Dark Places (11 page)

I removed the paperclip from the packet and put it in my paperclip cup in the kitchen (no one should ever buy paperclips, pens— any of those free-range office supplies). Then I popped the videotape into my very old VHS player. Click, whir, groan. Images of pentagrams and goat-men, of screaming rock bands and dead people flashed on the screen. A man with a beautiful, hairsprayed mullet was walking along a graffiti’d wall, explaining that “This video will help you identify Satanists and even watch for signs that those you love most may be flirting with this very real danger.” He interviewed preachers, cops, and some “actual Satanists.” The two most powerful Satanists had tire-streak eyeliner and black robes and pentagrams around their necks, but they were sitting in their living room, on a cheap velveteen couch, and you could just see into the kitchen on the right, where a yellow refrigerator hummed on a cheery linoleum floor. I could picture them after the interview, rummaging through the fridge for tuna salad and a Coke, their capes getting in the way. I turned off the video right about when the host was warning parents
to scour their children’s rooms for He-Man action figures and Ouija boards.

The clippings were just as useless, and I had no idea what Barb wanted me to do with the photos of her. I sat defeated. And lazy. I could have gone to the library to look things up properly. I could have set myself up with home Internet access three years ago, when I said I would. Neither seemed like an option right now—I was easily wearied—so I phoned Lyle. He picked up on the first ring.

“Heeyyyy, Libby,” he said. “I was going to call you. I really wanted to apologize for last week. You must have felt ganged-up on, and that wasn’t what was supposed to happen.” Nice speech.

“Yeah, it really sucked.”

“I guess I didn’t realize that all of us had our own theories, uh, but none of them included Ben being guilty. I didn’t think it through. And I didn’t realize. I didn’t take into account. Just. You know, this is real to you. I mean, I know that, we know that, but we
don’t
at the same time. We really just never will. I don’t think. Totally get that. You spend so much time discussing and debating it becomes … But. Well. I’m sorry.”

I didn’t want to like Lyle Wirth, as I’d already decided he was a prick. But I appreciate a straightforward apology the way a tone-deaf person enjoys a fine piece of music. I can’t do it, but I can applaud it in others.

“Well,” I said.

“There are definitely members who’d still like to acquire any, you know, mementos you want to sell. If that’s why you’re calling.”

“Oh, no. I just wondered. I have been thinking a lot about the case.” I might as well have said
dot dot dot
aloud.

WE MET AT
a bar not far away from me, a place called Sarah’s, which always struck me as a weird name for a bar, but it was a mellow enough place, with a good amount of room. I don’t like people up on me. Lyle was already seated, but he stood up as I came in, and bent down to hug me, the action causing much twisting and collapsing of his tall body. The side of his glasses poked my cheek. He was wearing another ’80s-style jacket—this one denim, covered with slogan
buttons. Don’t drink and drive, practice random kindness, rock the vote. He jangled as he sat back down. Lyle was about a decade younger than me, I guessed, and I couldn’t figure if his look was intentionally ironic-retro or just goofy.

He started to apologize again, but I didn’t want any more. I was full up, thanks.

“Look, I’m not even saying I’m sold on the idea that Ben is innocent, or that I made any mistakes in my testimony.”

He opened his mouth to say something, then snapped it back shut.

“But if I were to look into it more, is that something the club would be able to help finance? Pay for my time, in a way.”

“Wow, Libby, it’s great news that you’re even interested in looking into this,” Lyle said. I hated this kid’s tone, like he didn’t realize he was talking to someone with seniority. He was the type who, when the class was over and kids were tapping toes and the teacher asked, “Any more questions?” actually had more questions.

“I mean, the thing is, we all have theories about this case, but so many more doors would open for you than for anyone else,” Lyle said, his leg jittering under the table. “I mean, people actually
want
to talk to you.”

“Right.” I pointed at the pitcher of beer Lyle had next to him, and he poured some into a plastic cup for me, mostly foam. Then he actually swiped his finger against his nose and put it in the beer, oil-flattened the foam, and poured more.

“So. What kind of compensation were you thinking?” He handed me the cup, and I set it in front of me, debating whether to drink it.

