Tag: fic

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

You probably weren’t supposed to be annoyed by people who were trying to help, but they just piled more expectations on you in the middle of your distress. Ollie felt like she had to worry about Jared above herself, so that was annoying and concerning at the same time, but then there were Dad and Cindy’s friends. It wasn’t politically correct to make this kind of division, but it really seemed like they were doing it for her: the men wanted to get together and drink and complain, all loud voices and stomping boots, and the women wanted to bring food to the house and sit and gossip.

Seriously, did women just have casseroles in the fridge, waiting for emergencies? It was one thing to have a hot dish for Sunday after church or for a funeral, but those were all planned ahead of time. Maybe they had frozen hamburger next to the bag of frozen mixed vegetables and cream of whatever soup waiting in the pantry, but seriously. The guys trooped out to one of the bars but the women swarmed and Ollie didn’t know them.

Jared didn’t go out to the bar, and Eli wasn’t going to leave her, so it was the two guys in this house of print blouses and rinsed hair and ostentatious jewelry and voices that really did sound like chickens, so apparently Meredith Willson knew his stuff. Cheep cheep cheep, talk a lot … And Ollie couldn’t tell if Cindy actually wanted all these people here, or if she was just malleable and the victim of her friends’ curiosity barely disguised with goodwill.

After Mom and Birdy’s memorial service, the lunch took place at the church. Dad hadn’t even allowed Ollie home at that point, so it didn’t matter that they wouldn’t all have fit inside anyway—nobody was allowed to come over unless it was Dad or someone delivering supplies. She wasn’t even sure he’d let anyone help him with the renovations. The gazebo wasn’t around back then, so all they’d had extra was a picnic table, and of course everyone swarmed for the funeral.

That day, everyone said nice things about Birdy. Rose-colored glasses things. Back then, they all remembered she was just a child.

Ollie couldn’t even try to tend to Cindy because three of the others attached themselves to her side and kept offering more food or more of something fizzy and pink that was probably made of Sprite and Hi-C. They asked her questions about how she was doing, which were really questions about what, exactly, her husband did to get arrested, and clearly restrained themselves from saying they’d told her so, even though that wasn’t actually true. When Cindy started dating Dad, everyone wanted her to know what had happened to her predecessor, but nobody thought Dad did it. That should’ve been enough tragedy for a lifetime.

She’d stopped counting the number of times she wanted to scream when, in a lull in the general kitchen conversation, one of the self-appointed three said “Well you know Randy didn’t do it because we all know who did.”

Ollie slowly set down her cup. Eli and Jared were in the living room, but the living room wasn’t exactly far away. She took a slow breath, because this wasn’t her house, and maybe she wasn’t even the one closest to the problem right now—did new wife trump daughter? After all, she’d moved out years ago, so Cindy was the one who counted on Dad being around for the day-to-day—when Cindy blinked and straightened up. “Get out.”

There was a pause and then some titters as the group prepared, en masse, to make excuses for her.

“Get out,” Cindy repeated, louder this time. “All of you, but especially if you’re so ignorant. I know Randy didn’t do it, but Eli didn’t do it, either, so take your dishes and your gossip somewhere I don’t have to listen to it. All of you, out. Ollie and Eli and Jared can stay, but I want the rest of you to leave.” Then, at a rising protest: “Now.”

One of them still tried: “Cindy, do you really think your husband—?”

“Randy’s spent too long with his head up his ass about Eli, okay?” she snapped back. “He’s just pissed because he wanted to keep Ollie to himself, as his little girl, for just about ever, and maybe because sometimes we aren’t actually the best people for our children, but he’s wrong. Eli didn’t do it, and I’m glad he and Ollie are finally getting married, and I want the rest of you out of my house.”

They didn’t move quickly—there was saran wrap and tin foil to put over their dishes, if they were taking them, and punch to negotiate, and some more snide remarks to mutter—but they did go. Eventually. Ollie practically chewed on her tongue to keep from responding to things like “Everett told me the wedding was off” and “Poor dear, doesn’t know what she’s saying,” but at least she didn’t taste blood. She followed Cindy into the living room, drifting a bit, and watched as her stepmom first locked the door, peered out through the curtains, and then flipped the bird at the final departing cars. It probably wasn’t possible for someone not to know that particular gesture in today’s world, but Ollie thought her stepmom had never actually used it before in her life.

“They’re going to talk about you,” Eli offered from the couch.

Cindy shook her head and crossed her arms. “Let them. If they’re saying I’ve gone mad with grief because I think you’re innocent, at least they’re saying you’re innocent.”

Eli smirked. “I don’t care what they think.”

No—he just cared what the random school board member thought.

“Olls, hey.” He reached for her hand and gave it a tug, pulling her to sit on the arm of the couch next to him. His eyebrows asked if she needed him to keep going on that, to verbalize the fact that she didn’t need to be thinking whatever she was thinking, and Ollie shook her head. Her eyes, though, flicked to Jared to ask her own question, and Eli’s mouth tightened. So. Not good.

Cindy sighed and checked her phone, scrolling through notifications or messages but apparently not finding what she wanted. “What are the chances they’ll just let him go, do you think?” she asked, sitting in the wooden rocking chair that Ollie always thought looked hard and uncomfortable, but it was Cindy’s favorite.

“Did you ask Deborah?” Eli wanted to know.

“Yeah, but she avoided answering. Something about how you can’t put percentages on these things.”

Ollie chewed on her lip, holding Eli’s hand in both her own and trying not to think that Mom would’ve yelled at her for sitting on the arm of the couch. Not this couch. This was the one that replaced the old couch. But she figured Mom’s rule would’ve applied to the new couch, too.

Eli took a deep breath and tried to settle in more comfortably. “It depends on what they think they have on him. If it’s just the blood type thing Len said, then that can’t be enough to actually charge him. They can’t prove how long anyone knew.” Then he blinked and really focused on Cindy. “Wait, did you know?”

She nodded. “Not right away or anything, but …” Cindy flushed.

Eli nodded hurriedly to indicate that no, she didn’t have to mention how such information might be relevant to Randy’s sex life, thanks. “They’ll want to hit him with that and see how he reacts. They try to get you angry or defensive so you just lash out without thinking. And they try to push it when your lawyer isn’t in the room and make you believe wanting a lawyer is already admitting guilt—anything to get you talking.”

Cindy closed her eyes. She didn’t have to say anything, though, because they all knew Randy.

“They might also have him right now to buy themselves time to look for something else, although I don’t know what they’d think they could find.” He gestured around the room that Randy had renovated so it didn’t look like two women died here. “There weren’t fingerprints or anything. No boot prints.” Because, if they’d had any of those, it wouldn’t have matched Eli. It would have matched the murderer.

Cindy sighed and checked her phone again before tucking it back in her pocket. “If it would make people feel better for Harper and Brad to come over, they’re allowed. Have them pick up dinner if they need something to do. I might …” She flapped a hand toward the stairs to indicate a retreat. “But they’re okay. If you want.”

“Do you think you’ll be hungry for anything?” Ollie asked.

Her stepmom almost laughed. “Moose tracks, maybe. A big old tub of moose tracks.”

