All Good People Here(5)

“Hi.”

“How’re your folks? Gosh, I haven’t seen Adam and Bethany for ages!” The bartender’s face dropped dramatically. “I miss them. Will you tell them Linda says hi?”

Margot nodded. “Sure. Yeah, course.”

“Oh my god!” Linda exclaimed, then her voice dropped an octave as she said, “Is this why you’re here?”

“Um.” Margot shook her head. “Is what why I’m here?”

“Well, the story of course. You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”

“Yes…” Margot was so thrown by how much this stranger seemed to know about her, she was having trouble following the conversation. “What story? What’s going on?”

Linda’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean you don’t know?” She whirled around, looking for something, and finally her gaze landed upon a TV remote beside an open jar of maraschino cherries. She grabbed it up and pointed it at the TV. On the screen, the volume bar grew.

“…on a recent event that’s happened in Nappanee, Indiana,” a male newscaster was saying. The town name jolted in Margot’s chest. Nappanee was a stone’s throw from Wakarusa. If she got into her car now, she could be there in under fifteen minutes. “Early this morning,” the newscaster continued, “five-year-old Natalie Clark was reported missing by her parents. According to her mother, Samantha Clark, the girl disappeared from a crowded local playground. Mrs. Clark had been feeding her youngest, an infant, when she looked up to check on Natalie and her son, but Natalie was nowhere to be found.”

A photo of the missing girl flashed on the screen, all teeth and wild brown hair, and suddenly everything fell into place: the anxious look on the pharmacist’s face, the woman’s phone call and her mention of the Jacobs family. Margot hadn’t misheard her after all. And now she knew what Linda was going to say even before the woman turned to her to say it.

“It’s happening again. January Jacobs. Her murderer is back.”





THREE


    Krissy, 1994


Krissy stared with blank incomprehension at Robby O’Neil’s face. His features—small, dark eyes, ruddy cheeks, slick lips—swam in her vision. This man, whom she’d known her entire life, looked suddenly and completely unfamiliar. But more confusing than that was why Robby O’Neil was at their front door in the first place.

Only twenty minutes earlier, when Krissy had come downstairs and spotted the words on their wall, she’d woken Billy with a scream. Both he and Jace had run down the stairs at the sound. Jace’s twin sister, January, had not.

Those words—That bitch is gone—had flashed in Krissy’s mind as she and Billy frantically searched the house for their six-year-old daughter, and when they didn’t find January anywhere, they’d called 911. So the police were supposed to be the ones knocking on their door—not their old pal from high school. Robby’s presence here, at 5:30 a.m. on this torturous, bizarre morning, cast the whole ordeal into a strange, surreal light. Krissy had gone to kindergarten through high school with Robby O’Neil, had watched as he’d stumbled through current event presentations in social studies, had listened to her friend Martha gush about how dreamy he was.

By her side, Jace tucked his face into the folds of her robe and Krissy put a hand on his back. Then she took it off. Before she could work out what to say to Robby, Billy approached from behind her. “Hey, Robby,” he said, leaning through the doorway to shake his hand. “Thanks for coming.”

It was then, as Krissy’s eyes flicked over Robby’s uniform, that she realized he was the police. Of course, some dark part of her brain had known that—he’d been an officer in Wakarusa now for years—but it seemed like a cruel practical joke that when she called the police because her only daughter was missing, this was what she got: Robby-couldn’t-even-give-a-current-events-presentation-O’Neil.

“No problem,” Robby said with a look of exaggerated concern, as if he thought what he’d been called for was an overreaction but was treating it as if it wasn’t because they were old friends.

It made Krissy’s face burn. She’d stood beside Billy as he’d told the 911 operator that their house had been broken into, that their daughter had been taken.

“Why don’t you, uh, why don’t you come in?” Billy said. “Kris?” he added, giving her a look. “You wanna step back so Robby can come in?”

Krissy felt a jolt of anger toward her husband. Why was he acting so goddamn calm? Their daughter, their January, was gone, and here he was trying to make their guest feel welcome? But she knew deep down Billy wasn’t doing it because he was calm; he was doing it because he was a people pleaser, down to his bones. She knew that, just as she was, Billy was the opposite of calm. When he’d rushed down the stairs that morning and had caught sight of the words scrawled on the wall, he’d stopped so abruptly it was as if he’d run into some invisible barrier. His face had widened with shock and horror. He’d given Krissy a searching look. Then, later, as he’d phoned the police, his whole body had shaken.

Billy led them through the entryway to the kitchen, Robby following behind, Krissy with Jace clinging to her robe bringing up the rear.

“So, you guys can’t find January?” Robby said, his voice still light. It grated on Krissy’s nerves.