Rebecca Frost

Ollie Clark—Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Eli shrugged when Ollie said “Dad’s house,” but he dropped the transmission into drive and took her there, parking on the street instead of pulling into the driveway. “I’ll come in if you need me.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. “Always. You won’t miss much—I can tell you after—but maybe he needs to see you with me.”

He shrugged and undid his seatbelt. Ollie waited for him to come around to her side and he kissed her before they started up the walk.

To the front door. Because today she rang the bell and waited, here on the spot where Birdy died because someone shot her when she came to answer either a knock or this same freaking doorbell.

The curtain obscured her enough that Dad had the door most of the way open before he realized who it was. “Shut up and listen,” Ollie told him, forcing him back as she came inside. She could at least wait for Eli to shut the door before she said anything else. “We just talked to Len. No.”

Dad shut his mouth but also crossed his arms and lowered his head, fixing her with that You’re on thin ice, young lady look.

“Len doesn’t think Eli did it. He lied to you.”

Cindy came out of the kitchen and hovered near the vague dividing line between it and the living room, and Jared—of course Dad would’ve called Jared for moral support—appeared over her shoulder.

“He did a lot of lying to you to keep you talking. You’re right—he thinks he’s figured it out. That he’s made connections.”

Even in a better mood Dad wouldn’t get a You didn’t connect shit reference.

“He had Mom and Birdy’s blood types from their autopsies, and he said he asked you yours. So he knows. And he thinks you did it. He seriously thinks—shut up. He seriously thinks you did it, so you need to think long and hard about everything you’ve ever told him and everything he could even suspect you’ve told him.”

Randy laughed, a single short exhale. “I know you’ve got this thing against him, but Len’s not behind this. Besides, you’re my alibi, kiddo.”

“Yeah? Did the police say oh, sorry, right, we totally forgot we had Ollie’s statement in evidence?”

His eyes narrowed. “They let me go.”

“They don’t arrest you right away,” Cindy hissed.

“Shush.” Randy didn’t even glance at her. “Look, kiddo, I know you’re pissed about what I said about Eli, and the florist already called with condolences that the wedding’s off, but whatever this is? It’s done.”

She ignored him. “You have a lawyer?”

“One’s coming,” Cindy answered, this time earning herself a glare.

“Good. You tell them,” she ordered her stepmother. “Dad, if you’ve got any record of what you said to Len … copies or transcripts or anything …”

“Get out of my house. Both of you.” Dad grabbed the doorknob, twisted violently, and pulled it open with a sort of mocking bow. “And don’t darken my door again.”

Behind him, pale and small, Cindy nodded slightly. Ollie nodded back before she let Eli guide her out first, his hand on the small of her back, and he even opened the door for her as she got into the car. The short drive—two blocks down and two blocks over—put them back at his apartment building, and Ollie wasn’t sure she even really breathed until the car was off again. “Cindy listened.”

“Ah. Good.” Eli licked his lips. “I’m sorry, Olls.”

“He’s going to get himself arrested. At least they called a lawyer.”

He grimaced. “Even the best lawyers only work with what you can give them. Saying ‘I don’t know, I fell asleep on the couch and was there all night’ doesn’t do much when it’s already out there that Jared woke up and I was gone.”

She slowly turned her head. “How much of you wanting to stick around for him now is feeling guilty about how utterly pissed you were at him for saying that and getting you into all this in the first place?”

“Pretty sure he wasn’t the one who put the target on my back, Olls. I was that Chapman kid.” But then Eli sighed. “Okay. Yeah. It was a thoughtless comment and I could’ve ended up in prison, but … well, this is the long run. I didn’t lose you, but he lost her, and he’s never gotten over it.”

Ollie bit her lip. “Did he …?”

It was such a vague start to a question, but Eli held out his left wrist and drew a cross on it with his right forefinger. “Your dad found him. They didn’t keep him in the area—they took him away and locked him up for supervision, which to me seems like the opposite thing you want to do with someone who keeps insisting he doesn’t deserve to live.”

She reached for his hand and gripped his cold fingers.

“They all kept trying to get him in therapy, something more permanent, but he refused. So your dad started showing up. I could see him, actually.” Eli pointed behind them. “Just sitting on the front stoop, waiting either to be let in or for Jared to get home. Letting Jared have all this time, and I kind of hated him for that, too. He sent you away as often and as far as possible, but Jared? He wouldn’t let him get away. All that macho male bonding and … shit. Your dad was married twenty years. Jared was screwing your sister for a handful of weeks.” He closed his eyes. “Sorry.”

“I’ve thought that much myself.”

He squeezed her hand. “All our lives, everyone’s always liked Jared better. Short notice, long notice … it doesn’t matter. You’re the only one I’ve ever known who’s always, always, always put me first, even when I told you not to. Maybe I don’t deserve someone like you, but you deserve better than your dad.”

“Eli.” Ollie squeezed back. “Take me upstairs so I can kiss you properly.”

“My pleas–”

They jumped at a sharp knock on the driver’s side window and Ollie stifled a yelp, both hands going to her mouth. Eli swore, but only after he realized it was Jared and his shoulders could come back down. He opened the door. “Yes?”

Jared didn’t seem to realize he’d startled them. “Olls, do you want to tell me what the hell’s going on? Your dad refused.”

She leaned forward to peer around Eli. “Did you just run down here?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t even seem to notice he was breathing hard. “So can you explain or are you going to shut me out, too?”

Well. Apparently Jared wasn’t used to being shut out. Dad only did that to the women in his life. “Yeah, come on. Upstairs.” Even though both she and Eli went with far less enthusiasm than previously, Eli didn’t waste time. He didn’t understand everything, either.

---

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Randy Clark, January 29, 2019

RC: I think it’s harder to talk about Wendy. I’ve had less practice. With Birdy, you got her whole high school class there at the service, wanting to share their memories. And it’s tragic, being eighteen and just so … so full of life. Not that forty isn’t tragic, but it’s middle-aged, and none of your friends want to look at that and admit it could’ve been them. They don’t want to think it could’ve been their kids, either, but there’s just this huge difference. Wendy …

LW: We don’t have to do this today.

RC: Nah, I’m up for it. I can. I just … well. I’m out of practice. Here, hang on. You’ve got the scans of the wedding album, right? Can you … I don’t know how this thing works. Can we both look at it together?

LW: Yeah, here, just a minute. I have to find it, and then … share my screen … here we go. Can you see that?

RC: Yeah. Go ahead to the next page. That’s weird, scrolling instead of flipping. Okay. So that’s my mom’s old church. She went there until she got sick. I never really got into the religion thing, but she made me go until I was old enough to be the one taking her. She got buried out of there. Grace Lutheran. And it wasn’t like Wendy was religious, either, but that’s where you get married, right? In a church. We did the counseling stuff the minister asked for, and I think he wanted to give us hell because she was pregnant, but he couldn’t because he thought we were doing the “right” thing, you know? And my mom had just died, and her parents had just died, so yeah, maybe we slipped, according to the whole judgmental Christian faith, but … like I said, we were doing the right thing. Getting married. Making sure our kid wasn’t born a bastard and all the rest. Sorry, are you religious?

LW: My parents are, sort of. They didn’t make us keep going when we said we didn’t want to, but they always did.

RC: Yeah, well, that’s probably a good thing, you know? Keep you from resenting it. But you return, I guess, for the big moments. Marrying and burying—isn’t that what they say? So we decided to get married there, maybe do the thing right. Wendy bought a dress at St. Vinnie’s and sewed some more lace on it. I borrowed that suit jacket. We had a potluck reception in the Fellowship Hall, can you believe it? How cheap is that? Everyone showed up with a hot dish, plugged it in or whatever, came in for the ceremony, and then got out all the spoons and stuff so we could go through first. Those photos? Our friends took them. Anyone with a camera, and then they printed doubles and gave us copies. That was our wedding present.

LW: It sounds like it was really personal.

RC: Cheap, is what it was. But yeah, sure, if you want to put the positive spin on it, it was personal. But also … keep going. Find that one big group shot … yeah, okay, you see? That’s everyone who was there. The church definitely wasn’t packed. If we’d had an open bar, that would’ve been one thing, but … Wendy didn’t have many friends. I think it’s why she let Birdy hang out with those other girls, even though it was bad news. They kept getting her in trouble, but they were friends. Wendy would rather I keep paying for trips to the emergency room than let Birdy grow up like she did. Without friends.

LW: Did Wendy ever talk about why she didn’t have friends?

RC: Didn’t have to. We went to school together, remember? All the way up through graduation. She was pretty. You can see that. She had a rough start, her family and all, but she was just naturally pretty. Put her in oversize secondhand clothes and it just made it more obvious. I guess all the boys wanted her, had crushes on her, my own girls would’ve said, but they weren’t supposed to. She was trash. But she looked better than any of the other girls in the class, even on the days when they spent hours on their makeup and stuff. She was pretty, she was sweet, and you really couldn’t hate her because she was so sweet, so they hated her because she was pretty.

LW: Were you the first person to date her?

RC: Hah. No, yeah, I was first, but we didn’t really “date.” Didn’t go out anywhere, at least. She started cooking dinner, and first it was so it’d be ready when I got home and I could make sure Mom ate, but then Wendy started sticking around. Joining us. So if that’s dating, then … sure. We spent a lot of time together. And you and everyone else in the world knows how that went, because you can see she’s pregnant in all these photos, but that wasn’t a mistake. A surprise, maybe, but not a mistake. I asked her, Wendy, if she really wanted to marry me or if she was just going to do it because of the baby, and she shrugged and said she figured she’d still be married to me when we were eighty, so … no, keep going. I’ll tell you when—there, that one?

LW: Yeah?

RC: That’s Agatha Grace. My mom’s best friend. And just—this is the best one of the bunch, okay? And she’s still giving Wendy that side-eye. She’s got that little prune mouth. Always looks like she just ate a lemon, but she’s also the kind of woman who goes looking for lemons. She had all these theories about Wendy. You hear any of those?

LW: No.

RC: Oh, I’m sure you will. Starting with how Wendy killed my mom. She wanted the house for herself, and me for herself, I guess that one goes. So she killed mom, and probably slept with the coroner or whoever to get him to sign off on the death certificate. Agatha’s never had sex so she figures all the pretty little things can’t keep their legs together. Tells you more about her than about them, hey? But yeah, Wendy killed my mom so she could have the house. Then she got pregnant, but the rumor there was that Ollie wasn’t actually mine. She slept with the coroner so he’d cover for her, that kind of thing. I don’t think Ollie’s ever heard that one, thank God, but it was out there for a while. She looks too much like me, though. Our baby photos? Practically identical. But Agatha … she’s always been a thorn in my side, but she’s a respected member of the community, you know? You can’t call her a cranky old biddy with her nose where it doesn’t belong. If she said Wendy’s a whore, then Wendy’s a whore. And then there was all that shit about Birdy … like mother, like daughter? Utter BS. But you can bet she was one of them saying it.

LW: The joys of a small town?

RC: Everyone thinks they know why you do everything, even when they’ve got no clue, and what they think is usually so much more fun than the real reason, so that’s what sticks. You’d think we’d all know better by now, because it’s happened to all of us, but no. That day? Our wedding? Wendy was a slut and I was the fool who thought the baby was mine. I was throwing my life away for a little tramp who was playing me. Can you believe it? I’d never looked at anyone else in my life, and I didn’t need to. For me it was Wendy, for better or for worse. You dating anyone?

LW: No. RC: I hope you find your Wendy. I joke, hey, about the cheap wedding. Hot dish potluck. But that? One of the happiest days of my life. Don’t make me rate it against the days my girls were born, but those are my top three. All my girls. Can’t imagine what my life would’ve been like without them.

---

Bury the Dead 17 – coming April 17

Ollie Clark—Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Len was in his cabin, and he turned down the music—classical, of all things—before opening the door. “Ollie. Eli.” Each name was two syllables, but they clearly didn’t taste the same in his mouth. “How can I help you?”

“You don’t actually think Eli did it, but you let my dad think you do.”

Len blinked and stepped back, opening the door wider to get them inside. “He figured it out?”

“He just called Cindy from the police station. What did you tell them?” Ollie had both hands on her purse strap, not because her phone was inside recording and she worried about the angle but because she wanted to keep herself from gesturing. Or slapping. Maybe clawing.

After a long look at her and an even longer one at Eli, Len took a seat in one of the rustic wooden chairs and gestured for them to take two of the others. “Don’t you want to know who actually killed your mom and sister?” he asked her gently, slouching back in the chair.

“Sure I do, but it wasn’t him. He was with me that night.”

Len winced. “You were nineteen and just lost half your family. You’re not a valid alibi. It didn’t matter back then, when they decided to go for Eli, but it matters now.”

Ollie slowly shook her head. “We drove out to camp. It’s in Covington. That’s not just around the corner.”

“He had plenty of time to get you out there and situated and for you to fall asleep before coming back, shooting them, and returning to your camp. There’s no way of knowing what the odometer in his car read Friday afternoon compared to twenty-four hours later. And they barely gave it a going over. It had the dirt and stones and whatever they expected, there wasn’t any blood …”

“Have you paid any attention the last couple nights? The sun doesn’t set until almost eleven. I couldn’t have fallen asleep stargazing because we couldn’t even see them yet. Dad told us at dinner we were swapping weekends and I’d be the one going with him once the dishes were done, we drove out, and we were still in the cabin at eleven. Talking.”

Len raised a finger. “About Eli.”

It wasn’t a question, so Ollie just waited.

“Your dad said that Birdy asked him to take you instead because Eli begged her for the change so your dad would talk you into marrying him.”

It still wasn’t a question. Why was she treating him like he was cross-examining her? Why was Len acting like he was cross-examining her?

“Randy doesn’t like Eli. He’s never liked Eli. Sorry,” Len added as an aside to the man in question. “So why would Eli or Birdy ever think Randy would come down on his side? Especially since I’ve seen plenty of emails between you and Birdy where you’re already planning the wedding. Birdy knew you were going to marry Eli and was excited about it. She’d never ask your dad to try to convince you to say yes, because you would never have said anything else. So: your dad lied.”

Ollie shook her head before she could stop herself, but held her tongue. She just needed to know how the hell Len had gone so wrong. She wasn’t here to correct him.

“He made the switch to your sacred schedule so he could have your mom and Birdy home unexpectedly. So you did fall asleep, maybe because he drugged you, so he could drop you off there and use you as his alibi if he needed it. Which he didn’t, because nobody looked even once at him, and that turned out all right because you would’ve been dismissed, anyway. What kid’s going to say her dad left the night the rest of her family was killed and risk losing him, too?”

Ollie pressed her lips together and shook her head. “That’s not all you’ve got.” They wouldn’t go after Dad just for that: following lines of supposition that, let’s face it, were beaten to death a decade ago.

Len sighed and looked to Eli like maybe Eli should stop him from going on. “Motive.”

Yeah. Motive was good. Because there wasn’t any.

“I have a copy of the coroner’s reports. On both of them.”

Okay, but they’d left Birdy’s pregnancy off the report. As a courtesy. And possibly illegally, but … small town. Unless Ollie or Randy told … or, yeah, Jared … then nobody was going to know.

Len wasn’t going to know.

