Dark Places

it, but no one got to see his face, he had to protect himself first and he had to get her before she woke the other kids up—he knew there were more, and he knew he didn’t have the heart to kill all of them. That wasn’t his mission, his mission was to help.
    He saw the little girl turn to run and he got that axe suddenly in his hand—he saw the shotgun too, and he thought, the axe is more quiet, I can still keep this quiet.
    And then, maybe he did go insane, he was so angry at the child—he chopped up a little girl—so angry at the redhead woman, for screwing this all up, for not dying right. He killed a little girl with an axe. He shot off the head of a mother of four instead ofgiving her the death she deserved. Her last moments were horror, nightmare in her house instead of him just holding her while she bled onto the snow and died with her face against his chest. He chopped up a little girl.
    For the first time, Calvin Diehl thought of himself as a murderer. He fell back in his seat and bellowed.

Libby Day
NOW
    T hirteen days after Diondra and Crystal went missing, and the police had still not found them, had still not found any physical evidence to link Diondra to Michelle. The hunt was dissolving into an arson case, it was losing steam.
    Lyle came over to watch bad TV with me, his new habit. I let him come if he didn’t talk too much, I made a big deal about him not talking too much, but I missed him on the days he didn’t come. We were watching some particularly grotesque reality show when Lyle suddenly sat up straighter. “Hey, that’s my sweater.”
    I was wearing one of his too-tight pullovers I’d taken from the back of his car at some point, and it really did look much better on me.
    “It really does look better on me,” I said.
    “Man, Libby. You could just ask, you know.” He turned back to the TV, where women were going at each other like angry pound dogs. “Libby Sticky Fingers. Too bad you didn’t leave Diondra’s with, like, her hairbrush. We’d have some DNA.”
    “Ah, the magic, magic DNA,” I said. I’d stopped believing in DNA.
    On the TV, a blond woman had another blond woman by the hair and was pushing her down some steps, and I flipped the channel to a nature show on crocodiles.
    “Oh, oh, my God.” I ran from the room.
    I came back, slapped Diondra’s lipstick and thermometer on the table.
    “Lyle Wirth, you are goddam brilliant,” I said, and then I hugged him.
    “Well,” he said, and then laughed. “Wow. Huh, brilliant. Libby Sticky Fingers thinks I’m brilliant.”
    “Absolutely.”
    DNA FROM BOTH objects matched the blood on Michelle’s bedspread. The manhunt ignited. No wonder Diondra had been so insistent she was never remotely connected to Ben. All those scientific advances, one after another, making it easier and easier to match DNA: she must have felt more endangered each year instead of less. Good.
    They nailed Diondra at a money-order dive in Amarillo. Crystal was nowhere to be found, but Diondra was nabbed, although it took four cops to get her in the car. So Diondra was in jail and Calvin Diehl had confessed. Even some skeevy loan agent had been rounded up, his mere name giving me the willies:
Len
. With all that, you’d think Ben might have been released from prison, but things don’t go that quickly. Diondra wasn’t confessing, and until her trial unfolded, they were going to hold on to my brother, who refused to implicate her. I finally went to visit him at the end of May.
    He looked plumper, weary. He smiled weakly at me as I sat down.
    “Wasn’t sure if you’d want to see me,” I said.
    “Diondra was always sure you’d find her out. She was always sure of it. Guess she was right.”
    “Guess she was.”
    Neither of us seemed willing to go past that. Ben had protected Diondra for almost twenty-five years, I had undone all that. He seemed chagrined but not sad. Maybe he’d always hoped she’d be exposed.I was willing to believe that, for my own sake. It was easy not to ask the question.
    “You’ll be out of here soon, Ben. Can you believe it? You’ll be out of prison.” This was by no means a sure thing—a strip of blood on a dead girl’s sheets is good, but a confession’s better. Still, I was hopeful. Still.
    “I wouldn’t mind that,” he said. “It may be time. I think twenty-four years may be enough. It may be enough for … standing by. Letting it happen.”
    “I think so.”
    Lyle and I had put together pieces