Charlie had dealt with her share of mothers who were convinced that their children were being framed, but there was no time to give Ava Wilson the speech about how sometimes good people did bad things. “Listen to me, Ava. The police are going to come in whether you let them or not. They’ll remove you from the house. They’ll do a thorough search. They might break things or find things you don’t want them to find. I doubt they’ll hold you in custody, but they might if they think you’re going to alter evidence, so please don’t do that. You cannot, please, hear me on this: you cannot say anything to them about Kelly or why she might have done this or what might have happened. They are not trying to help her and they are not her friends. Understand?”
Ava did not acknowledge the information. She just stood there.
The helicopter swooped lower. Charlie could see the pilot’s face behind the bubbled glass. He was talking into the mic, probably giving the coordinates for the search warrant.
She asked Ava, “Can we go inside?”
The woman didn’t move, so Charlie took her by the arm and led her into the house. “Have you heard from your husband?”
“Ely don’t call until he’s done working, from the payphone outside the lumber yard.”
Which meant that Kelly’s father would probably learn about his daughter’s crimes from his car radio. “Do you have a suitcase or a small bag you can put some clothes in?”
Ava did not answer. Her eyes were fixed on the muted television.
The middle school was on the news. An aerial shot showed the top of the gymnasium, which was likely being used as a staging ground. The scroll at the bottom of the screen read: BOMB SQUAD SWEPT BUILDING FOR SUSPICIOUS DEVICES. TWO DEAD—8-YEAR-OLD STUDENT, HERO PRINCIPAL WHO TRIED TO SAVE HER.
Lucy Alexander was only eight years old.
“She didn’t do this,” Ava said. “She wouldn’t.”
Lucy’s cold hand.
Sam’s trembling fingers.
The sudden white waxiness of Gamma’s skin.
Charlie wiped her eyes. She glanced around the room, fighting against the slideshow of horror that had returned to her head. The Wilson house was shabby, but tidy. A Jesus hung on a cross by the front door. The galley kitchen was right off the cramped living room. Dishes were drying in the rack. Yellow gloves were folded limply over the edge of the sink. The counter was cluttered, but there was order to it.
Charlie told Ava, “You’re not going to be allowed back in the house for a while. You’ll need a change of clothes, some toiletries.”
“The toilet’s right behind you.”
Charlie tried again. “You need to pack some things.” She waited to see if Ava understood. “Clothes, toothbrushes. Nothing else.”
Ava nodded, but she either could not or would not look away from the television.
Outside, the helicopter lifted away. Charlie was burning through time. Coin had probably gotten his warrant signed by now. The search team would be en route from town, full lights and sirens.
She asked Ava, “Do you want me to pack some things for you?” Charlie waited for another nod. And waited. “Ava, I’m going to get some clothes for you, then we’re going to wait outside for the police.”
Ava clutched the remote in her hand as she sat on the edge of the couch.
Charlie opened kitchen cabinets until she found a plastic grocery bag. She slipped on one of the yellow dishwashing gloves from the sink, then walked past the bathroom down the short, paneled hallway. There were two bedrooms, both of them taking up one end of the house. Instead of a door, Kelly had a purple curtain for privacy. The sheet of notebook paper pinned to the material said NO ADULTS ALOWT.
Charlie knew better than to go into a murder suspect’s room, but she used Lenore’s phone to take a picture of the sign.
The Wilsons’ bedroom was on the right, facing a steep hill behind the house. They slept in a large waterbed that took up most of the space. A tall chest of drawers kept the door from opening all the way. Charlie was glad she’d thought to put on the yellow glove as she opened the drawers, though to be honest, the Wilsons were neater than she was. She found some women’s underwear, a few pairs of boxers, and a pair of jeans that looked like they came from the children’s department. She grabbed two more T-shirts and shoved all of the clothes into the plastic grocery bag. Ken Coin was notorious for needlessly drawing out his searches. The Wilsons would be lucky if they were allowed back into their home by the weekend.
Charlie turned around, planning to go to the bathroom next, but something stopped her.
ALOWT.
How could Kelly Wilson reach the age of eighteen without knowing how to spell such a simple word?
Charlie hesitated once, then pulled back the curtain. She wouldn’t enter the room. She would take pictures from the hall. Not as easy as it sounded. The bedroom was the size of a generous walk-in closet.
Or a prison cell.
Light slanted in from the narrow, horizontal window mounted high over the twin bed. The paneling on the walls had been painted a light lilac. The carpet was orange shag. The bedspread had Hello Kitty listening to a Walkman with large headphones over her ears.
This was not a Goth girl’s room. There were no black walls and heavy metal posters. The closet door was open. Stacks of shirts were neatly folded on the floor. A few longer pieces hung from a sagging rod. Kelly’s clothes were all lightly colored with ponies and rabbits and the sort of appliqués you would expect a ten-year-old girl to wear, not an eighteen-year-old almost woman.
Charlie photographed everything she could: the bedspread, the posters of kittens, the candy-pink lip gloss on top of the dresser. All the while, her focus was on the things that weren’t there. Eighteen-year-olds had all kinds of make-up. They had pictures with their friends and notes from possible future boyfriends and secrets that they kept all to themselves.
Her heart jumped when she heard wheels spinning down the dirt track. She stood on the bed and looked out the window. A black van with SWAT on the side slowed to a stop in front of the yellow school bus. Two guys with rifles drawn jumped out of the van and entered the bus.
“How …” Charlie started to say, but then she realized it didn’t matter how they’d managed to get here so quickly, because as soon as they cleared the bus, they would tear apart the house that she was standing in.
But Charlie wasn’t exactly standing in the house. She was standing on Kelly Wilson’s bed inside Kelly Wilson’s bedroom.
“Fuck me,” she whispered, because there was no other way to put it. She jumped off the bed. She used her rubber-gloved hand to swipe away the dirt from her tennis shoes. The deep purple fabric hid the grooves but a forensic tech with a sharp eye would know the size, brand and model number before the sun went down.
Charlie needed to leave. She needed to take Ava outside, hands raised in the air. She needed to make it clear to the heavily armed SWAT team that they were cooperating.
“Fuck,” Charlie repeated. How much time did she have? She stood on tiptoe and looked out the window. The two cops were searching the bus. The rest stayed inside the van. They either believed they had the element of surprise or they were looking for explosive devices.
Charlie saw movement closer by the house.
Lenore was standing by her car. Her eyes were wide as she stared at Charlie because any fool could tell that the slit of a window she was looking through was in one of the bedrooms.
Lenore jerked her head toward the front door. Her mouth mimed the words, “Get out.”