“But—” He didn’t understand. He was thinking about Maddy and her friends. It was different in Lake Point. Everyone grew up faster there. “I killed him, Walter. That’s first-degree murder. You know that.”
“You were only two years older than Maddy is now! The man had molested you. You’d just found out that your sister—”
“Stop,” she said, because there was no point in arguing the facts. “I’m telling you this for a reason.”
“Does there have to be a reason?” He couldn’t move off his outrage. “Jesus Christ, Leigh. How could you live with this guilt for so long? You were a victim, too.”
“I wasn’t a fucking victim!”
She had screamed the words so loud she was afraid Maddy would hear them inside of the house. Leigh stood up. She walked over to the little window in the door. She looked up at Maddy’s bedroom. The bedside lamp was still on. She pictured her precious girl curled up with her nose in the book, the same way Callie used to do when she was a kid.
“Baby,” Walter said. “Look at me. Please.”
She turned back around, arms hugging her waist. She could not stand the softness in his voice. She did not deserve his easy forgiveness. Callie was her responsibility. He would never understand that.
She told him, “The client, the rapist I had to meet with Sunday night. Andrew Tenant. That’s who I babysat for. He’s Buddy and Linda’s son.”
Walter had gone speechless again.
“Andrew has all of his father’s videos. He found the murder tape in 2019, but he’s had the rape videos since he went off to college.” Leigh wasn’t going to let herself think about what Andrew had said about watching the tapes. “There were at least two cameras recording everything. There are hours of Buddy raping Callie. Everything that happened the night of the murder was recorded, too. Callie getting into the fight with Buddy, slicing his leg with the knife, then me coming in and murdering him.”
Walter waited, a grim set to his mouth.
“The woman Andrew raped, all the other women he raped, he cut their leg right here.” She put her hand to her own thigh. “The femoral vein. Exactly where Callie cut Buddy.”
Walter waited for the rest.
“Andrew didn’t just rape these women. He drugged them. He kidnapped them. He tortured them. He ripped them apart the same way his father ripped apart Callie.” Leigh put a finer point on it. “He’s psychotic. He’s not going to stop.”
“What—” Walter had the same question that Leigh had. “What does he want?”
“To make me suffer,” Leigh said. “He’s blackmailing me. Voir dire starts tomorrow. Andrew told me he wants me to destroy the victim on the stand. He stole her medical records. I’ve got the information to do it. And then he’s going to make me do something else. Then something else. I can’t stop him.”
“Wait.” Walter’s sympathy was finally draining away. “You just said this guy is a violent psychopath. You have to—”
“What?” she asked. “Throw the trial? He told me he has a fail-safe—either a backup to the cloud or maybe he has the tapes in a bank vault or I don’t know. He said if anything bad happens to him, then he’ll release all of the videos.”
“So fucking what?” Walter said. “Let him release them.”
It was Leigh’s turn to be astonished. “I told you what’s on those tapes. I’ll end up in prison. Callie’s life will be over.”
“Callie’s life?” Walter repeated. “You’re worried about Callie’s fucking life?”
“I can’t—”
“Leigh!” He banged his fist again. “Our teenage daughter is twenty feet away inside of our house. This man is a violent rapist. Did it never occur to you that he could hurt Maddy?”
Leigh was rendered speechless, because Maddy had nothing to do with this.
“Answer me!”
“No.” She started shaking her head, because that would never happen. This was between her and Andrew and Callie. “He wouldn’t—”
“He wouldn’t rape our sixteen-year-old daughter?”
Leigh felt her mouth move, but she couldn’t respond.
“God dammit!” he yelled. “You and your fucking compartments!”
He was falling back into their old argument when this was completely different. “Walter, I never—”
“What? You never thought the violent, sadistic rapist who’s been threatening your freedom would spill into your fucking private life because what—because you won’t let him? Because you’re so goddam good at keeping everything separate?” Walter punched the cabinet door off its hinges. “Jesus fucking Christ! Are you taking your fucking parenting tips from Phil now?”