The Silent Wife (Will Trent #10) - Karin Slaughter Page 0,160

I don’t know. Maybe everything was actually really where it was supposed to be. There was a comedian who had this joke about breaking into people’s apartments and moving their things one centimeter away from where they should actually be. Isn’t that crazy?”

Faith didn’t answer.

“I just felt … scrutinized?” Callie didn’t seem satisfied with the word. “As if someone had been through my things. Touched my things. Nothing was missing, but then one day, suddenly, I couldn’t find my favorite hair tie.”

Faith’s hand tightened around her glass.

“My hair tie,” Callie repeated, as if to highlight the insignificance. “I reached into my purse for it, and it wasn’t there, and I just went mental. I tore the place apart searching for it everywhere, but it was gone.”

“What did it look like?”

“Just a red hair tie.” She shrugged. “I paid a few hundred bucks for it.”

Faith looked at the tie in Callie’s hair. A gold charm dangled down from the elastic. She recognized the double C’s of the Chanel logo.

“I know this sounds ludicrous, but that hair tie meant something to me. I usually had to get Rod’s permission to buy a pack of gum. It was the first thing I bought on my own. And the reason was, he always made me wear my hair down. Always. He would spot-check me at work.” She gave a bitter laugh. “So, he broke into my apartment and stole it from me.”

“Did the security cameras catch him?”

She shook her head. “I never looked. I didn’t want my super telling everyone in the building about the hysterical woman crying over a missing hair tie.”

Faith had assumed that a $6,000,000 penthouse bought you some degree of indulgence.

Callie said, “That’s how Rod always won. He made me feel crazy, like I couldn’t tell anybody what was going on because they wouldn’t believe me.”

Faith gently steered her back to the attack. “You were hit in the head with a hammer. You were missing for thirty-six hours. You had—”

“I had a gift.” Her tone made it clear that she was certain of this one thing. “Rod was going to drag me into court and air every single piece of our dirty laundry. And believe me, there’s a lot. Not just about me, but about my family. My mother. Her business. Rod wanted to burn all of us in effigy. But then he gave me this gift, this abhorrent, savage gift, and I traded my silence for my freedom. Rod slithered back to Wyoming with nothing but the clothes on his back. I walked away with my life.”

Faith looked down at the glass in her hand. Callie Zanger sounded triumphant, avenged. But the more she talked, the more Faith was convinced that she was wrong.

She tried, “Do you remember how you got from your car to the woods?”

“No. The doctors said that amnesia is normal after a significant blow to the head.” She had finished her vodka. She motioned towards Faith glass. “I know what it looks like when someone is pretending to drink.”

Faith slid her glass toward Callie. She knew what it looked like when someone was an alcoholic.

“I remember waking up in the woods.” Callie tossed back her head. Half the liquid disappeared. “I woke up several times, actually. I don’t know if it was the head wound or the shit he was forcing me to drink, but I kept falling asleep, waking up, falling asleep.”

“What did he make you drink?”

“Whatever it was, it made me absolutely stoned. I was delirious. I couldn’t control my thoughts. One minute I was terrified, the next minute I was floating in the ether. I couldn’t move my arms and legs. I kept forgetting where I was, even who I was.”

Faith thought that sounded a hell of a lot like Rohypnol. “Did you recognize the taste?”

“Sure, it tasted like piss and sugar. I prefer this.” Callie raised the glass in a toast, then finished the vodka in one go. The alcohol seemed to catch up with her all at once. Her eyes turned glassy. She had trouble placing the empty glass flat on the counter.

Faith reached over to help.

“You know, it’s bittersweet that Rod’s downfall was the thing that made me fall in love with him in the first place.” She explained, “He always needed to control me. He couldn’t just leave me there to die. He had to keep coming back. Three or four times, I would wake up and he was there.”

“Did you see him?” Faith asked. “Did you see