Dark Places

wondered if they’d slept together, Trey had the same disdain Ben once saw him direct at an ex-girlfriend:
I am not angry or sad or happy to see you. I could not give a shit. You don’t even ripple
.
    “Some shit about the Devil and what you guys do to … help him,” she said.
    Trey got his grin going then, sat down across from Ben—Ben avoiding eye contact.
    “Hey Trey?” Alex said. “You’re Indian aren’t you?”
    “Yeah, you want me to scalp you?”
    “You’re not full though, right?” the girl blurted.
    “My mom’s white. I don’t date Indian chicks.”
    “Why not?” she asked, running the roach clip feather in and out of her hair, the metal teeth tangling themselves in the waves.
    “Because Satan likes white pussy.” He smiled and cocked his head at her, and she started to giggle, but then he kept the same expression and she shut down, her ugly boyfriend putting an arm back on her hip.
    They’d liked Ben’s patter, but Trey was spookier. He sat there almost cross-legged, eyeing them in a way that seemed friendly on the surface, but was entirely without warmth. And while his body was folded in a casual way, every limb was held at a tense, sharp angle. There was something deeply unkind about him. No one offered to pass the joint again.
    They all sat quietly for a few minutes, Trey’s mood unnerving everyone. Usually he was the loud, smart-ass, fight-starting beer swigger, but when he got upset it was like he sent out hundreds of invisible, insistent fingers to push everyone down by the shoulders. Sink everyone.
    “So you want to go?” he suddenly asked Ben. “I got my truck. Igot Diondra’s keys. We can go to her place til she gets home, she’s got cable. Better’n this freezing cold shithole.”
    Ben nodded, gave a jittery wave to the crowd, and followed Trey who was already outside, tossing his beer can on the snow. Ben was definitely altered. Words clotted in the back of his throat, and as he climbed into the GMC he tried to stammer some excuse to Trey. Trey who’d just saved his ass, for unclear reasons. Why was he the one with Diondra’s keys? Probably because he’d asked for them. Ben didn’t think to ask enough.
    “I hope you’re ready to back that shit up, what you were saying in there,” Trey said, putting the stick in reverse. The GMC was a tank, and Trey drove it straight across the farm property, bumping over old cornstalks and irrigation ditches, forcing Ben to grab on to the armrest to keep from biting his tongue off. Trey landed a meaningful glance on Ben’s tight grip.
    “Yeah, of course.”
    “Maybe tonight you become a man. Maybe.”
    Trey flicked on his cassette player. Iron Maiden, midsong, hell yes, the words hissing at Ben:
666 … Satan … Sacrifice
.
    Ben worked the music in his head, his brain sizzling, feeling angry-frantic, the way he always did to metal, the guitar strum never letting up, bundling him tenser and tenser, bumping his head up and down, the drums shooting up his spine, the whole thing this rage-frenzy, not letting him think straight, just keeping him in a tight shake. His whole body felt like a cocked fist, ready for release.

Libby Day
NOW
    T he stretch of I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis was hours and hours of pure ugly driving. Flat, dead-yellow, and littered with billboards: a fetus curled up like a kitten (Abortion Stops a Beating Heart); a living room turned red from the glare of ambulance lights (Take Care Crime-Scene Cleanup Specialists); a remarkably plain woman giving fuck-me eyes to passing motorists (Hot Jimmy’s Gentlemen’s Club). The billboards ominously advising love of Jesus were in direct proportion to those advertising porn liquidators, and the signs for local restaurants consistently misused quotation marks: Herb’s Highway Diner—The “Best” Meal in Town; Jolene’s Rib House—Come in for Our “Delicious” Baby Back Ribs.
    Lyle was in the passenger seat. He’d debated the pros and cons of joining me (maybe I would have more rapport with Krissi alone, us both being women; on the other hand, he did know this part of the case better; but then again, he may get too excited, ask her too many questions, and then blow it, he sometimes got ahead of himself, if he had one flaw it was that he sometimes got ahead of himself; then again, $500 was a lot of money and he felt somewhat entitled, no offense, to come along). Finally I’d snapped into the phone thatI’d swing by Sarah’s Pub in thirty minutes,