Ollie nodded as she pulled out her phone, because it was really nice of Cindy to let other people help, even if it was just bringing her some ice cream.

---

Excerpts from the interrogation of Randall Clark by Lieutenant Samuel Johnson and Sergeant Parker Dennis, with Deborah Binkman present, June 27, 2019

SJ: Now, this isn’t going to be like yesterday, Clark. You know that, right? You can’t just walk out of here when we piss you off.

DB: Do you have questions for my client, gentlemen?

SJ: Sure we have questions. For example, how did it make you feel when you realized you weren’t Catherine’s biological father?

DB: To be blunt, gentleman, Birdy Clark was the product of a brutal rape. Her mother was violently assaulted and sexually battered. My client learned of this occurrence shortly after it happened and was understandably upset.

PD: Mr. Clark, we don’t have a record of a police report about a rape.

DB: No, gentlemen, your colleagues ridiculed Mrs. Clark and informed her they didn’t believe her. They said she was trying to cover up an affair. I could name names, if that would help.

PD: I’m sorry, but without that record, we can’t—

RC: My wife was raped, you bastards and—

DB: Randy—

RC:—you guys laughed in her face—

DB: Randy.

RC: I just—you wonder why more women don’t report it.

SJ: So you’re angry at the police, is what you’re saying. Not at your wife. Even though … well, maybe she was asking for it?

DB: Gentlemen.

PD: Sorry, Ms. Binkman.

SJ: Yeah? Because I’m not. You murdered your wife, Clark, so you’re trying to come up with some sort of story that … I don’t even know, because it doesn’t explain anything.

PD: We know about the blood drive.

RC: The blood …?

PD: When Catherine did the blood drive. For the first time. And she had that sheet with her blood type. Which, as far as we can tell, is the first time she ever got that information. And, since you knew your own … and your wife’s …

DB: Birdy’s blood type was not a surprise, since both Wendy and Randy were aware of the conditions surrounding her conception. Birdy herself was aware.

SJ: Yeah, well, we can’t ask her, can we?

PD: What about the gun, Mr. Clark?

RC: The gun?

PD: The gun. We went on a bit of a scavenger hunt yesterday by your cabin. A bunch of us with metal detectors. Your neighbors let us onto their property, too. We found a shotgun buried in the woods. The estimate is that it’s been there for about a decade.

DB: Exactly how did you come to this estimate?

SJ: You used it to shoot your wife and her daughter.

RC: Birdy was our daughter.

SJ: Not biologically. Which you knew by early June 2009. So on one of your daddy-daughter weekends, you broke into Ensio Kurtti’s camp, maybe in the middle of the night, and tried to throw us off because you took more than just the shotgun.

DB: Why didn’t this come up in 2009, gentlemen?

SJ: You got rid of the other guns but kept the shotgun until you could figure out how to do this. Except you got impatient and didn’t want to wait for the proper weekend, so you lied to Olive, told her Catherine wanted the change, and brought Olive to your camp so she’d be out of the way. Drugged, probably, so she wouldn’t realize you just dropped her off and left.

PD: She didn’t even realize she was drugged. She gave you your alibi.

SJ: Sneaky, using one girl against the other like that. So you came back, shot your wife and Catherine, and hightailed it back to Covington like you’d been there the whole time.

PD: Did you bury the gun that night while Olive was still drugged, or come back and take care of it later?

SJ: Mr. Clark, do you have any idea how long fingerprints can last on a buried gun?

DB: There is in fact no scientific way to determine how long a latent fingerprint will last, gentlemen.

SJ: Right, so … we get the gun to the lab …

PD: Mr. Clark, you haven’t been fingerprinted before, have you?

SJ: … and we have our answer.

DB: Gentlemen, even if you could prove that the gun you found is the murder weapon, if there are any usable prints on the gun, they won’t be a match to my client.

SJ: Right, right. Never fired a gun in his life.

PD: You know that’s hard to believe, Mr. Clark. You being a full-blooded Yooper and all.

SJ: Not very manly.

PD: Plus there’s the whole camp.

SJ: You tell me you have that camp on all that land and you’ve never gone after deer?

PD: No record of bow hunting, either.

SJ: I mean, that’s the entire point, right? You stole the guns so they wouldn’t be connected back to you. There’s nothing on paper that says you’ve ever shot anything before, so … when your wife and her kid get shot …

PD: It doesn’t actually look good, Mr. Clark. The complete lack of records.

SJ: You might even say it’s suspicious.

DB: Gentlemen, if you have no other questions, we have nothing to say to you at this time.

RC: Actually, I do have something to say.

DB: Randy—

PD: Go ahead, Mr. Clark.

RC: I didn’t do it. That’s all. We can be done now.

---

Bury the Dead 23 – coming April 23

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

Eli tried calling Jared again before they went up the crumbling concrete steps, but there still wasn’t an answer so his phone went into one pocket while he dug keys out of the other. It turned out that one of the unknowns on Dad’s usual key ring fit, but Ollie held back as Eli went inside, just in case Jared slept naked. Okay and maybe a little bit because she didn’t really want to see his initial reaction when Eli told him.

Eli went through the doorway from the living room—Jared had a separate one—into the other main room of the apartment, since that led him to the bedroom door, but Ollie stopped in the living room and let the door close behind her. She usually avoided coming here because Jared’s apartment made her sad. He’d been here for years and had permission to hang things on the walls, but hadn’t. Most of his furniture once sat on someone else’s lawn with a FREE sign on it, and the blinds were the ones that came with the apartment. He didn’t keep it neat so much as ascetic, and the cans not quite overflowing the plastic bin by the couch were about the only touch of personality. Ollie couldn’t imagine living like this. She couldn’t imagine Birdy living like this, and that was the depressing part, wasn’t it? There was absolutely no proof that Birdy and Jared would’ve stayed together if that night hadn’t happened, but Ollie was fairly certain Jared wouldn’t be here, like this, if Birdy were still alive.

She jerked out of her reverie when Jared came into view, pushing his hair back from his forehead with one hand while clutching a sheet around his waist with another. Ollie didn’t know guys did that outside of television shows that weren’t rated to reveal more than naked male torsos.

“Olls, what the fuck?” he asked, blinking.

“They just arrested Dad for the murders.”

“Yeah, that’s what he said, but …” Jared looked like he wanted to rub both hands over his face but caught himself just in time and made do with one. “Based on what? Len’s blood type information?”

She shrugged, crossing her arms and trying not to take too deep a breath. It didn’t smell bad in here, but Jared wasn’t the kind of guy to open windows and let in some fresh air. “I think they’d have to have more than that, but it’s not like they told us. They just pounded on the door and arrested him.”

Jared nodded, then shook his head. “Wait, you were up there? Your dad asked you to come?”

“Cindy asked us to,” Eli corrected. “Because Randy’s lawyer wanted us to. So he’s got one, and she was there, and she told him not to say anything until she got downtown.”

“But …” His hand worked over his face again, pulling it down into a mask of tragedy. “But Randy didn’t do it.”

