Callie turned on the faucet. She scraped the white paste off of her hand. She used a wet paper towel to wipe the rest of the Adderall off the counter. All the while, she did a silent inventory of the other prescription bottles inside of her purse.
Her gaze found her reflection in the mirror. Callie stared back at herself, wanting to feel bad about what she was going to do. The feeling wouldn’t come. What she saw instead was Leigh and Walter’s beautiful girl running down the field, oblivious to the monster hiding in the tunnel.
Andrew was going to pay for threatening Maddy. He was going to pay with Sidney’s life.
14
Leigh stood in line for security outside the DeKalb County courthouse, a white marble mausoleum of a building with a toothy, dark-brick main entrance. Faded stickers on the ground designated the proper standing distance. Signs warned that masks were mandated. Large posters were taped to the doors advising visitors that they were not allowed inside per the statewide emergency order from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
The courthouse had only recently opened back up for business. Through the pandemic, all of Leigh’s cases had been tried via Zoom, but then vaccinations for court employees had made it possible for the government to open up in-person trials again. Never mind the jurors, attorneys, and defendants who were still playing Corona Russian roulette.
Leigh used her foot to push a file box along to the next sticker. She nodded to one of the deputies who came out to check the line and warn stragglers. There were ten divisions to the Superior Court. All but two of the judges were women of color. Of the two outliers, one had come from a prosecutorial background, but was known to be incredibly fair. The other was a man named Richard Turner, a proud graduate of the good ol’ boy school of judging who had a reputation for being much more lenient toward defendants who looked like him.
In a life of perpetually falling upward, Andrew had drawn Judge Turner for his trial.
Leigh took no pleasure in accepting this as good news. She had resigned herself to defending Andrew Tenant to the fullest of her abilities, even if that required her to break every moral and legal code. She would not let those videos get out. She would not let Callie’s fragile life get shattered. She would not allow herself to think about the implications for Maddy or the argument with Walter last night or the deep and fatal wound he had inflicted on her soul.
Are you taking your fucking parenting tips from Phil now?
She edged up the file box to the next decal as the line shifted forward. Leigh looked down at her hands. The shaking was gone. Her stomach had settled. There were no tears in her eyes.
Walter’s one abiding complaint was that Leigh’s personality changed depending on who was in front of her. She put everything into separate compartments, never letting one spill over into the other. He saw this as a weakness, but Leigh saw it as a survival skill. The only way she was going to make it through the next few days was to completely partition off her emotions.
The transition had started last night. Leigh was standing in her kitchen pouring an entire bottle of vodka down the sink. Then she was standing over the toilet flushing the rest of her Valium. Then she was prepping for Andrew’s case, re-reading motions, re-watching Tammy Karlsen’s interview, doing a deeper dive into her therapy notes, devising a working strategy to win the case because, if she didn’t win, Andrew’s fail-safe would kick in and it would be all for nothing.
By the time the sun came up, the floating feeling had completely evaporated. Walter’s fury, his rage, his deep and fatal wound, had somehow forged Leigh into cold, hard steel.
She picked up the box as she went inside. She stood in front of the iPad stand that took her temperature. The green box told her to proceed. At the checkpoint, she took her phones and laptop out of her purse and placed them in bins. The box went on the belt behind them. She walked through the metal detector. There was a giant bottle of hand sanitizer on the other side. Leigh pumped a glob into her hand and instantly regretted it. One of the local distilleries was riding out the pandemic by using their stills to churn out disinfectants. The white rum residue in the tanks made the entire courthouse smell like Panama City Beach during Spring break.
“Counselor,” someone said. “Your number’s up.”
A deputy had pulled her bins off the belt. Adding to the miseries of the day, Leigh had been selected for random screening. At least she knew the deputy. Maurice Grayson’s brother was a fireman, which gave him a close connection to Walter.
She easily clicked herself into the role of Walter’s wife, smiling behind her mask. “This is blatant racial profiling.”
