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.

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.

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?

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.

Bury the Dead 8

Ollie Clark—Saturday, June 22, 2019

There was a rental car parked at the curb, like Len Wilcox didn’t want to presume and use the driveway. Even though Cindy and Dad went through this whole complicated thing so he could meet Len Wilcox at the airport, hang around once Cindy dropped him off, and then wait for Len Wilcox to pick up the rental so he wasn’t without transportation during his stay. That meant Dad would’ve been in the car with Len Wilcox on the way back, so maybe Dad was the one who told him to park at the side of the road?

Ollie really didn’t want to get to know the guy well enough that she didn’t think of him as both names, like his byline.

Eli turned off the car but paused before taking the key out of the ignition. “Maybe Jared didn’t know.”

Ollie shrugged miserably. He’d never said anything to her, and she’d never ventured it herself.

“What if, um …” He licked his lips and shook his head, bringing it out without looking over at her: “What if it wasn’t his?”

“I don’t know.” There was a lot she didn’t know, and would never know, because someone decided to come to South Range with a shotgun and murder the two Clark women. Someone who might not even have known who they were. That was why Kelly made so much sense: he did the incomprehensible and randomly shot strangers when they came to answer their doors after dark. Who did that?

Well. Kelly. And at least one other person, because Birdy and Mom were both dead.

Eli took a slow breath and shook his head decisively. “I’m not asking him. If he’s gone this long and never said anything …”

Ollie nodded.

He blinked and seemed to realize he was still in the car with her sitting next to him. Eli quickly switched his keys to his left hand so his right could reach for hers. “Sorry. I just … I’d never thought of it before.”

She squeezed back.

“Shall we get this over with?”

Ollie could use some more sitting out here, thanks, but she nodded and unclipped her seatbelt.

They both left their shoes in the mudroom, Ollie’s flats and Eli’s sneakers, next to a pair of brown leather things that clearly didn’t belong. Ollie wasn’t really sure what wingtips were, but this pair had some fancy bits on them, and they might’ve been polished that morning as Len Wilcox waited in the Chicago airport.

“Here we are!” Dad boomed from the next room, gesturing at the new arrivals as though he hadn’t seen either of them in weeks … and they were both lovingly welcome. “Len, this is Ollie and Eli.”

The little author photos didn’t really convey Len Wilcox’s size. Ollie was used to Jared sitting at the kitchen table, but there was a difference between his shoulders in plaid and t-shirts and Len Wilcox’s in a freaking dress shirt, light blue with white collar and cuffs. Ollie didn’t think he was actually taller and broader than Jared, but ye gods. Add to that the brown braided belt, which of course went with the brown leather shoes in the mud room, and the khakis—with pleats on the front, if you please—and sheesh. Len Wilcox did not belong in this room at her parents’ kitchen table, and that weird little beard that looked like he forgot to shave two mornings in a row didn’t help.

“Ollie.” Even his voice was too big for the room. It was deep, and should have been warm, but it bounced back too quickly. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Eli got a nod.

Well. Ollie guessed Len Wilcox had heard a lot about him, too, but she just smiled and let Eli gesture her into one of the chairs. The one directly across from the reporter. So. Thanks, Eli.

“Listen, I’m …” Len Wilcox brushed his hair back from his forehead and leaned on the table to lock eyes intently with her. “I’m really sorry about this news. I was supposed to be here because it was solved, all done and buttoned up, but …” His blue eyes, professionally soft, looked to Eli.

Eli smiled almost easily, but Ollie noticed his eyes didn’t sparkle. “That’s all right. I wasn’t planning on going on the record with you, anyway.”

Len Wilcox matched the smile, sans sparkle. “I’m sure it’s not all right, but …”

Ah, yes: the silence. Most people didn’t do well with silence and rushed to fill it. This was a technique used by investigative reporters wherever they met their subjects, detectives in interrogation rooms, and high school teachers in the classroom. Ollie fixed her face into a benign expression that wasn’t quite a smile and just waited along with the reporter.

