Charlie waited.
Delia asked, “Would it help you speak more freely if your husband left the room?”
Charlie smoothed her lips together. “Ben knows why I was at the school this morning.”
If Delia was disappointed that her ace had been played, she didn’t let on. She picked up the pen. “Let’s start from that point, then. I know your car was parked in the faculty lot to the east of the main entrance. How did you enter the building?”
“The side door. It was propped open.”
“Did you notice the door was open when you parked your car?”
“It’s always open.” Charlie shook her head. “I mean, it was when I was a student there. It’s quicker from the parking lot to the cafeteria. I used to go to the …” Her voice trailed off, because it didn’t matter. “I parked in the side lot and went through the side door, which I assumed from my previous time as a student would be open.”
Delia’s pen moved across the pad. She didn’t look up when she asked, “You went directly to Mr. Huckabee’s classroom?”
“I got turned around. I walked by the front office. It was dark inside, except Mr. Pinkman’s light was on in the back.”
“Did you see anyone?”
“I didn’t see Mr. Pinkman, just that his light was on.”
“What about anybody else?”
“Mrs. Jenkins, the school secretary. I think I saw her go into the office, but I was way down the hall by then. The lights came on. I turned around. I was about thirty yards away.” Standing where Kelly Wilson had stood when she murdered Mr. Pinkman and the little girl. “I’m not sure it was Mrs. Jenkins who entered the office, but it was an older woman who looked like her.”
“And that’s the only person you saw, an older woman entering the office?”
“Yes. The doors were closed to the classrooms. Some teachers were inside, so I guess I saw them, too.” Charlie chewed her lip, trying to get her thoughts together. No wonder her clients talked themselves into trouble. Charlie was a witness, not even a suspect, and she was already leaving out details. “I didn’t recognize any of the teachers behind the doors. I don’t know if they saw me, but it’s possible they did.”
“Okay, so you went to Mr. Huckabee’s classroom next?”
“Yes. I was in his room when I heard the gunshot.”
“A gunshot?”
Charlie wadded the Wet Wipes into a ball on the table. “Four gunshots.”
“Rapid?”
“Yes. No.” She closed her eyes. She tried to remember. Only a handful of hours had passed. Why did everything feel like it had happened an eternity ago? “I heard two shots, then two more? Or three and then one?”
Delia held her pen aloft, waiting.
“I don’t remember the sequence,” Charlie admitted, and she again reminded herself that this was a sworn statement. “To the best of my recollection, there were four shots, total. I remember counting them. And then Huck pulled me down.” Charlie cleared her throat. She resisted the need to look at Ben, to gauge how he was taking this. “Mr. Huckabee pulled me down behind the filing cabinet, I assume for cover.”
“Any more gunshots?”
“I—” She shook her head because again she was unsure. “I don’t know.”
Delia said, “Let’s back up a little. It was only you and Mr. Huckabee in the room?”
“Yes. I didn’t see anyone else in the hall.”
“How long were you in Mr. Huckabee’s room before you heard the shots?”
Again, Charlie shook her head. “Maybe two to three minutes?”
“So, you go into his classroom, two to three minutes pass, you hear these four gunshots, Mr. Huckabee pulls you down behind the filing cabinet, and then?”
Charlie shrugged. “I ran.”
“Toward the exit?”
Charlie’s eyes flicked toward Ben. “Toward the gunshots.”
Ben silently scratched his jaw. This was one of their things, the way Charlie always ran toward danger when everyone else was running away.
“All right.” Delia spoke as she wrote. “Was Mr. Huckabee with you when you ran toward the gunshots?”
“He was behind me.” Charlie remembered sprinting past Kelly, leaping over her extended legs. This time, her memory showed Huck kneeling beside the girl. That made sense. He would’ve seen the gun in Kelly’s hand. He would’ve been trying to talk the teenager into giving him the revolver the entire time that Charlie was watching the little girl die.
She asked Delia, “Can you tell me her name? The little girl?”
“Lucy Alexander. Her mother teaches at the school.”
Charlie saw the girl’s features come into focus. Her pink coat. Her matching backpack. Was her name monogrammed on the inside of her jacket or was that a detail that Charlie was making up?
Delia said, “We haven’t released her name to the press, but her parents have been notified.”
“She didn’t suffer. At least, I don’t think so. She didn’t know she was …” Once again, Charlie shook her head, aware that she was filling in blanks with things that she wanted to be true.
Delia said, “So, you ran toward the gunshots, in the direction of the front office.” She turned to a fresh page in her pad. “Mr. Huckabee was behind you. Who else did you see?”
“I don’t remember seeing Kelly Wilson. I mean, I did remember later that I saw her, when I heard the cops shouting, but when I was running, well, before that, Huck caught up with me, he passed me at the corner, and then I passed him …” Charlie chewed her lip again. This meandering narrative was the kind of thing that drove her crazy when she talked to her clients. “I ran past Kelly. I thought she was a kid. A student.” Kelly Wilson had been both of those things. Even at eighteen, she was tiny, the kind of girl who would always look like a kid, even when she was a grown woman with children of her own.
“I’m getting fuzzy on the timeline,” Delia admitted.
“I’m sorry.” Charlie tried to explain, “It screws with your head when you’re in the middle of this kind of thing. Time turns from a straight line into a sphere, and it’s not until later that you can hold it in your hand and look at all the different sides, and you think, Oh, now I remember—this happened, then this happened, then … It’s only after the fact that you can pull it back into a straight line that makes sense.”
Ben was studying her. She knew what he was thinking because she knew the inside of his head better than she did her own. With those few sentences, Charlie had revealed more about her feelings when Gamma and Sam had been shot than she had alluded to in sixteen years of marriage.
Charlie kept her focus on Delia Wofford. “What I’m saying is that I didn’t remember seeing Kelly the first time until I saw her the second time. Like déjà vu, but real.”
“I get it.” Delia nodded as she resumed writing. “Go on.”
Charlie had to think to find her place. “Kelly hadn’t moved between the two times I saw her. Her back was to the wall. Her legs were straight out in front of her. The first time, when I was running up the hall, I remember glancing at her to make sure she was okay. To make sure she wasn’t a victim. I didn’t see the gun that time. She was dressed in black, like a Goth girl, but I didn’t look at her hands.” Charlie