All Good People Here(38)

She laughed. “Yeah. So weird.”

Pete smiled. “You told me that’s what we’d say when people asked. Instead of being the loser who’d peed my pants, I was the cool kid who’d gotten into a water fight with a girl. I can’t believe you didn’t remember that. It was pretty traumatizing for me. Or almost traumatizing I should say.”

Margot thought back to when she’d been scared and alone and January had sidled up next to her, pressing a fabric snowflake into her hand. When I’m scared, I squeeze this and it makes me brave. “I guess we just remember our own stuff.”

“Well, anyway. Enough about me peeing my pants.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “How’s your uncle doing?”

“Um. Yeah, he’s okay,” she said, then wondered if it was true.

She’d managed to get a hold of Luke on her way back from her interview with Townsend, and thankfully, he’d seemed fine. He hadn’t been able to tell her if he’d eaten lunch and he’d seemed vague about what he’d been up to that day, but he’d also been emotionally even, not angry or upset or significantly confused. And when she’d reminded him there was sliced meat and cheese in the fridge, bread by the toaster, she’d heard him start to rustle around the kitchen. Before they hung up a few minutes later, he said he may lie down for a nap. And yet, that was over an hour ago. With his condition, everything could be different now.

“I should probably be getting back to him,” Margot said. “But now that I have you…Are you familiar with January’s case?”

Pete raised his eyebrows. “Uh…kinda. I mean, being here, it’s something you hear about all the time. But I’ve never, like, seen the file.”

Margot glanced at her watch. She was torn between the desire to get home and check on Luke and the need to dissect what Townsend had just told her.

During the half-hour drive back to Wakarusa, she hadn’t been able to stop picturing the look in the former detective’s eyes as he explained why he’d never been able to arrest Krissy. Despite the nonexistent rules for law enforcement officials in retirement, despite the fact that throughout their interview he’d seemed entirely forthcoming, the way he’d looked in that moment had given Margot the unmistakable feeling that he wasn’t telling her the full truth. Had she been making it up, that strange, secretive glint? She’d always prided herself on being able to read people, but her life felt as if it was starting to unravel, her confidence starting to slip. Plus, why would Townsend, a retired detective, feel the need to hide something from her?

Margot bit the inside of her cheek. It was getting late, but she had a Wakarusa police officer who felt he owed her a favor right there and a question gnawing at her mind. “Do you have a few minutes?” she said. “There’s something I want to ask you.”



* * *



—

The two of them settled onto a bench half a block from the police station and Margot proceeded to tell Pete everything she’d just learned from Townsend. It was clear from his reactions as she spoke that he’d heard all of it before.

“Well,” Pete said when she finished. “He wasn’t lying when he told you why the case never went to court, why he could never make an arrest. Not exactly. He just wasn’t telling you the full truth. It’s not surprising, actually. It’s exactly why Wakarusa PD has a grudge against him, against the whole state police.”

“A grudge against the— Why?”

“The older guys always say that the state police waltzed into town without knowing a thing about this place or its residents and made a snap judgment about what happened to January. A lot of them thought Townsend was so blinded by his belief that the killer was Krissy that he overlooked details that didn’t fit his own narrative.”

“What details?”

“Um…” Pete furrowed his brow as if trying to remember. “I guess I only know of one in particular, but the rumor around here is that there’s this one piece of evidence that prevented Townsend from selling his case to the prosecutor. Because it muddied his version of the events that night and diverted the blame from Krissy.”

“What piece of evidence?”

He hesitated. “Can this be off the record?”

“Of course.”

“Okay. So, you have to remember Krissy and Billy’s statement about that night for it to make sense. Remember how they said that they’d all slept through the night that night, Jace included?”

Margot nodded.

“Krissy had a pattern of taking sleeping pills before bed and Billy said he always slept soundly, so it was hard to really vouch for anyone but themselves, but they said something like Jace was a heavy sleeper and rarely woke in the middle of the night. And whenever he did, he always called for one of them. Well, they said he hadn’t called for them that night, so he clearly hadn’t woken up.” Pete shook his head. “Whatever, they made a big deal about it.”

“Okay…”

“Well, according to a report by state, they confiscated the pajamas Jace was wearing that night and took them for forensic analysis. On them, they found blood. It was concentrated and fresh and fit January’s blood type. As twins, they probably had the same blood type, although it wasn’t a given. But Jace didn’t have any cuts and January had a lot of internal bleeding, which, when it’s in your head like hers was, it can often, like, leak out of your ears and nose. And of course, there was some blood on the back of her head where she’d been hit. Anyway, the point is it was her blood on Jace’s pajamas.”