Dark Places(53)

Ed answered the door. Jim, Ed, and Ben were all in the same grade, but the brothers weren’t twins, one of them had flunked at least once, maybe twice. She thought it was Ed. He goggled at her for a second, a short kid of only 5’4” or so, but with a man’s athletic build. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked behind him.

“Well, hi, Mrs. Day.”

“Hi, Ed. Sorry to bother you on Christmas break.”

“No, no problem.”

“I’m looking for Ben—is he here? Have you seen him?”

“Be-en?” He said it in two syllables, like he was tickled at the idea. “Ah, no, we ain’t seen Ben in … well, I don’t think we seen him this whole year. Aside from school. He’s been hanging around with a different group now.”

“What group?” asked Diane, and Ed looked at her for the first time.

“Uh, we-ell …”

She could see Jim’s silhouette approaching the door, backlit by the picture window in the kitchen. He lumbered toward them, bigger and wider than his brother.

“Can we help you, Mrs. Day?” He nudged his face in, then his torso, slowly moving his brother to the side. The two of them effectively closed off the doorway. It made Patty want to crane her neck around them and peek inside.

“I was just asking Ed if you two’d seen Ben today, and he said you hadn’t been seeing much of him this whole school year.”

“Mmm, no. Wish you’d phoned, could have saved you some time.”

“We need to find him soon, you have any idea where we can find him, it’s sort of a family emergency,” Diane interrupted.

“Mmm, no,” said Jim again. “Wish we could help.”

“You can’t give us even a name of who he spends time with? Surely you must know that.”

Ed had swung to the background now, so he was calling from the shadow of the living room.

“Tell her to phone 1-800-Devils-R-Us!” he cackled.

“What?”

“Nothing.” Jim looked at the door knob in his hand, debating whether to start closing it.

“Jim, can you help us, please?” Patty murmured. “Please?”

The boy frowned, tapped the point of a cowboy boot against the floor like a ballerina, refused to raise his eyes. “He hangs out with, like, the Devil crowd.”

“What does that mean?”

“Some older guy heads it, I don’t know his name. They do a lot of drugs, peyote or whatever, and kill cows and sh-stuff. That’s just what I heard. They don’t go to our school, the kids in it. Except for Ben, I guess.”

“Well, you must know the name of someone,” Patty coaxed.

“I really don’t, Mrs. Day. We steer clear of that stuff. I’m sorry, we tried to stay friends with Ben, but. We go to church here, my parents, they run a tight ship. Er … I’m real sorry.”

He looked at the ground, and stopped talking, and Patty couldn’t think of anything else to ask.

“OK, Jim, thanks.”

He shut the door and before they could turn around, from inside the house they heard a bellow: Asshole, why’d you gotta say that! followed by a heavy bang against the wall.





Libby Day





NOW





Back in the car, Lyle said only three words. “What a nightmare.” In reply, I said, mmmm. Krissi reminded me of me. Grasping and anxious, always bundling things aside for future use. That packet of chips. We scroungers always like little packets of food because people give them up with less hassle.

Lyle and I drove for twenty minutes without saying much, until finally he said, in his summing-up, newscaster voice, “So obviously she’s lying about Ben molesting her. I think she lied to her dad too. I think Lou Cates went nuts, killed your family, and then later, he found out she’d lied. He killed an innocent family for nothing. Hence, his own family disintegrates. Lou Cates disappears, starts drinking.”

“Hence?” I nipped at him.

“It’s a solid theory. Don’t you think?”

“I think you should not come on any more of these interviews. It’s embarrassing.”

“Libby, I’m financing this whole thing.”

“Well, you’re not helping it.”

“Sorry,” he said, and then we stopped talking. As the lights of Kansas City turned the sky a sick orange in the distance, Lyle said, without looking at me, “It’s a solid theory though, right?”

“Everything’s a theory, that’s why it’s a mystery!” I mimicked him. “Just a great mystery, Who Killed The Days?” I proclaimed, brightly. After a few minutes, I said grudgingly. “I think it’s an OK theory, I think we should look at Runner too.”

“Fine by me. Although I’m still going to track down Lou Cates.”

“Be my guest.”

I dropped him back outside Sarah’s, not offering to take him home, Lyle standing on the curb like a kid baffled that his parents can really bear leaving him at camp. I got home late and cranky and anxious to count my money. I’d made $1,000 so far from the Kill Club, with another $500 that Lyle owed me for Krissi, even though Krissi clearly would have talked to anybody. But even as I thought that, I knew it wasn’t true. None of those Kill Club misfits could have made that work with Krissi, I thought. She talked to me because we had the same chemicals in our blood: shame, anger, greed. Unjustified nostalgia.