“I had to kind of work my way around to it, but your dad’s talkative when he thinks someone’s listening. And when he gets to shape things the way he wants. You knew that, right? He wasn’t going to talk about them to you because you’d know where he lied. I’m kind of surprised he said so much to me, since it could end up in print, but I also figured he wouldn’t keep talking if he thought we were on good terms, so …” Len shrugged. “Sorry.”

Um. What, for ogling her in front of Eli? Dismissing Eli completely?

“One of the things I got from him this week was his blood type.”

Oh, shit.

“Your dad’s O,” Len continued, so either her face didn’t change or he didn’t notice, all caught up in being Holmes or Poirot or Monk. “So’s your mom. Positive, negative … that doesn’t matter, because Birdy was A.”

Eli frowned. “What?”

Len nodded. “Exactly. What? Now, it could be the other way around. Apparently. I’m not that great with blood typing, but if both your parents were AO, then okay, Birdy could’ve gotten an O from each of them. But, if your type is O, there isn’t anything else. Each parent has two Os, so the kid can’t get anything else.” He shrugged. “Birdy’s biological father is where she got the A.”

“Birdy’s …?” Eli either wasn’t following or didn’t want to.

“Look, the man has the patience of a saint,” Len agreed, sitting up a little so he could lean forward. “Eighteen years of putting up with Birdy. He should get a medal for that. And I don’t know when he found out, or at least found out for certain, but especially that last year? Birdy telling everyone her parents were cheapskates who hated her because she didn’t get money for college the way her perfect big sister did? And lying about it, of course. Maybe nobody else knew, but your parents knew she was lying. Telling everyone. You want to talk about saints? Jared had to be one, too. If her death didn’t drive him to drink, all that complaining would’ve. So Randy snapped and seized his moment.” Len spread both hands, palm up, like it really was all that simple. “I’m sorry, Ollie, but they’re only questioning him in case he can come up with a darn good excuse before his arrest.”

---

Len Wilcox’s private notes, handwritten, undated

All right, Len, it’s your freaking private diary. The question isn’t “Was Randy Clark abusive?” but “How abusive was Randy Clark?”

The evidence, your honor.

His daughters’ friends have little problem calling Wendy “Wendy” first time, every time, but he’s Mr. Clark. Maybe corrected to Randy, but how many times have I heard people talk about Wendy and Mr. Clark, no backtracking, all the way through? And maybe it’s a sign of respect, but calling adults by their first names isn’t always disrespect. It could be closeness. If they went over to the house to hang out, then Wendy would’ve been there.

Even though—crap, which one of the friends … she said they’d eat together in another room. (What other room? I’ve got the schematics—there aren’t many rooms in his house. The living room, on a card table?) And the other Clarks, Wendy and Ollie and Mr., ate at the table. So that’s separation from Wendy, too, but maybe it’s one of those order of operations things: when Mr. Clark’s present, then she has to go with him. When he’s gone, she can focus her attention on the kids.

Time and time again I hear that she never left the house without him. It was Randy and one or both of the girls, or it was all four of them. I’ve got this complete lack of information on Wendy because she was some sort of Yooper Rapunzel, locked in a house instead of a tower. Tell me that’s not abusive. Control is at the center of abuse, and this man is all about control. What would happen if something caused him to lose it?

---

Bury the Dead 16 – coming April 16

Ollie Clark—Wednesday, June 26, 2019

It was amazing how much packing you could get done when you stayed in the apartment. When you left your phone on silent, face down, in another room so you didn’t have to see missed calls or messages of any sort. Including the ones from, say, the florist and the venue expressing their sorrow at the cancellation, because Ollie didn’t feel like explaining why things changed. The various businesses just knew the fancy winter wedding was no longer happening, and at least Ollie and Eli hadn’t sent out save the date cards yet.

Eli tried “You don’t actually have to—” but she cut him off.

“How many times have you told me you’d rather just go to the courthouse or Vegas?” she reminded him. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about the dress, but you can wear jeans.”

He shook his head. “Mom said I can’t wear jeans to my own wedding.”

She thew up her hands. “We’ll get married this summer. Pick a beach. You can wear shorts.”

Ollie didn’t always understand the things Eli chose as important in his life. The Britta pitcher, for example, or his insistence on a diamond engagement ring, and yet a preference for eloping over a formal ceremony. She wasn’t actually even sure if Esther knew it was off, although Jared did. Jared said he, personally, didn’t mind being downgraded from a tux to jeans, as long as Eli and Ollie ended up married by the end of the year.

Harper just texted to remind them that Brad was recognized by the state of Michigan as legally able to conduct marriage ceremonies, which just made the beach idea look even better. If Ollie had brought up her birth certificate for some reason, they could’ve gotten their marriage license already and be in the three-day waiting period.

Ollie Googled flights to Vegas and glared at the price.

Eli caught her expression and glanced at her phone. “Of course they’re gouging you. You looked for tomorrow. We’d need, like, August from TC.”

“So you’re thinking Vegas?”

He shrugged. “I’m down with Brad on the beach. Let Jared wear his jeans.”

She didn’t book any flights, but that didn’t mean absolutely zero planning. Ollie tried to ignore it, though, and focus on packing because that was in front of her right now and hey, Eli was off. If they got everything ready and could leave early …

“You own too much stuff,” she murmured to Eli, straightening up and twisting to try to crack her back.

“I thought part of the reason I’m moving down instead of you moving up is because you have more,” he countered, setting down the scissors and maneuvering around the various boxes and packing material to answer the knock at the door.

Ollie was all ready to shoot something back, but it wasn’t Jared. Or Harper. It was Cindy, and from this angle Ollie couldn’t tell if Eli was startled and handling it well or if he’d been warned. Eli wasn’t avoiding his phone.

Even though they were packing everything from the cabinets and drawers, Eli’s cheap little table was still there and that’s where Cindy set down a white bag and a cardboard container of to-go cups. “I know you were just at Fifth & Elm, but not many places do takeout.”

Ollie considered the presence of the food and then looked up at her stepmom. “How are you?”

“Glad we didn’t have anyone already sleeping in the guest room,” she grumbled, checking the drinks and passing them around. “He hasn’t walked it back. I’m, uh.” Cindy sighed and sat down when Eli nodded for her to take the other chair since he pulled the ottoman over from the living room side. “I’m surprised he hasn’t said anything before, if …”

“If he’s really believed it this whole time?” Eli finished wryly.

Ollie shook her head. “Kelly confessed. Everybody believed his confession. They were all pissed and awkward because they believed his confession. Absolutely nobody came forward and said no, actually, the simplest explanation is clearly someone else with the same method and the same kind of gun.”

Eli had his mouth open for a bite of his breakfast bagel, but it stopped short. “Huh.”

“Huh?”

“Just … was it in the paper or anything at all back then? Like, do you think the real killer was out there somewhere all smug because hey, his plan worked? They thought Kelly did it?”

Cindy held up her hands when Ollie looked at her. “Children’s librarian. I could ask Dirk if he’s willing to look back through the papers, but I wouldn’t know how to do that myself.”

“If it was someone trying to frame a serial killer who wasn’t even identified as a serial killer, then he must’ve had a weird reaction when I went on trial.”

Cindy’s eyebrows went up. “There’s a question. Who had a weird reaction?”

Ollie rolled her eyes. “Me. Esther. Jared.”

“Aunt Serena,” Eli added.

“Dad. There wasn’t anybody out front with ‘Free Eli Chapman’ signs or anything.”

“Birdy’s friends were weird,” Eli mused. “But … teenage girl in a tragedy beyond their comprehension weird. Not …”

Cindy sighed. “Not ‘stole a shotgun and killed two people’ weird.”

Ollie shrugged. “You realize the whole thing was such a mess because no explanation has ever made sense? The only person who benefited monetarily was me, from Birdy’s college fund. Mom and Dad were in debt, so he inherited her debt. The life insurance went back into the house and for the funerals.”

“He’s very proud of the work he’s done on that house,” Cindy pointed out, voice wry and on the quiet side, like maybe she hadn’t meant to say that out loud. Then she jumped because her cell phone rang. Ollie didn’t know anyone other than her stepmom who kept her cell phone on at top volume all the time.

She frowned at the screen, but her thumb swiped and she held it up to her ear all the same. “Hello?”

Ollie looked at Eli, but he shrugged, and they both frowned when Cindy twisted around to look at the clock. “You … what? Are …?” More silence, and then: “Well, no, I don’t think calling Arnie would help. He’s not going to know any lawyers up here.”

On the one hand, that seemed to confirm her suspicions that it was Dad, but … lawyers?

“No, we’ll—look, okay: come home and we’ll make some calls. Okay? We’ll figure this out. Promise. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Love you too.” Cindy ended the call, shaking her head and blinking before she focused on Ollie. “That was your dad. The police just let him go.”

“What?”

“They brought him in for questioning. Just took him from work. They said …” She licked her lips, eyes drifting again as she tried to recall the exact words. “They said they wanted to give him the chance to speak up in light of new evidence.”

“New evidence?” Eli echoed. “From ten years ago?”

Ollie carefully folded the foil over the rest of her breakfast sandwich. “You go on home,” she told Cindy. “Eli, how confident do you feel about holding me back?”

“Uh.” He rubbed his chin. “From whom?”

“Len Wilcox.”

He blinked. “Not at all confident. I’d say you could tear his balls off, except I really don’t want you going anywhere near them. But I’ll come with you.”

“Len?” Cindy dropped her own breakfast sandwich back in the bag and picked it up, along with her drink, but clearly she wasn’t tracking.

Ollie shrugged as she got up and went into the bathroom to grab her hairbrush. “You know anyone else who’s been trying to uncover new information lately?”

“Ah.” Her stepmom nodded, but the clarity in her eyes didn’t last. “Even though your dad …?”

Ollie turned around and met her eyes. “Arresting the wrong person isn’t justice.”

“But your dad’s not arrested.”

“Yet,” Eli said pointedly. “That’s how they do it. You get a chance to try to save your skin. They’ve only got two days after they arrest you to charge you, so if you happen to give them a couple more things while they’ve got you in the room …”

Cindy’s lips moved before her mouth snapped shut and she blushed. Ollie figured she’d almost asked Eli how he knew. Instead, she cleared her throat and nodded at both of them, foregoing any parting words as she left.

Eli picked up Ollie’s purse and looked through it, letting the rape alarm stay but removing the stuff that wasn’t called mace even if that’s what it could be used for. “Eliminating temptation,” he informed her before holding it out. “Also, I’m pretty sure we can’t secretly record anything he says and have it stand up in court, but … I wouldn’t stop you from trying.”

“Assuming he’s even at the cabins.”

“I hope he is.” Eli grabbed his keys. “Because you stew when you’re mad, and it’s just going to be worse for him if you have to wait.”

---

From Len Wilcox’s private journal—November 30, 2018

I really want to talk to Eli Chapman. I totally understand if he won’t say a single word to me, but I’m dying to try. That would make a book all by itself.

I’ve got books on the brain. Sean Kelly’s going to be the biggest thing that’s ever happened to me. I suppose you could say he’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to all the people I’m going to be interviewing for this project, too, but that’s different. I can’t make that comparison anywhere other than to myself, privately. Thoughts like that can’t make it to print.

Over the past decade, Sean Kelly has killed at least two dozen people with his shotgun. Buckshot every time. It doesn’t take much finesse. He rings a doorbell, shoots when someone opens, and then shoots anyone else who comes running. It’s never been more than two people at once, the lucky bastard, but there was that one kid he orphaned in Ohio. The boy was asleep in his crib, wearing those weird footie pajama things with the leg webbing that meant he couldn’t climb out of it, and he didn’t start screaming until after Kelly left. Lucky tot. If he’d toddled downstairs to see what all the noise was, Kelly could’ve used the shotgun like a baseball bat and taken the kid’s head off.

Happy thoughts, Len. The kid’s fine.

Well. Alive. Probably having nightmares and needing therapy, but alive.

But here’s the thing: out of all those murders, only one person ever went to trial for them. One. Eli James Chapman of South Range, Michigan.

Sure, there were arrests, but nobody else went to trial. Eli Chapman is it.

I’ve barely scratched the surface on this, but come on. He went to trial for the brutal shotgun murders of his girlfriend’s mom and sister. There are newspaper photos of his girlfriend and her dad in that courtroom during the trial. Transcripts of what each of them said about him while under oath.

Eli Chapman was nineteen years old when it happened. So was his girlfriend. The mom was forty and the sister was eighteen, but just barely. Your life shouldn’t end at forty, much less half that. And that’s what happened, isn’t it? Chapman didn’t do a darn thing, but he went to trial for it and that “not guilty” verdict didn’t do squat. He’s got a job, I guess, but it’s with someone who moved into the area. He couldn’t find a position with anyone local.

It’d be a comedy of errors except for the fact that it’s a tragedy, and there’s nothing unique about a tragedy of errors. It’s the basic genre description. Guy meets girl when they’re in elementary school. Guy starts dating girl as young teens. Girl goes off to college but stays in relationship with guy. And then guy goes to trial for murdering girl’s family.

Guy doesn’t get to marry girl. They don’t settle down in their hometown like her parents and raise some little guys and little girls of their own. Girl graduates from college and moves away, and guy finally finds a job being a behind-the-scenes programming geek who doesn’t have to deal with the public.

Guy should sue. Or at least get a Netflix series of his own.

After giving me an exclusive interview, of course.

Okay that wouldn’t actually be the smart decision. Books take a lot of time. Anything he exclusively told me would exclusively stay with me for … years. He needs to kick up a fuss long before then. Strike while the iron is hot and Kelly is still in the news.

But he should also let me interview him. Tell me what it’s like to live out that tragic story. And then, right before it goes to layout, maybe I can add in a little “Where are they now?” section, where guy and girl might finally be getting to pick up exactly where their lives left off.

That would make a satisfying epilogue. Kelly’s confessed, he’s been sentenced … and the only person who went to trial for one of Kelly’s crimes is starting an upswing. That book would fly off the shelves.

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Bury the Dead 15 – coming April 15

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Terri Simmons, June 25, 2019

TS: I’m so glad you could come over. Cookie?

LW: No, thank you. I’ve only got about an hour, Ms. Simmons—

TS: Terri.

LW:—so if we could jump right in …?

TS: Right, okay. So. I told you I used to babysit the girls. That’s a polite fiction. If you babysit, you get paid, right? I was never paid. I didn’t ask to be—make sure you put that in. And it wasn’t charity, don’t call it charity, but …

LW: What was it?

TS: Kindness? It just … happened. The thing is … Wendy was a stay-at-home mom while the girls were young, right? But then, once they started school, she got restless. She was looking for something else. So I’d pick the girls up from school. It’s right over there, so I’d just walk up and bring them back here for cookies and they’d plunk down in front of the television and wait for Wendy to come pick them up or call so I could walk them over.

LW: And you did this for how long?

TS: Longer than necessary, probably. Ollie could’ve started going home alone before they stopped coming. But I think she knew why.

LW: Why …?

TS: Birdy. She couldn’t be left alone. It wasn’t boys—not back then. It was her little friends. I wouldn’t have them over—I refused. The Clark girls, okay, but I wasn’t going to play policewoman for the others. I wouldn’t even have them show up alone. Liza or Carrie or Kendra, I mean. You get them one on one, they’re fine, but even two of them together … that’s when things happened, Mr. Wilcox.

