but just like he’s had a rough time. If it was Justin…he was there, right there in front of me.”
“But he didn’t tell you he was your brother?” Stynes asked.
Color rose in Janet’s cheeks. “I did something weird,” she said. “I called him ‘Justin.’ When he started to leave, I called out that name to see how he would respond.”
“And?” Stynes asked.
“He said something like, ‘Not yet.’ Whatever that means.”
Ashleigh looked at her mom and said, “So maybe he’s going to tell you soon. Maybe he can’t right now.”
“Why would he not be able to?” Janet asked. “Does someone want to hurt him?”
“Was there anything else, Janet?” Yes, Stynes was more involved with this case than any other. He could admit that to himself. Then all the more reason to remain sharp, to not let the emotion of the Mannings possess him and interfere with finding out what he needed to learn. “Anything he said or did that might be pertinent?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did he talk about anything from your childhood? Did he ask about your parents or other family members?”
Janet swallowed. She lowered her voice. “He said his mother was dead. And that his father didn’t care about him.”
Even Stynes felt a chill on his neck when he heard that. The room grew quiet. Someone needed to break the tension, and to his credit, the kid, Kevin, did.
“Detective?” he said.
Stynes looked up.
“Didn’t you do a DNA test on the body you found in the woods back then? Or something?”
“We didn’t do DNA testing back then. I know it’s hard for you kids to understand, but it just didn’t exist.”
Ashleigh said, “I always hear about bodies being checked with dental X-rays.”
“Your uncle was so young when he died that he’d never had dental X-rays taken.”
“Then how did you know it was him?” Ashleigh asked.
Stynes resisted the urge to tell the two teenagers to keep their mouths shut and quit bothering the grown- ups. But they were right. People were going to be asking the same types of questions once the news broke. And it would break. Yes, it would.
“Justin disappeared from that park,” he said. “We found the body of a child in the woods near that park. The remains were the same approximate age and size as Justin Manning. We had a suspect. We had witnesses, including Janet here. That’s how we make a case.”
But the words didn’t ring true as they came out of Stynes’s mouth. He felt like an actor reading from a script he thought was terribly written. None of it made sense. None of it at all, unless Stynes believed that this Kollman/Manning guy was just a nutjob who wanted to harass the family of a crime victim.
But Stynes had never heard of such elaborate manipulation. If the guy was just a nut, he was so far out there the scale would need to be recalibrated.
Stynes stood up. “I have to go. We’re going to head over to this Kollman guy’s apartment, see if there’s anything else we can use to help establish his real identity. I suspect he doesn’t mean to do any of you any harm. If he wanted to, he would have done so already. But I’m going to ask the officers who patrol around here to keep a special eye on this house. You never know. At the very least, he’s probably guilty of harassment and identity theft. If he comes around, call us.”
Janet looked at Stynes. “What if he needs our help?” she asked. “Are you saying I should not have contact with the man who might be my brother?”
“I’m asking you to be careful, Janet. Just be careful.”
“Detective?” Janet said.
“Yes?”
“The other day with the reporter and then tonight-I was right, wasn’t I?”
“About what?”
“You don’t think Dante did it.”
Stynes couldn’t lie. But he wasn’t ready to admit anything because too many things were coming at him at once.
“Let’s just say, things appear to be in a state of flux right now. And do me a favor? Keep the doors locked. And if anything happens after I’m gone, make sure you share it with me this time.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
Janet went down the hall to the closed door of her father’s bedroom. Everyone else had left-Stynes to pursue evidence against both the man who’d assaulted Ashleigh and the man who might be Justin, Kevin back to his home and his family. Janet thought about leaving the old man alone, leaving him to stew in the bed-room with his own miserable thoughts, whatever they might be.
But she couldn’t just walk away from him. Something had changed, something profound. Justin might be alive. And in the wake of their earlier conversation, the one in which the darkest thoughts Janet had ever experienced about her father came to her mind, she felt a need to see her father’s face, to know how the news Ashleigh brought home affected him.
She heard the TV playing through the closed door. When she and Ashleigh had moved in, her dad had immediately gone out and bought his own television for the bedroom, something that allowed him to retreat from the shared living space of the house and be alone. He’d done this with more and more frequency in the six months since he’d stopped actively looking for work. And until that night, Janet rarely disturbed him. She rapped lightly, expecting an immediate response. But none came.
She knocked louder.
“Dad?”
Still nothing.
She placed her hand on the knob but didn’t turn it. Even as a kid, she wouldn’t have gone into her parents’ room when the door was closed. She couldn’t bring herself to do it as an adult. And a part of her felt relief. If he wanted to lock himself away, that was his problem.
But she’d let him off the hook so many times, given him so much space just to make his life easier and less confrontational. And, Janet had to be honest, to make her life easier as well. She didn’t want to tap into whatever the old man was thinking, so she avoided it. But the time for avoidance was past.
She made a fist and used it like a club, rapping against the door. The volume on the TV dropped and the door opened. Her dad stood there, still dressed, but his hair mussed in the back.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“I want to know what you think of all this now,” she demanded.
“Oh, Janet-”
“No, you can’t just turn away,” she said. “Tell me something about tonight. What do you think about the fact that Justin might still be alive? Just say something.”
“I think it’s unfortunate that all of this is stirring your fantasies,” he said.
He tried to close the door, but Janet put her hand out and stopped it.
“This isn’t going to go away, Dad. We’re in the middle of it now, and we’re going to know something. Finally. We can’t avoid it.”
He met her eye and stopped trying to close the door. “I know that as well as you do, Janet.”
She let go of the door and straightened up. They stared at each other across a distance that felt much greater than the physical space separating them.
“I have to go somewhere tonight,” Janet said.
“So go.”
“I wouldn’t go anywhere if it wasn’t important,” she said. “But there’s someone I need to talk to.”
“The cop?”
