Dark Places

  “Don’t … you know,” I started saying to Lyle, who was snapping his head around, shifting into his oblivious inquisitor mode, “You know, don’t—”

  “I won’t.”

  The crazy-making jazz continued as Lyle called out a hello. I could not see a single employee, nor customer for that matter, but then it was midmorning on a rainy Tuesday. Between the music and the sun-baked lighting from the ruthless fluorescent lamps, I felt stoned. Then I could make out movement, someone in the far back, bending and stooping in one of the aisles, and I started walking toward the figure. The man was dark, muscled, with thick black hair in a ponytail. He reared up when he saw us.

  “Oh, dang!” he said flinching. He stared at us, then at the door, as if he’d forgotten he was open for business. “I didn’t hear you all come in.”

  “Probably because of the music,” Lyle yelled, pointing up at the ceiling.

  “Too loud for you? Probably right. Hold on.” He disappeared toward a back office and suddenly the music was gone.

  “Better? Now what can I help you with?” He leaned against a seed bag, gave us a look that said we’d better be worth his turning down the music.

  “I’m looking for Trey Teepano,” I said. “Is he the guy who owns this store?”

  “I am. I do. I’m Trey. What can I do you for?” He had a tense energy, bounced on the balls of his feet, tucked his lips into his teeth. He was intensely good-looking with a face that blinked young-old, depending on the angle.

  “Well.” Well, I didn’t know. His name floated in my head like an incantation, but what to do next: ask him if he’d been a bookie, if he knew Diondra? Accuse him of murder?

  “Um, it’s about my brother.”

  “Ben.”

  “Yeah,” I said, surprised.

  Trey Teepano smiled a cold crocodile smile. “Yeah, took me a second, but I recognized you. The red hair, I guess, and the same face. You’re the one who lived, right? Debby?”

  “Libby.”

  “Right. And who’re you?”

  “I’m just her friend,” Lyle offered. I could feel him willing himself to stop talking, not pull a repeat of the Krissi Cates interview.

  Trey began straightening the shelves, readjusting bottles of Deer-Off, poorly pretending to be occupied, like reading a book upside down.

  “You knew my dad too?”

  “Runner? Everyone knew Runner.”

  “Runner mentioned your name the last time I saw him.”

  He swung back his ponytail. “Yeah, did he pass on?”

  “No, he, he lives down in Oklahoma. He seems to think you were somehow … involved that night, that maybe you could shed some light on what happened. With the murders.”

  “Right. That old man is crazy, always has been.”

  “He said you were, like, a bookie or something back then.”

  “Yup.”

  “And you were into Devil worship.”

  “Yup.”

  He said these things with the faded blue-jean tone of a reformed addict, that vibe of broken-in peace.

  “So that’s true?” Lyle said. Then looked at me guiltily.

  “Yeah, and Runner owed me money. Lot of money. Still does, I guess. But it doesn’t mean I know what happened in your house that night. I been through all this back ten years ago.”

  “More like twenty-five.”

  Trey needled his eyebrows.

  “Wow, I guess so,” he said, still seeming unconvinced, his face twisted as he added up the years.

  “Did you know Ben?” I persisted.

  “A little, not really.”

  “Your name just keeps coming up a lot.”

  “I got a catchy name,” he shrugged. “Look, back then, Kinnakee was racist as hell. Indians they did not like. I got blamed for a lot of shit I didn’t do. This was before Dances with Wolves, you know what I’m saying? It was just BTI all the time out in BFE.”

  “What?”

  “BTI, Blame the Indian. I admit it, I was a shit. I was not a good guy. But after that night, what happened to your family, it was, like it freaked me out, I got clean. Well, not right after, but a year or so later. Stopped drugs, stopped believing in the Devil. It was harder to stop believing in the Devil.”

  “You really believed in the Devil?” Lyle said.

  He shrugged: “Sure. You gotta believe in something, right? Everyone has their thing.”

  I don’t, I thought.

  “It’s like, you believe you have the power of Satan in you, so you have the power of Satan in you,” Trey said. “But that was a long time ago.”

