False Witness Page 3

  Still, Callie picked up the receiver, expecting him to wail and plead and beg for her forgiveness and reaffirm his love and devotion.

  He did none of this. His mouth kept trouting. He stood like a frozen gorilla, his arms bulging out at his sides.

  Callie turned her back to him. She rested the receiver against her shoulder. Stretched the springy cord out of her way. Touched the number eight on the keypad.

  The entire world slowed down before her brain could register what was happening.

  The punch to her kidney was like a speeding car sideswiping her from behind. The phone slipped from her shoulder. Callie’s arms flew up. Her feet left the ground. She felt a breeze on her skin as she launched into the air.

  Her chest slammed into the wall. Her nose crushed flat. Her teeth dug into the Sheetrock.

  “Stupid bitch.” Buddy palmed the back of her head and banged her face into the wall again. Then again. He reared back a third time.

  Callie forced her knees to bend. She felt her hair rip from her scalp as she folded her body into a ball on the floor. She had been beaten before. She knew how to take a hit. But that was with someone whose size and strength were relatively close to her own. Someone who didn’t thrash people for a living. Someone who had never killed before.

  “You gonna fuckin’ threaten me!” Buddy’s foot swung into her stomach like a wrecking ball.

  Callie’s body lifted off the floor. She huffed all of the air out of her lungs. A sharp stabbing pain told her that one of her ribs had fractured.

  Buddy was on his knees. She looked up at him. His eyes were crazed. Spit speckled the corners of his mouth. He wrapped one hand around her neck. Callie tried to scramble away but ended up on her back. He straddled her. The weight of him was unbearable. His grip tightened. Her windpipe flexed into her spine. He was pinching off her air. She swung at him, trying to aim her fist between his legs. Once. Twice. A sideswipe was enough to loosen his grip. She rolled out from under him, tried to find a way to stand, to run, to flee.

  The air cracked with a sound she couldn’t quite name.

  Fire burned across Callie’s back. She felt her skin being flayed. He was using the telephone cord to whip her. Blood bubbled up like acid across her spine. She raised her hand and watched the skin on her arm snake open as the phone cord wrapped around her wrist.

  Instinctively, she jerked back her arm. The cord slipped from his grasp. She saw the surprise in his face and scrambled to get her back against the wall. She lashed out at him, punching, kicking, recklessly swinging the cord, screaming, “Fuck you, motherfucker! I’ll fucking kill you!”

  Her voice echoed in the kitchen.

  Suddenly, somehow, everything had come to a standstill.

  Callie had at some point managed to spring to her feet. Her hand was raised behind her head, waiting to whip the cord around. Both of them stood their ground, no more than spitting distance between them.

  Buddy’s startled laugh turned into an appreciative chuckle. “Damn, girl.”

  She had opened a gash along his cheek. He wiped the blood onto his fingers. He put his fingers in his mouth. He made a loud sucking noise.

  Callie felt her stomach twist into a tight knot.

  She knew the taste of violence brought out a darkness in him.

  “Come on, tiger.” He raised his fists like a boxer ready for a knock-out round. “Come at me again.”

  “Buddy, please.” Callie silently willed her muscles to stay primed, her joints to keep loose, to be ready to fight back as hard as they could because the only reason he was acting calm right now was because he had made up his mind that he was going to enjoy killing her. “It doesn’t have to be like this.”

  “Sugar doll, it was always going to be like this.”

  She let that knowledge settle into her brain. Callie knew that he was right. She had been such a fool. “I won’t say anything. I promise.”

  “It’s too far gone, dolly. I think you know that.” His fists still hung loose in front of his face. He waved her forward. “Come on, baby girl. Don’t go down without a fight.”

  He had nearly two feet and at least one hundred fifty pounds on her. The heft of an entire second human being existed inside of his hulking body.

  Scratch him? Bite him? Pull out his hair? Die with his blood in her mouth?

  “Whatcha gonna do, little bit?” He kept his fists at the ready. “I’m giving you a chance here. You gonna come at me or are you gonna fold?”

  The hallway?

  She couldn’t risk leading him to Trevor.

  The front door?

