False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  Leigh wasn’t going to put herself between them. She pulled the laptop closer and returned to the VICTIM PHOTOS file. Her finger pressed the arrow key as she paged through to the rape-kit documentation. Each close-up was more devastating than the previous. God knew that Leigh had witnessed her share of brutality, but she felt a sudden vulnerability sitting in a small room with two loud men who were arguing about bitches while the horrific evidence of a savage sexual assault flashed across the screen.

  The skin along Tammy Karlsen’s back had been clawed out. Bite marks riddled her breasts and shoulders. Handprint-shaped bruises wrapped around her arms, stretched across her ass and the back of her legs. The Coke bottle had ripped her open. Contusions and lacerations scraped up her thighs into the groin. Fissures sliced her anus. Her clitoris had been ripped, only a tiny piece of tissue keeping it connected. The wounds had bled so profusely that the impression of her buttocks was sealed in blood against the concrete of the pavilion floor.

  “Jesus,” Andrew said.

  Leigh suppressed a shiver. Andrew was standing right behind her. The photo on the laptop showed Tammy Karlsen’s mutilated breast. Bite marks dug into the soft flesh around the nipple.

  He said, “How could anyone think I would do that? And how stupid would I be to follow her from the bar with all of those cameras?”

  Leigh felt relieved when he walked over to the couch.

  “It doesn’t make sense, Harleigh.” Andrew’s tone went soft as he took his place on the couch. “I always assume I’m on camera. Not just at a bar. At an ATM. On the streets. At the dealership. People have cameras in their driveways, on their doorbells. They’re everywhere. Always watching. Always recording everything you’re doing. It defies logic that you could hurt someone—anyone—without a camera catching you in the act.”

  Leigh had picked the wrong time to look him in the eye. Andrew held her directly in his sights. His expression changed right in front of her, the left corner of his mouth twitching into a smirk. In seconds he transformed himself from hapless innocent to the suave psychopath who had kissed Tammy Karlsen, then followed her car, waiting for her to pass out so that he could kidnap and rape her.

  “Harleigh,” he said, his voice almost a whisper. “Think about what they’re saying I did.”

  Kidnap. Rape. Aggravated assault. Aggravated sodomy. Aggravated sexual battery.

  “You’ve known me longer than anybody but Mom,” Andrew said. “Could I do that?”

  Leigh didn’t need to look at the laptop to see the rape-kit photos flashing in front of her eyes. Open wounds, gouges, bites, scratches, all caused by the animal who was now staring at her like fresh prey.

  “Think about how clever I would have to be,” Andrew said. “Avoid the cameras. Avoid witnesses. Avoid leaving any clues.”

  She felt her throat catch as she tried to swallow.

  “I wonder, Harleigh, if you were going to commit a terrible crime, a crime that would destroy another person’s life, would you know how to get away with it?” He had moved to the edge of the couch. His body was tensed. His hands clenched. “It’s not like when we were kids. You could get away with cold-blooded murder back then. Couldn’t you, Harleigh?”

  Leigh felt herself slipping back in time. She was eighteen, packing for college even though it was a month away. She was picking up the phone in her mother’s kitchen. She was listening to Callie say that Buddy was dead. She was in her car. She was in Trevor’s room. She was in the kitchen. She was telling Callie what to do, how to clean up the blood, where to drop the pieces of broken video camera, how to dispose of the body, what to do with the money, what to say to the cops, how they were going to get away with this because she had thought of everything.

  Almost everything.

  Slowly, she turned toward Reggie. He was clueless, absently typing on his phone.

  “Did—” The word caught in her throat. “The attacker used a knife on Karlsen. Did the police find the knife?”

  “That’s a negative.” Reggie kept typing. “But from the wound size and depth, they think the blade was serrated, maybe five inches long. Probably a cheap kitchen knife.”

  Cracked wooden handle. Bent blade. Sharp, serrated teeth.

  Reggie finished typing. “You’ll see it in the files when I put them on your server. Cops say the same knife was used on the three other victims. They all had the same wound in the same place.”

  “Wound?” Leigh heard her own voice echo in her ears. “What wound?”

