All Good People Here(85)

“I want to break into his unit,” she’d said. “He moves around a lot, so it makes sense for him to keep things there that he doesn’t want getting lost. Plus, if he was protecting himself from a potential search warrant, he’d want to keep anything incriminating somewhere that’s harder to connect to him. The only problem is I don’t know how to get past the locks. They’re combination locks with these thick, like, U-shaped metal bolts.”

Jodie had closed her eyes, hesitating as she made some decision. Then, finally, she opened them again and said, “We have bolt cutters in our garage. It’s amazing the things they can cut through.”

So they’d driven to Jodie’s home in South Bend and Jodie had slipped quietly through the front door, returning a few minutes later with an enormous pair of bolt cutters in one hand, two baseball caps in the other.

“For the cameras,” Jodie had said, handing Margot a hat.

“Good idea.”

After that, Margot had found the nearest twenty-four-hour drugstore on her phone and asked Jodie to swing by. She’d worn the baseball cap inside and had come back a few minutes later with two small flashlights and a box of latex gloves. “For prints,” she’d said when Jodie had thrown the box a questioning look.

“Good idea.”

There was no guarantee, of course, that if they made it into Wallace’s unit, they’d find anything at all. And even if they did, breaking and entering was illegal, which meant that Margot would only be able to report their findings to the police as an anonymous tip. But she felt, in more ways than one, that time was running out. Her uncle was getting worse and she wanted to put all this behind her so she could focus on his health. She wanted to create a schedule with Luke and stick to it, provide him with a stable environment. She wanted to get a steady job again, with regular hours and benefits. She wanted enough money to be able to afford a caregiver long term. On top of all that, she wanted to bring justice to Elliott Wallace for everything he’d done. And she wasn’t going to wait around while the police cut through red tape and gave Wallace enough time to slip away—or worse, enough time to kidnap and kill another little girl.

In the car, outside the storage unit, Margot turned to see Jodie studying the baseball cap in her hands. “Jodie?”

Throughout their drive to Waterford Mills, Jodie had seemed stoic, resolute. But now, the reality of what they were about to do was clearly hitting her. She was taking deep breaths through her nose and letting them out slowly through her mouth.

Jodie glanced over at Margot. “What if you just call the manager back tomorrow? He gave you the unit number. He might let you in.”

“He’s not gonna let some stranger into a random unit. My ID doesn’t even have the same name I told him over the phone.”

“Okay…But I still think if we just went to the police—”

“I already did. We don’t have enough evidence to get a search warrant. This is the only way.”

Jodie frowned.

“Listen,” Margot said. “You don’t have to do this. You can wait in the car if you want. I just—I at least need a ride home.” It was true; she didn’t absolutely need an accomplice to break into the unit. But if Jodie went with her, she could help keep an eye out for cameras. More important, once they got inside, having another person to go through Wallace’s stuff would split the search time in half.

“Fuck,” Jodie breathed. “Okay. Let’s do it.”

“You sure?”

Jodie nodded. “If everything you said is true, this man killed three girls. He ruined Krissy’s life. If we can prove it…” Her voice faded and she finished the thought by putting the baseball cap on her head.

Margot gave her a thin smile. “Thank you.”

Still wearing her own hat, she stuffed the flashlights and two pairs of latex gloves into her jeans pocket, grabbed the bolt cutters from the back seat, and got out of the car, closing her door quietly behind her. Jodie followed suit, joining Margot on the other side, and the two of them made their way over to the chain-link fence.

For perhaps the first time in her life, Margot found herself grateful for the provinciality of the Midwest small town—the Waterford Mills storage unit was far from state of the art. Though the fence was eight or nine feet high, there was no barbed wire at the top, so it was scalable, and while she had spotted a security camera affixed to the corner of a nearby unit, she had her doubts about whether or not it actually worked. Still, she felt hot with nerves. If she got caught, she’d not only lose her lead to Wallace but would be facing criminal charges. Everything she’d worked so hard for would slip through her fingers.

Margot gazed through the fence at Wallace’s unit. “That’s his.” She gestured to it with her chin. “Seventy-four. Third from the right.”

Jodie nodded tightly.

“I’ll climb over first,” Margot said, bending down to press the two flashlights through one of the metal diamonds. “Then you can toss the bolt cutters over and follow.”

Jodie glanced at the top of the fence. “I hope I can make it.”

“You will.” Jodie may have been on the cusp of fifty, but she was in the kind of shape that hinted at regular jogging and Pilates.

Jodie threw her a look. “You are considerably younger than me, Margot.”