  “What about Diondra Wertzner?” I said.

  He paused, turned away from us, walked over to the bunnies, started stroking one through the wire with his index finger.

  “Where you going with this, Deb, uh, Libby?”

  “I’m trying to track down Diondra Wertzner. I heard she was pregnant with Ben’s baby at the time of the murders, and that she disappeared after. Some people say she was last seen with you and Ben.”

  “Ah shit, Diondra. I always knew that girl would bite me in the ass sooner or later.” He grinned wide this time. “Man, Diondra. I have no clue where Diondra is, she was always running off, though, always making up drama. She’d run away, her parents would make a big deal, she’d come home, they’d all play house for a little, then her parents would be assholes—they neglected the shit out of her—and she’d need the drama, start some shit, run away, whatever. Total soap opera. I guess she finally ran away, decided it wasn’t worth coming home. I mean, you try the white pages?”

  “She’s listed as a missing person,” Lyle said, looked at me again to see if I minded the interruption. I didn’t.

  “Oh, she’s fine,” Trey said. “My guess is she’s living somewhere under one of her crazy-ass names.”

  “Crazy names?” I said, put a hand on Lyle’s arm to keep him quiet.

  “Oh, nothing, she was just one of those girls, always trying to be different. One day she’d talk in an English accent, next day it was Southern. She never gave anyone her real name. Like she’d go to the beauty parlor and give a wrong name, go order a pizza and give the wrong name. She just liked screwing with people, you know, just playing. ‘I’m Desiree from Dallas, I’m Alexis from London.’ She was always giving, uh, using her porn name, you know?”

  “She did porn?” I said.

  “No, like that game. What’s the name of your childhood pet?”

  I stared at him.

  “What’s the name of your childhood pet,” he prompted.

  I used Diane’s dead dog: “Gracie.”

  “And what was the name of the street you grew up on?”

  “Rural Route 2.”

  He laughed. “Well, that one didn’t work. It’s supposed to sound slutty, like Bambi Evergreen or something. Diondra’s was … Polly something … Palm. Polly Palm, how great is that?”

  “You don’t think she’s dead?”

  He shrugged.

  “You think Ben was really guilty?” I asked.

  “I got no opinion on that. Probably.”

  Lyle was suddenly tense, bobbing up and down, pushing his pointy finger against my back, trying to steer me toward the door.

  “So thanks for your time,” Lyle blurted, and I frowned at him and he frowned back at me. A fluorescent above us thrummed on and off suddenly, flashing sick light on us, the bunnies scampering around in the straw. Trey scowled up at the light and it stopped, as if scolded.

  “Well, can I give you my number, in case you think of anything?” I said.

  Trey smiled, shook his head. “No thanks.”

  Trey turned away then. As we walked toward the door, the music got loud again. I turned around as the storm started to crackle, one side of the sky black, the other yellow. Trey was coming back out of the office, watching us with his hands on his sides, the rabbits behind him doing a sudden scuffle.

  “Hey Trey, so what’s BFE then?” I called.

  “Butt Fucked
Egypt, Libby. That’s our hometown.”

  LYLE WAS GALLOPING ahead of me, leaping off the steps. He reached the car in three big strides, jiggling the handle to be let in, comeoncomeoncomeon. I dropped in next to him, pre-annoyed. “What?” I said. Thunder crackled. A gust of air kicked up a wet gravel smell.

  “Just drive first, let’s get out of here, hurry.”

  “Yessir.”

  I swung out of the parking lot, back toward Kansas City, the rain turning frantic. I’d driven about five minutes when Lyle told me to pull over, aimed himself at me, and said, “Oh my God.”

  Ben Day

  JANUARY 3, 1985

  12:02 A.M.

  They pulled up outside Diondra’s, the dogs barking frantically as usual, as if they’d never seen a truck, or a person, or Diondra even. They all three went through the back gate, then Diondra told Ben and Trey to stand in front of the sliding door and to take their clothes off so they wouldn’t drip blood everywhere. Just peel ’em off, put ’em all in a pile, and we’ll burn them.

