All Good People Here(35)

Margot sat frozen, reeling. His words echoed in her mind. Hate is up close and personal. Killed by someone who knew her. She thought back to Billy, so adamant and defensive that his wife had loved their daughter. She thought about all those interviews at Shorty’s, everyone in town saying January had been envied by her own mother. She thought about the guilt-ridden suicide note Billy had found by his wife’s body: I’m sorry for everything. But more than all that, there was only one person the former detective could be talking about, only one person connected to the case who was dead.

“Krissy,” Margot said, the name no more than a whisper.

Townsend nodded. “Bingo.”





TWELVE


    Margot, 2019


Margot sat across from the detective, head spinning. Krissy Jacobs had killed January? Was it possible? This was by no means the first time she’d considered it, but it was one thing to hear this theory bandied about by prejudicial, uninformed people at Shorty’s, another entirely to hear it from the lead detective on January’s case. Margot thought back to her childhood, trying to conjure the face of Jace and January’s mom. She knew what Krissy looked like from all the photos and videos she’d seen online, but she didn’t think she had any organic memories of the woman from across the street. To Margot, she’d been just like any other mom, a faceless adult who appeared every now and then to tell the twins it was time for dinner or to produce an afternoon snack.

“But how…” Margot’s voice faded and she shook her head. “How do you know? How did you solve it?”

“Krissy Jacobs’s fingerprints were all over that original crime scene—literally and figuratively.”

Over the years, Margot had read and reread every article that existed about January’s case. She knew that during the initial investigation, the detectives had located the can of spray paint that had been used to write the message tucked away in the Jacobs barn. When they’d processed the fingerprints on the canister, most had belonged to Krissy. “But prints on a can of spray paint? And around her own kitchen? It looks bad, sure, but it’s not exactly a smoking gun.”

Townsend shook his head. “No. It isn’t. But that’s not all, not nearly. I began to suspect Krissy from the get-go. She was acting off the moment we met her. And not like grieving off or stressed off. But suspicious off. It was clear she wasn’t telling us something. At first, we didn’t know what it was. Sometimes people in investigations lie about stupid stuff because they think it’ll get them in trouble—drugs, an affair. So, for the first few days or so, I thought she might’ve just been hiding an addiction to sleeping pills or a garden-variety tryst with the next-door neighbor.

“But then,” Townsend continued, “we found the fingerprints, which is when I started to really look at her as a suspect. After we discovered January’s body, we got cadaver dogs to search the two crime scenes and the surrounding areas to see if they could pick up a trace of decomposition, something to show us where the body had been. It was pretty clear Krissy Jacobs was our guy after that.”

“How so?” Margot asked.

“The cadaver dogs hit on the trunk of her car. We searched it and forensics found fibers from the nightgown January was wearing on the night of her death.” He gave Margot a meaningful look. “Krissy transported her daughter’s dead body in her trunk that night.”

“Jesus,” she said on an exhale. Her chest felt kicked in from the revelation. Then, after a moment, she added, “But, I don’t understand. Why did she do it? What’s the motive?”

The former detective shook his head. “You don’t need a motive to prove a murder. The evidence does it for you.”

While that may have been true for solving crimes, Margot was a journalist. She dealt in stories, and characters in stories needed motives. And no matter what direction of thought she went in, Margot couldn’t understand Krissy’s. “Do you have a guess?”

Townsend shrugged. “Krissy Jacobs was smart. She was ambitious and attention-seeking. It was obvious within five minutes of meeting her that she was…different from most people in that town. She felt wasted in it. And I think she went crazy there. I don’t know what ultimately made her snap, but I do know she was overly invested in January’s dancing, jealous and controlling. And don’t get me started on her relationship with Billy. They put up a good front, but there were problems there, under the surface. Honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if she did it just to hurt the guy.”

He leaned forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “It’s hard to understand, but people like that do exist. Most envision these kinds of crimes to be perpetrated by strangers. They see Ted Bundy, Son of Sam.”

Margot thought about her younger self in the days after learning about January’s murder. She saw her small body curled in the dark, squeezing her fists so tightly her nails drew blood as she imagined her friend’s murderer outside her window.

“And those people are out there,” Townsend said. “Don’t get me wrong. But more often than not, crimes are committed by people who know the victim.”

Everything he was saying made sense, and yet still something about his theory felt…off. Incomplete. And Margot couldn’t help but feel some deep-buried prejudice in his words. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe women were capable of depravity, but saying Krissy was guilty because she was different? Margot thought of Wakarusa’s original name—Salem, and all those women burning.