Not to mention she might be looking at a murder rap if she got hold of Dexter Black. He had called her twice today, once without a police monitor. He could’ve mentioned that he was going to squeal on some teenagers.
Not teenagers.
One teenager.
Flora.
Oliver Patterson had been released without charge. Dexter was free to do as he pleased until the next time his ass landed in jail. Nancy was never formally questioned. The entire sting had been about capturing Flora Faulkner. Why they launched a SWAT team to handcuff a fifteen-year-old girl was beyond Charlie. She was surprised they hadn’t brought the decommissioned bulletproof Humvee the police force had been given last year.
The door opened.
Flora was dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit that was too big for her small frame. Her wrists were uncuffed. She hugged herself with her skinny arms. Her pink-and-white Nike sneakers shuffled across the floor. Her eyes were wide, pupils blown. She was clearly in shock.
Charlie’s first inclination was to hold the girl, to let her put her head in Charlie’s lap, to stroke back her hair and tell her that everything was going to be all right.
Instead, Charlie guided her to one of the chairs. She helped Flora sit. She put her hand to the girl’s back, soothing her, willing her to stay strong. If Charlie’s brain had been ping-ponging at the diner, it was so focused now that she practically vibrated with the urgency to make sure Flora got out of this in one piece.
She asked the girl, “Are you okay?”
Flora nodded.
“Did you speak to any of them? Answer any questions?”
Her lip started to tremble. She played with the charm on her necklace, a tiny cross that Charlie had not noticed before.
“Flora, look at me.” Charlie had to force the girl to turn her head. “Did you answer any questions or talk to anybody?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Did you see a guy in a cheap suit?”
“I think so,” Flora said. “I mean, the suit was ugly. I don’t know how much they cost.”
“That’s probably Ken Coin. He’s the district attorney. You didn’t say anything to him?”
“No, ma’am.” Flora’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Am I gonna go to jail?”
“Not if I have anything to do with it.” Charlie kept a protective arm around the girl’s narrow shoulders. Her heart was pounding in her chest. She was so worried for Flora that she might as well be talking to her own child. “Listen, that man in the suit, Ken Coin, he is as sneaky as a snake, so be very careful around him, okay? He’ll try to trick you, or he’ll lie to you about evidence or he’ll tell you that your friends have said bad things about you, but don’t believe him. All you need to do is sit there and be quiet and let me do the talking.”
Flora’s tears started to fall. “I’m scared.”
“I know you are, sweetheart.” Charlie rubbed her back. Her chest swelled with righteous indignation. She wanted to throw open the door, kick the ass of any man who got in her way, and take Flora to safety. “You’re going to be okay. I’m going to represent you.”
“What about ramifications?”
“It’s different now,” Charlie said. “We don’t have much time before the police come in. I’m your attorney. I’m making it official. Anything you tell me is confidential. Do you understand?”
Flora nodded, her teeth still clicking.
“Is there anything you need to tell me?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“I know, baby, but you need to trust me. There’s a reason they picked you up.”
Her tears kept falling. Her nose started to run. “I don’t understand why I’m here.”
Charlie found some tissues in her purse. As she waited for Flora to blow her nose, she noticed the girl’s hands were clean. At least the booking sergeant had allowed Flora to wipe off the black ink after being fingerprinted. “Do you have any idea why they might have arrested you?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Is Oliver wrapped up in something that maybe he shouldn’t be?”
“Not that I know about.” She looked over Charlie’s shoulder, thinking about it. “I mean, he went hunting during the off season, last spring, but he didn’t catch anything, so does that count?”
Charlie shook her head at the girl’s guilelessness. “He’s not selling drugs or mixed up with some bad people?”
“No, ma’am, not that I’ve ever seen. He mostly plays video games and smokes cigarettes and drinks beer on the weekends.” Flora wiped her eyes. She asked, “What’s gonna happen to me now?”
