“How is Luke, by the way?” Linda said. “There was so much going on the other night, I didn’t get a chance to ask you.”
“He’s good,” Margot said automatically. She wasn’t sure how much people already knew about his diagnosis, but the look of curiosity in Linda’s eye bordered on hunger, and Margot had the sudden, uncomfortable sensation of agreeing with her mom—it was none of their fucking business. “He’s great. Anyway, Linda, I’ve been thinking about what you said the other night. That Natalie Clark was taken by the same person who killed January. Do you really believe that?”
“Well, of course I do. We’re only big enough for one childnapper round these parts.”
Margot leaned over to grab her notepad and phone from her bag. “Do you have a few minutes to talk? And would you mind if I record?”
Linda’s eyebrows shot high on her forehead. Then, just as quickly, her face corrected, her back straightened, and she dipped her chin in a magnanimous gesture. “Not at all.” In the briefest of moments, she’d gone from surprised at the invitation for an interview to regally accepting it, as if she’d been patiently sitting by all day just for someone to ask her.
“Thanks.” Margot smiled as Linda settled in the chair across from her. “So you believe whoever killed January also took Natalie Clark. And what about this note on the Jacobs barn? Any ideas about who wrote it?”
“It’s all the same guy, isn’t it? He kills one little girl, takes another, and now he’s trying to terrorize us, the whole town. It’s what everybody’s saying. That this is January’s murderer, come back again.”
“Let’s talk about January’s case,” Margot said. “What can you tell me about the Jacobs family? What were they like back then?”
“Well, before everything happened, the Jacobses were like royalty around here. Billy and Krissy were ten years older’n me or so, so I didn’t know them in school or nothing, but I knew them because everybody knew them. They owned basically the whole town, and both Krissy and Billy were so attractive, you know? Billy with his golden hair and all those muscles? And Krissy, well, she was a knockout, pure and simple.” Linda made a little sound in her throat for emphasis. “They were basically the all-American family, walking around with those adorable twins. Bless Jace’s heart, but the town’s jewel was really January. Whenever she’d go off to one of her competitions, the dance studio would make a banner and hang it right in the town square to wish her luck. When she was found in that ditch”—Linda shook her head—“a little bit of all of us died with her.”
“What was it like in the days after she was found?” Margot asked. From her experience, interviews worked best when the subject steered the conversation, so she was content to follow Linda’s train of thought wherever she went.
“At first, we all rallied behind them like you wouldn’t believe. I bet they had enough casseroles to last a lifetime. Their front stoop turned into a January shrine—flowers, balloons, framed pictures of her. I brought a teddy bear because I thought, you know, it’d be nice for her to have, wherever she’d gone.”
Linda’s eyes grew glassy. Too-early deaths did that to people. They didn’t just rob children of their lives; they robbed them of their futures. Alive, they could grow up to become famous dancers or hard-hitting reporters. Dead, they turned into nothing but lost potential.
“But it wasn’t long before the town turned on them,” Linda went on. “And it all started when they went on TV. Krissy was—well, I’m sorry, but she was just not acting normal, not like a grieving mother. She would just stare off into space, her knuckles white on little Jace’s shoulder. And then people started to talk. Krissy always wanted to be a dancer—that was no secret—and here her little girl was winning competitions at the age of six. She was more successful than Krissy had ever been or would ever be. At the rate she was going, January could’ve been famous. And everyone knows jealousy is a powerful motivator. So that’s when people around here started to be not so nice to them.”
“Sorry,” Margot said, “but it kind of sounds like you think Krissy killed January.”
“Oh!” Linda’s eyebrows shot up high on her forehead. “Gosh. No. I don’t think Krissy killed her little girl. I’m just saying what people were thinking back then. Isn’t that what you asked? I think whoever took little Natalie Clark took January too. It’s what I’ve always thought, that she was killed by some…intruder. Some bad man traveling through.”
Margot had to fight to keep her face neutral. It was revisionist history at its most clumsy. Luke had been right the other morning. The locals had turned on the Jacobs family and now were feeling guilty.
Linda continued. “I mean, why else would there’ve been all that broken glass?”
Despite the jump in topic, Margot understood what Linda was talking about: the supposed way the intruder had come into the Jacobs house. When the police visited their home on the morning of January’s disappearance, they’d found one of the basement windows smashed in, glass littering the floor.
“I think,” Linda said, “an intruder punched in that window, came in through the basement, and grabbed January from her bed. I don’t know what he’s been doing in the meantime, but by the looks of it, now he’s back.”
Just then, the front door opened and both women turned to watch a family of four walk in. Behind them was a train of others. Linda had not been exaggerating about the after-church-event swarm. “Shoot,” she said. “It’s time.”
Margot nodded. “Right, of course. Thank you.” Linda got up and started walking toward the front, but turned when Margot called her back. “Hey, Linda, would you mind spreading the word about what I’m doing? That I’m a reporter and if anyone wants to talk, they can find me here?”
Linda grinned, and Margot could tell she’d won the waitress over. In her experience, everyone wanted the same thing: someone to listen while they talked. “Sure thing, hon,” Linda said, and just before she turned back to the front, she threw Margot a wink.
* * *
—
Word quickly got around that the Davies girl, a reporter from Indianapolis, was in town conducting interviews about the Natalie Clark and January Jacobs cases. And just as Linda had said, all the locals seemed to believe the perpetrator of both crimes was one and the same. Subsequently, they also believed the Jacobs family was innocent. Within twenty-four hours, the sentiment of the town seemed to have done a one-eighty. But it also seemed this change of heart had been so swift that people were having a hard time keeping up. Like Linda, even as they voiced their newfound support of the Jacobses, they still managed to cast suspicion on them—or rather, on Krissy. Though both Luke and Pete had said the town had turned on the entire Jacobs family, it seemed to Margot most of their ill will now was targeted at January’s mom.
“Krissy was undeniably jealous of January,” one woman told Margot. “Because of her dance stuff and all the attention people lavished on her. But of course, I don’t think she’d ever murder because of that.”
“Krissy was jealous of January,” the town’s butcher agreed. “But it wasn’t because of dance. She couldn’t handle knowing that Billy loved January more than he loved her. So people used to suspect that had something to do with the murder. But of course, now they know better.”
“Billy and Krissy got married when they were eighteen,” said one woman whom Linda introduced as her best friend. “And January and Jace came along not much later. Could’ve been nine months, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was less. They were babies raising babies! And Krissy couldn’t handle a family. So some people thought that maybe, you know, she murdered January to escape motherhood, but chickened out before she could get to Jace.”