And ten years ago Eli hadn’t done it, either, thanks. Ollie took a breath and firmly reminded herself she hadn’t seen Jared’s reaction back then, so maybe it was exactly the same. Jared saying Dad didn’t do it wasn’t Jared saying that Eli did. God, she needed some Excedrin.

“They have forty-eight hours to charge him,” Eli pointed out, either patiently or just slowly. “And there’s not really anything we can do in those forty-eight hours, but we thought you’d want to know.” He shrugged when his cousin turned to look at him. “And hear it from us instead of … I don’t know. Roger, maybe.”

Jared looked toward the front door and reflexively pulled the sheet higher. “Be right back,” he murmured, narrowly avoiding Eli as he returned to the bedroom and shut the door.

Eli sighed and jingled the keys in his pocket as he came to join Ollie in the living room, not relaxing enough to put an arm around her but touching shoulders. Well, letting her shoulder touch his upper arm because of the height difference. “There’s literally nothing we can do right now for your dad, hey?”

She nodded. “He’s got Deborah. That would be the only thing I can think of.”

“And Cindy?”

“I mean, I just kind of hope she doesn’t mess anything up.”

He sighed. The jingling stopped, but he hunched his shoulders. “They both need to just clam up. Let Deborah do the talking. But, uh … the police can lie to you, did you know? They could be telling him right now that they absolutely have some piece of evidence that proves he did it, just to see what he’ll say.”

Ollie opened her mouth to protest that Dad wouldn’t confess, but she shut it again before making a sound because hey, confession wasn’t the only thing they were after. Get Dad in a mood and he’d say a lot of things to add to the suspicion, especially if he thought he should stand on keeping all of Mom’s secrets. He didn’t seem to realize that it wasn’t being disloyal to Mom if they talked about it in order to keep Dad out of prison.

“God, Jared doesn’t even have a deck of cards,” Eli murmured, eyes roving around the room he’d seen hundreds of times before.

“We can go back to Dad’s. There’s that shelf of board games down in the basement.”

He almost smiled. “Did every kid think they were bored games because your mom only told you to play them when you were bored?”

Ollie tilted her head. “I think Mom usually got them out before we said we were bored. Like, if I was bored I’d get out a book and just sit there, but if Birdy didn’t have something to occupy herself, she’d get destructive.”

“Destructive.”

“Too much energy.”

He looked over, and then past, her. “Aw, hell. I was going to say you always see her through rose-colored glasses, but …” The blinds were open enough to see Len Wilcox coming their way.

“Maybe it’s just harder for me to forget that she was a literal child,” Ollie pointed out, locking the doorknob with one hand before pushing Eli back into the other room and out of sight. Len’s arrival didn’t have to interrupt their conversation

“I think he saw us.”

“There’s glare on that glass. And even if he did, nobody has to answer.”

“If he’s hanging around, we’re going to have a harder time getting back to your dad’s.”

Ollie shrugged and winced a little at the loud knocking, but at least Jared emerged from the bedroom and raised an eyebrow at them instead of calling out. “Len,” she explained.

Jared’s eyes closed briefly. “God. Okay. Get down under that window—he’s tall.”

Eli frowned, like he wasn’t sure what Len’s height had to do with anything, but then he nodded and the three of them sat on the floor beneath the window that Len would probably peer through, far enough over so that they wouldn’t be visible from the windows in the living room, either.

“It’s like an active shooter drill,” Ollie grumbled, hands linked around her knees. “Except the principal’s not going to give us an all-clear.”

Jared, on the other side of Eli, checked his watch. “Right, so how long do we give him?”

Ollie shook her head and then groaned when Eli started singing: “Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall …”

---

Phone Call, Roger Porvoo with Len Wilcox, June 27, 2019

RP: You find them?

LW: No. No answer anywhere.

RP: Cindy’s down at the station. She wouldn’t talk to me.

LW: I could have a run at her.

RP: Doubt it. She and I are in agreement: we both think this is because of you.

LW: I made connections, but I don’t have evidence.

RP: Speaking of connections, mine just gave me two things. He said “blood type” and “we found the gun.” Either of those mean something to you?

LW: They found the gun?

RP: Yeah, that’s what I said. He didn’t clarify. I don’t think they can even match an individual shotgun to the crime right after, much less ten years later, but that was it. “We found the gun.” Do you know anything about the gun?

LW: I know of a shotgun that was stolen only weeks before the murders.

RP: Yeah?

LW: It’s your town. Your own paper reported it.

RP: You city kids think you’re all the Lone Ranger. You know something about the Lone Ranger? He was useless. He was just the white guy who listened to Tonto.

LW: Randy’s blood type is O.

RP: Randy’s blood type is O. That’s, um … still basically nothing, kid.

LW: You can find everything else on your own. If you actually look. You telling me that reporters up here don’t do any better than the police?

RP: You don’t have many friends, do you?

LW: You know what? Not all of us had our best friend’s dad offering us steady gigs right out of college.

RP: You …

LW: It’s called research.

---

Bury the Dead 22 – coming April 22

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

Deborah left immediately to go downtown and be with Dad while they did whatever they did after an arrest—Ollie figured Eli could tell her, but she didn’t want to ask just now—and Cindy decided that she should go, too, even though that wasn’t on her list of orders. She was, in fact, supposed to stay put where neither police nor Roger Porvoo could question her.

Cindy clearly thought she knew better than some lawyer with years of experience, so she ran a brush through her hair, freshened her lip gloss, and told Ollie to lock up.

Right. So.

Eli took a slow breath and got up to freshen his coffee, moving slowly. In shock? Deep in thought? When he turned around and leaned against the counter, cup in both hands, he asked Ollie, “Have you and I ever been alone in this house?”

Ah. Deep in thought. “Uh.”

“I’m just saying. This is weird.”

Right. That was the weird thing about today.

He slurped some off the top. “What did you do last time?”

“Last time?” They’d never been alone in Dad’s house before.

“Yeah, last time. I get arrested and you … did you text people?” He frowned, pondering this as a sort of academic exercise instead of something deeply personal. “Do we text people that your dad just got arrested? Is that rude? Because I can’t see us calling everybody, and even if we do that, the first people are going to keep us on for so long the last people will get it from the grapevine before they hear it from us.”

Ollie pulled out her phone and just looked at it. “Honestly, I can’t remember.” She didn’t have an iPhone back then, but what phone had it been? A flip phone? The one with the full keyboard that pulled out with actual buttons instead of just a touch screen? “There’s a lot about that time I can’t remember.”

“Lucky,” he sighed, grabbing the pad of paper off the fridge and drinking more coffee so it didn’t spill as he sat down again. He plunked the mug on the table and tore off the shopping list on the first sheet before clicking open the tiny pen. “Okay. Jared, my mom … Harper and Brad, hey? And …?”

“Serena.”

Eli made a face. “Jared can tell her, thanks. She agrees with your dad.”

“With …?” Oh. Well. True, things had been tense between Serena and Esther for years, but Ollie had always assumed it had to do with the brothers they’d married.

He sighed and clicked the pen again. “Well. That was a good use of paper.”

“Group chap with Harper and Brad?”

He nodded, pulling out his own phone. “I’ll leave you out of the Jared one.”

“If he’s awake.”