“Olls, Len would still really like to talk to you.” Dad had never done well with silence although, when this house held both Mom and Birdy, it was a rare occurrence. “Cindy’s already agreed.”

Okay, and where was Cindy? Did she decide this was a good time to do laundry? To fold each piece ever so carefully so everything stacked up perfectly?

“I would love to hear your perspective.” God, did people really fall for this? Was it an ace thing that made her immune? The way Harper joked that old time sailing ships should’ve had sailors on the asexual spectrum because they wouldn’t fall victim to sirens. Len used body language that was meant to be … not open, exactly, but receptive, and his eyes basically demanded she look back at him. “Daughter and sister … you knew them the way no one else did.”

Eli’s hand snuck back to her thigh and this time just rested there, and that made it easier to smile. “You’ve talked to Kendra and Liza and Corrie, hey?”

“I have, yes.” Len Wilcox blinked and smiled, but it was clear she’d gone off his mental script. “Even, uh … Bobbi. Kendra’s mom. But that’s not the same. It doesn’t … well.” He stopped himself, smiling almost indulgently.

Dad grinned and pointed at him. “Tell her. He’s got this thing,” he added to Ollie, like Eli wasn’t even there, “where people are onstage and he’s trying to light them up from all angles. So if he’s missing one, it’s not a full picture.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth. And the point, of course, is that sure, they were her friends, and Randy was her dad, but no one else was her sister. No one has your perspective.”

Ollie dropped her hand to Eli’s and carefully wrapped her fingers around his. “No, thank you.”

The two men across the table blinked like she’d never said that before. “Kiddo,” Randy began in the voice he used to use when she was small and acting out in public as though none of the other adults would realize his tone.

“It’s really not going to be complete without you,” Len Wilcox added, and this was an appeal meant to guilt her.

Great. Okay. “Look, Mr. Wilcox, I’m sorry to be the one to say this, but we’re not in your book anymore. My mom and my sister aren’t in your book anymore. Your book’s about Sean Kelly, and Sean Kelly didn’t kill them.”

“That doesn’t mean I can’t devote the same time and care to them as to the other victims.”

There were too many possible responses there. Wouldn’t including them diminish the other victims? Weren’t her mom and sister more than just victims? And wasn’t his book, like all true crime books, actually about Sean Kelly, the killer? “I said no thank you, Mr. Wilcox. I know the offer’s open, and I promise to let you know if I change my mind, but my answer is no.”

Now Dad gave her that look that meant she was being outright rude and should apologize immediately, but Len Wilcox actually put his hand on Dad’s arm. “It’s fine,” he reassured him, like he knew he had to intervene on Ollie’s behalf. “Not everyone’s comfortable talking to a stranger. We have plenty of time to get to know each other.” Unspoken: Because anyone who gets to know me can’t help but talk.

The front door opened, blowing Cindy in on the sound of laughter. “Sorry, sorry,” she called, slipping out of her crocs and picking them up so she could carry them back to the mudroom. “The Halttunnens were out and I couldn’t get out of the conversation. What did I miss?”

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Agatha Grace, May 23, 2019

LW: Can you start by telling me how you’re connected to the Clarks?

AG: Even though I …?

LW: I only just started recording.

AG: Oh, right. Sorry. I was good friends with Evelyn Clark. Randy’s mom. We went to the same church.

LW: And what did you want to tell me about Randy?

AG: Well, that it’s ironic, really. Both his girls dating the Chapman boys. Because when Randy was little, he was a hellion. Can I say that?

LW: If you’d like to say it, you certainly can.

AG: Then I do want to. Randy Clark was a little hellion. He ran that household since before he could talk. As a baby he’d wrinkle up his face and Evie jumped. If he got enough breath to start screaming, you’d know she’d had a long night. That was slow. He didn’t talk for the longest time because all he had to do was look at her and she’d run the list. Hungry? Thirsty? Cold? He’d just point and she’d jump. Toivo never had to lift a finger because Evie was always there. And it put a strain on their marriage, let me tell you. Did you ever wonder why Randy was an only child? She used to jump for Toivo, but then he got demoted. Second banana. And that man needed to be the only banana.

