False Witness

by Karin Slaughter

  She told him now what she had been unable to tell him then. “I can’t live without you. I love you. You are the only man that I will ever feel this way about.”

  He hesitated, and it broke her heart all over again. “I love you, too, but it’s not that easy. I don’t know if we’re going to get past this.”

  Leigh’s throat worked. She had finally touched the bottom of his seemingly bottomless well of forgiveness.

  He said, “Let’s talk out the problem that’s in front of us. How do we save you? How do we save Callie?”

  Leigh brushed away her tears. It would be so easy to let Walter help carry the burden, but she had to say, “No, sweetheart. I can’t let you get involved in this. Maddy needs one of us to be her parent.”

  “I’m not negotiating,” he said, as if he had a choice. “You told me Andrew has a fail-safe. That means someone else has copies of the videos, right?”

  Leigh humored him. “Right.”

  “So, who would that be?” Walter could sense her intransigence. “Come on, sweetheart. Who would Andrew trust? He can’t have that many friends. It’s a physical device—a thumb drive or an external hard drive. He makes a call, the fail-safe retrieves the device, releases it on the internet, takes it to the cops. Where would it be kept? Bank vault? Safe? Train station locker?”

  Leigh started to shake her head, but then she found herself at the most obvious answer, the one that had been right in front of her from day one.

  Both the primary and the backup server are locked in that closet over there.

  She told Walter, “Andrew’s private detective, Reggie. He has a server. He bragged about the fancy encryption and how he doesn’t back up to a cloud. I bet he’s got it stored on there.”

  “Is Reggie in on it?”

  She shrugged and shook her head at the same time. “He’s never in the room when Andrew pulls his bullshit. All he cares about is money. Andrew’s his bank. He would follow through on a fail-safe if Andrew got arrested, no questions asked.”

  “Okay, so we get the server.”

  “You mean breaking and entering?” Leigh had to draw a hard line. “No, Walter. I’m not going to let you do that, and it solves nothing. Andrew still has the originals.”

  “So help me think of another way.” He was clearly irritated by her logic. “Maddy needs her mother. All she did all day was cry and ask me where you were.”

  The thought of Maddy calling her name, of Leigh not being there, was gut-wrenching.

  She told Walter, “I’m sorry I’m such a shitty mother. And wife. And sister. You were right. I try to keep everything separate and all that ends up doing is punishing everyone else.”

  Walter looked down at the ground. He didn’t disagree with her. “We steal the server, all right? And then we need to find the originals. Where would Andrew keep them? They won’t be in the same place as the server. Where does he live?”

  Leigh pressed together her lips. He wasn’t thinking this through. Reggie’s office was probably closed at night. He had no visible security. The hasp lock on his closet would be easy to break. All it would take was a screwdriver to back out the screws.

  Andrew’s house had cameras and a security system and it would more than likely have Andrew, who had already murdered one person and made it clear he was willing to hurt many more.

  “Leigh?” Walter said. He was ready to do this. “Tell me about Andrew’s house. Where does he live?”

  “We’re not Ocean’s Eleven, Walter. We don’t have a ninja and a safe-cracker.”

  “Then we—”

  “Blow up his car? Burn down his house?” Leigh could get just as crazy as he could. “Or maybe we could torture him until he tells us. Strip him down, chain him to a chair, rip out his fingernails, pull out his teeth. Is that what you were thinking?”

  Walter rubbed his cheek. He was doing the same thing Leigh had done the first year she had moved to Chicago.

  Dr. Patterson. Coach Holt. Mr. Humphrey. Mr. Ganza. Mr. Emmett.

  Leigh had come up with thousands of gory fantasies where she ended their disgusting existence—burning them alive, cutting off their dicks, humiliating them, punishing them, destroying them—but then she had realized that her homicidal rage had died in the Waleskis’ dreary kitchen on Canyon Road.

