Dark Places

“I was in the house …”

“Yeah, how do you explain the gunshots your mom died from?” the guy hammered, leaning forward on his knees. “Ben didn’t have any residue on his hands—”

“Guys, guys,” the older man interrupted, waving thick, crimped fingers. “And ladies,” he added, greasily, nodding at me and the Frizz-Head Woman. “We haven’t even presented the facts of the case. We have to have protocol or this might as well be some Internet chat session. When we have a guest like this, we should be particularly sure we’re all on the same page.”

No one disagreed more than a grumble’s worth, so the old guy wet his lips, looked over his bifocals and rearranged some throat phlegm. The man was authoritative, yet somehow unwholesome. I pictured him at home by himself, eating canned peaches at the kitchen counter, smacking at the syrup. He began reciting from his notes.

“Fact: Somewhere around 2 a.m. on January 3,1985, a person or persons killed three members of the Day family in their farmhouse in Kinnakee, Kansas. The deceased include Michelle Day, age ten; Debby Day, age nine; and the family matriarch, Patty Day, age thirty-two. Michelle Day was strangled; Debby Day died of axe wounds, Patty Day of two shotgun wounds, axe wounds, and deep cuts from a Bowie hunting knife.”

I felt the blood rush in my ears, and told myself I wasn’t hearing anything new. Nothing to panic about. I never really listened to the details of the murder. I’d let the words run over my brain and out my ears, like a terrified cancer patient hearing all that coded jargon and understanding nothing, except that it was very bad news.

“Fact,” the man continued. “Youngest child Libby Day, age seven, was in the house at the time, and escaped the killer or killers through a window in her mother’s room.

“Fact: Oldest child Benjamin Day, fifteen, claims he was out sleeping in a neighbor’s barn that night after an argument with his mother. He has never produced another alibi, and his demeanor with the police was extremely unhelpful. He was subsequently arrested and convicted, based largely on rumors within the community that he’d become involved in Satan worship—the walls of the house were covered in symbols and words associated with Devil worship. In his mother’s blood.”

The old man paused for dramatic effect, eyed the group, returned to his notes.

“More damning was the fact his surviving sister, Libby, testified that she saw him commit the murders. Despite Libby’s confused testimony and young age, Ben Day was convicted. This despite a startling lack of physical evidence. We convene to explore other possibilities and to debate the merits of the case. What I think we can agree on is that the killings can be traced to the events of January 2, 1985. It all went wrong in a single day—no pun intended.” Murmurs of laughter, guilty looks toward me. “When that family got up that morning, it wasn’t like there was a hit on them. Something went really wrong that day.”

Part of a crime-scene photo had slid out of the speaker’s folder: a plump, bloody leg and part of a lavender nightgown. Debby. The man noticed my gaze and tucked it back in, like it wasn’t my business.

“I think the general consensus is that Runner Day did it,” the fat woman said, rummaging in her purse, wadded tissues falling out the side of it.

I started at the sound of my dad’s name. Runner Day. Miserable man.

“I mean, right?” she continued. “He goes to Patty, tries to bully her for money, as usual, gets nothing, gets pissed, goes haywire. I mean, the guy was crazy, right?”

The woman produced a bottle and popped two aspirin the way people in the movies did, with a sharp, violent throwback of the head. Then she looked at me for confirmation.

“Yeah. I think so. I don’t remember him that well. They divorced when I was, like, two. We didn’t have much contact after. He came back and lived with us for a summer, the summer before the murders, but—”

“Where’s he now?”

“I don’t know.”

She rolled her eyes at me.

“But what about the big guy’s footprint?” said a man in the back. “The police never explained why a man’s dress shoe shows up tracking blood in a house where no men wore dress shoes …”

“The police never explained a lot,” started the older guy.

“Like the random bloodstain,” Lyle added. He turned to me. “There was a bloodstain on Michelle’s bedsheets— and it was a different blood type than anyone in the family. Unfortunately the sheets were from Goodwill, so the prosecution claimed the blood could have come from anyone.”

“Gently used” sheets. Yes. The Days were big fans of Goodwill: sofa, TV, lamps, jeans, we even got our curtains there.

“Do you know how to find Runner?” the younger kid asked. “Could you ask him some questions for us?”

“And I still think it’d be worthwhile to question some of Ben’s friends from the time. Do you still have any connections in Kinnakee?” said the old man.

Several people started arguing about Runner’s gambling and Ben’s friends and poor police procedure.

“Hey,” I snapped. “What about Ben? Ben is just off the table?”

“Please, this is the grossest miscarriage of justice ever,” said the fat lady. “And don’t pretend you think otherwise. Unless you’re protecting your daddy. Or you’re too ashamed about what you did.”

I glared at her. She had a glop of egg yolk in her hair. Who ate eggs at midnight? I thought. Or had that been there since this morning?

“Magda here is very involved with the case, very involved in the effort to free your brother,” said the old guy, with a patronizing rise of his eyebrows.

“He’s a wonderful man,” Magda said, pointing her chin at me. “He writes poetry and music and he’s just a force of hope. You should get to know him, Libby, you really should.”