“Shit.” He lowered his phone and leaned back to try to see into the mudroom. “You think his apartment key’s on your dad’s ring?”

“No clue.” And at least she had the easy ones to inform. Ollie pulled up the proper group chat and typed So Dad was just arrested for Mom and Birdy’s murder. There wasn’t any reason to pad it, and it wasn’t like she had any evidence she could share. Maybe Len started the police looking at Dad, but the suppositions of some hotshot true crime writer weren’t enough to get a judge to sign the warrant. They had to think they had something, but what? Seriously, after a decade … what?

Eli had his phone to his ear, but his mouth tightened and he sighed before saying “Hey Jare, when you get this, call me right back.” He lowered his phone, hesitated, and ended up texting someone.

“Your mom?” Ollie guessed.

“Jared. But we’ll probably have to go down there. Now I’m texting Mom.”

God, it was awful. Ollie couldn’t remember what happened to Esther after Eli got arrested. Someone came to get Ollie—was it Dad?—but Esther … well, she probably went downtown, like Cindy, because even if she couldn’t do anything, it still felt better to do nothing close by instead of sitting out here where you couldn’t be there in an instant if there was something you could do.

Her phone buzzed. WTF. Do you have any more information? Harper wanted to know.

Sort of. He’s got a lawyer and Len thinks he did it, but I don’t know what the police think they have on him. She didn’t really want to go into how Cindy called them up to the house and they got to see Dad get arrested, thanks. Clearly Harper knew how their last encounter went, since they volunteered Brad to perform the wedding ceremony, but … some things were just too much right now.

Okay make that most things. Maybe this was why she couldn’t remember what happened last time. Who wanted to move second by second through the minutes television and movies turned into montages? This was the boring stuff. She wasn’t even doing a training regimen so she could defeat her enemy in the epic battle sequence.

Waiting really was the hardest part. Being set to music didn’t make it any less poetic.

“Can I be weird for a sec?” Eli asked, eyes still on his phone.

Uh. “Sure.”

“I’m fine with being the one to barge in on Jared, but I’d feel better if you were the one who handed me your dad’s keys.”

Ollie shrugged and got up to look at the various options on the key hooks. Yeah, maybe it was kind of a strange dividing line, but she was used to working with boundaries. You could respect them without fully understanding them. She picked up Dad’s usual key ring and spread the keys out: his car, Cindy’s car, front door, back door … “There’s extras on this one,” she told Eli, holding it up. “But there’s more still on the hooks.”

He chewed on his lip. “How do you feel about grabbing them all?”

Ollie held out her hand because hey, the mud room really wasn’t that far from the kitchen table. “Toss me my phone?” She took a picture of the rest of the keys before grabbing them. It felt halfway between being nice and wanting to put them back in the proper place so Dad didn’t get annoyed, and being sneaky and wanting to put them back in the proper place so Dad maybe wouldn’t find out she’d touched them. Don’t darken my door again probably included don’t take my keys.

Eli held out both hands so she could pass them off with a jingle. “Thank you. You don’t have to come with me.”

She smiled, and it actually felt natural. “Like I have anywhere better to be.”

---

From a file on Len Wilcox’s laptop created June 24, 2019

Wendy and Birdy Clark were murdered late on June 19, 2009. Within forty-eight hours the police closed in around suspect Eli James Chapman and made the mistake of shutting off all other avenues of inquiry. Evidence contained within the case file remained there for me to find almost a decade later. It was neither hidden nor concealed, but rather overlooked. If it didn’t fit or support the theory of Eli Chapman as murderer, prosecuting attorney Carson Denomie had no use for it.

One of the biggest questions surrounding the double murder is “Where did the murderer get the gun?” Although shotguns are not uncommon in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, neither the Clark family nor Eli Chapman owned one. That is, none of them could be found to have purchased one legally.

In early June 2009, Ensio Kurtti pulled up to his camp outside of Covington, Michigan, and discovered that it had been broken into since he was last there. “Camps” in the Upper Peninsula refer to cabins in the woods, generally rustic and off the grid, mostly used for hunting. The Clarks were not hunters, but Kurtti was, and a number of his guns had been stolen. As of this writing three of them, including a shotgun, have not been recovered.

Kurtti’s closest neighbor in the woods is the camp owned by Randy Clark. It was here that Randy and his older daughter, Ollie, spent the night on June 19—according to their testimony. We cannot blame a nineteen-year-old girl in shock from the brutal murders of her mother and sister for insisting that she spent the night stargazing with her father, especially when the pair had indeed done so many times before. In the confusion, Ollie could easily agree that Randy was there all night without even realizing her mind had crossed the wires from a different night. Ollie could be hooked up to a polygraph machine and give her dad that alibi without moving the needles so much as a millimeter … but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

With the gun stolen from Kurtti’s camp, Randy had a weapon that could not be traced back to him and the means of committing the murders. The opportunity came during a daddy-daughter weekend when he unilaterally declared that the daughters should swap, feeding Ollie a half-baked lie that her sister would never be able to explain or deny. This only leaves the question of motive.

Birdy was not an easy child. Even her friends admitted it, breaking the taboo and speaking ill of the dead. Each one was defensive, but they all said it, even when declaring it was against their better judgment. Ollie was universally loved by her teachers, the “easy” child, but Birdy made up for that in spades. During Birdy’s senior year, when Ollie was out of the house as a college freshman, Birdy dialed it up to eleven. It took the murder trial and evidence displayed in court to start untangling the lies she told her friends … and that her friends believed.

As her father, Randy Clark endured the accusations that he favored one daughter over the other as an incompetent and unfairly biased parent as the rumors spread through the teenage grapevine and permeated the community. Without undergoing the embarrassment of throwing the family accounts open for public scrutiny, there was no way Clark could counteract Birdy’s claims. Teenagers delight in aggravating their parents.

Like the stolen guns from the Kurtti camp, there is another fact that was overlooked in the police’s scramble to pin the murders on Eli Chapman. Even Birdy’s friends seem to have forgotten it, perhaps because it shows a more generous side of the murdered girl: at the end of her senior year, despite a long-stated phobia of needles, Birdy donated blood for the first time at a local blood drive along with other members of her senior class. She brought the paperwork home where it was pinned up on the kitchen cork board so she wouldn’t lose it before she was able to donate again. This paperwork clearly displayed her blood type.

---

Bury the Dead 21 – coming April 21

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

It had been one of Johanna’s points at the trial: sure, Denomie’s story that Eli wanted to kill Wendy and Birdy so Ollie would inherit the money might have been a plausible one had her client been that ruthless, shortsighted … and telepathic. On the night of Friday June 19, 2009, there were only four people in the entire world who knew that Birdy was in South Range and Ollie was in Covington. Witness after witness testified to the Clarks’ known weekend schedule, from the girls’ closest friends to mere acquaintances. As far as anyone who wasn’t a Clark was concerned, up until the moment they saw Ollie alive, she was one of the victims.

