The Good Daughter: The gripping new bestselling thriller from a No. 1 author

“He’s right.” Charlie shifted on her feet. She could hear dogs barking in the distance. The sun was burning the top of her head. “Look, I know you’re devastated about your daughter, but I need to prepare you for what’s coming next. The police are on their way here right now.”

“Are they bringing Kelly home?”

Charlie was thrown off by the hopefulness in Ava Wilson’s voice. “No. They’re going to search your house. They’ll probably start in Kelly’s room, then—”

“Will they take her some clean clothes?”

Again, Charlie was thrown. “No, they’re going to search the house for weapons, any notes, computers—”

“We don’t got a computer.”

“Okay, that’s good. Did Kelly do her schoolwork at the library?”

“She didn’t do anything,” Ava said. “She didn’t kill …” Her voice trailed off. Her eyes glistened. “Ma’am, you gotta hear me. My baby didn’t do what they’re saying.”

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.”

Charlie jammed the plastic bag of clothes into her purse and made to leave.

The purple walls. The Hello Kitty. The kitten posters.

Thirty, maybe forty seconds. That’s how long it would take them to clear the bus, get back in the van, and reach the front door.

She used her gloved hand to open the dresser drawers. Clothes. Underwear. Pens. No diary. No notebooks. She got on her knees and ran her hand between the mattress and boxspring, then looked underneath the bed. Nothing. She was checking between the stacked clothes on the closet floor when she heard the SWAT van doors thunk closed, the tires crunch against dirt as they drew closer to the house.

Teenagers’ rooms were never this neat. Charlie rifled the contents of the tiny closet with one hand, dumping out two shoe boxes of toys, pulling clothes off hangers and tossing them onto the bed. She patted pockets, turned hats inside out. She stood on tiptoe and reached blindly onto the shelf.

The rubber glove skipped across something flat and hard.

A picture frame?

“Officers.” Lenore’s deep voice reached her ears through the thin walls. “There are two women in the house, both unarmed.”

The cop wasn’t interested. “Go back to your car! Now!”

Charlie’s heart was going to blow up in her chest. She grabbed at the thing on the closet shelf. It was heavier than she thought. The sharp edge jabbed the top of her head.

A yearbook.

Pikeville Middle School class of 2012.

A deafening knock came at the front door. The walls rattled. “State police!” a man’s voice boomed. “I am executing a search warrant. Open the door!”

“I’m coming!” Charlie jammed the yearbook into her purse. She had made it as far as the kitchen when the front door splintered open.

Ava screamed like she was on fire.

“Get down! Get down!” Lasers swept around the room. The house shook on its foundation. Windows were broken. Doors were kicked in. Men yelled orders. Ava kept screaming. Charlie was on her knees, hands in the air, eyes wide open so that she could see which man ended up shooting her.

No one shot her.

No one moved.

Ava’s screaming stopped on a dime.

Six massive cops in full tactical gear took up every available inch of the room. Their arms were so tensed as they gripped their AR-15s that Charlie could make out the strands of muscle working to keep their fingers from moving to the triggers.

Slowly, Charlie looked down at her chest.

There was a red dot over her heart.

She looked at Ava.

Five more dots on her chest.

The woman was standing on the couch, knees bent. Her mouth was open, but fear had paralyzed her vocal cords. Inexplicably, she held a toothbrush in each of her raised hands.

The man closest to Ava lowered his rifle. “Toothbrushes.”

Another rifle was lowered. “Looked like a God damn trigger switch.”

“I know, right?”

More rifles were lowered. Someone chuckled.

The tension lightened incrementally.

From outside the house, a woman yelled, “Gentlemen?”

“Clear,” the first guy called back. He grabbed Ava by the arm and pushed her out the door. He turned around to do the same to Charlie, but she escorted herself out, hands in the air.

She didn’t lower her arms until she was out in the yard. She took a deep breath of fresh air and tried not to think about how she could’ve died if any one of those men hadn’t taken the time to differentiate between a toothbrush and a detonator for a suicide vest.

In Pikeville.

“Jesus Christ,” Charlie said, hoping it would pass for a prayer.

Lenore had stayed by the car. She looked furious to Charlie, which she had every right to be, but she only lifted her chin, asking the obvious question: You okay?

Charlie nodded back, but she didn’t feel okay. She felt angry—that Rusty had sent her here, that she had taken such a stupid risk, that she had violated the law for reasons that were completely unknown to her, that she had risked getting shot in the heart with what was likely a fast-expanding hollow-point bullet.

All for a fucking yearbook.

Ava whispered, “What’s happening?”

Charlie looked back at the house, which was still shaking from all the heavy men traipsing back and forth. “They’re searching for things they can use in court against Kelly.”

“Like what?”

Charlie listed off the things that she had been looking for. “A confession. An explanation. A diagram of the school. A list of people Kelly was mad at.”

“She’s never been mad at nobody.”

