Real Bad Things(83)
“The guy with the missing finger. Remember him? He was a nice guy. But then he disappeared.”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Diane swiped the hair out of her face. Her gaze darted around the room. “I don’t know what you want. But you—”
“What happened to him? I saw his picture in that box you keep, the one with all the other pictures of all these other men.” Her face heated. “I saw his photo. I saw it in the box. What happened to him? What happened to the others?” Madness. Her mind had turned to madness. But she had to know for sure. “What did you do?”
“What did I do?” Diane practically cackled. “I didn’t do shit. They’re the ones who—”
“The body.” She thought she might collapse from lack of air. Say it, she told herself. “It’s—”
Out of nowhere, Diane brushed the hair out of Jane’s eyes, startling her. She held onto Jane’s shoulders and looked at her with what Jane could only interpret as pity. Then she grasped the back of Jane’s head and pulled her close, so close, her fingers twined so tight the roots of Jane’s hair felt liable to give and fall to the floor. Pain pulsed at her scalp.
“Nothing happened to him or them,” Diane said, her grip tightening. “And nothing happened to you.”
Before she could pause to think about what Diane meant, survival took over. Jane yanked her head away. Searing pain followed from the tuft of her hair left hanging in Diane’s grip.
She rushed down the hallway, knocking pictures off the wall as she tried to keep from stumbling. Inside the room, she pushed the clutter out of the way until she found the shoebox. It was still there. She grabbed it, held it in front of her, and raced to the bedroom door.
She ricocheted backward and almost fell but managed to stay upright.
Diane looked as stunned as Jane felt. They both looked down.
A small box cutter was lodged in the cardboard.
“What the fuck?” Jane whispered.
Before Jane could recover, Diane yanked and yanked until she released the box cutter. Then she lunged for Jane.
She cut her finger. Her hand. Her face. Any strip of skin she could find.
Jane wielded the box as a weapon and shoved Diane into the wall repeatedly. Diane screamed and shrieked, but Jane kept shoving her. Again and again. All the while, Diane lashed out with the box cutter, slashing Jane’s exposed skin.
Jane held the box away, closed her eyes, and hit and hit and hit, and then the box slipped from all the blood and Jane dropped it. She scrambled to grab all the photos that had spilled out.
She ran out the door.
She ran into the street.
She ran until she almost got run over by a car, whose driver jumped out and screamed.
But Jane kept running. Because she had the box.
She had the box.
Thirty-One
GEORGIA LEE
“Tell us again.” Benjamin glared at her.
“We told you.” Georgia Lee gripped her head. “There’s nothing else to say.”
“What was Jane’s involvement?”
“For the last time, she wasn’t there,” Jason said.
Benjamin’s chest rose and fell with irritation. “You’ve all said a lot of things, none of them consistent, which leads me to believe none of them are true.”
“Jane was protecting me,” Jason said. “She thought the police were going to lock me away, so she took the blame. That’s the truth.”
Georgia Lee clasped her hands. “It’s true. I swear he’s telling the truth.”
“None of you have told the truth,” Benjamin said. “Why did Jane lie? Why did you both decide to confess last night? What prompted that?”
“Nothing!” The agony of Georgia Lee’s conversation with Jane still ached. Now she fully understood why Jane had confessed to the crime years ago. “I told you. Nothing!”
John shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Let it go, Benjamin. They confessed. It’s enough.”
But it wasn’t enough for Benjamin. He was chasing the truth. A confession was hardly that. It was just words. Words were easy to tear apart, unlike proof. Evidence. And from all Georgia Lee had seen, they had none of that.
“We confessed,” Jason said, still calm. He eyed Benjamin almost as if he were staring at someone across the bar, contemplating whether or not to buy them a drink. He glanced at Benjamin’s manila folder and lifted an eyebrow. “Unless you have something to share.”
They locked eyes. The clock ticked down the seconds of their showdown. John and Georgia Lee watched them, waited. Any second now one of them would explode.
The door flashed open and slammed the wall. Georgia Lee screamed and dropped to the floor, covering her head with her hands. John joined her. From her vantage point, she could see Benjamin and Jason in mirrored positions, hands clutched to their chests from being startled. Also from her vantage point, she recognized the shoes, the pants of the perpetrator who had crashed into the room and nearly scared them all to death. Georgia Lee raised her head. Eyes level with the table, she witnessed a panting, bloody Jane, a box in front of her.
“It’s not him,” she said, ragged breath barely getting out the words. “The man you found. It’s not Warren.”