LW: What kinds of things?

TS: Mischief. Pranks. The sorts of things that could get you arrested if you’re an adult, but they were kids. They’d play chicken in the highway—run out in front of cars, trucks, that kind of thing. Dare each other. Egg each other on. You had to egg Birdy on, or else she acted out until you exploded. Adrenaline junkie, maybe. But she was always doing it, or daring the others to do it, and honestly they were terrors. You weren’t supposed to say so, because they were just little girls, but they were. Nobody ever reported them, and they never got in trouble for it. Even that day Birdy broke her arm? We all know what actually happened. Only Randy’s ever bel—shit. Don’t publish that.

LW: I won’t publish anything you don’t want me to.

TS: Right. I just—okay.

LW: Did Wendy have a job? Is that why they needed someplace to go after school?

TS: She never told me where she worked. She was very private. That’s the thing about Wendy—you probably haven’t found many people who can talk about her, right? Because she just didn’t have friends. I’m not even sure she brought the girls to playdates with other kids and talked to the other moms. And … well, shit. I don’t know if I want to say that part either.

LW: You’ll get a transcript and the chance to cross out anything you don’t want me using.

TS: Well, that’s fine, and I’m sure I can trust you, but that doesn’t mean I want you having this in your head while you’re talking to everyone else.

LW: It’s your decision, Terri.

TS: Right. Well. The thing is, you’re not from here, and you don’t understand. Small town. This isn’t Chicago. And … okay. Wendy’s dad had been at her. Incest, to be blunt. It’s why there was so much discussion about Ollie. Not—people weren’t trying to be mean about it, but the timing … there’s not a good way to ask if a baby was born with webbed fingers, but you know what I mean? We were worried about her. If she wasn’t Randy’s, then …

LW: But you didn’t have the kind of relationship with Wendy where you could’ve asked her about that.

TS: God, no. Nobody did. And you wouldn’t have tried if Randy was anywhere nearby. I don’t know if she would’ve told him anyway, but …

LW: How would you describe their relationship? Randy and Wendy?

TS: I hardly ever saw them together. People rarely did, because she didn’t leave the house. She’d come pick the girls up before he got off work, and then the four of them would be together, I guess. Until Birdy started leaving or sneaking out or whatever she did. Evenings were family times, and they had their weekends scheduled. Which you probably know, considering …

LW: The daddy-daughter weekends.

TS: Yeah. But it was still isolating. Just the family. Friends were never invited along for those. Everyone always said it was so nice to see the parents involved like that, especially the dad, but it wasn’t like he was involved where everyone could see. You know?

LW: What do you mean?

TS: Well, he had work, is what I mean. During the day he’d be at work, and then evenings and weekends were family time. So he really tried. Especially with Birdy—he really tried to give her that nuclear family, you know? Some stability. The consistency. She knew—both the girls knew—he was there for them. He made that time.

LW: Did it bother him that his wife was working?

TS: I have no idea. I’d assume no, because any income would be good, and the girls were at school all day. If she needed that extra time after to decompress or go shopping or whatever on those days, I can completely understand. It must have been a shock, Birdy coming along after Ollie like that, because Ollie was such a sweet girl. She got along with everyone. Even Birdy, and that was a trick. But Birdy was so much like her mom. It’s such a pity, them both dying like that, but …

LW: But?

TS: Well. You’re not supposed to say these things. It might’ve been the best for Ollie.

LW: How do you mean?

TS: Less drama for her just as she was getting started in life. Which sounds awful, because her mother and her sister were murdered, and that’s plenty dramatic. But she didn’t have to deal with whatever Birdy came up with next. College in, what was it, California? Maybe taking Jared Chapman out there with her? Booze and drugs and babies of her own, I’m sure. Anything to get all the attention and take it away from Ollie. And their mom gave it—you need to know that. Wendy spent so much of her time dealing with Birdy that Ollie was all but forgotten, especially when they got older. Ollie could be left on her own and nobody worried about her, so they did leave her alone and forget to worry about her. Those daddy-daughter weekends? It wasn’t just Randy trying to get to know his girls. It was trying to force Wendy to pay attention to her older child once a month.

LW: Randy told you that?

TS: Oh, God, no. It was something we just knew. Nobody talks about that kind of thing, Mr. Wilcox. When a husband has to correct his wife. Tell her what we’re all thinking. They just did it, and we all knew why, and this might be something else I cross out when you give me the chance, but we all breathed a sigh of relief when it happened. When we knew we didn’t have to deal with Birdy and Wendy anymore, and that sweet, sweet young woman wouldn’t have to deal with them, either.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with XX, June 25, 2019

XX: So you’re going to keep this anonymous, right? None of your usual descriptions of the person you’re interviewing?

LW: Right. And any information I do use will be credited to an anonymous source.

XX: You probably think that’s stupid. Small town, everybody’ll know who I am. But thank you for meeting in private. I … have a lot to say.

LW: By all means.

XX: I have connections to the prosecuting attorney. Carson Denomie. Well, former prosecuting attorney—he didn’t get the votes last time around. Which is surprising, because he survived the Eli Chapman thing, but … okay. Eli wasn’t Denomie’s top suspect. He was just the one he thought he’d be able to get a conviction for.

LW: … go on.

XX: All right, so let me run this by you: everyone who knew the Clarks knew about their weekend schedules. And it was a big deal that they were doing it again, because Ollie was back from college, so her weekends with each parent mattered. You with me so far?

LW: Yes.

XX: So whoever showed up that night expected to find Ollie home with their mom. You dig?

LW: Walk me through it.

XX: All right, so: he shows up and rings the doorbell. It doesn’t matter which one answers—he’s just going to kill both. So that inner door opens, and he shoots through the screen door. They’re all the same height, so he knows where to aim even if he doesn’t see much more than movement. Not even a silhouette, because she’s backlit, and he gets her in the face, anyway. Maybe he’s too high on adrenaline to even really be thinking, anyway, but then he turns, sees Wendy, and shoots her. In the chest, maybe because she’s further away, or maybe because he’s had an extra moment to look. Both of them dead, so he runs, dumps the gun, and goes back home. Then in the morning he has to fake shock at the news to be like everyone else, except then there’s a bit extra: actually that was Birdy, not Ollie. Ollie’s still alive. He has to see it for himself, and that’s when he breaks.

LW: And “he” is …?

XX: Jared Chapman. Hear me out. You know what Kendra said about money. She’s not the only one who heard that. Birdy’s gang did, so you know her boyfriend did. Say he’s listening to this and thinking hmmm, how can I help my girlfriend? If Ollie were dead, then that would leave her money for Birdy.

LW: I’m not sure that’s how that would’ve worked.

XX: Sure, because you’re a grown man. Sensible. You’re sitting here wondering if Ollie had a will, or if the money would’ve been enough for California. But Jared Chapman? Especially back then? No depth. Birdy’s pissed because Ollie’s got the money, so get rid of Ollie. Which is why it’s so ironic, you know? That he shot Birdy in the face. He steps over her to get a better angle for Wendy, and he doesn’t even know he just killed the wrong sister. They had the same hair. She was in pajamas. Hell, take away the face and all three of the Clark women looked very similar. And the thing is, it was only Birdy at home because Eli had intervened, right? Asked her to stand up for him and all the rest. Which, well … makes me wonder, actually, if maybe Eli knew what his cousin planned to do. If he went ahead and got Ollie out of the way.

LW: So he’d be an accessory.

XX: Sure. And also a kid, so it’s not like he would’ve thought it through. How he could’ve told the truth at any time. Because he would’ve had to say oh, yeah, I totally knew he was going to kill people, so I saved my girlfriend but let him kill her sister and her mom. Sorry, honey. Miscalculated that one.

LW: So …

XX: I know, I know. We’re still left with the same problem they had with Eli: what about the gun? Where did he get it? Where did it go? And we could go with the same answers Denomie presented at the trial. Yes, it would’ve been possible for someone to have borrowed a gun from a friend and put it back before it was missed. We’ve got enough people who don’t lock up their stuff, and in June? They probably aren’t checking on it daily. If it’s in the basement, it’s in the basement. And if there’s a window into the basement, or they don’t lock their doors … which happens around here. Anyone could go in and get the gun, especially if they know where it is. And it’s a shotgun—you don’t need to be a sharpshooter. They got Eli, sure, but they didn’t get Jared and ask him to strip. See if he had a bruise on his shoulder, that kind of thing. They had Jared all wide-eyed saying no, Eli wasn’t with me all night, and they could run with that. They could use him, even though he backtracked on it, because he didn’t really backtrack. He said hey, Eli wasn’t in the room, that’s all. Like one of those what-do-you-call-thems from Stranger in a Strange Land. The people who’d tell you a house is brown on this side and not assume the other three sides match?

LW: I don’t know that reference.

XX: Heinlein, really? You’re missing out. But Eli said he was there all night, and Jared said he woke up and Eli wasn’t. What they missed was asking Jared if he was there all night. If Eli was telling the truth but Jared was lying. Except it was his girlfriend who’d been shot, so Denomie called a meeting and they had to decide which one was winnable: Jared or Eli? So they voted for Eli. And what’s why he went to trial: because Denomie thought he’d be able to win that one.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Juho Laitila, June 25, 2019

JL: Good to see you. I couldn’t figure out that Zoom thing—I didn’t want to ask my granddaughter, because she’d want to know why, and then she’d lecture me. Pappa, maybe you’re not a teacher, but … oh, something about decency. When I saw so much, but nobody asks the janitor. I could’ve told them tales if they’d just sworn me in.

LW: Did you go to the prosecutor’s office and tell him you had something to say?

JL: That houkka? No. If he wasn’t smart enough to figure it out himself, then he wasn’t going to listen to me. And the jury came back right. It wasn’t Eli Chapman. That family … they’re no good, the Chapmans, so it’s not a compliment to call Eli the best of the bunch, but that’s what he is. Everything he’s put up with now … and he loved that girl. Ollie. Well, and the thing is, Eli wasn’t the only one like that. Showing up early, staying late … being at school as long as he could because even the empty school was better than home. He wasn’t even looking for someone to want him—just a place to be. He couldn’t always go to Ollie’s, you know. Because of her father.

LW: Randy didn’t like Eli?

JL: What sort of father really likes the boy after his daughter’s virginity? But she loved him, so he had to bend. Just not always. And Randy seemed to forget the sort of boy he’d been himself. Worse than Eli Chapman, I tell you. Randy was spoiled and Randy was mean. More like his younger daughter. You couldn’t tell either of them no, which may or may not have had something to do with his shotgun wedding. I couldn’t say. But what I can tell you is that Eli was probably only the second person in the world who loved Birdy, after Ollie. Because she loved Birdy. And he would’ve known, that kid, that killing Birdy wouldn’t have helped a thing. There wasn’t money, there wasn’t jealousy … Denomie and his idea that Eli wanted to chain Ollie down? Paska. Eli Chapman always ever only wanted the best for Ollie Clark, even if the best wasn’t him. It just happened to be.

LW: Oh?

JL: Ah, the two of them. So in love. It doesn’t always work, when one goes off to college and the other stays to home, but I think they were going to make it work. Or they would have, if not for Denomie. I guess they’re engaged now, finally, but there shouldn’t have been this delay. That poor boy …

LW: Mr. Laitila, have you seen the news?

JL: Which news, son? There’s a lot of it.

LW: Sean Kelly has an alibi for the night Wendy and Birdy Clark were murdered. He didn’t do it.

JL: No? Huh. Are they sure?

LW: Yes. So I was wondering if you had any idea who might have done it.

JL: Who would’ve wanted to kill Wendy and Birdy?

LW: Yes. Did you think it was someone back then?

JL: A drifter. I mean, God rest their souls, I could name a person or two who’d have something against them, but not to kill. Hitto, the girl was going away. She was done with school, done with this place … nobody had to get rid of her. She was ready to get rid of herself. And the mother, Wendy? Hardly anyone ever saw her. Who’s going to make enemies when she never leaves the house? It was a drifter. Somebody lost, confused … although I’ll tell you something, poika, if you can keep a secret.

LW: The recorder is running, but you’ll be able to review the transcript and tell me if you don’t want me using something.

JL: Ah, yes, you said. Well. It might have been a blessing for Jared Chapman. The two of them together, Jared and Birdy, were a bad idea. Worse than flint and steel. They were going to explode, and who knows how many they would’ve taken out when that happened. But she was killed, bless her soul, and he straightened up. Even helped Eli out. Stood by him when his own mother did nothing but drink. Eli needed someone, she wasn’t there, and he couldn’t have Ollie, not after all that. So Jared stepped in, and he’s never stopped insisting Eli was innocent.

LW: Even though he said—?

JL: He said he woke up that night and Eli wasn’t there, yes, I know. You couldn’t go three steps back then without someone mentioning it. But it wasn’t like he said “I woke up and saw Eli coming back to bed all covered in blood,” or “I woke up and Eli was sitting there crying because he’d just killed people.” Perkele! Denomie stressed that, and he couldn’t get a conviction. Because it means nothing! One boy wakes up, another’s not there … that doesn’t mean the other’s out killing someone. You’re not a very good detective if you think.

LW: I’m not a detective, Mr. Laitila. I’m a reporter.

JL: Well, then. Go on and report that Eli didn’t do it.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Esther Chapman, June 25, 2019

EC: I don’t expect you to understand. You’re a man. Men are the ones who do the leaving. They don’t even have to stick around long enough to find out if you’re pregnant—they can just fuck you and go. Thank you ma’am and out the door. Lonnie married me, sure, but how long did that last? He left me, and he even hung around here for a while, but not around me. Not around Eli. And then he took off completely, and I have no idea where he is. I didn’t hear a peep from him back then, either. Son’s on trial for murder and he can’t even bother. The papers loved that. Tried tracking him down, but they couldn’t manage it, either. I don’t even know if I’m still married.

LW: You never hired a lawyer to—?

EC: Look, Mr. Wilcox, maybe that’s what you city people do, but how was I going to pay for a lawyer? I had to take charity as it was. Left on my own with a boy, no family … Serena’s all high and mighty about it now, but she certainly didn’t offer anything. She got lucky with work, but I got lucky with Eli. Yes, fine, everyone wants to say he was an angry kid, but who wouldn’t be? His dad left us. Abandoned us. I was working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads, but the roof leaked, and clothes on his back, but they were all second-hand ones he didn’t like. It’s hard for a kid to be angry at someone who’s gone, so he was angry at me for sticking around but doing everything wrong. Except Eli never hit me. He never let it out the way some guys do—throwing things or punching things to let you know that they could lay their hands on you. When it gets too much for Eli, he goes for a walk, or splits firewood, or gets it all out with something that doesn’t hurt anyone. Something productive. Which, I’m sad to say, can’t be said for Jared.

LW: What do you mean?