Maurice laughed as he started unpacking her purse. “More like sexual harassment, Counselor. You’re looking dope today.”
She took the compliment, because she’d paid special attention to everything this morning. Light blue button-down blouse, dark charcoal skirt and blazer, thin white gold necklace, hair down around her shoulders, three-inch black heels—exactly the way the consultants said that Leigh should dress for the jury.
Maurice rolled around the contents of her clear make-up bag, ignoring the tampons. “Tell your husband his Flex is a joke.”
Leigh guessed this had to do with fantasy football. Just like she guessed that Walter did not give one shit about the game that had taken every moment of his free time before last night. “I’ll pass that along.”
Maurice finally cleared her, and Leigh grabbed her things off the belt. Even though she was masked, the smile stayed on her face as she walked into the lobby. She went into lawyer mode, nodding at colleagues, biting her tongue at the idiots who’d let their masks slip below their noses because real men could only get Covid through their mouths.
She didn’t want to wait for the elevator. She carried the box up two flights. At the door, she took a moment, trying to reforge herself into steel. Maurice bringing up Walter had led her thoughts toward Maddy, and thinking about Maddy threatened to open a giant, gaping hole in her heart.
Leigh had texted her daughter this morning, the usual cheery rise and shine along with the detail that she would be in court all day. Maddy had sent back an oblivious thumbs up along with a heart. Leigh would have to talk to her daughter eventually, but she was afraid if she heard Maddy’s voice, she would lose it. Which made Leigh just as much of a coward as Ruby Heyer.
She heard voices coming up the stairs. Leigh used her hip to open the door. Jacob Gaddy waved to her from the end of the hall. The associate had managed to snag one of the rarely available attorney/client conference rooms.
“Well done on the room.” Leigh let him take the box. “I need these catalogued and ready for Monday.”
“Got it,” Jacob said. “The client’s not here yet, but Dante Carmichael was looking for you.”
“Did he say what he wanted?”
“I mean—” Jacob shrugged, as if it was obvious. “Deal ’Em Down Dante, right?”
“Let him find me.” Leigh walked into the empty room. Four chairs, one table, no windows, flickering overhead lights. “Where’s—”
“Liz?” Jacob asked. “She’s downstairs trying to snag the jury questionnaires.”
“Don’t let anyone interrupt me if I’m with the client.” Leigh’s personal phone started to ring. She reached into her purse.
Jacob said, “I’ll keep an eye out for Andrew.”
Leigh didn’t respond because Jacob had already shut the door. Her mask came off. She looked at her phone. Her stomach threatened to churn, but Leigh willed it to calm. She answered on the fourth ring. “What is it, Walter? I’m about to go into court.”
He was silent for a moment, probably because he’d never met Leigh the frigid bitch before. “What are you going to do?”
She chose to be obtuse. “I’m going to try to select a jury that will find my client not guilty.”
“And then?”
“And then I’m going to see what he wants me to do next.”
Another hesitation. “That’s your
plan, just let him keep pushing you around?”
She would’ve laughed if she wasn’t terrified that showing one emotion would break open the others. “What else can I do, Walter? I told you he has a fail-safe. If you’ve got a brilliant alternative then, please, tell me what you want me to do.”
There was no response, only the sound of Walter’s breathing through the phone. She thought about him in the RV last night, the sudden fury, the deep and mortal wound. Leigh closed her eyes, tried to still her pounding heart. She imagined herself standing alone on a small wooden boat, gliding away from the shore where Walter and Maddy stood waving goodbye as Leigh floated toward the rushing waters of a waterfall.
That was how her life was supposed to end up. Leigh was never meant to move to Chicago, or meet Walter, or accept the gift of Maddy. She was meant to be trapped in Lake Point, drop-kicked into the gutter along with everybody else.
