Dark Places(50)

“It’s fine, Kevin, my friend’s got it,” Krissi said, and then laughed. “What’s your name anyway?”

I avoided the question by asking the bartender how much I owed, paid it from a fan of twenties so Krissi knew I had more money. Takes a mooch to catch a mooch.

“You’ll love these, like drinking a cookie,” she said. “Cheers!” she raised the shot up with a screw-you gesture toward a dark window in the back of the club, where I guessed Mike was sitting. We drank, the shot sitting thick in my throat, Lyle making a whoo! noise like it had been whiskey.

After a few beats, Krissi readjusted a boob and then pulled in another big gulp of air. “So, yeah. I was eleven, Ben was fifteen. He started hanging around me after school, just always watching me. I mean, I got that a lot, I always got that. I was always a cute kid, I’m not bragging, I just was. And we had a lot of money. My dad—” here I caught a flicker of pain, a quick wrinkle of her lip that exposed a single tooth—“he was a self-made man. Got into the videotape industry right at the start, he was the biggest videotape wholesaler in the Midwest.”

“Like, movies?”

“No, like blank tapes, for people to record stuff on. Remember? Well, you probably were too young.”

I wasn’t.

“Anyway, so I was kind of an easy target maybe. Not like I was a latchkey kid or anything, but my mom didn’t keep the best eye out for me all the time, I guess.” This time a more obvious look of bitterness.

“Wait, why are you here again?” she asked.

“I’m researching the case.”

Her mouth drooped down at the corners. “Oh. For a second I thought my mom sent you. I know she knows I’m here.”

She clicked long, coral nails on the counter and I hid my left hand, with its stumped finger, under my shotglass. I knew I should care something about Krissi’s homelife but I didn’t. Well, I cared enough not to tell her that her mom was never going to check up on her.

One of the patrons at one of the plastic tables kept peeling off glances at us, looking over his shoulder with a drunk pissiness. I wanted to get out of there, leave Krissi and her issues behind.

“So,” Krissi began again. “Ben was really sneaky with me. He’d, like … you want some chips? The chips are really good here.”

The chips hung in cheap snack packs behind the bar. The chips are really good here. I had to like the woman for working me so hard. I nodded a yes and soon Krissi was tearing into a bag, the stench of sour-cream-and-onion making my mouth water in spite of its better judgment. Yellow flavoring stuck to Krissi’s bubblegum lipgloss.

“Anyway, so Ben earned my trust and then started molesting me.”

“How did he earn your trust?”

“You know, gum, candy, saying nice things to me.”

“And how did he molest you?”

“He’d take me into the closet where he kept his janitor stuff, he was a janitor at the school, I remember he always smelled horrible, like dirty bleach. He’d take me in there after school and make me perform oral sex on him and then he’d perform oral sex on me and he’d make me swear allegiance to Satan. I was so so scared. He’d tell me, you know, that he’d hurt my parents if I told.”

“How did he make you go into the closet?” Lyle asked. “If it was at school?”

Krissi turtled her neck at that, the same angry gesture I’ve always made when anyone questioned my testimony about Ben.

“Just, you know, threaten me. He had an altar in there, he’d pull it out, it was an upside-down cross. I think some dead animals too that he’d killed were in there. A sacrifice thing. That’s why I think he was working up to killing me. But he got his family instead. The whole family was into it, that’s what I heard. That the whole family was worshiping the Devil and stuff.” She licked chip shards off her thick plastic fingernails.

“I doubt that,” I muttered.

“Well, how do you know?” Krissi snapped. “I lived through this, OK?”

I kept waiting for her to figure out who I was, to let my face— not so different from Ben’s face—float into her memory, to notice the wide hairline of red roots springing from my head.

“So how many times did Ben molest you?”

“Countless. Countless.” She nodded somberly.

“How did your dad react when you told him what Ben had done to you?” Lyle asked.

“Oh my god he was so protective of me, he freaked, went totally ballistic. He drove around town that day, the day of the murders, looking for Ben. I always think if he’d only found Ben, he’d have killed him, and then Ben’s family would still be alive. Isn’t that sad?”

My gut clenched at that and then my anger flared back.

“Ben’s family—the horrible Devil worshipers?”

“Well, maybe I was exaggerating on that.” Krissi cocked her head, the way grown-ups do when they’re trying to placate a child. “I’m sure they were nice Christian people. Just think, if my dad had found Ben though …”

Just think if your dad didn’t find Ben and instead found my family. Found a gun, found an axe, wiped us out. Almost wiped us out.

“Did your dad come back to your house that night?” Lyle asked. “Did you see him after midnight?”