All Good People Here(39)

Margot listened, transfixed. She’d studied the case many times over the years and she hadn’t heard any of this before.

“I don’t know if you remember,” Pete said, “but neither Krissy nor Billy had ever made any statement suggesting that January had bled before she’d gone to bed, which means that the blood had gotten onto Jace’s pajamas sometime after. It means that in all likelihood, Jace was up that night and that he saw—or did—far more than he or his parents were willing to say.”

That old memory of Jace filled Margot’s mind, and suddenly she was ten again, sitting in an oak tree, gazing down at the boy from across the street. She watched as he pressed the toe of his shoe onto the chest of a dead bird, pushing harder and harder until its head bulged. Years later in college, Margot had taken a psychology course and had learned the vast array of effects grief can have on people. She’d remembered that dead bird then too and had thought she’d finally understood Jace’s bizarre behavior. After losing his twin sister, he’d developed a preoccupation with death as an effort to comprehend what had happened to her. But now, Margot wondered if she’d been wrong. Had there been something else, something darker, growing inside him?

Pete continued. “So word around here is that Townsend brushed this evidence under the rug because it didn’t help his case against Krissy. And from what you told me, it sounds like he’s still unwilling to admit it.” He glanced at his watch. “Hey, sorry to cut this short, but I should probably get going.”

“Oh,” Margot said, feeling as if she were in a fog, everything he’d just said swirling around her head in a storm cloud. “Yeah. No, absolutely.”

Pete slapped his palms onto his knees, then stood. “Hope this helped.”

“It did. Thank you.”

He turned to leave, then turned back again. “I will take a look at that report, by the way. Try to figure out who sent you that note.”

Margot, who was reaching into her bag for her phone, looked up at him and smiled. “Thanks, Pete. I appreciate it.”

As he walked back to the station, she wrote out a text to Luke. One more thing to do, she typed, pushing away the guilt she felt as she did. Then I’m coming home :)

A few minutes later, she walked into Shorty’s, which was already bustling with an early dinner crowd, and spotted Linda behind the bar, popping the tops off two bottles of Bud Light. Margot caught her eye as she walked over and Linda grinned.

“Hey, Margot,” she said brightly, sliding the beers to two men across the bar. “You here for some more interviews?”

“Not today,” Margot said. “I was hoping to talk to you, though.”

Linda raised her eyebrows, clearly trying to mask her delight with a cool, casual look. “Oh yeah?”

“Yeah. Would you mind spreading the word about something for me?”

Linda grinned. “Well, sure, hon. I’m good at that. What d’you want me to tell folks this time?”

“Tell them I’m looking for Jace Jacobs.”





FOURTEEN


    Krissy, 1994


Krissy was shaking. The room at the Hillside Inn was closing around her, its blandly painted walls shrinking. She thought she’d been so good, thought she’d covered all her tracks, but Billy had found her out after only a few hours.

“What did you do?” he spat again.

The blue velveteen sleeve of her robe was still balled in his fist, and it looked as though he was fighting the urge to slam her head against the wall. Krissy’s gaze flicked from the red spray paint on the sleeve of her robe to her husband’s snarling face.

On the day they’d gotten married, seven years and an eternity ago, it was as if a switch had flipped in Billy’s brain, turning him from teenage boy into husband. Suddenly he was saying he loved her because, Krissy assumed, that’s what people who were married said. He expected dinner on the table at six; he stopped doing his own laundry. For Krissy, on the other hand, being a half of that whole hadn’t come naturally. She burned meals. She never knew when he needed new socks or when he was running out of shampoo. She didn’t call him honey or sweetie or dear. As the years passed, she simply stopped trying. And yet, as long as she went through the motions, as long as she put on a dress for church and made breakfast for the kids, Billy never seemed to notice that she wasn’t really there at all.

Standing across from him now felt like the first time he’d really looked at her in years. And it was clear from the fury in his eyes that the time of his complacency was over. Krissy couldn’t tell this angry man her secret. They weren’t a team, nor did she trust him enough to keep it. The stakes were too high. “What exactly are you accusing me of here, Billy?”

“I—” He blinked. The look of certainty that had been hardening his features slowly began to morph into something more tentative, a deep but nebulous suspicion. “What—why is there spray paint on your sleeve?”

“Why do you think? I probably brushed up against the wall.” Krissy knew that by the time the two of them had gone downstairs that morning, the spray paint would have been dry, but Billy didn’t.

He gazed at her for a long moment, his eyes narrowed. Now, behind the suspicion, there was a seed of confusion. He clearly didn’t know what to think. Finally, he released his grip on the robe, the soft blue sleeve crumpling to the hotel bed, then he dropped his head into his hands. “I don’t understand.” His muffled voice sounded like a croak. “None of this makes any sense. I—”