Dark Places

Libby goes to the encampment at the toxic Superfund site. Eventually, a man tells her where to find Runner. He lives at the far end of the encampment inside a 10-foot-tall industrial mixing vat, and Libby must climb down a ladder that does not reach the bottom of the tank. Runner taunts her into climbing down and then swings her around like a kid because she can’t reach the bottom of the tank without his help. He makes her say “Uncle” before he puts her down.

Runner believes that if he had told the police everything that happened the night of the murder, he would have gone to prison, so he said nothing. He asks Libby if she thinks it’s strange that only she was left alive. Ben was with Trey that night, and Runner believes they were devil worshippers. He swears Patty had money she wasn’t giving him and asks Libby what happened to all the money from her life insurance policy. Libby says it went to Ben’s defense, but Runner is skeptical. He believes someone has the money from that night. Trey was a bookie, and many people, including Runner, owed him money. He asks what happened to Diondra and tells Libby that Ben got her pregnant. This is a new piece of information for Libby.

Runner is behaving threateningly, and Libby pulls an old mini fridge over to the ladder so she can stand on it and get out. The fridge tips, and she falls. Runner says he will help her up if she gives him $50. He told her to bring money for his information, but she didn’t, so he is not risking his freedom by telling the truth about that night.

The house is calm after Runner leaves. The girls worry about Ben, and Michelle starts crying, saying she doesn’t like Ben and neither do the kids at school. She knows Ben is in trouble for sex, but he never touched her: “He’s a freak, it’s embarrassing. No one likes him. I mean, just look in his room, Mom. He’s got all sorts of weird stuff” (259). Patty goes to her room to get a pair of bolt cutters and finds that Diane left her $520 in cash for emergencies. She goes to Ben’s bedroom and breaks the padlock, telling the girls to go to their rooms. Inside, she finds notebooks with disturbing poems and images about killing pregnant women and their babies. There are rows of girls’ names and variations of “Krissi Day.” She finds the bag of girls’ underwear under Ben’s bed. Unaware that Ben bought it for his and Diondra’s baby, Patty goes to the living room and throws the clothes in the fireplace.

Len calls and says he heard about Ben. He says knows a way to help Patty with her legal costs and tells her to meet him at a park on Rural Route 5. Patty goes outside to chop more wood for the fire, and when she returns to put it in the fireplace, she realizes Michelle is standing beside her. Michelle points out that Patty was about to throw the axe in the fire—she does not mention the clothes, which are only partly burned. Michelle takes the axe and sets it near the door.

It is snowing when Patty drives to the park. There, a man wearing a Stetson hat meets her. He knows about Ben and the foreclosure on her farm. It would be terrible for Ben to be in prison for child molestation, and to prevent that from happening, Patty needs a lawyer. The man used to be a farmer, what is happening to Patty’s farm happened to his, too. He says he can help Ben if she’s interested, and Patty says yes.

When Libby gets home, she showers obsessively, feeling like toxic waste is on her skin. She has a dream about Debby making pancakes with grasshoppers in the batter (the arsenic at the site was to kill a grasshopper infestation). When her family eats them, they choke on the poisoned grasshoppers and die. When she eats a pancake, the grasshopper tries to climb out of her throat.

Libby finds Diondra on the Missing Persons database, reported missing on January 21, 1985. She visits Ben in prison, but he is uncooperative when she asks about Diondra and Trey. She realizes the baby would be 24 now if it lived. Ben avoids her questions, instead saying she has to pick a side: She has to believe him or the people who say he is guilty.

Trey, Diondra, and Ben drive to a farm outside of town, where they plan to kill a cow as a sacrifice to Satan. By this point, Ben is high and hungry and wants to go home. When they get to the farm, Diondra and Trey snort a bright orange powder called Devil’s rush. Diondra immediately falls and vomits into the snow, laughing. Trey pressures Ben into taking it, and Ben dumps the powder in his hand, letting most of it blow away in the wind before snorting some.

Trey gives Ben an axe and a shotgun and Diondra a bowie knife. He takes a pickaxe, and they stand in a circle with the weapons in the center. Trey and Diondra chant a prayer to Satan; Ben is scared but excited. Diondra approaches a bull and sticks the knife into its throat. Trey attacks it with the pickaxe, and when it is on the ground, they tell Ben to finish it off. Trey taunts Ben, telling him, “Be a man” (277). The bull is almost dead, and Ben cracks its skull with the axe. He is high and likes the feeling of killing. Trey and Diondra mock him afterwards, saying the bull was mostly dead by the time he killed it. Ben picks up the shotgun and imagines shooting the rest of the cows in the field while Trey and Diondra watched.

Lyle leaves nine messages while Libby is in Oklahoma. When she returns, she gives him her address, and he comes over while she is dyeing her hair red. Lyle thinks there were two killers since Michelle was killed in such a different way from Patty and Debby. He tells Libby she should recant her testimony, but she is not sure that Ben is innocent. Lyle mentions the strangeness of all the coincidences that happened that day: the farm foreclosure, the child molestation rumors, and Trey—"the Devil-worshiping bookie” (283)—demanding Runner pay his debts. Libby says that everyone is lying, both then and now.

As they watch TV, Lyle confesses that when he was 12, he accidentally started a series of wildfires in San Bernadino. He tried to light some dead foxtails and grass on fire out of curiosity, but the fire spread quickly until the whole forest was burning. This is why he identifies with Libby, as a kid whose actions unintentionally caused great damage. He invites Libby to his birthday party, which makes Libby feel awkward but happy. The news announces that Lisette Stephens’s body was found dead in a ravine: “She’d been dead for months” (286).

The clothes have completely burned in the fireplace except for a square of fabric, and Patty throws one more log on the fire to make sure it disappears. She calls Diane, who is getting a list of lawyers. Diane assures Patty that everything will be okay and that they’ll find Ben in the morning.

Patty looks in on the girls, who are all asleep. She lays in bed, thinking that she no longer has to worry about the house or farm; they will leave Kinnakee and start over. She falls asleep. Around 1am, Libby sleepwalks into her room and gets in bed. Patty tells Libby she loves her, but Libby is already fast asleep.