False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  “I’m sorry. Cats can be very judgmental.” She found the sandwich she’d made for her dinner. “Eat this before you hit it tonight.”

  “Right, right.” Sammy tucked the sandwich under a strip of cardboard. “Listen, though, do you think he was trying to tell me something?”

  “I’m not sure,” Callie said. “As you know, cats choose not to talk because they’re afraid we’ll make them pay taxes.”

  “Ha!” Sammy jabbed a finger at her. “Snitches get stitches! Oh-oh-hey Cal, wait up a sec, okay? I think Trap is looking for you so—”

  “Eat your sandwich.” Callie walked away, because Sammy could rattle on for the rest of the night. And that was without the crack.

  Callie rounded the corner, taking a labored breath. Trap looking for her was not a good development. He was a fifteen-year-old meth freak who’d graduated early with a degree in dipshittery. Fortunately, he was terrified of his mother. As long as Wilma got her patronage, her idiot son stayed on a tight leash.

  Still, Callie swung her backpack around to the front of her chest as she got closer to the motel. The walk was not completely unpleasant because it was familiar. She passed by empty lots and abandoned houses. Graffiti scarred a crumbling brick retaining wall. Used syringes were scattered across the sidewalk. By habit, her eye searched for usable needles. She had her dope kit in her backpack, a plastic Snoopy watch case with her tie-off, a bent spoon, an empty syringe, some cotton, and a Zippo lighter.

  What she enjoyed most about shooting heroin was the pageantry of the act. The flick of the lighter. The vinegar smell as it cooked on the spoon. Drawing up the dirty brown liquid into the syringe.

  Callie shook her head. Dangerous thoughts.

  She followed the dirt-packed strip that traced around the backyards of a residential street. The energy abruptly changed. Families lived here. Windows were thrown open. Music played loudly. Women yelled at their boyfriends. Boyfriends yelled at their women. Children ran around a sputtering sprinkler. It was just like the rich parts of Atlanta, but louder and more cramped and less pale.

  Through the trees, Callie spotted two squad cars parked at the far end of the road. They weren’t scooping up people. They were waiting for the sun to go down and the calls to come in—Narcan for this junkie, the emergency room for another, a long wait on the coroner’s van, child services, probation officers, and Veterans Affairs—and that was just for a Monday night. A lot of people had turned to illicit comforts during the pandemic. Jobs were lost. Food was scarce. Kids were starving. The number of overdoses and suicides had gone through the roof. All the politicians who had expressed deep concern about mental health during the lockdowns had shockingly been unwilling to spend money on helping the people who were losing their minds.

  Callie watched a squirrel skitter around a telephone pole. She angled her route toward the back of the motel. The two-story concrete block building was behind a row of scraggly bushes. She pushed aside the limbs and stepped onto the cracked asphalt. The Dumpster gave off a pungent welcome. She scanned the area, making sure Trap didn’t sneak up on her.

  Her mind wandered back to the lethal cornucopia of drugs in her backpack. Meeting Kurt Cobain would be amazing, but her desire for self-harm had passed. Or at least had simmered down to her usual quest for self-harm, the kind that didn’t end in certain death, only possible death, and then maybe she could be brought back so why not bump it up a little more, right? The police would come in time, right?

  What Callie wanted tonight was to take a long shower and curl up in bed with her pigeon-snacking cat. She had enough methadone to get her through the night and out of bed in the morning. She could sell on the way to work. Dr. Jerry would have a heart attack if she showed up before noon anyway.

  Callie was smiling when she turned the corner because she seldom had an actual plan.

  “’Sup girl?” Trap was leaning against the wall smoking a joint. He gave her the once-over, and she reminded herself that he was a teenager with the brain of a five-year-old and a grown man’s potential for violence. “Got somebody looking for you.”

  Callie felt the hairs go up on her neck. She had spent the majority of her adult life making sure that no one ever looked for her. “Who?”

  “White dude. Nice car.” He shrugged, like that was enough of a description. “Whatchu got in that backpack?”

  “None of your fucking business.” Callie tried to walk past him, but he grabbed her arm.