  The dogs were frightened of Trey. They barked but they didn’t come near him—he’d beaten the shit out of the white one once, and they all walked carefully around him ever since. Trey pulled his shirt off from the back, the way guys in movies did, the hard way, and then he unbuttoned his jeans, his eyes on Diondra, as if they were about to screw. Like this was some crazy foreplay. Ben pulled his shirt off the same way, and unpeeled his pants, those leather pants he’d sweat through already, and then the dogs were on him, sniffing at his crotch, licking at his arms, like they might devour him. He pushed one away, his palm on its snout, pushing hard, and it just came right back, slobbery, aggressive.

  “It wants to suck your dick, man.” Trey laughed. “Get it where you can, right?”

  “He ain’t getting any from me, so he might as well,” Diondra snapped, doing her pissy, loop-de-loop head twist. She stepped out of her jeans, tan lines marking where her panties should have been, where no panties were, just white flesh and black fur, sticking up like a wet cat. Then she took off her sweater and stood there in just her bra, her breasts swollen, white stretch marks trailing along the tops of them.

  “What?” she said at Ben.

  “Nothing, you should go inside.”

  “Thanks, genius.” She kicked her clothes over to a pile and told Trey—somehow she made it clear that it was just Trey—that she’d go get some lighter fluid.

  Trey kicked his jeans into the center, stood in blue boxers, told Ben that he’d failed to prove himself.

  “I don’t see it that way,” Ben muttered, but when Trey said what? he just shook his head. One dog was fully on him now, his paws on Ben’s thighs, trying to lick around his stomach, where the blood had pooled. “Get off me,” Ben snapped, and when the dog just leapt right back up, he backhanded it. The dog snarled, then so did the second, the third barking, its teeth bared. Ben shimmied naked back toward the house yelling, “Go’way,” to the dogs, the dogs backing off only when Diondra returned.

  “Dogs respect strength,” Trey said, a slightly upturned lip aimed at Ben’s nakedness. “Nice fire bush.”

  Trey grabbed the lighter fluid from Diondra, still nude from her big stomach on down, her belly button poking out like a thumb. Trey sprayed it over the clothes, holding the can near his dick like he was pissing. He flicked his lighter to one side, and WHOOMP! the clothes fired up, making Trey stumble back two big steps, almost fall. It was the first time Ben had seen him look foolish. Diondra turned away, not wanting to embarrass Trey by seeing it. That made Ben more sad than anything else tonight: the woman he wanted to be his wife, the woman who’d have his child, she’d give this bit of grace to another man, but never, ever to Ben.

  He needed to make her respect him.

  HE WAS STUCK there, at Diondra’s, watching them smoke more dope. He couldn’t get home without his bike—it was just too cold, dead man’s cold, snowing hard again, the wind blowing down the chimney. If it turned into a blizzard, the rest of those cows would freeze to death by morning, if the lazy-ass farmer didn’t do something. Good. Teach him a lesson. Ben felt the anger in him coming up again, tight.

  Teach everyone a fucking lesson. All those fuckers who never seemed to have any trouble, who seemed to just glide by—hell, even Runner, shitty drunk that he was, seemed to get less hassle than Ben. There were a lot of people who deserved a lesson, deserved to really understand, like Ben did, that nothing came easy, that most things were going to go sour.

  Diondra accidentally burned his jeans along with the leather pants. So he was wearing a pair of Diondra’s purple sweats, a big sweatshirt, and thick white Polo socks she had already mentioned twice she wanted returned. They were at that aimless time of night, the big event over, Ben still wondering what it meant, if he really did pray to the Devil, if he really would start feeling power. Or if it was all some hoax, or one of those things you talked yourself into believing—like a Ouija board or a killer clown in a white van. Were they all three agreeing silently to believe that they’d really sacrificed for Satan, or was it just an excuse to get really high and fuck stuff up?

  They should have stopped early on with the drugs. It was cheap stuff, he could tell by how much it all hurt, even the weed went down fighting, like it was out to damage. It was the cheap stuff that made people mean.

