“I know.”
“Huh,” Callie said, which was what she said when she didn’t know what else to say.
“Cal, you don’t have to be here,” Leigh said. “I can take you to—”
“No.” Callie hated being placated, though she knew that she needed it. “Please, Harleigh. Tell me what happened. Don’t leave anything out. I have to know.”
Leigh was still visibly reluctant. The fact that she didn’t protest again, that she didn’t tell Callie to forget about it, that Leigh was going to handle everything like she always did, was terrifying.
She started at the beginning, which was around this time last night. The meeting at her boss’s office. The revelation that Andrew and Linda Tenant were ghosts from her past. Leigh went into detail about Trevor’s girlfriend, Reggie Paltz the private detective who was a little too close, the lies about Callie’s life in Iowa. She explained the rape charges against Andrew, the possible other victims. When she got to the detail about the knife slicing just above the femoral artery, Callie felt her lips part.
“Hold on,” she said. “Back up. What did Trevor say exactly?”
“Andrew,” Leigh corrected. “He’s not Trevor anymore, Callie. And it’s not what he said, it’s how he said it. He knows that his father was murdered. He knows that we got away with it.”
“But—” Callie tried to wrap her brain around what Leigh was saying. “Trev—Andrew is using a knife to hurt his victims the same way I killed Buddy?”
“You didn’t kill him.”
“Fuck, Leigh, sure.” They weren’t going to have that stupid argument again. “You killed him after I killed him. It’s not a contest. We both murdered him. We both chopped him up.”
Leigh fell back into silence. She was giving Callie space, but Callie didn’t need space.
“Harleigh,” she said. “If the body was found, it’s too late to know how he died. Everything would be gone by now. They’d just find bones. And not even all of them. Just scattered pieces.”
Leigh nodded. She had already thought about this.
Callie went through the other options. “We looked for more cameras and cassettes and—everything. We cleaned the knife and put it back in the drawer. I babysat Trevor for another whole damn month before they finally left town. I used that steak knife every time I could. There’s no way anybody could link it back to what we did.”
“I can’t tell you how Andrew knows about the knife, or the cut to Buddy’s leg. All I can say is that he knows.”
Callie forced her mind to go back to that night, though by necessity she had worked to forget most of it. She flipped through the events quickly, not pausing on any one page. Everybody thought that history was like a book with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That’s not how it worked. Real life was all middle.
She told Leigh, “We turned that house upside down.”
“I know.”
“How does he …” Callie flipped back through it again, this time more slowly. “You waited six days before you left for Chicago. Did we talk about it in front of him? Did we say something?”
Leigh shook her head. “I don’t think we did, but …”
Callie didn’t need her to say the words. They had both been in shock. They had both been teenagers. Neither of them was a criminal genius. Their mother had figured out that something bad had happened, but all she’d told them was Don’t put me in the middle of whatever shit you’re tangled up in because I will throw both of your sorry asses under the first bus that swings by.
Leigh said, “I don’t know what mistake we made but, obviously, we made a mistake.”
Callie could tell by looking at her sister that whatever this mistake was, Leigh was piling it onto the other pile of guilt that already weighed her down. “What did Andrew say exactly?”
Leigh shook her head, but her recall had always been excellent. “He asked me if I would know how to commit a crime that would destroy somebody’s life. He asked if I’d know how to get away with cold-blooded murder.”
Callie bit her bottom lip.
“And then he said today isn’t like when we were kids. Because of cameras.”
“Cameras?” Callie echoed. “He said cameras specifically?”
“He said it half a dozen times—that cameras are everywhere, on doorbells, houses, traffic cameras. You can’t go anywhere without being recorded.”