False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  Sidney kissed her on the mouth. Callie had pulled away the first two times their lips had touched, but now, she let herself give in. Sidney’s mouth was perfect. Her tongue was velvet. Tingles ran up Callie’s spine. For the first time in twenty years, there was no pain in her body. She laid back on the couch. Sidney was on top, her mouth pressing against Callie’s neck, then her breasts, then Callie’s jeans were unbuttoned and Sidney’s fingers slipped inside of her.

  Callie moaned. Tears wept into her eyes. It had been so damn long since she’d had someone inside of her who she really wanted inside of her. She rocked against Sidney’s hand. Sucked on her mouth, her tongue. The sensation started to build. Callie felt dizzy as breath flooded into her open lungs. Her eyes closed. Her mouth opened to call Sidney’s name—

  Breathe into it I’m almost there come on.

  Callie’s eyes opened. Her heart slammed against her chest. There was no gorilla, just the clear sound of Buddy Waleski’s voice.

  Buddy, please, it hurts too much please stop please …

  Her own voice, fourteen years old. Hurting. Terrified.

  Buddy, please stop I’m bleeding I can’t—

  Callie threw Sidney off of her. The sound was coming from the speakers.

  Shut the fuck up Callie I said hold the fuck still.

  Buddy’s voice was everywhere, booming from the speakers, echoing around the sterile, white room. Callie grabbed the remote off the coffee table. She frantically pressed the buttons, trying to stop the sound.

  Fucking bitch I told you to stop struggling or I’ll—

  Silence.

  Callie did not want to turn around, but she did.

  She did not want to look at the television, but she did.

  The stained shag carpet. Streetlight lasering around the puckered edges of the orange and brown drapes. The tan club chairs with sweat-stained backs and cigarette-burned arms. The orange couch with its two depressing indentations at opposite ends.

  The sound was muted, but she heard Buddy’s voice in her head—

  Come on, baby. Let’s finish on the couch.

  What was happening on the television did not mirror the memories inside of her head. The video twisted them around, turned them into something sleazy and brutal.

  Buddy was silently grinding into her fourteen-year-old body, his massive weight pressing so hard that the frame of the couch flexed in the middle. Callie watched her younger self struggle for freedom, scratching out, trying to fight him off. He grabbed both of her hands in one meaty paw. With his other hand, he ripped the belt out of the loops in his pants. Callie was horrified to watch him bind her wrists with the belt, flip her over, and start raping her from behind.

  “No …” she breathed, because that was not how it had happened. Not once she got used to it. Not once she learned how to finish him with her mouth.

  Sidney asked, “Do you still like it rough?”

  Callie heard a clatter of sound. She had dropped the remote. It lay on the floor in pieces. Slowly, she turned. All of the beauty had drained out of Sidney’s face. She looked as hard and merciless as Andrew.

  Callie’s voice shook when she asked, “Where is the tape?”

  “Tapes,” Sidney said, her voice hard. “Plural. As in more than one.”

  “How many?”

  “Dozens.” Sidney put her fingers in her mouth, making a loud smacking noise as she sucked the taste of Callie off of them. “We can watch more if you want.”

  Callie punched her in the face.

  Sidney stumbled back, stunned by the impact. Blood poured from her broken nose. She blinked like a stupid punk bitch taking her first hit on the playground.

  “Where are they?” Callie demanded, but she was already walking around the room, pressing her hand against the walls, trying to find another hidden cabinet. “Tell me where they are.”

  Sidney collapsed onto the couch. Blood dripped onto the white leather, pooled onto the floor.

  Callie kept touching the walls, leaving blood prints from her own wounded hands. A door finally clicked open. She saw a sink and toilet. She pushed another door. Heat poured off a rack of electronic equipment. Her finger traced down the components, but there was no VCR.

  Sidney asked, “Did you really think it would be that easy?”

  Callie looked at her. She was standing up, hands at her side while blood flowed down her face and neck. Her white shirt was turning crimson. She seemed to be recovered from the sudden punch to the face. Her tongue licked out, tasting the trickle of blood from her lip.

