False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  At the very least, Leigh should thank Callie for making her job easier.

  And then Leigh should go fuck herself for making Callie climb into Buddy’s attic.

  Business Suit had finally reached the coffee urn. Callie waited for him to finish, then poured herself two cups because she knew the meeting would run long. There were no cookies. She guessed that was the pandemic at work, but considering what most of these people were willing to do for booze, there was a low risk that a cookie would be the thing that killed them.

  Or maybe not. Statistically, ninety-five percent of them would quit the program within a year.

  Callie noticed that Sidney had left her purse under her chair. She found a seat opposite, then one back, which would make it easier for her to keep an eye on her prey. Callie put her purse on the floor beside her extra cup of coffee. She crossed her legs. She looked down at her calf, which still had a nice shape to it under the tight jeans. She let her eyes travel up. The fingernail on her right index finger was ripped down to the nailbed from trying to claw Andrew’s face off. She had thought about covering it with a Band-Aid, but Callie wanted a visual reminder of how much she despised Andrew Tenant. All she had to do was think about Maddy’s name coming out of the twisted fucker’s mouth and the rage threatened to explode again like lava spewing from a volcano.

  Seventeen years ago, when Callie had first realized she was pregnant, she had known that she had choices, just like she had known that heroin was always going to win. The appointment with the clinic had already been booked. She had mapped out the bus route, planned her convalescence at one of the southside’s finer motels.

  Then a Christmas card had arrived from Chicago.

  Walter had clearly forged Leigh’s signature, but what Callie had found remarkable was that he cared enough about his girlfriend to try to keep her from completely breaking away from her baby sister.

  And by that time, Walter was more than familiar with Leigh’s junkie pain-in-the-ass baby sister. Callie had gone through detoxes where Walter had forced her to drink Gatorade and she had thrown up on his lap and then down his back and Callie was pretty sure at one point she had punched him in the face.

  The one consistent fact that had penetrated her misery was the knowledge that her sister deserved this good, kind man, and that eventually this good, kind man was going to ask Leigh to marry him.

  There was no question in Callie’s mind that Leigh would say yes. She was profoundly, stupidly in love with Walter, her hands flitting around him like a butterfly because she always wanted to touch him, her head going back as she laughed too hard at his jokes, her voice nearly breaking into song when she said his name. Callie had never seen her sister like that before, but she could predict based on past behavior exactly where it would end. Walter would want a family. And he should, because even then Callie had known he’d be a fantastic father. And she had known that Leigh would be an equally fantastic mother because it wasn’t Phil who had raised them.

  But Callie also knew that Leigh was never going to let herself be that happy. Even without the well-documented history of self-sabotage, her sister would not trust herself enough to have a child. Either getting pregnant or staying pregnant would’ve been rife with fear and trepidation. Leigh would’ve fretted about Phil’s mental illness. She would’ve grown too anxious about Callie’s addictions tainting her DNA. She would not have trusted herself to do all of the things for a baby that had never been done for her. She would’ve talked about the what ifs for so long that Walter would’ve either grown deaf or found someone else who would give him the family that he deserved.

  That was why Callie had white-knuckled through sobriety for eight excruciating months. It was why she had moved to a god-awful city that was either too cold or too hot and too noisy and too dirty. It was why she had lived in a shelter and let herself get poked and prodded by doctors.

  Callie had fucked up so many things in Leigh’s life, including bringing her sister to murder. The least—the very least—Callie could do was move to Chicago and grow her sister a baby.

  “One minute.” An older woman in a pink tracksuit clapped her hands for attention. She had the demeanor of a drill sergeant, though no one at AA was really supposed to be drill-sergeanty. Tracksuit glanced out the door. She repeated the countdown in a lower voice to Sidney. “One minute.”

  Callie pressed her thumb into her ripped fingernail. The pain reminded her why she was here. She looked at the masked strangers in the circle around her. Someone coughed. Someone else cleared their throat. Tracksuit started to close the door. In the hall, Sidney’s eyes went wide. She whispered something into the phone, then darted inside before the door shut.

