False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  FALSE WITNESS

  Karin Slaughter

  Copyright

  Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

  1 London Bridge Street

  London SE1 9GF

  www.harpercollins.co.uk

  First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2021

  Copyright © Karin Slaughter 2021

  Lyrics from “The Music Man” (written by Meredith Willson)

  Cover design by Claire Ward © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2021

  Cover photographs © Lyn Randle/Trevillion Images

  Karin Slaughter asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locales are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

  Source ISBN: 9780008303501

  Ebook Edition © June 2021 ISBN: 9780008303525

  Version: 2021-05-31

  Dedication

  For my readers

  Epigraph

  The past is never where you think you left it.

  —Katherine Anne Porter

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Summer 1998

  Spring 2021

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Summer 1998

  Spring 2021

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Summer 2005

  Spring 2021

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Keep Reading …

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Karin Slaughter

  About the Publisher

  SUMMER 1998

  From the kitchen, Callie heard Trevor tapping his fingers on the aquarium. Her grip tightened around the spatula she was using to mix cookie dough. He was only ten years old. She thought he was being bullied at school. His father was an asshole. He was allergic to cats and terrified of dogs. Any shrink would tell you the kid was terrorizing the poor fish in a desperate bid for attention, but Callie was barely holding on by her fingernails.

  Tap-tap-tap.

  She rubbed her temples, trying to ward off a headache. “Trev, are you tapping on the aquarium like I told you not to?”

  The tapping stopped. “No, ma’am.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Silence.

  Callie plopped dough onto the cookie sheet. The tapping resumed like a metronome. She plopped out more rows on the three count.

  Tap-tap-plop. Tap-tap-plop.

  Callie was closing the oven door when Trevor suddenly appeared behind her like a serial killer. He threw his arms around her, saying, “I love you.”

  She held on to him as tightly as he held on to her. The fist of tension loosened its grip on her skull. She kissed the top of Trevor’s head. He tasted salty from the festering heat. He was standing completely still, but his nervous energy reminded her of a coiled spring. “Do you want to lick the bowl?”

  The question was answered before she could finish asking it. He dragged a kitchen chair to the counter and made like Pooh Bear sticking his head into a honeypot.

  Callie wiped the sweat from her forehead. The sun had gone down an hour ago, but the house was still broiling. The air conditioning was barely functioning. The oven had turned the kitchen into a sauna. Everything felt sticky and wet, herself and Trevor included.

  She turned on the faucet. The cold water was irresistible. She splashed her face, then, to Trevor’s delight, sprinkled some on the back of his neck.

  Once the giggling died down, Callie adjusted the water to clean the spatula. She placed it in the drying rack beside the remnants from dinner. Two plates. Two glasses. Two forks. One knife to cut Trevor’s hot dog into pieces. One teaspoon for a dollop of Worcestershire sauce mixed in with the ketchup.

  Trevor handed her the bowl to wash. His lips curved up to the left when he smiled, the same way his father’s did. He stood beside her at the sink, his hip pressing against her.

  She asked, “Were you tapping the glass on the aquarium?”

  He looked up. She caught the flash of scheming in his eyes. Exactly like his father. “You said they were starter fish. That they probably wouldn’t live.”

  She felt a nasty response worthy of her mother press against the back of her clenched teeth—Your grandfather’s going to die, too. Should we go down to the nursing home and stick needles under his fingernails?

  Callie hadn’t said the words out loud, but the spring inside of Trevor coiled even tighter. She was always unsettled by how tuned in he was to her emotions.

  “Okay.” She dried her hands on her shorts, nodding toward the aquarium. “We should find out their names.”

  He looked guarded, always afraid of being the last one to get the joke. “Fish don’t have names.”

  “Of course they do, silly. They don’t just meet each other on the first day of school and say, ‘Hello, my name is Fish.’” She gently nudged him into the living room. The two bicolored blennies were swimming a nervous loop around the aquarium. She had lost Trevor’s interest several times during the arduous process of setting up the saltwater tank. The arrival of the fish had sharpened his focus to the head of a pin.

  Callie’s knee popped as she knelt down in front of the aquarium. The throbbing pain was more tolerable than the sight of Trevor’s grimy fingerprints clouding the glass. “What about the little guy?” She pointed to the smaller of the two. “What’s his name?”

  Trevor’s lips curved up at the left as he fought a smile. “Bait.”

  “Bait?”

  “For when the sharks come and eat him!” Trevor burst into too-loud laughter, rolling on the floor at the hilarity.

