False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  Get on the couch, little dolly. I’m so hot for you I can’t stand it.

  Callie asked, “How’s Linda?”

  “Rich as shit.”

  Callie looked out the window. Her vision blurred. She could see the gorilla turning, glaring at her. “I guess they didn’t need Buddy’s money after all.”

  “Callie.” Leigh’s tone was filled with urgency. “I’m sorry, but I need you to listen.”

  “I’m listening.”

  Leigh had good reason not to believe her, but she said, “Trevor goes by Andrew now. They changed their last name to Tenant after Buddy—after he disappeared.”

  Callie watched the gorilla start running toward her. Spit sprayed from his mouth. His nostrils flared. His thick arms rose up. He lunged at her, teeth bared. She smelled cheap cigars and whiskey and her own sex.

  “Callie.” Leigh grabbed her hand, holding so tight that the bones shifted. “Callie, you’re okay.”

  Callie closed her eyes. The gorilla stalked back to its place on the horizon. She smacked her lips. She had never wanted heroin so much as she did in this moment.

  “Hey.” Leigh squeezed her hand even tighter. “He can’t hurt you.”

  Callie nodded. Her throat felt sore, and she tried to remember how many weeks, maybe as long as a few months, it had taken before she could swallow without pain after Buddy had tried to choke the life out of her.

  You worthless piece of shit, her mother had said the day after. I didn’t raise you to let some stupid punk bitch kick your ass on the playground.

  “Here.” Leigh let go of her hand. She reached into the back seat to open the carrier. She scooped up Binx and placed him in Callie’s lap. “Do you want me to stop talking?”

  Callie held Binx close. He purred, pushing his head against the base of her chin. The weight of the animal brought her comfort. She wanted Leigh to stop, but she knew that hiding from the truth would only shift all of the burden onto her sister.

  She asked, “Does Trevor look like him?”

  “He looks like Linda.” Leigh went silent, waiting for another question. This wasn’t a legal tactic she’d learned in the courtroom. Leigh had always been a trickle-truther, slowly feeding out information so that Callie didn’t freak out and OD in a back alley.

  Callie pressed her lips to the top of Binx’s head, the same way she used to do with Trevor. “How did they find you?”

  “Remember that article in the paper?”

  “The urinator,” Callie said. She had been so proud to see her big sister profiled. “Why does he need a lawyer?”

  “Because he’s been accused of raping a woman. Several women.”

  The information was not as surprising as it should’ve been. Callie had spent so much time watching Trevor test the waters, seeing how far he could push things, exactly the way his father always had. “So, he’s like Buddy after all.”

  “I think he knows what we did, Cal.”

  The news hit her like a hammer. She felt her mouth open, but there were no words. Binx grew irritated by the sudden lack of attention. He jumped onto the dashboard and looked out the windshield.

  Leigh said it again, “Andrew knows what we did to his father.”

  Callie felt the cold air from the vents seep into her lungs. There was no hiding from this conversation. She couldn’t turn her head, so she turned her body, pressing her back against the door the same way that Leigh had. “Trevor was asleep. We both checked.”

  “I know.”

  “Huh,” Callie said, which was what she said when she didn’t know what else to say.

  “Cal, you don’t have to be here,” Leigh said. “I can take you to—”

  “No.” Callie hated being placated, though she knew that she needed it. “Please, Harleigh. Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out. I have to know.”

  Leigh was still visibly reluctant. The fact that she didn’t protest again, that she didn’t tell Callie to forget about it, that Leigh was going to handle everything like she always did, was terrifying.

  She started at the beginning, which was around this time last night. The meeting at her boss’s office. The revelation that Andrew and Linda Tenant were ghosts from her past. Leigh went into detail about Trevor’s girlfriend, Reggie Paltz the private detective who was a little too close, the lies about Callie’s life in Iowa. She explained the rape charges against Andrew, the possible other victims. When she got to the detail about the knife slicing just above the femoral artery, Callie felt her lips part.