LW: How do you mean?

AG: He’d stay out. He’d drink. He wouldn’t come home until after the baby was in bed—that’s what he always called Randy: the baby—and then he’d take it out on Evie. She’d be tired, of course, running after the toddler all day, and then … well, she never said anything to me, but she wore dark glasses and long sleeves. Makeup. It wasn’t good. Toivo kept drinking until that one night when he tried walking home from the bar, went out into the snowstorm, and didn’t make it. They found him frozen out there by the baseball diamond. No idea how or why he crossed the highway, but he did. And then Evie and little Randy were left alone.

LW: She never remarried?

AG: Oh gosh no. She had Randy. Who else would she need?

LW: Did Randy date in high school?

AG: Pshaw, of course not. Not until Evie had her stroke. That’s when Wendy started being around, you know. She helped Evie. She wanted to be a nurse. Wendy. That’s why she was helping Evie. But of course she was a pretty girl, and she was around a lot, and she was probably the only girl Randy ever spoke to. He was a good-looking kid, but his mother, you know? He’d get in trouble. She’d lecture him about syphilis and getting some trollop pregnant. Which is what he did, of course. She was at least four months along when they got married. Maybe five. But Evie was dead by then. Another stroke. Probably caused when she learned her son got the little nurse in a family way.

LW: They were married for twenty years.

AG: They were. That’s the surprise. No one thought it would last. She quit school, he had a terrible job … but he got a better one. Evie owned the house, at least, so they had somewhere to stay. Somewhere to start. They moved out when the girls were small. I don’t know why they picked the one they did, with only two bedrooms when they had the two babies and clearly could’ve gotten another one just as fast, but I don’t think they wanted to be in Evie’s house anymore. He always said it was Wendy who wanted out, who wanted to be the mistress of her own house instead of the crown princess to Queen Elizabeth, but I don’t think that was true.

LW: Oh?

AG: Young man, I think that’s gossip.

LW: I haven’t found many people willing to talk about Wendy.

AG: Many? Or any?

LW: I’m sorry. I can’t get into specifics.

AG: My bet would be “any.” Wendy wasn’t a church girl. And she was alone—you know about the accident.

LW: Yes.

AG: A blessing. Her parents never knew about the bun. Olive. She turned into such a wonderful young woman. It’s a surprise, really.

LW: Because of how her parents met?

AG: Because of who their parents were. How they’d all grown up. Incest, in Wendy’s case. And that’s not gossip. It’s a sad truth. And why she was so quick to jump in the sack with Randy, who probably didn’t even know what he was doing. He was that naïve. But a flower always knows how to get bees.

LW: Pardon?

AG: That girl knew what she was doing. She put out the birdseed and brought out the cage.

LW: I’m sorry?

AG: Honestly. It’s not a nice thing to say, but she wasn’t a nice girl. She wanted to keep him, and she knew how.

LW: Ah. Wendy got pregnant on purpose so he’d marry her.

AG: Yes, exactly. That’s what I said. And he was an honorable man, even if he’d been a brat, so he stayed married to her. Was a wonderful father to his girls. Even though Birdy took after her mother. That Chapman boy got off lucky, all things considered. It wasn’t nice, what happened to them, but some women live dangerous lifestyles.

LW: As a married woman?

AG: To be perfectly blunt, Mr. Wilcox, a ring doesn’t block a hole.

LW: Wendy wasn’t faithful in her marriage?

AG: Yes, of course. I don’t know how much clearer I can be.

LW: I see.