  “Good morning.” Tracksuit trotted through the preamble, then said, “For those of you who wish, let’s start with the serenity prayer.”

  Callie kept her body turned toward Tracksuit, but she watched Sidney getting settled. The young woman was clearly still flustered from the call. She checked her phone before shoving it into her purse. She crossed her legs. She pushed back her hair. She crossed her arms. She pushed back her hair again. Every quick movement said she was pissed off and would’ve loved nothing more than to run out into the hall and finish her conversation, but when a judge told you thirty meetings in thirty days, and the tracksuited fascist who signed off on your court-ordered log wasn’t prone to forgiveness, you stayed for the whole hour.

  Tracksuit opened up the room to discussion. The men kicked it off, because men always assumed people were interested in what they had to say. Callie listened with half an ear to business dinners gone wrong, embarrassing DUIs, confrontations with angry bosses. The Westside AA meeting was a lot more fun. Bartenders and strippers were not worried about their bosses. Callie had never heard anyone top the story of a twink who’d woken up in his own vomit, then eaten it for the alcohol content.

  She raised her hand during a lull. “I’m Maxine, and I’m an alcoholic.”

  The group returned, “Hi, Maxine.”

  She said, “Actually, I’m called Max.”

  There were some chuckles, then, “Hi, Max.”

  Callie took a breath before launching in. “I was sober for eleven years. And then I turned twelve.”

  More chuckles, but the only one that counted was the husky, low laugh of Sidney Winslow.

  “I was a professional dancer for eight years,” Callie began. She had spent hours prepping the story she would tell at the meeting. She hadn’t worried about leaving a digital trail. She had used her phone to dig deeper into Sidney’s social media so she would know which points to hit the hardest. Started taking ballet in middle school. Raised in a very religious family. Rebelled after high school. Estranged from her family. Lost all of her friends. Made new ones in college. Track team. Yoga. Pinkberry. Beyhive.

  “There’s a clock on dancing professionally and, once my time ran out, I fell into despair. No one understood my loss. I stopped going to church. Lost touch with my friends and family. Found solace at the bottom of a bottle.” Callie shook her head at the tragedy. “And then I met Phillip. He was rich and handsome and he wanted to take care of me. And in all honesty, I was tired of being on my own. I needed someone else to be the strong one for a change.”

  If Sidney had been a beagle, her floppy ears would’ve perked up as she wondered at the parallels between Max’s life and her own.

  “We had three wonderful years together—traveling, seeing the world, going to great restaurants, talking about art and politics and the world.” Callie went in for the kill. “And then one day, I pulled into the garage and Phillip was lying face down on the floor.”

  Sidney’s hand went to her heart.

  “I rushed over to him, but his body was cold. He’d been dead for hours.”

  Sidney’s head started to shake.

  “The police said he’d overdosed. I knew he’d started taking muscle relaxers to help with his back, but I never …” Callie carefully looked around the room, ratcheting up the suspense. �
��Oxycontin.”

  There were plenty of nods. Everyone knew the stories.

  Sidney murmured, “Fucking Oxy.”

  “The loss was a desecration to the love we had together.” Callie let her shoulders slump from the weight of her imaginary grief. “I remember sitting in the lawyer’s office, and he was telling me about all the money and properties, and it meant nothing. You know, I read a story last year about Purdue Pharmaceuticals coming up with a formula. They were going to pay out $14,810 for every overdose that was attributable to Oxycontin.”

  She heard the expected quacks of outrage.

  “That’s what Phillip’s life was worth.” Callie wiped away a tear. “$14,810.”

  The room went silent, waiting for the rest. Callie was content to let them extrapolate. They were alcoholics. They knew how it ended.

  Callie didn’t have to look at Sidney to know that the young woman had been sucked in. Sidney’s eyes had not left Callie the entire time. It wasn’t until Tracksuit led them in a keep coming back it works if you work it chant that Sidney managed to pull her attention away. She had her phone in her hand and a scowl on her face as she walked toward the door.