EC: I mean Serena might’ve gotten rid of an abusive man, but she was stuck with an abusive boy. Jared would kick and hit and just flail when he was younger, and then he started aiming. It went past the point where you could say oh, he’s just a kid, he doesn’t know any better. He knew better, but she defended him anyway. She’d have a black eye and tell you she ran into a door, that kind of thing. And she was so damn holier than thou about not dating men, not bringing them into little Jared’s life just to have them leave again, but she was the one with shiners. Not me. And of course she felt all smug when Eli got arrested. Her little angel wouldn’t have done a single thing. He was home all night. She even preened because he’s the reason the police pounced on Eli. Isn’t that a good word? Preened.

LW: It is a good word.

EC: And it’s the right word. She showed up to that trial every day in that one suit. You know what it was like? That Simpsons episode where Marge finds that designer thing at a thrift store and then wears it all the time to get into the country club. Except this wasn’t a country club. She wanted to be there with her makeup done because it made me look worse. And she didn’t even say anything to me. Just showed up, sat there between me and Jared, and stared straight ahead. No help. No comfort. In case you wondered which Chapman wife got the good kid and which one got the murderer. Even though it should’ve been the other way around. Eli should’ve married Ollie years ago. The two of them … I raised a good man, Mr. Wilcox. Or maybe he turned out good in spite of me. But they lost ten whole years, and Jared took that away from them. A single thoughtless comment, and Jared made sure Eli couldn’t ask her to marry him, that they couldn’t have kids. They couldn’t have the life they deserved.

LW: I understand Eli proposed last Christmas.

EC: Yes, he did. It was lovely. But he should’ve done it years ago, except public opinion made him a murderer. That not guilty verdict? It ruined Eli’s life. Everyone’s decided they have to punish him because the state didn’t, so it’s all up to them. But now? They think sorry’s enough. They spent years abusing my kid, cutting him off, laughing at him … and they think they can just laugh it off and not take responsibility.

LW: Responsibility.

EC: Yes, of course. They ignored the verdict. They chose to act the way they did. They ruined his life. And now they want to just laugh and say “Let bygones be bygones” because otherwise it means facing consequences for those actions, and consequences means they did the wrong thing. They’re all convinced they did the right thing, Mr. Wilcox. That Eli got what he deserved, just because he’s a Chapman. Just because I didn’t handle myself the way Serena did. I didn’t fake it for them well enough, so it serves my son right. That’s how they’re thinking. And they won’t ever want to say they were wrong.

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Bury the Dead 14 – coming April 14

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Sara Sheldon, June 24, 2019

SS: Okay, so first thing on the record, I need to make sure everyone knows I did my duty and Len Wilcox did indeed get a breakfast pasty.

LW: The local delicacy.

SS: You have no idea how lucky you are. They sell out like that.

LW: Is that a tourist rite of passage?

SS: I think the first rite is admitting there’s no R in “pasty.” Okay, so you go ahead and eat that, and I’ll get started, because I know you’re booked. Do you have a list of questions, or …?

LW: Why don’t you start with how you’re connected to the Clark family and go on from there.

SS: I grew up in the house behind them. My parents still live there. The blue one, just across the alley? I’m younger than their kids, so I was fourteen when the murders happened. But I remember that night.

LW: The night, huh?

SS: Oh, yeah. My bedroom looked right out into the backyard, so it looked into their backyard. So it could’ve been a lot worse, because I couldn’t see their front door or anything, and I heard … well. If you’ve seen photos, then you know … that they could see her from the street. Birdy. But … okay. I don’t know if I heard the shots, because I can’t remember what woke me up, but I remember all the flashing lights. There were a lot of them, police cars and the ambulance and stuff, and it went on for hours. No sirens, but lights. There was a police car in their driveway, pulled all the way up, and that was the main one. My bedroom kept flashing like a rave. And my parents woke up after a while—I could hear them moving around, and then I saw my dad go out, and a policeman stopped him at the alley, and they talked for a while. So I got up, and went downstairs where my mom was at the kitchen table in her robe, and we waited for Dad to come back in.

LW: Did they tell him anything?

SS: They asked him if he’d seen or heard anything, and that was enough. Because of the police cars and the ambulances, you know? All the people. So clearly something had happened, and it needed EMTs, and it took a long time. So my dad kind of took my mom aside, you know, and … okay, you’re not going to get us for slander or something on this, are you?

LW: I don’t have to print anything you tell me.

SS: Okay, because … well, I heard him, even though he was trying to be quiet. And the first thing Dad thought was that Mr. Clark killed his family. So. I mean, we know it’s not true, but that’s what he said to Mom: “I think Clark finally cracked and killed them all.” So.

LW: I’m sure it was tense. And nobody knew anything.

SS: Right, and if people did know, they weren’t telling. The police were trying to keep it quiet, and then the adults were trying to shield their kids, and for a while there they thought it was Ollie working with Eli, which was just a load of crap. Ollie loved her sister. Sometimes … well. Sometimes I think she was the only one who did.

LW: Really.

SS: Oh, you’ve heard stories, I’m sure. Always fighting with Wendy, Mr. Clark didn’t know what to do with her … did you know—well, I know you don’t—that when I was really little, maybe four or five, I was out in the backyard and I saw Birdy teasing this cat? It was caught in a live trap, because it was a stray, and she was just … poking at it with a stick. Nice and safe, but poking. Not laughing or anything—her face was blank. She was just … turned off. Then, when she saw me, she stared right at me and said “If you think you saw something, no, you didn’t.”

LW: Oh?

SS: Yeah. Which I remember, because it wasn’t the only time I heard any of them say it. It was one of Wendy’s things, except she always made it funny. You’d catch her taking a cookie and she’d say “If you think you saw something, no you didn’t” and wink and also give you one. You know: haha, you caught me being bad, but not really bad. Except the time with the cat? That was really bad. I’ve never told anybody, not even my best friend, because … well. It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? And it was just … so weird.

LW: Did you have much contact with the Clark sisters?

SS: Not really. They’re only a few years older, but that’s a lot when you’re kids. And they didn’t … well, Ollie hung out around the house a lot, I guess, so she’d wave or whatever if we saw each other, but Birdy was always out with her friends. On their bikes or once they got a car, that kind of thing. So I’d avoid them. That whole gang.

LW: What were they like as a group?

SS: You were always the outsider and they wanted you to know it. If it was just the four of them, they’d sort of trade off: Birdy and two of them against the other one. But never the three of them against Birdy. And then, if you crossed them, they’d all turn on you and start making fun of … well, it didn’t really matter. Your hair, especially if you’d just gotten it cut or your mom had done it special. Your clothes. Your lunch box, if you had one. Or even just … if you had a stutter, or a lazy eye? All of them would start mocking you and laughing and shrieking. You could hear them from blocks away, so at least you could avoid them. And the thing … okay, another deep, dark secret, I guess: I was so worried that Ollie had been killed that night. Birdy, I didn’t really mind, and it was awful about their mother, but I was a kid. I thought forty was old. But Ollie was always so … so sweet, and nice, and in Birdy’s shadow.

LW: Yeah?

SS: Yeah. You’d think it’d be the other way, since Ollie was older and got the good grades and everything, but Birdy had the spotlight. All the time. And if she didn’t already have it, she’d steal it. But Ollie didn’t really mind. She was almost relieved, I think, when she could just be left alone with her book. That’s how it was a lot of summers: Birdy off with the gang and Ollie in the backyard with a book. I’m not surprised she became an English teacher. And she was so smart—because of how much she read, I think. But now … since I’m not a child anymore … I don’t think it was right, you know? Leaving her alone like that. Letting Birdy take all their attention and just … hoping Ollie didn’t slip through the cracks.

LW: I thought that was what the daddy-daughter weekends were for.

SS: What, you think Mr. Clark talked to her about school and the future and stuff? Wendy, maybe, but not him. He always talked about the stuff he liked, and if you wanted to hang out with him, you had to go along with it. The camp? Where they were that night? No running water, no electricity … my mom says he kept it that way so Wendy wouldn’t want to join him. And Birdy didn’t really like it, either, but he was harder to annoy than Wendy, so she kind of had to do it or else not get anything from him. And Ollie … I think she was just so desperate for any of them to admit she existed that she’d go along for anything.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Roger Porvoo, June 24, 2019

LW: So you were the reporter covering … the trial?

RP: Everything. It’s a small paper, Mr. Wilcox.

LW: Len.

RP: Right, Len. Small paper. So I was up and out there early morning on the twentieth, when the police were still stringing up the tape and telling people to stay back. I was there when Randy Clark got home, and yes, I asked if he wanted to say something. You know how it is. Or maybe you don’t—you only get to people long after it’s over, don’t you?

LW: Correct.

RP: So I was there, and I tried. You’ve read it?

LW: Yes.

RP: Okay, so some of what I didn’t write was how he looked like he was the one who’d been shot in the chest. Pale. His face didn’t move, but it wasn’t still, either, if you know what I mean. Melting wax figure that hadn’t been painted properly. Moving the way I always thought Cinderella would in her glass slippers. Slowly, feeling for each step … but you can’t put that in a paper. It’s too poetic. Did I tell you I write poetry?

LW: You did, yes.

RP: Not that the situation was really poetic. It’s just one of those things people can’t really imagine, you know? And don’t want to. Who wants to come home to blood and who knows what else? Wife and daughter on slabs. He identified them. I wasn’t there for that, but I asked. He didn’t break down. I don’t think anyone I talked to has ever seen Randy Clark break down. Maybe it was for his daughter. The other one—Ollie. They kept moving her around. Keeping her away from me, I guess. I didn’t get to her until the trial, which … yeah, sounds bad, but … again, you know. It’s the job. It’s what people want, as long as it’s not them.

LW: You were there every day of the trial?

RP: Oh, yeah. That’s one of the biggest things that ever happened up here. We don’t usually get to try people for multiple murder, you see. But it was a weird trial. The defense was right to push for one, because Denomie really didn’t have evidence. There was so much he said, she said, but nobody says the same thing. And none of it made any sense, because it wasn’t in hot blood. Wendy had always been nice to Eli, and Birdy had never been nice to anybody, but it wasn’t like he’d go off and shoot the both of them for Ollie. Makes no sense. That whole story about how it was supposed to frame Randy? Complete BS. Denomie was banking on public backing, the headlines … support come election time … but he built up a house of cards, and he was the only one who wouldn’t admit it. We had this horrific crime, and he wanted to wrap it all up with a bow. Instead, he ruined that kid’s life.

LW: I don’t know if you’ve seen the news …

RP: What, Kelly having an alibi? First, sloppy. That should’ve all been checked before the big press conference. And second, so what? It still wasn’t Eli Chapman. It made no sense. And even if you don’t want to rely on personality and all the rest, what about the gun? Chapman didn’t have a gun. His aunt didn’t have a gun, so he couldn’t have gotten one there. And friends? He didn’t have anyone else. The Clarks didn’t have guns. I know it seems like that should be rare, up here, but none of them did. So he would’ve had to steal one, but there weren’t any reports. Nobody was missing one. So you’re left with, what, he stole one, shot it twice, and returned it before it was missed? No. It was an outsider. The gun wasn’t found because it wasn’t there. Someone brought it in, used it, and took it back out again. You know what I think?

LW: What?

RP: I’ve always wondered if it wasn’t a case of mistaken identity. Wrong address. Wrong house. Not a hitman, maybe, but … maybe. Someone who wasn’t from there, so he’d be in, out, and in the wind. But he got the wrong house, and he just … shot twice. Jacked up on adrenaline. Then he reads in the papers that it wasn’t the right ones, that he killed a girl and her mother, and …

LW: And?

RP: No idea. Suicide? Gets religion? Either way it’s not the kind of case that’s easily solved. Strangers killing strangers, and in that case, strangers killing the wrong strangers.

LW: What were your impressions of the Clarks and Chapmans during the trial?

RP: Ah, well … Randy didn’t come off well. He was stiff. Cold. My opinion, it was rage, because he was sure Eli had done it. His daughter’s boyfriend since time out of mind. Ultimate betrayal. He had such a tight hold on himself, you wouldn’t have said he felt anything about his wife and daughter. So that didn’t play well. Ollie tried to keep it together, but she cried more than once. Denomie really didn’t look good, coming after her like that. He was still trying to get her to say that yeah, sure, it was her boyfriend, and she’d known about it. Helped him plan it. Eli’s lawyer kept objecting, and eventually the judge had to call them both to the bench. Lectured him, I guess. Ollie was broken. Dull. Like she was an oil painting and someone took a couple swipes at her with a rag dipped in turpentine. Eli, now … he was angry. Kept clenching his jaw and then reminding himself not to, because it was a bad look, being pissed at the remaining family, you know, but then he’d do it again. His mom was a wreck—I don’t think she showed up sober a single day. Don’t know how she lasted those long days, either, unless she’d sneaked a flask in or had someone waiting outside with one for recesses. So that wasn’t much help for him, this drunk mom who seemed to think he was guilty. His aunt and cousin were there, too, and they always sat next to her, but it was night and day. Serena wore the same suit every single day, but it was clean. Sat straight as a poker. Jared spent most of his time leaned forward, elbows on his knees, staring at the judge or whatever witness was speaking. He was the only one obviously rooting for Eli in that entire room. And the only one who’d say it—every day after, or whenever he had a chance to talk to the press, he’d say Eli was innocent. They got sick of him, because it was the same thing, no matter what. No matter what evidence, who else had been called … which made sense, because there wasn’t any evidence and the defense poked holes in everything, but it doesn’t make for good press, the same thing over and over.

LW: Does anyone else stand out to you?

RP: As good media? Well. Birdy’s little friends canonized her. Apparently they didn’t know about waterproof mascara. And one of them, I think the Rajala kid, had a handkerchief. Lace-edged, if you please. They all went into hysterics since their queen bee was gone, and they used the courtroom to fight for the empty throne. God, I’m not going to let you use any of this. But they acted like it was all fake—a courtroom drama instead of an actual courtroom. But it was too loud, too often … Ollie fought it. She wanted to get her answers out so they could be heard and get it over with. I don’t think … well. She kept giving the press the good old “no comment,” so I didn’t really get a chance to make an opinion before that, but Ollie thought the trial was a waste of time. She’d do her duty and put herself through it, but she was maybe the only person up there on the stand who thought the prosecuting attorney was an idiot and Eli was innocent.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Elise Koko, June 24, 2019

EK: I was the children’s librarian back then—that’s how I met the girls. I suppose you couldn’t talk to the school librarian or any of their teachers, hey?

LW: No. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to put anyone in that position.

EK: Some of them have retired. They wouldn’t lose their job. And Birdy’s dead—she’s been dead now for more than half the time she was alive. Cruel, maybe, but true. And it’s such a unique situation. It’s not like they’d be talking about children who are still out there. Who had the chance to grow and change. Which, if I may be blunt, Birdy really should’ve had the chance to. That child …

LW: What did you want to tell me about her?

EK: The father, Randy, always brought them in to sign them up for the summer reading program. Read books, earn small prizes and the chance to win bigger ones. Beat the summer slide, so on and so forth. And I was always glad to see them, because so many parents don’t care at all. But Randy brought them in, like clockwork, as soon as signups opened. The years we had the adult program, he signed up, too, like he wanted to prove to them it wasn’t punishment. And it wasn’t punishment for Ollie. That girl was in here year-round, when she could get a ride. Her dad would drop her off, do some errands, and pick her up again. We’re not really supposed to do that, you know—unaccompanied minors and all—but if the child doesn’t bother anyone, and if they’re not upset, we look the other way. Assume a parent is in the other section, that sort of thing. Ollie would take her time picking her books, and check them out, and tuck them into her special library bag, and then take them over to a chair and sit and start reading one. Her dad always knew where to look when she came in, and he’d check with us, too, even though he didn’t really have to. Was Ollie good? Of course she was good. She read Matilda one summer and I wanted to ask her if she felt any sort of kinship, but that felt like crossing a line. Have you ever read Matilda?

