All Good People Here(12)

Luke laughed, but there was the slightest glint of frustration in his eyes, and Margot could tell she was embarrassing him. “How do you think I’ve been feeding myself before you got here? Anyway, I usually don’t eat much in the mornings. If I start to think I’m gonna pass out, I’ll walk to…to the grocery store for cereal.”

Margot’s gaze flicked over his face for a moment. She had a feeling that pause meant he’d forgotten the name of Granny’s Pantry—the same grocery store he’d been going to for fifty years—but other than that blip, he seemed completely with-it. And she really needed to nail this article. “Okay. Sorry. Yeah, that sounds good.”

“So, where’re you headed?”

“Well, nowhere yet. I still have some work here to do first.” As Adrienne had very clearly pointed out, Natalie Clark was the centerpiece of this story, so Margot needed to prepare for the press conference and interviews in Nappanee before she spent another minute thinking about January Jacobs. “But after that, Shorty’s, I think. I wanna hear what other people say about January’s case. See if there’s anything that sounds similar to the other one. Do you think I’ll be able to get anyone to talk?”

At that, Luke let out a bark of laughter. “There’s nothing people here love to do more. But…this town crucified the Jacobs family all those years ago and they may not exactly like the way that looks now. So people will talk, sure, but you won’t be able to believe a word they say.”





FIVE


    Krissy, 1994


Krissy no longer felt that she was in her own home. The light inside seemed bright and sterile, the sounds of camera flashes and clipped tones unfamiliar. Even the objects didn’t seem to belong to her anymore, and she almost asked permission from Detective Townsend to sit on the couch that had been in her sitting room since before she’d moved in over six years ago.

“Thanks for speaking with me, Mrs. Jacobs,” Detective Townsend said when they’d settled across from each other.

After they’d finished in January’s room, Detective Townsend had split Krissy and Billy up so they could do their interviews one-on-one. Billy was still up there, in January’s room with Detective Lacks, while Krissy and Detective Townsend were back in the sitting room off the entryway, and she was grateful for the change of scenery. Being in her daughter’s bedroom earlier, surrounded by all of January’s things, had made her panicky and claustrophobic. Also, to Krissy’s relief, Detective Townsend had closed the sitting room’s French doors, cutting them off from the chaos beyond. All that bustling around and shouting of orders had her twitchy with nerves.

“Why don’t we start with this morning,” the detective continued. “From the moment you woke up. Could you walk me through that?”

Krissy took a deep breath, a sudden wave of weariness penetrating the constant feed of adrenaline she’d felt since she’d discovered January was gone. The day seemed to be unfurling in fits and starts; sometimes it felt as though time were sped up, other times it dragged like molasses. “Our alarm went off at five, like it always does,” she began, and then talked him through the rest of the morning until the moment she and Billy had called the police—walking down the stairs, seeing the writing on the wall, shouting to Billy to come down, Jace running into her arms, searching the house for January.

Townsend was scribbling on a small notepad perched on his knee. When he finished, he looked up at her with sharp eyes. “And what about yesterday? Let’s walk through that too. Particularly if you can think of anything odd happening in the past twenty-four hours or so.”

“Um…” Krissy tried to remember what they’d done yesterday. When she couldn’t, she tried to recall any errant detail about it—what she’d worn, the weather, what the kids had eaten for breakfast—but her mind was full with images of her daughter dead and discarded somewhere. After a moment, she dropped her face into her hands and pressed her fingers into her eye sockets.

“I know this is difficult,” Townsend said, his tone coaxing. He’d softened since his lapse into rudeness upon finding the photo of January in her dance costume, but Krissy suspected that was due more to expedience than to sincerity. “Your mind’s going a million miles a minute, but try to focus. Yesterday was Saturday. Can you remember what you did yesterday?”

Krissy took a breath. “Right. Yes. It was just a regular Saturday. Billy worked. The kids did chores in the morning. They do little things around the farm—feed the chickens, gather eggs. Sometimes Billy lets them help with feeding the cows, stuff like that. They played in the house in the afternoon. I cooked and we had dinner. Then we just watched TV and did bedtime. With two young kids, that takes awhile.”

Townsend narrowed his eyes. “All right…That was good, but would you mind going through it once more for me? This time in more detail? The twenty-four hours before someone goes missing are crucial, and in an investigation like this, you never know what seemingly unimportant detail is gonna help solve the case.”

“Oh,” she said, feeling chastened. “Right. Sure.” She took a deep breath and started again from the beginning, this time in much more detail.

“And after you put the kids to bed?” Townsend asked.

Krissy shrugged. “I took a bath then went to bed. Billy was downstairs watching TV. I was asleep by the time he came up.”