False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  Callie studied the photograph. Linda’s face hadn’t changed much, except the way that everyone’s face had changed in the last twenty-three years, which was to say that the important stuff had slid a bit lower. The most overriding emotion Callie felt when she looked at Linda was love. She had worshipped the woman. Linda was kind and caring and she had always made it clear that her number one priority was her son. Not for the first or last time, Callie wondered how different her life would’ve been if Linda Waleski had been her mother.

  Roger snorted underneath the table. Callie dropped a tiny piece of bacon on the floor. Then another piece because New Dog snorted, too.

  She found a map on the site, then navigated to the Mercedes dealership in Buckhead. She clicked on Meet Our Sales Team!

  Callie sat back in the chair. There were eight photos in two rows of four, all but one a man. At first, she didn’t read the names. She studied each man’s headshot, looking for signs of Linda or Buddy. Her eyes went back and forth, row by row, drawing a blank. Finally, she relented and identified Andrew Tenant in the second photo from the top. His Miss America Pageant bio was even better than Linda’s.

  Andrew loves animals and hiking in the great outdoors. He volunteers most of his weekends at DeKalb’s no-kill shelter. An avid reader, Andrew enjoys the fantasy novels of Ursula K. Le Guin and the feminist essays of Mary Wollstonecraft.

  Callie gave him little credit for the thick layer of bullshit. He should’ve mentioned Hamlet, because shethinks the rapist doth protest too much.

  If there was none of Linda or Buddy in Andrew’s face, she saw absolutely no sign of Trevor, either. In fact, Andrew was wholly unremarkable compared to his fellow frat-boy-attractive car dealers. Strong jawline, neatly combed hair, closely shaved face. His dark blue suit was the only thing that gave him away. Callie could tell by the stitching around the lapels that an actual human being had sewn it. His shirt looked equally expensive—light blue with stripes just a shade darker. The tie set it off, a vivid royal blue that brought out the color of his eyes.

  His sandy hair was the only attribute he shared with his father. Andrew had the same thinning at the temples, half-scoops taken out of his hairline. Callie could remember how embarrassed Buddy had been about losing his hair. I’m just an old man little dolly why do you want anything to do with me what do you see in me come on tell me I really wanna know.

  Safety.

  Buddy had never sucker-punched her at the kitchen table. At least not until the end.

  So.

  They had argued a lot, mostly about Callie wanting to spend more time with him. Which was crazy because, almost from the beginning, she had hated spending time with him. And yet there she was, telling him she was going to quit school and he was going to leave Linda and happily-ever-after blah-blah-blah. Buddy would laugh and give her money and then eventually, sometimes, he would take her to hotels. Nice ones at first, before everything turned seedy. They ordered room service, which was Callie’s favorite part. Then, he would get down on his knees and take his time pleasing her. Buddy was so much bigger than Callie that everything else he did hurt.

  And toward the end, the everything else was all that he had wanted to do, and he always wanted to do it on the couch. Stop crying I’m almost there Jesus Christ you feel so good I can’t stop baby girl please don’t make me stop.

  The bathroom door banged open. Phil hacked out a wet hairball of a cough. Her Doc Martens clomped up the hallway. Callie closed Andrew’s bio page. She was back in her chair when Phil returned to the kitchen.

  “What’ve you been up to?” Phil demanded. She’d plastered on her war paint, a goth version of Mrs. Danvers if Mrs. Danvers favored spiked dog collars and had a nose piercing and instead of loving Rebecca had scuttled the uppity bitch’s boat during an alcohol-fueled bender.

  Callie asked, “What is anybody ever up to?”

  “Jesus, you’re so fucking squirrelly.”

  Callie wondered if her mother’s Sid Vicious T-shirt was meant to be a celebration of a suicidal heroin addict or if she just liked the anarchy symbol in the background. “Awesome shirt, Mom.”