LW: No, can’t say I have.

EK: The little girl learns to read and uses the library to escape her horrible family. They’re all horrible and rather stupid—dad, mom, older brother. And I don’t think Randy was horrible or stupid, exactly, because he did bring Ollie here, but he did just leave her here, if you catch the difference. It was more than the mother ever did, I can tell you that. I honestly didn’t realize she was still alive before I saw the news about the murders, if you can believe it. It’s such a shame when that happens. Some people like knowing things, but not learning them, because to learn, you have to first admit that you don’t know something. You follow?

LW: I think so.

EK: And that’s not to say a library’s a cure, but I’ve certainly never heard of it hurting a family. But we also see those divisions. One parent only, or a grandparent, but not the others. And the children … well. Ollie always earned the highest level on her program challenge. We asked them to read books and then come and tell one of us a bit about them—informal, but it’s more than just turning in the title list, you know. These days it’s more of an honor system, and it’s not even the kids doing it—it’s the parents, checking out stacks of books and making lists of titles. But Ollie wasn’t one to cut corners. Sometimes she came in with sticky notes in the book, and she’d tell me about them as she went through and took them out before she returned it. She didn’t just sit down and give you a monotone list of events—she’d wonder why, or what if this had happened, or what happened after the happy ending. She devoured books, but the way the French eat a fine meal: slowly, tasting every bite. Birdy, now …

LW: Birdy was different.

EK: Good gracious, yes. Birdy would plunk down and recite the jacket copy as fast as she could, then hop up again and shove her sheet at me so I’d sign off on it. We always asked questions—that was the deal back then: two questions per child. If they couldn’t answer, then they didn’t get the credit. With a kid like Ollie, you didn’t need the questions, so you could ask the soft ones about character’s names, or something broad, like “Well what do you think happened next?” Birdy could show you a copy of Treasure Island with Long John Silver on the cover, crutch and all, and not be able to tell you how many legs he had. She didn’t want to be there. She was a girl who never wanted to be where she was and always thought somewhere else was better, but she never got the chance to learn that, wherever you go, there you are.

LW: She just wasn’t a happy kid?

EK: She wasn’t a satisfied kid. Contentment wasn’t in her DNA. But she didn’t get enough time to figure it out—that going to California wasn’t going to be enough. Whatever her dream was, if you plunked her down in the middle of it, she’d still be unsatisfied. She wasn’t ever going to grow out of it, but at least she could’ve learned that about herself. How to live with it. How to use it.

LW: But, as a kid, it manifested …?

EK: She wanted to be anywhere but here, doing anything other than what she was doing right now. Always. Like a cat: as soon as you let it out, it wants back in. She had a resting bitch face as a kindergartener, before we even knew what the term was, and she was just so haughtily dismissive of everyone. It was like she thought all of us, even the adults, cared about whether she thought we were cool. Like she expected us to kowtow the way her little friends did. And they weren’t in here much, either, for the record. There was no good influence in the bunch. Birdy had the most power, and she pulled them all down.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Liza Kahkonen, June 24, 2019

LK: Yeah, I mean, I guess … I did think Birdy was acting funny that last day or two. I didn’t see her at all on the nineteenth.

LW: And that was weird?

LK: Well, yeah. I mean, neither of us really liked being at home, you know? So we’d get out of the house as soon as we could, which was pretty early. It’s not like our moms sat there and ate breakfast with us or anything. Get up, grab whatever, head out. We had, like, a couple places we’d meet up, so you’d do a circuit and find whoever got there before you. If you were somewhere and got tired of waiting you’d check the other spots, looking for the group, that kind of thing. And that morning it was just me, because the other two had work and Birdy didn’t show up. I did a loop, and waited, and did another loop, and went home for lunch, and did another loop, but she wasn’t there. After I’d guessed she was with Eli, you know? That he’d found her and talked about Ollie and convinced her to change the weekend and all the rest.

LW: Eli—

LK: Never said that happened, I know, but she wasn’t there, so that’s what I ended up thinking. After Mr. Clark said that part. And, like, why would he lie about it? I mean, Birdy might lie about it, but she still had to be somewhere. She wasn’t where she normally was. That was all. And Ollie said she wasn’t home most of the day, at the trial, when they asked her, so …

LW: Was she acting funny before that?

LK: A bit. See, usually if something was bothering her, you knew exactly what it was. She’d tell you, and rehash it, and then find a new angle and go over it again. She was snippy, though. Not talking much, but when she did, she’d snap at you. Well. More than usual. I guess I figured it had something to do with Jared, because she didn’t complain to us about him, you know? Which was weird, because she’d totally complain about these other guys she was with. How bad they were at sex or if they didn’t get the door for her or if they’d ignored her for some video came or whatever. But we didn’t hear much of anything about Jared. So it was weird, because maybe he wasn’t good, but she wasn’t complaining? And …

LW: She always complained?

LK: Yeah, you know. Everything was a big deal and nothing was ever right. Standard Birdy stuff.

LW: She complained about her parents?

LK: All the fu—all the time. So it wasn’t them.

LW: Ollie?

LK: God, yes. That was just about all we heard that year. Ollie’s going to college, Ollie’s getting the money, my parents won’t give me the money they’re giving Ollie … because then it was someone else’s fault, you know? Not Birdy’s for not making better grades or getting the scholarships. It was Ollie’s and their parents’, and Birdy was still perfect. It … well. The thing is, we all believed it at the time, because she’s the only one we heard talk about it, you know? It wasn’t like any of us went up to Wendy like hey, thanks for the snacks, and by the way what’s this about Ollie getting all the college money for herself? And Ollie wasn’t around, so she couldn’t defend herself. Which … was basically Birdy’s MO. As you probably know already. If you’re not there, shots fired. And if you are there, you have to go along with it, even though you know this means she does it to you when you’re not. Even though we all knew. But like, she was our friend, so we had to side with her. Girl code. The same way she always took our side against our own parents. My mom cut my allowance because of a grade? Birdy was the first to call her a bitch. Birdy slept with my boyfriend? She’d call him out as a cheating bastard.

LW: Even though …

LK: Yeah, I know, right? In her world, she was doing us a favor. If the guys slept with her, then it was on them, and at least we found out sooner rather than later. Before we married them or got pregnant or whatever.

LW: Did she ever try to sleep with Eli?

LK: You know, I’m pretty sure she did say something to him once, but the way she worded it … it was half-joking, and he just shut her down. She didn’t even try again. And it wasn’t even in front of Ollie or anything, because … well, that’s not how she worked. The guy didn’t have to be alone, but the girlfriend couldn’t be there. So … yeah, okay, she propositioned Kendra’s boyfriend in front of me once. When there was a group of us, and she just walked up, looked him up and down, and said “You’re cute and I’m horny. Want to?”

LW: Did he?

LK: He went off with her. So he wanted us to think he did.

LW: So maybe she spent the nineteenth off with someone else’s boyfriend, is what you’re saying?

LK: Well. I mean, It wouldn’t be out of the question. Nobody ever came out and said “Oh, yeah, she was with me,” but it wasn’t like the police actually asked. Or anyone would admit to it.

LW: What do you mean?

LK: Dude, she was dating Jared Chapman. Like publicly hanging out and holding hands and all the rest. He’d claimed her, and you didn’t mess with Jared. You heard all that about how angry Eli was? Eli walked away. He’d go retreat when he was angry and take it out … I don’t even know. On himself, maybe. But Jared? He was like Birdy. Whenever he had a problem, it was also your problem, and it didn’t always matter if you weren’t the one who’d pissed him off. You had to answer for it. And if Birdy cheated on him, he wouldn’t take it out on her, no matter how pissed he was. He’d go for the guy, and he’d be lucky not to end up in the morgue. Did you look into Jared’s history? It’s not all juvenile records. He’s beat the crap out of people and sent them to urgent care. One guy went to the ER.

LW: A town as small as this one, a community this tight-knit, and nobody knows where she was?

LK: I know, right? If anybody saw her that last day, they’ve never said. And nobody we know showed up with bruises and crap after, so it’s not like Jared found out on the sly.

LW: Because he would’ve absolutely laid his hands on anyone who had sex with Birdy.

LK: Touched. Looked at wrong. That was his girl, and he’s the possessive caveman type. You do her wrong, you’ve done him wrong, and you have to answer for it.

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Bury the Dead 13 – coming April 13

Ollie Clark—Sunday, June 23, 2019

It was clearly choreographed, but that was to be expected. After dinner—Vollwerth’s hot dogs and brats with store-bought potato salad and coleslaw—Cindy and Eli disappeared inside to do the dishes and Jared said he’d walk Len back to the cabins. They didn’t even have to cross the highway, and of course the trail went right by them. That’s why they were so popular with the ATV and snowmobile crowds. Basically the Clark backyard emptied out like someone gave a cue and the spotlight came up on Ollie and Dad, alone, center stage.

Dinner had been okay because they didn’t all fit around the picnic table, anyway, so Dad, Cindy, and Len Wilcox sat there while Jared, Eli, and Ollie balanced their plates on their knees in the gazebo. It wasn’t like the two were that far apart, but they made cross-conversation difficult, so Len—God, she’d started dropping the Wilcox half the time—charmed Cindy and left the kids to goof off. But now the leftovers had been picked up, there was a plate of homemade chocolate chip cookies protected with plastic wrap, and Dad came into the gazebo with both the dessert and a sigh. “Kiddo, I think we need to talk.”

Okay, so the cookies were supposed to relax her, but that opener just put her guard back up.

“I’m kind of worried.” Dad teased up the edge of the saran wrap and took a cookie himself before turning it so she could reach the opening, but the odd thing was how he looked around before finishing his thought. “Len’s got a bunch of interviews scheduled over the next couple of days, right? All kinds of people. I don’t know if they wouldn’t Zoom or he’s doing follow-ups or what, but I’m worried he’s going to come for Eli.”

Ollie fumbled her cookie and brushed at the crumbs on her shirt. “He can’t come for Eli.”

“Not legally,” Dad acknowledged, “but since Friday I think Len’s decided he should solve the case and then make a book out of it.”

Huh. That seemed really insightful for Dad.

“Jared and I talked about it”—ah, okay; it was Jared’s theory—“and he said yeah, Len’s got the old files, copies of everything, all highlighted with notes scrawled all over them. He’s going to try to get a better look tonight. I think … well.” Dad took a deep breath and forced his eyes to stop wandering everywhere but her face. “I think Len’s taking the fact that Eli and I have never really gotten along, plus your refusal to talk to him, as evidence.”

Ollie shook her head. “That’s exactly what Denomie had when he came after Eli, and he couldn’t do it. There’s not evidence. And honestly, Dad, you’re just giving me more reasons not to talk to him!” Plus he told her outright he knew he played a role in making Len suspect Eli. God, seriously?

“It doesn’t matter if there’s not actually evidence!” he snapped back. “You know this! It’s the entire reason you ran downstate after college!”

She gaped at him.

“I don’t even know why Eli proposed to you last Christmas,” Dad continued, the peace offering cookies forgotten. “You ran off, leaving him stranded, so you didn’t have to deal with the weight of public condemnation.”

That definitely wasn’t a Dad phrase. Was he quoting Len now?

“You abandoned him during the trial and, what, he can’t get anyone else, so he drags you back in? I don’t care what Jared says,” Dad added, overriding her perceived protests. “Whatever he wants to walk back. He woke up and Eli wasn’t there that night, but you still … still …”

Ollie looked at the house, but there was no way Eli knew what Dad wanted to get her alone for. Cindy couldn’t have known either, could she? “So you think Eli did it.”

Dad’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not convinced he didn’t.”

Ollie carefully tucked the saran wrap down to seal off the plate, but she didn’t need any longer than that. The back door opened as she got to her feet and she turned to meet Eli’s eyes. “We’re leaving.”

He blinked but shrugged and nodded.

“And you don’t have to worry, okay?” she added to Dad. “I’m going to cancel everything. Anything you put money on. You’ll get your deposits back and you don’t have to save the date. For the record,” she shot over her shoulder, “I’m not marrying a murder, but you don’t have to be there.”

“You …?” Cindy turned to Dad where he sat in the gazebo. “You don’t actually think …?”

But Dad didn’t answer. Eli came to Ollie and put his arm around her, and still Dad didn’t answer. Cindy fell back half a step and said “Oh, Randall,” but Dad didn’t answer.

Ollie and Eli walked away, and even though it was slow because she had to lean on him so heavily and he supported her, Dad didn’t answer.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Bobbi Rajala, May 14, 2019

LW: Could you start us off by explaining how you knew Birdy Clark?

BR: I’m Kendra’s mom. Kendra was in Birdy’s little friend group. You already talked to Kendra.

LW: And she suggested you might want to talk to me, too?

BR: Yes. She’s, um … well. Kendra’s worried that maybe you’ve got a bunch of interviews about Birdy that aren’t … very nice. She … look, I made some notes so I wouldn’t say the wrong thing. Okay. Kendra really enjoyed hanging out with Birdy. She didn’t have any other friends. So it was devastating when Birdy died. Kendra was already having some issues that summer. Doubts about not being with her friends. Kendra wasn’t going off to college, and she felt like she was missing out. Especially since the other girls were going pretty far. None of them to Tech, I mean. Birdy …

LW: You can speak freely, Ms. Rajala. You’ll have the chance to—

BR: Review the transcript, I know. Kendra told me. But … okay. You’ve read the trial transcripts.

LW: Yes.

BR: So you know Denomie got Kendra to go on the stand and talk about money.

LW: Yes.

BR: And how that all turned out.

LW: Yes, but I’d appreciate your perspective.

BR: My … right, okay. So the morning of the twentieth, we’ve all heard but we haven’t heard. We knew which house. People were dead. But they weren’t saying who it was, and the thing is, anyone who knew the family knew it was Birdy’s weekend with their father. So Kendra was freaking out, because she told me that she’d heard something from Jared. And from Birdy. That there wasn’t enough money to send both girls to college, and the family picked Ollie to go. So she … Kendra … she didn’t have to tell me that Birdy and her mom had always been at it. Screaming fights, you know? So the very first thing … and it wasn’t only Kendra who thought this—the rumor started everywhere—was that Birdy came back and killed her sister because Ollie was the favorite, the perfect one who got the money, and then killed her mom out of rage.

LW: With a gun?

BR: We didn’t know that. I told you. We just knew two people were dead, and it was bad. The police were keeping people back, you know? But you could still see blood. The bodies were gone, but there was something on the front stoop. Birdy with a knife, maybe—that was the theory. Something wild.

LW: And it seemed believable?