Charlie sat back in her chair. She had to dial down her emotional response, otherwise she would be next to useless when Ken Coin made his entrance. “The district attorney is going to come in here and ask questions, but remember, you don’t answer anything, or even make a comment, unless I tell you to, okay? And then be very, very brief. Only answer the question he asked. Don’t try to be helpful, or over explain.”
“Should I answer anything at all?” the girl asked. “I mean, don’t I have the right not to? To remain silent?”
“You do, absolutely, and if that’s your choice, then you should follow your conscience. What’ll happen is you’ll say that you don’t want to talk to them, and they’ll leave, and you’ll be taken back to the cell.”
Flora took a shaky breath. “What about your way?”
“As your lawyer, I think it’s best to let the district attorney talk, and we’ll listen, and maybe we won’t give him a lot of answers but his questions will help us figure out how you got mixed up in this mess.” Charlie added, “I can’t promise anything, but I might be able to talk them into releasing you. But you should know that if I can’t talk them into it, then you’ll be taken back to the cell anyway.”
Flora started to nod. “It sounds like your way gives me a chance, at least.”
“I can’t make any promises,” Charlie hedged, because sometimes Ken Coin was smarter than she wanted to admit. “Now, listen, your Meemaw said that Oliver has a record. I know you said before that he wasn’t mixed up in anything. I really need the truth from you now. I’m not going to judge you, or lecture you, or pass judgment. I just don’t want to be surprised by Mr. Coin when he comes in.”
Flora pressed together her lips. “I’m supposed to open the diner tomorrow morning. Nancy can’t do it ’cause she’s got summer school.” Flora stopped to swallow. “You said I have to have a job to prove to the judge that I can take care of myself. I can’t get fired.”
Charlie let out a short breath. The girl was still worried about emancipation when she should have been worried about prison. “Is there anything you’re not telling me?”
Flora said, “I’m sorry, Miss Quinn, but I can’t tattle on anybody. That’s not right.”
Charlie studied the girl’s open expression. Thirty minutes ago, Charlie had been worried about the Pikeville foster system. Now Flora was looking at a night, possibly more, in the women’s detention center. She wouldn’t make it a day without being irreparably damaged. The older inmates would set upon her like jackals.
Charlie asked, “Who are you protecting?”
Flora said nothing.
She guessed, “It’s not Oliver, is it? You’re protecting someone else.”
Flora looked away.
“Is it Meemaw?” The Porsche. The beer money. Maude was the clearest beneficiary of Flora’s trust. She was also keeping the girl in line with her fists. “Flora, listen to me. Someone is going to sleep in jail tonight. Do you want it to be you, or do you want to tell Mr. Coin what Meemaw has been doing and maybe work it out so that it’s just you and your grandpa living in the apartment?”
Flora kept looking down at the table. “I don’t want to get anybody—”
“In trouble, I know. But if you’re taking the fall for Meemaw, think about where this ends.”
“I’m a kid.” She shrugged. “I won’t get in trouble like she would.”
“In
trouble for what?” Charlie asked. “Hypothetically?”
Flora glanced over her left shoulder, then her right. She saw the two-way mirror. She looked into Charlie’s eyes, and she silently mouthed the word meth.
Charlie suppressed a curse. She knew from Ben that the cops were looking for a van that was being used to cook meth in the vicinity of the cinder-block apartments. Maude didn’t strike Charlie as a meth freak, but Leroy had all the signs. Were they sending their granddaughter to make the buys, then Leroy took some off the top and Maude sold the rest at Shady Ray’s for beer money? And was Maude beating Flora whenever Flora refused to make the buys, because the girl struck Charlie as the type of kid who didn’t relish the idea of breaking the law.
Charlie told her, “If you go down for a crime your grandmother committed, I want you to know that you’re probably looking at hard time. I don’t mean jail. I mean big-girl prison.”
Flora’s throat worked as she swallowed. “I’m only a kid, though.”
“There are a lot of teenagers in adult prison who thought they’d get a light sentence because of their age, and they’re going to have gray in their hair by the time they get out.”
