Dark Places

Chapter 31

Libby Day NOW

Iwoke up feeling like I dreamt about my mom. I was craving her weird hamburgers we always made fun of, filled with carrots and turnip bits and sometimes old fruit. Which was strange since I don't eat meat. But I wanted one of those burgers.

I was considering how one actually cooks hamburgers when Lyle phoned with his pitch. Just one more. That's what Lyle kept saying: just one more person I should talk to, and if nothing came of it, I could give up. Trey Teepano. I should look up Trey Teepano. When I said it'd be too hard to track him down, Lyle recited his address. "It was easy, he has his own business. Teepano Feed," Lyle said. I wanted to say "nice work" back to him - how easy would that have been? - but I didn't. Lyle said Magda's women would give me $500 dollars to talk to Trey. I'd have done it for free, but I took the money anyway.

I knew I would keep going like this, actually, that I couldn't stop until I found some sort of answer. Ben knew, I was sure of that now, Ben knew something. But he wasn't saying. So keep going. I remember watching a very sensible love expert on TV once. The advice: "Don't be discouraged - every relationship you have is a failure, until you find the right one." That's how I felt about this miserable quest: every person I talked to would let me down until I found the one person who could help me figure out that night.

Lyle was coming with me to Teepano Feed, partly because he wanted to see what Trey Teepano was like, and partly, I think, because he was nervous about the guy. ("I don't really trust Devil worshipers.") Teepano Feed was just east of Manhattan, Kansas, somewhere in a squat of farmland wedged between several new suburbs. The developments were blank and clean. They looked as fake as the Western souvenir shops back in Lidgerwood, a place where people only pretended to live. To my left, the boxy houses eventually gave way to an emerald lagoon of grass. A golf course. Brand new and small. In the cold morning rain, a few men remained on the fairway, twisted and tilted as they swung their clubs, looking like flags of yellow and pink against the green. Then just as quickly as the fake houses and the fake grass and the pastel-shirted men appeared, they were gone, and I was looking at a field of pretty brown Jersey cows, staring at me, expectant. I stared back - cows are the few animals that really seem to see you. I stared so hard I missed the big old brick building labeled Teepano Feed and Farm Supply, Lyle tapping my shoulder, LibbyLibbyLibby. I hit the brakes on my car and hydroplaned a good fifty feet, that soaring feeling reminding me of Runner letting me loose after spinning me. I backed up wildly and swerved into the gravel parking lot.

Only one other car was parked in front of the store, the whole place looking worn. The cement grooves between the bricks were filled with muck, and a kids' merry-go-round near the front door -  quarter a ride - was missing its seats. As I walked up the wide wooden steps that spanned the front, the neon lights in the windows blinked on. "We Got Llamas!" Odd words to see in neon. A tin sign reading Sevin 5% Dust dangled from one of the building posts. "What's Pharoah quail?" Lyle said as we hit the top step. A bell on the door jangled as I opened it, and we walked into a room colder than the outside - the air conditioner was blasting, as was a soundsystem, playing cacophonous jazz, the soundtrack to a brain seizure.

Behind a long counter, rifles were locked in a glimmering cabinet, the glass enticing as a pond surface. Rows and rows of fertilizer and pellets, pick-axes, soil, and saddles stretched to the back of the store. Against the far wall was a wire cage holding a pack of unblinking bunnies. World's dumbest pet, I thought. Who would want an animal that sat, quivered, and shat everywhere? They say you can litter-box train them, but they lie.

"Don't ... you know," I started saying to Lyle, who was snapping his head around, shifting into his oblivious inquisitor mode, "You know, don't - "

"I won't."

The crazy-making jazz continued as Lyle called out a hello. I could not see a single employee, nor customer for that matter, but then it was midmorning on a rainy Tuesday. Between the music and the sun-baked lighting from the ruthless fluorescent lamps, I felt stoned. Then I could make out movement, someone in the far back, bending and stooping in one of the aisles, and I started walking toward the figure. The man was dark, muscled, with thick black hair in a ponytail. He reared 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 a*sholes - they neglected the shit out of her - and she'd need the drama, start some shit, run away, whatever. Total soap opera. I guess she finally ran away, decided it wasn't worth coming home. I mean, you try the white pages?"

"She's listed as a missing person," Lyle said, looked at me again to see if I minded the interruption. I didn't.

"Oh, she's fine," Trey said. "My guess is she's living somewhere under one of her crazy-ass names."

"Crazy names?" I said, put a hand on Lyle's arm to keep him quiet.

"Oh, nothing, she was just one of those girls, always trying to be different. One day she'd talk in an English accent, next day it was Southern. She never gave anyone her real name. Like she'd go to the beauty parlor and give a wrong name, go order a pizza and give the wrong name. She just liked screwing with people, you know, just playing. 'I'm Desiree from Dallas, I'm Alexis from London.' She was always giving, uh, using her porn name, you know?"

"She did porn?" I said.

"No, like that game. What's the name of your childhood pet?"

I stared at him.

"What's the name of your childhood pet," he prompted.

I used Diane's dead dog: "Gracie."

"And what was the name of the street you grew up on?"

"Rural Route 2."

He laughed. "Well, that one didn't work. It's supposed to sound slutty, like Bambi Evergreen or something. Diondra's was ... Polly something ... Palm. Polly Palm, how great is that?"

"You don't think she's dead?"

He shrugged.

"You think Ben was really guilty?" I asked.

"I got no opinion on that. Probably."

Lyle was suddenly tense, bobbing up and down, pushing his pointy finger against my back, trying to steer me toward the door.

"So thanks for your time," Lyle blurted, and I frowned at him and he frowned back at me. A fluorescent above us thrummed on and off suddenly, flashing sick light on us, the bunnies scampering around in the straw. Trey scowled up at the light and it stopped, as if scolded.

"Well, can I give you my number, in case you think of anything?" I said.

Trey smiled, shook his head. "No thanks."

Trey turned away then. As we walked toward the door, the music got loud again. I turned around as the storm started to crackle, one side of the sky black, the other yellow. Trey was coming back out of the office, watching us with his hands on his sides, the rabbits behind him doing a sudden scuffle.

"Hey Trey, so what's BFE then?" I called.

"Butt F*cked Egypt, Libby. That's our hometown."

LYLE WAS GALLOPING ahead of me, leaping off the steps. He reached the car in three big strides, jiggling the handle to be let in, comeoncomeoncomeon. I dropped in next to him, pre-annoyed. "What?" I said. Thunder crackled. A gust of air kicked up a wet gravel smell.

"Just drive first, let's get out of here, hurry."

"Yessir."

I swung out of the parking lot, back toward Kansas City, the rain turning frantic. I'd driven about five minutes when Lyle told me to pull over, aimed himself at me, and said, "Oh my God."