  “When I killed Buddy,” she told Walter. “I was in this—I think it was a fugue state. It was me. I did it. But it wasn’t me. It was the girl he’d molested in the car. It was the girl whose sister he’d raped, the one who kept getting pushed around and touched and fondled and laughed at and called a liar and a bitch and a whore. Do you know what I’m saying?”

  He nodded, but there was no way he truly got it. Walter had never kept his keys jutting between his fingers as he walked to his car. He had never darkly joked with himself about being raped in a garage because physical vulnerability was not in her husband’s range of emotions.

  Leigh pressed her palm flat to Walter’s chest. His heart was pounding. “Sweetheart, I love you, but you’re not a murderer.”

  “We can find another way.”

  “There’s not—” She stopped, because Reggie Paltz had impeccable timing. He was hopping over the gate instead of walking around to the garage entrance. “He’s here. The investigator. Give me a minute to talk to him, okay?”

  Walter looked behind him.

  Then he looked again.

  He asked, “That’s the guy? Reggie, the investigator?”

  “Yes,” Leigh said. “I’m supposed to—”

  Without any warning, Walter took off in a dead run.

  Reggie was thirty feet away. He didn’t have time to respond. His mouth opened in protest, but Walter punched it closed with his fist.

  “Walter!” Leigh yelled, running to stop him. “Walter!”

  He was straddling Reggie, his fists windmilling. Blood splattered the concrete. She saw a piece of tooth, tendrils of bloody mucus. Bones cracked like kindling. Reggie’s nose flattened.

  “Walter!” Leigh tried to grab his hand. He was going to kill Reggie if she didn’t stop him. “Walter, please!”

  One final punch cracked Reggie’s mouth open. His jaw twisted sideways. His body went limp. Walter had knocked him out. Still, he raised his fist, ready to strike again.

  “No!” She grabbed his hand, holding as tight as she could. His muscles were like cables. She had never seen him like this before. “Walter.”

  He looked back at her, still furious. Rage distorted his features. His chest heaved with every breath. Blood whipped across his shirt, slashed along his face.

  “Walter,” she whispered, wiping the blood out of his eyes. He was soaked with sweat. She could feel his muscles tensing as he tried to control the animal inside of him. Leigh looked around the garage. There was no one, but she didn’t know how long that would last. “We need to get out of here. Stand up.”

  “It was him.” Walter’s head dropped down. He held tight to her hand. She watched the rise and fall of his shoulders as he tried to regain his control. “He was there.”

  Leigh looked around again. They were yards from a courthouse full of police officers. “Tell me in the car. We have to get out of here.”

  “The play,” Walter said. “Reggie was there. He was sitting in the audience at Maddy’s play.”

  Leigh sank down to the ground. She felt numb again, too overwhelmed to do anything but listen.

  “During the intermission.” Walter was still breathing hard. “He came up to talk to me. I don’t remember the name he gave. He said he was new. He said his daughter went to the school. He said his brother was a cop, and then we were talking about the union and …”

  Leigh’s hand covered her mouth. She remembered intermission—standing up from her seat, searching the auditorium for Walter. He had been talking to a man with short, dark hair who’d kept his back to Leigh the entire time.

  “Leigh.” Walter was looking at her. “He asked me about Maddy. He asked about you. I thought he was another dad.”<
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  “He tricked you.” Leigh hated the sound of guilt straining his voice. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “What else does he know?” Walter asked. “What are they planning?”

  Leigh checked the parking garage again. No one was around. The only cameras tracked the cars entering and exiting. Reggie had jumped the fence instead of going around to the front gate.

  “Put him in the trunk,” she told Walter. “We’ll find out.”

  17

  Leigh stood back as Walter opened the trunk. Reggie was still out cold. There had been no need to cut the emergency pull cord or bind his hands with the roll of duct tape that Leigh kept in her emergency roadside kit. Leigh’s husband, her sweet, thoughtful husband, had almost killed the man.

  Walter turned, checking the perimeter. The parking lot outside of Reggie’s office was empty, but the road was twenty yards away, only obscured by a patchy row of Leyland cypress. Walter had parked the Audi by the crumbling concrete steps. The sun had dropped down, but Xenon lights put the parking lot on full display.

