She took a long sip. “He’s getting worse.”
Pete’s eyes flicked over her face, landing on her swollen cheek. “He do that?”
Margot had washed the cut and put a Band-Aid on earlier, but it still throbbed. She shook her head. “It was an accident.”
“Is there anything I can do?”
She gave him a look. “Really? After everything you’ve done this afternoon?”
“I told you. I’ve been through this. It’s…tough.”
She studied his face a moment. “Actually. There is something.” She hesitated. “Could you track down an Elliott Wallace for me?”
“Who’s that?”
So Margot told him everything and Pete listened, a look of disbelief frozen on his face.
“Holy shit,” he said when she finished. He dropped his eyes to the tabletop, where they roved, unseeing, eventually landing on the half-eaten slice of pizza in his hand. He frowned at it as if he was surprised to see it there, then dropped it onto his paper plate and brushed his hands against each other.
“I know,” Margot said. “This is something. I can feel it.”
“Yeah…Yeah, I think you’re right. Jesus Christ.”
“So, do you think you could help me track him down? Elliott Wallace? I remember he was living in Dayton when we met, but I can’t remember where and I have no idea if he’s still there.” She knew the location of his old neighborhood was probably buried somewhere deep in her mind, but his house had been in a cookie cutter suburb, in a city she’d never been to before. Plus, it had been three years. He could’ve moved.
Pete scratched his jaw. “It can be a long process tracking someone down like that. It can take weeks just to hear back from the places I’d need to reach out to. That is, if I do it aboveboard.”
Margot hesitated. “And if you do it not aboveboard?”
Pete let out a breath of laughter. “Yeah, that wouldn’t take as long, but I guess I’m wondering…well, are you sure this is what you want to be doing right now?”
Margot cocked her head. “What d’you mean?”
“I just mean with—” He jutted his chin toward the living room behind her, where Luke was watching TV with the volume on loud. “You have a lot going on.”
“Well…sure. But I still have to do my job.” She hadn’t told Pete she’d gotten fired and she wasn’t about to now. While he may have been willing to bend the rules for a journalist with a solid lead, he probably wouldn’t if he knew she had no publication to back her up. Not to mention the mortification she’d feel if she told him. And she didn’t need that. Not on top of everything else.
“I know,” he said. “But couldn’t you work on a different story or something? One that doesn’t have you chasing people all over the Midwest.”
“I’m doing the best I can with him, Pete.” Margot had tried to keep her voice neutral, but it still came out hard.
“I know. I do. But leaving him overnight when he’s like this can be dangerous.”
Heat flared over her chest like a rash. “Are you kidding me?”
“Hey, listen. I’m not trying to tell you how to take care of your family, but—”
“No, I get it,” she snapped, standing so quickly her chair almost fell over behind her. “You think I should be in the home, rather than out in the workforce.”
“I…” Pete held up his hands. “Whoa. Margot, that’s not what I’m saying.”
“Isn’t it, though?”
From the table next to her, her phone chimed with an incoming notification. Instinctively, she grabbed it from the tabletop and glanced at the screen. “Fuck!” It was a Venmo request from her old landlord, Hank, for the amount of twelve hundred dollars, July’s rent. Margot had called her subletter multiple times over the past few days, but it seemed he’d disappeared. Now she had no choice but to pay.
“Everything okay?” Pete asked hesitantly.
Margot put her phone back onto the table a bit too hard. “Everything’s great. I just have to pay rent for a place I’m no longer living, but yeah, maybe I should just stop working and stay home with my uncle instead.” She felt idiotic and fraudulent to be defending a job she no longer actually had, but her face was throbbing, she was overwhelmed with Luke, and she felt inches away from the biggest story of her life—if she could just find the time to piece it together.
“I’m sorry,” Pete said, standing up. “I didn’t mean to—”
“It’s fine. Really. But I think I should clean the kitchen now.”
“I…” He sighed. “Sure. Okay.”
* * *
—
After Pete left, Margot put the leftover pizza in the fridge, cleaned the kitchen—again—and sent Hank his money. Then she grabbed her laptop from her room and settled onto the couch with Luke.
He gave her a vague, vacant smile, then turned his face back to the TV. Margot’s chest ached. She knew why Pete’s suggestion had hit her so hard, and it wasn’t because of any sexist undertones. It was because his condemnation was exactly what she said to herself in her worst moments. She worked too much. She wasn’t there for her family. After all, here she was, in the wake of one of Luke’s worst episodes yet, and all she could think about was January’s case. Maybe Pete was right. Maybe she should just get a waitressing job and hire a part-time caregiver until she could find something more lucrative and less time-consuming. And yet. And yet.
Elliott Wallace’s name echoed in her mind like a taunt. She’d sat across from him, had listened to his words and looked in his eyes, and he’d fooled her. The whole time he’d been acting concerned about Polly Limon’s murder and he’d gotten away with it. He’d gotten away with January’s murder, and now he was getting away with Natalie’s too. And Margot was the only one who knew he was guilty. She knew it inside her as certainly as she knew she loved her uncle, as certainly as she knew she was meant to be a reporter. The knowledge had heft and density. It was solid as bone.
On the living room couch, Margot rested her laptop on her thighs and turned it on. If Pete wouldn’t help her, she’d have to nail this fucker herself. But where did she start? She glanced absently at the show Luke was watching—some animal documentary on big cats—as she tried to remember everything Jace had told her about January’s “imaginary friend.” He’d said that Elephant Wallace had played with January on the playground, hadn’t he? That Wallace had gone to her recitals?
An idea hit Margot and she pulled up a Google tab. She typed the words January Jacobs plus dance into the search bar, then selected the Images filter. Ordinarily, to find photos for a case like this, she’d have to go to the girl’s dance studio or contact her parents. But January’s case was so famous Margot knew every photo attached to it had been splashed on the internet since the moment the internet was invented. Sure enough, the results materialized within seconds, spitting out thousands upon thousands of images. The first fifteen photos or so were all the same one, the most famous of the case: January in a nautical-themed costume, her chestnut hair teased, her lips bright red.
After that were dozens of similar shots: January in dance costumes, posing alone, her lipsticked lips smiling. Scattered among them were photos from the case: Billy, Krissy, and Jace at press conferences, on Sandy Watters’s couch, outside their home. In all of them, they looked solemn and scared. Margot scrolled.
The first photo she clicked on was twelve pages deep in the results. It was a wide shot of one of January’s performances, capturing the entire stage and some of the audience. Margot zoomed in, examining the heads of the audience members, but up close, they turned into no more than fuzzy blurs. She clicked back to the results page.
Margot wasn’t sure how much time had passed when she finally found something, and it was only when Luke snapped his head to look at her that she realized she’d audibly gasped.
“Rebecca?” he said. “Are you okay?”