Dark Places

weren’t covered in snow. Maybe he was a lawyer? she thought. A lawyer Len had talked into representing Ben. But then why would they be meeting out—
    “Hear you got yourself some trouble,” he said in a rumbly voice that matched his eyes. Patty just nodded.
    “About to foreclose on your farm, and your boy’s about to be arrested.”
    “The police just want to talk to him about an incident that—”
    “Your son is about to be arrested, and I know what for. In this next year, you will need money to fend off your creditors, so you can keep your children at home—in their own goddam home—and you will need money for a lawyer for your son, because you do not want your son to go to prison labeled a child molester.”
    “Of course not but Ben—”
    “No, I mean: You do not want
your
son to go
to prison
labeled a
child molester
. There is nothing worse you can be in prison than a child molester. I seen it. What they do to those men, a nightmare. So you need a very good lawyer, which costs a lot of money. You need one right now, not weeks from now, not days from now. Right now. These things get out of control fast.”
    Patty nodded, waiting. The man’s speech reminded her of being with a car salesman: you had to do it now, and this model and at this price. She always lost these conversations, always took what the salesman insisted she take.
    The man pressed his Stetson down, breathed out like a bull.
    “Now I myself was once a farmer, and my daddy before me and his daddy before him. Eight hundred acres, cattle, corn, wheat, outside Robnett, Missouri. Fair amount, like your operation.”
    “We never had eight hundred acres.”
    “But you had a family farm, you had your goddam land. It’s your goddam land. We been swindled, farmers. They say ‘plant fencepost to fencepost!’ and we goddam well did. Buy more land—they say— cause they ain’t making more of it! Then whoops, sorry, we gave you some bad advice. We’ll just take your farm, this place been in your family for generations, we’ll just take this, no hard feelings. You’re the jackass believed us, not really our fault.”
    Patty had heard this before, thought it before. It was a raw deal. Let’s get back to my son. She leaned on one haunch and shivered, tried to seem patient.
    “Now I’m no businessman, I’m no accountant, I’m no politician. But I can help, if you’re interested.”
    “Yes, yes I’d like that,” she said. “Please.”
    And in her head she told herself, Don’t hope, don’t hope for too much.

Libby Day
NOW
    I drove back home through sickly forests. Somewhere down one of those long stringy roads was a landfill. I never saw the dump itself, but I drove through a good twenty miles of float-away trash. To my right and left, the ground flickered with a thousand plastic grocery bags, fluttering and hovering just above the grass. Looking like the ghosts of little things.
    Rain started splattering, then got thicker, freezing. Everything outside my car looked warped. Whenever I saw a lonely place—a dimple in the landscape, a copse of whiskery trees—I pictured Diondra buried beneath, a collection of unclaimed bones and bits of plastic: a watch, the sole of a shoe, maybe the red dangly earrings she wore in the yearbook photo.
    Who gives a tinker’s damn about Diondra? I thought, Diane’s phrases again popping into my head. Who cares if Ben killed her, because he killed your family, and it all ends there anyway.
    I’d wanted so badly for Runner to give something up, make me believe he did it. But seeing him only reminded me how impossible it was that he killed them all, how dumb he was.
Dumb,
it was a word you used as a kid, but it was the best way to describe Runner. Wilyand dumb at the same time. Magda and the Kill Club would be disappointed, although I’d be happy to give them his address if they wanted to continue the conversation. Me, I hoped he’d die soon.
    I passed a thick, flat brown-earth field, a teenage boy leaning against a fence in the rain, in the dark, sulky or bored, staring out at the highway. My brain returned to Ben. Diondra and Ben. Pregnant. Everything else Ben told me about that night felt right, believable, but the lie, the insistent lie about Diondra. That seemed like something to worry about.
    I sped home, feeling contaminated. I went straight to the shower and scrubbed myself, Silkwood-style with a hard nail brush, my skin looking like I’d been attacked by a pack of cats when I was done.