  “Left thigh, a few inches south of the groin.” Reggie shrugged. “They got lucky. Any deeper, and he would’ve cut open the femoral artery.”

  3

  Leigh barely made it more than a mile from Reggie’s office before her stomach turned inside out. Horns blared as she swerved her car over to the side of the road. She lunged across the passenger seat. The door flew open. Torrents of bile shot out of her mouth. Even when there was nothing left, she couldn’t stop gagging. Daggers stabbed into her abdomen. She hung her head so low that her face almost touched the ground. The smell made her gag again. She started to dry-heave. Tears poured from her eyes. Sweat beaded across her face.

  They think the blade was serrated.

  She hacked so hard that stars burst against her eyelids. She gripped the door to keep from falling. Her body was wracked by a series of agonizing spasms. Slowly, painfully, the heaving subsided. Still, she waited, hanging out of the car, eyes squeezed closed, begging her body to stop shaking.

  Maybe five inches long.

  Leigh opened her eyes. A thin line of saliva fell from her mouth, pooled into the flattened grass. She gulped down a breath. She let her eyes close again. She kept waiting for more, but nothing came.

  Probably a cheap kitchen knife.

  She tested herself, gently moving into an upright position. She wiped her mouth. She closed the door. She stared at the steering wheel. Her ribs ached where she’d stretched across the console between the two seats. The car shook as a truck whizzed past.

  Leigh hadn’t panicked inside Reggie Paltz’s office. She had gone into a sort of fugue state—still physically there but somehow not there, her soul hovering above the room, seeing everything but not feeling anything.

  Below, she had watched the other Leigh look at her watch, register surprise at the time. She had made an excuse about having a meeting downtown. Andrew and Reggie had both stood when she did. Other Leigh had lifted her purse onto her shoulder. Reggie had returned his attention to his laptop. Andrew had watched her every move. Like a fluorescent tube flickering back on, he’d turned all cow-eyed and innocent again. His words had come rushing at her like a fire hose. I’m sorry you have to leave I thought we were just getting into things should I give you a call or will I see you at the meeting with Cole tomorrow afternoon?

  Floating against the ceiling, Leigh had watched her other self make promises or excuses, she wasn’t sure which because she couldn’t hear her own voice. Then her fingers had looped her mask around her ears. Then she was waving goodbye. Then she was walking through to the outer office.

  Her other self continued to project an outward calm. She had stopped to get some hand sanitizer. She had looked at the empty Dunkin’ Donuts coffee cup that had been taken out of the trash and placed prominently on the counter. Then she was walking down the hall. Then she was going down the stairs. She had opened the glass door. She had walked out onto the concrete stoop. Navigated her way down the crumbling stairs. Looked out at the parking lot.

  Sidney Winslow was smoking a cigarette. Her mouth had twisted in disgust when she’d seen Leigh. She had thumbed off some ash, leaned back against a low sports car.

  Andrew’s car.

  Leigh had staggered forward, reeling from the impact of her soul slamming back into her body. She was herself again, one person, one woman who had just heard a sadistic rapist all but confess that he not only knew that Leigh had been involved in Buddy’s murder, but that he was also refining the same technique on his own victims. />
  Any deeper, and he would’ve cut open the femoral artery.

  “Hey, bitch.” Sidney had aggressively pushed herself away from the car. “I don’t appreciate you making it out like my own damn fiancé can’t trust me.”

  Leigh had said nothing, just stared at the stupid girl. Her heart was jackrabbiting. Her flesh was hot and cold at the same time. Her stomach had filled with razor blades. It was Andrew’s car that was setting her off.

  He drove a yellow Corvette.

  The same color, the same body style, as the one that Buddy had driven.

  Suddenly, Leigh heard a loud horn. The Audi shook violently as a truck swerved by. She looked in the side mirror. Her back tire was on the line. Instead of moving, she watched the traffic coming toward her, silently daring someone—anyone—to hit her. More horns. Another truck another sedan another SUV but no flash of yellow from Buddy’s Corvette.

  Andrew.

