False Witness by Karin Slaughter
SUMMER 1998
From the kitchen, Callie heard Trevor tapping his fingers on the aquarium. Her grip tightened around the spatula she was using to mix cookie dough. He was only ten years old. She thought he was being bullied at school. His father was an asshole. He was allergic to cats and terrified of dogs. Any shrink would tell you the kid was terrorizing the poor fish in a desperate bid for attention, but Callie was barely holding on by her fingernails.
Tap-tap-tap.
She rubbed her temples, trying to ward off a headache. “Trev, are you tapping on the aquarium like I told you not to?”
The tapping stopped. “No, ma’am.”
“Are you sure?”
Silence.
Callie plopped dough onto the cookie sheet. The tapping resumed like a metronome. She plopped out more rows on the three count.
Tap-tap-plop. Tap-tap-plop.
Callie was closing the oven door when Trevor suddenly appeared behind her like a serial killer. He threw his arms around her, saying, “I love you.”
She held on to him as tightly as he held on to her. The fist of tension loosened its grip on her skull. She kissed the top of Trevor’s head. He tasted salty from the festering heat. He was standing completely still, but his nervous energy reminded her of a coiled spring. “Do you want to lick the bowl?”
The question was answered before she could finish asking it. He dragged a kitchen chair to the counter and made like Pooh Bear sticking his head into a honeypot.
Callie wiped the sweat from her forehead. The sun had gone down an hour ago, but the house was still broiling. The air conditioning was barely functioning. The oven had turned the kitchen into a sauna. Everything felt sticky and wet, herself and Trevor included.
She turned on the faucet. The cold water was irresistible. She splashed her face, then, to Trevor’s delight, sprinkled some on the back of his neck.
Once the giggling died down, Callie adjusted the water to clean the spatula. She placed it in the drying rack beside the remnants from dinner. Two plates. Two glasses. Two forks. One knife to cut Trevor’s hot dog into pieces. One teaspoon for a dollop of Worcestershire sauce mixed in with the ketchup.
Trevor handed her the bowl to wash. His lips curved up to the left when he smiled, the same way his father’s did. He stood beside her at the sink, his hip pressing against her.
She asked, “Were you tapping the glass on the aquarium?”
He looked up. She caught the flash of scheming in his eyes. Exactly like his father. “You said they were starter fish. That they probably wouldn’t live.”
She felt a nasty response worthy of her mother press against the back of her clenched teeth—Your grandfather’s going to die, too. Should we go down to the nursing home and stick needles under his fingernails?
Callie hadn’t said the words out loud, but the spring inside of Trevor coiled even tighter. She was always unsettled by how tuned in he was to her emotions.
“Okay.” She dried her hands on her shorts, nodding toward the aquarium. “We should find out their names.”
He looked guarded, always afraid of being the last one to get the joke. “Fish don’t have names.”
“Of course they do, silly. They don’t just meet each other on the first day of school and say, ‘Hello, my name is Fish.’” She gently nudged him into the living room. The two bicolored blennies were swimming a nervous loop around the aquarium. She had lost Trevor’s interest several times during the arduous process of setting up the saltwater tank. The arrival of the fish had sharpened his focus to the head of a pin.
Callie’s knee popped as she knelt down in front of the aquarium. The throbbing pain was more tolerable than the sight of Trevor’s grimy fingerprints clouding the glass. “What about the little guy?” She pointed to the smaller of the two. “What’s his name?”
Trevor’s lips curved up at the left as he fought a smile. “Bait.”
“Bait?”
“For when the sharks come and eat him!” Trevor burst into too-loud laughter, rolling on the floor at the hilarity.
Callie tried to rub the throb out of her knee. She glanced around the room with her usual sinking depression. The stained shag carpet had been flattened sometime in the late eighties. Streetlight lasered around the puckered edges of the orange and brown drapes. One corner of the room was taken up by a fully stocked bar with a smoky mirror behind it. Glasses hung down from a ceiling rack and four leather bar stools crowded around the L-shape of the sticky wooden top. The entire room was centered around a giant television that weighed more than Callie. The orange couch had two depressing his-and-her indentations on opposite ends. The tan club chairs had sweat stains at the backs. The arms had been burned by smoldering cigarettes.