Her gaze found her reflection in the mirror. Callie stared back at herself, wanting to feel bad about what she was going to do. The feeling wouldn’t come. What she saw instead was Leigh and Walter’s beautiful girl running down the field, oblivious to the monster hiding in the tunnel.
Andrew was going to pay for threatening Maddy. He was going to pay with Sidney’s life.
14
Leigh stood in line for security outside the DeKalb County courthouse, a white marble mausoleum of a building with a toothy, dark-brick main entrance. Faded stickers on the ground designated the proper standing distance. Signs warned that masks were mandated. Large posters were taped to the doors advising visitors that they were not allowed inside per the statewide emergency order from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Georgia.
The courthouse had only recently opened back up for business. Through the pandemic, all of Leigh’s cases had been tried via Zoom, but then vaccinations for court employees had made it possible for the government to open up in-person trials again. Never mind the jurors, attorneys, and defendants who were still playing Corona Russian roulette.
Leigh used her foot to push a file box along to the next sticker. She nodded to one of the deputies who came out to check the line and warn stragglers. There were ten divisions to the Superior Court. All but two of the judges were women of color. Of the two outliers, one had come from a prosecutorial background, but was known to be incredibly fair. The other was a man named Richard Turner, a proud graduate of the good ol’ boy school of judging who had a reputation for being much more lenient toward defendants who looked like him.
In a life of perpetually falling upward, Andrew had drawn Judge Turner for his trial.
Leigh took no pleasure in accepting this as good news. She had resigned herself to defending Andrew Tenant to the fullest of her abilities, even if that required her to break every moral and legal code. She would not let those videos get out. She would not let Callie’s fragile life get shattered. She would not allow herself to think about the implications for Maddy or the argument with Walter last night or the deep and fatal wound he had inflicted on her soul.
Are you taking your fucking parenting tips from Phil now?
She edged up the file box to the next decal as the line shifted forward. Leigh looked down at her hands. The shaking was gone. Her stomach had settled. There were no tears in her eyes.
Walter’s one abiding complaint was that Leigh’s personality changed depending on who was in front of her. She put everything into separate compartments, never letting one spill over into the other. He saw this as a weakness, but Leigh saw it as a survival skill. The only way she was going to make it through the next few days was to completely partition off her emotions.
The transition had started last night. Leigh was standing in her kitchen pouring an entire bottle of vodka down the sink. Then she was standing over the toilet flushing the rest of her Valium. Then she was prepping for Andrew’s case, re-reading motions, re-watching Tammy Karlsen’s interview, doing a deeper dive into her therapy notes, devising a working strategy to win the case because, if she didn’t win, Andrew’s fail-safe would kick in and it would be all for nothing.
By the time the sun came up, the floating feeling had completely evaporated. Walter’s fury, his rage, his deep and fatal wound, had somehow forged Leigh into cold, hard steel.
She picked up the box as she went inside. She stood in front of the iPad stand that took her temperature. The green box told her to proceed. At the checkpoint, she took her phones and laptop out of her purse and placed them in bins. The box went on the belt behind them. She walked through the metal detector. There was a giant bottle of hand sanitizer on the other side. Leigh pumped a glob into her hand and instantly regretted it. One of the local distilleries was riding out the pandemic by using their stills to churn out disinfectants. The white rum residue in the tanks made the entire courthouse smell like Panama City Beach during Spring break.
“Counselor,” someone said. “Your number’s up.”
A deputy had pulled her bins off the belt. Adding to the miseries of the day, Leigh had been selected for random screening. At least she knew the deputy. Maurice Grayson’s brother was a fireman, which gave him a close connection to Walter.
She easily clicked herself into the role of Walter’s wife, smiling behind her mask. “This is blatant racial profiling.”
Maurice laughed as he started unpacking her purse. “More like sexual harassment, Counselor. You’re looking dope today.”
She took the compliment, because she’d paid special attention to everything this morning. Light blue button-down blouse, dark charcoal skirt and blazer, thin white gold necklace, hair down around her shoulders, three-inch black heels—exactly the way the consultants said that Leigh should dress for the jury.