EPILOGUE
Leigh sat in a folding chair beside Walter. The cemetery was quiet but for a few birds chirping in the tree over the grave. They watched Callie’s pastel-yellow casket being lowered into the ground. There were no creaks and groans from the pulleys. Her sister had weighed ninety-five pounds by the time she’d arrived at the medical examiner’s office. The autopsy report revealed a body that had been ravaged by long-term drug abuse and illness. Callie’s liver and kidneys were diseased. Her lungs were only working at half-capacity. She had been dosed with a lethal cocktail of narcotics and poisons.
Heroin, fentanyl, Rohypnol, strychnine, methadone, baking soda, laundry powder.
None of the findings were all that surprising. Neither was the revelation that only Callie’s fingerprints were on the spoon, candle, and bag of powder. Andrew’s prints joined hers on the syringe in Callie’s leg, but Callie’s fingerprints alone were on the lethal dose of pentobarbital she had jacked directly into Andrew’s heart.
For years, Leigh had convinced herself that she would feel a guilty kind of relieved when Callie finally died, but now what she felt was an overwhelming sadness. Her eternal nightmare that there would be a late-night phone call, a knock at the door, a detective asking her to identify her sister’s body, had not come to pass.
There had only been Callie lying on a filthy stack of mattresses in the house that her soul had not left since she was fourteen years old.
At least Leigh had been with her sister at the end. Leigh was standing inside Andrew’s empty mansion when she’d realized that Callie had played her. The drive from Brookhaven was a blur. The first thing Leigh could recall was tripping over Sidney’s body in the carport. She had completely missed Walter lying in the hallway because her full attention had been directed toward the two bodies on top of a pile of mattresses where the ugly orange couch used to be.
Andrew was lying across Callie. A large, spent syringe was sticking out of his back. Leigh had pushed him off her sister. She had grabbed Callie’s hand. Her skin had felt chilled. The heat was already leaving her frail body. Leigh had ignored the needle sticking out of her sister’s thigh and listened to the slow, dwindling sounds of Callie’s breath.
At first, twenty seconds passed between the rise and fall of her chest. Then thirty seconds. Then forty-five. Then nothing but a long, low sigh, as Callie finally let go.
“Good morning, friends.” Dr. Jerry walked to the foot of Callie’s grave. His mask had leaping kittens across the front, though Leigh wasn’t sure if he had worn it for Callie or if it was just something he had lying around.
He opened a slim book. “I’d like to read a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.”
Walter exchanged a look with Leigh. That was a bit on the nose. Dr. Jerry probably had no idea the poet had been a morphine addict most of her life.
“I’ve chosen the old gal’s most popular sonnet, so please feel free to recite along.”
Phil snorted from the other side of Callie’s grave.
Dr. Jerry cleared his throat politely before beginning, “‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways/I love thee to the depth and breadth and height/My soul can reach …’”
Walter’s arm wrapped around Leigh’s shoulders. He kissed the side of her head through his mask. She was grateful for his warmth. The weather had taken a cold turn. She hadn’t been able to find her coat this morning. She’d been distracted by a long phone call with the man who ran the cemetery because he’d kept gently suggesting that a headstone with rabbits and kittens on it was better suited for a child.
Callie was her child, Leigh had wanted to scream, but she had passed the phone to Walter so that she didn’t reach through the line and rip the man’s head off.
Dr. Jerry continued, “‘I love thee to the level of every day’s/Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light/I love thee freely, as men strive for right.’”
She looked across the open grave at Phil. Her mother was not wearing a mask, though Georgia’s first Covid superspreader event had taken place at a funeral. Phil sat defiantly, legs spread, hands curled into fists. She hadn’t dressed any differently for her youngest daughter’s funeral than she would’ve for a day of collecting rent. Dog collar around her neck. Black Sid Vicious T-shirt because heroin was so awesome. Eye make-up straight out of the rabid raccoon collection.
