She raised her thin shoulders up, then held them for a second before letting them drop back down. “It’s just something everybody knows.”
Sam asked, “Kelly, do you have many friends at school?”
“Acquaintances, you mean?”
Sam nodded. “Sure.”
“I guess I know almost about everybody. I been at the school a real long time.” She smiled again. “Not long enough to be a lawyer, though.”
Sam felt herself smile back. “Do you have anyone you’re particularly close to?”
Kelly’s cheeks turned bright red.
Sam recognized that type of blush. She opened her notepad. “You can tell me his name. I won’t repeat it to anyone.”
“Adam Humphrey.” Kelly was obviously eager to talk about the boy. “He’s got brown hair and eyes and he’s not real tall but he drives a Camaro. But we don’t go together. Not like official or anything.”
“Okay, how about friends who are girls? Do you have any of those?”
“No, ma’am. Not close like I’d bring ’em home with me.” She remembered, “Except there was Lydia Phillips when I was in elementary school, only she moved away when her daddy got transferred on account of the economy.”
Sam recorded the details in her pad. “Are there teachers you’re close to?”
“Well, Mr. Huckabee used to help me with my history lessons, but he ain’t done that in a while. Dr. Jodie said he’d let me do some extra work to make up for missing some classes last week, but he ain’t give me that work yet. And Mrs. Pinkman’s—”
Kelly quickly bowed her head.
Sam finished a line in her notes. She put down her pen. She studied the girl.
Kelly had gone still.
Sam asked, “Was Mrs. Pinkman helping you with English?”
Kelly did not answer. She kept her head down. Her hair covered her face. Sam could hear her sniff. Her shoulders began to shake. She was crying.
“Kelly,” Sam said. “Why are you upset?”
“’Cause Mr. Pinkman wasn’t a bad man.” She sniffed again. “And that girl was just a baby.”
Sam clasped her hands together. She leaned her elbows on the table. “Why were you at the middle school yesterday morning?”
“’Cause,” she mumbled.
“Because why?”
“’Cause I brung the gun from my daddy’s glove box.” She sniffed. “And I had it in my hand when I killed them two people.”
The prosecutor in Sam wanted to press, but she wasn’t here to break the girl. “Kelly, I know you’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but it’s important. You are never to tell anyone what you just told me. Okay? Not your parents, not friends, not strangers, especially not anyone you meet in jail.”
“They ain’t my friends, is what Mr. Rusty said.” Kelly’s voice was muffled behind the cascade of thick hair. “They might try to get me in trouble so they can get out of trouble theirselves.”
“That’s right. No one you meet in here is your friend. Not the guards, or your fellow inmates, or the janitor, or anyone else.”
The girl sniffed. The handcuff chain was clinking under the table again. “I ain’t talked to none of them. I just kept to myself, like I do.”
Sam pulled the rest of the tissues from her purse and passed them to Kelly. “I’ll speak with your parents before you see them and make sure they know not to ask you about what happened.” Sam assumed that Rusty had given the Wilsons that speech already, but they were going to hear it from Sam before she left town. “Everything you told me about yesterday is between you and me. Okay?”
She sniffed again. “Okay.”
“Blow your nose.” She waited for Kelly to do as she was told, then said, “Tell me about Adam Humphrey. Did you meet him in school?”
Kelly shook her head. Sam could still not see her face. All she saw was the top of her head.
Sam asked, “Did you meet Adam when you were out? For instance, at a movie or at church?”
Kelly shook her head again.
“Tell me about the yearbook in your closet.”
Kelly quickly looked up. Sam expected to see anger, but she saw fear. “Please don’t tell nobody.”
“I won’t,” Sam promised. “Remember, everything here is confidential.”
Kelly kept the tissue in her hand as she wiped her nose with her sleeve.
Sam asked, “Can you tell me why people wrote those things about you?”
“They were bad things.”
“I don’t think the acts they were describing were bad. I think that the people who wrote those things were being unkind.”
Kelly appeared baffled. Sam couldn’t fault her. This was no time to lecture an eighteen-year-old spree killer on feminism.
She asked Kelly, “Why did they write those things about you?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. You’d have to ask them.”
“Were some of the things they said true?”
Kelly looked back down at the table. “Not like how they said, but maybe something similar.”
Sam wondered at the turn of phrase. The girl was not so slow that she couldn’t obfuscate. “Were you angry because they were picking on you?”
“No,” she said. “I was hurt mostly, because them’s private things and I didn’t know most of them people. But I guess it was a long time ago. A lot of ’em could of graduated already.”
“Has your mother seen the yearbook?”
Kelly’s eyes went wide. This time, she looked scared. “Please don’t show my mama.”
“I won’t,” Sam promised. “Remember how I told you that anything you tell me will remain confidential?”
“No.”
Sam felt a prick in her left eyebrow. “When I first walked into the room, I explained to you who I am, and that I work with my father, and that we have both taken an oath of confidentiality.”
“No, ma’am, I don’t remember that last part.”
“Confidentiality means that I have to keep your secrets.”
“Oh, well, okay, that’s what your daddy said, too, about secrets.”
Sam looked at the time. She had less than four minutes. “Kelly, I was told that yesterday morning, right after the shooting took place, when Mr. Huckabee was asking you to relinquish the revolver, you said something that Mr. Huckabee and perhaps a police officer heard. Do you remember what you said?”
“No, ma’am. I didn’t much feel like talking after all that.”
“You said something.” Sam tried again, “The officer heard you. Mr. Huckabee heard you.”
“Okay.” Kelly nodded slowly. “I did say something.”
Sam was surprised by how quickly the girl had changed her story. “Do you remember what you said?”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember saying it.”
Sam felt Kelly’s eagerness to please pushing out into the space between them. She tried approaching the question from a different angle, asking, “Kelly, in the hallway yesterday morning, did you tell Mr. Huckabee and the police officer that the lockers are blue?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Kelly latched onto the suggestion. “They are blue.”
Sam started nodding her head. “I know they’re blue. But is that what you said at that point? Did you actually say that to them, that the lockers are blue? Is that what you told Mr. Huckabee and the policeman? That the lockers are blue?”