  She held the Glock in her hand because she was afraid of what Walter would do if he had the opportunity to use it. She had never seen him so feral before. He was clearly standing on the edge of a dark precipice. Leigh couldn’t think about her part in his descent, but she knew that she had brought it on with her own stupid belief that she could keep everything under control.

  Walter started to reach down for Reggie, but then he looked back at Leigh. “Is there an alarm?”

  “I don’t know,” Leigh said. “I don’t remember seeing one, but probably.”

  Walter shoved his hand into Reggie’s front pocket and pulled out a ring loaded with keys. He passed them to Leigh. She had no choice but to leave him at the car so she could open the glass front door. Her eyes traveled around the lobby as she looked for an alarm keypad.

  Nothing.

  Walter grunted as he started to drag Reggie from the trunk.

  She tried several keys before the lock turned. The door opened. She nodded to Walter. She glanced out at the road. She looked around the parking lot. Her heartbeat was so loud in her ears that she couldn’t hear what must’ve been more grunts and groans as her husband lifted Reggie into a fireman’s carry over his shoulder. Walter struggled under the weight as he climbed up the stairs and dropped Reggie onto the lobby floor.

  Leigh didn’t look down. She did not want to see Reggie’s damaged face. She locked the glass door. She told Walter, “His office is upstairs.”

  Walter lifted Reggie again. He went first up the stairs. Leigh stuck the Glock deep into her purse, but she kept her hand wrapped around the weapon. Her finger rested along the trigger guard, the way that Walter had taught her. You didn’t put your finger on the trigger unless you were prepared to use it. There was no conventional safety on the gun. When you pressed back on the trigger, the weapon fired. Leigh did not want to find herself facing another murder charge because she had gotten startled and made a horrible mistake.

  But it wasn’t just herself she had to worry about. Felony murder didn’t care who pulled the trigger. The moment Walter had put Reggie into the trunk of the car, they’d both become accessories to each other’s crimes.

  On the landing, Walter paused to shift Reggie’s weight. He was breathing heavily again, more animal than man. He had said very little on the drive over. They had not made a plan because there was nothing to plan. They would find the server. They would destroy the fail-safe. What happened beyond that was nothing that either of them was willing to say out loud.

  Leigh rounded the landing. She thought about Andrew standing on this same spot three short days ago. He had been angry when he talked about losing his father. She had ignored the warning siren in her gut. She’d been obsessed with finding out what Andrew really wanted when he had told her straight to her face.

  It ruined our lives when Dad disappeared. I wish whoever made him go away understood what that felt like.

  This was what Andrew Tenant wanted—what was happening with Walter right now, their beautiful girl forced into hiding, Callie nowhere to be found. Andrew wanted everything Leigh cared about, everything she had ever loved, to be thrown into chaos the same way his life had been ruined when Buddy died. She had played right into his hands.

  Walter had reached the end of the hallway. He leaned down. Reggie’s feet went to the ground, his back against the wall. Walter held him up with a fist to his chest. Reggie groaned, his head rolling.

  “Hey.” Walter slapped his face. “Wake up, asshole.”

  Reggie’s head rolled again. The light from the parking lot cut through the window, spotlighting the damage Walter had caused. The man’s left eye was swollen shut. His jaw looked unnatural and loose. The bridge of his nose was nothing more than a pinkish white bone where the skin had been punched away.

  Leigh searched for the key to Reggie’s office, her hands trembling as she tried each one in the deadbolt.

  “Come on,” Walter said, slapping Reggie again. “Wake the fuck up.”

  Reggie coughed.

  Blood sprayed onto Walter’s face, but Walter didn’t blink. “What’s the alarm code?”

  Reggie’s jaw popped. He let out a low wheeze.

  “Look at me, asshole.” Walter pressed his thumbs into Reggie’s eyelids, forcing them open. “Tell me the alarm code or I will beat the life out of you.”

