False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  “How did it feel when you chopped him up?” Andrew asked. “I couldn’t see your face in the video. You never looked up. You just did what Harleigh told you to do.”

  It was almost a relief to feel the gorilla’s hand wrap around her neck, his arm loop around her waist. She was locked in place, trapped, the way that he always wanted her.

  “You don’t have to let her keep bossing you around,” Andrew said. “I can help you get away from her.”

  The gorilla pressed into her back, fingering up her spine. She heard his grunts. Felt his excitement. He was so big. So overpowering.

  “Just tell me you want to get away.” Andrew took another step. “Say the word and I can take you somewhere. Anywhere you want to go.”

  The scent of Andrew’s breath mints swirled into Buddy’s cheap whiskey and cigars and sweat and cum and blood—so much blood.

  Andrew said, “Walter David Collier, aged forty-one, legal counsel for the Atlanta Fire Fighters’ Union.”

  Callie’s heart shook inside of her chest. He was threatening Walter. She had to warn him. She clawed at the gorilla’s arm, trying to loosen his hold.

  Andrew said, “Madeline Félicette Collier, aged sixteen.”

  Pain dug into her arm. Not the tingling numbness or the misfiring nerves but the agony of her skin being ripped open.

  “Maddy’s a gorgeous little girl, Callie.” Andrew’s smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “Such a tiny little thing.”

  Callie looked at her arm. She was shocked by the sight of blood dripping from four deep gashes. She looked at her other hand. Her own blood and skin were furled underneath the fingernails.

  “It’s funny, Callie, how Harleigh’s daughter looks so much like you.” Andrew winked at her. “Like a little dolly.”

  Callie shuddered, but not because Andrew sounded like his father. The gorilla had stepped into her body, melted into her bones. His strong legs were her strong legs. His fists were her fists. His mouth was her mouth.

  She lunged at Andrew, fists flying, teeth bared.

  “Jesus!” Andrew yelled, holding up his arms, trying to fend her off. “Crazy fucking—”

  Callie went into a blind frenzy. No sound came from her mouth, no breath from her lungs, because all of her energy was directed toward killing him. She pounded him with her fists, scratched with her fingernails, tried to rip off his ears, gouge out his eyes. Her teeth bit deep into the flesh of his neck. She wrenched back her head, trying to rip out his jugular, but her neck stiffly caught on the frozen pivot at the top of her spine.

  And then she was lifted into the air.

  “Stop!” the security guard ordered, his arms bear-hugging her waist. “Hold the fuck still.”

  Callie kicked out, trying to break the bonds. Andrew was on the ground. His ear was bleeding. Skin hung from his jaw. Red welts surrounding the bite in his neck. She was going to kill him. She had to kill him.

  “I said stop!” The security guard slammed Callie face down onto the ground. His knee jammed into her back. Her nose banged into the cold concrete. She was breathless but still tensed, ready to strike again even as she heard the click of handcuffs.

  “No, officer. It’s okay.” Andrew’s voice sounded raspy as he tried to catch his breath. “Please, just escort her away from the school.”

  “You cocksucker,” Callie hissed. “You fucking rapist.”

  “Are you serious, man?” The guard kept his knee pressed to her back. “Look at her arms. Bitch is a needle junkie. You need to call the cops, get her tested.”

  “No.” Andrew was standing up. Out of the corner of her eye, Callie could see the flashing red light on his ankle monitor. He told the guard, “None of this will look good for the school, will it? And it won’t look good for you because you’re the one who let her get past the gate.”

  This seemed to sway the guard, but he still asked, “Are you sure, man?”

  “Yes.” Andrew knelt down so he could look at Callie’s face. “She doesn’t want you calling the police, either. Do you, miss?”

  Callie was still tensed, but her reason was starting to return. She was inside the stadium where Maddy went to school. Walter was in the bleachers. Maddy was on the field. Neither Callie nor Andrew could afford for the police to come.