AG: The babies didn’t make her grow up. He grew up—Randy. He bought the new house to try to make his pretty young wife happy, and he did all he could for the girls. Worked those jobs. Those hours. Broke his back for the women, and the only one who ever appreciated it was Olive. She tried to be the perfect girl for him. Which wasn’t easy in that house, let me tell you. Not with those other examples. And we worried, all of us, when she started going with the other Chapman boy, but he wasn’t dragging her down. It seemed like it was going well. Like one of the Clark girls was going to grow up properly, and settle down, and make a life for herself. But then the other two got killed, the Chapman boy got himself arrested, and … well.

LW: Well?

AG: They should have married years ago, shouldn’t they? Married, and settled down, and started a family. I hear they’re finally going to do it, that they’ve picked a date in December, but … sometimes things come too late. There are moments you can’t get back, no matter how much you waste your time trying.

Bury the Dead 7

Ollie Clark—Saturday June 22, 2019

Eli adjusted the rearview mirror even though it was his car and it really didn’t need adjusting. “Moving to Traverse City isn’t going to stop that from happening. Not when it’s me.”

Even though it more or less worked that way for Ollie. The murders hadn’t really made it downstate, or at least hadn’t lingered in the collective consciousness by the time Ollie moved down there. Clark was a common enough last name and if anyone remembered first names it was Wendy and Birdy, even though Eli had been the sister’s boyfriend. But, with these new headlines …

“I’ll figure it out.”

He sucked his teeth, which she took to mean he wished she didn’t have to figure it out and was blaming himself again, but at least he didn’t say anything, so she didn’t have to say anything. “Did Cindy say we’re totally cool or do I take the scenic route?”

“We’re fine. Dad already gave him the tour.” She closed her eyes and let her head fall back against the headrest. “Why didn’t he sell the house?”

“Good memories?” Eli suggested. “That’s where you both grew up. They moved, when, like right after Birdy was born? So … your childhood … the best years of his life …”

“So your wife and kid get shot in the living room and you’re like oh, yeah, we’ll just redo the walls and rearrange the furniture and like it’s fine? Because I have a hard time being in that house remembering the good stuff when their freaking ghosts are so loud.”

He probably looked over at her, at least for as long as he could when heading into the Yooper Loop, but she kept her eyes closed. “Maybe he’s trying to banish the ghosts.”

“Is that what you’re thinking or something Jared relayed?”

“Jared,” he admitted.

Because Jared was far closer to Dad than she was. Than she’d ever been.

“Maybe he also just didn’t want to sell,” Eli added, shrugging when she looked at him. “It’s like a local landmark now. Yeah, there’s the purple house, but the one next to the purple house is the murder house. If he sold it, he’d risk someone turning it into … I don’t know, a gruesome Airbnb or something.”

“I think you watch too much TV.”

“Really? Because the Len Wilcoxen of the world would jump all over that.”

She laughed without really wanting to. “Wilcoxen?”

“It’s the accepted plural. And just because you think he’s some sort of ghoul doesn’t mean everyone does. The guy gets clicks. Bucks. Attention. People want what he does and other people want to be a part of it.”

“Like Dad.”

“Yeah, sure. That part I can kind of see. First the only guy put on trial gets off, and then there’s a big fat goose egg for years. The whole cold case aspect … like they forgot them. Like even the local police forgot them. Denomie was a laughingstock because he couldn’t get the conviction, so he sure as hell wasn’t going to get any support for another trial with someone else. Even if he honestly believed it was me and tried to argue they actually had the killer, he couldn’t prove it. Not in court. Double jeopardy says he gets one chance. Which he lost, along with public support, and …” Eli shrugged. “Even if your dad kept it up, trying to find justice, he didn’t get any responses. They shut him out. Hey, Randy, there’s no evidence. We can’t find a single person who’d want to kill Wendy. Birdy, well …”

Ollie shook her head. “Birdy was just a kid.”

“An annoying kid.”

She licked her lips and looked out the passenger window.

“Olls. I know you loved her, but even I couldn’t always see why.”

“Maybe because she was such a kid, but she didn’t want everyone to know it, so she …”

“Slept around and kept propositioning her friend’s boyfriends.”