  “Hold on,” she said. “Back up. What did Trevor say exactly?”

  “Andrew,” Leigh corrected. “He’s not Trevor anymore, Callie. And it’s not what he said, it’s how he said it. He knows that his father was murdered. He knows that we got away with it.”

  “But—” Callie tried to wrap her brain around what Leigh was saying. “Trev—Andrew is using a knife to hurt his victims the same way I killed Buddy?”

  “You didn’t kill him.”

  “Fuck, Leigh, sure.” They weren’t going to have that stupid argument again. “You killed him after I killed him. It’s not a contest. We both murdered him. We both chopped him up.”

  Leigh fell back into silence. She was giving Callie space, but Callie didn’t need space.

  “Harleigh,” she said. “If the body was found, it’s too late to know how he died. Everything would be gone by now. They’d just find bones. And not even all of them. Just scattered pieces.”

  Leigh nodded. She had already thought about this.

  Callie went through the other options. “We looked for more cameras and cassettes and—everything. We cleaned the knife and put it back in the drawer. I babysat Trevor for another whole damn month before they finally left town. I used that steak knife every time I could. There’s no way anybody could link it back to what we did.”

  “I can’t tell you how Andrew knows about the knife, or the cut to Buddy’s leg. All I can say is that he knows.”

  Callie forced her mind to go back to that night, though by necessity she had worked to forget most of it. She flipped through the events quickly, not pausing on any one page. Everybody thought that history was like a book with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s not how it worked. Real life was all middle.

  She told Leigh, “We turned that house upside down.”

  “I know.”

  “How does he …” Callie flipped back through it again, this time more slowly. “You waited six days before you left for Chicago. Did we talk about it in front of him? Did we say something?”

  Leigh shook her head. “I don’t think we did, but …”

  Callie didn’t need her to say the words. They had both been in shock. They had both been teenagers. Neither of them was a criminal genius. Their mother had figured out that something bad had happened, but all she’d told them was Don’t put me in the middle of whatever shit you’re tangled up in because I will throw both of your sorry asses under the first bus that swings by.

  Leigh said, “I don’t know what mistake we made but, obviously, we made a mistake.”

  Callie could tell by looking at her sister that whatever this mistake was, Leigh was piling it onto the other pile of guilt that already weighed her down. “What did Andrew say exactly?”

  Leigh shook her head, but her recall had always been excellent. “He asked me if I would know how to commit a crime that would destroy somebody’s life. He asked if I’d know how to get away with cold-blooded murder.”

  Callie bit her bottom lip.

  “And then he said today isn’t like when we were kids. Because of cameras.”

  “Cameras?” Callie echoed. “He said cameras specifically?”

  “He said it half a dozen times—that cameras are everywhere, on doorbells, houses, traffic cameras. You can’t go anywhere without being recorded.”

  “We didn’t search Andrew’s room,” Callie said. That was the only place they hadn’t considered. Buddy barely spoke to his son. He wanted nothing to do with h
im. “Andrew was always stealing things. Maybe there was another cassette?”

  Leigh nodded. She had already considered the possibility.

  Callie felt her cheeks burn bright red. Andrew was ten when it happened. Had he found a cassette? Had he watched his father screwing Callie every which way he could think of? Was that why he was still obsessed with her?

  Was that why he was raping women?

  “Harleigh, logic that out. If Andrew has a video, then all it shows is that his father was a pedophile. He wouldn’t want that out in the open.” Callie fought off a shudder. She didn’t want that out in the open either. “Do you think Linda knows?”

  “No.” Leigh shook her head, but there was no way she could be sure.

  Callie put her hands to her burning cheeks. If Linda knew, then that would be the end of her. She had always loved the woman, almost worshipped her for her steadiness and honesty. As a kid, it had never occurred to Callie that she was cheating with Linda’s husband. In her screwed-up head, she had seen them both as surrogate parents.

  She asked her sister, “Before he started talking about cameras, did Andrew ask you about anything from that night, or around Buddy’s disappearance?”

