Dark Places

you need to testify to that,” I interrupted. “If that’s the truth.”
    “Wow, you know nothing.” He grabbed me by the arm. “You expect everything, want everything for free, one big handout, me risking my neck for … I told you to bring money. I told you.”
    I slipped his grasp, grabbed the mini-fridge and began dragging it over below the ladder, the thing rattling loud enough to drown out Runner. I climbed up on it, and my fingers were still several inches short of the top of the tank.
    “Give me fifty bucks and I’ll get you up,” Runner said, assessing me lazily. I stretched to grab the edge, up on my tiptoes, straining, and then I could feel the fridge tilt beneath me, and I fell to the ground fast, hitting my jaw, biting the side of my tongue, my eyes watering from the pain. Runner laughed. “Jesus, what a mess,” he said looking down at me. “You scared a’ me, little girl?”
    I skittered behind the fridge, keeping my eyes on him as I looked for things to pile on it, climb out.
    “I don’t kill girls,” he said, out of nowhere. “I wouldn’t kill little girls.” And then his eyes brightened up. “Hey, did they ever find Dierdre?”
    I knew the name, knew what he was trying to say.
    “Diondra?”
    “Yeah, Di-
on
-dra!”
    “What do you know about Diondra?”
    “I always wondered if they killed her that night, you never saw her after that night.”
    “Ben’s … girlfriend,” I prompted.
    “Yeah, right, I guess. Last time I saw her, it was with Ben and Trey and I sort of hope she just run away. I like the idea of being a granddaddy sometimes.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Ben’d got her pregnant. Or that’s what he said. Made a big deal out of it, like it’s hard to do. So I saw her that night and then she never showed up again. I worried she might be dead. In’t that’s what they do, Devil worshipers—kill pregnant ladies and their babies? She sure did disappear.”
    “And you didn’t say anything to the police?”
    “Well, how’s that my business?”

Patty Day
JANUARY 2, 1985
9:12 P.M.
    T he house had gone silent for a few beats after Runner sped away, finding someone else to bully for money. Peggy Bannion, she was his girlfriend now, Patty’d heard—why doesn’t he go harass her? Probably already had.
    One beat, two beats, three beats. Then the girls had turned into a mess of questions and worries and small hands everywhere on her, as if they were trying to get warm by a really weak campfire. Runner was scary this time. He’d always had a bit of menace to him, he’d always been temperful when he didn’t get his own way, but this was the closest he’d come to attacking her. For the most part. When they’d been married, there’d been tussles, little slaps upside the head, designed more to infuriate, to remind you of your helplessness, than to really hurt.
Why is there no food in the fridge?
Smack.
Why is this place such a shithole?
Smack.
Where does all the money go, Patty?
Smack, smack, smack.
You listening to me, girl? What the hell you do with all the money? The
man was obsessed with cash. Even in a rare fatherly moment, grudgingly playing Monopoly with the kids, he’d spend most of his time sneaking money out from the Bank, clutching the bright orange and purple bills in his lap.
You calling me a cheat?
Smack.
You
saying your old man’s a cheat, Ben?
Smack, smack, smack.
You think you’re smarter’n me?
Smack.
    Now nearly an hour after Runner had left, the girls were still huddled on her, near her, behind her, all over the sofa asking her what was wrong, what was wrong with Ben, why was Dad so mad. Why’d she make Dad mad? Libby sat the farthest from her, tucked in a bundle, sucking a finger, her worried brain stuck on the visit to the Cates’s house, the cop. She looked feverish, and when Patty reached out to touch her cheek, she flinched.
    “It’s OK, Libby.”
    “No it’s not,” she said, unblinking eyes fixed on Patty. “I want Ben back.”
    “He’ll come back,” Patty said.
    “How do you knoooooww?” Libby whimpered.
    Debby hopped on that. “Do you know where he is? Why can’t we find him? Is he in trouble because of his hair?”
    “I know why he’s in trouble,” Michelle said in her most wheedling voice. “Because of sex.”
    Patty turned on her, furious at that simpering, gossipy rhythm. A hair-in-curlers, whisper-in-the-supermarket tone. People were using that tone to discuss her family all over Kinnakee right