  “Come on,” Trap said. “Mama told me to collect.”

  Callie laughed. His mother would kick his balls into his throat if he took a cut off her piece. “Let’s go find Wilma right now and make sure that’s true.”

  Trap’s eyes got shifty. At least that’s what she thought. Too late, Callie realized he was signaling someone behind her. She started to turn her body because she could not turn her head.

  A man’s muscular arm looped around her neck. The pain was instantaneous, like lightning striking down from the sky. Callie’s hips jutted forward. She fell back against the man’s chest, her body levering like the hinge on a door.

  His breath was hot in her ear. “Don’t move.”

  She recognized Diego’s shrill voice. He was Trap’s fellow meth freak. They’d smoked so much crystal that their teeth were already falling out. Either one of them alone was a nuisance. Together, they were a breaking news rape-and-murder story waiting to happen.

  “Whatchu got, bitch?” Diego yanked harder on her neck. His free hand slipped under the backpack and found her breast. “You got these little titties for me, girl?”

  Callie’s left arm had gone completely numb. She felt like her skull was going to break off at the root. Her eyes closed. If she was going to die, let it be before her spine snapped.

  “Let’s see what we got.” Trap was close enough for her to smell the rotten teeth in his mouth. He unzipped the backpack. “Damn, bitch, you been holdin’ out on—”

  They all heard the distinctive click-clack of a slide being pulled on a nine-millimeter handgun.

  Callie couldn’t open her eyes. She could only wait for the bullet.

  Trap said, “Who the fuck are you?”

  “I’m the motherfucker who’s gonna put another hole in your head if you assholes don’t step the fuck off right now.”

  Callie opened her eyes. “Hey, Harleigh.”

  5

  “Christ, Callie.”

  She watched Leigh angrily dump the backpack onto the bed. Syringes, tablets, vials, tampons, jellybeans, pens, notebook, two library books on owls, Callie’s dope kit. Instead of railing against the stash, her sister’s gaze bounced around the dingy motel room as if she expected to find secret stashes of opium inside the painted concrete block walls.

  Leigh asked, “What if I’d been a cop? You know you can’t carry this much weight.”

  Callie leaned against the wall. She was used to seeing different versions of Leigh—her sister had more aliases than a cat—but the side of Leigh that could pull a gun on a couple of junkie teenagers hadn’t reared its head in twenty-three years.

  Trap and Diego had better thank their fucking stars that she was carrying a Glock instead of a roll of cling film.

  Leigh warned, “Trafficking would put you in prison for the rest of your life.”

  Callie stared longingly at her dope kit. “I hear it’s easier for bottoms inside.”

  Leigh swung around, hands on her hips. She was wearing high heels and one of her expensive ladybitch suits, which made her presence in this shithole motel somewhat comical. And that included the loaded gun sticking out of the waistband of her skirt.

  Callie asked, “Where’s your purse?”

  “Locked in the trunk of my car.”

  Callie was going to tell her that was a stupid rich white lady thing to do, but her skull was still throbbing from when Diego had nearly cracked the remaining vertebrae in her neck. “It’s good to see you, Har.”

  Leigh stepped closer, looking into Callie’s eyes to check
her pupils. “How stoned are you?”

  Not enough was Callie’s first thought, but she didn’t want to run Leigh off so soon. The last time she’d seen her sister, Callie was coming off spending two weeks on a ventilator in Grady Hospital’s ICU.

  Leigh said, “I need you straight right now.”

  “Then you’d better hurry.”

  Leigh crossed her arms over her chest. She clearly had something to say, but she just as clearly wasn’t ready yet. She asked, “Have you been eating? You’re too thin.”

  “A woman can never be—”

  “Cal.” Leigh’s concern cut like a shovel through bullshit. “Are you okay?”

  “How’s your anglerfish?” Callie enjoyed the confusion on her sister’s face. There was a reason the weirdos hadn’t wanted the least popular cheerleader at the freak table. “Walter. How’s he doing?”

  “He’s okay.” The hardness left Leigh’s expression. Her hands dropped down to her sides. There were only three people alive who ever got to see her guard down. Leigh brought up the third without prompting. “Maddy’s still living with him so she can go to school.”