Leigh looked away before she felt the same anger she always felt around her mother. She stared at the camera that was streaming the funeral. Shockingly, Phil’s mother was still alive and living in a retirement home in Florida. Even more surprising, Cole Bradley had asked to pay his remote respects. He was technically still Leigh’s boss, though she imagined it was only a matter of time before she was called into his office again. The optics were not great, to put it in corporate speak. Leigh’s sister had murdered her client and his new wife, and then overdosed herself, all seemingly without explanation.
Leigh had made it clear that she wasn’t going to provide that explanation and no one else had stepped forward to fill in the giant blank. Not Reggie Paltz, who as predicted had skipped town. Not a friend or neighbor or lawyer or banker or money manager or paid informant.
But someone out there had to know the truth. Andrew’s safe had been wide open the night that Leigh had broken into his house.
It was empty.
She had told herself she was okay with that. The tapes were still in existence. Eventually, someone would go to the police or approach Leigh or—something. However it happened, Leigh would accept the consequences. The only thing she could control was how she lived her life in the meantime.
Dr. Jerry finished, “‘I love thee with a love I seemed to lose/With my lost saints/I love thee with the breath/Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose/I shall but love thee better after death.’”
Walter let out a long sigh. Leigh felt the same. Maybe Dr. Jerry understood more than they thought.
“Thank you.” Dr. Jerry closed the book. He blew Callie a kiss. He walked over to offer Phil his condolences.
Leigh dreaded what her mother would say to the kindly old man.
“You good?” Walter whispered. His eyes were filled with concern. This time last year, she would’ve been annoyed by his hovering, but now, Leigh was overwhelmed with gratitude. Somehow, it was easier to let herself love Walter completely now that he understood what it felt like to be broken.
“I’m okay,” she told him, hoping that saying the words aloud would make it so.
Dr. Jerry was circling back around the grave. “There you are, young lady.”
Walter and Leigh stood up to talk with him.
She said, “Thank you for coming.”
His mask was wet with tears. “Our Calliope was such a lovely girl.”
“Thank you,” Leigh repeated, feeling her own mask stick to her face. Every time she thought she’d run out of tears, more showed up. “She really loved you, Dr. Jerry.”
“Well.” He patted her hand. “Could I tell you a secret that I found out when my dear wife passed away?”
Leigh nodded.
“Your relationship with a person doesn’t end when they die. It only gets stronger.” He winked at her. “Mostly because they’re not there to tell you that you’re wrong.”
Leigh’s throat tightened.
Walter saved her from having to respond. “Dr. Jerry, that Chevy of yours is a classic. Do you mind showing it to me?”
“That would be my pleasure, young man.” Dr. Jerry let Walter take his arm. “Tell me, have you ever been punched in the face by an octopus?”
“Fuck me.” Phil leaned back in her chair. “Old guy’s got the dementia. Moving up to Oregon with Antifa or some shit like that.”
“Shut up, Mother.” Leigh peeled off her mask. She searched her purse for a tissue.
“She was my daughter, you know,” Phil shouted at Leigh across Callie’s grave. “Who took care of her? Who did she always come home to?”
“Walter will pick up the cat tomorrow.�
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“Stupid Cunt?”
Leigh was startled, but then she laughed. “Yes, Stupid Cunt will be living at my house. It’s what Callie wanted.”
“Well, fuck.” Phil looked more upset about losing the cat than she’d been when Leigh had told her about Callie. “That’s a damn good cat. I hope you know what you’re getting.”
Leigh blew her nose.
“You know, I’m gonna tell you this.” Phil stuck her hands into her hips. “The problem with you and your sister was that Callie couldn’t stop looking back and you were always so goddam desperate to keep looking forward.”
Leigh hated that she was right. “I think the bigger problem was that we had an incredibly shitty mother.”
Phil’s mouth opened, but then it snapped closed. Her eyes had gone wide. She was looking past Leigh’s shoulder as if a ghost had appeared.
Leigh turned. Worse than a ghost.