  “Help her stand.” Andrew stood. “She’s not going to cause any more trouble.”

  “You’re crazy, man.” Still, the guard tested Callie, releasing some of the pressure on her back. She felt the fight leave her body and agony flood back in. Her legs wouldn’t work. The guard had to lift her up and physically put her back on her feet.

  Andrew stood close, daring her to come at him again.

  Callie wiped the blood from her nose. She could taste blood in her mouth. Andrew’s blood. She didn’t just want more of it. She wanted all of it. “This isn’t over.”

  “Officer, make sure she gets on the bus.” Andrew held out his hand to the guard, passing some folded twenties. “A woman like her can’t be trusted around children.”

  SUMMER 2005

  Chicago

  Leigh scrubbed at the lasagna pan even as her own sweat dropped into the water. Fucking northerners. They had no idea how to use air conditioning.

  Walter said, “I can do that.”

  “I’ve got it.” Leigh tried not to sound like she wanted to beat his brains out with the pan. He had been trying to do something sweet for her. He’d even called his mother to get her lasagna recipe. And then he had baked it so long in the oven that Leigh’s skin was going to rub off her fingers before the burned sauce came out of the non-stick bottom.

  Walter said, “You know that pan only cost five bucks.”

  She shook her head. “If you saw five bucks on the ground, would you leave it?”

  “How dirty is the five bucks?” He was behind her, arms wrapped around her waist.

  Leigh leaned back into him. He kissed her neck, and she wondered how in the hell she had turned into the stupid kind of woman who felt her stomach flip when a man touched her.

  “Here.” Walter reached under her arms, grabbing the sponge and pan. She watched him awkwardly scrub for almost a full minute before realizing the futility of the task.

  Still, Leigh couldn’t give up entirely. “I’ll let it soak a little longer.”

  “What’ll we do to pass the time?” Walter’s teeth nipped at her ear.

  Leigh shuddered, holding on to him tightly. Then she let go, because she couldn’t show him how desperate she was to be near him. “Don’t you have a paper to write on organizational behaviors?”

  Walter groaned. His arms dropped away as he walked to the fridge and took out a can of ginger ale. “What point is an MBA? The unions up here, their succession plan is ten-deep. My name won’t come up until I’m drawing social security.”

  Leigh knew where this was going, but she tried to steer him in a different direction. “You like Legal Aid.”

  “I like being able to pay my share of the rent.” He drank from the can as he walked back into the living room. He flopped down onto the couch. He stared at his laptop. “I’ve written twenty-six pages of jargon that even I can’t understand. There is no practical, real-world application for any of this.”

  “All that matters is the degree on your resumé.”

  “That can’t be all that matters.” He leaned his head back, watched her wipe her hands on a kitchen towel. “I need to feel useful.”

  “You’re useful to me.” Leigh shrugged, because there was no use talking around the obvious. “We can move, Walter. Just not to Atlanta.”

  “That job with the fire department is—”

  “In Atlanta,” she said, the one place she had told him she would never go back to.

  “Perfect,” he said. “That’s the word I was going to use—perfect. Georgia is a right-to-work state. No one is going to let their cousin’s uncle’s grandkid skip the line. The job in Atlanta is perfect.”

  Leigh sat beside him on the couch. She clasped together
her hands so that she didn’t start wringing them together. “I told you that I will follow you anywhere.”

  “Except there.” Walter gulped down the rest of the ginger ale. The can went to the coffee table, where it would leave a ring. He tugged at her arm. “Are you crying?”

  “No,” she said, though tears had welled into her eyes. “I’m thinking about the lasagna pan.”

  “Come here.” He tugged at her arm again. “Sit in my lap.”

  “Sweetheart,” she said. “Do I look like the kind of woman who would sit in a man’s lap?”

  He laughed. “I love how you southern women say sweetheart like a Yankee woman would say dumbass.”

  Leigh rolled her eyes.