  Callie tried to rub the feeling back into her arm. “I know that’s hard for you.”

  “Well, yeah, everything’s hard for everybody.” Leigh started pacing around the room. It was like watching a cymbal-clanging monkey wind itself up. “The school just sent out an email that some stupid mother threw a superspreader party last weekend. Six kids have tested positive so far. The entire class is on virtual learning for two weeks.”

  Callie laughed, but not over the stupid mother. The world Leigh lived in was like Mars compared to her own.

  Leigh nodded at the window. “Is that for you?”

  Callie smiled at the muscular black cat on the ledge. Binx stretched his back as he waited for entry. “He caught a pigeon today.”

  Leigh clearly didn’t give a shit about the pigeon, but she tried, “What’s his name?”

  “Fucking Bitch.” Callie grinned at her sister’s startled reaction. “I call him Fitch for short.”

  “Isn’t that a girl’s name?”

  “He’s gender fluid.”

  Leigh pressed together her lips. This wasn’t a social visit. When Harleigh socialized, she went to fancy dinner parties with other lawyers and doctors and the Dormouse fast asleep between the Hatter and March Hare.

  She only sought out Callie when something really bad had happened. A pending warrant. A visit at the county jail. A looming court case. A Covid diagnosis where the only expendable person who could nurse her back to health was her baby sister.

  Callie ran through her most recent transgressions. Maybe that stupid jaywalking ticket had put her in the shit. Or maybe Leigh had gotten a tip-off from one of her connections that Dr. Jerry was being looked at by the DEA. Or, more likely, one of the morons Callie was selling to had flipped to keep his own sorry ass out of jail.

  Fucking junkies.

  She asked, “Who’s after me?”

  Leigh circled her finger in the air. The walls were thin. Anyone could be listening.

  Callie hugged Binx close. They had both known that one day, Callie would get herself into the kind of trouble that her big sister wouldn’t be able to get her out of.

  “Come on,” Leigh said. “Let’s go.”

  She didn’t mean take a stroll around the block. She meant pack up your shit, stick that cat in something, and get in the car.

  Callie looked for clothes while Leigh repacked the backpack. She would miss her bedspread and her flowery blanket, but this wasn’t the first time she’d abandoned a place. Normally sheriff’s deputies were standing outside with an eviction notice. She needed underwear, lots of socks, two clean T-shirts, and a pair of jeans. She had one pair of shoes and they were on her feet. More T-shirts could be found at the thrift store. Blankets would be handed out at the shelter, but she couldn’t stay there because they didn’t allow pets.

  Callie stripped off a pillowcase to hold her meager stash, then loaded in Binx’s food, his pink mouse toy, and a cheap plastic Hawaiian lei the cat liked to drag around when he was having feelings.

  “Ready?” Leigh had the backpack over her shoulder. She was a lawyer, so Callie didn’t explain what a gun and a shit ton of drugs could mean because her sister had earned herself a slot in that rarefied world where the rules were negotiable.

  “Just a minute.” Callie used her foot to kick Binx’s carrier out from under the bed. The cat stiffened, but didn’t fight when Callie placed him inside. This wasn’t his first eviction, either.

  She told her sister, “Ready.”

  Leigh let Callie go first out the door. Binx started hissing when he was put into the back seat of the car. Callie buckled the seatbelt around his carrier, then got into the front seat and did the same for herself. She watched her sister carefully. Leigh was always in control, but even the way she turned the key in the ignition was done with a strangely precise flick of her wrist. Everything about her was freaked out, which was worrying, because Leigh never freaked out.

  Trafficking.

  Junkies were by necessity part-time lawyers. Georgia had mandatory sentencing based on weight. Twenty-eight or more grams of cocaine: ten years. Twenty-eight or more grams of opiates: twenty-five years. Anything over four hundred grams of methamphetamines: twenty-five years.

  Callie tried to do the math, to divide her list of customers who had probably flipped by the ounces or total grams she had sold in the last few months, but, no matter how she toggled it around, the numerator kept bringing her back to fucked.