  He would never be Trevor to her again. The thirty-three-year-old man was not the creepy five-year-old who used to jump out from behind the couch to scare her. Leigh could still remember the invisible tears the little boy had wiped away when she’d screamed at him to stop. Andrew clearly knew some details about his father’s death, but how? What had they done to give themselves away? What stupid mistake had Leigh made that night that somehow, eventually, had allowed Andrew to put together the pieces?

  If you were going to commit a terrible crime, a crime that would destroy another person’s life, would you know how to get away with it?

  Leigh sniffed, and a chunk of something thick and putrid slid down her throat. She looked for a tissue in her purse. Couldn’t find one. Dumped her purse onto the passenger seat. Everything scattered. She saw the pack of tissue obscuring a distinctive orange pill bottle.

  Valium.

  Everyone had needed something to get through the last year. Leigh didn’t drink. She hated feeling out of control, but she hated not sleeping even more. During the drawn-out election insanity, she had gotten a script for Valium. The doctor had called them Pandemic Pleasers.

  Sleepy medicine.

  That’s what Buddy had called Andrew’s NyQuil. Every time Buddy got home and Andrew was still awake, he would tell Leigh, Hey doll I can’t put up with his shit tonight, do me a favor before you go and give the kid his sleepy medicine.

  Leigh could hear Buddy’s distinctive baritone as if he were sitting in the back seat of her car. Unbidden, she conjured the feel of his fumbling hands rubbing her shoulders. Leigh’s own hands started trembling so badly that she had to use her teeth to open the cap on the Valium. Three orange tablets scattered onto her palm. She tossed them all back, dry-swallowing them like candy.

  She gripped her hands together to stop the shake. She waited for the release. Four more tablets were left in the bottle. She would take them all if it came to that. She couldn’t be like this right now. Wallowing in fear was a luxury she could not afford.

  Andrew and Linda Tenant were not trashy poor Waleskis anymore. They had Tenant Auto Group fuck-you money. Reggie Paltz could probably be bought off with the promise of more work from Leigh’s firm, but he wasn’t the only private investigator in town. Andrew could hire an entire team of investigators who could start asking questions no one had bothered to ask twenty-three years ago, like—

  If Callie was worried about Buddy, why hadn’t she called Linda? The woman’s number was taped to the wall by the kitchen phone.

  If Andrew had in fact accidentally ripped the phone cord out of the wall, why couldn’t he remember doing it? And why was he so groggy the next day?

  Why had Callie called Leigh to drive her home that night? She’d made the ten-minute walk hundreds of times before.

  Why did the next-door neighbors say they’d heard Buddy’s Corvette stalling several times in the driveway? He knew how to drive a manual transmission.

  What happened to the machete in the shed?

  Why was the can of gasoline missing?

  What about Callie’s broken nose and cuts and bruises?

  And why did Leigh leave for college a month early when she had nowhere to stay and no money to waste?

  $86,940.

  The night that Buddy died, he had just been paid for a big job. His briefcase had been packed with fifty grand. They had found the rest hidden around the house.

  Not for the first time, Callie and Leigh had argued about what to do with the money. Callie had insisted they leave something for Linda. Leigh had been equally insistent that leaving a dime would give them away. If Buddy Waleski was really skipping town, he would take all of the cash he could lay his hands on because he didn’t give a shit about anybody but himself.

  Leigh could remember the exact words that had finally persuaded Callie: It’s not blood money if you pay for it with your own blood.

  Another car horn beeped. Leigh startled again. The sweat had dried to a chill on her skin. She dialed back the air conditioner. She felt weepy, which helped nothing. She needed to summon her focus. In the courtroom, she had to be ten steps ahead of everybody else, but now she had to use all of her energy to figure out which first step would take her in the best direction.

  She called up Andrew’s exact words, the taunting sneer on his lips.

  It’s not like when we were kids. You could get away with cold-blooded murder back then.

  What had Leigh and Callie missed? They hadn’t exactly been teenage gangsters, but they’d both spent time in juvie and they had both grown up in the ’hood. They intuitively knew how to cover their tracks. Their bloody clothes and shoes had gone into a burn barrel. The video camera was broken into pieces. The house was thoroughly cleaned. Buddy’s car was stripped and burned. His briefcase was destroyed. They’d even packed a suitcase full of his clothes and tossed in a pair of his shoes.

  The knife was the only thing left.