  Too far away.

  The kitchen door?

  Callie could see the gold doorknob out of the corner of her eye.

  Gleaming. Waiting. Unlocked.

  She walked herself through the motions—turn, left-foot-right-foot, grab the knob, twist, run through the carport, out into the street, scream her head off the whole way.

  Who was she kidding?

  All she had to do was turn and Buddy would be on her. He wasn’t fast, but he didn’t need to be. In one long stride, his hand would be around her neck again.

  Callie stared all of her hatred into him.

  He shrugged, because it didn’t matter.

  “Why did you do it?” she asked. “Why did you show them our private stuff?”

  “Money.” He sounded disappointed that she was so stupid. “Why the hell else?”

  Callie couldn’t let herself think about all those grown men watching her do stuff she did not want to do with a man who had promised he would always, no matter what, protect her.

  “Bring it.” Buddy punched a lazy right hook into the air, then a slow-motion uppercut. “Come on, Rocky. Gimme whatcha got.”

  She let her gaze ping-pong around the kitchen.

  Fridge. Oven. Cabinets. Drawers. Cookie plate. NyQuil. Drying rack.

  Buddy smirked. “You gonna hit me with a frying pan, Daffy Duck?”

  Callie sprinted straight toward him, full out, like a bullet exploding from the muzzle of a gun. Buddy’s hands were up near his face. She tucked her body down low so that when he finally managed to drop his fists, she was already out of his reach.

  She crashed into the kitchen sink.

  Grabbed the knife out of the drying rack.

  Spun around with the blade slicing out in front of her.

  Buddy grinned at the steak knife, which looked like something Linda had bought at the grocery store in a six-piece set made in Taiwan. Cracked wooden handle. Serrated blade so thin that it bent three different ways before straightening out at the end. Callie had used it to cut Trevor’s hot dog into pieces because otherwise he would try to shove the whole thing in his mouth and start to choke.

  Callie could see she’d missed some ketchup.

  A thin streak of red ran along the serrated teeth.

  “Oh.” Buddy sounded surprised. “Oh, Jesus.”

  They both looked down at the same time.

  The knife had slashed open the leg of his pants. Left upper thigh, a few inches down from his crotch.

  She watched the khaki material slowly turn crimson.

  Callie had been involved in competitive gymnastics from the age of five. She had an intimate understanding of all the ways that you could hurt yourself. An awkward twist could tear the ligaments in your back. A sloppy dismount could wreck the tendons in your knee. A piece of metal—even a cheap piece of metal—that cut across your inner thigh could open your femoral artery, the major pipeline that supplied blood to the lower part of your body.

  “Cal.” Buddy’s hand clamped down on his leg. Blood seeped through his clenched fingers. “Get a—Christ, Callie. Get a towel or—”

  He started to fall, broad shoulders banging into the cabinets, head cracking off the edge of the countertop. The room shook from his weight as he dropped down.

  “Cal?” Buddy’s throat worked. Sweat dripped down his face. “Callie?”

  Her body was still tensed. Her hand was still g
ripping the knife. She felt enveloped by a cold darkness, like she’d somehow stepped back into her own shadow.

  “Callie. Baby, you gotta—” His lips had lost their color. His teeth began to chatter as if her coldness was seeping into him, too. “C-call an ambulance, baby. Call an—”

  Callie slowly turned her head. She looked at the phone on the wall. The receiver was off the hook. Slivers of multi-colored wires stuck out where Buddy had ripped away the springy cord. She found the other end, following it like a clue, and located the receiver underneath the kitchen table.

  “Callie, leave that—leave that there, honey. I need you to—”

  She got down on her knees. Reached under the table. Picked up the receiver. Placed it to her ear. She was still holding the knife. Why was she still holding the knife?

  “That one’s b-broken,” Buddy told her. “Go to the bedroom, baby. C-call an ambulance.”

  She pressed the plastic tight to her ear. From memory, she summoned a phantom noise, the bleating siren sound that a phone made when it was off the hook too long.

  Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah …

  “The bedroom, baby. G-go to the—”

  Wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah-wah …

  “Callie.”