  Leigh’s skin prickled with fear. She looked up from the lock. She knew that Walter wasn’t making an empty threat. Reggie did, too. His wheezing spiraled as he tried to push out sound with a jaw that Walter had broken off its hinge.

  “Th-three …” Reggie started. The number was awkward and muffled when it came out of his mouth. “Nine … six … three.”

  Leigh felt the final key on the ring slide into the lock, but she didn’t open the door. She told Walter, “It could be a trick. It might make a silent alarm go off.”

  Walter said, “If that happens, then we’ll shoot him in the head and take the server. We’ll be gone before the police get here.”

  Leigh was chilled by the determination in his voice.

  She gave Reggie a chance, asking, “You’re sure about the code? Three-nine-six-three?”

  Reggie huffed out a cough. Pain etched lines into his face.

  Walter told Leigh, “Show him the gun.”

  Reluctantly, she lifted the Glock from her purse. She saw the whites of Reggie’s eyes as he stared down at the weapon. In her head, she told herself that Walter was bluffing. He had to be bluffing. They were not going to murder anyone.

  Walter wrenched the gun from her hand. He pressed the muzzle into Reggie’s forehead. His finger stayed along the trigger guard. He asked again, “What’s the code?”

  Reggie’s body convulsed as he coughed. His mouth wouldn’t close. Drool mixed with blood as it slid from his lip onto his shirt.

  “Five,” Walter said, counting down. “Four. Three.”

  Leigh watched his finger move to the trigger. He was not bluffing. Her mouth opened to tell him to stop, but Reggie spoke first.

  “Backward,” he said, the word sloppy from the effort. “Three, six, nine, three.”

  Walter kept the gun pressed to Reggie’s head. He told Leigh, “Try it.”

  She turned the key in the lock. She opened the door. A beeping sound filled the dark outer office. She followed the noise down the short hallway. The keypad was inside the main office. A red button was flashing. The beeping sped up, counting down the seconds until the alarm went off.

  Leigh entered the code. Nothing happened. She leaned down, trying to figure out what to do. The beeping got faster. The alarm was going to go off. The phone was going to ring. Someone was going to ask for a safe word and there was no way that Reggie would give it. If he was still alive by then because Walter had already told them both what would happen.

  “Fuck,” she whispered, scanning the numbers. The word OFF was written in small print under the 1 button. She pressed in the code again,
then added a 1.

  The keypad gave one final, long beep.

  The red button turned green.

  Leigh put her hand to her heart, but she was still waiting for the phone to ring. Her ears strained in the silence. All she heard was the door closing in the other room, then the turn of the lock, then heavy footsteps as Walter dragged Reggie down the hallway.

  The lights came on. Leigh dropped her purse on the couch. She went to the window to close the blinds. The same two questions chased each other around her brain: What were they going to do? How was this going to end?

  Walter shoved Reggie into one of the chairs. She was shocked when Walter pulled out the roll of duct tape from the back of his pants. He’d brought it from the trunk of her car, which meant that he had thought this through. Worse, he had a plan, and Leigh was the one who’d put it in his mind.

  Strip him down, chain him to a chair, rip out his fingernails, pull out his teeth.

  “Walter,” she said, her voice pleading with him to rethink this.

  “Is that where the server is?” Walter pointed to the metal door on the back wall. The hasp lock was held closed by a black padlock that looked like something out of a military catalogue.

  Leigh said, “Yes, but—”

  “Get it open.” Walter wrapped tape around Reggie’s chest, binding him to the chair. He checked that the man’s wrists were still held together before going down on one knee to tape his ankles to the chair legs.

  Leigh had no words. It was like watching her husband fall into madness. There was no way to stop him. All she could do was go along until he found his senses. She pulled on the padlock. The hasp held fast. The screws in the metal door and frame were Phillips head. She had a screwdriver in her emergency roadside kit. She had teased Walter when he’d put it in her trunk but now she wanted to go back in time and leave it in the garage in her building because it would be only a matter of time before he told her to go downstairs and get it.

  Leigh knew if she left the two men alone in the room, she would only find one of them alive when she returned.