“The victim,” Leigh said. “What’s her name?”
“She’s not just a victim, Collier. She was a mother, a wife, a Sunday school teacher. She’s got a sixteen-year-old daughter, just like you.”
“Save the violins for your closing argument,” Leigh said. “Tell me her name.”
“Ruby Heyer.”
15
“Fucking yeah!” Sidney screamed into the air whipping around her convertible BMW. The radio was blaring a song that dropped more n-words than a white nationalist convention. Sidney sang along, her fist pumping toward the sky with every beat. She was drunk as hell from three pitchers of mimosas, stoned out of her mind from the molly Callie had slipped into her last drink, and probably going to lose control of the car if she didn’t put her eyes back on the road.
The BMW fishtailed at a stop sign. Sidney racked the heel of her palm into the horn. Her foot slammed down on the gas. “Outta my way, motherfucker!”
“Woot!” Callie yelled, raising a companionable fist in the air. Despite herself, she was having fun. Sidney was hilarious. She was young and stupid and she hadn’t completely fucked up her life yet, though clearly, she was working on it.
“Fucker!” Sidney yelled at another driver as she blew through a stop sign. “Fuck you in the face, motherfucker!”
Callie laughed as the elderly driver used both hands to flip them off. Her mind was racing. Her heart was a hummingbird. Colors burst in front of her eyes—neon-green trees, blazing yellow sun, vivid blue sky, bright white trucks and siren-red cars and flashing yellow lines popping up from the jet-black asphalt.
She had forgotten how fantastic it felt to party. Before she’d broken her neck, Callie had tried coke and molly and bennies and meth and addys because she had thought that the answer to her problems was to make the world spin as fast as it could.
The Oxy had changed that. Callie had known the first time the drug hit her system that what she really needed was to revel in the slow. Like a monkey, her feet had turned into fists. She could hang in one place while the world passed her by. The zen from those early days of opioids had been ludicrously off the chart. And then weeks went by, then months, then years, then her standing-still life had narrowed down solely to the pursuit of more heroin.
She fished out one of the pill bottles from her purse, found another Adderall. She placed it on her tongue. Showed it to Sidney.
Sidney leaned over and sucked the tablet off of Callie’s tongue. Her lips melted into Callie’s. Her mouth was hot. The sensation was electric. Callie tried to make it last, but Sidney slipped away, turning her attention back to the car. Callie shuddered, her body waking up in a way it hadn’t in years.
“God damn!” Sidney yelled, pushing the car to go faster as she slalomed down a residential street. The BMW skidded into a sharp curve. She came to a jarring stop. “Fuck.”
Callie was jerked forward as Sidney pushed the gear into reverse. Tires burned against the blacktop. Sidney backed up several yards, hit the gear again, and they were heading up a long driveway to a giant white house.
Andrew’s house.
Back at the restaurant, Callie had made noises about taking the party to her pretend hotel room, but she’d dropped in the detail that they’d need to keep quiet and Sidney had said the exact words that Callie had teed up—
Fuck being quiet let’s go back to my place.
It shouldn’t have been surprising that Andrew lived in what looked like a serial killer’s murder mansion. Everything was white but for the sugar-cube-shaped shrubs. The place embodied the dead-inside vibe Andrew had exuded inside the stadium tunnel.
And it was the most likely location that Andrew would store the video tape of Buddy’s murder.
Callie pressed down on her torn fingernail, the pain bringing her back to reality. She wasn’t here to party. Sidney was young and innocent, but so was Maddy. Only one of them had a rapist psychopath in their lives. Callie was going to keep it that way.
Sidney swung the car around the back of the house. The BMW screeched to a stop in front of an industrial-looking glass garage door. Sidney pressed a button on the bottom of the rearview mirror. She told Callie, “Don’t worry, he’s tied up all day.”
He was one of the ways she referred to Andrew. She called him my stupid boyfriend or my idiot husband, but she had never used his name.
The car lurched into the garage, nearly hitting the back wall.
“Fuck!” Sidney yelled, jumping out of the car. “Let’s get this party started!”