Dark Places(54)

They all sat quietly for a few minutes, Trey’s mood unnerving everyone. Usually he was the loud, smart-ass, fight-starting beer swigger, but when he got upset it was like he sent out hundreds of invisible, insistent fingers to push everyone down by the shoulders. Sink everyone.

“So you want to go?” he suddenly asked Ben. “I got my truck. I got Diondra’s keys. We can go to her place til she gets home, she’s got cable. Better’n this freezing cold shithole.”

Ben nodded, gave a jittery wave to the crowd, and followed Trey who was already outside, tossing his beer can on the snow. Ben was definitely altered. Words clotted in the back of his throat, and as he climbed into the GMC he tried to stammer some excuse to Trey. Trey who’d just saved his ass, for unclear reasons. Why was he the one with Diondra’s keys? Probably because he’d asked for them. Ben didn’t think to ask enough.

“I hope you’re ready to back that shit up, what you were saying in there,” Trey said, putting the stick in reverse. The GMC was a tank, and Trey drove it straight across the farm property, bumping over old cornstalks and irrigation ditches, forcing Ben to grab on to the armrest to keep from biting his tongue off. Trey landed a meaningful glance on Ben’s tight grip.

“Yeah, of course.”

“Maybe tonight you become a man. Maybe.”

Trey flicked on his cassette player. Iron Maiden, midsong, hell yes, the words hissing at Ben: 666 … Satan … Sacrifice.

Ben worked the music in his head, his brain sizzling, feeling angry-frantic, the way he always did to metal, the guitar strum never letting up, bundling him tenser and tenser, bumping his head up and down, the drums shooting up his spine, the whole thing this rage-frenzy, not letting him think straight, just keeping him in a tight shake. His whole body felt like a cocked fist, ready for release.





Libby Day


NOW


The stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis was hours and hours of pure ugly driving. Flat, dead-yellow, and littered with billboards: a fetus curled up like a kitten (Abortion Stops a Beating Heart); a living room turned red from the glare of ambulance lights (Take Care Crime-Scene Cleanup Specialists); a remarkably plain woman giving fuck-me eyes to passing motorists (Hot Jimmy’s Gentlemen’s Club). The billboards ominously advising love of Jesus were in direct proportion to those advertising porn liquidators, and the signs for local restaurants consistently misused quotation marks: Herb’s Highway Diner—The “Best” Meal in Town; Jolene’s Rib House—Come in for Our “Delicious” Baby Back Ribs.

Lyle was in the passenger seat. He’d debated the pros and cons of joining me (maybe I would have more rapport with Krissi alone, us both being women; on the other hand, he did know this part of the case better; but then again, he may get too excited, ask her too many questions, and then blow it, he sometimes got ahead of himself, if he had one flaw it was that he sometimes got ahead of himself; then again, $500 was a lot of money and he felt somewhat entitled, no offense, to come along). Finally I’d snapped into the phone that I’d swing by Sarah’s Pub in thirty minutes, and if he was out front, he could come. Click. Now he was fussing next to me, flicking the door lock up and down, fiddling with the radio, reading each sign out loud, like he was trying to reassure himself of something. We drove past a fireworks warehouse the size of a cathedral, and at least three bundles of fatality markers: small white crosses and plastic flowers gathering dust on the side of the road. Gas stations made themselves known with signs skinnier and taller than the wilting weather vanes of nearby farms.

On one ridge was a billboard with a familiar face: Lisette Stephens, with that joyful grin, a phone number below for information on her disappearance. I wondered how long til they took it down, drained of hope or money.

“Oh God, her,” Lyle said, as we passed Lisette. I bristled, but my feelings were similar. After a while it was almost rude to ask you to worry about someone who was clearly dead. Unless it was my family.

“So Lyle, can I ask you, what is it that makes you so obsessed with the … this case?” As I said it, the sky got just dark enough to switch the highway lights on, and all in a row, into the horizon, they blinked white, like my question had intrigued them.

Lyle was staring at his leg, listening sideways like he usually did. He had a habit of pushing one ear toward whoever was speaking, and then he’d wait a few seconds, like he was translating whatever was said into another language.

“It’s just a classic whodunit. There are a lot of viable theories, so it’s interesting to talk about,” he said, still not looking at me. “And there’s you. And Krissi. Children who … caused something. I’m interested in that.”