  Callie tried to rub the throb out of her knee. She glanced around the room with her usual sinking depression. The stained shag carpet had been flattened sometime in the late eighties. Streetlight lasered around the puckered edges of the orange and brown drapes. One corner of the room was taken up by a fully stocked bar with a smoky mirror behind it. Glasses hung down from a ceiling rack and four leather bar stools crowded around the L-shape of the sticky wooden top. The entire room was centered around a giant television that weighed more than Callie. The orange couch had two depressing his-and-her indentations on opposite ends. The tan club chairs had sweat stains at the backs. The arms had been burned by smoldering cigarettes.

  Trevor’s hand slipped inside of hers. He had picked up on her mood again.


  He tried, “What about the other fish?”

  She smiled as she rested her head against his. “How about …” She cast around for something good—Anne Chovey, Genghis Karp, Brine Austin Green. “Mr. Dar-Sea?”

  Trevor wrinkled his nose. Not an Austen fan. “What time is Dad getting home?”

  Buddy Waleski got home whenever he damn well got home. “Soon.”

  “Are the cookies ready yet?”

  Callie winced her way to standing so she could follow him back into the kitchen. They watched the cookies through the oven door. “Not quite, but when you’re out of your bath—”

  Trevor bolted down the hallway. The bathroom door slammed. She heard the faucet squeak. Water splattered into the tub. He started humming.

  An amateur would claim victory, but Callie was no amateur. She waited a few minutes, then cracked open the bathroom door to make sure he was actually in the tub. She caught him just as he dipped his head under the water.

  Still not a win—there was no soap in sight—but she was exhausted and her back ached and her knee was pinching when she walked up the hallway so all she could do was grit through the pain until she reached the bar and filled a martini glass with equal parts Sprite and Captain Morgan.

  Callie limited herself to two swigs before she leaned down and checked for blinking lights under the bar. She had discovered the digital camera by accident a few months ago. The power had gone out. She’d been looking for the emergency candles when she noticed a flash out of the corner of her eye.

  Callie’s first thought had been—sprained back, trick knee, and now her retina was detaching—but the light was red, not white, and it was flashing like Rudolph’s nose between two of the heavy leather stools under the bar. She had pulled them away. Watched the red light flash off the brass foot rail that stringed along the bottom.

  It was a good hiding place. The front of the bar was done up in a multi-colored mosaic. Shards of mirror punctuated broken pieces of blue, green, and orange tile, all of which obscured the one-inch hole cut through to the shelves in the back. She’d found the Canon digital camcorder behind a cardboard box filled with wine corks. Buddy had taped the power cord up inside the shelf to hide it, but the power had been off for hours. The battery was dying. Callie had no idea whether or not the camera had been recording. It was pointed directly at the couch.

  This is what Callie had told herself: Buddy had friends over almost every weekend. They watched basketball or football or baseball and they talked bullshit and business and women, and they probably said things that gave Buddy leverage, the kind of leverage that he could later use to close a deal, and probably that’s what the camera was for.

  Probably.

  She left out the Sprite on her second drink. The spiced rum burned up her throat and into her nose. Callie sneezed, catching most of it with the back of her arm. She was too tired to get a paper towel from the kitchen. She used one of the bar towels to wipe off the snot. The monogrammed crest scratched her skin. Callie looked at the logo, which summed up Buddy in a nutshell. Not the Atlanta Falcons. Not the Georgia Bulldogs. Not even Georgia Tech. Buddy Waleski had chosen to be a booster for the division two Bellwood Eagles, a high school team that went zero-to-ten last season.

  Big fish/small pond.

  Callie was downing the rest of the rum when Trevor came back into the living room. He wrapped his skinny arms around her again. She kissed the top of his head. He still tasted sweaty, but she had fought enough battles for the day. All she wanted now was for him to go to sleep so that she could drink away the aches and pains in her body.

  They sat on the floor in front of the aquarium as they waited for the cookies to cool down. Callie told him about her first aquarium. The mistakes she had made. The responsibility and care it took to keep the fish thriving. Trevor had turned docile. She told herself it was because of the warm bath and not because of the way the light went out of his eyes every time he saw her standing behind the bar pouring herself another drink.

  Callie’s guilt started to dissipate as they got closer to Trevor’s bedtime. She could feel him start to wind himself up as they sat at the kitchen table. The routine was familiar: An argument about how many cookies he could eat. Spilled milk. Another cookie argument. A discussion about which bed he would sleep in. A struggle to get him into his pajamas. A negotiation over how many pages she would read from his book. A kiss goodnight. Another kiss goodnight. A request for a glass of water. Not that glass, this glass. Not this water, that water. Screaming. Crying. More battling. More negotiating. Promises for tomorrow—games, the zoo, a visit to the water park. And so on and so on until she eventually, finally, found herself standing alone behind the bar again.

  She stopped herself from rushing to open the bottle like a desperate drunk. Her hands were shaking. She watched them tremor in the silence of the dingy room. More than anything else, she associated the room with Buddy. The air was stifling. Smoke from thousands of cigarettes and cigarillos had stained the low ceiling. Even the spiderwebs in the corners were orangey-brown. She never took her shoes off inside the house because the feel of the sticky carpet cupping her feet made her stomach turn.