BR: Yes. No hesitation. Birdy had a temper. She screamed, but she also threw things. And college … that was the major bone of contention in that family her senior year. Birdy wanted to go off to California just because it’s about the furthest she could think of. And she kept mentioning Ollie: but you let Ollie do this. Ollie’s allowed. I tried to explain to Kendra, about scholarships, but her dad didn’t go, and she wasn’t interested, so she really didn’t understand. How Ollie filled out all kinds of applications and wrote so many essays and pieced it all together. She had a job on campus, too—part of the package was work/study.

LW: I didn’t think her parents wanted her working.

BR: It was the only way she could actually swing it. I think it was the one time they couldn’t tell her no. She worked in the library. Then, the next summer, she stayed on-campus and took classes and worked. But Kendra didn’t want to hear it, because she listened to Birdy. “Wendy and Mr. Clark don’t want Birdy to succeed.” That was Birdy’s message, so it was Kendra’s. And … well, if it had been like that, Birdy killing her family, she would’ve ended up behind bars rather than at college, but that felt like Birdy, too. The shortsightedness.

LW: When did you find out Birdy was dead?

BR: Oh, early afternoon, I think. That’s when Randy and Ollie came back, and he had to go identify the bodies. He dropped her off with the Chapmans—Eli and his mom. She was so shell-shocked, the poor thing. And when Jared saw her …

LW: Jared was there?

BR: No, he’d been at his mom’s place, but he came over when he heard, and then he broke down. Esther had to call for the paramedics. It wasn’t good for Ollie, either, seeing him like that, but they took him away and I guess Serena went to him, and then a day later, Eli was arrested.

LW: Did you still think it had to do with college money?

BR: For a while, yes. Not the whole way until the trial, but … you have the transcript.

LW: Could you tell me anyway?

BR: Well, at the trial, the prosecuting attorney got Randy on the stand and did the whole … evidence thing with their bank accounts. All the Clark family bank accounts. And it wasn’t like Birdy had said at all. There were two college accounts, one for each of the girls, and Birdy’s had a lot more in it than Ollie’s, because Ollie had already paid for a year of college. So everyone knew Birdy had just been creating drama, but then it looked like maybe Eli had killed the others so Ollie could get money. So she could finish school, maybe, but maybe also so he could marry her and not have to work. Use her, you know?

LW: And did that seem believable?

BR: Mr. Wilcox, I’m sorry to say this, but yes. We would’ve believed either Chapman kid had killed for money, thinking it would put him on easy street. That’s why this whole Sean Kelly thing’s been worse for us than the murders.

LW: Oh?

BR: It’s true. I might cross this off later, but it’s true. A double murder? Horrific. But we didn’t have to look for outsiders to explain what happened. We had the Chapman boys, right there, mixed up in the family and everything. And then when Jared said Eli wasn’t with him all night, right after Eli said that’s where he’d been … bingo. It seemed solved. Then that Ohio lawyer comes along and tells us oh, it’s actually this other guy, someone you’ve never heard of … what do you think that does to a community, Mr. Wilcox?

LW: What does it do?

BR: It’s ripped us apart. You’ve got groups that think we should apologize and try to make it up to the kid somehow, you know? But that’s ridiculous. You can’t just give back ten years. We can’t just go paying him what we think he should’ve made or some such nonsense they’ve got floating around. Trying to make it up to him, my ass. If he wasn’t the kind of person we’d suspect, he wouldn’t have been in this mess. And Kendra … they called her up on the stand, too, and made her look like a liar because Birdy had lied to her. But you can’t go after a dead girl, so they went after Kendra, and I’d always thought it was stupid that Randy had gotten Ollie a lawyer like that, but I should’ve had one for her.

LW: They came after her.

BR: They tried to say she was trying to protect Eli. Or maybe she’d been having an affair with him. Some sort of dirty deal like that. It didn’t stick, but come on, Mr. Wilcox. Eli Chapman was found not guilty in a court of law, and you know how we all felt about that.

---

Bury the Dead 12 – coming April 12

Ollie Clark—Sunday, June 23, 2019

Ollie knew some church families, but she’d never really been involved with any, so Sundays weren’t for church. They were a time to generally avoid restaurants and grocery stores when the local services got out, since they’d be flooded, which made it the perfect day to hit the Keweenaw Co-Op, grab sandwiches from the deli, and head out to Calumet Waterworks for a picnic lunch. True, there were so many places on the Keweenaw you could just park and head down to a secluded section of beach, but this way Harper and Brad would be able to meet up with them.

The Waterworks was not the sunrise beach. That one had been just a little stretch where Eli had pulled over and they’d spent the night talking and … well. They’d officially been a couple again since that morning, that was all. If not for that sunrise …

The beach was rocks instead of sand, but Ollie spread a blanket anyway and slipped off her shoes to sit and wait for the other two. Eli had his head down as he walked along the waterline, bending every so often to grab an agate. Seriously, it was like his eyes weren’t even the same as hers—Ollie had never found an agate in her life, but he spotted them from yards away. Local jewelers were always looking for them, so he had a pretty good side hustle going on as far as agates went.

When Ollie had tried suggesting that her engagement ring could have an agate instead of a diamond, she’d offended him. Apparently engagement ring stones were supposed to be something rare.

“Hey, don’t get all the good ones!” Harper called as they came over the rise to the beach, clamping down their giant straw hat with one hand while they ran toward the water to join Eli, playfully shoving him out of the way.

Brad joined Ollie with a sigh, spreading his own blanket. “We didn’t bring any spare clothes. They’re not riding home in my car wet.”

Ollie snorted. “After all the times we’ve just jumped on in?”

“Stripped to our undies and jumped on in,” he corrected, setting down an actual wicker picnic hamper before stretching out next to her, propped up on one elbow as though the rocks weren’t digging into it. “We at least had some dry layers for going home.”

She shrugged. “They could wrap in a blanket.”

“We’d get stopped for indecent exposure, sure as anything.”

“All those nights …”

“Yeah, well, my brain’s fully formed now, Olls, and we’re damn lucky nobody ever spotted our bare asses.” Brad grinned though and shook his head. “I swear there were times I wanted to tell your mom you were getting far more than Birdy ever did, except you just did it all with the same guy.”

“You wanted to talk about sex with my mom?”

He shrugged, watching the agate hunters. “She would’ve laughed. Your dad would’ve gotten pissed and I don’t know what he would’ve done to Eli, but your mom would’ve laughed. Sorry, did I say something?”

Ollie had drawn in a quick breath through her nose and she was around someone who cared enough to catch it. “I just, uh.” She cleared her throat and shook her head. “She would’ve laughed because she saw us together and, um … well. I wasn’t bruised or anything.”

Brad blinked and sat up. “Olls?”

“Not me. Mom.” She licked her lips. “Had some stuff in her past. That’s all. Stuff that I don’t think she knew how to approach Birdy about it, you know? Ask her if it was true. All the sex at that age … I don’t know.”

“Olls, do you need to talk about something?” he asked quietly.

“Araminta knows, so no, I don’t think so.” Somehow both Ollie and Eli ended up with good therapists who had unique names, so it wasn’t like she had to clarify who, exactly, Araminta was.

Brad frowned, chewing on his lip, and nodded to himself as he lay back down again. “I’m sorry.”

For Mom? For bringing it up? Or in some complicated way for Ollie having grown up with a mom who knew too much about the ways sex could turn bad?

Eli and Harper came back up the beach a couple minutes later, Harper laughing and nudging Eli in the ribs, making him grin. “He’s a cheat and thief, Olls,” they announced. “Leave him. We’ll run away together. Aw, hell.”

That last part didn’t seem to fit, and Ollie followed Harper’s gaze.

“What the fuck,” Eli agreed quietly, joining Ollie on the blanket and adding a handful of agates to her purse all by feel, watching Len Wilcox as he scanned the beach, visibly started, hesitated—Good, go away, Ollie thought—and then came toward them.

“Should’ve picked a different beach,” Harper muttered, slipping into their usual poker face. The one that meant most people thought they were a cold-hearted … well, strangers usually wanted to follow that up with bitch or bastard. Harper preferred the gender-neutral fool of a Took.

“Hey.” Len Wilcox stopped a few steps away, hands in his pockets, and grinned, but the light was wrong so Ollie couldn’t tell if it was sheepish or faking. At least he wore jeans and a T-shirt, but they were the kind of jeans that came with the holes already in them and a T-shirt that was bought pre-faded. “Your dad gave me a list of places to see, so I was just doing a tour. Everything’s so far away up here.”

“Len, this is Harper and Brad,” Eli told him, doing a good job of keeping his voice neutral and not, for example, clearly pointing out that the other man had zoomed in on Ollie with a laser focus.

Harper held out their hand. “Harper Moilanen. They/them.”

Len Wilcox blinked but came forward to shake. “Hi. Len.”

Brad smiled and, although Ollie couldn’t be sure, she guessed it was his shark smile and not his teddy bear smile. “Brad Culver. He/him.”

This time Len Wilcox just nodded but, before Ollie could relax, he crouched down, elbows on his knees and hands clasped. “I’ve emailed both of you. About the book.”

“Wendy and Birdy aren’t in your book anymore,” Brad pointed out, accepting the sandwich Harper passed him. “Since they aren’t connected to Kelly. So.”

Len Wilcox shrugged, content to stay here like this forever. Apparently he didn’t skip leg day. “Maybe it’s not a serial killer, but it’s still a fascinating story, don’t you think? You grew up with Ollie and Eli, and you knew Wendy and Birdy. Those are valuable perspectives. You could really shed light on them as complex individuals.”

Oh God, it really was his line.

“We have your contact info.” Harper’s voice was the same dead robotic thing they usually used when their face went blank. “We know how to tell you if we change our minds.”

“Look, I’m just saying.” Len Wilcox tilted his head and spread his empty hands. “I get the resistance. I do. But I don’t want to get them wrong. The more information I have, the more people willing to share their memories …”

“Mr. Wilcox, you really need to learn how to take no for an answer.” Although Brad’s posture was easy, his voice was cold.

Len Wilcox looked at him, apparently trying to figure out how much of Brad’s bulk was muscle and what might not be. Who might win in a fight.

Who’d be taller if they both straightened up.

Then he looked at Ollie, like maybe she’d change her mind and beg her friends to talk to him. Sign their names and their words away in the name of shedding light on complex individuals.

“You’ve got a whole list of places, hey?” Brad reminded him. “And nothing’s all that close here. So.” He raised an eyebrow when Len didn’t move. “Get on to the next one.”

Len Wilcox slowly rose to his feet, the gesture smooth and even with no wobbles. So yes, Ollie confirmed, he kept up with leg day. He paused there a moment, looking down at Brad, before turning and heading back to the parking lot.

“Phew,” Harper murmured, eyebrows going up as their mask fell off. “I’d hate to meet his mother.”

“His mother?” Eli echoed.

“Yeah. The woman who put that up on a pedestal and turned him into an entitled brat.” They shook their head.

“Bastard,” Brad agreed. “Olls, do we need to tell our little ace friend how he was looking at you?”

She shook her head, but Harper said it anyway: “He wants you bad and he wants Eli to know it. Just another notch on his bedpost.”

“Can we not talk about Len Wilcox?” she requested. “It’s ruining my appetite.”

“I’m just saying,” Brad protested, clearly trying to be reasonable. “I myself am fully capable of looking at your fiancé without obviously undressing him with my eyes. It’s not my fault Harper doesn’t have that kind of self-control around you.”

“Bradley Dennis,” Ollie groaned, dropping her face into her hand.

Harper just shrugged. “Eli knows I’m all about consent and I’m not down with cheating, so it’s pure admiration. You two want some Doritos, or are you feeling all high and mighty with your preservative-free meats and fresh-pressed organic juice?”

---

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Jared Chapman, April 27, 2019

JC: Okay so can I go?

LW: Yep, we’re good to go.

JC: Okay, so: I wasn’t lying when I said I woke up that night and didn’t see Eli, but that doesn’t mean he killed anyone. Okay? Because he didn’t. He didn’t have access to a gun, he didn’t even know how to fire a gun, and he didn’t have a beef with Randy and Wendy. Okay? Things were going good with Ollie and I know she thought they were going good, too.

LW: How do you know?

JC: She told me. Okay? We were friends. We’d talk, and I’d see them together, and she’d get this goofy little grin when we talked about him. Things were good. She stuck to him like glue. He was over there all the time. Wendy’d ask him to stay for dinner so he didn’t have to go home, that kind of thing. Make it so my mom didn’t have to feed him all the time. That family supported him, okay? They were there for him when his own parents couldn’t be. And he would’ve known, okay, that he couldn’t try to pin it on Randy and get Ollie to himself, because first of all he already had Ollie all to himself, and second Randy couldn’t have done it. His own wife and daughter? And for Eli it was like a bonus mom and a sister.

LW: Do you want to talk about how it felt when Eli was arrested?

JC: How do you think it felt, man? They’re all turning on me, like vipers, saying it’s my word that did it. Eli said he slept over here all night and then I’m saying I woke up and he wasn’t there, but I didn’t actually check the house, okay? He just wasn’t in the bedroom. But it was already out there, okay, and it’s not like I could backtrack on it because that would’ve been a lie, except I didn’t get to clarify, either. Nobody put it in the headlines when I was like hey, dude, I said he wasn’t in the bedroom. Maybe he was in the bathroom, maybe he was in the house, how should I know? I didn’t conduct a search. If he says he was here, he was here. And he certainly wasn’t out there freaking killing anyone.

LW: But you were the only one willing to go on the record to say that.

JC: Dude, don’t make that a dig at Ollie, okay? Full on the record here. She was nineteen, everyone was talking about how her mom and her baby sister died, and I mean brutal disgusting details. Out in public and everything. Everyone was going on about how Eli did it, speculating details, and of course she couldn’t say anything. She’s lost, she’s confused, she’s in mourning, and half her family’s gone. Her family and Eli both. The police were coming after her, trying to make it her fault that Eli did it. The flipping police, man. Her dad got her a lawyer and everything. Can you imagine? Nineteen, you can’t go home until your mom and sister’s blood has been cleaned out of the house, and the police are trying to blame it on you. Saying you made your boyfriend do it. Then he’s arrested, and she can’t even talk to him, and man. Of course she kept saying “No comment.”

LW: Through her lawyer.

JC: Of course through her lawyer. They were accusing her of being an accessory. What did Eli do as soon as they arrested him? Asked for a lawyer. That’s what you do when the cops start talking to you. And what else was she going to say? If she’d defended him, nobody would’ve believed her. Randy would’ve disowned her, and then she would’ve been left entirely alone. Besides, the police were after it like a whole Bonnie and Clyde thing. Like Eli did the shooting but Ollie orchestrated the whole thing.

LW: How long did it take them to figure out that wasn’t true?

JC: Not very. Before the weekend was over, at least. They had Randy saying hey, so, actually the daddy-daughter weekend was switched because Birdy asked for it.

LW: Because Eli asked her to ask.

JC: So he said. Randy. Not Eli. And I think—okay, this is speculation, and I told them back then, but it didn’t make it into the courtroom. Because I don’t have any evidence. Okay? I think Birdy wanted the time with her mom. It had nothing to do with getting Ollie to “safety” or whatever the argument was. It was Birdy, who figured she could come at her dad using Eli, because she … shit, okay.

LW: Do you need a moment?

JC: No, I just … I don’t know if this is smart. Telling you. But, like you said … if I can take it back later …

LW: Yes.

