“Shit,” she hissed, her foot going down to the floor. The car in front of her had braked suddenly. Leigh turned the a/c back up. The cold air slapped her face. She passed the stopped car. Drove so carefully that she felt like an old lady. Ahead, the green light started to turn, but she didn’t rush it. She rolled to a stop. Pushed up the turn signal. The digital sign outside the bank gave the time and temperature.
Eleven fifty-eight a.m. Seventy-two degrees.
Leigh turned off the air conditioning. She rolled down the window. She let the heat envelop her. It felt only fitting that she should be sweating. By the end of the stifling August night that Buddy Waleski had died, Leigh and Callie’s clothes were soaked through with blood and sweat.
Buddy was a contractor, or at least that’s what he’d told people. The tiny trunk of his Corvette had held a toolbox with pliers and a hammer. Inside the shed in the backyard were tarps and tape and plastic and a giant machete that hung from a hook on the back of the door.
First, they had rolled Buddy onto the plastic. Then they had gotten on their hands and knees to clean up all the blood underneath him. Next, they had used the kitchen table and chairs to create an impromptu bathtub around the body.
Every second of what happened next was seared into Leigh’s memory. Slicing off chunks of skin with the sharpest knives. Hacking joints with the machete. Breaking teeth with the hammer. Prying up fingernails with pliers in case Callie’s skin was underneath. Scoring fingers with a razor blade to obscure prints. Splashing bleach onto everything to wash away any trace of DNA.
They had taken turns because the work was not just mentally grueling. Cutting up the massive body and shoving the pieces into black lawn bags had taken every last ounce of their physical strength. Leigh had gritted her teeth the whole time. Callie had kept chanting the same maddening lines over and over again— If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and try again … If this is an emergency …
Silently, Leigh had added her own chant—This-is-my-fault-this-is-all-my-fault-this-is-my-fault …
Leigh was thirteen and Trevor was five when she’d started babysitting for the Waleskis. She’d gotten the referral by word of mouth. That first night, Linda had delivered a long-winded lecture about the importance of being trustworthy, then made Leigh read aloud from the list of emergency numbers by the kitchen telephone. Poison Control. Fire department. Police department. Pediatrician. Linda’s number at the hospital.
There had been a quick tour of the depressing house as Trevor had clung to Linda’s waist like a desperate monkey. Lights were turned on and off. The fridge and kitchen cabinets were opened and closed. Here was what they could eat for dinner. There were the snacks. This was his bedtime. Those were the books to read. Buddy would be home by midnight at the latest, but Linda needed Leigh to promise on her life that she would not leave until Buddy was there. And if he didn’t come home, or if he showed up drunk—knee -walking drunk, not just a little drunk—Leigh was to call Linda immediately so she could leave work.
The lecture had seemed like overkill. Leigh had grown up in Lake Point, where the last wealthy white residents had drained the lake on their way out of town so that no black people could swim in it. The small, abandoned houses had been turned into crack dens. Gunshots could be heard at all hours. Leigh walked to school past a park where there were more broken syringes than children. During her previous two years of babysitting, no one had ever questioned her street smarts.
Linda must’ve picked up on her bristling. She had quickly turned down the threat level. Apparently, the Waleskis had been plagued by irresponsible flakes. One sitter had abandoned Trevor, not even locking the door behind her. Another had stopped showing up. Another refused to answer her phone. Linda was mystified. So was Leigh.
And then three hours after Linda had left for work, Buddy had come home.
He’d looked at Leigh in a way that she had never been looked at before. Top to bottom. Appraising her. Sizing her up. Lingering on the shape of her lips, the two tiny bumps pressing against the front of her faded Def Leppard T-shirt.
Buddy was so big, so looming, that his footsteps shook the house as he walked toward the bar. He had poured himself a drink. He had wiped his sloppy mouth with the back of his hand. When he spoke, his words fell all over each other, a cataclysm of sly questions buried in inappropriate compliments—How old are you dolly you can’t be more than thirteen right but damn you look like you’re already a full-grown woman I bet your daddy has to beat the boys off with a stick what’s that you don’t know your daddy that’s a shame baby girl a little thing like you needs a big tough guy to protect her.