Page 70 of All Good People Here

She tried again.

“Here,” Jodie said when Margot released the cutters. “Let’s take turns.”

Margot handed them over and Jodie fixed their jaws around the metal loop, pushing the handles together so hard her arms shook. When she eventually gave up, Margot could see the dents were getting deeper. They alternated like that, making more and more progress each time, until finally, during Margot’s fifth attempt, as she was squeezing the handles, the metal loop split apart and the lock clattered to the ground.

She caught Jodie’s eye, and a broad smile slowly spread across the woman’s face.

“We did it,” Jodie said.

Margot let out one wry laugh. “Now let’s just hope it was worth it.”

Just then, the sound of another car’s engine revved in the distance.

“Shit,” Margot hissed. “Get inside. Quick.”

She hastily undid the latch and tugged the metal door open. The hinges creaked noisily and Margot winced, listening as the sound of the car grew louder. When the space was just wide enough to fit through, they hurried inside and Margot tugged the door shut behind them, ensconcing them in blackness so dark she couldn’t see her own body. The two of them stood, unmoving, listening to the car in the distance, the sound of their too-fast breathing loud in Margot’s ears. Finally, the noise from the car’s engine faded into the night. Margot exhaled. She was being paranoid. No one was watching the cameras’ footage live. No one knew they were here.

She tugged the flashlights from her back pocket and clicked them on, illuminating the storage unit in front of them. Finally, they could see. She handed one of the flashlights to Jodie, and the two of them gazed out over the space.

Margot didn’t know what she’d been expecting exactly, but she felt disappointed at the banality of Wallace’s things. There was a wooden dresser, an old-looking couch, a lamp, and stacks uponstacks of unlabeled cardboard boxes. Sifting through it all would take hours.

“Let’s split up,” she said with a glance at Jodie. “I’ll start over here.”

“I’ll start with those.” Jodie nodded toward a collection of boxes on the far side of the unit.

“Oh,” Margot added. “I almost forgot.” She pulled the latex gloves out of her pocket and handed a pair to Jodie. They both tugged them on, then headed in opposite directions.

Margot stopped in front of one of the smaller cardboard boxes at the foot of the old plaid couch. Holding her flashlight with one hand, she opened the cardboard flaps with the other, revealing a collection of old books. The sight of them reminded her of her interview with Wallace three years ago, when he said he’d been working his way through the classics. Margot picked up one of the paperbacks on top, a weathered copy ofMoby-Dick,and flipped through the pages with her thumb.

She sifted through the rest of the books quickly, looking for anything that might have been tucked into them, but found nothing even slightly incriminating other than a well-worn copy ofLolitathat turned her stomach, but would be useless as proof of anything.

“You find anything?” Jodie called quietly from the other side of the unit.

“No. Just books. You?”

“Nothing. Clothes.”

The two of them moved through Wallace’s stuff like this for about two hours, freezing every now and then at some far-off sound. Each time, they would lock eyes across the unit and stand motionless, waiting. Margot would squeeze her hands into fists by her sides, her heart in her throat, envisioning the door flinging open to reveal the gruff-voiced manager or the police or Elliott Wallace himself, but no one ever came.

And then, just as Margot was starting to think all of this was for nothing, she opened the last cardboard box and her eyes widened.

“Holy shit,” she breathed, staring down into the box’s contents. For a long moment, she felt paralyzed. Then she blinked, cleared her throat. But even so, when she called across the unit, her voice was little more than a croak. “Jodie! Come here.”

“Did you find something?” Margot heard the woman clamber to her feet and hurry over, stepping carefully through the maze of objects. “What is i—” But as Jodie sidled up next to Margot and looked into the box, her question turned into a gasp. She clapped a hand over her mouth so her next words were muffled and weak.“Oh my god.”

THIRTY-TWO

Margot, 2019

Margot and Jodie stood side by side, gazing down into the enormous cardboard box between them, both frozen and silent until finally, Margot forced her lungs to take a breath.

“Look at the names.”

“Yeah.” By the choked whisper of her voice, Margot could tell Jodie was crying.

In the box was a neat collection of matching plastic containers, probably four or five layers deep, each one about the size of a shoebox with a white lid and a name written in black. The top four read: Natalie, Hannah, Mia, Polly.

“Oh my god,” Jodie said. “It’s him.”

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