Her head shook again before she could stop it. “Teenager. Her brain didn’t get the chance to fully form. Bad impulse control, destructive decisions …” Like maybe she’d chosen to teach high school in part because she’d spent a lot of time thinking about how much those years could change someone. Or how much potential existed, if only there was enough time for teenagers to grow up, and learn from their mistakes, and channel their energies into sustainable actions instead of self-destructive ones. When Ollie looked back at Eli, she caught him licking his lips and focusing quickly on the road again. “Say it.”

“You don’t want to talk to Len Wilcox just to give him another side of her?”

Ollie rubbed at her mouth and wiped her hand on her jeans and shifted in her seat. “Why do I owe anyone my side of Birdy?”

“Because otherwise he’ll get it wrong?”

She shook her head. “He’s going to get it wrong anyway. You think I’d talk to him and he’d be like oh, gee, sorry, I guess I have to throw all these other interviews out? I’d just be … I don’t know, the big sister trying to whitewash Birdy’s reputation. He’d make it look like I was ashamed of her, or always annoyed with her, or … you realize nobody other than you actually believes I did love her?”

“You don’t have to like someone to love them.”

Ollie licked her lips and then pressed them together.

Eli chuckled. “Your turn. Go on.”

“You don’t have a Birdy in your family.”

He took a hand off the wheel to circle it and draw out the rest of what she was thinking.

“You’ve got, like … the single mom thing, and alcoholism, and … I don’t know, however you want to define your relationship with Jared, but … it’s not like guys get painted the same way girls do, so even if Jared slept around a lot, it’s like oh, yeah, sure, he’s a stud. Local sports hero. Good for him. So Birdy does it, plays up her sexuality into a freaking parody, but she’s just a slut. A slut,” she hammered home, “who propositioned you.”

Eli wrinkled his nose. “I shut her down before she really could. Most people didn’t shut her down.”

“Most people blame Birdy for the offers, however authentic they may have been, and not the guys for accepting.”

He frowned, clearly debating something, then brought it out: “Do you think she really slept with everyone who said they did? Hell, everyone who even walked away with her? Because all we know is that yeah, fine, she’d get into the car with people, or go off with people. I mean, I’m not saying she was a virgin or anything …”

“You …?”

“Olls?”

She blinked and shook her head, but it wasn’t working. “You …?”

“What?”

“Jared’s never …?”

They were out of town now, on M-26 on the way to South Range, so he had a longer moment to be able to look at her face. “Jared and I don’t talk about our sex lives. He just assumes I have one.”

“No, they …” Could you be disloyal to someone who’d been dead for a decade? Someone who hadn’t even told you? “I don’t know if they always test, or if it was a special case. I mean, they kept it out of the trial because it didn’t have any relevance, and I’m not even sure it made it into the actual report. Birdy was pregnant when she died. Not very far along, but … Dad and I figured that’s what she really wanted to talk to Mom about that night.” She shrugged, feeling like she should apologize. “And I always assumed it was Jared’s.”

Interview excerpts, Len Wilcox with Carrie Jameson, March 15, 2019

CJ: Okay, so you’re not supposed to say this kind of thing? But I’m going to, because otherwise it’s lying, and I tell my kids all the time that they have to be truthful. Birdy Clark was someone you were only friends with because she’d make your life miserable otherwise, except it wasn’t exactly a walk in the park to be her friend in the first place. You couldn’t do anything that made her think you were cooler than her, even if you didn’t think that way, and it was exhausting trying to keep up with what made that list.

LW: Do you have an example?

CJ: Oh, millions. Say, Kendra came to school one day with new shoes. They weren’t expensive. They weren’t even brand name. They were very clearly cheap knockoffs from ShopKo, but Birdy threw a fit. She wouldn’t talk to Kendra or let her sit with us, and I heard she had a screaming fight with her mom that night, but two days later, she had the same shoes and Kendra could sit with us again. So you had to run stuff by her, like bring it along in your backpack and show it to her, except you couldn’t make it look like you were asking permission. You’d be like hey, I got this skirt in Green Bay last weekend. What do you think? And she’d be like oh, yeah, it’ll go so well with that top, or she’d say something like mmm, are you really sure it’s your style? Then show up in one almost exactly like it the next week, so at least you knew you could wear yours then, because it’d look like you were second.