Walter said, “I want you here tomorrow night at six. We’re going to talk to Maddy and explain that she’s going to go on a trip with Mom. She can do school virtually from the road. I can’t have her around while this guy is out there. I can’t—I won’t—let anything bad happen to her.”
Leigh was not as caught out as Walter. She had heard him use his current tone exactly once, four years ago. She’d been lying on the bathroom floor, still drunk from the previous night’s binge. He was explaining to Leigh that she had thirty days to get sober or he was going to take Maddy away from her. The only difference between that ultimatum and this one was that the first had been given out of love. Now, he was doing it out of hate.
“Sure.” She took a breath before launching into the three sentences she’d rehearsed in the car this morning. “I filed the paperwork this morning. I’ll send you the link. You need to e-sign your part and we’ll be divorced thirty-one days after it’s processed.”
He hesitated again, but not for nearly long enough. “What about custody?”
Leigh felt her resolve start to crumble. If she talked to him about Maddy, she would end up on the floor again. “Play that out, Walter. We do a contested divorce. We go to mediation or you put me in front of a judge. I try to get visitation and then what, you file a motion stating that I’m a danger to my child?”
He said nothing, which was a form of confirmation.
“I intentionally and willfully murdered a man,” she said, reminding him of his words last night. “You wouldn’t want me connecting another teenage girl with a goddam rapist.”
If he had a response, Leigh wasn’t going to hear it. She ended the call. She placed the phone face down on the table. The Hollis Academy crest glittered on the back. Leigh traced her fingers around the outline. The sight of her bare finger caught her out. Her wedding ring was in the soap dish she kept by her kitchen sink. Leigh had not taken it off since they’d left Chicago.
Please accept the gift of this beautiful girl. I know that no matter what happens, you will both always and forever keep her happy and safe.
She used the back of her hand to rub the tears out of her eyes. How was she going to tell her sister that she had fucked up everything? Over twenty-four hours had passed since Leigh had walked Callie back to Phil’s. They hadn’t spoken to each other once they’d left the Waleskis’ house. Callie had been shaking uncontrollably. Her teeth were chattering the same way they’d chattered the night that Buddy had died.
Leigh had forgotten what it felt like to walk beside her sister in the street. It was difficult to describe the feeling of no longer being a solitary adult, only responsible for the workings of your own body. The anxiety she felt around Callie—the fear for her safety, for her emotional well-being, for her physical health, for her not to trip over her own damn feet and fall and break something—reminded Leigh of what it felt like when Maddy was a little girl.
The responsibility for her child had brought incomprehensible joy. With Callie, Leigh felt endlessly burdened.
“Leigh?” Liz knocked on the door as she entered. The look on her face said that something was wrong. Leigh didn’t have to ask for an explanation.
Andrew Tenant stood behind Liz. His mask hung from one ear. An angry, deep gash was engraved along his jawline. White butterfly strips pinned down a torn part of his earlobe. He had what looked like a giant hickey on his neck. And then he came closer and Leigh could see teeth marks.
Leigh’s immediate response wasn’t concern or outrage. It was a single, shocked laugh.
Andrew’s jaw set. He turned to shut the door, but Liz was already closing it behind her.
He waited until they were alone. He took off his mask. He pulled out a chair. He sat down. He told Leigh, “What did I tell you about laughing at me?”
She waited to feel the same, visceral fear that her body always conjured in response to his presence. But her skin wasn’t crawling. The hairs on the back of her neck were not at attention. Her fight or flight had somehow deactivated. If this was the result of Walter’s fatal wound, then she was all the better for it.
She asked Andrew, “What happened to you?”
His eyes went back and forth across her face as if she were a book that he could read.
He sat back in his chair. He rested his hand on the table. “I went for a jog after you left my house yesterday morning. Physical exercise is an approved part of my bail conditions. Someone mugged me. I tried to fight back. Unsuccessfully, as it turns out. They stole my wallet.”
Leigh didn’t comment on the fact that he’d already taken his shower when she’d arrived at his house. “Do you always jog with your wallet?”
