Lies We Bury

by Elle Marr

  “You got it, Claire. Oh, and here’s a TriMet pass for getting around the city while you’re doing work for us. Just one of the many Post perks.” Pauline hands me a card with a bus in the foreground.

  “Ah. Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” she says, as though the extra emphasis will nourish me the way an increase in wages might. She smiles before walking out the glass door.

  From among the book spines, I find the brightest ones in the collection—Crayola red, Egyptian blue, and spring green—then move them to a shelf by one of several windows along the back wall for the best lighting. I ask Amanda to stand in front of my makeshift backdrop, and she automatically adopts a charismatic smile. Not her first photo shoot, either, apparently.

  “So what do you do for digital marketing?” I ask, snapping two test shots. “Can you tilt your head forward a bit?” There’s more shadow in the room than I’d like, and I narrow the aperture of my Canon for a sharper image.

  “Like this?”

  “You got it.”

  She switches to a more subdued, pensive smile. “I lead a team of three marketing specialists and four college interns.”

  “Sounds like a full plate. Can you cross your arms and hug your elbows? That’s great.”

  “Yeah, it’s a lot. Luckily, I live and breathe social media, so it doesn’t feel like work.” The laugh tumbles out of her like it’s too big for her throat. “Our job is to make sure Portland readers know where they can find reliable and accurate news.”

  “Is that a problem, generally?”

  “Not exactly. I mean, most of the news that outlets are reporting is all from the same handful of sources: the police, eyewitnesses who want their five minutes of fame, or government officials. For that reason, it’s about building brand loyalty with readers versus trying to be the first ones to report. There’s no way you could know what to report on first, every time, unless you were the criminal.” She grins again, lifting an eyebrow.

  “That makes sense. Let’s do a series of profile shots. Then I think I have everything I need.”

  Amanda gives me her left side and smiles at a shelf in front of her.

  I lift the viewfinder to my eye, but her words roll through my head again. No way you could know . . . unless you were the criminal. If anyone knew I took photos of Four Alarm before it was a crime scene, would I be a suspect?

  When I don’t click the shutter, Amanda turns back to me. “Uh. Claire, right? Everything okay? Should I do something different?”

  “No, you’re good. The focus was off,” I mumble. “I read on the Post website about the Four Alarm death. Has the brewery staff been cleared of suspicion?”

  “Too early to tell. Word on the street is that one guy is being looked at for having ties to the S&M community, but no one has been arrested.”

  “Sadomasochism?”

  Amanda meets my eyes with a smirk. “Right? As if being into a little kink means you’re into murder.”

  I nod, then snap another three photos. “Any other crimes like this recently? Or similar crimes in the past? A woman being held underground and then killed.” Speaking the words feels wrong, as though I might out my origins accidentally. Remember that one guy who held three women underground and made them bear children?

  “Or killed and then moved underground—there have been a few,” Amanda says. “From years ago. Three others that all involved bunkers or basements or something weird going on belowground. The crime team has been trying to dig up those details since the weekend, but they’re short on help.”

  “Lots of people on PTO, huh?” I ask, remembering Pauline’s explanation for the last-minute coverage of the parade.

  “That, paternity leave, and someone else quit out of the blue.”

  A midmorning shadow slides down the window, followed by a rumbling noise. An airplane dips low, probably landing at Portland International Airport, and obstructs the light for a final shot. Unease seems to paint Amanda’s face in the gloom of the cavernous room. Then the airplane’s engine fades into the distance, and the sunrays return.

  I snap the shutter button and tell Amanda we’re done. She leaves, promising to send the next subject upstairs. I remain at the window, digesting her words, waiting for the sun’s warmth to energize me. Instead, a cold, clammy feeling persists along my skin.

  When a man knocks on the glass, I jump and almost drop my camera to the floor.

  “Claire? You ready for me?” The man Pauline called Elliot peers at me from the doorframe. He runs a hand through gray-threaded black hair, then tucks a thumb into his belt loop. Although he must be nearing fifty, his shirt buttons strain against the muscles of his chest. “I got Kasey covering for me on the police scanner for the next twenty minutes.”