  Callie’s heart tripped because she had stupidly assumed Sidney would stay for the afterparty. She scooped up her purse and trailed her out the door. Fortunately, Sidney went left instead of right toward the exit. Then she took another right toward the ladies’ room. The phone was to her ear. Her voice was a growly mumble. The romantic drama continued.

  Old-lady perfume wafted out of the Sunday school rooms as Callie trailed behind Sidney. The odor made Callie long for her early Covid days when she couldn’t smell or taste anything. She turned, checking behind her. Everyone else was streaming toward the parking lot, probably on their way to work. Callie took a right then pushed open the door.

  Three sinks on a long counter. One giant mirror. Three stalls, only one of them occupied.

  “Because I said so, you dumbass,” Sidney hissed from the last stall. “Do you think I care about your fucking mother?”

  Callie gently closed the door.

  “Fine. Whatever you say.” Sidney let out a frustrated groan. There were a couple more fucks, then she seemed to decide that since she was sitting on a toilet, she might as well pee.

  Callie turned on the faucet to make her presence known. She stuck her hands under the cold water. The bare flesh under her torn fingernail started to sting. Callie pressed into the side, bringing out a thin line of blood. Her mouth filled with saliva again. She heard Andrew’s voice, so much like Buddy’s voice, echoing through the dark stadium tunnel.

  Madeline Félicette Collier, aged sixteen.

  The toilet flushed. Sidney came out of the stall. Her face was absent a mask. She was even more attractive in person than on her social. She told Callie, “Sorry, fucking boyfriend. Husband. Whatever. He got mugged yesterday afternoon. We’re talking just hours before our wedding. But he won’t call the cops or tell me what happened.”

  Callie nodded, pleased that Andrew had come up with a good lie.

  “I don’t know what his problem is.” Sidney twisted on the faucet. “He’s being a total dickwad.”

  “Love is brutal,” Callie said. “At least that’s what I carved onto my last girlfriend’s face.”

  Sydney’s hand went to her mouth as she guffawed. She seemed to realize her face was uncovered. “Fuck, sorry, I’ll put on my mask.”

  “It’s cool,” Callie said, peeling off her own mask. “I hate these fucking things anyway.”

  “Preach.” Sidney punched the lever on the soap dispenser. “I’m, like, so ready to be over these meetings. What’s the point?”

  “I always feel better hearing people are worse off than I am.” Callie took some soap for herself. She adjusted the water to make it warmer. “Do you know any good places to get breakfast around here? I’m staying at the St. Regis and I can’t take another room service meal.”

  “Oh, right, you’re from Chicago.” Sidney turned off the faucet, shook out her hands. “So you used to be a dancer?”

  “Long time ago.” Callie pulled out a paper towel from the dispenser. “I still do my routines, but I miss performing.”

  “I bet,” Sidney said. “I took dance all the way through high school. I loved it, like, crazy I-wanna-do-this-for-the-rest-of-my-life loved it.”

  “You’ve still got it,” Callie said. “I noticed it when you walked across the room. You don’t ever lose that poise.”

  Sidney preened.

  Callie pretended to look for something in her purse. “Why’d you stop?”

  “Not good enough.”

  Callie looked up, skeptical eyebrow raised. “Trust me, there were a lot of girls who weren’t good enough who still made it onto stage.”

  Sidney shrugged, but she looked enormously pleased. “I’m too old now.”

  “I would say you’re never too old, but we both know that’s bullshit.” Callie kept her hand in her purse, like she was waiting for Sidney to leave. “Hey, it was nice meeting you. I hope things work out with your husband.”

  Sidney’s disappointment was writ large on her face. And then her eyes did exactly what Callie wanted them to do. They traveled down to the purse. “You holding?”

  Bingo.

  Callie winced with faked regret as she pulled out one of the prescription bottles. Stimulants were generally the last thing that Callie wanted, but she had assumed a woman of Sidney’s generation would be all about the Adderall.

  “Study Buddies.” Sidney smiled at the label. “Mind sharing? I am so fucking hungover.”