Linda Tenant was leaning against a black Jaguar. A cigarette dangled from her mouth. She was wearing the same pearls and popped collar, but her shirt was long-sleeved for the cooler weather. The last time Leigh had seen Andrew’s mother, they were sitting around the conference table in Cole Bradley’s private office talking about how to defend her son.
“We should—” Leigh stopped, because Phil was hot-stepping in the opposite direction. “Thanks, Mom.”
Leigh took a deep breath. She started the long walk toward Andrew’s mother. Linda was still leaning against the Jag. Her arms were crossed. She was clearly here to ambush Callie’s funeral. Leigh recognized the brazen act as something she would’ve done herself. The woman’s son and daughter-in-law had been murdered. Never mind that Ruby Heyer’s family along with Tammy Karlsen and Andrew’s three other victims would never see justice. Linda Tenant wanted an explanation.
Leigh still wasn’t going to provide one, but she owed Linda the courtesy of giving her someone to scream at.
Linda flicked her cigarette into the grass as Leigh got closer. “How old was she?”
Leigh hadn’t been expecting the question, but she guessed they had to start somewhere. “Thirty-seven.”
Linda nodded. “So she was eleven when she started working for me.”
“Twelve,” Leigh said. “One year younger than me when I started.”
Linda fished a pack of cigarettes out of her khakis. She shook one out. Her hand was steady on the lighter. She hissed a plume of smoke into the air. There was something so angry about her that Leigh didn’t know whether Linda was going to rail at her or run her over with her car.
She did neither of these things. Instead, she told Leigh, “You cleaned up.”
Leigh looked down at her black dress, which was a far cry from the jeans and Aerosmith T-shirt she’d worn that first night. She asked rather than said, “Thank you?”
“I’m not talking about your outfit.” Linda made a jerky movement as she pulled the cigarette from her lips. “You girls were always tidy, but you never cleaned like that.”
Leigh shook her head. She heard the words, but they didn’t make sense.
“That kitchen floor was shining when I got home from the hospital.” Linda took another angry drag. “And the bleach was so strong that my eyes watered.”
Leigh felt her mouth open in surprise. She was talking about the Canyon Road house. After they’d gotten rid of the body, Callie had gotten on her knees to scrub the floors. Leigh had scoured the sinks. They had vacuumed and dusted and wiped down counters and shined doorknobs and baseboards and neither of them had ever once considered that Linda Waleski would come home from work and wonder why they had deep-cleaned her normally damp, dirty house.
“Huh,” Leigh said, hearing echoes of Callie when she didn’t know what to say.
“I thought you’d killed him for the money,” Linda said. “And then I thought something bad had happened. Your sister—the next day—that was awful. There had clearly been a fight or—or something. I wanted to call the police. I wanted to beat up that piece of shit you call a mother. But I couldn’t.”
“Why?” was all that Leigh could ask.
“Because it didn’t matter why you did it. What mattered was that you got rid of him, and you got paid, and that seemed fair.” Linda sucked hard on the cigarette. “I never asked questions because I got what I wanted. He was never going to let me leave. I tried once, and he beat the holy hell out of me. Smacked me until I was unconscious, then left me on the floor.”
Leigh wondered how Callie would’ve felt about this information. Probably sad. She had loved Linda so much. “You couldn’t go to your family?”
“I made my bed, didn’t I?” Linda picked a piece of tobacco off of her tongue. “Even after you got rid of him, I had to prostate myself in front of my prick of a brother. He would’ve put me out in the streets. I had to beg him to take me in. He made me wait a month, and even then, I wasn’t allowed in his house. We had to live in a squalid apartment over the garage like the damn servants.”
Leigh held her tongue. There were far worse places to live.
“I did wonder, though. Not all the time, but sometimes, I wondered why you two girls did it. I mean, what’d he get paid for that framing job, fifty grand?”
“Fifty was in his briefcase,” Leigh said. “We found thirty-six more hidden around the house.”
“Good for you. But it still didn’t make sense. You girls weren’t like that. Some of the other kids in the neighborhood—sure. They’d cut your throat for ten dollars, do God knows what for 86K. But not you two. Like I said, that part always bothered me.” Linda took the keyfob off her belt. Her thumb rested on a button. “And then I found these in my garage, and I finally understood.”