“Ava Wilson?” A tall woman in bulky tactical gear walked toward them. She had her rifle slung to her side. A rolled-up piece of paper was in her fist. That was how they’d gotten here so quickly. The warrant had been faxed to the van. “Are you Ava Wilson, mother to Kelly Rene Wilson?”

Ava stiffened at the sound of authority. “Yes, sir. Ma’am.”

“This is your house?”

“We rent it, yes, ma’am. Sir.”

“Mrs. Wilson.” The cop didn’t seem concerned with pronouns. “I’m Captain Isaac with the state police. I have a warrant to search your house.”

Charlie pointed out, “You’re already searching it.”

“We had reason to believe evidence might be tampered with.” Isaac studied Charlie’s bruised eye. “Were you accidentally injured during the breach, ma’am?”

“No. A different police officer hit me today.”

Isaac glanced at Lenore, who was still apparently livid, then looked back at Charlie. “Are you two ladies together?”

“Yes,” Charlie said. “Mrs. Wilson would like to see a copy of the warrant.”

Isaac made a point of noticing the yellow glove on Charlie’s hand.

“Dish-washing glove,” Charlie said, which was technically true. “Mrs. Wilson would like to see a copy of the warrant.”

“Are you Mrs. Wilson’s lawyer?”

“I’m a lawyer,” Charlie clarified. “I’m only here as a friend of the family.”

Isaac told Ava, “Mrs. Wilson, per your friend’s request, I am giving you a copy of the warrant.”

Charlie had to lift Ava’s arm so that the warrant could be placed in the woman’s hand.

Isaac asked, “Mrs. Wilson, are there any weapons in the house?”

Ava shook her head. “No, sir.”

“Any needles we should be worried about? Anything that’s going to cut us?”

Again, Ava shook her head, though she seemed troubled by the question.

“Explosives?”

Ava’s hand flew to her mouth. “Is there a gas leak?”

Isaac looked to Charlie for an explanation. Charlie shrugged. The mother’s life was upside down. Logic was the last thing they should expect from her.

Isaac asked Ava, “Ma’am, do I have your consent to search your person?”

“Ye—”

“No,” Charlie interrupted. “You don’t have consent to search anything or anyone beyond the scope of the warrant.”

Isaac glanced down at Charlie’s purse, which had conformed roughly to the shape of a rectangular yearbook. “Do I need to search your bag?”

Charlie felt her heart flip. “Do you have cause?”

“If you’ve concealed evidence, or removed something from the house with the purposes of concealment, then—”

“That would be illegal,” Charlie said. “Like searching a school bus when it’s not specifically listed in your warrant and it’s not part of the curtilage.”

Isaac nodded once. “You would be correct, unless there was cause.”

Charlie snapped off the yellow glove. “I did remove this from the house, but not intentionally.”

“Thank you for being forthcoming.” Isaac turned to Ava. She had a script to follow. “Ma’am, you can stay outside, or you can leave, but you cannot go back into the house until we’ve released it. Do you understand?”

Ava shook her head.

Charlie said, “She understands.”

Isaac walked across the yard and joined the men inside the house. Plastic containers were stacked by the door. Evidence logs. Zip ties. Plastic bags. Ava stared through the bay window. The television was still on. The screen was so large that Charlie could read the scroll along the bottom: PIKEVILLE PD SOURCE: SCHOOL SECURITY FOOTAGE WILL NOT BE RELEASED.

Security cameras. Charlie had not noticed them this morning, but now she recalled a camera at the end of every hallway.

The murder spree had been captured on video.

Ava asked, “What are we going to do?”

Charlie suppressed her first answer: Watch your daughter get strapped to a gurney and executed.

She told Ava, “My father will explain everything back at his office.” She took the rolled-up warrant from the woman’s sweaty hand. “There has to be an arraignment within forty-eight hours. Kelly will likely be held at the county jail, but then they’ll transfer her somewhere else. There will be a lot of court appearances and plenty of opportunities to see her. None of this will happen quickly. Everything takes a long time.” Charlie scanned the search warrant, which was basically a love letter from the judge allowing the cops to do whatever the hell they wanted. She asked Ava, “Is this your address?”

Ava looked at the warrant. “Yes, ma’am, that’s the street number.”

Through the open front door, Charlie saw Isaac start yanking out drawers in the kitchen. Silverware clattered. Carpet was being stripped from the floor. None of them were being gentle. They lifted their feet high as they stomped around, checking for hollow sounds under the floorboards, poking at the stained tile in the ceiling.

Ava grabbed Charlie’s arm. “When will Kelly come home?”

“You’ll need to talk about that with my father.”

“I don’t see how we can afford any of this,” Ava said. “We ain’t got no money, if that’s why you’re here.”

Rusty had never been interested in money. “The state will pay for her defense. It won’t be much, but I can promise you, my father will work his heart out for your daughter.”

Ava blinked. She didn’t seem to follow. “She’s got chores to do.”

