All Good People Here(34)

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Former Det. Max Townsend’s house was an old ranch-style tucked away in the suburbs of South Bend, and the moment Margot walked in, she could tell it was the home of a single man. The furniture was dark, primarily leather, with no apparent attempt at cohesion or any design scheme. The walls were bare, and the only nod toward decoration was the slew of framed photos scattered over every flat surface, all of which featured the same girl and spanned what looked to be twenty years of her life.

“Your daughter?” Margot said with a glance to the top of the TV console, where a handful of photos were on display. In one black frame, the girl looked to be about seven, blond and blue-eyed, grinning in a soccer uniform, a ball tucked beneath one arm. Next to it was one of her and Townsend, on a beach, pink-skinned and smiling.

Townsend followed Margot’s gaze and smiled a complicated smile. “Jess.”

“Cute,” she said. “Thanks again for meeting with me.”

He nodded, gestured toward the brown leather couch for her to sit. He chose the brown leather armchair, which, although it wasn’t currently reclined, clearly could. Hooking an ankle over a knee, he laced his fingers over his stomach, which hadn’t expanded in his retirement. In fact, he looked almost completely unchanged from the photos and footage Margot had seen from the investigation all those years ago. He was still big and broad, with astonishingly blue eyes and neat gray hair. The only major difference was that the lines on his face had deepened and expanded.

“It was no trouble.” His tone was clipped, but even so, something about the look in his eye gave Margot the feeling he was grateful for the opportunity to be a detective again, even if it was just for an interview. “You said over the phone you wanted to talk about the January Jacobs case?”

Margot leaned to retrieve her phone from her backpack pocket, her fingers brushing against the note. When she sat up again, she showed him her phone. “Do you mind if I…?”

He shook his head. “Not at all.”

She pulled up her recording app, hit the red button, then said, “I’m also looking into the Natalie Clark case and the note that appeared on the Jacobs barn yesterday. Have you heard about those?”

“I have, though I’m not sure what the Natalie Clark case has to do with the other two.”

“Well, neither do I exactly. But there are similarities between Natalie’s case and January’s. As I’m sure you know, Nappanee and Wakarusa are only eight miles apart, practically the same town. Natalie’s five years old. January had recently turned six when she died. And the message on the barn appeared only days after Natalie was taken. I think whoever wrote it was trying to connect the two cases. So that’s what I’m looking into.”

“I see,” Townsend said. “Well, I can help you out there. They’re not connected.”

She frowned. He had that same assured note in his voice that Detective Lacks had had at the press conference, and suddenly, Margot’s ex-boss’s words intermingled uncomfortably with Townsend’s in her head. You’re blinded by your relationship to the January Jacobs case.

“Um.” She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but how can you be so sure?” It was the same question she’d asked his former partner, but Margot knew she had a far better shot here than she’d had there. The rules that governed the police were strange ones: Any active members of the force were bound by strict policies about what they could and couldn’t say about open cases, but the moment a law enforcement official retired, they were liberated from these restrictions. Townsend could tell her anything.

“First of all,” he began, “the cases are vastly different. From what I’ve seen of the Clark girl’s investigation, it’s a cut-and-dried kidnapping. She’s a young girl who was taken from a crowded playground. Scumbag perverts do that all the time. January’s case, on the other hand, couldn’t be more different. The crime scene was in her own home, the crime far more personal. That crime scene—the message on the Jacobs kitchen walls—indicates that January’s murder was one of hate. And hate is up close and personal. Which suggests she was killed by someone who knew her.”

A crime of hate. Margot had never thought of it like that, but she realized he had a point. A little girl’s head bashed in, her body abandoned in a ditch, angry words all over her walls.

“But say January was kidnapped just like Natalie,” she said. “Say she put up a fight with her kidnapper. Couldn’t he have snapped out of anger? Couldn’t he have gotten upset that his victim wasn’t cooperating and slammed her head into something until she did? January was the closest thing to a public figure a six-year-old can be. She must’ve attracted plenty of attention from scumbag perverts who obsessed over her. And obsession can turn to hate like that. Especially in an unstable mind.”

Townsend nodded. “That’s true.”

“Which means that none of what you said proves January’s killer and Natalie’s kidnapper are not the same. Not unequivocally. So…how can you be sure?”

“Because my team and I solved January Jacobs’s case twenty-five years ago.”

Margot blinked. That, she hadn’t been expecting. She opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’m sorry. What?”

Townsend gave her a small, wry grin. “That’s right. It’s why I can assure you the cases aren’t connected. The person who killed January couldn’t possibly have kidnapped Natalie Clark, because January’s murderer is dead.”