You Like It Darker

Danny Coughlin dreams that a dead woman is buried in a shallow grave behind an abandoned gas station. She wears a charm bracelet on one wrist, which a dog is chewing. Danny lives in a trailer park and is the head custodian at Wilder High School in Kansas. He enjoys working in the summer without the chaos of students undoing his efforts. Two students work with him: a Black teen named Jesse Jackson and a truant worker named Pat Grady. The morning after his nightmare, Danny uses the library computer to look up the gas station from his dream and finds a picture of it. When Pat arrives late to work, Danny threatens to fire him.

Danny calls his ex-wife, Margie, to make sure they never drove past the gas station. Their relationship is amicable, though Danny harassed her in the past when he had an alcohol addiction, leading to his arrest over a restraining order. Danny is close friends with a neighbor, Becky, and her daughter, Darla Jean. That weekend, he drives to the gas station to prove the dream wasn’t real. There, however, he finds the dog and sees the dead woman’s arm, on which is a charm bracelet. To ward off the dog, Danny puts a trash barrel over the arm. Using a burner phone, he makes an anonymous police report. He discards the phone but fails to remove the SIM card. That night, a news report states that police found the body. Further reports indicate that the woman, a hitchhiker from Oklahoma, was raped and stabbed to death. One night, the news plays Danny’s call recording, so he worries that the police consider him a suspect.

Two officers from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation visit Danny at work to ask about the dead woman. Introducing themselves as Franklin Jalbert and Ella Davis, they explain that they traced the anonymous call to him after finding the discarded burner phone. They reveal the dead woman’s name, Yvonne Wicker, and confirm that Danny is the only person known to have visited her burial site. Though he’s reluctant to explain how he knew where she was buried, Danny tells the officers about his dream. They mock him, especially after Danny reveals that he never had psychic dreams before. The officers challenge him to submit a saliva sample to compare against samples found on Yvonne’s corpse. Danny agrees.

Jalbert reads Danny his Miranda rights before he and Davis pressure him to admit that he’s Yvonne’s killer. Danny denies it. The police search his truck and his trailer. Jalbert and Davis schedule an interview at the police station. A neighbor gives Danny the number of a real estate lawyer named Edgar Ball, who agrees to represent him. Becky distances herself and Darla Jean from Danny after learning that he’s a suspect. In the hotel, Jalbert winds down by adding up the numerous folding chairs in his room. When forensic analysis clears Danny of involvement, Jalbert assumes that Danny wiped his truck and trailer clean.

Before the interview, Davis notes to Jalbert that Danny was relieved when they asked for a saliva sample. Ball arranges the terms of his retainer with Danny and defends him from the officers’ accusations. They demand his phone, but Ball points out that they need a warrant. Danny accounts for his whereabouts when Yvonne died and gives the officers his phone when they insist. Davis mentions that Yvonne’s fingerprints were on the truck, which Danny says is a lie. They discuss Danny’s dream, and he agrees to a polygraph test. When the officers again press him for his whereabouts, Ball realizes that they don’t know Yvonne’s time of death and are still trying to establish plausibility that Danny killed her. Danny reiterates that he knew her location only because of the dream and challenges the officers to arrest him. Sensing that Jalbert won’t budge, he implores Davis to find the killer. Davis is bothered that Danny called her bluff.

Danny experiences “the week from hell” (141). He fires Pat after he’s late for work again, so Pat’s parents file a complaint against him. The next day, Plains Truth, a free newspaper, publicizes Danny’s involvement in the investigation. Ball and Danny suspect that Jalbert leaked his name to the press. By Wednesday, Danny loses his job due to “budgetary reasons,” though he gets the comptroller to admit that it’s because of the case. On Thursday, Jalbert harasses Danny at the grocery store, publicly calling him out. Danny tells Davis about Jalbert’s compulsion to count things out loud. She remains unsympathetic but privately has difficulty reconciling her convictions with the case. Danny then calls his brother Stephen (who lives in Colorado) and learns that Davis called him for information. Danny is concerned that Davis may have upset Steven, who has autism.

On Friday, someone throws a brick at Danny’s trailer, telling him to leave the park. Jalbert works with Henry Calten, a highway patrol trooper, to plant incriminating evidence on Danny. At the school, Jalbert breaks into Danny’s truck, but Jesse alerts Danny to Jalbert’s presence. Jalbert tells Danny to give an official statement at the police station. He reports that Yvonne’s body was returned to her family and then mocks Danny’s reaction. Danny confronts Jalbert about his impulsive habits, which indicate stress-induced arithmomania. When Jalbert leaves, Danny finds a small envelope of drugs in his truck. He hides the envelope, reports the intrusion to Davis, and then goes to the police station. On the way, Calten stops him but fails to find the drugs under the driver’s seat. Danny meets Ball at the police station and delivers his statement. When the county attorney urges Danny to remain in town, he challenges the police to arrest him. Citing the threats he has received to his well-being, he says he’s considering moving to Colorado.

Danny privately shows Davis the envelope Jalbert planted. Davis cautiously agrees to corroborate Danny’s story. He asks about her faith, asking her to believe in him if she can believe in God, and cautions her about Jalbert. Davis agrees that Jalbert has arithmomania. Jalbert obsesses over Danny’s challenge to arrest him, interpreting it as mocking the police. At the hotel, he’s upset when housekeeping removes the folding chairs he has been counting from his suite. Davis interviews Jesse, who corroborates Jalbert’s intrusion and expresses outrage over his harassment of Danny.

Danny’s neighbor asks him to leave the trailer park, and he calls Steven to talk about moving to Colorado. Darla Jean is upset since she likes Danny. Meanwhile, Davis visits the Plains Truth reporter, and the recording of the anonymous tip identifies Jalbert as the caller because of arithmomania. Jalbert reports his progress to police officials, but his assertion that Danny is the killer doesn’t convince them. Davis confronts Jalbert about his illicit behavior, telling him to withdraw from the investigation and retire. Jalbert angrily denies her accusations, but Davis has built her claims on interviews with everyone, including Calten.

Before Danny leaves town, Jesse expresses his support for him. Ball later informs him that while other newspapers have picked up the story that Danny is a suspect, rumors abound that Jalbert is leaving the investigation. Jesse invites Danny to breakfast and reassures him that online comments on the news stories suggest the public is largely on Danny’s side. When they return to Danny’s trailer, Yvonne’s brother, Albert, is there waiting and shoots Danny with a revolver.

Danny recovers from his injuries at the hospital. Davis informs him that the police apprehended the killer, a plumber named Andrew Iverson. A survivor escaped from captivity and identified Iverson. Among his kill trophies were charms from Yvonne’s bracelet. Danny refuses to press charges against Jalbert, but Jalbert’s superiors agree to finance Danny’s hospitalization if he withholds Calten’s involvement from the press.

Jalbert is back home working on a jigsaw puzzle when he hears of Danny’s shooting. Initially thrilled, Jalbert is less enthused to learn that Danny survived. Davis tells him that Iverson was apprehended as the killer. Jalbert is still convinced that Danny was somehow involved. He decides that Iverson and Danny collaborated and sets out to kill Danny himself. To divert the police, he calls in a fake bomb threat at the high school. In the hospital, Danny has a second dream, anticipating Jalbert’s attack. He calls Davis to warn her. Davis rushes to the hospital and intercepts Jalbert at the entrance. Jalbert insists that Danny is guilty, but Davis tells him she knew to come only because Danny saw it in a dream. After a scuffle, Jalbert dies by suicide. Davis checks in on Danny; both are unsure why he had the dreams. He reminds her that “belief is hard” (234).