“I think it would have to be case by case,” I said, pretending I was just thinking of this for the first time. “Depending on how hard it was to find the person and what questions you’d want me to ask.”

“Well, I think we’d have a long list of people we’d want you to talk to. Do you really have no contact with Runner? It’s Runner that would be tops on most lists.”

Good old fucked-in-the-head Runner. He’d called me once in the past three years, mumbling crazily into the phone, crying in a
wee-heee!
shudder and asking me to wire him money. Nothing since.
Hell, not much before either. He’d shown up sporadically at Ben’s trial, sometimes in an old tie and jacket, mostly in whatever he slept in, so drunk he listed. He was finally asked by Ben’s defense to stop coming. It looked bad.

Now it looked even worse, with everyone in the Kill Club saying they believed he was the murderer. He’d been in jail three times I knew of before the killings, but just podunk crap. Still, the guy always had gambling debts—Runner bet on everything—sports, dog races, bingo, the weather. And he owed my mom child support. Killing us all would be a good way to be quit of that obligation.

But I couldn’t picture Runner getting away with it, he wasn’t smart enough, and definitely not ambitious enough. He couldn’t even be a dad to his lone surviving child. He’d slunk around Kinnakee for a few years after the murders, sneaking away for months at a time, sending me duct-taped boxes from Idaho or Alabama or Winner, South Dakota: inside would be truck-stop figurines of little girls with big eyes holding umbrellas or kittens that were always broken by the time they reached me. I’d know he was back in town not because he came to visit me but because he’d light that stinky fire in the cabin up on the ridge. Diane would sing “Poor Judd Is Dead” when she saw him in town, face smudged with smoke. There was something both pitiful and frightening about him.

It was probably a blessing he chose to avoid me. When he’d come back to live with my mom and us, that last summer before the end, all he did was tease me. At first it was leering,
got your nose
sort of stuff—and then it was just mean. He came home from fishing one day, clomping through the house with his big wet waders, banging on the door to the bathroom when I was in the tub, just screwing with me.
Come on, open up, I gotta surprise for you!
He finally flung the door wide, his beer odor busting in with him. He had something bundled in his arms, and then he flung them wide, threw a live, two-foot catfish in the water with me. It was the pointlessness that frightened me. I tried to scrabble out of the tub, the fish’s slimy skin sliding over my flesh, its whiskered mouth gaping, prehistoric. I could have put my foot in that mouth and the fish would have slid all the way up, tight like a boot.

I flopped over the side of the tub, panting on the rug, Runner
screaming at me to stop my damnbaby crying.
Every single one of my kids is a scared-ass dumbshit
.

We couldn’t clean ourselves for three days because Runner was too tired to kill the thing. I guess I get my laziness from him.

“I never know where Runner’s at. Last I heard, he was somewhere in Arkansas. But that was a year ago. At least.”

“Well, it might be a good idea to try to track him down. Some people would definitely want you to talk to him. Although I don’t think Runner did it,” Lyle said. “It maybe makes the most sense— debts, history of violence.”

“Craziness.”

“Craziness.” Lyle smiled pertly. “But, he doesn’t seem smart enough to pull that off. No offense.”

“None taken. So, then, what’s your theory?”

“I’m not quite ready to share that yet.” He patted a stack of file folders next to him. “I’ll let you read through the pertinent facts of the case first.”

“Oh for the love of Pete,” I said. Realizing, as my lips were pressed into the
P,
that it was my mother’s phrase.
For the love of Pete, let’s skeedaddle, where are my ding dang keys
?

“So if Ben’s really innocent, why doesn’t he try to get out?” I asked. My voice went high, urgent on this last part, a child’s whinny: but
why
can’t I have
dessert?
I realized I was stealthily hoping Ben was innocent, that he’d be returned to me, the Ben I knew, before I was afraid of him. I had allowed myself a dangerous glimpse of him out of prison, striding up to my house, hands in his pockets (another memory that came back, once I let myself start thinking again: Ben with his hands always burrowed deep in his pockets, perpetually abashed). Ben sitting at my dinner table, if I had a dinner table, happy, forgiving, no harm done. If he was innocent.