LW: So she wanted to be first with all of the trends.

CJ: She wanted everyone looking at her and saying her name. So it wasn’t oh, did you see Carrie’s new haircut? It was oh, did you see Carrie got her hair cut to look like Birdy’s? Everything. When she quit ballet, the rest of us had to quit ballet. When she joined choir, the rest of us had to join choir—except we couldn’t be as good as her. She wanted you under her thumb, trailing after her, looking up at her, whatever. Not equals. I don’t know how Ollie could even stand living with her. At least the rest of us could go home, you know? Get a break. Her freshman year at Northern must’ve been the best one of her life.

LW: So when you hung out with Birdy, it wasn’t also with her sister.

CJ: No. Or her mom, unless we were spending the night and Wendy had to feed us dinner. But then we got to eat somewhere special and the rest of them, Wendy and Ollie and Mr. Clark, ate at the table like usual. Birdy didn’t really like having Ollie around.

LW: Because they didn’t get along?

CJ: Because Ollie was like the only one who didn’t care. She just … let Birdy have the spotlight and the cool pencils and whatever else. Even if they went back to school shopping together and picked out their own stuff, if they got home and Birdy decided she wanted Ollie’s binder instead, Ollie didn’t fight it. She just took whichever one was left. It’s the fight Birdy thrived on. Her and Wendy both—they were always at each other. And Ollie and their dad were just … there. Waiting for the screaming to stop so they could go into the kitchen and make a sandwich or whatever.

LW: So Birdy didn’t fight with her dad?

CJ: She’d yell at him if she thought he was being unfair. Talk about him when he wasn’t around—complaining and stuff. She thought he went out of his way for Ollie and wouldn’t do squat for her, except if you asked the rest of us, even he gave her more. Ollie went off to school and it was like oh, good, she escaped. Maybe somebody’ll treat her right for once. But it didn’t help, because then Birdy was the only one home, and she kept demanding more. Full on princess treatment. Our senior year … did you hear the rumor that she had sex with the math teacher right there in his classroom so he’d give her a passing grade?

LW: Can’t say I did.

CJ: Oh, yeah. He was new, too. Young. Right out of college. And he left after that one year, so of course it stuck. Oh, that’s why. I mean, there’s probably nothing to it, but the rumor was there. And she didn’t deny it. That was her style: bat her eyes, maybe giggle, but don’t say yes or no. Let people talk. Encourage people to talk. You wonder what the administration was thinking. They should’ve quashed it. Had a talk with her. But Birdy just kept on getting away with things none of the rest of us could’ve dreamed of. So there were rumors about that, too.

Bury the Dead 6

Ollie Clark—Friday, June 21, 2019

Normally when her brain got caught on something, Ollie could blink a couple times and force it on through. She had plenty of experience thinking on her feet—high schoolers came at you with the weirdest stuff out of nowhere sometimes and you had to make split-second decisions to ignore, acknowledge, or redirect. Say, when some of them congratulated her on her engagement after Christmas and added something like “Isn’t it weird that he was on trial for killing your mom?” Well, yes, it was weird, because anyone who knew Eli knew he couldn’t have done it. The problem was that not many people really knew him. They just went on his family’s reputation.

All eyes were on her. They’d had, what, over an hour to digest this information, even if it was an elephant passing through a boa constrictor, but she’d just been hit with it. “How …?” It came out as a croak and Ollie shook her head in case that knocked things back into position enough for the blinking to help. “How did they …?”

Dad shook his head more slowly. “I don’t know. Arnie didn’t say.” He sighed. “I didn’t ask. He just said Kelly’s lawyer came up with an alibi, so he didn’t do it.”