  “You’re with marketing, too?” I ask.

  A conspiratorial gleam enters his eyes. “Newspapers run pretty lean nowadays, so I’m on three different teams. The interns find it funny that the old guy is in marketing—as if social media and publicity are just for kids. What can I say?” he adds. “I surprise people.”

  Glancing down at Amanda’s wary expression on my screen, I clutch my camera closer. “I know the feeling.”

  Jenessa’s phone goes to voice mail as I cross the river to the house she rents in North Portland. She hasn’t invited me over since I moved here, but I have to speak to her. There’s no one else in the city who will understand the panic blurring the white dashed lines of the asphalt. If there is a link between this victim and me, there’s only one person I can speak to freely about it. My sister.

  Hurtling over the bridge at a speed too fast, I pass individuals standing at the thick-beamed railing, alone and seemingly deep in thought. Are they contemplating jumping right here and now or planning out a return visit under cover of darkness, as I would?

  The city Rosemary moved us to after we left Portland didn’t have a major river that would assist a suicide attempt—only a lazy one that wound through the desert town. Despite our torrid beginnings, my mother didn’t even own a gun, too terrified that one of us, herself included, might do something drastic. She wasn’t wrong. Although the obvious means of hurting myself were out of reach, I never let that stop me.

  I merge onto another freeway and swerve onto the shoulder to avoid a car ambling forward. Breezy. Calm. Carefree.

  A sign for Jenessa’s exit looms around the corner, and I hit my blinker with a shaking hand. Following the directions the navigation app on my phone provides, I turn right and pass a pet hotel next to an Asian grocery outlet.

  I park my car in front of a bungalow with yellow trim. Before climbing the stairs, I look in each direction to see if anyone else just parked, too, or might have followed me from downtown.

  “Jenessa? Open up—it’s me.” I knock again on my sister’s door, then press my ear to the peeling paint of the wood. No footsteps come to greet me. An ambulance siren howls from the next block over. “Jay, you home?”

  “Marissa? What are you doing here?”

  I turn and face my sister’s surprised expression where she’s paused on the cracked sidewalk. Worry lines mark her forehead in the direct sunlight, and her jet-black hair appears wiry. She’s aged since the last time I saw her (when she graduated from rehab again), but so have I. A bag of groceries digs into each of her thin shoulders before she sets them on the ground.

  “I’m sorry to drop in on you like this after I canceled yesterday,” I begin, feeling myself sliding into old patterns with her. Always apologizing. Always the one at fault. “I need to share something with you.”

  She stiffens. “What’s wrong? Is everything okay? It’s not Lily, is it?”

  I shake my head. “No, nothing to do with Lily. As far as I know, she’s fine. It’s something else. Can we talk inside?”

  Jenessa picks up her grocery bags, then sniffs. “You’d think Lily would figure out cheap international calls at some point. Isn’t Switzerland supposed to be more advanced than us? All those electronics and watches?”


  We pause at the door while she digs in her pocket for keys. Wild roses bloom along the sidewalk plot in a thick hedge, mostly red but some yellow. Jenessa inherited her mother’s green thumb. Nora often sent us photos of Jenessa posing beside Nora’s latest prizewinning hydrangea or rhododendron, but Jenessa never looked too pleased in those photos. In each picture, she always had both hair and makeup done for the occasion. She was Nora’s pliable doll until she hit adolescence.

  “Good thing I went shopping. You hungry?” she asks. “Did you drive all the way out from the suburbs? You could have called.”

  “No, downtown. Work for the newspaper I told you about.”

  Jenessa smiles, the first time, as she opens the door. “That’s right.”

  She kicks off her shoes, and I do likewise. A quick tour of her two-bedroom house confirms she lives alone—no pets, no nosy roommates. She explains that the creaking I hear with each footstep is the house’s invaluable “charm.”