  Phil ignored the compliment as she jerked open the fridge. She took out a pitcher of micheladas, which was an ungodly mixture of salt, powdered chicken bouillon, a dash of Worcestershire, a shot of lemon juice, a bottle of Clamato, and two ice-cold bottles of Dos Equis beer.

  Callie watched her pour the concoction into a Thermos. “Is it collection day?”

  “One of us has to work.” Phil took a generous sip straight from the pitcher. “What about you?”

  Callie had $140 of Leigh’s money in her backpack. She could save it or she could use it to fund her methadone habit instead of stealing from Dr. Jerry or she could just stick it in his cash box and let him think that everybody in the neighborhood had stocked up on heartworm medication this week because the other option—sticking it into her veins—was on the back burner for now.

  She told Phil, “I thought I’d do a little of this, then, if I still have time, a little of that.”

  Phil scowled, screwing the top onto the Thermos. “You hear from your sister lately?”

  “Nope.”

  “She’s got all that money. Do you think I ever see any of it?” Phil took another swig from the pitcher before putting it back in the fridge. “What’re you doing for cash?”

  “The police would call it trafficking.”

  “You get caught with that shit in my house, I’ll flip on you so fast your head will spin.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s for your own good, asshole. Harleigh needs to stop bailing you out. Make you pay the consequences of your actions.”

  “I think you mean ‘suffer,’” Callie said. “You suffer the consequences of your own actions.”

  “Whatever.” Phil grabbed a bag of dog kibble out of the pantry. “She has a daughter, you know. Kid has to be twenty by now and I’ve never even met her. Have you?”

  Callie said, “I heard they’re handing out disability for Covid survivors. Maybe I’ll try to sign up.”

  “Bunch of bullshit.” Phil ripped open the bag with her teeth. “I ain’t never met nobody who died from that.”

  “I’ve never met anyone who died of lung cancer.” Callie shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t exist, either.”

  “Maybe.” Phil started mumbling to herself as she measured out food into two bowls. The dogs were getting antsy for breakfast. New Dog’s collar jingled as he pranced alongside Roger. “Dammit, Brock, what did I tell you about manners?”

  Callie had to admit Brock was a good name for the half terrier. He looked like a banker.

  “Poor little thing gets constipated.” Phil mixed a teaspoon of olive oil into the dry food. “Do you remember how backed up Harleigh used to get? Had to take her to the hospital. Two Benjamins for some genius doctor to tell me she had a retarded colon.”

  “That’s really funny, Mom.” Who didn’t find it hilarious that an eight-year-old messed up her colon because she was too terrified to go to the bathroom in her own house? “Tell me another story.”

  “I’ll tell you a fucking story.”

  Callie listened to the needle scratch along the same old record. I did the best I could with you two. You don’t know how hard it is to be a single mother. It wasn’t all miserable you ungrateful bitch. Remember that time when I—and then we—and then I—

  That was how it was with abusive parents. They only remembered the good times and you only remembered the bad.

  Phil skipped on to another track. Callie stared at the back of the iMac. She should’ve looked up the private detective instead of strolling down memory lane, but seeing Reggie Paltz online would somehow make him real in her life, and the boarded-up house and the flash of light would be real, too.

  “How about that?” Phil stabbed her finger into the counter. “Who took two different buses to pick up your sister from juvie?”

  “You did,” Callie answered, but only to break Phil’s moment
um. “Hey, is someone living in that abandoned house across the street?”

  Phil’s head cocked to the side. “Did you see someone in there?”

  “I don’t know,” Callie said, because the best way to scratch Phil’s crazy was to show indecision. “It’s probably my imagination. I saw one of the boards was pulled back. But there was a flash of light or something?”

  “Fucking crackheads.” Phil banged the bowls onto the floor before she shot out of the kitchen. Callie followed her to the front of the house. The bat by the door swung up onto Phil’s shoulder as she kicked open the metal screen.

  Callie stood at the window watching her mother storm toward the boarded-up house.

  “Cocksucker!” Phil bellowed, bolting up the front walk. “Did you shit on my sidewalk?”