  “Sweetheart.” He held her hand. “You can’t annex an entire city from your life just because you’re afraid you’ll run into your sister.”

  Leigh looked down at their hands. She had never in her life wanted to hold on to someone else so tightly. She trusted him. No one had ever made her feel safe.

  She said, “We wasted fifteen grand on her, Walter. Fifteen thousand dollars in cash and credit card debt, and she lasted one day.”

  “It wasn’t a waste,” he said, which was generous considering five grand of the money had been his. “Rehab usually doesn’t work the first time. Or the second or third time.”

  “I don’t—” she struggled to articulate how she felt. “I don’t understand why she can’t quit. What is it about that life that she enjoys?”

  “She doesn’t enjoy it,” Walter said. “Nobody enjoys that.”

  “Well she’s getting something out of it.”

  “She’s an addict,” Walter said. “She wakes up, she needs a fix. The fix wears off and she has to hustle to get the next one, the next one, the next one, to stop from getting dope sick. All of her friends, her community, that’s the world they’re trapped in, constantly hustling so they don’t get sick. Her addiction isn’t just mental. It’s physical. Why would somebody do that to themselves if they didn’t have to?”

  Leigh would never be able to answer that question. “I liked coke in college, but I wasn’t going to throw my life away for it.”

  “You’re really lucky you were able to make that choice,” Walter said. “With some people, their demons are too big. They can’t overcome them.”

  Leigh pressed together her lips. She had told Walter that her sister had been molested, but that was where the story had ended.

  He said, “You can’t control what Callie does. All you can control is how you respond to her. I just want you to make peace with it.”

  She knew that he was thinking of his father. “It’s easier to make peace with the dead.”

  He gave a rueful smile. “Trust me, baby, it’s much easier to make peace with the living.”

  “I’m sorry.” Leigh stroked the side of his face. The sight of the thin gold ring on her finger momentarily threw her. They had been engaged for less than a month and she still could not get used to seeing the ring.

  He kissed her hand. “I should finish this worthless paper.”

  “I need to review some case law.”

  They kissed before retreating to opposite sides of the couch. This was what she loved most of all about their lives, the way they silently worked together, separated by one couch cushion between them. Walter leaned over his laptop on the coffee table. Leigh surrounded herself with pillows, but she extended her leg across the cushion, pressing her foot against his thigh. Walter absently rubbed her calf as he read his pointless paper.

  Her fiancé.

  Her future husband.

  They hadn’t talked about children yet. She assumed that Walter hadn’t brought it up because children were a foregone conclusion. He probably had no qualms about possibly passing on the addictions that had nearly destroyed his side of the family. It was easier for men. No one blamed a father when a child ended up on the streets.

  Leigh instantly chastised herself for being so cold. Walter would be a magnificent father. He didn’t need a role model. He had his own goodness to guide him. Leigh should be more concerned about her mother’s mental illness. They had called it manic depression when Leigh was a child. Now they called it bipolar disorder, and the change had made not one bit of difference because Phil was never going to get any kind of help that didn’t come out of a pitcher of micheladas.

  “Fuh-fuh-fuh …” Walter mumbled, searching for a word as his fingers rested on the keyboard. He nodded to himself, and the typing resumed.

  She asked, “Are you backing that up?”

  “Of course I am. And all my supporting data.” He stuck in the USB drive. The light flashed as the files backed up. “I’m a man, baby. I know all about computering.”

  “So impressive.” She pushed him with her foot. He leaned over and kissed her knee before returning to his paper.

  Leigh knew she should get back to work, but she took a moment to look at his handsome face. Rugged, but not hardened. He knew how to work with his hands, but he knew how to use his brain so he could pay someone else to do the job.

  Walter was by no means soft, but he had grown up with a mother who adored him. Even when she was deep in the bottle, Celia Collier had been a pleasant kind of drunk, given to spontaneous hugs and kisses. Dinner was always on the table at six o’clock. There were snacks in his backpack to take to school. He’d never been forced to wear dirty underwear or beg strangers for money to buy food. He’d never hidden under his bed at night because he was afraid his mother would get drunk and knock the shit out of him.