  “My pleasure.” Callie shook out four peach-colored tablets onto the sink counter. Then she used the edge of the bottle to start crushing them.

  “Shit,” Sidney said. “I haven’t snorted since high school.”

  Callie made a face. “Oh, honey, if it’s too much—”

  “Fuck, why not?” Sidney whipped out a twenty-dollar bill and straightened it back and forth over the edge of the counter. She grinned at Callie. “Still got it.”

  Callie walked over to the bathroom door. She reached up to turn the lock. Blood was rolling down from her torn fingernail. She clicked the lock, leaving her own bloody print on the metal. Then she returned to the counter and continued crushing the tablets into a fine, peach-colored powder.

  Adderall came in two versions, IR for immediate release and XR for extended release. The XR came in capsules with tiny microbeads that were coated in a time-release film. As with Oxy, the film could be crushed off but that was hard to do and the XR burned the shit out of your nose and basically gave you the same rush as the IR, which was incidentally cheaper, and Callie was not one to pass up a bargain.

  The important part was that snorting the powder jacked the entire dose immediately and directly into your system. The amphetamine/dextroamphetamine cocktail entered through the blood vessels in the nose, then carried on the party up to the brain. No time for the stomach or liver to filter down the euphoria. The rush could be intense, but it could also be overwhelming. The brain could freak out, causing your blood pressure to skyrocket and, in some cases, could bring on anything from seizures to psychosis.

  It would be terribly hard for Andrew to stalk a sixteen-year-old girl while his beautiful young wife was strapped down to a hospital gurney.

  Callie expertly wielded the edge of the bottle cap, chopping out four thick lines. She watched Sidney lean down. The woman might not have snorted since high school, but she certainly knew how to put on a show while she did it. Her legs crossed at the ankles. She pushed out what was a very well-defined ass. The tip of the rolled-up twenty went into her nose. She waited for Callie to look at her in the mirror, and then she winked before hoovering up a line.

  “F-f-fuck!” Sidney stuttered, which was a bit much. It took about ten minutes to really hit you. “Praise, Jesus!”

  Callie supposed the religious fervor was a holdover from her bible school days.

  She asked Sidney,
“Good?”

  “Fuck yes. Go. Your turn.” Sidney offered the twenty. Callie didn’t take it. She reached up to Sidney’s face and used her thumb to wipe away a fine dusting around the woman’s nostril. And then she let her thumb travel down to her perfect rosebud mouth. Sidney didn’t need encouragement. Her lips parted. Her tongue darted out. She slowly licked the side of Callie’s thumb.

  Callie smiled as her hand dropped away. She slid the rolled-up twenty from between Sidney’s fingers. She leaned down. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Sidney bouncing on her toes, shaking out her hands like a boxer. Callie cupped her left hand to her face, pretending to press her nostril closed. She switched the twenty to her mouth, blocked the back of her throat with her tongue, and sucked up a line.

  Callie coughed. Some of the powder had tickled into her throat, but most of it had plastered to the bottom of her tongue. She coughed again, and spit the wad of paste into her fist.

  “Yes!” Sidney grabbed the twenty and swooped down for more.

  Then it was Callie’s turn again. She performed the same pantomime—the cupping, the sucking, the horking. More powder slipped past her tongue this time, but that was the cost of doing business.

  “Sushi!” Sidney was blinking her eyes entirely too fast. “Sushi-sushi-sushi. We should go to lunch together, okay? Is it too early for lunch?”

  Callie made a show of looking at her watch. She’d found it in the back of one of Phil’s drawers. The battery was dead, but it had to be around ten. “We could do brunch?”

  “Mimosas!” Sidney shouted. “I know a place. My treat. I’ll drive. Is that good? I need a fucking drink, okay?”

  “Sounds like fun,” Callie told her. “Let me use the toilet, then I’ll meet you outside.”

  “Yes! Okay. I’ll be outside. In my car. Okay? Right.” Sidney’s hands slipped around the lock until she finally managed to get it open. Her low, husky laughter drained off as the door closed behind her.