After a long moment, when he still hadn’t continued, Margot used the opportunity to ask the question that had been nagging her since he’d started. “Do you really remember all this that clearly?”
He shrugged, looking suddenly very tired. “Yes and no. I’ve told this story to myself every day for twenty-five years, but I’m not sure if my brain remembers it all because it was so traumatic or if it just filled in the gaps. Some things are completely clear about that night. The sound of the Etch A Sketch for one, and seeing January at the bottom of the stairs. But it’s not all one long memory. It’s more like splotches of one.”
Margot nodded. “And what do you remember next?”
“I was bent over her, checking if she was asleep, when I saw blood coming from her nose. I assumed she’d gotten a bloody nose and was lying down to stop it from bleeding. That’s what our mom always had us do, like, tilt our heads back. And I remember leaning over to touch it. I don’t actually know why I did this, but I remember it, because when I saw it on my finger, I freaked. I just wanted it off. I’ve never been good with blood. Or maybe I’ve never been good with it since. I don’t know.”
He took a sip of beer, and for the first time in her life, Margot could finally see all the strange pieces of evidence falling into place. She assumed he was about to tell her that he wiped the blood on his pajama pants.
“I wiped it off on my pajamas,” he said. “And that’s when I heard something behind me. I turned to see my mom standing at the top of the stairs and—this part I remember so clearly. The look on her face was—I can’t even describe it. It was terrible, sort of a mixture of horror and rage. So I—” His voice cut out.
“So you…?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I just. I felt bad for her. I remember wanting to make her feel better, but I didn’t know how. Do you mind if I smoke?”
He said the last so abruptly that for a moment, Margot didn’t understand what he’d asked. “Oh, no, course not.”
He grabbed the pipe from the table, lit the bowl, and took a hit. “Want some?” he asked, smoke curling from his mouth.
She shook her head. It wouldn’t be the worst thing for her to relax, but she wanted a clear head and she was already drinking. “So what happened after that?”
He let out a hollow cough. “What happened after that is…nothing really. The next thing I remember is it being morning. For years, I believed January had been taken by whoever wrote those words on the kitchen wall—because that’s what my parents told me happened. I later learned that wasn’t true.”
He went on to tell Margot that a decade earlier, he’d written to his mom and they’d struck up a correspondence about that night. “She told me that when she found me standing over January’s dead body, she assumed I’d killed her. Pretty fucked up, huh?” He laughed bitterly. “It must’ve looked pretty bad, though, me standing there, January’s blood on my clothes. But I guess my mom loved me more than I realized, because she decided to protect me.
“She staged the scene as a break-in, to divert the police from finding out ‘what I’d done.’?” He said the last part with air quotes. “She found a hammer in the barn to smash in the basement window from the outside, to make it look like that’s where the intruder came in. And when she was putting the hammer back, she found the spray paint and got an idea. She knew writing that message was risky, knew it was complicating the scene, but that’s exactly what she thought she had to do. So she wrote all that shit on the wall, put the spray paint back in the barn, and then…”
His voice faded and he took a sip of beer. “She moved January’s body. She put her into the trunk, drove to that ditch, and dumped her there. Which is why all the evidence pointed to her. The entire country thinks my mom is a murderer because of me.”
Margot reeled with the impact of Jace’s story. It was incredible, unbelievable, and yet it explained everything. Everything except who the actual killer was.
“What about your dad?” she asked. During her interview with Billy, she’d suspected he’d been holding something back about Krissy and about Jace too. Had he known about his wife’s suspicions of their son? Had he known what she’d done to protect him? “What did he know? Did he help your mom that night?”
Jace shook his head. “According to her, he slept through the whole thing, but that’s all she really said about it. I can’t imagine he didn’t suspect something, though—of me or her, I’m not sure. After that night, we all just sort of fell apart…And before you ask, I don’t like my dad, and he wasn’t a good dad, but he’s not a murderer. Like I said, he loved January. More than he loved me. The media made us all look insane, but we were just a family. We might not have been happy, but we were normal.”
They sat in silence for a moment, and then Margot said, “So, what d’you think happened? If you didn’t kill January and neither did your mom or dad, who did?”
He leaned forward to grab the pipe from the table and took another hit. “I’ve always guessed that it was someone else. Some…man with an infatuation. I mean, the police said the side door was unlocked when they got there, which—it was Wakarusa, 1994. Everyone slept with their door unlocked. Someone could’ve just walked right in. That’s the irony: The story my mom wanted everyone to believe was what actually happened, but she fucked everything up so much that night we’ll never know who really did it.”
And if that were true—that a stranger had broken into the Jacobs house that night—that same someone could have written those words on the barn a few days ago, could’ve taken Natalie Clark from the playground in Nappanee, could’ve left that note on Margot’s car.
“Have you told any of this to the police?”
He let out a short, humorless laugh. “I told Detective Townsend. A few months after my mom died, I showed him everything she’d sent me.”
“What happened?”
Jace shrugged. “Not much. He clearly didn’t believe what she’d written was true. Said the letters didn’t reveal anything concrete other than that she’d fucked up the crime scene. Said there was no way to even confirm the handwriting was hers now that she was dead. I’ve never had much credibility when it comes to the cops, but it pissed me off and, well, things sort of fell apart for me for a while after that.”
Margot’s mind flashed to that long list of crimes. “Can you remember anyone from your childhood who showed a special interest in January? Anyone who was at her recitals or practices who shouldn’t have been? Anyone you saw around in odd places?”
“No. And believe me—I’ve thought about it. I don’t remember a strange man ever lurking around.”
“What about a woman?”
He raised his eyebrows. “A woman?”
She nodded, an image of the auburn-haired woman in her mind. None of what Jace had said about that night had begun to explain her.
“Uh…Not that I can remember.”
“What about someone January talked about? Was there anyone she mentioned a lot back then?”
“Jesus, I don’t know. She talked about the other girls in her dance class. She talked about her dance teachers, Miss Morgan or Miss Megan or something. I think there was a Miss April, maybe. I don’t know. Oh, she had an imaginary friend,” he said with a breath of sarcastic laughter. “Are you interested in him? He went to her recitals and played with her at the park. She called him Elephant something because she said he had big ears.” He smiled at the memory, and when he spoke again, his voice had softened with nostalgia. “She made up a funny last name for him too. God, what was it? Elephant…Elephant…” He snapped twice slowly. “Oh! Elephant Wallace!”