  Leigh loved countless things about Walter Collier. He was kind. He was brilliant. He was deeply caring. But most of all, she adored him for his relentless normalcy.

  “Sweetheart,” he said. “I thought we were working.”

  Leigh smiled. “That’s not how you say it, sweetheart.”

  Walter chuckled as he typed.

  Leigh opened her book. She had told Walter she needed to familiarize herself with the updated guidelines to the Americans with Disabilities Act in regards to disabled tenants but, secretly, Leigh was looking into the limits of spousal privilege. As soon as she and Walter returned from their honeymoon, she was going to sit him down and tell him everything about Buddy Waleski.

  Maybe.

  She leaned her head back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. There was not much about Leigh’s life that Walter did not know. She had told him about her two stints in juvenile detention and exactly why she’d landed there. She’d described her terrifying night in county lock-up for slashing her sleazy boss’s tires. She had even told him about the first time she had realized she could fight back when her mother attacked her.

  Each time she unburdened herself, each time Walter absorbed the details without flinching, Leigh had to fight the urge not to tell him the rest.

  But the rest was too much. The rest was such a burden that her sister would rather shoot herself up with poison than live with the memories. Walter had never touched a drop of alcohol, but what would happen if he learned exactly what his wife was capable of? It was one thing to hear about Leigh’s distant, violent past, but Buddy Waleski had been chopped up in his own kitchen less than seven years ago.

  She tried to walk herself through that conversation. If she told Walter one thing, she would have to tell him everything, which would start back at the beginning when Buddy had rested his fat fingers on her knee. How could someone even as understanding as Walter believe that Leigh had let herself forget about that night? And how could he forgive her if she could never, ever forgive herself?

  Leigh wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. Even with spousal privilege, was it fair to make the only man she would ever love a conspirator to her crimes? Would Walter look at her differently? Would he stop loving her? Would he decide that Leigh could never be the mother of his child?

  The last thought opened the floodgates. She had to stand up to find a tissue so that he didn’t see her fall apart.

  “Baby?” Walter asked
.

  She shook her head, letting him think she was upset about Callie. She wasn’t afraid of Walter turning her in to the police. She knew that he would never do that. She was afraid that his legal mind would understand the difference between self-defense and cold-blooded murder.

  Leigh herself had known the weight of her sins when she had put Atlanta in her rearview mirror. The law twisted itself into knots over the question of intent. What a defendant was thinking when they committed a criminal act could be the deciding factor behind anything from fraud to manslaughter.

  She knew exactly what she had been thinking when she had wrapped the cling film around Buddy Waleski’s head six times: you are going to die by my hand and I am going to enjoy watching it happen.

  “Sweetheart?” Walter asked.

  She smiled. “That’s going to get old pretty fast.”

  “Is it?”

  Leigh walked back to the couch. Against her better judgment, she sat in his lap. Walter wrapped his arms around her. She pressed her head to his chest and tried to tell herself that she didn’t cherish every second of being held by him.

  He asked, “Do you know how much I love you?”

  “No.”

  “I love you so much that I’ll stop talking about my dream job in Atlanta.”

  She should’ve felt relieved, but she felt guilty. Walter’s life had turned upside down when his father had died. The union had saved his mother, and he wanted to pay back that kindness by fighting for other workers who found their lives thrown into chaos.

  Leigh had been drawn in by Walter’s need to help other people. She had admired it so much that, against her better judgment, she had gone out on a date with him. In a week, she had gone from sleeping on his couch to curling alongside him in bed. Then they had graduated and gotten jobs and gotten engaged and both of them were ready to start their lives—except for Leigh holding Walter back.

  “Hey,” he said. “That was meant to be sexy, that sacrifice I made for you there.”

  She brushed back his curly hair. “Do you know—”

  Walter kissed away her tears.