  That’s what she’d hear if she picked up the phone in the bedroom. The unrelenting bleating and, looped over that, the operator’s mechanical voice—

  If you’d like to make a call …

  “Callie, baby, I wasn’t going to hurt you. I would never h-hurt—”

  Please hang up and try again.

  “Baby, please, I need—”

  If this is an emergency …

  “I need your help, baby. P-please go down the hall and—”

  Hang up and dial 9-1-1.

  “Callie?”

  She laid the knife on the floor. She sat back on her heels. Her knee didn’t throb. Her back didn’t ache. The skin around her neck didn’t pulse where he had choked her. Her rib didn’t stab from his kicks.

  If you’d like to make a call …

  “You fucking bitch,” Buddy rasped. “You f-fucking, heartless bitch.”

  Please hang up and try again.

  SPRING 2021

  Sunday

  1

  Leigh Collier bit her lip as a seventh-grade girl belted out “Ya Got Trouble” to a captive audience. A gaggle of tweens skipped across the stage as Professor Hill warned the townsfolk about out-of-town jaspers luring their sons into horse-race gambling.

  Not a wholesome trottin’ race, no! But a race where they set right down on the horse!

  She doubted a generation that had grown up with WAP, murder hornets, Covid, cataclysmic social unrest, and being forcibly home-schooled by a bunch of depressed day drinkers really understood the threat of pool halls, but Leigh had to hand it to the drama teacher for putting on a gender-neutral production of The Music Man, one of the least offensive and most tedious musicals ever staged by a middle school.

  Leigh’s daughter had just turned sixteen years old. She’d thought her days of watching nose-pickers, mamas’ boys, and stage hogs break into song were blissfully over, but then Maddy had taken an interest in teaching choreography so here they were, trapped in this hellhole of trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.

  She looked for Walter. He was two rows down, closer to the aisle. His head was tilted at a weird angle, sort of looking at the stage, sort of looking at the back of the empty seat in front of him. Leigh didn’t have to see what was in his hands to know that he was playing fantasy football on his phone.

  She slipped her phone out of her purse and texted—Maddy is going to ask you questions about the performance.

  Walter kept his head down, but she could tell from the ellipses that he was responding—I can do two things at once.

  Leigh typed—If that was true, we would still be together.

  He turned to find her. The crinkles at the corners of his eyes told her he was grinning behind his mask.

  Leigh felt an unwelcome lurch in her heart. Their marriage had ended when Maddy was twelve, but during last year’s lockdown, they had all ended up living at Walter’s house and then Leigh had ended up in his bed and then she’d realized why it hadn’t worked out in the first place. Walter was an amazing father, but Leigh had finally accepted that she was the bad type of woman who couldn’t stay with a good man.

  On stage, the set had changed. A spotlight swung onto a Dutch exchange student filling the role of Marian Paroo. He was telling his mother that a man with a suitcase had followed him home, a scenario that today would’ve ended in a SWAT standoff.

  Leigh let her gaze wander around the audience. Tonight was the closing night after five consecutive Sunday performances. This was the only way to make sure all the parents got to see their kids whether they wanted to or not. The auditorium was one-quarter full, taped-off empty seats keeping everyone at a distance. Masks were mandatory. Hand sanitizer flowed like peach schnapps at a prom. Nobody wanted another Night of the Long Nasal Swabs.

  Walter had his fantasy football. Leigh had her fantasy apocalypse fight club. She gave herself ten slots to fill out her team. Obviously, Janey Pringle was her first choice. The woman had sold enough toilet paper, Clorox wipes, and hand sanitizer on the black market to buy her son a brand new MacBook Pro. Gillian Nolan knew how to make schedules. Lisa Regan was frighteningly outdoorsy, so she could do things like build fires. Denene Millner had punched a pit bull in the face when it charged her kid. Ronnie Copeland always had tampons in her purse. Ginger Vishnoo had made the AP physics teacher cry. Tommi Adams would blow anything with a pulse.