  “Damn,” Callie mumbled as Phil pounded the thin plywood covering the door. She hoped like hell nobody was stupid enough to call the police.

  “Come out!” Phil turned the Louisville Slugger into a battering ram. “You fucking shitter!”

  Callie cringed at the crack of wood against wood. This was the problem with weaponizing Phil. You couldn’t control the explosion.

  “Get the fuck out of there!” Phil rammed the bat again. This time, the plywood splintered. She yanked back the bat, and the rotted wood came off with it. “Gotcha!”

  Callie didn’t know exactly what Phil had caught. The flash of light could’ve been just that—a flash of light. Maybe the methadone had hit Callie the wrong way. Maybe she’d shot up too much or too little. Maybe she should stop Phil from attacking some poor houseless man whose only crime was seeking shelter.

  Too late. She saw her mother disappear into the house.

  Callie’s hand went to her mouth. There was another flash. Not light this time, but motion. It came from the side of the house. A piece of plywood bent up from one of the windows like a mouth opening. A man was disgorged into the tall grass. Seconds later, he was on his feet, shoulders hunched as he made his way across the yard. He climbed over a rusted chain-link fence. He was gripping a professional-looking camera around the telescoping lens like he was strangling it by the neck.

  “Motherfucker!” Phil bellowed from inside.

  Callie’s eyes followed the camera until it disappeared into another yard. What would be on the memory card? How close had the man gotten to her window? Had he taken photographs of her sleeping in bed? Had he managed to capture Callie sitting in front of the mirror sticking a needle into her leg?

  Her hand cupped her neck. Beneath her fingers and thumb, the blood pulsed in her jugulars. She could feel the gorilla’s claws digging into her skin. The rake of the telephone cord gouging her back. His hot breath in her ear. The pressure of him fingering up her spine. Callie closed her eyes, thought about falling back into the gorilla, surrendering to the inevitable.

  Instead, she found her backpack and left her mother’s house through the kitchen door.

  7

  Leigh hadn’t fallen asleep until two this morning, then her alarm had gone off at four. She was punch-drunk from yesterday’s Valium spree and the enormous stress that had caused her to break down and take it. Several cups of coffee had ramped up her jitters and done nothing for her clarity. It was almost noon and her brain felt like a Jell-O mold packed with buckshot.

  Somehow, through it all, she had managed to come up with a working Andrew Hypothesis:

  He knew about Buddy’s camera behind the bar because, even as a kid, he’d been a nosey shit who sneaked through your things. He knew about the femoral artery because he’d seen Callie worrying over the anatomical drawing in the textbook. Like Leigh, her sister leaned toward the obsessive compulsive. She could easily imagine Callie sitting at the kitchen table tracing the artery until her finger rubbed a blister. Andrew would’ve been sitting beside her because Andrew was always where you didn’t want him to be. He’d stored both facts into his sick, twisted brain and then somehow, years later, he’d put it all together.

  That was the only explanation that made sense. If Andrew really knew what had happened that night, he would know that the knife hadn’t actually killed his father.

  Leigh had.

  What she needed to do right now was find a way to throw Andrew Tenant’s case while Cole Bradley was looking over her shoulder. Leigh had barely made a dent in the volumes of paperwork attached to the looming trial. Andrew’s files were splayed across her desk, overflowing from boxes couriered over by Octavia Bacca. Two associates were in the process of compiling an index, cross-referencing Octavia’s work with the mountains of horseshit that the prosecutor had provided during discovery. Liz, Leigh’s assistant, had taken over a conference room to spread out everything on the floor so she could develop a timeline that backed up the footage that Reggie Paltz had spliced together on his laptop.

  And still, there was always more work to be done. Even though Cole Bradley had cleared the decks so Leigh could focus on Andrew’s case, that didn’t mean her calendar was completely open. She had to finish filing motions and compose interrogatories, review documents for discovery, call clients, schedule depositions, push back Zoom and court appearances, research case law and, on top of everything else, she had to worry about her sister dangling herself as bait in front of a psychopath with a well-documented history of violently assaulting women.