True, it was either difficult or impossible to prove not knowing, but there weren’t any calls to or from the Clark household members on any of their phones that entire day. Both Ollie and Dad said the change was made at dinnertime and they left right after the dishes were done. The change agent, as one person called Birdy, hadn’t brought it up until shortly before dinner, and she hadn’t been out of the house between then and when Dad and Birdy left. Knowing what they did about Mom, Birdy wouldn’t have left after, so it was impossible for her to have told anyone.

Add to that the fact that Jared broke down utterly and completely when he saw Ollie on the twentieth. It was at Esther’s apartment, and she’d had to call an ambulance. He didn’t need just some calming shot—they’d taken him to the hospital. Ollie got the feeling Selena blamed her for Jared’s breakdown.

Dad licked his lips. “You …?”

“Everyone thought Ollie was dead that morning,” Eli said quietly, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. “News got around. The address, two bodies … it wasn’t even a question until you showed up.” He looked at Ollie and shrugged like he had to apologize for the tears. “Even Roger said he had to stop the wrong name from going to print. Nobody thought Birdy was the one home that night. That’s why Johanna couldn’t figure out another suspect.”

Dad closed his eyes. “Whoever did it thought he was killing Ollie.” If he knew who they were at all. If it wasn’t another Sean Kelly or a case of mistaken identity.

But it was also why Len’s explanation made a twisted sort of sense: Dad knew which of his daughters was where. He could’ve made the switch himself, lying about Birdy’s excuse and just telling the girls what was up. If this were a CSI episode there’d probably even be a full theory fleshed out around Dad, but it was still too early for that to be the final answer. If you kept an eye on the time, you knew when the team was just chasing a red herring. In this case, it was a second red herring about a decade after the first.

This was a useless line of thought. CSI solved most cases in a single episode. Serial killers popped up during sweeps week, but Sean Kelly had an alibi, and oh, man, Ollie’s head hurt.

Dad stared at Eli. “You thought Ollie was dead.”

“Yeah. That whole morning.” Eli’s smile was ghastly. “Just a glimpse into Jared’s reality, I guess.”

And Ollie hadn’t even thought of it. Hadn’t had time to think of it. There was the police car rolling up to the cabin and the man who knocked had seemed a bit stuck on getting her name right, looking back and forth between her ID and her face like she was trying to buy liquor, but the news … it overwhelmed everything. The officer called it in and barely stopped Dad from jumping right into his car and tearing on out of there. It wasn’t really an emergency anymore once everyone was dead.

Jared was in the hospital when he told the police he’d woken up and Eli wasn’t there. He was probably still hooked up to an IV and all kinds of monitoring. But he was an adult, and it was such a juicy detail, given at a time when nobody thought he could’ve made it up.

Johanna hadn’t been able to get the judge to throw it out, even with Jared’s own protests, but there was reasonable doubt there. Especially when Eli testified that no, he hadn’t been in the bedroom all night because he’d fallen asleep on the couch. There were no witnesses to that, but no evidence that he got up to anything else, either.

Okay and why did Ollie have to keep thinking about these things? Couldn’t they go back to knowing that it was Sean Kelly, a perfect stranger and completely senseless? It was an unsatisfying answer, but at least it was an answer. It was something that everyone, even Eli’s biggest detractors, could get behind.

Cindy set a cup of coffee down in front of Ollie and she blinked, wiping at her cheeks and uncertain how long, exactly, she’d zoned out. Before Cindy could say something, though, there was a sharp knock at the front door. “Police, Mr. Clark,” someone barked before they had any hope of answering. “We have a warrant for your arrest.”

Dad looked toward the back door but Deborah, the only one whose pulse might not have changed, shook her head as she swapped out her glasses. “They’ll be around the back, too. You’ll arouse more suspicion if you try it. Cindy, go on and open the door. Say nothing. That goes for all of you,” she added, as though Eli hadn’t been here before.

“But—”

“Mr. Clark, you say nothing to them unless I give you permission, and you certainly don’t speak to them when I’m not around,” she said sharply, now able to focus on him through her glasses instead of over them. “They’ve either already found something else or they want you out of here and stuck with them for forty-eight hours so they can find it, so don’t give them anything.”

“There’s nothing to find,” he protested, but men were already coming in, demanding to know if Mr. Clark had anything in his pockets and moving the glass Coke bottle out of his reach and reading him his rights and pulling out handcuffs and patting him down, and God, if the kitchen was crowded before … or if any of the others had a weapon and wanted to strike out … there simply wasn’t enough room for enough people to come in and frisk everyone, or to keep out of arm’s reach while frisking Dad, but come on. Shouldn’t they have cleared things out first?

Eli offered his hand and Ollie clamped both of hers on it because hey, she wasn’t the only one having flashbacks here. First he had to remember the morning of the twentieth, and now they were back at the twenty-first, except he hadn’t had a lawyer calmly announcing she’d join them all downtown and meeting the officers’ eyes, refusing to back down. It had just been Eli and Esther and Ollie, and the police—the good guys—took away the last solid thing in her life.

At least they didn’t have a search warrant. Although, once Ollie thought of it, she realized it was laughable: a search warrant for something that happened ten years ago, in a house that had been remodeled so no traces of the crime were left. When they released a crime scene, they let you get rid of the evidence.

After the men left with Dad and while Deborah gave a long list of instructions to Cindy, Eli moved his chair closer so he could pull her into his arms and just hold on.

---

Birdy Clark—June 19, 2009

Birdy watched Dad and Ollie drive away, waving back at her sister before letting the curtain fall over the living room window. Her heart was in her throat, in her ears, and somehow in her eyeballs, making the entire world pulse, but she forced herself to say it loud enough for Mom to hear: “I’m pregnant.”

Silence. Great. This was going to be one of those things where she had to turn around and actually look Mom in the eyes and see every single nuance—

Mom had her hands on her hips, her head cocked, and one eyebrow raised. “Child. I’m the last person on Earth to lecture anyone about unplanned pregnancies.”

“Yeah, but …” Birdy tried a deep breath that shuddered in her chest. “You had Dad.”

Mom’s second eyebrow joined the first and she nodded. “I think we need cocoa.”

Cocoa. She just told Mom she was pregnant and Mom said they needed cocoa. Although really … all things considered … Birdy shrugged and followed her back to the kitchen so she could have some cocoa.

“I’m fact-finding, okay?” Mom asked, reaching up to get the special cocoa mugs. Birdy thought it was a little silly they had special cocoa mugs, but she kind of liked it, too. “Jared’s the father?”

“Yes.” Just fact-finding, huh? God, you’d think this would’ve been easier.

“And he knows?”

Okay, seriously, no one should be that graceful while making cocoa. Mom was picture-perfect, barefoot in her red dress with her long blonde hair, like she didn’t actually have any care in the world. “I told him this afternoon.”

Mom glanced over but at least didn’t pin Birdy with her gaze. “How long have you known?”

“I took the tests this morning.” She decided she might as well sit, folding her hands together on the tabletop. “Two of them. Just in case.”

“All right. And Jared said?”

Birdy cleared her throat and looked out the window. “He proposed.”

Wendy clucked her tongue. “Sorry, honey, but you’re really making me pull information out of you piece by piece here. Lay it all on the table?”

