Dark Places

have been at least seventy years old, her pancake makeup pooling in the crepe of her cheeks, purple veins marbling her hands. Some part of her creaked as she bent down for my order, snuffing when I asked for just a PBR.
    “The brisket is really good here,” Lyle said. But he wasn’t having it either, just sipping on the dregs of something milky.
    I don’t eat meat, really, not since seeing my family sliced open— I was still trying to get Jim Jeffreys and his sinewy steak out of my head. I shrugged no, waited for my beer, looking around like a tourist. Lyle’s fingernails were dirty, first thing I noticed. The old waitress’s black wig was ajar: Strands of sweaty white hair stuck to her neck. She tucked a few back under as she grabbed a packet of fries sizzling beneath the heat lamp. A fat man sat by himself at the next table, eating short ribs and examining his flea-market purchase:a kitschy old vase with a mermaid on it. His fingers left grease marks on the mermaid’s breasts.
    The waitress said nothing as she set the beer squarely in front of me and then purred over to the fat man, calling him Honey.
    “So what’s with the club?” I prompted.
    Lyle turned pink, his knee jittery beneath the table.
    “Well, you know how some guys do fantasy football, or collect baseball cards?” I nodded. He let out a strange laugh and continued. “Or women read gossip magazines and they know everything about some actor, know like, their baby’s name and the town they grew up in?”
    I gave a wary incline of the head, a be-careful nod.
    “Well, this is like that, but it’s, well, we call it a Kill Club.”
    I took a slug of beer, sweat beads popping on my nose.
    “It’s not as weird as it sounds.”
    “It sounds pretty fucking weird.”
    “You know how some people like mysteries? Or get totally into true-crime blogs? Well, this club is a bunch of those people. Everyone has their crime that they’re obsessed with: Laci Peterson, Jeffrey MacDonald, Lizzie Borden … you and your family. I mean you and your family, it’s huge with the club. Just huge. Bigger’n JonBenét.” He caught me grimacing, and added: “Just a tragedy, what happened. And your brother in jail for, what, going on twenty-five years?”
    “Don’t feel sorry for Ben. He killed my family.”
    “Heh. Right.” He sucked on a piece of milky ice. “So, you ever talk with him about it?”
    I felt my defenses flip up. There are people out there who swear Ben is innocent. They mail me newspaper clippings about Ben and I never read them, toss them as soon as I see his photo—his red hair loose and shoulder-length in a Jesus-cut to match his glowing, full-of-peace face. Pushing forty. I have never gone to see my brother in jail, not in all these years. His current prison is, conveniently, on the outskirts of our hometown—Kinnakee, Kansas—where he’d committed the murders to begin with. But I’m not nostalgic.
    Most of Ben’s devotees are women. Jug-eared and long-toothed, permed and pant-suited, tight-lipped and crucifixed. They show upoccasionally on my doorstep, with too much shine in their eyes. Tell me that my testimony was wrong. I’d been confused, been coerced, sold a lie when I swore, at age seven, that my brother had been the killer. They often scream at me, and they always have plenty of saliva. Several have actually slapped me. This makes them even less convincing: A red-faced, hysterical woman is very easy to disregard, and I’m always looking for a reason to disregard.
    If they were nicer to me, they might have got me.
    “No, I don’t talk to Ben. If that’s what this is about, I’m not interested.”
    “No, no, no, it’s not. You’d just come to, it’s like a convention almost, and you’d let us pick your brain. You really don’t think about that night?”
    Darkplace.
    “No, I don’t.”
    “You might learn something interesting. There are some fans … experts, who know more than the detectives on the case. Not that
that’s
hard.”
    “So these are a bunch of people who want to convince me Ben’s innocent.”
    “Well … maybe. Maybe you’ll convince them otherwise.” I caught a whiff of condescension. He was leaning in, his shoulders tense, excited.
    “I want $1,000.”
    “I could give you $700.”
    I glanced around the room again, noncommittal. I’d take whatever Lyle Wirth gave me, because otherwise I was looking at a real job, real soon, and I wasn’t up for that. I’m not someone who can be