The trunk popped open.
Leigh walked around to the back of the Jaguar. A black plastic garbage bag was inside. The top was open. She saw a pile of VHS cassettes. Leigh didn’t have to count them to know that there were fifteen in all. Fourteen featuring Callie. One with Callie and Leigh.
“The night Andrew died, he came by my house. I heard him in the garage. I didn’t ask him why. Sure, he was acting strange, but he was always strange. Then a few days ago I remembered. I found that garbage bag shoved into the back of one of the storage cabinets. I didn’t tell the police, but I’m telling you.”
Leigh felt her throat grow tight again. She looked up at Linda.
The woman hadn’t moved except to keep smoking. “I was only thirteen when I met his father. He had me but good. It took three years of me running away, being sent to my grandparents, even to boarding school, before they realized I wasn’t going to give him up and they finally let us get married. Did you know that?”
Leigh wanted to grab the bag, but Linda was the one with all the power. There could be copies. There could be another server.
“I never thought …” Linda’s voice trailed off as she took another puff. “Did he try it with you?”
Leigh stepped away from the trunk. “Yes.”
“Did he succeed?”
“Once.”
Linda shook another cigarette out of the pack. She lit the fresh one off the old one. “I loved that girl. She was a sweetheart. And I always trusted her with Andrew. I never for a moment thought that anything bad would happen. And the fact that it did—that she was hurt so bad that, even after he was gone, he found a way to keep hurting her …”
Leigh watched tears slide down the woman’s face. She hadn’t once said Callie’s name.
“Anyway.” Linda coughed, smoke coming out of her mouth and nose. “I’m sorry for what he did to you. And I’m real damn sorry for what he did to her.”
Leigh said the same thing that Walter had said to her. “You never thought a pedophile who molested you when you were thirteen would molest other thirteen-year-olds?”
“I was in love.” She gave a bitter laugh. “I suppose I should throw in an apology for your husband. Is he all right?”
Leigh didn’t answer. Walter had been knocked out, held at gunpoint, and forced to drink
a date-rape drug. He wasn’t going to be all right for a really long time.
Linda had sucked the cigarette down to the filter. She did the same as before, shaking out another, lighting the new off the old. She said, “He raped that woman, didn’t he? Killed the other one?”
Leigh gathered she was talking about Andrew and Sidney’s respective crimes now. She tried to make Linda say Tammy Karlsen and Ruby Heyer’s names. “Which women are you talking about?”
Linda shook her head as she blew out more smoke. “It doesn’t matter. He was as rotten as his father. And that girl he married—she was just as bad as he was.”
Leigh looked down at the tapes. Linda had brought them for a reason. “Do you want to know why Callie killed Andrew and Sidney?”
“No.” She tossed the cigarette into the grass. She walked to the back of the car. The garbage bag came out. She dropped it onto the ground. “Those are the only copies I know about. If anything else comes out, I’ll say it’s a lie. A deepfake. Whatever they call it. I’ll have your back the same as before, is what I’m saying. And for what it’s worth, I told Cole Bradley what happened wasn’t your fault.”
“Am I supposed to thank you?”
“No,” Linda answered. “I’m thanking you, Harleigh Collier. As far as I’m concerned, you put one animal down for me. Your sister put down the other.”
Linda climbed into her car. She gunned the engine as she drove away.
Leigh watched the sleek black Jaguar prowl its way out of the cemetery. She considered Linda’s anger, the manic chain-smoking, the total lack of compassion, the laughable thought that, all of these years, Linda Waleski had persuaded herself that her husband had been murdered by two incredibly hygienic teenage hitmen.
Callie would’ve had questions.
Leigh couldn’t begin to answer them. She looked up at the sky. Rain had been in the forecast, but white clouds were rolling in. She wanted to think her sister was up there reading Chaucer to a kitten who was using digital currency to hide his money from the IRS, but reality kept her from going that far.
False Witness Page 48