Dark Places

I got into bed still feeling infected, fussed around in the sheets for an hour, then got up and showered again. Around 2 a.m., I fell into a sweaty, heavy sleep filled with leering old men I thought were my father until I got close enough to see their faces melt. More potent nightmares followed: Michelle was cooking pancakes, and grasshoppers were floating in the batter, their twig legs snapping off as Michelle stirred. They got cooked into the pancakes, and my mom made us eat them anyway, good protein, crunch, crackle. Then we all started dying— choking, slobbering, eyes floating back in our heads—because the grasshoppers were poisoned. I swallowed one of the big insects and felt it fight its way back up my throat, its sticky body surfacing in my mouth, squirting my tongue with tobacco, pushing its head against my teeth to escape.
    The morning dawned an unimpressive gray. I showered again— my skin still feeling suspicious—and then drove to the downtown public library, a white pillared building that used to be a bank. I sat next to a pungent man with a matted beard and a stained army jacket, the guy I always end up next to in public places, and finally got on the Internet. I found the massive, sad Missing Persons database and entered her name.
    The screen made its churning, thinking sound and I sweated while hoping a No Data screen would come up. No such luck. The photo was different from the yearbook but not too: Diondra with the mousse-hard curls and the cresting bangs, charcoal eyeliner and pink lipgloss. She was smiling just the tiniest bit, pouting her lips out.
    DIONDRA SUE WERTZNER
BORN: OCTOBER 28, 1967
REPORTED MISSING: JANUARY 21, 1985
    BEN WAS WAITING for me again, this time with his arms crossed, leaned back in the chair, belligerent. He’d given me the silent treatment a week before granting my request to see him. Now he shook his head at me when I sat down.
    It threw me off.
    “You know, Libby, I’ve been thinking since we talked last,” he finally said. “I’ve been thinking I don’t need this, this pain. I mean, I’m already in here, I don’t really need my little sister to show up, believe in me, don’t believe in me. Ask me weird questions, put me on the guard after goddam twenty-four years. I don’t need the tension. So if you’re coming here, trying to ‘get to the bottom of things,’” he made angry air quotes, “you know, go somewhere else. Because I just don’t need it.”
    “I found Runner.”
    He didn’t stand up, he stayed solid in his chair. Then he gave a sigh, a might-as-well sigh.
    “Wow, Libby, you missed your calling as a detective. What’d Runner have to say? He still in Oklahoma?”
    I felt an inappropriate twitch of a smile. “He’s at a Superfund dump on the edge of Lidgerwood, got turned out from the group home.”
    Ben grinned at that. “He’s living in a toxic waste dump. Ha.”
    “He says Diondra Wertzner was your girlfriend, that you got her pregnant. That she was pregnant and you two were together, the night of the murders.”
    Ben put a hand over his face, his fingers splayed. I could see his eyes blink through them. He talked with his face still covered, and I couldn’t hear what he said. He tried twice, me asking each time what he was saying, and on the third try he pulled his head up, chewing on the inside of his cheek, and leaned in.
    “I said, what the fuck is your obsession with Diondra? You got a goddam bee in your bonnet about this, and you know what’s going tohappen, you’re going to fuck all this up. You had a chance to believe in me, to do the right thing and finally believe in your brother. Who you
know
. Don’t say you don’t because that’s a lie. I mean, don’t you get it, Libby? It’s the last chance for us. The world can believe I’m guilty, believe I’m innocent, we both know I’m not going anywhere. There’s no DNA going to release me—there’s no goddam
house
anymore. So. I’m not getting out. So. The only person I care, to say they know I couldn’t have
murdered my family,
is you.”
    “You can’t blame me for wondering whether—”
    “Of course I can. Of course I can. I can blame you for not believing in me. Now, I can forgive you for your lie, for getting confused, as a kid. I can forgive that. But goddamit, Libby, what about now? You’re what, thirty-some years old, and still believe your own blood could do something like that?”
    “Oh I totally believe my own blood could do that,” I said,