  She warned Callie, “It won’t be so easy the next time.”

  Callie wasn’t going to have a conversation with the bitch. This wasn’t the end of a Batman episode. She stalked into the kitchen. Without thinking, her hand found Linda’s kitchen knife.

  She continued through the house, passing a powder room, then a home gym. No closets. No cabinets. No video tapes. Next room, Andrew’s office. The desk drawers were narrow, filled with pens and paper clips. The closet was stacked with paper and notecards and files. Callie used her arm like a shovel and swept everything onto the floor.

  Sidney said, “You’re not going to find them.”

  Callie pushed past her, stalking down another long hallway with more bondage photos. She could hear Sidney trailing behind her. Callie knocked the frames off the walls, sending them shattering to the floor. Sidney yelped as she stepped on broken glass. Callie kicked open doors. Guest room. Nothing. Another guest room. Nothing. Master bedroom.

  Callie stopped in the open doorway.

  Instead of white, everything was black. Walls, ceiling, carpet, silk sheets on the bed. She slapped the wall switch. Light flooded the room. She scuffed her boots across the carpet. She ripped open the bedside drawers. Handcuffs and dildos and butt plugs fell onto the dark floor. No video tapes. The television on the wall was almost as tall as Callie. She looked behind it, pulled at the wires. Nothing. She checked the walls for secret panels. Nothing. She found the walk-in closet. Black cabinets. Black drawers. Black as the rot inside this fucking house.

  The safe was out in the open, roughly the size of a dorm fridge. Combination lock. Callie turned around, because she knew that Sidney was there. The woman seemed heedless to the blood on her face, the bloody footprints that led like breadcrumbs to the closet door.

  Callie told the bitch, “Open it.”

  “Calliope.” Sidney shook her head the same sad way that Andrew had in the tunnel. “Even if I wanted to, do you think Andy would give me the combination?”

  Callie felt her teeth grit. She ran through the inventory in her purse. She could pump enough heroin into this evil cunt to stop her heart. “When did you know it was me?”

  “Oh, baby girl, from the moment you walked into the meeting.” Sidney was smiling, but there was nothing fun or sexy about her mouth now, because she had been playing Callie like a fiddle the entire time. “I gotta say, Max, you clean up really nice.”

  “Where are the tapes?”

  “Andy was right.” Sidney was openly looking at her again, appraising her body. “You really are a perfect little fucking doll, aren’t you?”

  Callie’s nostrils flared.

  “Why don’t you stick around, baby girl?” Sidney’s smirk was sickeningly familiar. “Andy will be home in a couple of hours. I can’t think of a better wedding present than letting him watch me fuck you.”

  Callie looked down at her hand. She was still holding Linda’s knife. “Why don’t I cut the skin off your face and leave it hanging on the front door?”

  Sidney looked startled, as if it had never occurred to her that fucking with a needle junkie who had survived on the streets for twenty years was a bad idea.

  Callie didn’t give her time to consider the implications.

  She lunged at the woman, knife first. Sidney screamed. She fell onto her back. Her head banged against the floor. Callie could smell the huff of tequila as she jumped on top of her. She raised the knife over her head. Sidney scr
ambled to defend herself, catching Callie’s wrist with both of her hands. Her arms shook as she tried to keep the knife from plunging into her face.

  Callie let Sidney’s focus stay on the knife, because the knife only mattered if you played fair. Callie hadn’t played fair since she’d chopped up Buddy Waleski. She rammed her knee straight up between Sidney’s legs so hard that she felt her kneecap crack against Sidney’s pelvis.

  “Fuck!” Sidney screamed, rolling to the side, gripping her hands between her legs. Vomit spewed from her mouth. Her body was shaking. Tears poured from her eyes.

  Callie grabbed her by the hair, wrenching back her head. She showed Sidney the knife.

  “Please!” Sidney begged. “Please don’t!”

  Callie pressed the tip of the knife into the soft skin of Sidney’s cheek. “What’s the combination?”