If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a very Merry Christmas,
I heard my aunt Diane boom in my head. Those words had been the bane of my childhood, a constant reminder that nothing turned out right, not just for me but for anyone, and that’s why someone had invented a saying like that. So we’d all know that we’d never have what we needed.

Because—
remember, remember, remember, Baby Day
—Ben was
home that night. When I got out of bed to go to my mom’s room, I saw his closed door with the light under it. Murmuring from inside. He was there.

“Maybe you could go ask him, make that your first stop, go see Ben.”

Ben in prison. I’d spent the last twenty-odd years refusing to imagine the place. Now I pictured my brother in there, behind the wire, behind the concrete, down a gray slate hall, inside a cell. Did he have photos of the family anywhere? Would he even be allowed such a thing? I realized again I knew nothing about Ben’s life. I didn’t even know what a cell looked like aside from what I’d seen in the movies.

“No, not Ben. Not yet.”

“Is it a money thing? We’d pay you for that.”

“It’s a lot-of-things thing,” I grumbled.

“Okaaaaaaaay. You want to look into Runner then? Or … what?”

We sat silent. Neither of us knew what to do with our hands; we couldn’t keep eye contact. As a child, I was constantly being sent on playdates with other kids—the shrinks insisted I interact with cohorts. That’s what my meeting with Lyle was like: those first loose, horrible ten minutes, when the grown-ups have left, and neither kid knows what the other one wants, so you stand there, near the TV they’ve told you to keep off, fiddling with the antenna.

I picked through the complimentary bowl of peanuts in their shells, brittle and airy as beetle husks. I dropped a few in my beer to get the salt. I poked at them. They bobbed. My whole scheme seemed remarkably childish. Was I really going to go talk to people who might have killed my family? Was I really going to try to
solve
something? In any way but wishful thinking could I believe Ben was innocent? And if he was innocent, didn’t that make me the biggest bastard in history? I had that overwhelming feeling I get when I’m about to give up on a plan, that big rush of air when I realize that my stroke of genius has flaws, and I don’t have the brains or energy to fix them.

It wasn’t an option to go back to bed and forget the whole thing. I had rent coming up, and I’d need money for food soon. I could go
on welfare, but that would mean figuring out how to go on welfare, and I’d probably sooner starve than deal with the paperwork.

“I’ll go talk to Ben,” I mumbled. “I should start there. But I’d need $300.”

I said it thinking I wouldn’t really get it, but Lyle reached into an old nylon wallet, held together with duct tape, and counted out $300. He didn’t look unhappy.

“Where you get all this money from, Lyle?”

He beefed up a bit at that, sat up straighter in his chair. “I’m treasurer of the Kill Club; I have a certain amount of discretionary funds. This is the project I choose to use them for.” Lyle’s tiny ears turned red, like angry embryos.

“You’re embezzling.” I suddenly liked him more.

I
t was an hour bike ride from the farm to Kinnakee proper. At least an hour, at a good pace when the cold wasn’t turning your lungs metal-red and blood wasn’t dripping down your cheek. Ben planned his work at the school for the times when it was most empty—like, he’d never go there on a Saturday because the wrestling team had the gym on Saturdays. It was just too lame holding a mop when all these blocky, muscled, loud guys were waddling around, spitting chaw on the floor you just cleaned and then looking at you, half guilty, half daring you to say something.

Today was Wednesday, but it was still Christmas break, so the place should be kind of quiet—well, the weight room was always busy, always making that sound like a thumping steel heart. But it was early. Early was always best. He usually went from eight to noon, mopped and straightened and shined like the fucking monkey he was, and got the hell out before anyone saw him. Sometimes Ben felt like a fairy-tale elf who’d creep in and leave everything spotless without anyone noticing. The kids here didn’t give a shit about keeping things clean: They’d toss a carton toward a trash can, the milk drooling all over the floor, and just shrug. They’d spill sloppy-joe meat on
their cafeteria seat and just leave it there, hardening, for someone else to deal with. Ben did it, too, just because that’s what everyone did. He’d actually drop a glob of tuna sandwich on the floor and roll his eyes like it wasn’t worth dealing with, when he was the guy who’d be dealing with it in a few days. It was the stupidest thing, he was actually abusing himself.