Callie had been right about one thing last night. Leigh had to stop flailing around like a helpless bitch. It was about time she flexed her hard-earned right to play by rich people rules. She had graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern. She worked at a white-shoe firm and had clocked in nearly two thousand hours of billing in the last year. She was married to one of the most admired men in his field. She had a beautiful daughter. Her reputation was spotless.
Andrew Tenant was credibly accused of kidnapping, raping, beating, and sodomizing a woman.
Who were they going to believe?
Leigh looked at the time. Three more hours before she was expected in Cole Bradley’s office. Andrew would be waiting for her. Leigh would have to come fully armed, ready for whatever game he was going to play.
She rubbed her temples as she looked down at the first responding officer’s statement.
Female victim was handcuffed to picnic table in center of open-air pavilion located in …
Leigh’s vision doubled on the rest of the paragraph. She tried to refocus her eyes by looking out the glass wall that separated her rarefied kind from the first-year associates. There was no breathtaking view of the downtown skyline, just a windowless cubicle farm that spread like prison bars across the entire floor. Plexiglas barriers kept the occupants from breathing on each other, but masks were still required. Janitors came through once an hour to sanitize the surfaces. All of the baby lawyers worked off hot desks, which meant they took whichever desk was available when they arrived. And since they were baby lawyers, most of them arrived at six in the morning and worked in the dark until the overhead lights came on at seven. If they had been surprised to see Leigh had beaten them into the office, they were too weary to show it.
She checked her personal phone, though she knew Callie hadn’t texted because Callie wasn’t going to text until Leigh was so tense that her head was about to explode.
As expected, there was nothing from her sister, but Leigh’s heart did a funny little flip when she saw a notification on the screen. Maddy had posted a video. Leigh watched her daughter lip-synching around Walter’s kitchen as Tim Tam, their chocolate Lab, played unwitting backup.
Leigh strained to follow the lyrics, desperate for cues on how to post a response that didn’t get an eye-roll or, worse, completely ignored. At least she was able to recognize Ariana Grande. She scrolled to the description, but 34+35 made absolutely no sense. She had watched the video two more times before her mind performed the simple addition and she realized what the song was really about.
“Oh for the love of—” She snatched up her desk phone. She started to punch in Walter’s number, but there was no way to talk to Walter without telling him that she had seen Callie.
The phone dropped back into the cradle. Walter knew everything about Leigh except for the one thing that mattered the most. She had told him Callie had been molested, but the details had stopped there. Leigh wasn’t going to give Walter a name to look up on the internet or a stray comment that would make him start wondering what had really happened all those years ago. She had held back the information not because she didn’t trust Walter, or because she was worried it would make him love her less. She did not want to burden her gentle husband, her precious daughter’s father, with the weight of her guilt.
Liz knocked on the glass door. She was wearing a fuchsia mask that matched the flowers on her jumpsuit. Leigh put on her mask before waving her in.
There was never any preamble with Liz. She said, “I’ve moved the Johnson depo by two weeks. The judge on the Bryant case wants your response to the motion by six on Friday. I’ve put Dr. Unger on the sixteenth; it’s updated in your Outlook. You’re due in Bradley’s office in three hours. I’ll bring you lunch, just let me know if you want a salad or a sandwich. You’ll need your heels for Bradley. They’re in the closet.”
“Sandwich.” Leigh had written the details on her notepad as Liz rattled them off. “Did you read the incident reports about Andrew’s ankle monitor?”
Liz shook her head. “What’s up?”
“He’s had four separate issues in the last two months. Anything from the GPS going off-line to the fiber optic cable in the strap shorting out. Each time the alarm went off, he called the probation office, but you know how bad things are right now. Anywhere between three and five hours passed before an officer was dispatched to reset the system.”
“Was there any evidence of tampering?”
“Not that the officer reported.”