“But …”

“But he confessed?” Dad nodded and raised the bottle to his mouth. “Yeah. Bastard confessed.”

Behind her, Jared snorted. “It’s probably going to call all of his confessions into question.”

Sean Kelly wasn’t the one they had to worry about. When Ollie turned around, slowly, like the air was suddenly thick, it was to look at Eli.

He had his arms crossed and his shoulders jerked in a shrug, but he could barely look at her. “That one school board member thanked you for keeping our relationship a secret until I wasn’t a murderer.”

“Eli …”

His chin lifted to indicate the small diamond on her ring finger. “You’re engaged to a killer again.”

“Not guilty,” Jared protested, because yes, that was the official legal sentence, but the community had never agreed. They scoffed that the prosecuting attorney had failed at a slam dunk.

Ollie shook her head, holding Eli’s eyes. “I’m engaged to you.”

That made him look away again. “Olls …”

“Hey.” She put a hand on his forearm, urging him to unstrap himself enough so she could hold his hand. “This sucks, and it changes a lot of things, but that isn’t one of them. Okay?” She tilted her head to the rest of the room. “Witnesses.” Because, for so long, he’d resisted the idea that anyone else could know. For so long, he’d resisted her entirely.

“Thank God this didn’t come out before,” he quoted, giving each word its own weight.

Yes, and Ollie had never liked that member of the school board, who’d been drinking at the time he said it to her, and whose term was almost up, anyway. “One random dude with a bad mustache doesn’t get to decide my future for me.”

“Take him home,” Jared ordered, and his flash of a grin was exactly the same as it had been in high school when all the girls swooned over the tall, broad-shouldered football player with that lock of dark hair that always fell so charmingly over his forehead. “Actions speak louder than words.”

“Yeah, my dad is right there,” she hissed, suddenly fifteen again with knobby knees and a training bra.

“That’s exactly why I said it.” Jared shrugged, unconcerned that he’d thrown her even more than Arnie’s news had. “Look, it’s not like we’ve figured out anything else to do.”

Cindy put her hand on Dad’s arm, shrugging as she looked at Ollie. “Len’s still coming tomorrow. Dad already called him.”

Uh. Okay. So not only did Jared and Eli find out before she did, but Dad called Len freaking Wilcox?

“He’ll be up tomorrow,” Dad agreed. He grimaced and twisted his head like he had a sudden neck cramp. “All of that’s going to go forward as planned.”

Meaning other things shouldn’t? Or that it was the only part Dad thought he had some say over?

“Go on,” Cindy urged quietly. “If we get any more information, we’ll tell you.”

Dad scoffed at that and drained the rest of his beer. “What more is there? Took them almost ten years to find a new suspect, and then …” He flapped a hand and turned to the fridge. “Go on. All of you.”

Jared shrugged and gestured for the other two to leave first, like he didn’t think any of this had been awkward. Like he was more used to Dad’s emotional thermometer than Ollie was.

The guys slipped into their sandals, identical-looking battered Birkenstock knockoffs, and just like that Ollie was back in the driveway again. Seriously. All that stress and worrying for what, a single sentence? It could’ve been a text.

“Let Cindy handle him,” Jared said in a low voice, ducking his head down because he was six four and their ears were nowhere near the level of his mouth. “He wanted you to know, but …”

But. This wasn’t the first time Dad pushed her away while he processed something. Except, in his mind, he wasn’t pushing. Even after the fight that preceded the reconciliation—which he never called a fight, and Dad also didn’t see why they needed a reconciliation because you only needed to restore something that’d gone missing—he wanted to dump the news on her and immediately push her away. Then he’d be grouchy about the fact that, if he wasn’t going to support her emotionally, of course she’d turn to someone else … and of course that person would be Eli.

Jared looked at his cousin and pointed at Ollie. “You’re marrying her. Full stop. Chaos swirls, people are jerks, but you don’t get to pull your stupid Edward Cullen shit again. You’ve put in the work.”

