As Krissy stared at the horrific tableau beneath her, her mind felt scrubbed except for one word: No. She heard a sound—a soft, guttural moan—and realized it had come from her own mouth.
Jace must’ve heard it too, because he straightened and slowly turned his head over his shoulder, his impassive gaze pinning her like a butterfly to a corkboard. He stared at her quietly for a moment before opening his mouth, and his words, spoken in his small little-boy voice, were a blade across Krissy’s stomach, slicing into skin, intestine, womb.
“Can we play tomorrow, Mommy? Just you and me?”
NINETEEN
Margot, 2019
In her hotel room, Margot slid the chain lock into place. She was fairly sure the woman with the auburn hair hadn’t followed her all the way to Chicago, but the words that had been written on the Jacobs barn and those of the note left on her windshield still filled her brain. She will not be the last. It’s not safe for you here. Especially now, after the news of Natalie Clark’s body being found, Margot took comfort in being locked safely inside her room. She knew she wasn’t in the same danger as Natalie or January had been, but she’d clearly attracted the attention of someone, and she wasn’t sure what they wanted or how far they’d go to get it.
Margot grabbed her laptop and settled onto the bed, her back against the pillows, the cheap bedspread rough against her legs. Since she’d begun digging into January’s case days ago, she’d spent countless hours trying to find Jace online to no avail. Once she’d discovered he’d gone to Chicago, she’d been able to narrow that search, but still, it had been fruitless. Which was why the first thing she did, once she’d made it to the city and checked into a hotel, was visit the courthouse to request all the legal documents containing Jace’s name. It wasn’t a sure thing, but it could yield results Google couldn’t.
And sure enough, it did. The first set of documents she received from the clerk at the courthouse, at only two pages long, was made up of one report—an arrest of Jace Jacobs for battery and assault back in 2007—which was proof, at the very least, that Jace had been in Chicago, but little else. But then, as she read over the pages again, more slowly this time, she saw it. On the second page, in a section she’d previously skimmed over, was a line titled “Known Aliases.” Typed beneath was the name Jay Winter. As she stared down at it, finally all those futile searches made sense. Jace had changed his name.
So Margot ordered all the documents containing the name Jay Winter, and this time, the stack of papers that came back was thick. Flipping through them, she could see they covered two years’ worth of crimes, everything from public intoxication to disturbing the peace. And there, on page three, was a mugshot. Standing in front of a white concrete wall, dark hair in disarray, green eyes unfocused, Jace Jacobs stared back at her, his mouth twisted in a strange smile.
On her hotel bed, Margot tapped her fingertips impatiently against the keyboard as she waited for it to come to life. Since leaving Wakarusa, a part of her mind had been perpetually on her uncle, and although she’d told herself that coming to Chicago was the right thing to do for the story and her career, and therefore the best way to help him, guilt gnawed at her. She just wanted to find Jace, talk to him, and get back home as soon as she could. Luckily, with his new name, tracking him down should be easy. These days, it was almost impossible to disappear without a trace.
Margot started with social media, but every one—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn—came up dry. There were a few Jay Winters in the world, but not the one she was looking for. She switched to a broader search, googling Jay Winter plus Chicago, and still there was nothing. Not a photo, not a place of employment, not a single person who knew him. Jace, it turned out, had done the thing right.
Margot slumped back into the pillows, glancing at the time on her laptop. It was already midafternoon and she was nowhere closer to Jace than she’d been three hours ago. Where could she go from here, when she had nothing more to go on? Almost everything she knew about Jace was from a twenty-five-year-old investigation. Other than that, she knew his crime record and what he looked like a decade ago. She knew that he had a tendency toward violence, smoked weed in high school, and brought flowers to January’s grave every year. But the last one was the only road she could explore, and she already had. From the courthouse, Margot had driven straight to Kay’s Blooms, the florist shop where Jace had bought that bouquet of white roses. But the woman behind the counter had just shaken her head blankly at Jace’s mugshot. She was a part-time employee, she’d explained. The owner, who worked most days, was out of town.
Margot squeezed her eyes shut, trying to dredge up any scrap of information she’d left unexplored, but all she could remember was Pete’s warning about him. He was not a good guy. She dragged her hands down her face, letting out a frustrated groan.
But then, something Eli had said popped into her head. He liked art, painting and shit. It had been a throwaway remark, but it hadn’t been the first time Margot had heard something like it about Jace. What had Billy told her? That Jace was into arty stuff? An idea, flimsy and vague, formed in Margot’s mind.
She sat up, adjusted her laptop, and typed in the search bar: art plus Chicago. The first few results to pop up were the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and a few lists of the highest-rated art galleries in the city. Margot scrolled through their sites and social media accounts, searching for any hint of Jace’s presence, but she didn’t have much hope. Those weren’t the type of places where you worked when you were trying to disappear. She spent more time on the websites of the smaller galleries, but after an hour, she’d still found nothing, so she switched her search word from art to paint.
“Huh,” she said aloud as the new results popped up. The first was for a place called Bottle & Brush, and she could tell immediately from the photos what the business was. In Indianapolis, they had a similar place called Syrah’s Studio, a franchise of painting studios for nonpainters. Bridal parties went there to drink wine and finish their own Monet in an hour and a half. The instructors were all recent art grads looking to make extra cash, their turnaround quick and uneventful. It was the kind of place you could work with art and remain anonymous, the kind of place that might attract someone like Jace.
Margot clicked on the first of the two locations, then navigated to its photos. Most featured a classroom full of people, either posing with their finished paintings or sitting in front of easels, brushes in one hand, glasses of wine in the other. She scanned the faces of who she assumed were the instructors, the ones in paint-splattered smocks at the front of the room. Most seemed to be Jace’s age, late twenties or early thirties. There was a brunette girl, her hair piled artfully on her head and tied with a bandanna. There was a Black guy with dreads, and a white guy with thick-framed glasses. But she didn’t see Jace. Then she clicked to the second-to-last photo and stopped.