  We settle into a worn couch and armchair in her living room. A bookshelf sits against the wall opposite, and I can make out a few titles on the spines. Getting Right in a Wrong World. When Horrible Things Happen Again. Wedged in an empty spot is a framed photo of the three of us—me, Jenessa, and Lily—the only photo in the space. We must have been fourteen; Lily, ten. The photo captured a moment of joy when we discovered a kitten behind the rear tire of Rosemary’s car. Lily holds the kitten, triumphant, above her head.

  “So can I get you anything?” Jenessa asks, sinking into the couch cushions. “What was so urgent that you came directly here?”

  “This.” I withdraw yesterday’s folded piece of paper from my pocket and lay it between us. Jenessa reads it, her eyes widening with each line. She lifts a hand to her mouth, as I did. As much as I don’t like thinking about who links us, the genetics we share can’t be denied.

  “What the hell is this?” she whispers. “What the fuck is this?” She leaps to her feet and backs away from me, nearly tripping over her coffee table.

  I inhale a breath, try to keep us both calm. “I found it on my windshield.”

  “Well, what do you think it means? Why four alarms? Why aren’t you freaking out?” Jenessa’s eyes dart across the page as she rereads it.

  “That’s a brewery.” I do my best imitation of a woman’s elevator voice: cool, measured, collected. Even as I remember all the times Jenessa threw wild temper tantrums growing up, the peaks of her mood swings, and that she may just be getting started. We have that in common, too.

  “There was a murder committed there Saturday. A body left in an underground tunnel. I don’t know, it’s all—” I pause, searching for the right words, for her confirmation that this is as bad as it feels. “This person knows who I am.”

  Jenessa rubs her arm where I notice she’s broken out into hives. We each look down at the paper again. The last time I felt this anxious was three years ago when a middle-aged woman followed me to each of my four jobs for a week—then drove an hour to appear on Rosemary’s doorstep under the guise of selling beauty products. She said she wanted to be friends with our family and that she had survived a terrible upbringing, too. Judging from her lack of boundary recognition, we weren’t interested.

  “You know what?” Jenessa taps the page with a gray lacquered nail, still standing. “I think I know who wrote this.”

  “What? Who?”

  She begins to chew on a fingernail, reading again. “Last week, I was approached by someone. He called out of the blue—no idea how he got my number—and pitched me this book idea, wanted me to act as his source. Offered me a grand up front to do it.”

  “Wow. I’m assuming you said no?”

  “Are you kidding?” Her nose wrinkles. “Reporters and bloggers have been chasing me for years. More so than you or Lily. Something about rehab making me the most interesting sister,” she grumbles. “The very last thing I’d want is to give those bastards more ammunition.”

  I tuck my legs underneath me. “This is all so crazy. Why me? Why now?”

  Jenessa pushes a thick curtain of wavy hair behind an ear. “Isn’t it obvious?” she asks in a small voice. “It says so right there. Twenty years. The author wants to capitalize on the anniversary. Drum up more publicity by getting you involved. It’s probably that writer.”

  “Mm.”

  A thousand dollars. Would I have accepted it had I been approached? The idea of exposing myself, my family, more than we already are feels awful, but my empty wallet would be tempted. Even though a small voice within me is wondering why Jenessa was approached and not me, I’m glad I didn’t have to make the decision she did. Sibling rivalry be damned.

  I tear my eyes from a book entitled My Sister, My Friend and turn back to Jenessa. “You think the note has nothing to do with the killer? It’s just someone trying to manufacture an association between our case and this new crime?”

  “I mean, yeah. Doesn’t that make more sense? If it is the writer who contacted me, and he wrote you this note to grab your attention, I can see how your involvement would benefit him. Help sell more books. Why would this killer share information with you otherwise?”

  I glance down at the page, wanting to believe. But the police didn’t learn about the body until the next day. “I don’t know. I just want this to go away. Maybe it will.”

  She laughs, then runs a hand down her face. “God, it’s so like you to assume things will just go your way. Everything will work out because it always has for you. Been that way since we were kids.”

  I stiffen. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Come on. That time when we were eight and you were watching the class guinea pig and it just died overnight? Rosemary made sure to tell everyone it choked on a pellet.”

