All Good People Here

Margot is on her way to the hardware store to make a copy of Luke’s house key. The night before, Luke locked the door, and Margot had to bang on the window for Luke to let her in. When he did, he seemed concerned and anxious, asking where Rebecca was and saying that he did not want Margot “walking home alone. Not now. Not after what happened to January” (134), indicating Luke thought it was around 1994.

Before she reaches the store, Linda calls. She tells Margot that she has a lead to Jace: a former friend of his named Eli who works at the DVD rental store in town. Margot asks Eli about Jace and his whereabouts, but Eli says that while they were friends in the past, they do not talk anymore, and he does not know where Jace currently lives.

Undeterred, Margot asks what Eli remembers about Jace’s personality before he left town. Eli responds that he liked “art, painting and shit. He hated his family” (138), which strikes Margot. Eli says that Jace never spoke about January, but that he could not have hated her because he brought flowers to her grave every year during the summer. Margot puts the pieces together, figuring out that Jace must bring flowers on the anniversary of her death, July 23. Margot checks the date, July 19, on her phone as she leaves the DVD store, wondering if Jace still delivers flowers yearly to his sister’s grave.

Exiting the store, Margot sees the same woman that was staring at her the other day. Margot begins running toward the building where the woman was, but when she rounds the corner, she sees that the woman is gone.

Margot drives to the cemetery, wondering if the woman is the one who left the ominous note on her windshield. When she arrives at the cemetery, she no longer feels like the woman is following her, at least for the time being. In the cemetery, January’s grave is not hard to find, surrounded by bouquets of flowers, stuffed animals, and candles. Standing in front of January’s grave, Margot cannot help but think of the time that has elapsed since her death. Margot wonders whether she is alive now “because some man had picked January’s window instead of hers[.] Did she have all those years because January had not?” (143). Margot feels both shame and gratitude at the thought.

The groundskeeper appears and asks if Margot is there to visit January’s grave, noting that there is an uptick in visitors at her site because of the upcoming 25th anniversary. Margot asks him if there are any regular visitors to her gravesite, and the man says that “there is the ghost that visits every year” on the anniversary of her death (144), leaving a bouquet of flowers overnight. Margot asks whether the flowers have appeared yet this year and the man points to a small bouquet of white roses in a vase. The groundskeeper says that the flowers appeared a bit earlier than usual this year.

The man leaves and Margot inspects the vase, looking for any identifying markers. She finds an oval sticker on the bottom that says “Kay’s Blooms,” and a search on her phone tells her that they came from a flower shop in Chicago. On the drive back to Luke’s house, Margot thinks about how the flowers appeared a few nights earlier, which would mean that Jace had been in Wakarusa both 48 hours after Natalie’s disappearance and the night that someone spray-painted Billy’s barn.

Margot tells Luke that she plans to leave town for a few days for work. Luke balks when Margot suggests bringing someone in to help him during the afternoons. He says that he appreciates Margot’s help, but that he is an adult who does not need to have a babysitter. While he speaks, he struggles to remember where the bottle opener is, and in frustration throws a bottle of beer against the kitchen wall. Luke apologizes for his behavior, and Margot helps him clean up the mess.

After dinner, Margot calls Pete from her room and asks him to stop by, surreptitiously, once a day while she is away, just to make sure things are okay. Pete agrees and asks Margot where she is going. He is concerned when she tells him of her plans to go to Chicago to look for Jace. Pete tells her that Jace was “not a good guy” (152), and that after Margot left town, he got in trouble for beating another kid up so badly it put him in the hospital. Pete also tells her that many guys on the force believe that Jace killed his sister, due to the blood found on his pajamas the night of January’s disappearance.

Pete’s warnings only fuel Margot’s desire to understand Jace. She leaves early the next morning, and as she drives toward Chicago, she gasps at the latest news from the radio: Police have found Natalie Clark’s body in the woods near the playground where she disappeared. Her body has signs of sexual abuse, and the cause of death is blunt-force trauma to the head. Margot immediately thinks of January, who died in the same way.

When the Jacobs family arrives home, Krissy sees a stream of news vans lining their road. Reporters fling questions at the family as they make their way inside. A group of women from town visits them, and Krissy invites them inside. Their heads all turn toward the kitchen walls, on which the spray-painted messages partially remain. Krissy understands that this means details of their family’s tragedy will soon be common knowledge in town. When the women leave, Krissy finds Billy. He tells her that the detectives have left, and that a TV producer from Headline with Sandy Watters called to request an interview. They argue about whether to do the interview, but Billy convinces Krissy: “[I]f we don’t make some sort of appearance, it’s gonna look like we have something to hide” (161).

The Jacobs family goes to New York City for the interview. Krissy thinks about “[h]ow different her life had turned out, so far from how it was supposed to be” (163). Jace is there as well, despite Krissy’s protestations. She agrees only after the producers promise that there will be no questions directed at Jace. Sandy begins the interview, inviting the Jacobses to “set the record straight” (163). Sandy asks about January’s overly mature dance costumes and whether Krissy believes that the costumes may have contributed to unwanted attention and January’s death. Krissy tries to explain that in hindsight she wishes that they had chosen different costumes.