  Trey passed out, slowly, watching TV, his eyes blinking first, then his head looping around, up then down, then back up. Then he slumped to his side and was gone.

  Diondra said she had to pee, and so Ben just sat there in the living room, wishing he were home. He was picturing his flannel sheets, picturing himself in bed, talking to Diondra on the phone. She never phoned from home, and he wasn’t allowed to call her because her parents were so crazy. So she got cigarettes and sat in a phone booth near the gas station or in the mall. It was the one thing she did for him, made him feel good, her making that effort, he really liked it. Maybe he liked the idea of talking to Diondra better than he liked actually talking to her, lately she was so fucking mean to him when they were together. He was thinking again about the bleeding bull and wishing he had the gun back, that’s what he wanted, and then Diondra was yelling his name from her bedroom.

  He turned the corner and she was standing by her glittery red answering machine, with her head cocked to the side, and she just said, “You’re fucked,” and hit the button.

  “Hey Dio, it’s Megan. I’m totally freaked out about Ben Day, did you hear about it, that he molested all these girls? My sister is in sixth grade. She’s fine, thank God, but god what a sicko. I guess the cops have arrested him. Anyway, call me.”

  And then a click and a whir and another girl’s voice deep and nasal: “Hey Diondra, it’s Jenny. I told you Ben Day was a Devil-dude, did you hear about this shit? I guess he’s, like, on the run from the cops. I guess there’s going to be some big conference about it at school tomorrow. I don’t know, I wanted to see if you want to go.”

  Diondra was standing over the machine like she wanted to crush it, like it was an animal she could do something to. She turned to Ben and screamed, “What the fuck?” turning pink and spitty and Ben immediately said the wrong thing: “I better go home.”

  “You better go home? What the fuck is this Ben, what is going on?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I should go home.”

  “No no no no no, momma’s boy. You fucking worthless fucking momma’s boy. What, you going to go home, wait for the police and leave me here while you go to jail? Leave me just sitting here waiting for my fucking dad to get home? With your fucking baby I can’t get rid of?”

  “What do you want me to do, Diondra?” Home. That’s what he kept thinking.

  “We’re leaving town tonight. I have about $200 cash left over from my parents. How much can you get at your place?” When Ben didn’t say right away, his brain on Krissi Cates and whether the kiss was something to be arrested for and how much was true and whether the cops were really after him, Diondra walked o
ver to him and slapped his face, hard. “How much do you have at your place?”

  “I don’t know. I have some money I’ve been saving, and my mom usually has a hundred bucks, two hundred, hidden around. But I don’t know where.”

  Diondra swayed, closed one eye and looked at her alarm clock. “Does your mom stay up late, would she be awake?”

  “If the police are there, yeah.” If they weren’t, she was asleep, even if she was scared out of her mind. It was the big joke in the family that his mom had never celebrated New Year’s Eve, she was always asleep before midnight.

  “We’ll go there, and if we don’t see a cop car, we’ll go in. You can get money, pack some clothes, and then we’ll get the fuck out of here.”

  “And then what?”

  Diondra crossed over to him, petted him where his cheek still stung. Her eye makeup was halfway down her cheek, but he still felt a surge of, what, love? Power? Something. A surge, a feeling, something good.

  “Ben baby, I am the mother of your child, right?” He nodded, just a bit. “OK, so get me out of town. Get us all out of town. I can’t do this without you. We need to go. Head west. We can camp out somewhere, sleep in the car, whatever. Otherwise you’re in jail, and I’m dead from my daddy. He’d make me have the baby and then kill me. And you don’t want our kid to be an orphan, right? Not when we can help it? So let’s go.”

  “I didn’t do what they said, with those girls, I didn’t,” Ben finally whispered, Diondra leaning on his shoulder, wisps of her hair curling up, vining into his mouth.

  “Who cares if you did?” she said into his chest.

  Libby Day

  NOW

  Lyle was bouncing in his seat. “Libby, did you notice? Holy crud, did you notice?”

  “What?”

  “Diondra’s porn name, the one she used all the time, did you notice?”