JC: Okay, so … Birdy thought she was pregnant. So she would’ve wanted to get her mom’s advice on what to do next.

LW: Because one of the options would be marrying you?

JC: Yeah. Yeah, that was one of the options.

---

Bury the Dead 11 – coming April 11

Ollie Clark—Sunday, June 23, 2019

Eli was the sort of person who could sleep through a fire alarm. As far as Ollie was aware this theory had never been tested, but she knew she didn’t have to worry about making noise if she got up before he did. Maybe she didn’t want to go so far as to start packing something loud, like the dishes, but she didn’t have to worry about getting the coffee going—using water from the fridge pitcher—and then transferring Eli’s books from the plank-and-cement-block shelves into some of the waiting boxes. Liquor boxes. He might’ve gotten them from one of the stores or maybe just from Jared.

There were plenty of places to buy alcohol around here. Out-of-towners were generally taken aback by the selection in the grocery stores, and that didn’t even count the party stores like the Shottle Bop. The day Birdy finally realized it was just Bottle Shop with the first sounds swapped, the way it might come out if you were drunk, she’d laughed so hard she cried. That at least meant Ollie smiled at the current carton instead of getting stuck with worries about Jared’s liver.

She’d argued more than once—to herself and herself alone, since it hadn’t come up with either Eli or Cindy—that Dad latched onto Jared like that because Jared was so clearly, so publicly a wreck after Mom and Birdy died. He showed up at the courthouse every day for the trial, sure, dressed well enough if red-eyed and with a bit of a thousand-yard stare, but things collapsed after that. Markedly. Maybe Dad just needed to know that at least he wasn’t that bad. That he could survive without Mom and Birdy, even if surviving was all he did. And yeah, he’d been both guilty and defensive when he told Ollie about Cindy, but Cindy was cool.

Cindy was also another buffer that meant Ollie didn’t feel so bad about leaving Dad on one peninsula while she lived in another, even if Dad had done his fair share of putting his foot down about her going back to school for her sophomore year and then finding A Good Job. All kids grew up and clashed with parents over it, but come on. This couldn’t be the norm.

And then Eli … he’d drawn the line at ever living with Jared, sure, but you walked out of this apartment building and could look across an abandoned lot to Jared’s duplex two streets over. Eli couldn’t abandon his cousin because his cousin was bound to him by blood and couldn’t escape anyway. Plus somehow Jared had already escaped, being the good Chapman kid. Ollie was just supposed to run away and forget about Eli so she didn’t have to keep being tarred with the same brush.

Okay and now her thoughts were definitely back to the negatives. Try remembering the time Birdy got hold of the entire package of Fig Newtons, her favorites, and made herself sick eating all of them. Mom had laughed until tears streamed down her face, apologizing through the gales but unable to stop, collapsed on the floor outside the locked bathroom door and repeatedly knocking on it while Birdy yelled at her to just go away. She hadn’t been a little kid then, either. Thirteen years old and she still didn’t have second thoughts. Dad must’ve thought something was seriously wrong when Mom called—she just wanted him to pick up a bottle of Pepto on his way home from work, but Birdy kept wailing in the background.

Ollie had a couple cartons packed when Eli emerged, arms crossed over his bare chest as he frowned. “You hate packing.”

“I do,” she agreed, “but I’m trying to keep good thoughts in mind.”

“Such as?”

“Well …” Ollie grinned as she added more books to the current carton. “Once you get packed and moved and unpacked, we’ll be living together, so I can basically have sex any time I want.”

“Huh.” He tilted his head. “You mean that, if we’re in the same domicile, with easy access to each other, I can basically get some at any hour of the day?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

“Okay, so …”

Ollie grabbed another handful of books.

Eli sighed as he came over and took the armchair so he’d be closer to where she sat on the floor. “Olls, you know I love you.”

This time she gave him a raised eyebrow.

“Wearing anything,” he expounded. “Saying anything. In any, you know …” He spread his hands. “Any physical position.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any,” he repeated, nodding. “All of them. All good. It’s just that some are extraordinary.”

“Yeah?” It was getting harder to fight a grin. “Such as?”

“That beach at sunrise.”

Ollie laughed, leaning back on one hand as she looked up at him. “That was fast. There’ve been a lot of beaches.”

He held up a finger. “Sunrise. There’ve been a lot of beaches, but … sunrise.”

“Ah, yes. True.” She thought her grin might be turning wicked. “So that’s on your mind?”

“Distracting,” Eli agreed. “Utterly distracting. And I figure it’s like an earworm, right? You get part of a song stuck in your head, you have to sing the entire thing to get rid of it. So.” He spread his hands and shrugged.

“So you get the distraction out of the way and then you can focus on helping me pack your stuff?”

“Sure. If that’s what it takes to convince you.” He stood again.

Ollie accepted his hand and let him pull her to her feet. “I mean. Just keep grinning like that.”

“Can’t grin and kiss you at the same time,” he teased, lips brushing hers.

She laughed and pulled him back toward the bedroom, which wasn’t a beach, but she figured they could make do.

---

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Serena Chapman, April 22, 2019

LW: Could you start off by clarifying something for me? Your relationships to Eli and Esther?

SC: Eli’s my nephew. Esther’s my sister-in-law. We married brothers. Not that it worked out well for either of us. Well, better for me, maybe. But there’s no blood. It’s just marriage. Wait, don’t say it that way. With the “just.” It’s through marriage, full stop.

LW: Right, through marriage.

SC: And I—can I just talk or do you need to ask questions?

LW: Go right ahead.

SC: Okay. I just … okay. I felt bad for Eli. Not for Esther, she put up with too much and should’ve gotten him out of there long before she did, but I felt bad for Eli. Because he was a kid. And I thought—I mean, I still think—he grew up really well despite all that. I’m not saying it was me, or Jared, but I think we helped. And Ollie, of course. She was so sweet. Quiet, but polite. And always so calm. Eli had a temper, we all knew he had a temper—the family, I mean. He had a really long fuse, but there was a temper there. He’s been working on that. Or was working on it? He did therapy, after the trial. I don’t know if you recover from therapy or what, but … I’m rambling.

LW: You’re doing just fine.

SC: You’re cute when you lie. Okay. The temper thing came up during the trial. Eli got into trouble with men, mostly. The ones Esther would introduce as “uncles,” like he didn’t know what that meant. The ones she was sleeping with, to be blunt. And they didn’t want a girlfriend with a kid. Especially a teenager. So he avoided going home a lot. He slept over here a lot. I don’t know if Wendy ever let him sleep over there—on the couch, maybe—but I’m pretty sure he’d sleep out in the woods sometimes. Anything to get away from them and how they made him feel. But that’s the thing you have to understand, Mr. Wilcox.

LW: Len.

SC: Len, then. Eli exploded when he was pushed, but you had to back him into a corner and push him. Left to his own devices, he literally left. That’s what he’d do. He’d walk out, walk away, and figure it out without hurting anyone. And the thing is, Mr.—Len. He never got that way with Ollie, or because of Ollie, or because of anyone in her family. Gosh, he even got along with Birdy, and that’s something to brag about.

LW: Could you explain what you mean by that?

SC: Just that … well, Birdy was sweet, too. She didn’t mean to hurt people, but … she did. She was just so headstrong. And her little friends … well, they couldn’t stand up to her, could they? The way I heard it, she pushed them out of trees and bullied them into ridiculous dares and honestly, it’s a surprise none of them needed more than the emergency room. When that girl got an idea in her head, you’d worry one of them would end up in the morgue, Mr. Wilcox. On a slab. Thank the lord Ollie wasn’t like that, or else I might’ve had to say something to Eli about it. Now it’s all such a shame, but … good gracious, you can’t tell anyone I said that. Forget myself and let my tongue run loose …

LW: You’ll get a transcript of this interview, Serena. You can delete anything you don’t want me to use at all or let me know which sections shouldn’t be attributed to you.

SC: Oh. Right. You said that. Because … well, I can’t imagine I’d be the only one saying it, but I don’t want the family to know I was saying it, know what I mean? Birdy was a terror, and it’s a wonder she kept her friends. They kept forgiving her and going back to her, even when she had sex with their boyfriends. Which happened. You can’t quote me, personally, but I know it happened. Which is why I didn’t want Jared dating her, lord no, but we weren’t in a good place that year. He did it to get back at me, and then, after … well.

LW: After?

SC: I just meant … [sigh] After Birdy and her mother were killed, Jared got all the attention. Birdy turned into this little angel and he was like a martyr. Then his own cousin got accused of the murders, and it just … well. Jared’s grown up since then, we’ve mended some fences, and he knows I think he milked it. The mourning for this girlfriend who cheated on him and it never would’ve worked, but they didn’t get to find that out for themselves. They didn’t have that time.

LW: How long were Birdy and your son dating?

SC: Oh, weeks. Only a handful of weeks. Since after she turned eighteen, at least. Not that her parents could’ve told her not to, anyway, but I think she waited at least that long. And she only picked Jared to irritate them. I think she told them she’d either go to college in California or marry Jared, and I’m sorry to say it, as his mother, but back then that was a real threat. He wasn’t working, he didn’t have his own life in order … and at that age a three-year difference is a lot, you know. Eighteen to twenty-one. I never asked him if he bought her beer, but I’m guessing he did. We all make mistakes. He was a young twenty-one. But then she was killed, and he had to grow up.

LW: Jared told the police that Eli wasn’t with him the whole night that night.

SC: Yes, he told them that.

LW: You don’t think it’s true?

SC: I think they took it the wrong way. So Eli wanted to get out for a bit, maybe go for a late night walk—he’s done that before. I told you, spending the night in the woods? That’s what he did when things got heavy: get out in nature. So he was gone, and Jared said it, and as soon as he realized what they thought he meant, he got right back on the record: it couldn’t have been Eli. Eli would never.

LW: They were nineteen and twenty-one and staying with you instead of in their own place?

SC: I don’t know how things work down in Chicago, Mister Wilcox, but there aren’t the jobs here. Or the apartments. Tech students grab all of those and there’s nothing left over for the local kids. Jared hadn’t found his calling yet, and Eli … he was struggling. But then, most of us are up here, all the time. Struggling. Maybe you can’t relate, because this isn’t city life.

LW: Can you explain?

SC: No, I don’t think I will. We’d all like to put this behind us. It was a terrible thing in the middle of a bad time, and now we know it had nothing to do with my nephew, so I’d really like to get past it and move on.

---

Bury the Dead 10 – coming April 10

Ollie Clark—Saturday, June 22, 2019

Esther Chapman now lived in Houghton in an apartment complex that Eli clearly thought did her some good, since it meant she wasn’t entirely alone. Whether or not part of his thinking was that at least she’d stopped dating the kind of men who came long enough to use her and then leave her even more used up than before wasn’t something Ollie had ever asked him, but the thought was there. The thing about Esther that outsiders just didn’t see was that she was a chronic giver, so she attracted chronic takers. Really Ollie thought there were some parallels between Esther and Birdy, except Esther had gotten more time to sort things out by now.

Eli and Ollie had plans to meet Esther for dinner at six, thank God, so she had a reason to get out of Dad’s house and not engage in whatever hamburger social party thing Dad had planned for Len. One that would have beer because Randy needed to show the world that he could handle his alcohol, thank you very much, and abstaining was somehow shameful. That probably wasn’t a good example for Jared, but it wasn’t Ollie’s concern. If she tried to say something, she’d get accused of butting in.

It was kind of depressing that she relaxed in the car on the way from Dad’s to Applebee’s, but there it was.

Esther was already there at a table and she waved enthusiastically when she saw Eli and Ollie come in. She jumped to her feet to give Ollie a hug and smacked a kiss on her cheek. “Serena said you wouldn’t come,” she sniffed, letting go of Ollie to hug Eli, too. “Said you’d throw the ring at him and run back to your dad.” She raised an eyebrow that had never recovered from overplucking to add Shows what that woman knows.

“Hate to disappoint her,” Ollie said wryly, sliding into the booth first so Eli could follow her.

“She’ll get over it.” Esther said it archly in a tone that meant they all knew she wouldn’t. Jared’s mom had never gotten over anything in her life. “How are you, though?”

Eli picked up the waiting menu. “Len Wilcox eye-fucked her this afternoon.”

“Eli James!”

“Sorry, Mom, but there’s no polite way to word that one.”

Esther turned to Ollie for an appeal, but she shrugged. “He made me really uncomfortable.”

“Well, talking about Birdy and your mom, sure, but …”

Eli shook his head as he flipped a page. “No, he was all into her. Way beyond undressing her with his eyes. He got that part out of the way first.”

Ollie shuddered, crossing her arms like maybe the air conditioning was turned up too far.

“Sorry,” Eli mouthed, reaching out to slip an arm around her.

“It’s not you.” Because it wasn’t. It was Len Wilcox and everyone who looked at him with wide, admiring eyes.

Esther cleared her throat. “He seemed all right when I talked to him. Let me get a few things off my chest.”

Ollie bit her lip, not sure if she wanted to ask Esther exactly what things, but someone came up to their table, and it wasn’t the waitress. “Sorry, but you’re Olive Clark?” a young woman said breathlessly, hands clasped to her chest like she just realized she was in the presence of a movie superhunk.

She went for a nod instead of trying for a smile.

“So you’re—yeah, it’s really her”—this was to a couple of her friends—“you know Len Wilcox?”

Oh God. “Met him this afternoon, yeah.”

“Well, could you …” She giggled with her friends, who nudged her and said things like Go on. “Could you tell him that we really like him? And what he’s doing? Because someone really does need to give a voice to the voiceless.”

“Sorry,” one of the friends said to Eli, tamping down a giggle. “It’s probably really weird, huh? Since everyone’s talking about her ex and all.”

“It is weird,” Eli agreed, holding up a hand to suggest they move over so their waitress could set down the glasses of water.

“Oh, we won’t keep you,” the first young woman giggled. “I just—he’s so hot. Sorry,” she added to Eli as the three of them went off in a cloud of shrill chatter.

Eli caught the way the waitress’ eyebrows kept jumping. “Yeah,” he told her. “I am the ex. What do you have on tap?”

Somehow they made it through dinner without saying too much more about Len Wilcox and without Esther commenting on exactly how much her son was drinking. Instead she talked on about local gossip, and some recent speaker who’d come to Arbor Green and talk about traveling the world, and how her friend Agnes convinced her to join the quilting group. She asked about the end of the school year and about Cindy, with a token addition of “and your father,” and honestly rather marvelously carried the conversation through dessert. When they stood up to leave, Eli rather obviously handed Ollie his keys, but Esther didn’t comment on that, either. She just hugged them both and wished them good night.

Eli was quiet on the drive back, arms crossed as he looked out the passenger window, and quiet when he got out of the car and unlocked first the door at the bottom of the stairs and then his apartment door at the top. He slipped off his shoes and went to get himself a glass of water before he sighed, looking back at her with a helpless shrug. “I don’t want to be my dad, Olls.”

She hadn’t known Eli’s dad, not really, but she knew two things: he drank, and he left them. Ollie went to him, slipping his arms around his waist and resting her head on his chest, closing her eyes and trying to stop the thoughts crossing her mind.