  “I don’t know!” Sidney wailed. “Please! He won’t tell me!”

  Callie pressed the knife harder, watching the skin curve against the blade, then finally give, opening up a line of bright red blood.

  “Please …” Sidney sobbed, helpless. “Please … Callie … I’m sorry. Please.”

  “Where’s the tape from before?” Callie gave her a moment to answer, and when she didn’t, she started to pull the blade down.

  “The rack!” Sidney screamed.

  Callie stopped. “I checked the rack.”

  “No …” She was panting, terror filling her eyes with tears. “The player is behind … there’s a space behind the rack. It’s on the … there’s a shelf.”

  Callie didn’t remove the knife from her face. She could so easily reach down, cut Sidney’s leg, and watch the woman’s life slowly ebb away. But that wouldn’t be good enough. Andrew wouldn’t see it happen. He wouldn’t suffer the way that Callie needed him to suffer. She wanted him terrified, bleeding, unable to stop the pain the same way she had been every time his father had raped her.

  She told Sidney, “Tell Andy if he wants his knife back, he’s going to have to come and get it.”

  16

  Leigh had put her emotions into stasis inside the cramped conference room with Dante Carmichael. She had known that the only way she would survive the rest of the day was to divide herself between being an attorney and being everything else in her life. One compartment could not spill into the other or there would not be any pieces left to categorize.

  Dante had left the photographs of Ruby Heyer’s mutilated body spread across the table, but Leigh had not looked at them again. She had stacked them together. She had returned them to their file folder. She had put the folder inside of her purse and then she had walked out into the hallway and told her client to get ready for jury selection.

  Now, she looked at the clock on the courtroom wall as she waited for the cleaner to sanitize the stand for the next prospective juror. They had half an hour left in the schedule. The room felt muggy. Pandemic protocols dictated that only the judge, the bailiff, a deputy, the court reporter, the prosecution, the defense, and the defendant were allowed in the room. Normally, there were dozens of spectators or at least a court monitor in the gallery. Without them, the process felt staged, as if they were all actors doing their parts.

  That wasn’t going to change anytime soon. Only nine jurors had been seated so far. They needed three more, plus two alternates. The initial questions from the judge had winnowed the pool of forty-eight down to twenty-seven. They had six left to interview, then a fresh batch would be scheduled for tomorrow morning.

  Andrew shifted in his chair. Leigh avoided his gaze, which was hard to do when someone was sitting directly beside you. Liz had her head bent down as she scribbled notes at the end of the table. Jacob was on Andrew’s left, sifting through the remaining questionnaires, trying to glean a detail that would make him look brilliant and useful.

  One of Leigh’s professors in law school had insisted that cases were lost or won during jury selection. Leigh had always enjoyed trying to game out the system, picking and choosing the right personalities for deliberations—the leaders, the followers, the questioners, the intransigent true believers. The process today was particularly meaningful because it would likely be the last time Leigh sat in the attorney’s chair at the defense table.

  Walter had tried to call two more times before Leigh had turned off both her phones. All devices were supposed to be silenced during court, but that wasn’t the reason why she wasn’t answering. Gossip traveled at the speed of light in the Hollis Academy community. Leigh knew that Walter would be calling about Ruby Heyer’s brutal murder. She knew that Walter would be sending Maddy away with his mother. She knew that he would end up at the police station telling the cops everything because that was the only way to guarantee Maddy’s safety.

  At least that was what Leigh told herself every other hour.

  She spent the hours in between telling herself that Walter would never turn her in. He hated her right now, but he was neither rash nor vengeful. Leigh thought that he would talk to her before he went to the cops. And then she thought about how sickened Walter would be by Ruby’s murder and how terrified he would be about Maddy’s safety and the rollercoaster started back up the hill again.

  The cleaner had finished sanitizing the stand from the last prospective juror, a retired English professor who had made it clear she could not be impartial. Normally, the jurors were seated in groups inside the courtroom, but Covid protocols had scattered them down a long hallway and into the deliberation room. They were allowed to bring books and use the courthouse WiFi, but the wait could be mind-numbingly tedious.