  Leigh turned right out of the motel parking lot. Nothing was said as they pulled onto the main road. They passed the two cop cars at the end of the residential street. The cops barely gave the Audi a glance. They likely assumed the two women were looking for a stoned kid or slumming around trying to score for themselves.

  They both kept silent as Leigh pulled out onto the outer loop, past Callie’s bus stop. The fancy car smoothly navigated the bumpy asphalt. Callie was used to the jerks and bounces of public transportation. She tried to remember the last time she’d ridden in a car. Probably when Leigh had driven her home from Grady Hospital. Callie was supposed to convalesce at Leigh’s zillion-dollar condo, but Callie had been on the street with a needle in her arm before the sun had come up.

  She massaged her tingling fingers. Some of the feeling was coming back, which was good but also like needles scraping into her nerves. She studied her sister’s sharp profile. There was something to be said for having enough money to age well. A gym in her building. A doctor on call. A retirement account. Nice vacations. Weekends off. As far as Callie was concerned, her sister deserved every luxury she could give herself. Leigh hadn’t just fallen into this life. She had clawed her way up the ladder, studying harder, working harder, making sacrifice after sacrifice to give herself and Maddy the best life possible.

  If Callie’s tragedy was self-knowledge, Leigh’s was that she would never, ever let herself accept that her good life wasn’t somehow linked to the unmitigated misery of Callie’s.

  “Are you hungry?” Leigh asked. “You need to eat.”

  There wasn’t even a polite pause for Callie’s response. They were in big sister/little sister mode. Leigh pulled into a McDonald’s. She didn’t consult Callie as she ordered at the drive-thru, though Callie assumed the Filet-O-Fish was for Binx. Nothing was said as the car inched toward the window. Leigh found a mask in the console between the seats. She exchanged cash for bags of food and drinks, then passed it all to Callie. She took off her mask. She kept driving.

  Callie didn’t know what to do but get everything ready. She wrapped a Big Mac in a napkin and handed it to her sister. She picked at a double cheeseburger for herself. Binx had to settle for two French fries. He would’ve loved the fish sandwich, but Callie wasn’t sure she could clean cat diarrhea out of the contrast stitching in her sister’s fancy leather seats.

  She asked Leigh, “Fries?”

 
Leigh shook her head. “You have them. You’re too skinny, Cal. You need to back off the dope for a while.”

  Callie took a moment to appreciate the fact that Leigh had stopped telling her she needed to quit altogether. It had only taken tens of thousands of dollars of Leigh’s money wasted on rehab and countless angst-filled conversations, but both of their lives had become a hell of a lot easier since Leigh had entered into acceptance.

  “Eat,” Leigh ordered.

  Callie looked down at the hamburger in her lap. Her stomach turned. There wasn’t a way to tell Leigh that it wasn’t the dope that was making her lose weight. She had never gotten her appetite back after Covid. Most days, she had to force herself to eat. Telling that to Leigh would only end up burdening her sister with more guilt that she did not deserve to carry.

  “Callie?” Leigh shot her an annoyed look. “Are you going to eat or do I have to force-feed you?”

  Callie choked down the rest of the fries. She made herself finish exactly half of the hamburger. She was downing the Coke when the car finally rolled to a stop.

  She looked around. Instantly, her stomach started searching for all sorts of ways to get rid of the food. They were smack in the residential part of Lake Point, the same place Leigh used to bring them in her car when they needed to get away from their mother. Callie had avoided this hellhole for two decades. She took the long bus from Dr. Jerry’s just so she didn’t have to see the depressing, squat houses with their narrow carports and sad front yards.

  Leigh left the car running so the air could stay on. She turned toward Callie, leaning her back against the door. “Trevor and Linda Waleski came to my office last night.”

  Callie shivered. She kept what Leigh had told her at a distance, but there was a faint darkness on the horizon, an angry gorilla pacing back and forth across her memories—short-waisted, hands always fisted, arms so muscled that they wouldn’t go flat to his sides. Everything about the creature screamed ruthless motherfucker. People turned in the opposite direction when they saw him in the street.