Flora seemed to waver.
“I want you to think about something,” Charlie said. “The way the police arrested you, the SWAT team and all the cops, I’m assuming that was to scare you. And you should be scared, but you don’t have to be stupid. They’re obviously trying to intimidate you into turning on whoever sold you the drugs in exchange for your freedom. It’s why they handcuffed you behind your back instead of in front. It’s why they took you down in front of your friends, behind the place where you work.”
Flora chewed her lip.
“You can give them the name of the van driver and make all of this go away.”
“Miss Quinn, those are bad people. They’ll kill me.”
Charlie had suspected she’d say as much. “Then you can give them the name of the person who sent you out to buy the drugs in the first place. The person who skimmed some off the top and sold it on.”
Flora looked shocked. “I can’t do that. Turn on my own blood. She took me in when my mama died. She’s all I got, except for Leroy.”
Charlie tucked the girl’s hair back behind her ear. It broke her heart that she was protecting her own abuser. “Flora, I know that you love your Meemaw, and I know that you want to do the right thing, but you have to ask yourself if your loyalty is worth the next five or ten years of your life.” She added, “And for that matter, what does it say if your Meemaw lets you go to prison so that she doesn’t have to?”
“She wouldn’t do that,” Flora defended. “She loves me too much.”
“She’s beating you.”
“She gets mad sometimes, is all.” Flora added, “I hit her back sometimes, too.”
“Is she afraid of you when you hit back? Afraid like you’re afraid of her?”
Flora thought about it. The answer was clear enough on her face. “She doesn’t mean it when it happens. She’s real sorry after. She cries and gets upset and she stops for a while.”
“Only for a while?”
“Like I told you, I put up with it this long. I can put up with it another two years.” She sniffed. “It only happens once or twice a month. That’s forty-eight more times, tops, before I go to college. And most of them aren’t that bad. Maybe three or four really bad ones, that’s all I’m looking at and—”
“Flora—”
“You know what it’s like to not have a mama.” The girl was crying openly now. “You know what it’s like to not have nobody who loves you, who cares about you, more than anybody else in the world.” Her voice cracked on the last part. “She ain’t perfect, but that’s what Meemaw is to me. She’s more of a mother than anybody else I got. You can’t take that away from me. Not again.”
Charlie felt tears in her own eyes. How many times had she wanted over the years to just one more time put her head in her mother’s lap and listen to her say that everything was going to be okay?
“Please,” Flora begged. “I can’t lose her. You gotta get us out of this.”
“Flora—” Charlie cut off the rest of her response when the door opened.
Ken Coin swaggered into the room; inasmuch as a man built like a miniature praying mantis can swagger. He slapped a thick file folder down on the table. He adjusted his too-loose pants. His dyed black hair was slicked back. His suit was so shiny that the fluorescent light turned the houndstooth pattern into a strobe.
Coin had started out his professional life as a sheriff’s deputy, then gotten his degree from a law school that was housed in a strip mall. None of the imbeciles who had voted him into office seemed to mind that he knew as much about the law as Flora probably did, or that he was so cozy with the police force that the Constitutionally mandated independence of the judicial system was a running joke at the courthouse.
“Charlotte.” Coin gave her a terse nod. He waited for Roland Hawley, a senior detective on the city’s police force, to enter.
Roland was a tall guy. He had to tilt down his head as he passed under the door frame. There wasn’t much space left in the room once he closed the door.
Coin sat across from Charlie. He tapped his fingers on the file folder like untold mysteries were soon to be revealed. Roland took the chair across from Flora. His football-sized hands went flat on the table. His knees were probably touching Flora’s.
Charlie grabbed the girl’s chair and pulled her back half a foot.
Roland smiled. They had played these games before. He took a small micro-tape recorder out of his pocket. “Mind if we keep this aboveboard?”
Charlie grimaced. “Don’t you always?”