His hand went flat to the table. There was no sound, but she was reminded of the power in his body. The fight or flight slowly stirred at the base of her spine.
She asked, “Is there something else I should know?”
“How’s Callie doing?”
“She’s fine. I talked to her this morning.”
“Is that right?” His tone of voice had turned intimate. Something had changed.
Leigh did not attempt to understand how she’d managed to cede some of her power. She could feel it in her body, that familiar visceral reaction that told her a shift had occurred. “Is there anything else?”
Each of his fingers tapped once on the table. “I should tell you that my monitor went off at 3:12 yesterday afternoon. I called my probation officer immediately. She arrived over three hours later to reset it. She interrupted the cocktail party before my wedding ceremony.”
Leigh hadn’t noticed the ring on his finger, but she saw him noting the lack of a ring on hers. She crossed her arms, asking, “You realize how this looks, right? You show up for jury selection on your rape trial with the kind of defensive wounds a man gets from a woman fighting him off, and then you add to that the documented fact that your ankle monitor was off for over three hours?”
“Is that bad?”
Leigh remembered their conversation yesterday morning. This was all part of his plan. Every step of the way, he made things harder for her. “Andrew, you’ve got four other documented occasions that your ankle monitor alarm went off. Each time, it took three to four hours for probation to respond. Did it ever occur to you that the prosecutor would argue that you were testing the system to see how long it takes for someone to come out?”
“That sounds very incriminating,” Andrew said. “Good thing my lawyer is highly motivated to argue my innocence.”
“There’s a huge difference between innocent and not guilty.”
His mouth twitched in a smile. “Nuance?”
Leigh felt the tingle of fear trace up her spine. He had seamlessly managed to reassert his dominance. He didn’t know that Leigh had revealed the truth to Walter, but Walter had never really been a weapon in Andrew’s arsenal. The videos were all he needed. Either by whim or through his fail-safe, he could end Leigh and Callie’s lives.
She opened her purse and found her make-up bag. “Come here.”
Andrew stayed seated. He wanted to remind her who was in charge.
>
Leigh unzipped her bag. She laid out primer, concealer, foundation, and powder. The asshole had gotten lucky again. All of the damage was on the left side of his face. The jury would be seated to his right.
She asked him, “Do you want this or not?”
He stood up, making his motions slow and deliberate, letting her know that he was still in charge.
Leigh felt the panic start to well inside of her chest as he sat down in front of her. He had the uncanny ability to turn his malevolence off or on. Being close to him, Leigh felt the revulsion roil her stomach. The tremble was back in her hands.
Andrew smiled, because this was what he wanted.
Leigh squeezed primer onto the back of her hand. She found a sponge in her bag. Andrew leaned closer. He smelled of musky cologne and the same mint that had been on his breath the day before. Leigh’s fingers felt awkward on the sponge as she dabbed at the bite marks on his neck. The bruises imprinted around the teeth marks were vivid blue, but they would probably turn black over the weekend, just in time for the trial.
Leigh said, “You’re going to need to hire a professional to do this Monday morning.”
Andrew winced when she moved up to the gash in his jaw. The skin was angry and red. Specks of fresh blood wept into the sponge. Leigh didn’t use a delicate hand. She loaded up a brush with concealer and jammed the bristles deep into the wound.
He hissed air between his teeth, but he didn’t pull away. “Do you like hurting me, Harleigh?”
She softened her touch, repulsed by the fact that he was right. “Turn your head.”
He kept his eyes on her as his chin moved to the right. “Did you learn how to do this when you were little?”
Leigh switched to a larger brush for the foundation. Her skin tone was darker than his. She would need to use more powder.
“I remember you and Callie used to show up with black eyes, cut lips.” Andrew gave another low hiss as she used her fingernail to scrape away a trickle of blood from his chin. “Mom would say, ‘Those poor girls and their crazy mother. I don’t know what to do.’”
False Witness Page 35