She had practice with saying the I’m pregnant part—once, at least—but the rest of this was brand new. “He started figuring out how he could come to California with me and we’d get married and raise the baby. But I’ve been talking to Ollie, and she … ugh.” Birdy closed her eyes and slouched back. Why was this so hard? All the times she’d talked, sitting here at this table, you’d think she’d be able to just say it. The words had always come so easily before.

Mom just waited, because she made cocoa on the stove, slowly heating up the milk before stirring in the powder. It was her special mix of powder. Mom never used cocoa packets.

“Okay, so, Ollie said college has been really good because it’s with all these new people, in this new place, and you get to just show up without all this baggage from people who think they’ve known you forever and won’t let you be anything else, and every class she had to tell them it’s Ollie, not Olive, because nobody else beat her to it. And she could just be herself, but that’s fine for Ollie, because she’s always been herself and it’s good to be her and she just … I don’t want to keep being me.”

She opened her eyes to see Mom standing at the stove, slowly stirring the milk and listening intently.

“Like at what point … do you ever … have you …?” Birdy shook her head and tried another deep breath. “I’m here, and I look back at who I used to be, and I don’t know how I got from there to here, and I don’t know if I can even get back to who I was before, but I can’t do that with Jared because this is the me he wants. And I can’t just tell him that I woke up this morning and realized I don’t even like this me.”

Mom nodded slowly, still stirring. “Okay.”

“So … yes? You know how that feels?”

“Well.” Mom smiled wryly. “I have gotten into a few situations and wondered how the hell I ended up down here in the mud when it seems like two seconds ago everything was clean and clear.”

“But you had Dad.”

She held up a finger as she turned to get out the cocoa mix. “You’ve got Dad. And me. And Olls. So.”

Birdy scoffed before she could stop herself, because come on, it wasn’t the same.

With her back turned again, Mom asked, “Are you absolutely sure it’s Jared’s? No room for doubt?”

“He’s the only one who didn’t use a condom and I only just missed my period.” Being blunt didn’t actually make her feel better, and it was worse when she heard Mom suck air through her teeth. “What? You don’t think it’s a good thing?”

“Honey, you’re sitting here tonight alone instead of the two of you announcing it to all of us at once.”

Birdy blinked. “Oh.”

“You’re telling me it’s not a good thing, sweetie. Jared proposed and you said?”

She shook her head, watching Mom get out the marshmallows. “I didn’t say anything. I just burst into tears. He waited while I cried and then I said I had to get home for dinner.”

Mom tossed the package of marshmallows onto the table even though she usually rationed them out like it was WWII and turned to pour the cocoa into mugs. Birdy got the one with the couple on the ski lift and Mom had the one with the ice skaters, because those were the mugs they always got. “So he thinks it’s still on the table,” she mused, sitting down across from Birdy and carefully placing her first marshmallow into the mug so it wouldn’t splash. Then she stifled a laugh.

“What?” Birdy demanded.

“I was just thinking that, a century ago, we’d send you off to some relatives like nobody else would catch on, but …”

Birdy winkled her nose and kept her fingers on one half of her marshmallow while she dunked the other like a teabag. “No relatives.”

Mom tilted her head. “Ollie and Eli—”

“They wouldn’t want me living with them,” she interrupted.

“Plus Marquette isn’t far enough and it’s the first place Jared would look?”

Birdy nodded miserably. “I’m going to ruin their wedding.”

“Pfft.” Mom pretended to flick something—that thought—off the table.

“What? I’m either going to be big as a house or have a newborn.”

“If Ollie and Eli end up married at the end of the day, they’ll have a perfect wedding. Nothing’s going to faze them.”

She shrugged, taking refuge in that same old insolence. “I’m not going if Jared’s there.”

Mom sighed and made a bigger gesture, now backhanding something instead of flicking it. “If you tell your sister that you never want to see Jared again, she’ll want to know why, but she’ll also turn around and tell Eli she’s not marrying him if Jared’s there.”

Birdy wanted to protest—God, the armor was hard to put down—but that part was true. If Eli got to marry Ollie, none of the rest of it mattered. No wonder she was envious.

“Okay.” Mom reached across the table to take Birdy’s hands. “We don’t have to figure it all out tonight. Two important things, though, okay?”

Birdy nodded even though she wasn’t sure if she wanted to hear the two things.

“I love you. And whatever happens, whatever you decide, we need to put you first. Okay?”

“The baby—”

“The baby will be fine. Especially if we put you first and make sure you’re safe and happy. Okay? If you want to talk abortion, we’ll have to do that sooner rather than later, but otherwise we can get you in to see Dr. Huang and buy you vitamins and all the rest and you can have some time to think it through.”

“Dad …”

Mom smirked a little. “Dad might have a few uncomfortable flashbacks to before Ollie was born, but this is your life, honey. Not ours.”

“Dad loves Jared.”

“Dad’s not the one who has to spend the rest of his life with him. Okay? Dad doesn’t get to tell Ollie she can’t marry Eli just because the two of them are oil and water, and he doesn’t get to decide who you marry, either. So.” Mom squeezed her hands. “You first. Okay?”

Birdy wasn’t entirely sure it was, but she nodded to show she’d heard.

“Good. Now we can keep talking about this if you want to, or we can change the subject and do our nails and have more cocoa. Which,” Mom allowed as she tilted her head, “we could still do while we talk about it. So. Dealer’s choice.”

She smiled. “What if we did, like … a movie and then manicures and more cocoa?”

Mom smiled back. “Sounds like a deal.”

---

Bury the Dead 20 – coming April 20

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

Deborah Binkman, Esquire, looked like Carrie Fisher except for the fact that she sat ramrod straight in the kitchen chair with both feet flat on the floor. She had one pair of glasses perched on her nose with the chain dangling, and another hung around her neck on the same kind of chain. Only the color of the cat’s eye frames set them apart.

Between her briefcase, laptop, and legal pads, she had half the kitchen table to herself. The other chair on that side was pulled out, and presumably Dad and Cindy sat together facing her as they’d talked it through, but those three chairs weren’t enough now that Ollie and Eli were here. Not that Dad wanted to sit down with them, anyway—it was his turn to lean back against a kitchen counter, although at least the glass bottle currently in his hand was Coke. The kind with real sugar.

“Ms. Clark.” Deborah smiled up at her and gestured for Ollie to take a seat, even though it meant having her back to Dad. It made her realize she thought of Dad as a wild animal, which came with its own layers of guilt. “Cindy said you talked to Mr. Wilcox after your father’s interview.”

So Len was Mr. Wilcox and Dad’s interrogation was an interview. “We both did, yeah.”

She smiled and nodded at Eli, too. “Mr. Chapman. What can the two of you tell me about that conversation?”

“That’s private family business,” Dad rumbled.

“Mr. Clark, this is all in the name of protecting you from an impending arrest.”

“It’s all in the name of gossip and airing dirty laundry, and they won’t arrest me because I didn’t do it.”

Ollie wasn’t sure which of them moved first, but her left hand clamped solidly on Eli’s right, because seriously? Was it possible that Dad didn’t realize what he’d just said? Denial was one thing, and never underestimate the special snowflake beliefs of the white American male, but come on.