Roland laughed at the sarcasm. Still he waited for Charlie’s nod before he turned on the tape recorder.
Charlie said, “Do you want to tell me why we’re here?”
“She didn’t tell you?” Roland winked at Flora. “Come on, gal, let’s get this story told so I can go home to my wife.”
Flora opened her mouth, but Charlie grabbed her hand underneath the table, willing her into silence. She told Coin, “Please tell the detective not to speak directly to my client.”
Coin gave a heavy, put-upon sigh. Instead of instructing Roland, he said, “Florabama Lee Faulkner, you’re gonna be charged with the manufacturing and distribution of methamphetamine, an illegal substance, in quantities in excess of five hundred grams.”
Charlie’s chin almost hit the table. The quantity triggered a mandatory twenty-five-year sentence. “Drug trafficking?”
“Yes indeed.” The smile on Coin’s face was somewhere between delighted and smug.
“She’s fifteen years old,” Charlie said. “You have to prove that she was knowingly involved in—”
“The sale, delivery or possession,” Coin finished. “Yes, Charlotte, I am aware of the law.”
Charlie bit back a cutting remark about his dime-store degree. “What evidence do you have?”
“We’ll leave that for the courtroom.”
“You’re taking this to court?” Charlie was aware that her voice was registering too high. She tried to get control of her tone before Coin said something about hysterics. She told him, “Flora didn’t have any drugs on her, let alone over a pound meth. I watched them search her.”
“She had constructive possession,” Coin said. “We found the drugs in the trunk of her car.”
“She’s still got her learner’s permit. She can’t legally own a car.”
Coin fiddled with his paperwork. “A 2004 Porsche Boxter, sapphire blue. Not much of a trunk, but that’s where we found it.” He slid the deed across the table. “That car is owned in full by the Florabama Faulkner Trust.”
Charlie couldn’t believe he was truly this ignorant. Even a mail-in law school covered the basics of trusts. “Her grandparents control the money. She can’t access it until she’s of legal age.”
Coin said, “According to the car salesman??
?s sworn affidavit, Flora picked out all the features on the car. Couldn’t decide between the Boxter or the 911.”
Roland said, “I would’ve gone with the 911 myself.”
Flora’s mouth opened to respond.
“No,” Charlie warned. “Let me answer the questions.”
Roland asked Flora, “That’s how you wanna play it? Let your lawyer do all the talking? I thought you were tougher than that.”
Flora’s mouth opened again.
Charlie stuck out her arm, like she needed to physically block any and all responses. To Coin, she said, “Flora is not a drug kingpin. She’s an honor student. She’s a Girl Scout, for Chrissakes. She’s working for tips at the diner, not running a meth operation.”
Roland asked, “Tell her that you can do both, Flora.”
Flora looked at Charlie, desperate. “I thought you said they wanted a name.”
“We’ve got a name,” Roland said. “Florabama Faulkner.”
Charlie shook her head. This had to be one of Ken Coin’s legendarily stupid power plays. “You know the word of a car salesman doesn’t matter. Flora can’t access that money.”
“She manipulated her grandpappy into doing it for her.” Coin made a weird spider-movement with his hand. “Like a marionette pulling the strings.”
“That’s crazy, Ken. Even for you.”
“You think that’s crazy?” He pulled a stack of photographs from the file and started tossing them on the table. “Flora driving the Porsche to work. Flora in the Porsche by the lake. Flora driving through the McDonald’s off Fifteen. Clearly, this is her automobile.”
Charlie scanned the photos and instantly saw the flaw in Coin’s reasoning. “Per the restrictions on her learner’s permit, she has an adult with her in every picture. That’s Leroy Faulkner, her grandfather, in the passenger’s seat.”
Coin said, “She forced him to go with her. Look at this.” He flung over another photograph. Flora was still behind the wheel, but Leroy was passing something out the window to a shifty-looking thug in sunglasses. Charlie immediately recognized the customer: Dexter Black.