All Good People Here(56)

He stared at it for a moment, then said, “I don’t wanna be recorded. I’ll talk to you, but that’s it.”

“Okay.” She slipped her phone back into her bag. “No problem.” In any other scenario, she probably would have pushed. Quoting an anonymous source was far less powerful than quoting a named one, especially when that source was Jace Jacobs. But his tone had been resolute and his face stony. “I know after everything you’ve been through, you’re probably not a big fan of the media.”

“I said two sentences on TV at the age of six and people still call me ‘the spawn of Satan’ online. I didn’t change my name for nothing.”

Margot blinked. “Right.” She’d seen the interview the Jacobs family had done with Sandy Watters all those years ago. I don’t like to talk about it, Jace had said, his little-kid voice flat and solemn. I don’t wanna get in trouble. “Can I ask you then…why you’re talking with me?”

Jace looked down. “I didn’t know about that Natalie girl. I don’t give a shit about your story, but if it helps catch whoever killed her, then…”

His words faded and Margot’s mind raced with the implications of them. Did he think January had been killed by an intruder? Some strange man who was back at it? Or was he simply pretending to think that? She studied his face, but it was unreadable.

Earlier, in her hotel room, Margot had prepared her questions methodically, planning to ease Jace into talking like she had with Billy. But he was too good at hiding behind that mask. She needed to crack through it.

“I saw the flowers you put on January’s grave,” she said. Jace jerked his chin back, clearly surprised. “They were pretty. You do that every year, don’t you?”

Jace hesitated, then nodded.

“Why?”

“Why do you think?”

She shook her head, her eye contact steady and unassuming. “I don’t know.”

He stared back at her for a long moment. Then, slowly, his hard exterior began to melt away. “I do it because…I feel bad, I guess. I wasn’t a good brother to her when she was alive.”

Margot waited for him to continue, and when he didn’t, she said, “How so?”

“Honestly? I was jealous of her, because she, well, she…sparkled. And I was never like that.” He gave her a wry look. “If you can imagine.” Again, Margot waited in silence, and this time, after a moment, he continued. “Everybody loved her so much, ya know? My parents—they didn’t even pretend to love me as much as they loved her.”

Margot’s gaze flitted over his face, as everything she’d learned about him ricocheted through her mind. The fire in the school bathroom, the dead bird, sending that boy to the hospital, the laundry list of crimes typed out on that thick stack of paper. Was it possible he’d done all of it because his parents hadn’t loved him? Well, she thought, of course it was. Wasn’t that why anyone did anything destructive? From feeling unloved? The only reason Margot was even mildly well adjusted was because of Luke.

“Can you tell me what happened that night?” she said, her voice gentle. She didn’t want to break the spell that had been cast in the wake of his vulnerability. “In 1994?”

Jace took a sip of beer, then placed it on the coffee table with a clink of glass against glass. “I woke up in the middle of the night…”

Anticipation buzzed in Margot’s veins. This was, to her knowledge, the first time he’d ever recounted this publicly. During the investigation, he and his parents had repeated the same line over and over again—the three of them had slept through the night.

“I don’t know if something woke me or if I just woke up naturally, but I got up and went into January’s room. I was jealous of her like I said, but we were also close, you know? We were twins.” He looked at Margot and she nodded. “Every once in a while,” he continued, “one of us would wake up and climb into the other’s bed. Like if we had a nightmare or something. So I went into her room, but she was gone and I got scared.”

“Scared? Like that something had happened to her?”

Jace shook his head. “No. Just little-kid scared. She should’ve been there and she wasn’t. I remember I snuck into my parents’ room, but she wasn’t there either, so I walked downstairs to try to find her.”

“Wait. You went to your parents’ room that night? Were either of them there? Do you remember?”

“Yeah. They were sleeping.”

“Your dad and your mom?”

He gave her a sort of confused look. Then after a moment, he said, “Oh, because you think my mom killed January.” He said it lightly, as if he were inured to the idea. “Well, she didn’t. She and my dad were sleeping that night. I saw them.”

Margot struggled to keep her expression even. Until now, she hadn’t been sure whether or not he was lying, whether or not he was responsible for January’s death, but if he was, he’d just squandered the most effective cover story he had at his disposal. When the entire world believed Krissy had killed her daughter, it would’ve been all too easy for him to let her take the fall, especially now that she was dead and couldn’t defend herself. In Margot’s mind, Jace exonerating Krissy was almost as good as Jace exonerating himself.