  The bailiff opened the door, calling, “Twenty-three, you’re up.”

  They all stirred as an older man took his place to be sworn in. Jacob slid the jury questionnaire in front of Leigh. Andrew sat back, but he didn’t bother to look down at the page. His interest had evaporated once he’d realized there was no psychological angle to be played. Only questions and answers and gut instinct. The law was never what anyone thought it was or wanted it to be.

  Twenty-three’s name was Hank Bladel. He was sixty-three years old and had been married for forty years. Leigh studied his craggly face as he sat down. Bladel had a spattering of white in his beard and the ropey arms of a man who kept himself fit. Shaved head. Straight shoulders. Firm voice.

  Jacob had drawn two horizontal lines in the corner of Bladel’s questionnaire, which meant he was on the fence as to whether or not the man would be good for Andrew. Leigh knew which way she was leaning, but she tried to keep an open mind.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Bladel.” Dante had been keeping his examinations brief. It was late in the day. Everybody was tired. Even the judge seemed to be nodding off, his head tilted down toward the papers on his desk, his eyes doing slow blinks as he pretended to listen.

  Turner had been true to form so far, bending over backward to give Andrew the white man’s golden handshake. Leigh had learned the hard way that she had to speak carefully around the judge. He demanded the kind of formality that you would expect of a supreme court justice. She had lost more than one ruling because he didn’t brook mouthy women.

  She tuned back into Dante’s questioning, which followed the same predictable pattern. Bladel had never been the victim of sexual assault. He had never been the victim of a crime. Neither had any family members that he knew of. His wife was a nurse. Both of his daughters were nurses, too. One was married to an EMT, the other to a warehouse supervisor. Before Covid, Bladel had worked full-time as a driver for an airport limo company, but now he was part-time and volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club of America. All of that lined up beautifully for the defense but for one thing: he had served twenty years in the military.

  This was why Leigh was leaning toward striking Bladel from the jury. The defense wanted people who questioned the system. The prosecution wanted people who thought that the law was always fair, that cops never lied and that justice was blind.

  Given the last four years, it was becoming harder and har
der to find anyone who thought the system worked the same for everybody, but the military could be a reliably conservative group to pull from. Dante had already blown through seven of his nine preemptory challenges, which could be used to strike any juror for any reason except on the basis of race. Thanks to Judge Turner’s leniency, Leigh had four challenges remaining, plus another when it came to selecting the two alternates.

  She checked her grid of seated jurors. Six women. Three men. Retired teacher. Librarian. Accountant. Bartender. Mailman. Two stay-at-home moms. Hospital orderly. She felt good about the line-up, but then the line-up didn’t matter because none of this would make it to trial. The rollercoaster was on its downward spiral where Walter had talked to the police and both Leigh and Andrew would be waiting for their separate arraignments before Monday morning rolled around.

  Andrew had a fail-safe tape of Leigh murdering his father.

  Leigh had it by her client’s own admission that Andrew was sitting on a large stash of child porn featuring her then-fourteen-year-old sister.

  “Judge,” Dante said. “The prosecution accepts this juror and asks that he be seated.”

  Turner’s head jerked up. He paged through his paperwork as he gave off a howl of a yawn under his mask. “Ms. Collier, you may cross.”

  Dante slumped back into his chair with a heavy sigh, because he assumed Leigh would use one of her challenges to strike the man.

  Leigh stood up. “Mr. Bladel, thank you for being here today. I’m Leigh Collier. I represent the defendant.”

  He nodded. “Nice to meet you.”

  “I should thank you for your service, too. Twenty years. That’s admirable.”

  “Thank you.” He nodded again.

  Leigh took in his body language. Legs wide. Arms at his side. Posture straight. He seemed open rather than closed off. The previous occupant of the chair had looked like Quasimodo in comparison.

  She said, “You used to be a limo driver. What was that like?”