  “No,” Leigh answered. “And like you said, even if Andrew had a cassette, it wouldn’t show how Buddy died. How does he know about the knife? The leg wound?”

  Callie watched Binx grooming his paw. She was absolutely clueless.

  Until she wasn’t.

  She told Leigh, “I looked into—I looked up stuff in one of Linda’s anatomy textbooks after it happened. I wanted to know how it worked. Andrew could’ve seen that.”

  Leigh seemed skeptical, but she said, “It’s possible.”

  Callie pressed her fingers to her eyes. Her neck pulsed with pain. Her hand was still tingling. The gorilla was restless in the distance.

  Leigh asked, “How often did you look it up?”

  Callie saw a projection on the back of her eyelids: the textbook open on the Waleskis’ kitchen table. The diagram of a human body. Callie had traced her finger along the femoral artery so many times that the red line had faded into pink. Had Andrew noticed? Had he seen Callie’s obsessive behavior and put it all together?

  Or was there a heated conversation between Callie and Leigh that he’d overheard? They had argued constantly about what to do after Buddy—whether their plan was working, what stories they had told to cops and social workers, what to do with the money. Andrew could’ve been hiding, listening, taking notes. He had always been a sneaky little shit, jumping out from behind things to scare Callie, stealing her pens and books, terrorizing the fish in the aquarium.

  Any of these scenarios was possible. Any one would elicit the same response from Leigh: It’s my fault. It’s all my fault.

  “Cal?”

  She opened her eyes. She only had one question. “Why is this getting to you, Leigh? Andrew doesn’t have any proof or he’d be at a police station.”

  “He’s a sadistic rapist. He’s playing a game.”

  “So fucking what? Jesus, Leigh. Sac up.” Callie opened her arms in a shrug. This was how it worked. Only one of them could fall apart at a time. “You can’t play a game with somebody if they’re not willing to suit up. Why are you letting that little freak get into your head? He doesn’t have jack shit.”

  Leigh didn’t answer, but she was obviously still rattled. Tears had filled her eyes. Her color was off. Callie noticed a speck of dried vomit on the neck of her shirt. Leigh had never had a strong stomach. That was the problem with having a good life. You didn’t want to lose it.

  Callie said, “Lookit, what do you always tell me? Stick to the damn story. Buddy came home. He was freaked out about a death threat. He didn’t say who had made it. I called you. You picked me up. He was alive when we left. Mom pounded the hell out of me. That’s it.”

  “D-FaCS,” Leigh said, using the abbreviation for the Department of Family and Children’s Services. “When the social worker came to the house, did she take any photos?”

  “She barely took a report.” Callie honestly couldn’t remember, but she knew how the system worked and so did her sister. “Harleigh, use your brain. We weren’t living in Beverly Hills, 90210. I was just another kid whose drunk mother kicked the shit out of her.”

  “The social worker’s report could be somewhere, though. The government never throws anything away.”

  “I doubt the bitch even filed it,” Callie said. “All of the social workers were terrified of Mom. When the cops questioned me about Buddy disappearing, they didn’t say a damn thing about how I looked. They didn’t ask you about it, either. Linda gave me antibiotics and set my nose, but she never asked one single question. Nobody pushed it with social services. Nobody at school said a damn thing.”

  “Yeah, well, that asshole Dr. Patterson wasn’t exactly a child advocate.”

  The humiliation flooded back like a tidal wave pounding Callie down onto the shore. No matter how much time had passed, she could not move past not knowing how many men had seen the things she’d done with Buddy.

  Leigh said, “I’m sorry, Cal. I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Callie watched Leigh search for a tissue in her purse. She could remember a time when her big sister had concocted murderous plots and grand conspiracies against the men who had watched Callie being defiled. Leigh had been willing to throw her life away in order to get revenge. The only thing that had pulled her back from the brink was the fear of losing Maddy.

  Callie told Leigh what she always told Leigh, “It’s not your fault.”