  Leigh’s eyes slid to the right, locating the broad, muscular shoulders of Darryl Washington. He’d quit his job to take care of the kids while his wife worked a high-paying corporate gig. Which was sweet but Leigh wasn’t going to survive the apocalypse only to end up fucking a meatier version of Walter.

  The men were the problem with this game. You could have one guy, possibly two on your team, but three or more and all the women would probably end up chained to beds in an underground bunker.

  The house lights came up. The blue and gold curtains swished closed. Leigh wasn’t sure whether she had dozed off or gone into a fugue state, but she was extraordinarily happy that the intermission had finally arrived.

  No one stood up at first. There was some uncomfortable shifting in seats as people debated whether or not to go to the restroom. This wasn’t like the old days when everybody busted down the doors, eager to gossip in the lobby while they ate cupcakes and drank punch in tiny paper cups. There had been a sign at the entrance instructing them to pick up a plastic bag before entering the auditorium. Inside each was a playbill, a small bottle of water, a paper mask, and a note reminding everyone to wash their hands and follow the CDC guidelines. The rogue—or, as the school called them, non-compliant—parents were given a Zoom password so they could watch the performance in the maskless comfort of their own living rooms.

  Leigh took out her phone. She dashed off a quick text to Maddy—The dancing was amazing! How cute was that little librarian? I’m so proud of you!

  Maddy buzzed back immediately—Mom I am working

  No punctuation. No emojis or stickers. But for social media, Leigh would have no idea that her daughter was still capable of smiling.

  This was what a thousand cuts felt like.

  She looked for Walter again. His seat was empty. She spotted him near the exit doors, talking to another broad-shouldered father. The man’s back was to Leigh, but she could tell by the way Walter was waving his arms that they were discussing football.

  Leigh let her gaze travel around the room. Most of the parents were either too young and healthy to jump ahead in the vaccine line, or smart and wealthy enough to know they should lie about buying early access. They were all standing in mismatched pairs talking in low murmurs across the required distance. After a nasty brawl had broken out during last year’s Non-Denominational Holid
ay Celebration That Happened Around Christmas, no one talked about politics. Instead, Leigh caught snippets of more sports talk, the mourning of past bake sales, who was in whose bubble, whose parents were Covidiots or maskholes, and how men who wore their masks below their noses were the same jerks who acted like wearing a condom was a human rights violation.

  She turned her focus toward the closed stage curtains, straining her ears to pick up the scraping and pounding and furious whispers as the kids changed out the set. Leigh felt the familiar lurch in her heart—not for Walter this time, but because she ached for her daughter. She wanted to come home to a mess in the kitchen. To yell about homework and screen time. To reach into her closet for a dress that had been “borrowed” or search for a pair of shoes that had been carelessly kicked under the bed. She wanted to hold her squirming, protesting daughter. To lie on the couch and watch a silly movie together. To catch Maddy giggling over something funny on her phone. To endure the withering glare when she asked her what was so funny.

  All they did lately was argue, mostly via text in the morning and on the phone at six sharp every night. If Leigh had an ounce of intelligence she would back off, but backing off felt too much like letting go. She couldn’t stand not knowing if Maddy had a boyfriend or a girlfriend or had left a string of broken hearts in her wake or had decided to give up love for the pursuit of art and mindfulness. The only thing Leigh knew for sure was that every nasty fucking thing she had ever done or said to her own mother kept slamming into her like a never-ending tidal wave.

  Except Leigh’s mother deserved it.

  She reminded herself that their distance kept Maddy safe. Leigh stayed in the downtown condo they used to share. Maddy had moved to the suburbs with Walter. This was a decision they had all reached together.

  Walter was legal counsel for the Atlanta Fire Fighters’ Union, so his job entailed Microsoft Teams and phone calls made from the safety of his home office. Leigh was a defense attorney. Some of her work was online, but she still had to go into the office and meet with clients. She still had to enter the courthouse and sit through jury selection and conduct trials. Leigh had already caught the virus during the first wave last year. For nine agonizing days, she’d felt like a mule was kicking her in the chest. As far as anyone knew, the risk for kids seemed to be minimal—the school touted its under-one-percent infection rate on its website—but there was no way she was going to be responsible for bringing the plague home to her daughter.