Dark Places

Libby asks Lyle to make the arrangements for her to visit Ben in prison in Kinnakee. She gets permission to visit him a week later. She reads his file, which includes her testimony from the trial: It is “a zig-zag of confusing kid memories” (91). She tells the prosecutor that her brother brought a witch to the house and answers “I guess” to many of the questions. She reads passages that were obviously coached; they contain detailed descriptions and adult vocabulary. She reads Ben’s testimony, in which he describes Satanic rituals and music. He is partly being sarcastic—the prosecutor asks him to take the trial seriously—but his black ponytail and defiant attitude play into the rumors about his Satan worship. Circumstantial evidence ties him to the murders, and he does not have a good alibi. After reading the file, Libby determines that she alone is not to blame for Ben’s conviction.

Libby drives three hours to Kinnakee and finds the town worse than when she lived there. Trash litters the streets, which are lined with pawn shops and old houses: The prison is the only real business in town.

When Ben enters the visitor room, he has shoulder-length red hair and wears wire-rimmed glasses and an orange jumpsuit. He is smiling, clearly happy to see Libby. Ben is about 39, but the text doesn’t mention his age. When he sits down across from her behind the glass, he starts crying. The first thing he says to Libby through the phone is: “God, you look just like Mom” (96). Libby is nervous and doesn’t know what to say. Ben tells her he got his high school diploma and is studying to get a bachelor’s degree in English. She cries and begins to apologize about her testimony, but Ben is not angry with her. He is only surprised the court believed her stories. He hasn’t tried to get out of prison because he doesn’t have a better alibi. He sticks to the story that he was sleeping in the barn that night, and he acted tough at the trial because he was trying to be manly; he thought kids at school would think he was a “bad-ass” (99) for going on trial but didn’t believe he would be convicted. Now he knows how stupid that logic was.

Libby says they need to find DNA evidence and get him out. Ben replies that Runner says the same thing in his letters. He writes to Ben every two years or so. As of last year, Runner was staying at Bert Nolan’s Group Home for Men in Oklahoma.

Patty refused Len’s advances and is now panicking because her family will have to leave the farm. She thinks about how disappointed her parents would be if they were alive.

Diane arrives with bags of canned goods, as she often does. She and Patty go to the garage where Diane can smoke, and Diane says there are rumors that Ben acted inappropriately with a young girl at school. Patty denies it, but Diane is worried the rumor is spreading. Patty wants Ben to come home, but she and Diane don’t know where he is. They go into the house and hit redial on the phone, but Diane’s number comes up because Patty called her that morning. Ben dyeing his hair black seems suspicious, but they don’t know what it means.

Libby is happy on her drive home from the prison because she now believes Ben is innocent. When she gets home, she calls Bert Nolan’s Home for Men and discovers that Runner has been in and out over the past month. Libby leaves a message with Bert that she wants to talk to Runner about Ben. Bert tells her Runner won’t make a long-distance call, but he can write her a letter. Libby leaves her address with Bert so that Bert can mail the letter without Runner finding out Libby’s address.

Libby thinks about Diane. She lived with Diane in her trailer after the murders, but she was a difficult child: “Over the next ten years, I totaled her car twice, broke her nose twice, stole and sold her credit cards, and killed her dog” (113). Killing Diane’s dog, Gracie, was an accident, but after that, Diane sent Libby to live with distant cousins. Diane would call once a month, but the conversations were awkward. After Libby published her self-help book, Brand New Day, Diane stopped talking to her. She finds Diane’s number and leaves an awkward message on her voicemail.

Libby meets Lyle to talk about her visit with Ben. She doesn’t tell him she believes Ben is innocent, but she’s willing to hear his theories. Lyle tells her he thinks Lou Cates, Krissi Cates’s father, is the murderer. Libby does not know about Krissi Cates, and Lyle tells her that she is the girl who accused Ben of molesting her. On the day of the murders, her father went to the police, and they were looking for Ben to question him about the allegations. Lyle tried to contact the Cateses with no luck. He gives Libby the mother’s contact information, and she calls until Krissi’s mother answers the phone. Krissi’s mother remarried and is not in contact with Lou or Krissi. She says they don’t talk about Ben Day: If Libby wants to find Krissi, she should look in the strip clubs near St. Louis.

Ben leaves a pink heart-shaped note in Krissi’s bin saying “Guess who? B” (121). He has a series of thoughts, one of which is about having sex with Diondra, and gets an erection. One of his former teachers, Mrs. Darksilver, sees him and wants to give him a hug, until she notices Ben’s erection. She sees that he was standing in front of Krissi’s bin, not his sister’s, as he said. When he goes through the doors that lead to the high school, he feels emasculated and goes back to his janitorial work.

After finishes work, he needs “some release” (124). He knows Diondra’s cousin Trey has a warehouse in the desert where he and his friends hang out, drink, and smoke marijuana. Ben has been there with Diondra a few times, but he has never gone alone. The people there are around 20 years old, all high school dropouts, but he knows a few of them. When he leaves the high school, the cut from his earlier bike accident starts to bleed onto his forehead.