  Leigh had wanted to get rid of it but Callie had told her that Linda would notice it was missing from the set. In the end, Callie had washed off the thin line of blood in the sink. Then they had soaked the wooden handle in bleach. Callie had even used a toothpick to clean around the tang, a word Leigh only knew because she had marked every year since it happened by going over all the details of a possible case that could be built against them.

  She did a quick review in her head, knocking down the long list of questions, which relied either on the memories of children or on a pair of elderly neighbors who had both died eighteen years ago.

  There was no physical evidence. No body found. No murder weapon. No unexplained hair, teeth, blood, fingerprints, DNA. No child porn. The only men who knew that Buddy Waleski had been raping Callie were the same men who were incentivized to keep their disgusting pedophile mouths shut.

  Dr. Patterson. Coach Holt. Mr. Humphrey. Mr. Ganza. Mr. Emmett.

  Maddy. Walter. Callie.

  Leigh had to keep her priorities front and center. The time for wallowing in fear was over. She checked the side-view mirror. She waited for the lane to clear, then pulled out onto the road.

  As she drove, the Valium stretched into her bloodstream. She felt some of the edges smoothing out. Her shoulders relaxed against the seat. The yellow line on the road turned into the belt on a treadmill. Buildings and trees and signs and billboards blurred by—Colonnade Restaurant, Uptown Novelty, Mitigate! Vaccinate! Keep Atlanta Open for Business!

  “Shit,” she hissed, her foot going down to the floor. The car in front of her had braked suddenly. Leigh turned the a/c back up. The cold air slapped her face. She passed the stopped car. Drove so carefully that she felt like an old lady. Ahead, the green light started to turn, but she didn’t rush it. She rolled to a stop. Pushed up the turn signal. The digital sign outside the bank gave the time and temperature.

  Eleven fifty-eight a.m. Seventy-two degrees.

  Leigh turned off the air conditioning. She rolled down the window. She let the heat envelop her. It felt only fitting that she should be sweating. By the end of the stifling August night that Buddy
Waleski had died, Leigh and Callie’s clothes were soaked through with blood and sweat.

  Buddy was a contractor, or at least that’s what he’d told people. The tiny trunk of his Corvette had held a toolbox with pliers and a hammer. Inside the shed in the backyard were tarps and tape and plastic and a giant machete that hung from a hook on the back of the door.

  First, they had rolled Buddy onto the plastic. Then they had gotten on their hands and knees to clean up all the blood underneath him. Next, they had used the kitchen table and chairs to create an impromptu bathtub around the body.

  Every second of what happened next was seared into Leigh’s memory. Slicing off chunks of skin with the sharpest knives. Hacking joints with the machete. Breaking teeth with the hammer. Prying up fingernails with pliers in case Callie’s skin was underneath. Scoring fingers with a razor blade to obscure prints. Splashing bleach onto everything to wash away any trace of DNA.

  They had taken turns because the work was not just mentally grueling. Cutting up the massive body and shoving the pieces into black lawn bags had taken every last ounce of their physical strength. Leigh had gritted her teeth the whole time. Callie had kept chanting the same maddening lines over and over again— If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again … If this is an emergency …

  Silently, Leigh had added her own chant—This-is-my-fault-this-is-all-my-fault-this-is-my-fault …

  Leigh was thirteen and Trevor was five when she’d started babysitting for the Waleskis. She’d gotten the referral by word of mouth. That first night, Linda had delivered a long-winded lecture about the importance of being trustworthy, then made Leigh read aloud from the list of emergency numbers by the kitchen telephone. Poison Control. Fire department. Police department. Pediatrician. Linda’s number at the hospital.

  There had been a quick tour of the depressing house as Trevor had clung to Linda’s waist like a desperate monkey. Lights were turned on and off. The fridge and kitchen cabinets were opened and closed. Here was what they could eat for dinner. There were the snacks. This was his bedtime. Those were the books to read. Buddy would be home by midnight at the latest, but Linda needed Leigh to promise on her life that she would not leave until Buddy was there. And if he didn’t come home, or if he showed up drunk—knee-walking drunk, not just a little drunk—Leigh was to call Linda immediately so she could leave work.