Dark Places(47)

“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 f*ck-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.”

“Children who caused something?”

“Something to happen, something that got bigger than they were, something that had unintentionally major consequences. Ripples. That interests me.”

“Why?”

He paused. “Just does.”

We were the two unlikeliest people to charm information out of someone. Stunted human beings who got awkward every time we tried to express ourselves. I didn’t really care if we got much from Krissi, though, as the more I thought about Lyle’s theory, the more it seemed like bunk.

After another forty minutes of driving, the strip clubs started showing up: dismal, crouched blocks of cement, most without any real name, just neon signs shouting Live Girls! Live Girls! Which I guess is a better selling point than Dead Girls. I imagined Krissi Cates pulling into the gravel parking lot, getting ready to take off her clothes at a strip club that was so entirely generic. There’s something disturbing about not even bothering with a name. Whenever I see news stories about children who were killed by their parents, I think: But how could it be? They cared enough to give this kid a name, they had a moment—at least one moment—when they sifted through all the possibilities and picked one specific name for their child, decided what they would call their baby. How could you kill something you cared enough to name?

“This will be my first strip bar,” Lyle said, and gave his pert-lipped smile.

I pulled off the highway, to the left, as Krissi’s mother had advised—when I’d phoned the only club listed, a greasy man told me he thought Krissi was “around”—and rattled into a pasture-sized parking lot for three strip bars, all in a row. A gas station and trucker park sat at the far, far end: in the bright white glow, I saw the silhouettes of women scuttling like cats between the cabs, doors opening and shutting, bare legs kicking out as they leaned in to line up the next trick. I assumed most of the strippers ended up working the trucker park once the clubs were done with them.