Dark Places

an indignant grunt andsat down on his beach towel, blowing his nose on one corner. “It’s not like your brother was some babe in the woods. Your brother was into witchcraft, Devil shit. You hang around with the Devil, sooner or later you’re gonna have to fuck … shoulda known it when I saw him with Trey Teepano, that fucking … fucker.”
    Trey Teepano, the name that kept coming up but went nowhere.
    “What did Trey Teepano do?”
    Runner broke into a grin, one cracked tooth leering over his bottom lip. “Boy, people do not know shit about what went on that night. It’s hilarious.”
    “It’s not hilarious. My mom is dead, my brother is in prison. Your kids are dead, Runner.”
    He cocked his head at that, stared up at a moon as curvy as a wrench.
    “You’re not dead,” he said.
    “Michelle and Debby are dead. Patty is dead.”
    “But why aren’t you, don’t you ever wonder?” he spat out a jelly of blood. “Seems weird.”
    “What’s Trey Teepano got to do with it?” I repeated.
    “Do I get some reward money or something if I talk?”
    “I’m sure, yeah.”
    “I’m not innocent, not entirely, but neither’s your brother, neither’s Trey.”
    “What did you do, Runner?”
    “Who ended up with all the money? Wasn’t me.”
    “What money, we had no money.”
    “Your mom had money. Your queen bitch mom had money, believe me.”
    He was standing now, glaring at me, his oversized pupils eclipsing his irises, making his blue eyes look like solar flares. He tilted his head again, in a twitchy, beastlike way and started walking toward me. He held his palms outward, as if to show he wasn’t going to hurt me, which just made me feel like he would.
    “Where’d all that money go, Libby, from Patty’s life insurance? That’s another mystery for you to think on. Because I sure as shit don’t have it.”
    “No one got money, Runner, it all went to defend Ben.”
    Runner was standing right on top of me now, trying to scare me the way he did when I was little. He was a small man, but still had a good six inches on me, and he breathed on me hard, his breath all warm, tinny beer.
    “What happened, Runner?”
    “Your mom, always keeping money to herself, never ever helping me, and I put years in on that farm, never seen a dime. Well, the chickens came home to roost. And your goddam mom brought it on herself. If she’d given me that money …”
    “You were asking her for money that day?”
    “All my life, I owed people money,” he said. “All my life, never able to get ahead, always owing. You got any money, Libby? Hell yeah you do, you wrote that book, didn’tcha? So you’re not really innocent either. Give me some money, Libby. Give your old man a little cash. I’ll buy me a liver on the black market, then I’ll testify to whatever you want. Whatever baby wants.” He poked me with two fingers in the middle of my chest, and I began slowly trying to back up.
    “If you were any part of that night, that will be found out, Runner.”
    “Well, nothing was found out back then, why should anything be found out now. You think the cops, the lawyers, everyone involved in that case, everyone who got famous from that case”—he pointed at me now, his lower lip jutting out—“You think they’re just gonna, what, ooops, our mistake, here you go, Benny boy, go ahead and enjoy your life. Nah. Whatever happened, he’s in there the rest of his life.”
    “Not if you tell the truth.”
    “You’re just like your mother, you know, so … cunt. Never go with the flow, always do things the hard way. If she’d just helped me once, in all those years, but she was such a bitch. I’m not saying she deserved to die …” he laughed, bit a hangnail … “but man, was she a hard woman. And she raised a goddam child molester. Sick fuck. Never, ever was that kid a man. Oh, and you tell Peggy she can suck my dick too.”
    I turned to go at that, and realized I couldn’t get back up without Runner’s help. I faced him again.
    “Little baby Ben, you really think he did those killings by his-self? Ben?”
    “So who was there, Runner? What are you trying to say?”
    “I’m saying Trey, he needed money, he was a bookie who needed to be paid.”
    “By you?”
    “I’m not going to cast inpersions right now, but he was a bookie. And that night he was with Ben. How do you think he got into that shit-ass house?”
    “If that’s what you think happened, if you think Trey Teepano killed our family,