What she had to do right now was turn that laser-focus not onto Andrew Tenant, but onto Andrew Tenant’s case. Leigh was a very high-priced lawyer. Andrew’s trial was scheduled to start in one week. Her boss had requested a full-on strategy session by end of day tomorrow. She had a client looking at serious charges and a prosecutor who was playing more than the usual prosecutor games. Leigh’s job was to find a way to poke enough holes in the case for at least one juror to drive a bus through.
She sighed out a stream of anxiety to help clear her thoughts. She scooped up Andrew’s file from the passenger seat. She flipped through the pages, found the summary paragraph.
Tammy Karlsen. Comma Chameleon. Fingerprints. CCTV.
Leigh read the entire summation without comprehension. The individual words made sense, but putting them into a coherent sentence was impossible. She tried to go back to the beginning. The lines of text began to swirl around until her stomach started swirling with them. She closed the file. Her hand found the door handle but didn’t pull. She gulped in air. Then again. Then again. And again, until she swallowed down the acid that was trying to hurl up her throat.
Leigh’s daughter was the only living being who had ever been able to break her focus. If Maddy was sick or upset or justifiably angry, Leigh was miserable until things were set right. That uneasiness was nothing compared to how she felt now. Every nerve ending inside of her body felt like it was being pounded by the rattling chains of Buddy Waleski’s ghost.
She tossed the file onto the seat. Squeezed her eyes closed. Pressed her head back. Her stomach wouldn’t stop churning. She had been on the edge of vomiting most of the night. She hadn’t been able to sleep. She hadn’t even bothered getting into bed. She’d sat on the couch for hours in the dark trying to think her way out of representing Andrew.
Trevor.
The night that Buddy had died, the NyQuil had effectively put Trevor into a coma. But they’d had to make sure. Leigh had called his name several times, her voice growing increasingly louder. Callie had snapped her fingers near his ear, then clapped together her hands close to his face. She’d even shaken him a little, before shifting him back and forth like a rolling pin across a piece of dough.
The police had never found Buddy’s body. By the time his Corvette was located in an even shittier part of town, the car had been stripped for parts. Buddy did not have an office, so there was no paper trail. The Canon digital camcorder hidden inside the bar had been broken into pieces with a hammer, the parts scattered around the city. They had searched for other mini-cassettes and found none. They had looked for compromising photographs and found none. They had turned over the couch and upended mattresses and rifled drawers and closets and unscrewed grates from the vents and rummaged through pockets and bookshelves and inside Buddy’s Corvette and then they had carefully cleaned up after themselves and put everything back in place and left before Linda had gotten home.
Harleigh, what are we going to do?
You’re going to stick to the damn story so we both don’t end up in prison.
There was so much awful bullshit Leigh had done in her life that still weighed on her conscience, but the murder of Buddy Waleski carried the mass of a feather. He had deserved to die. Her only regret was that it hadn’t happened years before he got his hooks into Callie. There was no such thing as a perfect crime, but Leigh was certain they had gotten away with murder.
Until last night.
Her hands started to ache. She looked down. Her fingers were wrapped around the bottom of the steering wheel. The knuckles were bright white teeth biting into the leather. She checked the clock. Her angst had eaten up ten full minutes.
“Focus,” she chided herself.
Andrew Trevor Tenant.
His file was still on the passenger seat. Leigh closed her eyes for another moment, summoning the sweet, goofy Trevor who’d loved to run around the yard and occasionally eat paste. That was why Linda and Andrew wanted Leigh to defend him. They had no idea that Leigh was involved in Buddy’s sudden disappearance. What they wanted was a defender who would still see Andrew as that harmless child from twenty-three years ago. They didn’t want her to associate him with the monstrous acts he was accused of.
Leigh retrieved the file. It was time for her to read about those monstrous acts.
She took another breath to reset herself. Leigh wasn’t one of those believers in bad blood or apples not falling far from the tree. Otherwise, she would be an abusive alcoholic with a felony assault conviction. People could transcend their circumstances. It was possible to break the cycle.