Page 40 of All Good People Here

She hung up, feeling unnerved. It wasn’t so much that Pete had painted such a violent portrait of Jace, but rather that she’d had no idea about it. There seemed to be endless versions of the boy from across the street. Along with that memory of the dead bird, Margot could also pull up vague, fuzzy recollections from before January’s death of the three of them—she, Jace, and January—running around in the fields behind their home, playing hide-and-seek around the farm. In those memories, Jace had been a regular kid, just a boy. And then to everyone Margot had interviewed at Shorty’s, he was a troublemaker, the product of bad mothering, but not inherentlybad. To Eli, he’d been nothing but an outcast.

Margot realized, as she packed her suitcase, that Pete’s warning had backfired. Rather than deterring her from finding Jace, it had only made her need to understand him stronger than ever. Because she didn’t know what his role was in all of this. All she knew was that he was a missing piece of the puzzle and she couldn’t see the greater picture until she understood where he fit in.

The next morning, she filled a to-go cup with coffee, threw her bag into the car, and said goodbye to her uncle, pushing away the guilt building inside her as she did. Then she headed out for the two-hour drive in the early morning light, news radio murmuring softly in the background, her mind whirling with thoughts of Jace. She was so preoccupied, in fact, that as she merged ontoUS-20, she almost missed the sound of Natalie Clark’s name through her speakers.

When she realized what the announcer had said, Margot gasped and reached over to spin the volume knob all the way to the right.

“The five-year-old-girl’s body was found early this morning,” the voice blared, “in the woods nearby the playground where she disappeared, and she was pronounced dead on the scene. While the police have not yet received the results from the autopsy, they believe that she was most likely sexually abused and that the cause of death was blunt force trauma to the back of her head.”

The announcer continued her report, but Margot was no longer listening. All her brain could do was conjure up images of the young girl, dead. In them, Natalie Clark was lying on the earthen floor, killed the exact same way January had been, her eyes still wide with fear, her head bashed in.

EIGHTEEN

Krissy, 1994

It was midafternoon on the day after January was murdered when Detectives Lacks and Townsend escorted Krissy, Billy, and Jace from the Hillside Inn back to their house. It had, apparently, been fully inspected, documented, and cleared out—ready to be inhabited once again. In the back of the unmarked police car, Jace sat between his parents, and Krissy spent the ride pressed against the window, simultaneously trying to avoid his touch and trying to appear as if she weren’t.

When they turned the corner onto their street, Krissy’s breath caught in her throat. Both sides of the road were lined with media vans, news channel logos printed on their sides in bold fonts. Krissy read the logos, feeling dizzier with each one. Some she’d never heard of—WRTV, WNDU, Channel 4 News—but there were some anyone would recognize—CBS, ABC. At the start of the long driveway to their house was a wall of media: overweight men with sagging waistbands, enormous cameras perched on shoulders; their on-air counterparts, thin, sleek women with hard eyes and perfect hair, holding microphones and smoothing theirblouses with flat palms. They looked like beetles, scuttling around each other, their equipment black and glinting.

Townsend directed the car into the horde, inching forward in sickening lurches, laying on the horn—an annoyed Moses parting the Red Sea. Krissy watched in horror as the swarm of reporters circled the car, swallowing it like a single organism. By the time Townsend shifted into park, they were surrounded once again. From her seat in shotgun, Lacks turned to face them, her gaze flicking between Krissy and Billy. “One of you should hold Jace’s hand. And get ready to run.”

Before Krissy could do anything, before she could take a breath or arrange any particular look on her face, the two detectives were out of the car and swinging open the back doors, and the cacophony beyond slammed into them like a wave. Jace slid his little hand into her own and Krissy forced herself not to shake him off. And then they were out of the car and the three of them were following the detectives as they darted through a tunnel of reporters, blinded by flashes.

“We’re sorry about January!” so many voices called in manic, detached tones that belied the sentiment of the words. Far from sorry, they seemed downright gleeful. “What was she like?” “Tell us about her!” “What happened two nights ago?” “Who do you think murdered your daughter?”

Townsend led them up the stairs of the porch, ushered them inside, and slammed the door shut behind them. Instantly, the swell of voices in the yard turned muffled and faint. Krissy dropped Jace’s hand.

“What the fuck was that?” Billy spat, a trembling finger pointed at the front door.

“Billy,” Krissy snapped, dipping her head toward Jace. She bent down in front of her son, her hands clasped around his wrists, her eyes on the collar of his shirt because she couldn’t look him in the eye. “Jace, can you go to your room and play for a bit?” She didn’tactually care about Billy’s language; she just wanted to get her son as far from the detectives as she could.

“But…” Jace said. “What do I do?”

“Why don’t you color with your colored pencils? Or play with your Lite Brite. Whatever you want.”

Lacks cleared her throat. “If you need to arrange someone to watch him—”

“No,” Krissy said. She didn’t want some stranger hovering and asking questions. “He’ll be fine. He’s okay being alone for a while.”

She turned back to Jace, holding out the Power Rangers backpack she’d packed the day before. He took it and dutifully slipped his little arms through the straps.

After he’d disappeared through the doorway, Lacks turned to Billy. “Mr. Jacobs,” she said. “I did try to warn you last night. I’m afraid this will be a big story. When we did the press conference yesterday—”

“You—what? Why’d you do a press conference?”

The detectives shared a look they didn’t try to hide. “Well,” Lacks said slowly. “This is a homicide investigation. It’s standard practice.”

Krissy rubbed her temples. They should have been expecting it, she now realized, but they’d been so insulated at the police station and in the hotel; the TV had been tuned all day to Cartoon Network for Jace. And even if they had been ready, being swarmed by all those reporters was far more unnerving than she ever could have imagined.

“Look,” Lacks said. “We get it. The press can be a bit much. But getting the word out can garner a lot more tips and information from the public. At the end of the day, we all just wanna catch the bad g—”

The sound of the doorbell cut her off.

Lacks smiled patiently, clasping her hands behind her back.When neither Krissy nor Billy made a move to answer it, she said, “Do one of you two wanna get that?”

“Oh.” Krissy nodded her head. She felt like a child around the detectives, needing their permission to do anything. “Sure.”

At the door was a huddle of women Krissy knew well—the moms of the little girls in January’s dance class. They’d all gone to her high school, but had graduated five to ten years before she had. The Birds, she called them, because of how they always dressed in bright colors and flapped around the studio importantly, passing along bits of gossip like juicy worms. Standing on her front porch, the Birds looked at her, pity on their faces, a Tupperware container in each set of hands.

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