Eli snorted at that before drawing in a deep breath and letting it out with a sigh and something resembling his usual grin as he looked at Ollie. “Take me home?”

She caught his hand and gave it a squeeze. “It’s what I’m here for.”

Excerpts from the first interrogation of Sean Kelly by Detectives Lana Schoellman and Dirk West, November 18, 2018

SK: The thing is, this isn’t the first time.

DW: It’s not the first time? What the hell do you mean by that?

SK: Just what I said. It’s not the first time. I’ve carried that shotgun with me … oh, the entire time I’ve been driving, I guess. In case I need it.

LS: Need it for what?

SK: You know. Urges.

LS: Urges. Like Donna Sullivan.

SK: If that’s her name, yeah. I don’t know their names. I just … pick a house.

DW: What do you mean you—?

LS: Why don’t you tell us from the beginning?

SK: Beginning? You mean my childhood? My daddy was mean to me and my mommy—

LS: No, just—what happened that night? At the Sullivan’s? A week ago?

SK: Right, okay. That’s really not the beginning, but … I get antsy, you know? When it’s been a while. Like a junkie, I guess, but I’ve never done drugs. Never saw the appeal. Is this what you wanted?

DW: Mr. Kelly—

LS: It’s fine. Please go on.

SK: So I just knew the feeling. It’s nothing new. And when you get an itch, you scratch it. See? So I took my gun, and I went for a walk. And what I’m looking for is a house with someone in it, but the ones on either side don’t have anyone. People leave lights on and there are motion sensors and stuff, but they aren’t actually home. And they aren’t fooling anyone.

DW: Except—

LS: Continue?

SK: Right, so I found the house. That street’s pretty dark. It’s the kind of place you can linger because nobody’s out that late, and nobody’s even peeking through their curtains. They lock the door and figure they’re safe. Right? So you can stand there for a while and watch those curtains, which aren’t opaque. You watch for movement. Even the flickering of the TV. You know? You can see a lot if you just stand there and watch.

LS: Okay. And after you watch?

SK: Well, it was just the one house. Someone still up and moving around. Someone home. So I walk up to the door, not even slow, and start pounding on it. Like an authority. I try not to yell something like “Police!” but sometimes I have to. But you have to be careful—as soon as someone starts opening the door, undoing the locks and stuff, I get the gun up. Sometimes they open it still on a chain, that kind of thing, but that makes no difference. You shoot, say average height for a woman, and either you get her in the face or someone taller in the chest. One shot and you’re done. Turn and leave before the neighbors can get to the windows, and even if they can, so what? It’s dark and they don’t know me. I’m just some person walking down the street.

DW: And you’ve done this how many times?

SK: I don’t know. You kind of lose count. And it’s always dark, so … I never know who it is. And then I’m gone the next day, anyway. That’s the point, isn’t it? I’m there, bam, and gone. The perfect crime.

DW: It wasn’t perfect for Donna Su–

LS: What was different last week?

SK: The cat. The damn cat. Dogs, I’ve dealt with. There’ve been dogs before. But the cat? It tripped her, not me. I didn’t set a foot inside the house. But she opened the door, and I was too slow. She saw me, and the gun, and started to step back, and the damn cat … she tripped over it, but I was already raising the gun through the gap in the door, and she grabbed it. Pulled me forward. Didn’t ruin the shot, because it still went into her, but I banged my head off the door frame. Started bleeding everywhere. The cat was gone by then, so I didn’t bleed on it, but that was enough. My blood on the frame, the porch … and then, what, you just had to check urgent cares, right? For someone who needed sixteen freaking stitches on the right side of his head, yea tall. Then you get my blood type, and now you got me, and whatever her name was—

DW: Donna Sullivan.

SK:—she wasn’t the first. So. I guess you’ve got your work cut out for you.

LS: Mr. Kelly, when you say she’s not the first … how many are we looking for?

SK: I don’t know. Something about stars in the sky?

Bury the Dead 3