Callie nodded slowly, almost imperceptibly.
Faith bit her tongue to hold back the rush of questions. Will was so much better at leaning into silence. All Faith could do was sip her iced tea and wait.
The bartender returned. He did the hat tip, placed the double vodka on the bar. This time, the pour wasn’t just generous. It was more like a triple. He saw Faith looking and winked before walking away.
Callie stared down at the clear liquid. She had started chewing the inside of her lip. “I found one of those GPS things on my car.”
“This was two years ago?”
“Yes. During my divorce.” Callie started turning the glass in a circle. “The transceiver was in a black metal box, attached by a magnet to the wheel well. I don’t know why I checked for it. Well, yes, actually I do. I felt like I was being watched. I knew Rod wouldn’t let me go.”
Faith asked, “Did you tell anyone about it at the time?”
“My divorce lawyer.” She looked up at Faith. “Always listen to your lawyer. They know best.”
Faith gathered from her tone that she was being sarcastic.
“She told me to leave it on the car exactly where I found it. She didn’t want to tip off Rod. We wanted to maintain privilege, so her office contracted directly with an IT guy to try to trace the device. He finally told us that he couldn’t get the information without a subpoena, and filing a subpoena would tip off Rod, so …”
Faith longed for her notebook. If Callie gave her attorney permission to break privilege, Faith could have a subpoena within hours.
She asked Callie, “How did it happen?”
“I was sitting in my car. About to drive to work. I had a meeting, but—” She waved her hand, brushing it all away. “I don’t think it was actually Rod who did it. He must’ve hired someone. He always liked to watch my face when he was beating me. This guy didn’t want to be seen.”
Callie took a long pull from her glass. She thumped it down on the counter. Her hands weren’t shaking, but they were unsteady.
She said, “I can still see it, you know? The hammer. I happened to look up into the rearview mirror. I have no idea why. I saw this hammer swinging down. It was strange-looking, the head of the thing. I’ve done so many internet searches looking for what to call it, but there are hundreds of different hammers, and they’ve got fiberglass handles and wooden ones and this hammer is for framing and that hammer is for drywall and, do you know, there are even YouTube videos that show the best way to knock out someone with a hammer?”
Faith shook her head, pretending like her heart had not dropped into her stomach.
The last week of March. The early morning hour. The hammer.
Callie signaled the bartender for another, telling him, “Bring one for my friend, too.”
Faith tried to stop her.
Callie asked, “Are you off the record or not?”
Faith nodded for the man to bring two drinks.
Callie watched the bartender walk to the other end of the bar.
She said, “He’s got a nice ass.”
Faith didn’t care about the man’s ass. The air had folded in around them. She looked in the mirror. Will was still sitting at the table across the room. He was holding his phone in his hand, but his eyes were on the bar.
Faith asked Callie, “What’s the next thing you remember?”
“I woke up in the woods, of all places.” She took a breath. “Our first date was a picnic on the grounds of the Biltmore. Rod was always clever that way. He knew he couldn’t impress me with a fancy restaurant or private club. He gave me something that money couldn’t buy: homemade sandwiches, chips, paper napkins, plastic cups. He even wrote me a poem. My romantic cowboy.”
She had moved away from that moment in the woods. Faith let her stray.
“The first time Rod hit me, we were a week away from getting married. He knocked the hell out of me. Literally rang my bell.” She stared longingly into the empty glass. “And then he cried like a baby. And it broke my heart. This big, strong cowboy was sobbing with his head in my lap, begging me to forgive him, promising me it would never, ever happen again, and I just …”
Faith listened to her voice trail off. There was a tinge of sadness in her tone. Callie Zanger was a smart woman. She knew the exact point in her life when everything had turned bad.
She glanced at Faith. “You’ve heard this old story before, right? As a police officer?”
Faith nodded.
“It’s so embarrassing how they all work from the same boring, predictable playbook.” She explained. “They cry and you forgive them. Then eventually, they realize that crying isn’t going to work anymore, so they make you feel guilty. And then the guilt stops working and they resort to threats, and before you know it, you’re terrified of leaving and terrified of staying and fifteen years has gone by and …”
Faith couldn’t let her trail off again. “What made you finally leave him?”
“I got pregnant.” She gave a thin smile. “Rod didn’t want children.”
Faith didn’t have to ask what had happened. Callie was right. She had heard this story countless times before.
“It was a blessing, honestly. I couldn’t protect myself. How could I protect a child?”
The bartender made his third appearance. This time, he skipped the hat tip. He put down the two glasses with a practiced twist of his wrists. Faith gathered he had seen Callie in here before. He knew that a double meant a triple. He more than likely knew he would be well compensated for the charade.
Callie told Faith, “Drink up.”
Faith wrapped her hand around the glass. The liquid was cold. She pretended to take a sip.
Callie took in a mouthful. She was two triples in and on the cusp of tipsy. Faith wondered if she’d had something else before coming down to the restaurant. Her eyelids were heavy. She kept chewing the inside of her lip.
“Rod toyed with me during the divorce,” Callie said. “I thought I was losing my mind.”
Faith feigned another sip.
“When we were married, he always checked after me to make sure I put things back where they belonged. If something was out of place—” She didn’t have to finish the sentence. “When I moved out, when I got my own space, I just thought, ‘I’m going to be messy. I’m going to drop my clothes on the floor and leave the milk out and throw caution to the wind.’”
Her laugh sounded like crystal breaking.
“You know what happens when you leave the milk out?” She gave Faith an eye-roll. “I had fifteen years of training. I couldn’t break the neat-freak habit. It made me too nervous. And I like knowing where things are, but suddenly, things were not where they were supposed to be.”
Faith felt a tightness in her chest. “Like what?”
“Oh, 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.”