Sandy then asks about the writing on their kitchen walls. Billy explains that he bought the spray paint for a project on the farm. When Sandy asks why Krissy’s fingerprints were on the can, Krissy quickly lies and says that she had moved the can when looking for a can of WD-40. Sandy then turns her attention to Jace, asking him to tell the audience what happened that night from his point of view. Jace says that he does not like to talk about it “because [he doesn’t] want to get in trouble” (165).

That night, Krissy wakes with a start to Jace standing over her. He says, “I’m sorry about January, Mommy” (166), which brings back a flood of memories of the night of January’s murder.

Krissy wakes to the sound of a crash somewhere deep in the house. She begins to panic when she sees both January and Jace missing from their rooms and finds the basement door downstairs wide open. Standing at the top of the stairs, Krissy feels something is deeply wrong. She sees January lying at the bottom of the stairs. She notes that January’s body looks strange and realizes her daughter is dead. She then notices Jace hunched over his sister’s lifeless body. Jace raises his head, asking Krissy, “Can we play tomorrow, Mommy? Just you and me?” (168).

Upon reaching Chicago, Margot requests court documents containing Jace’s name, and finds an arrest from 2007 for assault. She also discovers that he goes by the alias Jay Winter, so she orders those documents as well. These yield two years’ worth of crimes. Her lead dries up after she drives to Kay’s Blooms, where the employee does not recognize Jace from his mug shot.

Margot finds that Jace has no social media presence to speak of, even under the name Jay Winter. Frustrated at her lack of direction, she remembers Eli mentioning Jace’s interest in painting. She begins a new search and finds a page for a painting studio called Bottle & Brush, which offers painting classes. She scans the gallery of photos on the site and stops when she sees a man in the back of a photo that looks vaguely like Jace. She compares the photo to the mug shot and decides the similarity is enough to warrant a visit.

She arrives before that evening’s class, but the studio is dark. Frustrated, she turns to leave, but the door swings open and Jace stands before her. Margot asks if he is Jace Jacobs and he panics, nearly closing the door on her. Margot calls out her name and asks if he remembers her, and he stops. She begins asking questions about the message on the barn and January’s case; Jace moves to leave again, but he stops when Margot asks if he knows about Natalie Clark. Jace gives Margot a blank stare, and Margot explains, “Jace—Jay, what happened to your sister, it’s happening again. And I’m trying to figure out who’s behind it before any other girls show up dead” (176). Jace pauses for a moment, and then tells Margot that he cannot talk until after his shift. They agree to meet at his place at 10:30 that evening, and Margot silently reminds herself to text Pete the details of her whereabouts should Jace be dangerous.

Margot arrives at Jace’s apartment. He agrees to speak with her but explains that he is distrustful of the media after the Sandy Watters interview: “I said two sentences on TV at the age of six and people still call me ‘the spawn of Satan’ online” (178).

Margot asks Jace about the flowers he leaves on January’s grave every year and he admits that he feels bad that he was not a good brother. He says that he felt jealous of January growing up, and that it was obvious to him that his parents did not love him as much as they did January. Margot wonders whether he began acting out because of his resentment toward his parents.

She asks Jace to share his version of events the night January died. He says that he woke up after a nightmare and went to climb into January’s bed, but she was gone. Scared, he went to his parents’ room to look for her, but she was not there either. Jace explains that his mother did not kill January despite what everyone thinks. This puts further doubt in Margot’s mind that Jace is responsible for January’s murder, considering that he could have let his mother take the fall for him.

Jace continues, explaining that he found January at the bottom of the basement stairs and threw his Etch-a-Sketch to try and wake her up. When she did not stir, Jace saw that she was holding a scrap of her baby blanket and had a bloody nose. Jace leaned over to touch it, but then wiped it off on his pajamas, at which point he saw his mother standing at the top of the stairs.

Jace tells Margot that a decade later, he and his mother began writing letters to each other, in which Krissy admitted that she thought Jace had killed January. In these letters, she confessed that she decided to protect him by staging the scene, including spray-painting the messages on the kitchen walls and moving January’s body to the ditch. Jace assumes that some stranger, some predator, had come in the unlocked back door and killed January while the rest of the family was asleep.

At this, Margot asks if there was anyone suspicious from their childhood that Jace remembers taking an interest in January. Jace remembers January mentioning an imaginary friend, Elephant Wallace, who went to her dance recitals and played with her at the park. In January’s description, Elephant Wallace had big ears.

Margot leaves Jace’s apartment reeling with this latest information, including the fact that Krissy died by suicide after realizing that she had mistakenly thought her son was a murderer. Something else from their conversation needles Margot’s mind: the familiarity of the name Elephant Wallace. Back at her hotel, Margot makes the connection. Elephant Wallace is not imaginary, but a real man that Margot had interviewed years before as a suspect in the Polly Limon case: Elliott Wallace.