Eli heard them anyway. He set his cup down, wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her hair. “You’re not your dad, either,” he whispered, rubbing her back as tears leaked out of her eyes.

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox and Esther Chapman, February 2, 2019

EC: You know my kid didn’t do it.

LW: Yes, Mrs. Chapman.

EC: Because he didn’t. The jury said he wasn’t guilty, but nobody believed them. They couldn’t prove it. They just all knew he did it. There wasn’t evidence, but it’s because he was my son. Not just his father’s son, you understand—mine. They wanted to blame me, and my boyfriends, and that second husband I never should’ve married, and Eli, so they did. And it was like that, you understand. It wasn’t just Eli. It was that Chapman boy, and his whore of a mother, and her poor choice in men. Including Eli’s father, you understand. We’re all here, all in the same town, grew up together and live together and all the rest. No one of them’s better than any of the rest. But they’re still there, looking down their noses. A murder, a double murder, and is it some outsider or drifter? Doesn’t have to be. It was that Chapman kid. And don’t you go asking me how that felt. How do you think it felt? “How did that make you feel?” is a lazy question, Mr. Wilcox.

LW: What did you do when you heard he was arrested?

EC: Because I wasn’t home? Is that what you mean?

LW: Because I don’t think many people have ever been in your position, Mrs. Chapman.

EC: Damn right, they haven’t. Not guilty. That’s what they said, all twelve of them: not guilty. So he’s free, he’s out of handcuffs and that jumpsuit, and what happens? It’s like they want to punish him for being innocent. Oh, no, the Chapman kid can’t be innocent. I’m surprised they didn’t try to make it Jared. Did anyone think of that? Because Jared outright said he didn’t have an alibi. He woke up, saw Eli was gone. That’s it. So he was alone, and just because he said he never left the bedroom, that doesn’t mean anything. He could’ve been lying—did anyone think of that? Maybe Eli slept the whole night, never saw Jared gone, but Jared went.

LW: Are you accusing your nephew?

EC: Why the hell not? Serena went right out and accused hers. Like her son was an angel. Dating that girl… that’s what they should’ve been talking about. That Clark girl, not the Chapman kid.

LW: What about Birdy?

EC: Birdy. That’s not even a real name. She was a slut, I’m sorry to say, because Ollie’s so sweet. Kind. Ollie didn’t need to get attention with blowjobs and sex and God knows what else. Probably not drugs, but that’s about the one thing nobody ever accused that girl of. She couldn’t keep her tits in her shirt or her pants on, and she wasn’t picky. She wasn’t faithful, either, or loyal, or kind, or any of the things her sister was. Ollie was such a lovely girl, and she’s a lovely woman now, and the community did their best to drive her and my son apart. He should’ve been there for her. Her and Randy both. But instead, they decided he was just that Chapman boy, so she got left alone.

LW: What about her father?

EC: Randy? You expect a man who’s just lost his wife of twenty years, and his daughter on top of that, to be able to be there emotionally for his other girl? Look, Randy did what he could, but there wasn’t much he could do. He didn’t want Ollie going back home until it was all cleaned up, so they sort of shuffled her around. Made her couch surf with all these strangers in the name of decency. Decency? Hah. How’s a girl supposed to grieve like that? When she’s got a time to pack up her stuff every day and move to the next house, where she maybe has a door to shut between her and the rest of the world, and maybe doesn’t. And I couldn’t even reach out to her—the lawyer said so. It wouldn’t look good, or it wouldn’t be right. They took Eli right away, took him away from her, and didn’t even give her friends or people she actually knew. People who actually cared before the tragedy. And Randy, you were asking about him… he threw himself into the work, all that DIY stuff to try to fix it. The stuff he could fix. Which can’t be healthy, especially when he was the one who saw it all, the damage and the blood and the holes. They don’t clean up after themselves, those CSIs. They get their evidence, if there’s any to get, and then leave you to it.

LW: Nobody wanted to help him?

EC: Of course people wanted to help him! But you can’t help a man who says he doesn’t want help. He said no, turned them all down, and what could they do? Ignore the no? Just come into his house without permission? Randy didn’t have a gun, so it wasn’t like he was going to shoot them for a prowler, but… what’s the decent thing there? How do you be neighborly to a guy who’s refusing his neighbors? And keeping his daughter in free fall. There’s that, too.

LW: I thought she was with friends.

EC: Acquaintances, maybe. But not with him. Randy kept himself busy, with the house and all, and kept her away because that’s where he was. So he did what was best for him, and told himself that this was best for her, but…

LW: But?

EC: Honestly, Mr. Wilcox, do I need to spell it out for you?

LW: I’d appreciate it if you did.

EC: Well then: he abandoned her. The only person I know of who asked Ollie what she needed was Eli, but then they took him away and he wasn’t there to give it. To say a single word. He could call and she could accept the charges, but everything would be recorded. She could go in to see him, and she did, but not for long. Neither of them has ever said anything to me, but I think her father made her dump him. Both of them in dire straits, needing a friend, and they got torn apart. Did you know they’ve known each other since kindergarten? They knew everything about each other. Knew each other better than they knew themselves. Eli didn’t have to ask what she needed—he already knew, but he also knew she needed to be asked, so he did. And he would’ve gone with her to that house, and stood with her while she looked, and let her look. Not hurried her away. Let her try to take it in, to make it real. Because for Ollie, she just went away to camp, and then came back, and they were gone. She didn’t identify them. Randy wouldn’t have let her. Wendy, maybe, if they folded the sheet carefully enough, but not Birdy, with her face gone like that. And then, when the medical examiner or whoever was done with them, he had them cremated. That’s what Ollie had, you know: her family, and then a couple boxes. There was nothing in between.

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Bury the Dead 9 – coming April 9

Ollie Clark—Saturday, June 22, 2019

Cindy sighed and pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Ollie thought her stepmom had quit, but she wasn’t one to judge. They were outside, anyway, in the gazebo, just the two of them since Dad and Len Wilcox went up to the Wildlife Refuge Cabins to get him settled in. “I know, I know,” Cindy groaned, lighting up. “But I bought the pack because I figured between the nineteenth and this week, I’d be doing a whole lot of holding my tongue.”

“How was it when he was at camp?”

She shook her head, exhaling a stream of smoke. “I worked my normal schedule. He called from Darrin’s every night just to check in, but …” Cindy debated, then turned to prop her feet up on the bench, too, and really settle in. “I think he thought it was a kindness. Telling us no, no, don’t come. Don’t worry about him. And then being out of touch so I couldn’t text or call and ask him how he was doing.” She paused and seemed to run that through her head again. “So he wouldn’t have to figure out what to tell us about how he was doing. Which, well. You know.”

Ollie shook her head, not contradicting the fact that she knew, but holding up a finger. “I was born into this. I’m stuck. You chose him.”

“Knowing that he’s the type of guy to shove the people who love him away when he’s going through a hard time?” Cindy sighed and nodded. “Yeah. I guess I just kind of hoped, you know, after the two of you had it out about how he made you couch surf after the murders so he could distract himself with home renovations, and how you didn’t actually care if he doesn’t like Eli because you love him, that things would … settle.”

Groaning, Ollie decided to lie down on her section of bench. The sides of the gazebo weren’t long enough to stretch out on, but she fit if she put her feet flat on it and let her knees stick up. “We all know Jared’s the favorite.”

“Olls.” But Cindy knew that was part of the fight, too: Dad had been there in so many ways at all times of day for Jared, so why not his own flesh and blood? The only daughter that remained. “Your grandparents …”

Thank God Cindy was the sort of person she could do this with. Ollie held up her hands and started ticking off on her fingers. “Alcoholic, so of course he wants to save Jared. Gramps died young, so hey, another Jared. Sick mom. Clingy mom. Made him into the awkward outsider kid at school.” She interlaced her fingers and dropped her hands onto her stomach. “He only ever talks about them when they’re an excuse for his own behavior.”

Cindy made a noise that meant she agreed but didn’t actually want to be heard agreeing.

“He’s being sucked in by Len Wilcox’s sad eyes.”

“He is a good listener.”

Ollie turned her head. “What’s he think he’s going to get from you? You weren’t even living up here back then.”

“A perspective on your father.”

She raised an eyebrow.

Cindy blushed but forged ahead. “The victims aren’t only the dead. There are living victims, too, and in this case, it matters what sort of person your father is because he’s the central witness to your mom and sister.”

“What, so Len Wilcox isn’t just going to trust what Dad says?”

Cindy grimaced. “Your mother was kind of a shut-in.”

Ollie stifled a laugh.

“All right, fine: she barely left the house. When she did, it was all four of you. Everyone knows the daughter weekends meant one of you was out with Randy and the other was home with Wendy, because Wendy was always home. So. If he’s the only one who’s going to talk about Wendy … not that I’m trying to guilt you into it …”

She looked up at the dark ceiling of the gazebo like maybe the answer was written there in spiderwebs. “Did you ever read ‘The Body’? The Stephen King novella that got turned into Stand by Me?”

“No. I haven’t seen it, either.”

“There’s a character whose brother died, and he says something like he can’t give any pieces of his brother away because he has so few to start with. Len’s metaphor is great, I guess, the idea that people get lit up from all sides and become whole, but why should I give up all of mine just so it can be a tiny part of what he’s writing?” At Cindy’s silence, Ollie turned her head again, but her stepmom was looking across the path to the backyard behind theirs.

Cindy finally shook her head and seemed to notice she still held a cigarette, quickly tapping ash into one of the ornamental flowerpots she had spread around the yard. “Your dad’s not thinking of it that way. I guess he’s going a bit Coco and thinking that he needs to pass on their memory so they don’t die with him.”

Ollie chewed on her lower lip but hey, if she couldn’t say this now, it would never come out. “He’s never tried sharing his parts of them with me.”

“Olls …”

“Look.” Sitting up, she angrily swiped at her eyes. “There are parts of the past we can’t get back and things we can’t undo, okay. Sometimes we act in our own grief and anger in ways that make sense to us but look completely different to someone else, okay. Jared and Eli come from basically the same background but Jared’s the beloved son and Eli will never really be accepted here … not okay, but manageable. But, if he really wants to talk about them? Keep them alive? Why not do that with the people who actually knew them and loved them?” She shook her head, leaning forward to try to get Cindy to look at her. “Jared. Does he talk about them with Jared?”

Her stepmother shrugged.

“So why not? Why not share them with us? What is it about Len Wilcox that makes him so special?”

Cindy looked at her before looking away again, but at least it meant neither of them had to say it out loud: What makes Len Wilcox so much better than me?

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Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Randy Clark, January 6, 2019

RC: You can’t anticipate your kids. Wendy and I talked about that a lot: how we thought Ollie would be one kind of kid, based on who we were as kids, and we got Ollie instead. It’s not a bad thing—it’s just not what we thought. They get their own personalities so early, even as babies. She was Ollie almost from the start, you know? But then, when Wendy got pregnant again, we had this different set of expectations. We’d been through it once so we figured hey, okay, we can do this a second time. But Birdy was Birdy, not Ollie, and she wanted you to know it. She refused to sleep through the night, she refused to take a bottle, she’d barely sleep without one of us holding her. And all of that kept on, you know? Their teachers all said so. Ollie’s this, that, and the other thing, and Birdy’s none of those. She’s her own things.

LW: Like what?

RC: Oh, you know … Ollie was the kind of kid teachers liked. She was quiet, she did her work, that kind of thing. Able to fit the mold. Naturally, maybe. Birdy … Birdy had energy and wanted attention. If the spotlight wasn’t on her, she’d do something to make sure it came back. She had all these ideas—not always good ideas, or smart ones—but she had them, and she’d want to do them. She was very physical. Ollie’s more mental. Birdy had the friends who’d egg her on, too, and encourage her. On her own she was a firecracker, but get them together and all of a sudden you’ve got four of them doing it, pushing her further. Sometimes literally, you know? Birdy didn’t often get second thoughts, but sometimes she did, and this one time … I don’t know what she’d been watching, maybe MythBusters, but you couldn’t tell Birdy not to try something at home. She got a bunch of our sheets and cut them up and taped them into a parachute. I don’t know how long it took her, but she could concentrate when she wanted to. When it mattered to her. Then she took it up a tree, so she could test it, and her friends were with her. One of them was up there with her, and I’m not going to tell you which one, but all of a sudden I’m getting a call that my kid’s hurt. She’s got a broken arm. Not because she jumped out with her parachute—because the other kid pushed her. Birdy got second thoughts, realized that maybe this wasn’t going to work, but … peer pressure. From the two on the ground, sure, and the other one in the tree gave her a shove, and there we were, heading to the hospital so she could get a cast.

LW: And she still hung out with the same girls after?

RC: Oh, yeah. They were friends. And it wasn’t like she had much of a choice of who to hang out with, you know? A small class to start with, and the district’s so spread out. You can hang with kids in Atlantic Mine or Painesdale if you’ve got something for the trails, a four-wheeler or a snowmobile, but otherwise you’re stuck with the locals. The really locals. Those girls all lived within a couple blocks. Well, you’ve looked at a map, right? South Range isn’t that big. But if Birdy was going to leave the house at all, she’d run into them, and it wouldn’t have helped to tell her not to. If she wanted something, she did it. She was all about today, to hell with tomorrow. Like most kids, I guess. She wasn’t the one paying for the cast. Birdy knew what she wanted, so go on, get out of her way.

LW: Is Jared Chapman another example of that?

RC: Jared … well. He didn’t have a good start. Sports star in high school, could’ve had any girl he wanted, but … troubled. I’m not going to get into his dad, but his mom tried her best, and she was trying to help raise Eli, too, so that was just another part of the struggle. And then, after high school, he kind of floundered. Still a good guy, love him to pieces, but he wasn’t going anywhere. Except he was still the guy at high school, and Birdy liked the attention.

LW: From Jared?

RC: From everyone. It didn’t matter if you were trying to talk her out of something, as long as you were paying attention to her. That college in California thing? I don’t think Birdy actually wanted to go. She just picked something she knew Wendy would argue against every chance she got. I tried to tell her Wendy, honey, give it a rest. Maybe take a day off from sniping at Birdy about her clothes or her hair or her boyfriend or college, you know? You’ve already got one kid following the plan, you know? So maybe the second one doesn’t have to be a carbon copy of the first. She’s never been. Birdy was Birdy. But they were so alike that way.

LW: Birdy and Wendy?

RC: Yeah. They each knew what they wanted and expected everyone else to do it their way. Stubborn, both of them. My way or the highway, except they weren’t on the same page. Some days they weren’t even in the same book. They clashed over so much, and sometimes …

LW: Take your time.

RC: Sometimes I worry, you know? That Ollie didn’t get enough of her mom. Birdy needed so much attention, and Wendy was always willing to go toe to toe with her, but Ollie didn’t clash with her the same way. She blended into the background, you know? Kept her head down. Did what she was supposed to. Hung out with the kids who liked books and nature walks, not dares and peer pressure. So they didn’t clash, and I’m not saying Wendy’s parenting style was “clashing,” but … it means most of her time, her energy, was about Birdy. Ollie got on well enough on her own, so Wendy left her alone, except … maybe that’s not good parenting. Maybe she could’ve used more of a mom herself.

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Bury the Dead 8