Real Bad Things(85)
Georgia Lee watched it all in confusion. Her blood beat so fast she thought she might pass out. John and Tom looked about as confused as Georgia Lee felt. Jane was a tornado, Jason the frantic one trying to contain the storm. Benjamin the outside observer, taking it all in, asking the questions. On the edge of something.
“What is this?” Benjamin asked again and removed the lid from the box.
“A box of men.” Jane’s eyes lit up, as if finally being heard after years of speaking without anyone hearing her. “From our mother’s house—”
“A box of men?” Benjamin asked. The question came out tentative. “Like she’s collecting them?”
“Photos, all these random men. Other things too. Like, mementos.”
“Stop talking.” Jason glared at Jane. “Don’t talk unless you have a lawyer.”
“I don’t need a lawyer.” Her words were lashes off her tongue. “Diane does.”
Jason’s chest rose and fell. What was going on?
Benjamin flipped through the photos. “Who am I looking for, Jane?”
She plunged her hands in the box and searched. All the while, Jason held his hands on his head, elbows spread out at the sides like a bird, looking like he wished he could use them to fly away from there.
After a while, Jane found the photo she was looking for. “Him.”
“Who is he?” Benjamin asked.
“I don’t know his name. But it’s him. The guy you found. I don’t remember his name.” She turned to Jason. “Do you?”
Jason blinked but didn’t respond.
“Why do you think it’s him?” Benjamin asked.
“The missing finger.”
Benjamin stopped looking at the photo of the man and focused on Jane.
“I saw the photos,” Jane offered before Benjamin could ask. “From the coroner.”
Benjamin kept whatever he was thinking concealed. He grabbed a handful of the other photos from the box. “And these men? Who are they?”
Jason held his hand over his mouth.
“Old boyfriends, or whatever, of Diane’s,” Jane said. “They came in and out. They never showed up again.”
Georgia Lee stepped forward to get a closer look. There were maybe twenty or so in all. Random. Some posed with Diane, others alone. They sat on Diane’s couch. At the kitchen table. At a bar with Christmas lights strung haphazardly along the walls. The man in the photo Benjamin held sat by the river, his arm wrapped around Diane. His hand making an okay sign. His ring finger was missing after the knuckle.
Benjamin’s eyes met Georgia Lee’s, and recognition washed over his face. He tried to telegraph something to her, some shared knowledge, but she couldn’t parse his meaning. Her mind went blank. What was he thinking? What did that look mean? Then she remembered the conversation from her backyard: the missing men.
He lifted the box and handed it to Tom. “Take this into evidence. And get these two out of here.”
The look Benjamin had given her unmuted Georgia Lee. “What’s happening?” She didn’t know why, but she started to cry. “I don’t understand what’s happening.”
Georgia Lee, Jane, and Jason surveyed each other in silence for a while, which brought to mind imagery of deer in the woods, caught by hunters, waiting to see what fate would decide. Then Jason’s face changed, a look Georgia Lee couldn’t decipher.
Finally, Jane spoke. “It’s not Warren.”
“I know,” Benjamin said and looked at John in a way that reminded Georgia Lee of when the boys were young and screamed, I told you so, I told you so over and over. Tom gripped the box. John wrenched the hat in his hand.
“What do you mean you know?” Georgia Lee asked.
“She’s right,” Benjamin said flatly and tapped the manila folder on the table. “We got the DNA results this morning. The remains aren’t Warren’s.”
Georgia Lee stumbled back into a chair and nearly tipped over.
If the bones weren’t Warren’s, then whose were they? And where was Warren?
Thirty-Three
JANE
Jane didn’t want to see a medic, she wanted to see Benjamin arrest Diane. Whatever love she’d wanted from—and wasted on—Diane was gone after what she’d discovered and what Diane had done. She’d tried to stab her. She had really tried to stab her.
She brushed the medic’s hands away, but that didn’t do much to stop them. The medic had given her something. Maybe a sedative. Jane felt calm, no pain. But desperation clawed under the surface.
“Where’s Benjamin?” The medic didn’t answer. “Could you find Benjamin?”
“Drink this,” the medic said and shoved a bottle of something in her face.
“What is it?” Jane asked.
“Electrolytes. You’re dehydrated.” They wiped at another slash. Jane jumped at the cold sting of alcohol along one of the hundred little cuts that Diane had inflicted on her body. “And you should be at the hospital.”
Jane didn’t remember details, just great swaths of action that could be summed up as fighting, running, yelling, sitting, resisting any efforts to remove her from the police station until Jason was released. All the things in between were a little fuzzy, like when Jason and Georgia Lee had left the room. What happened after that was a blank.