  “It did. Why are you bringing that up?”

  “Marissa—”

  “Claire. I go by Claire now.”

  “Whatever. It was found with pellet mush coming out of its mouth. You fed it to death, like that scene in the movie Seven.”

  My cheeks flush, embarrassment tightening my chest. “He was hungry, and I didn’t know their stomachs were so tiny or that the pellets expanded once they were eaten. It was an accident.”

  Jenessa rolls her eyes. “Whatever the intention, Rosemary cleaned up your mess like always.”

  “Whoa, do you really think I killed my pet?”

  “I think it annoyed you with how often its cage had to be cleaned.”

  We’re both silent a moment. The words we just exchanged hang between us like noxious fumes. To say I’m disappointed would be an understatement, but I guess I didn’t think our first visit in two years would spiral so quickly. Or that she thinks I would hurt an innocent animal.

  I love my sister. However, as adults, we’ve always disagreed about the past.

  Jenessa offers up a tight smile. “Look, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I brought that up.” She gestures toward the table. “About the note? I think anyone can type and lead you down a wild-goose chase. The world has shown itself to be hard. Self-serving. And it treated us like circus freaks. This”—she holds up the paper—“is another example of that. If there really is another body, it will get found with or without you. Right now, it’s none of your business, and I would try and keep it that way.”

  Due to her rehab stints—both of them—for drug addiction, the world hasn’t let its grip on her loosen. I’ve visited the websites dedicated to her progress or regression and seen the annual updates on her sobriety, given by “caregivers in the know.” Vultures, all of them.

  “I feel like we’ve barely had a chance to connect again, and I’ve already brought this brick into our lives,” I say. I fold up the paper and tuck it into my jeans pocket. “What are your plans today?”

  She straightens, fixing me with serious brown eyes. Of the three of us, Jenessa inherited Chet’s stern jawline and sharp cheekbones—but her coloring is all Nora. Thick, wavy hair; tawny skin tone; full lips; and lengthy eyelashes make her the beaut
y of our trio of outcasts. More than once, as a teenager, I wondered whether I would have gotten into equal trouble with drugs and the wrong boys, were I deemed as attractive.

  “I’m off from the doughnut shop today. I had planned to get some work done in the garden, actually.”

  “That’s great. Are you still staging the shop front? I imagine it’s a nice way to be creative.” I peer past her at a framed watercolor of Mount Hood that Lily painted for me. “Hey, you still have it.”

  Jenessa follows my gaze. “It’s the only real piece of art I own.”

  The peak of the inactive volcano sits dead center in a cerulean blue sky, with pine trees cascading down its slopes, fresh snow decorating the branches. Our youngest sister is surprisingly talented—surprising when one considers that I can barely color within the lines. While I acted out in my own private ways and Jenessa engaged in more public forms of self-harm, Lily exercised her angst in earth-friendly, artistic behaviors: painting, sculpting, writing poetry, and protesting industrial practices with hunger strikes. Moving around the last few years, I didn’t feel like I could care for Lily’s artwork the way I should, and Jenessa agreed to hold on to it. Irony of ironies: the addict sister is the most stable of us all.

  My lips purse. “Well, thanks for allowing me to drop in on you like this. Can I help in the garden? It’s probably the least I can do, after you trucked around the painting all this time.”

  “I could use some slave labor,” she quips. “Thanks.”

  In a modest backyard overflowing with plants, Jenessa proudly presents the tomato vines she’s grown along the perimeter and the flowers sprouting beside them. Nora’s green thumb, all the way. From beside the porch, she produces a tray of iris bulbs and shows me where they should be planted.

  “How’s Nora doing?” I ask.

  Jenessa pauses beside a bird-of-paradise flower. “Good. She’s taken a back seat at the floral shop and is traveling more. Seeing more of the state lately.”

  “Do you spend a lot of time together?”

  Jenessa hands me a trowel, and I use it to form a shallow pit in the moist earth. The first bulb I grab feels damp in my palm.