Charlie did not want to open the conversation. “Why are you here?”
“It’s just—” He cut himself off. Instead of offering an explanation for his continued, unwanted presence, he said, “Kelly tried to kill herself. That shows remorse. I read about it on the Internet, that remorse matters in death penalty cases. So you could use that during her trial to make the jury give her life, or maybe life with a chance of parole. They know that, right?”
“Who knows that?” Sam asked.
“The police. The prosecutor. You guys.”
Charlie told him, “They’ll say it was a cry for help. She gave up the gun. She didn’t pull the trigger.”
“She did,” he said. “Three times.”
“What?” Sam stood up from the chair.
Charlie said, “You can’t lie about this. People were there.”
“I’m not lying. She put the gun to her chest. You were twenty feet away. You had to see it, or at least hear it.” He told Sam, “Kelly pressed the muzzle to her chest, and she pulled the trigger three times.”
Charlie had absolutely no recollection of any of this.
“I heard the clicks,” he said. “I bet Judith Pinkman did, too. I’m not making this up. She really tried to kill herself.”
Sam asked, “Then why didn’t you just take away the gun?”
“I didn’t know if she’d reloaded. I’m a Marine. You always assume a weapon is hot unless you can clearly visualize the empty chamber.”
“Reloaded,” Sam repeated, giving weight to the word. “When the shooting began, how many shots did you hear?”
“Six,” he said. “One, then there was a pause, then there were three real quick in a row, then there was a shorter pause, then another shot, then a quick pause, then another shot.” He shrugged. “Six.”
Sam sat back down. She reached into her purse. “You’re sure about that?”
“If you’ve been in close-quarters combat as many times as I have, you learn really fast to count the bullets.”
She had her notepad in her lap. “And Kelly’s revolver holds six shots?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Charlie asked, “Was it empty when you took it?”
Mason glanced nervously at Sam.
She said, “Now would be a good time to explain why you stuck it down the back of your pants.”
“Instinct.” He shrugged, as if committing a felony was inconsequential. “The cop wouldn’t take it, so I just stowed it, temporarily, like you said, in the waist of my pants. And then none of the cops asked me about it, or searched me for it, and then I was out the door and in my truck before I realized it was still there.”
Sam did not poke holes in the thin story. Instead, she asked, “What did you do with the gun?”
“I took it apart and dropped it around the lake. The deepest parts.”
Again, she let him off the hook. “Is it possible to tell whether a gun is loaded just by looking at it?”
“No,” Mason said. “I mean, a nine-mill, the slide will go back, but you can pop the catch and—”
Charlie interrupted, “With a revolver, once the bullets are fired, the shells stay in the cylinder.”
“They do,” Mason confirmed. “All six of them were left in the cylinder, so she hadn’t reloaded.”
Charlie said, “Which means that she knew the gun was empty when she clicked the trigger three times.”
“You don’t know that,” Mason insisted. “Kelly probably thought—”
“Verify the sequence for me, please.” Sam slid the pen out of her notepad. She started writing as she spoke. “One shot, long pause, three quick shots, then a short pause, then another shot, then another short pause, then another shot. Right?”
Mason nodded.
She said, “There was another shot fired after Lucy Alexander was hit in the neck.”
“Into the floor,” Mason said. “I mean, that’s what I’m assuming.”
Sam arched her brow.
He explained, “I saw a bullet hole in the floor, right around here.” He pointed to the right side of the screen. “It wouldn’t be on the video because of the camera angle. It’s closer to the door. More like where Kelly ended up when they cuffed her.”
Charlie asked, “What did the hole look like?”
“The tile was chipped away, but there was no stippling, so it was probably fired from a distance of at least two, three feet. It was oval, too. Like a tear drop, so it was shot down and at an angle.” He held out his hand, finger and thumb in the shape of a weapon. “So, at her waist, maybe? She’s shorter than I am, but the angle wasn’t that steep. You’d have to string it.” Mason shrugged. “I’m not really an expert. I took a class as part of my continuing ed during my service.”
Sam said, “She didn’t want to kill Judith Pinkman, so she shot the last bullet into the floor.”
Mason shrugged again. “Maybe. But she knew the Pinkmans from way back, and that didn’t keep her from killing Doug.”
“She knew them?” Sam asked.
“Kelly was the water girl for the football team. That’s when those rumors started about her and one of the players. I’m not one hundred percent on what happened, but Kelly missed a couple’a three weeks of school and the kid left town, so—” He shrugged off the rest, but he must have been talking about the rumors that had spurred half the school to denigrate Kelly Wilson in her own yearbook.
Sam clarified, “Douglas Pinkman was the coach of the football team, so he would know Kelly Wilson from her stint as a water girl.”
“Right. She did two seasons, I think, along with another girl from the special ed group. The county office sent down this edict that we were supposed to integrate the special kids into more extracurricular programs: marching band, cheerleading, basketball, football. It was a good idea. I think it really helped some of them. Obviously not Kelly, but—”
“Thank you.” Sam went back to her notes. She turned the pages slowly, making notations with her pen. She hadn’t dismissed Mason so much as found something more interesting.
Mason looked at Charlie for some kind of explanation.
Charlie could shrug, too. “What did you want to talk to us about?”
“Yeah.” He worked his hat between his hands. “Do you mind if I use your bathroom first?”
She couldn’t believe he was dragging this out. “It’s back down the hall.”
He nodded before leaving, like they were in an English drawing room.
Charlie turned to Sam, who was still focused on her notes. “Why are you talking to him? We need to get him out of here.”
“Can you look at this and tell me what you see?” Sam pointed to the right side of the screen. “I don’t trust my eyes. Does this shadow look odd to you?”
Charlie heard Mason open the door to the bathroom, then close it. Thank God he hadn’t accidentally found Rusty’s office.
Charlie told Sam, “Please help me get rid of him.”
“I will,” Sam said. “Just look at the video.”