Trey is not at the warehouse when Ben arrives, but he recognizes Alex, who is playing an electric guitar. Ben thinks briefly about going home but decides to stay. At first, everyone ignores him, then they tease him, calling him a “middle schooler” (126). When they see the blood on his head, Ben says he got in a fight with Trey. The people are shocked because there are rumors that Trey performs Satanic rituals. (They note Trey is “part Indian,” as if there is a connection.) Once, Trey and his friends killed four cows with machetes; it was on the news, though the police did not know Trey was responsible. Ben has drunk two beers and is buzzed. He tells an elaborate lie about helping Trey with blood sacrifices and claims he was there when Trey killed the cows. He thinks about going hunting with his mother and about the animals he’s killed in the past, including baby mice that his mother asked him to get rid of. The cut on Ben’s head starts bleeding, and he smears the blood over his face.

Trey arrives, and the mood changes. He does not contradict Ben’s story, but his presence makes everyone uneasy. He suggests Ben go with him to Diondra’s. When they get in the Trey’s truck, Trey tells Ben that he has to make good on his lies, saying, “Maybe tonight you become a man” (132). Iron Maiden plays on the radio, and the lyrics have Satanic overtones.

Libby and Lyle drive to St. Louis to find Krissi. Lyle is nervous; he has never been to a strip club and worries about asking Krissi too many questions. Libby asks Lyle why he is so interested in her family’s murders, and he replies that it’s a classic whodunit. He is also interested in the role children played in the event, meaning Libby and Krissi. They caused “something that had unintentionally major consequences” (134).

The strip club is off the highway, next to a trucker park. Libby sees women getting in and out of the trucks and realizes this is where they work when they can no longer work in the clubs. A girl walks from the park toward Libby; Libby guesses she is 15 or 16. The girl asks her for a cigarette and seems to be high on something. Libby asks if the girl knows Krissi Cates, and the girl, whose name is Colleen, replies that Krissi works a day shift at another club called Mike’s. Libby knows this is a sign that Krissi, who is in her mid-30s now, is not doing well. Colleen tells Libby that Krissi is now working in the trucker park and that she should be done soon. Libby briefly pictures herself working in a strip club because she is “a woman with no family, no money and no skills. A woman with a certain unwholesome pragmatism” (137).

A woman comes out of the trucker park, and Libby asks if she is Krissi Cates. Krissi says yes. Libby tells her they want to ask her about Ben Day, and Krissi agrees but says her last name is now Quanto: She is divorced but never changed her name back.

They go to Mike’s for a drink. It is seedy and dirty; both Libby and Lyle are uncomfortable. Krissi maintains that Ben molested her. She believes he planned to sacrifice her for one of his Satanic rituals. She describes how he molested her: “He’d take me into the closet where he kept his janitor stuff, […]. He’d take me in there after school and make me perform oral sex on him and then he’d perform oral sex on me and he’d make me swear allegiance to Satan. I was so so scared. He’d tell me, you know, that he’d hurt my parents if I told” (142). She says he had a Satanic altar in the janitor’s closet and that his whole family was into Satan worship. Her father became irate when she told him and drove around town all day looking for Ben. Krissi thinks he would have killed Ben if he’d found him.

Lyle asks a series of off-putting questions about Krissi’s dad, like he’s interrogating her, and Krissi becomes impatient. She ended up working at strip clubs because her family fell on difficult times; she is not in contact with her father. Before she goes, she asks Libby for $50 and gives her a slip of paper so Libby can write down her name and address. She does so, revealing that she is Ben’s sister.

Patty and Diane drive around town looking for Ben. They do not know where to go, so they drive to the house of two of his friends, Jim and Ed Muehler. They drive out to the Muehlers’ farm, and on the way, Diane assures Patty that she is not a bad mother.

When they arrive, the younger brother, Ed, answers the door. He does not know where Ben is and tells Patty that they are no longer friends. His older brother, Jim, approaches, and Patty asks him the same question: Where does Ben hang out and with whom? From inside the house, Ed yells: “Tell her to phone 1-800-Devils-R-Us!” (150). Jim reluctantly explains that Ben hangs out with the “Devil crowd,” meaning Trey and his friends. Jim says he and Ed tried to stay friends with Ben, but they do not like the kind of things he’s into now. 

Libby and Lyle are mostly silent on the drive home from meeting Krissi. Lyle still thinks Lou Cates could be the murderer, but he and Libby agree that Runner is still a suspect. Lyle tells Libby that Magda wants to host a swap meet where Libby can sell items that belonged to her family members.

At home, Libby realizes Diane has not returned her call. She begins to look through boxes of her family’s old items, things she kept after the murders. It is painful for her to look through the material, and she promises herself that she’ll stop in 20 minutes if it’s too difficult.

She finds birthday cards and a stack of Michelle’s old diaries. Michelle liked to know other people’s business, and she wrote about the teachers she saw smoking and drinking. Libby looks through the diaries but does not find anything that could be helpful for Ben’s case. Then she discovers a note folded like origami: It is a sexually explicit letter from Diondra, telling Ben to meet her after school so they can have sex. Libby did not know that Ben had a girlfriend; no one, not even Ben, mentioned it before, during, or after the trial. Libby finds Diondra’s photo in the 1984-1985 yearbook, but she is not in the yearbooks before or after.