Real Bad Things(72)

Where had things gone wrong? She considered as she took the ramp onto the highway instead of the road toward home. Had she overhelped? She had. She had overhelped. She had overhelped when her help wasn’t wanted. Even though it had seemed like life or death to Georgia Lee. It had. Warren had come at her. He had raised his hand to her, and then Jason had yelled at him to stop. But he hadn’t stopped, so Georgia Lee had stopped him. Hadn’t she? Her memory clashed with all the lies. When his body didn’t show up, they should’ve gone to the police right then. Georgia Lee should have told the truth. But how were they to know that then? They were young and scared and so had covered their sin. That was their mistake. But Jane had made the mistake to confess. That was all on her.

She pulled into the police station, locked her door and any emotion that might betray her, headed inside, and asked for John. While she waited for him to finish his “business in the back,” she chatted with some of the guys about the election. The chat anchored her in the moment, kept her from running out the door, which she considered with every lull in conversation. She crossed her arms to still her shaking body.

They also had lots to say about the news coverage of the photos that were, allegedly, as far as they knew, her. Lots of jokes about them suspecting her of murderous intention all along and how they couldn’t wait to see what other juicy details Lovelace would reveal to Let’s Talk About Maud next. She fake laughed along with them, except Benjamin. Not the laughing sort, she supposed. Maybe he knew exactly why she was there. Maybe he knew everything.

Just as her resolve had begun to crumble and doubt crept in and led her feet to creep toward the exit, John wandered in from the back room. He gave her a smile.

“What brings you in this late?”

Georgia Lee cast her gaze toward Benjamin. A wave of fear and finality rushed through her. There was no now or never. There was only now or soon, when she was least prepared.

Georgia Lee placed her purse on the counter and took a deep breath. “I’m here to turn myself in for the murder of Warren Ingram.”





Twenty-Five

JANE

The trailer was empty, Diane nowhere to be found. Probably out with Gerry, that traitor. Jane had spilled her guts, and he’d gone back to Diane anyway.

She paced the floor, trying to think of what to do with the information Georgia Lee had told her. She texted Jason.





911!


Emergency!

What the fuck?!?

He hadn’t responded to the drunken and incendiary text she’d sent from Family Fun, so she doubted her latest round would produce results.

She loosened her shirt, which bunched at the waist. She pulled the fabric to her nose. She could still smell Georgia Lee all over her.

She ripped off her shirt and pants and underwear and threw them on the floor. In the shower, she scrubbed until Georgia Lee was off her skin. Afterward, she returned to the couch, grabbed her laptop, and clicked on the TV. She flipped through the channels in between texting Jason and googling local news. Nothing but reality shows and old episodes of Law & Order. She left it on the latter with the volume low enough that it didn’t agitate her—and high enough that she didn’t feel all alone. She was hardly that. Next door, she could hear a couple talking loudly. Someone somewhere nearby listened to Spanish versions of American pop songs. In the distance, a subwoofer signaled the start of a party. Above it all, she swore she could hear the steady roar of water in the dam.

She turned up the volume on the TV, but it only heightened the questions in her head. How could Georgia Lee have forgotten what happened? Why had Jason let her think he had killed Warren? Did Diane know she hadn’t killed Warren?

A tornado of questions with no answers intensified in her head.

She wondered what Georgia Lee was doing at that moment. What she might be thinking, doing. Probably plotting against her. Had she done that already, gotten Jason to go against her, as Angie had suggested?

How the hell was she supposed to convince the cops that Georgia Lee had done it, not her or Jason, after Jane had already confessed?

She needed to calm all the nervous energy that vibrated through her. She needed a distraction, but the only thing that calmed her was going all in on the thing she most wanted to avoid but could not.

She typed Lezzie Borden and hit “Search.”

For hours, she pored over whatever details she could find about her original confession, about her prospects now. She didn’t know what she was looking for, so she wandered down a long and winding trail that led her to web sleuths, people who helped solve mysteries and cold cases from the comfort of their homes. Why the fuck didn’t she have web sleuths?

That goddamn confession.

She drank shitty coffee and read through forums and discussion groups. Learned the types of things web sleuths wanted to know when trying to figure out who really killed so-and-so and whether the alleged murder weapon was really the murder weapon.

At 5:00 a.m., blurry eyed and at a dead end, she grabbed a generic-brand yogurt from the fridge and returned to the couch. It’d been hours. No texts from Jason.

Tired but wide awake, she engaged in another futile social media check to see if anyone knew something about her case that she didn’t know, which would be a lot considering she didn’t know shit. Georgia Lee’s last Facebook post was an election flyer. Visually assaultive and predictable. Red, white, and blue all over in mismatched fonts and sizes. About as compelling as a bowl of unseasoned, unbuttered quick grits.