Cole Bradley was full of shit. He didn’t even know which floor Leigh worked on. “I’m also brutally honest. If the trial goes sideways, you are looking at serious time.”
“You haven’t changed a bit, Harleigh. You always put all your cards on the table. That’s why I wanted to work with you.” Andrew wasn’t finished. “You know, the sad part is, the MeToo movement really woke me up. I try hard to be an ally. We should believe women, but this—it’s unconscionable. False allegations only hurt other women.”
Leigh nodded, though she didn’t find his words persuasive one way or another. The problem with rape was that a guilty man generally knew enough about the prevailing culture to say the same things an innocent man would. Soon Andrew would start talking about due process without realizing that what he was going through right now was exactly that.
She said, “Let’s go inside.”
Andrew stepped back so she could walk ahead of him toward the building. Leigh tried to get her head on straight in the interim. She had to stop acting like the worst kind of criminal. As a defense attorney, she knew that her clients didn’t get caught because the cops were brilliant detectives. The client’s own stupidity or guilty conscience usually landed them in legal peril. They either bragged to the wrong person or confessed to the wrong person or, most of the time, stepped on their own dicks, and then they needed a lawyer.
Leigh wasn’t worried about guilty feelings, but she would have to be careful that her fear of getting caught didn’t somehow give her away.
She transferred the coffee cup to her other hand. She steeled herself as she climbed up the crumbling concrete steps to the entrance.
Andrew said, “I’ve looked for Callie over the years. What part of Iowa is she in?”
Leigh felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise up. The biggest mistake a liar could make was to offer too many specifics. “Northwest corner, close to Nebraska.”
“I’d love the address.”
Shit.
Andrew reached ahead of her to open the lobby door. The carpet was worn in front of the stairs. The walls were scuffed. The inside of the building felt more dreary and sad than it had from the outside.
Leigh turned around. Andrew had gone down on one knee to untuck the leg of his pants from his ankle monitor. The device was geo-targeted, limiting him to home, work, and meetings with his attorneys. Anything else and an alarm would go off at the monitoring station. Technically. Like every other resource in the pandemic-wracked city, the probation office was stretched thin.
Andrew looked up at her, asking, “Why Iowa?”
This, at least , Leigh was prepared for. “She fell in love with a man. Got pregnant. Got married. Got pregnant again.”
Leigh checked the sign. REGINALD PALTZ & ASSOC was upstairs.
Again, Andrew let her go first. “I bet Callie’s a terrific mom. She was always so kind to me. It felt more like she was my sister.”
Leigh gritted her teeth as she rounded the landing. She couldn’t figure out if Andrew’s questions were appropriate or intrusive. He had been so transparent as a child—immature for his age, gullible, easy to pin down. Now, all of Leigh’s finely honed gut instinct was falling to the wayside.
He said, “Northwest corner. Is that where the derecho hit?”
She squeezed the coffee cup so hard that the top almost popped off. Had he read everything he could find about Iowa last night? “They got some flooding, but they’re fine.”
“Did she stick with cheerleading?”
Leigh turned around at the top of the stairs. She had to redirect this before he put more words in her mouth. “I forgot you guys moved away after Buddy disappeared.”
He had stopped on the landing. He blinked up at her, silent.
Something about his expression felt off, though it was hard to tell because all she could really see were his eyes. She silently ran back through the conversation, trying to find out where it could’ve gone wrong. Was he acting strange? Was she?
Leigh asked, “Where did you move to?”
He adjusted his mask, pinching it around the bridge of his nose. “Tuxedo Park. We stayed with my uncle Greg.”
Tuxedo Park was one of Atlanta’s oldest, monied neighborhoods. “You were a real Fresh Prince.”
“No kidding.” His laugh sounded forced.
Actually, everything about him felt forced. Leigh had worked with enough criminals to develop an internal warning siren. She felt it flashing bright red as she watched Andrew readjust his mask again. He was completely unreadable. She had never seen someone with such a flat, vacant look in their eyes.