  Callie had been right about one thing last night. Leigh had to stop flailing around like a helpless bitch. It was about time she flexed her hard-earned right to play by rich people rules. She had graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern. She worked at a white-shoe firm and had clocked in nearly two thousand hours of billing in the last year. She was married to one of the most admired men in his field. She had a beautiful daughter. Her reputation was spotless.

  Andrew Tenant was credibly accused of kidnapping, raping, beating, and sodomizing a woman.

  Who were they going to believe?

  Leigh looked at the time. Three more hours before she was expected in Cole Bradley’s office. Andrew would be waiting for her. Leigh would have to come fully armed, ready for whatever game he was going to play.

  She rubbed her temples as she looked down at the first responding officer’s statement.

  Female victim was handcuffed to picnic table in center of open-air pavilion located in …

  Leigh’s vision doubled on the rest of the paragraph. She tried to refocus her eyes by looking out the glass wall that separated her rarefied kind from the first-year associates. There was no breathtaking view of the downtown skyline, just a windowless cubicle farm that spread like prison bars across the entire floor. Plexiglas barriers kept the occupants from breathing on each other, but masks were still required. Janitors came through once an hour to sanitize the surfaces. All of the baby lawyers worked off hot desks, which meant they took whichever desk was available when they arrived. And since they were baby lawyers, most of them arrived at six in the morning and worked in the dark until the overhead lights came on at seven. If they had been surprised to see Leigh had beaten them into the office, they were too weary to show it.

  She checked her personal phone, though she knew Callie hadn’t texted because Callie wasn’t going to text until Leigh was so tense that her head was about to explode.

  As expected, there was nothing from her sister, but Leigh’s heart did a funny little flip when she saw a notification on the screen. Maddy had posted a video. Leigh watched her daughter lip-synching around Walter’s kitchen as Tim Tam, their chocolate Lab, played unwitting backup.

  Leigh strained to follow the lyrics, desperate for cues on how to post a response that didn’t get an eye-roll or, worse, completely ignored. At least she was able to recognize Ariana Grande. She scrolled to the description, but 34+35 made absolutely no sense. She had watched the video two more times before her mind performed the simple addition and she realized what the song was really about.

  “Oh for the love of—” She snatched up her desk phone. She started to punch in Walter’s number, but there was
no way to talk to Walter without telling him that she had seen Callie.

  The phone dropped back into the cradle. Walter knew everything about Leigh except for the one thing that mattered the most. She had told him Callie had been molested, but the details had stopped there. Leigh wasn’t going to give Walter a name to look up on the internet or a stray comment that would make him start wondering what had really happened all those years ago. She had held back the information not because she didn’t trust Walter, or because she was worried it would make him love her less. She did not want to burden her gentle husband, her precious daughter’s father, with the weight of her guilt.

  Liz knocked on the glass door. She was wearing a fuchsia mask that matched the flowers on her jumpsuit. Leigh put on her mask before waving her in.

  There was never any preamble with Liz. She said, “I’ve moved the Johnson depo by two weeks. The judge on the Bryant case wants your response to the motion by six on Friday. I’ve put Dr. Unger on the sixteenth; it’s updated in your Outlook. You’re due in Bradley’s office in three hours. I’ll bring you lunch, just let me know if you want a salad or a sandwich. You’ll need your heels for Bradley. They’re in the closet.”

  “Sandwich.” Leigh had written the details on her notepad as Liz rattled them off. “Did you read the incident reports about Andrew’s ankle monitor?”

  Liz shook her head. “What’s up?”

  “He’s had four separate issues in the last two months. Anything from the GPS going off-line to the fiber optic cable in the strap shorting out. Each time the alarm went off, he called the probation office, but you know how bad things are right now. Anywhere between three and five hours passed before an officer was dispatched to reset the system.”