Dark Places

up when he saw us.
    “Oh, dang!” he said flinching. He stared at us, then at the door, as if he’d forgotten he was open for business. “I didn’t hear you all come in.”
    “Probably because of the music,” Lyle yelled, pointing up at the ceiling.
    “Too loud for you? Probably right. Hold on.” He disappeared toward a back office and suddenly the music was gone.
    “Better? Now what can I help you with?” He leaned against a seed bag, gave us a look that said we’d better be worth his turning down the music.
    “I’m looking for Trey Teepano,” I said. “Is he the guy who owns this store?”
    “I am. I do. I’m Trey. What can I do you for?” He had a tense energy, bounced on the balls of his feet, tucked his lips into his teeth. He was intensely good-looking with a face that blinked young-old, depending on the angle.
    “Well.” Well, I didn’t know. His name floated in my head like an incantation, but what to do next: ask him if he’d been a bookie, if he knew Diondra? Accuse him of murder?
    “Um, it’s about my brother.”
    “Ben.”
    “Yeah,” I said, surprised.
    Trey Teepano smiled a cold crocodile smile. “Yeah, took me a second, but I recognized you. The red hair, I guess, and the same face. You’re the one who lived, right? Debby?”
    “Libby.”
    “Right. And who’re you?”
    “I’m just her friend,” Lyle offered. I could feel him willing himself to stop talking, not pull a repeat of the Krissi Cates interview.
    Trey began straightening the shelves, readjusting bottles of Deer-Off, poorly pretending to be occupied, like reading a book upside down.
    “You knew my dad too?”
    “Runner? Everyone knew Runner.”
    “Runner mentioned your name the last time I saw him.”
    He swung back his ponytail. “Yeah, did he pass on?”
    “No, he, he lives down in Oklahoma. He seems to think you were somehow … involved that night, that maybe you could shed some light on what happened. With the murders.”
    “Right. That old man is crazy, always has been.”
    “He said you were, like, a bookie or something back then.”
    “Yup.”
    “And you were into Devil worship.”
    “Yup.”
    He said these things with the faded blue-jean tone of a reformed addict, that vibe of broken-in peace.
    “So that’s true?” Lyle said. Then looked at me guiltily.
    “Yeah, and Runner owed me money. Lot of money. Still does, I guess. But it doesn’t mean I know what happened in your house that night. I been through all this back ten years ago.”
    “More like twenty-five.”
    Trey needled his eyebrows.
    “Wow, I guess so,” he said, still seeming unconvinced, his face twisted as he added up the years.
    “Did you know Ben?” I persisted.
    “A little, not really.”
    “Your name just keeps coming up a lot.”
    “I got a catchy name,” he shrugged. “Look, back then, Kinnakee was racist as hell. Indians they did not like. I got blamed for a lot of shit I didn’t do. This was before
Dances with Wolves,
you know what I’m saying? It was just BTI all the time out in BFE.”
    “What?”
    “BTI, Blame the Indian. I admit it, I was a shit. I was not a good guy. But after that night, what happened to your family, it was, like it freaked me out, I got clean. Well, not right after, but a year or so later. Stopped drugs, stopped believing in the Devil. It was harder to stop believing in the Devil.”
    “You really believed in the Devil?” Lyle said.
    He shrugged: “Sure. You gotta believe in something, right? Everyone has their thing.”
    I don’t, I thought.
    “It’s like, you believe you have the power of Satan in you, so you have the power of Satan in you,” Trey said. “But that was a long time ago.”
    “What about Diondra Wertzner?” I said.
    He paused, turned away from us, walked over to the bunnies, started stroking one through the wire with his index finger.
    “Where you going with this, Deb, uh, Libby?”
    “I’m trying to track down Diondra Wertzner. I heard she was pregnant with Ben’s baby at the time of the murders, and that she disappeared after. Some people say she was last seen with you and Ben.”
    “Ah shit, Diondra. I always knew that girl would bite me in the ass sooner or later.” He grinned wide this time. “Man, Diondra. I have no clue where Diondra is, she was always running off, though, always making up drama. She’d run away, her parents would make a big deal, she’d come home, they’d all play house for a little, then her parents would be