  “I should’ve never left for Chicago. I could’ve—”

  “Gotten trapped in Lake Point and drop-kicked into the gutter with the rest of us?” Callie didn’t let her respond, because they both knew Leigh would’ve ended up managing a Taco Bell, selling Tupperware, and running a bookkeeping business on the side. “If you’d stayed here, you wouldn’t’ve gone to college. You wouldn’t have a law degree. You wouldn’t have Walter. And you sure as hell wouldn’t have—”

  “Maddy.” Leigh’s tears started to fall. She had always been an easy crier. “Callie, I’m so—”

  Callie waved her away. They couldn’t get entangled in another it’s all my fault/no it’s not your fault. “Let’s say social services has a report, or the cops put it in their notes that I was in bad shape. Then what? Where’s the paperwork now?”

  Leigh pressed together her lips. She was clearly still struggling, but said, “The cops are probably retired or up the ranks by now. If they didn’t document abuse in their incident reports, then it would be in their personal notes, and their personal notes would be in a box somewhere, probably in an attic.”

  “Okay, so I’m Reggie, the private detective that Andrew hired, and I’m looking into a possible murder that happened twenty-three years ago, and I want to see the police reports and anything the social workers have on the kids who were in the house,” Callie said. “What happens next?”

  Leigh sighed. She was still not focused. “For D-FaCS, you’d file a FOIA request.”

  The Freedom of Information Act made all government records publicly available. “And then?”

  “The Kenny A. v. Sonny Perdue Consent Decree was settled in 2005.” Leigh’s legal brain started to take over. “It’s complicated but, basically, Fulton and DeKalb County were forced to stop screwing over children in the system. It took three years to hash out an agreement. A lot of incriminating paperwork and files conveniently went missing before the settlement.”

  Callie had to assume any reports on her beat-down were part of the cover-up. “What about the cops?”

  “You’d file a FOIA for their official documents and a subpoena for their notebooks,” Leigh said. “Even if Reggie tried to go the other way and knocked on their door, they’d be worried about being sued if they documented abuse but never followed up on it. Especially if it’s tied into a murder case.”

  “So, the cops would conveniently be unable to lo
cate anything, too.” Callie thought about the two officers who had interviewed her. Another case where men would keep their mouths shut to cover for other men. “But what you’re saying is, neither of those are a problem we need to worry about, right?”

  Leigh hedged. “Maybe.”

  “Tell me what you need me to do.”

  “Nothing,” Leigh said, but she always had a plan. “I’ll take you out of state. You can stay in—I don’t know. Tennessee. Iowa. I don’t care. Wherever you want to go.”

  “Fucking Iowa?” Callie tried to lighten her up. “You couldn’t think of a better job for me than milking cows?”

  “You love cows.”

  She wasn’t wrong. Cows were adorable. There was an alternate Callie who would’ve loved being a farmer. A veterinarian. A trash collector. Anything but a stupid, thieving junkie.

  Leigh took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I’m so shaky. This really isn’t your problem.”

  “Fuck you,” Callie said. “Come on, Leigh. We’re both ride or die. You got us out of this before. Get us out of it again.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Andrew’s not a kid anymore. He’s a psychopath. And he does this thing where one minute he looks normal, and the next minute you feel your body going into this primal fight-or-flight mode. It freaked me the fuck out. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I knew something was wrong the second I saw him, but I couldn’t figure it out until he showed me.”

  Callie took one of Leigh’s tissues. She blew her nose. For all of her sister’s intelligence, she had been in too many soft places for far too long. She was thinking of the legal ramifications of Andrew trying to open up an investigation. A possible trial, evidence presented, witnesses cross-examined, a judge’s verdict, prison.

  Leigh had lost her ability to think like a criminal, but Callie could do it for both of them. Andrew was a violent rapist. He wasn’t not going to the police for lack of a smoking gun. He was torturing Leigh because he wanted to take care of this problem with his own hands.

  She told her sister, “I know you’ve got a worst-case scenario.”