Charlie looked into the woman’s eyes. Her pupils were small, but that could be explained by the intense sunlight. “Are you on something?”

She looked down at her feet. “No, ma’am. There was a pebble but I kicked it away.”

Charlie waited for an inappropriate smile, but the woman was being serious. “Did you take some medication? Or maybe you smoked a joint to take the edge off?”

“Oh, no, ma’am. I’m a bus driver. I can’t take drugs. Children depend on me.”

Charlie looked into her eyes again, this time for any sign of reason. “Did my father explain what’s happening to Kelly?”

“He said he was working for her, but I don’t know.” She whispered, “My cousin says Rusty Quinn is a bad man, that he represents low-lifes and rapists and killers.”

Charlie’s mouth went dry. The woman did not seem to understand that Rusty Quinn was exactly the kind of man that her daughter needed.

“There’s Kelly.” Ava was looking at the television again.

Kelly Wilson’s face filled the screen. Someone had obviously leaked a school photo. Instead of the heavy Goth make-up and black clothes, Kelly was wearing one of her rainbow pony T-shirts from the closet.

The photo disappeared and was replaced with live footage of Rusty leaving the Derrick County Hospital. He scowled at the reporter who shoved a microphone in his face, but he had left by the front doors for a reason. Rusty made a visible show of reluctantly stopping for the interview. Charlie could tell by the way his mouth was moving that he was offering a cavalcade of southern-y sound bites that would be played on a virtual loop by the national stations. This was how these high-profile cases worked. Rusty had to get out in front of the talking heads, to paint Kelly Wilson as a troubled teenager facing the ultimate punishment rather than as a monster who had murdered a child and her school principal.

Ava whispered, “Is a revolver a weapon?”

Charlie felt her stomach drop. She led Ava away from the house and stood with her in the middle of the track. “Do you have a revolver?”

Ava nodded. “Ely keeps it in the glove box of the car.”

“The car he drove to work today?”

She nodded again.

“Does he own the gun legally?”

“We don’t steal things, ma’am. We work for them.”

“I’m sorry, what I mean is, is your husband a convicted felon?”

“No, ma’am. He’s an honest man.”

“Do you know how many bullets the gun holds?”

“Six.” Ava sounded certain enough, but she added, “I think six. I seen it a million times, but I never paid attention to it. I’m sorry I can’t remember.”

“It’s all right.” Charlie had felt the same way when Delia Wofford was questioning her. How many shots did you hear? What was the sequence? Was Mr. Huckabee with you? What happened to the revolver?

Charlie had been right in the middle of it, but fear had dampened her recall.

She asked Ava, “When was the last time you saw the revolver?”

“I don’t—oh.” Ava’s phone was ringing from the front pocket of her pajamas. She pulled out a cheap flip phone, the kind that let you pre-pay for minutes. “I don’t know that number.”

Charlie knew the number. It belonged to her iPhone, which Huck apparently still had. “Get in the car,” she told Ava, motioning for Lenore to help. “Let me answer this.”

Ava gave Lenore a wary look. “I don’t know if—”

“Get in the car.” Charlie practically pushed the woman away. She answered the phone on the fifth ring. “Hello?”

“Mrs. Wilson, this is Mr. Huckabee, Kelly’s teacher from middle school.”

“How did you unlock my phone?”

Huck hesitated a good, long while. “You need a better password than 1-2-3-4.”

Charlie had heard the same thing from Ben on numerous occasions. She walked up the track for more privacy. “Why are you calling Ava Wilson?”

He hesitated a second time. “I taught Kelly for two years. I tutored her a few months when she moved up to the high school.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I spent four hours answering questions from two assholes with the GBI and another hour answering questions at the hospital.”

“What assholes?”

“Atkins. Avery. Some ten-year-old with a cowlick and an older black chick kept tag-teaming me.”

“Shit,” Charlie mumbled. He probably meant Louis Avery, the FBI’s North Georgia field agent. “Did he give you his card?”

“I threw it away,” Huck said. “My arm’s fine, by the way. Bullet went straight through.”

“My nose is broken and I have a concussion,” Charlie told him. “Why were you calling Ava?”

His sigh said he was humoring her. “Because I care about my students. I wanted to help. To make sure she had a lawyer. That she was being looked after by someone who wasn’t going to exploit her or get her into more trouble.” Huck abruptly dropped the bravado. “Kelly’s not smart, Charlotte. She’s not a murderer.”

“You don’t have to be smart to kill somebody. Actually, the opposite is usually true.” She turned back to look at the Wilson house. Captain Isaac was carrying out a plastic box full of Kelly’s clothes.

Charlie told Huck, “If you really want to help Kelly, stay away from any and all reporters, don’t go on camera, don’t let them get a good photo of you, don’t even talk to your friends about what happened, because they’ll go on camera or they’ll talk to reporters and you won’t be able to control what comes out of their mouths.”

“That’s good advice.” He let out a short breath and said, “Hey, I need to tell you that I’m sorry.”