“Mr. Clark, you don’t have to be here for this.”

“Talking about someone when they’re not in the same room is the textbook definition of gossip.”

“Len’s all smug because he thinks he uncovered evidence that Randy killed Wendy and Birdy because he discovered Birdy wasn’t his biological daughter,” Eli said quietly but firmly. “He saw Wendy and Birdy’s blood types and got Randy to say his, so he concluded the whole paternity thing. He also thinks Ollie’s either a liar or got her nights confused so she’s not a good alibi about him being in Covington.”

Dad muttered a lengthy curse under his breath but didn’t offer up anything louder.

Deborah frowned. “If the blood types were in the information available to the police at the time …”

“Did they have yours?” Ollie asked, twisting around to look at Dad.

If possible, his scowl clicked up a notch. “How the hell should I know?”

The lawyer tapped a finger against her chin. Her fingernails were manicured but not polished. “They might have had access to that information but, since the prosecution focused so quickly on Mr. Chapman, paternity questions had no role in their narrative.”

Eli shrugged at Ollie’s look. “You can ask Johanna if she knew, but the whole ‘this doesn’t make any sense’ thing means she couldn’t pull together any sort of story against anyone else, either. Just … no evidence against anyone.” He closed his mouth before he could add what Ollie read in his eyes: Including me.

Deborah nodded slowly as she scrolled through whatever she had up on her laptop screen. “Mr. Wilcox saw a blood type and jumped on it?”

“Oh, he thinks you lied about Birdy asking for the change, too.” Ollie twisted around again without thinking even though she knew what Dad looked like when he was grumpy. “He said it doesn’t make any sense because you never would’ve argued Eli’s side.” Then, turning back to the lawyer: “We talked about it that weekend. Dad and me. About how it was a really flimsy excuse and we’d get the real story Sunday or Monday, but … yeah, it was weird.”

“A cry for help kind of weird?”

Ollie pursed her lips. “I think she wanted Dad to know it was serious. She didn’t want to tell him what the real thing was, but she needed him to believe her enough to make the switch. We’d never done that before—those weekends were set in stone. It helped Mom to have that schedule, so we didn’t break it.”

“So your sister had to lie about Eli to break it?”

“She had to tell him something that would make him stop short and not just dismiss her.”

Behind her, Dad made another grumbling noise again, but she didn’t catch any words. Still, Ollie guessed he didn’t like how she’d just casually suggested he often dismissed Birdy. Even though they all did. Sometimes all that drama was just too much to take.

Deborah looked over the frames of her glasses at Dad. “Mr. Clark, I take it you would never have encouraged your daughter to accept a marriage proposal from Mr. Chapman?”

“Birdy and Jared? Sure. Ollie and Eli? Hah. Absolutely not. I get that she’s the best thing to happen in his miserable life, but some of that misery’s your own making, Eli, and you don’t get to drag my daughter down just because you think she’s some sort of life preserver. You can look at her with those puppy dog eyes all you want, and you got Wendy on your side, that’s for sure, but Ollie deserves better than you. Especially after all this. God, I don’t even know what you were thinking. All that just to get her piddling college account.”

Ollie turned around slowly, this time sliding in the chair instead of simply twisting. “Dad, if Eli did it … showed up that night with the shotgun?”

He waited, arms crossed firmly, one eyebrow raised in challenge.

“The guy who killed them shot through the screen door, right? When they were both backlit?”

“And? So it made it easier. He didn’t have to look at them while he killed them.”

“Eli didn’t know we’d switched. If it happened the way you said, he would’ve thought he was killing me.”

Dad opened his mouth to retort, clearly meaning to give some sort of snappy comeback, but it remained open and silent as he simply stared.

---

Excerpts from Len Wilcox’s notes, December 17, 2018

What a lunch. I’m grateful Dubrowski’s willing to share his contact info, but man, there’s something about this family. They’re all down here to talk to him, because I’m not enough of a draw—yet, at any rate—and it’s weird.

Okay, so this is the Clark family. Mom Wendy and daughter Catherine were killed in this dinky town north of nowhere in Michigan in June 2009. Classic Kelly: Catherine shot in the face at the door, mom through the chest in this little passageway between the kitchen and living room. (I’ve got diagrams of the house. Everything is little. I guess they don’t have a lot of trees up there.)

Going in, I figured the clincher would be the living daughter’s boyfriend. Same boyfriend now as back then, can you believe it? He went on trial for the murders, everyone thought they were over, but true love conquers all. Let’s get his side. He didn’t say much. He’s not really the strong, silent type—too geeky—but he didn’t give an inch. I’ll have to wear him down.

The older daughter, Olive, didn’t have much use for me, either. Can women be the strong, silent type? Silent, yes. Not so sure on “strong.” Brown hair, brown eyes, average figure … nothing stands out about her.

Try the stepmom next. Looks nothing like the real mom. Wendy was blonde with blue eyes, a total knockout. The sort of woman wrap dresses get made for. This new one, Cindy, is plumper than Olive. The cozy cuddly librarian, I guess, instead of the frosty old maid, but yow. Imagine being her. Who the fuck would want to marry into this little disaster of a family?

It’s the dad who made the bill worth it. I get silence from the kids, these stony, sullen faces, and new wifey just keeps looking admiringly at him as he talks—with his mouth full, and if that man’s seen a dentist lately, that guy’s license should be revoked—and he keeps pulling out all these photos.

Bingo. Every family has one. This man is desperate to tell you about the perfection that’s his dead wife and child, and he doesn’t freaking care if new wifey and other child are sitting right there. You know what’s even better? Dead kid was dating boyfriend’s cousin—talk about a time when you need the bulletin board and red yarn—and cousin’s the golden child. Even more golden than the dead kid. I’m surprised Dad didn’t bring him down here, too, so he could squeeze those broad shoulders into the booth along with the rest of them and flash me a grin with teeth that know the touch of whitening toothpaste.

This guy has so many tells. He’s so anxious to spill his guts and can’t read the room even of his nearest and dearest. You’ve got the kids who just want to get this over with and get Kelly convicted so she can stop being that girl whose mom and sister got murdered and he can stop being the one who murdered her mom and sister, and a wife who’s somehow decided to hitch her cart to his dying star for … I don’t even know what. There’s no chemistry there, so it can’t be sex. Maybe she was just sick of being an old maid.

The dad’ll get me enough for that part of the book, and maybe he can even get me interviews with some of the others. Friends and whatnot. If it’s the family asking, a lot more of them say yes. Then all I have to do is turn on the charm and make them think they’re the most interesting person in the conversation, and there we go. Pull out the juiciest lines, mix it all together, and that’s another chapter done.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of a serial killer book before. This thing’s going to write itself.

---

Bury the Dead 19 – coming April 19

Ollie Clark—Thursday, June 27, 2019

Ollie groaned at the text from Cindy and showed Eli her phone. Dad’s lawyer is here and wants to talk to you.

Eli stirred his coffee, tilting his head from side to side. “On the one hand, she’s making sure you know it’s actually his lawyer.”

“What, before I start ranting to one stranger about how he spilled his guts to a different stranger who wants to get him arrested?” Ollie set the phone on the table, plunked her elbow down next to it, and propped her chin on her fist.

