Callie mentally walked herself through the Waleskis’ filthy house. She could see herself kissing Andrew on the head, making certain he was really asleep, then heading down the hall to the master bedroom and picking up the pink princess phone by Linda’s side of the bed.
She told Leigh, “The cord was ripped off the phone in the kitchen. How could I call you from the bedroom?”
“You hung the receiver back up. I saw it on the wall phone when I got there.”
That made sense, so Callie believed her. “Was anyone else there? Like, a neighbor who could’ve seen?”
“When it was happening?” Leigh shook her head. “We would’ve heard about it before now. Especially when Linda came into all of that family money. Someone would’ve approached her about buying the information.”
She had that right. There was not one person in the entire ’hood who would’ve let the opportunity for a cash payday slip by. “Was there a time when we were both out of the house?”
“Not until the end when we were loading the trash bags into my car,” Leigh said. “And before that, we backtracked the fight. It took us four hours, and we kept making sure Andrew was asleep every twenty minutes at least.”
Callie nodded, because she could vividly recall that she had been the one to go into the room each time. Andrew always slept on his side, his tiny body curled into a ball, a clicking sound coming out of his open mouth.
“We’re back where we started,” Leigh said. “We still don’t know how much Andrew knows or how he knows it.”
Callie didn’t need the reminder. “Tell me the list you’ve been going over for the last two days.”
“We searched for more cameras. We searched for more video cassettes,” Leigh counted off the items on her fingers. “We checked every book on the shelves, turned over the furniture and mattresses, shook the jars and vases, the potted plants. We took everything out of the kitchen cabinets. We unscrewed the grills from all the air vents. You even put your hand inside the aquarium.”
Leigh had run out of fingers.
Callie asked, “Maybe Andrew was pretending to be asleep? He could’ve heard me in the hallway outside his door. The boards creaked.”
“He was ten years old,” Leigh said. “Kids that age are ridiculously transparent.”
“We were kids, too.”
Leigh was already shaking her head. “Think about how complicated the cover-up would have to be. Andrew would have to pretend he hadn’t seen his father murdered. Then keep pretending when Linda got home from work the next morning. Then lie to the cops. Then lie to whoever asked him about the last time he’d seen his father. Then keep the secret from you for a month while you were still babysitting him. Then keep the secret for all these years.”
“He’ s a psychopath.”
“Sure, but he was still a baby,” Leigh said. “Cognitively, even smart ten-year-olds are a mess. They try to act like adults, but they still make kid mistakes. They lose stuff all the time—jackets, shoes, books. They can barely be trusted to bathe themselves. They tell stupid lies you can see straight through. There’s no way even a ten-year-old psychopath could pull off that level of deceit.”
If anyone knew how bad a liar Andrew had been at ten, it was Callie at fourteen. “What about Andrew’s girlfriend?”
“Sidney Winslow,” Leigh provided. “Yesterday at Reggie’s office, I gave Andrew my little speech on the exceptions to spousal privilege. He looked like he was going to shit himself. He made Sidney wait in the parking lot. She pitched a fit. He knows he can’t trust her.”
“Which means he probably hasn’t shared anything about how his father really died.” Callie asked, “Do you think we could use her to get to him?”
“She’s definitely a weak link,” Leigh said. “If you take it on faith that Andrew was planning to screw with me during that first meeting with Reggie Paltz, the thing that sidetracked him was Sidney.”
“What do you know about her?”
“Not a damn thing,” Leigh said. “I found a credit check that the previous lawyer had Reggie do last fall. No outstanding debt. Nothing suspicious or damning, but the report is very superficial. Normally, when I want a deep dive on a witness, I assign an investigator to ask questions and follow them around, check all social media, look into where they work, but my boss made Reggie the exclusive investigator on the case. If I hire another one, Andrew or Linda or my boss will see the charges on my billing and ask for an explanation.”