Margot studied him. Although she’d slept a total of four hours over the past thirty-six, Billy looked more exhausted than she felt. “You know…” she said, keeping her voice gentle. “Wallace kept his distance when he was stalking those girls. Especially with January. It was his first time to do it and he was cautious.”
The plastic box with January’s name had been the sparsest of them all. Wallace had saved a few of her dance programs—the parallel to Luke had sent a chill up Margot’s spine—but other than that, he’d collected nothing that had belonged to her. And the stack of photos in her container had been thin. While he’d probably had two dozen of Natalie Clark, he’d only had five of January, all of which had been taken from afar. Although he’d made enough contact with January that she told Jace his name, it was clear to Margot that, when he was stalking her, he hadn’t yet worked out how to be the predator he’d evolved into. It was why January’s murder was unlike those of the other seven.
Margot had gone over it a hundred times, piecing together what must have happened that night, and what she’d come up with was that Wallace had walked through the unlocked door, planning to simply walk back out with January in tow. But something had gone wrong along the way. Perhaps, as Krissy had always purported, January had fought back or cried out, and Wallace had panicked. He’d either bashed her head in, most likely with a weapon he’d brought with him, then left her body at the bottom of the basement stairs, or they’d scuffled in the kitchen and he’d thrown her down there, where she’d cracked her head on the concrete floor.
It was why January was his only victim not to have sustained sexual abuse before her death. And that made Wallace change his MO. After January, he started taking girls from playgrounds and parking lots, where it was easier to abandon the plan if it didn’t work.
“I think,” Margot said, “especially in January’s case, it would’ve been hard to notice anything was wrong until it was.” She may have been overinflating this—after all, Wallace had made contact with January, probably multiple times—but she felt sorry for the man sitting across from her. He’d had everything taken away from him and she wanted to give some of it back, to erase some of the guilt he’d lived with for the past twenty-five years.
“Do you have kids, Margot?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Well. When you do, you’ll understand. Your job as their parent is to protect them and…I failed. I failed.” A broken sob hiccupped out of him. He made a fist with one hand, clasping the other around it, and pressed them both to his lips, as if to push the emotion back in.
“I can’t imagine how hard this must be. I’m sorry to dredge it all up again.”
Billy shook his head. “I don’t have much left in the world, but you gave me answers and you brought this asshole to justice and you cleared Krissy’s name. I’m very grateful.”
Margot’s throat tightened. She was gratified to have caught Wallace and solved the mystery of January’s death, but there was still so much she wanted to know about everything else. She wanted to ask Billy if he’d ever looked at his twins and seen the face of another man. She wanted to ask if he’d ever felt his love for Krissy go unreciprocated, either during that summer when she’d been sleeping with Luke, or years later when she’d gotten together with Jodie. But of course, she couldn’t ask any of this. So, instead, she said, “And I’m grateful for this coffee. I haven’t slept in days.”
Billy chuckled.
“Anyway, I should probably get going. I’m picking up dinner for me and my uncle.” She paused. “You could stop by sometime if you’d like. I know the two of you were friends a long time ago.” It seemed a shame to waste that friendship, especially now when Billy had no one else in the world and Luke was fading from it.
But when she said it, something dark flashed in Billy’s eyes. “Maybe,” he said with a tight smile. “Anyway, thanks for coming by, Margot.” She searched his face, but any sign of that darkness had vanished, leaving Margot to wonder if she’d even really seen it in the first place.
They retraced their steps through the house, the old floorboards creaking beneath their feet, and as they passed through the hallway of photos, a candid of January caught Margot’s eye. In it, January looked five or six, perhaps only months from her death. She was perched on the tire swing Margot recognized from the Jacobs backyard, her eyes squinched with laughter, her little mouth wide. But what caught Margot’s attention was something in her hand: squeezed between her fingers and the rope was a scrap of fabric—light blue with white snowflakes.
Margot’s mind flashed to that memory from so long ago, when she’d been scared and crouched against a tree. January had sidled up to her and pressed a snowflake into her hand, the edges of the light-blue fabric jagged as if it had been ripped. When I’m scared, January had said, I squeeze this and it makes me brave. As Margot looked at the photo, she balled her hand into a fist, her fingertips grazing the half-moon scars on her palm.
Billy, who’d reached the front door, turned to face her.
“What is this?” she asked, pointing to the photo.
He squinted. “Oh, the thing in her hand? That’s her baby blanket. Or, what was left of it. I used to give it to her whenever she got scared and told her if she squeezed it, it would make her brave. I think I told her it had some magic that made it powerful.” He chuckled, his gaze softening with the memory. “It was our thing, just between the two of us.”
Margot smiled, but something, some memory, was pushing at the edge of her mind. And then Jace’s words hit her: I remember how peaceful she looked, he’d said of January, dead, at the bottom of the basement stairs. Like she was just sleeping. And there was a little scrap of her baby blanket in her hand.
“Just like the night she died,” Margot said, the words slipping thoughtlessly from her mouth.
The moment they did, she realized her mistake.
January had died from blunt force trauma to the head; it would’ve been impossible for her to have held on to her baby blanket through whatever had killed her—which meant that someone had put it into her hand after she died, before Jace and Krissy had found her.
Margot froze, her heart pounding.
A suspicion bloomed inside her, coalescing into something hard and solid. Her mind raced as all the pieces of January’s murder began clicking into place. She was the only little girl who hadn’t been sexually abused. She was the only one who’d been killed in her own home. Margot had assumed all of this meant that Elliott Wallace had simply evolved as a murderer, but what if January had been one of the girls he’d stalked but never killed? Someone had tucked her baby blanket into her hand after she’d died, before Jace had found her—that wasn’t some perverted act of a pedophile, but an act of love.
Margot thought about that dark look that had just passed over Billy’s face at her mention of Luke. It had been so fleeting she thought perhaps she’d fabricated it, but she hadn’t. That look, she realized now, had been one of hatred. Billy loathed her uncle. And Margot had a good guess why—he knew about Luke’s affair with Krissy, knew Luke was the father of the twins.
Had she been wrong about everything? Had she, as so many people had accused her, been so convinced January’s case was connected to Natalie’s and Polly’s that she’d overlooked the stark differences between them?
Could it have been Billy, not Elliott Wallace, who’d killed January all those years ago? But—why?
Though the why didn’t matter right now. She’d just revealed she knew something she wasn’t supposed to. Had Billy heard? Did he understand?
Her brain raced with thoughts of self-preservation. Put on an act. Don’t let him see what you suspect. Get out. She forced a smile onto her face as she turned from the photo to Billy, who was standing by the open doorway, hand on the knob.
“Cute,” Margot said, taking a step forward.