  Callie slowly twisted the cap off the bottle of rum. The spices tickled at her nose again. Her mouth started to water from anticipation. She could feel the numbing effects just from thinking about the third drink, not the last drink, the drink that would help her shoulders relax, her back stop spasming, her knee stop throbbing.

  The kitchen door popped open. Buddy coughed, the phlegm tight in his throat. He threw his briefcase onto the counter. Kicked Trevor’s chair back under the table. Snatched up a handful of cookies. Held his cigarillo in one hand as he chewed with his mouth open. Callie could practically hear the crumbs pinging off the table, bouncing against his scuffed shoes, scattering across the linoleum, tiny cymbals clanging together, because everywhere Buddy went, there was noise, noise, noise.

  He finally noticed her. She had that early feeling of being glad to see him, of expecting him to envelop her in his arms and make her feel special again. Then more crumbs dropped from his mouth. “Pour me one, baby doll.”

  She filled a glass with Scotch and soda. The stink of his cigarillo wafted across the room. Black & Mild. She had never seen him without a box sticking out of his shirt pocket.

  Buddy was finishing the last two cookies as he pounded his way toward the bar. Heavy footsteps creaking the floors. Crumbs on the carpet. Crumbs on his wrinkled, sweat-stained work shirt. Trapped in the stubble of his five o’clock shadow.

  Buddy was six-three when he stood up straight, which was never. His skin was perpetually red. He had more hair than most men his age, a little bit of it starting to gray. He worked out, but only with weights, so he looked more gorilla than man—short-waisted, with arms so muscled that they wouldn’t go flat to his sides. Callie seldom saw his hands when they weren’t fisted. Everything about him screamed ruthless motherfucker. People turned in the opposite direction when they saw him in the street.

  If Trevor was a coiled spring, Buddy was a sledgehammer.

  He dropped the cigarillo into the ashtray, slurped down the Scotch, then banged the glass down on the counter. “You have a good day, dolly?”

  “Sure.” She stepped aside so he could get a refill.

  “I had a great one. You know that new strip mall over on Stewart? Guess who’s gonna be doing the framing?”

  “You,” Callie said, though Buddy hadn’t waited for her to answer.

  “Got the down payment today. They’re pouring the foundation tomorrow. Nothing better than having cash in your pocket, right?” He belched, pounding his chest to get it out. “Fetch me some ice, will ya?”

  She started to go, but his hand grabbed her ass like he was turning a doorknob.

  “Lookit that tiny little thing.”

  There had been a time early on when Callie had thought it was funny how obsessed he was with her petite size. He would lift her up with one arm, or marvel at his hand stretc
hed across her back, the thumb and fingers almost touching the edges of her hip bones. He called her little bit and baby girl and doll and now …

  It was just one more thing about him that annoyed her.

  Callie hugged the ice bucket to her stomach as she headed toward the kitchen. She glanced at the aquarium. The blennies had calmed down. They were swimming through the bubbles from the filter. She filled the bucket with ice that smelled like Arm & Hammer baking soda and freezer-burned meat.

  Buddy swiveled around in his bar stool as she made her way back toward him. He had pinched off the tip of his cigarillo and was shoving it back into the box. “God damn, little girl, I love watching your hips move. Do a spin for me.”

  She felt her eyes roll again—not at him, but at herself, because a tiny, stupid, lonely part of Callie still bought into his flirting. He was honest-to-God the first person in her life who had ever made her feel truly loved. She had never before felt special, chosen, like she was all that mattered to another human being. Buddy had made her feel safe and cared for.

  But lately, all he wanted to do was fuck her.

  Buddy pocketed the Black & Milds. He jammed his paw into the ice bucket. She saw dirt crescents under his fingernails.

  He asked, “How’s the kid?”

  “Sleeping.”

  His hand was cupped between her legs before she caught the glint in his eye. Her knees bowed awkwardly. It was like sitting on the flat end of a shovel.

  “Buddy—”

  His other hand clamped around her ass, trapping her between his bulging arms. “Look at how tiny you are. I could stick you in my pocket and nobody’d ever know you were there.”

  She could taste cookies and Scotch and tobacco when his tongue slid into her mouth. Callie returned the kiss because pushing him away, bruising his ego, would take up so much time and end up with her back at the exact same damn place.

  For all his sound and fury, Buddy was a pussy when it came to his feelings. He could beat a grown man to a pulp without blinking an eye, but with Callie, he was so raw sometimes that it made her skin crawl. She had spent hours reassuring him, coddling him, propping him up, listening to his insecurities roll in like an ocean wave scratching at the sand.