“On the other hand,” he continued, nudging her mug closer, “we’re not allowed to darken that door again. So.”

The little dots danced and then revealed She’s told Dad in no uncertain terms that she needs to talk to you, even if he wants to be a whiny brat and leave the room.

Eli raised an eyebrow. “Do you think the lawyer actually said ‘whiny brat’?”

“Children’s librarian,” Ollie murmured, picking up her phone but then hesitating. “I don’t have to rope you into this.”

“I don’t have work and I’m sure as hell not packing if you’re not here to marvel over the wonderful job I’m doing.”

“Praise kink,” Ollie muttered, shaking her head as she typed We’ll be up there soon.

“Slow burn, hurt/comfort, fluff and angst.” He winked. “Adult content. By clicking here, you agree that you are over eighteen and consent to see—”

“Yeah, let’s bookmark that for later.” Ollie chugged the rest of her coffee and considered her shorts and t-shirt before deciding that a lawyer who made house calls had probably endured worse. “Okay.”

“Not flip-flops,” Eli cautioned, going to grab some socks so he could put on sneakers instead of sandals. “You know. In case we need to run back home.”

She rolled her eyes. “Beat Jared’s time trial. Hey, you heard from him today?”

Eli shook his head. “Way too early. His phone’ll be on silent, so unless your dad went and broke down the door …”

“Doesn’t he have a key?”

“Maybe. If your dad’s ever asked for one. Randy’s the only guy Jared’s ever had trouble saying ‘no’ to.”

Ollie’s phone buzzed again before she dropped it into her purse. Coffee’s on.

Eli nodded. “So she’s anxious.”

Cindy didn’t need to be anxious to put the coffee on. “They just got into the biggest fight of their marriage because Dad wants to blame you for the murders and now super stud Len Wilcox is trying to get her husband arrested.”

Eli grimaced but got the door and gestured her out first. “So, I’m not saying your dad’s stupid but, if he actually did do it, trying to focus all the attention on me is about the worst move.”

“Yeah?”

“Sure. I’ve already been dismissed. I,” he announced with theatrical grandiosity, “have been vindicated by no fewer than four separate podcast episodes.”

She wrinkled her nose. “You actually listen to those?”

“I have, yeah. I know they tell authors not to read reviews, but …” Shrugging, Eli took her hand as they crossed the parking lot. “I did at least wait until other people listened and posted and gave away the ending.”

“Who’d they say did it, then?” Since presumably these episodes were published more than six months ago, before Sean Kelly got his own wave of podcasts.

“Two of them said it was a stranger or a mistake. One of them went for your dad, and the other …”

“The other?”

“It was one of those dynamic duo podcasts. One of them said a stranger, and the other … she said Jared.”

Ollie wasn’t sure what sound came out of her, but it wasn’t very ladylike. “Jared?”

“Yeah. So it’s probably a good thing they didn’t know Birdy was pregnant, or else she would’ve said he killed her to keep from getting tied down.”

She chewed on her lip, not really keeping an eye out as they walked because there just wasn’t much traffic in South Range and Eli would pull her to a stop, anyway. Jared knew Birdy was pregnant. The math meant she wasn’t that far along, unless it was someone else’s kid, in which case Jared wouldn’t have been tied down, anyway. If Birdy came after him for child support, he’d say sure, after we do the DNA test, and bingo. Except Jared wasn’t angry about it last night. He was sad. And oh, God, that totally put him on par with Dad, didn’t it? They’d both lost their partner and their child. Dad wasn’t going to stick at the whole idea of potential child, not with everything he and Mom went through with Birdy. So if Jared knew Dad knew …

But there were other things Jared wouldn’t have known. “How did this podcaster get around the fact that I was supposed to be the one home that night? Like, if he wanted to kill Birdy, why didn’t he go out to Covington?”

“Yeah, that’s what the other one pointed out. Plus how angry do you have to be to kill someone and her mother because hey, by the way, birth control isn’t just on the partner with a uterus?”

“I mean, if it’s the uterus that pisses you off …” Still, she shook her head, because Jared? Jared was self-destructive. He drank and he hid from the world and he refused to socialize and he wouldn’t even buy self-help books. She couldn’t imagine Jared killing anyone other than himself, and definitely not Birdy. Sure, it might’ve been six weeks, but in those six weeks his entire universe revolved around Birdy. Her death tore his life apart.

“Yeah, nothing makes any sense,” Eli agreed. “It would’ve been so much easier if they could’ve made it stick with me, but uncertainty is part of life.”

Ollie shook her head. “We had our certainty. Sean Kelly.”

“And now it’s not him, so we’re back to the uncertainty. And,” he added with an apologetic shrug, “we’re probably going to be stuck there. It was a freaking miracle we had Kelly in the first place.”

If you could accept a serial killer as a miracle, maybe, but Ollie knew what she meant. She chuckled, though, and nodded at Dad’s driveway instead. “How much can you trust a lawyer who owns a Prius up here?”

“Maybe she owns two cars. She’s successful enough she can do the Prius in the summer and something hearty in the winter. So really, it’s a good sign.”

“Yeah, I’m just going to say that having to talk to a lawyer is never a good sign.” But Cindy had the door open already and stood there fiddling with the hem of her blouse as she waited for them to come in, so Ollie gave Eli’s hand a tug and went on up the steps.

---

Phone Call, Roger Porvoo with Len Wilcox, June 27, 2019

RP: Hey, Len, it’s Roger.

LW: Hi Roger.

RP: You know, I’d like to get you on the record. I don’t want to say you were hiding things from me on Monday, but …

LW: You recording right now?

RP: I am.

LW: I’ve got nothing to put on the record at the moment.

RP: At the moment. So. What are you thinking? Is he going to get arrested? Can I get some insights then?

LW: No comment at this time.

RP: Come on, Len. You can’t keep this kind of thing all to yourself. Make nice with the locals, hey? Throw me a bone to tide me over until you publish whatever you’re going for.

LW: Rog, come on. You know how this goes.

RP: I do know how this goes. You’re the one who doesn’t seem to get it. You’re not a lone wolf here, kid. And if you sit on it, and something happens, the police might mention your name during a press conference. Once. Then, if you try to publish your own tell-all, you’ll get swamped by angry people saying you’re trying to take the credit for their hard work. Back the blue. So the way this goes, Len, is you give me a comment now about the fact that you’re involved, and then, later, you let me have a teaser before you drop the full piece.

LW: I don’t think—

RP: You don’t have to think, Len. If you don’t go on the record now, I’ll be the one pointing out your Monday-morning quarterbacking and how you’re trying to take credit away from our good men and women with your city smile and capped teeth.

LW: They’re not—

RP: Final question: do you have anything you want to put on the record?

[long pause]

LW: I would like to express … my gratitude … for everyone who’s been willing to speak to me about the murders and … if anything this project uncovers … assists … the police in any way, I only hope that the Clark family can find closure.

RP: Clark family, huh? Every single member?

LW: No further comment.

---

Bury the Dead 18 – coming April 18

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

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

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

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.

---

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.

---

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.

---

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