Lies We Bury

by Elle Marr

  “You want me to cover live events?”

  “Hold on.” Pauline muffles the phone and bellows something about a deadline. “Madison, victims never cooperate with us after the fact. They’re unpredictable. I need a better variety of sources, got it?” She uncovers the phone, and the sound becomes clear again.

  “Sorry about that, Claire. The crime beat. We need someone on call during this business with the brewery murder. The police don’t usually allow this much media access to live sites, but they’re desperate to find the culprit. This is something that’s usually seen in Seattle or San Francisco, and we need to take advantage of that urgency. So what do you think? . . . Hello?”

  “Yes, I’m here.” Sweat breaks out across my neck as I try to marshal my thoughts. Get a grip. Process what she’s suggesting. “What kind of—what would you pay me to be your crime photographer?”

  I hate negotiating. I always get nervous and psych myself out, certain that the other party will tell me I’m not worth whatever price I’m asking. But I’ve had enough experience with law enforcement, violence, and criminals for a lifetime. For me to accept a role in which I must be physically present at these sites, in the thick of the chaos of police personnel and up to my neck in crime details, I’d need to be offered a solid sum.

  Although she is offering to pay me for what I’m already doing on my own. And recalling the two dead-end breweries I visited today—someone’s life may depend on it.

  Pauline clears her throat. “The same rate as before. How does that sound?”

  I lean onto my knees, hugging the phone to my ear. “For me to be your sole crime photographer . . . I think . . . it’s not great.”

  She makes a noise, and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad. I wait for her to hang up, to tell me she’s going to call someone from the ad that she placed on the freelancer website.

  “Fine. I’ll double it,” she says with a sigh.

  Double? To two dollars per photo? Even the retouched photos cost her five dollars each. I take a deep breath.

  “I’ll need my normal rate. One hundred dollars per hour of work.” My headshot sessions actually amounted to more than that—but this rate will narrow the gap. And allow me to buy more than a sandwich for lunch and Cup Noodles for dinner.

  Pauline clicks her tongue. “All right. Come back to the office to sign the paperwork. We’re already a day behind, so I need you to go and capture images from the brewery’s basement today.”

  “Like . . . right now?” The panic in my voice makes me wince.

  “Is that a problem?”

  Flashes of memory snap forward at her words, and I recall climbing Chet’s crooked stairs, leaving the darkness beneath. The metal door he kept us behind was painfully cold on one side, subject to the house’s air conditioner that was on full blast during the summer heat. Rosemary told me not to look back, but I did; the dim space of our home, where I had spent the first seven years of my life, hungrily returned my gaze. Suddenly it was a monster, nipping at my heels and eager to keep us in its belly.

  My insides twist, but I form the words with my tongue anyway. “No. Be there in twenty.”

  Eight

  THEN

  Lunch comes and goes with Mama Rosemary whipping up pasta with red sauce—my favorite! All our favorite actually. We get to slurp the spaghetti like Lady and the Tramp and Mama doesn’t yell at us.

  After we clean up and me and Twin do the dishes and Sweet Lily lays down for a nap Mama Rosemary breaks out the chalkboard.

  “Even today?” Twin whines.

  Mama nods wiping off the last of my drawing of a boat. “Especially today.”

  We review our math first and add up all the macaroni that we have. I count seventy-two pieces of macaroni and Twin gets the same number so we’re happy. “Good job, sweetheart,” Mama says to me patting my hand.

  “What about me?” Twin asks.

  “What about you?” I mumble.

  “I’m not talking to you!”

  “Ow! She bit me!”

  “Girls! We need to focus,” Mama says. “Bodies to ourselves—you know that.”

  Mama says something nice to Twin but I know she meant it more to me.

  Next we do geography. Mama draws a map of America and we have to point out where Oregon is. I point just below Washington and Twin points at the middle which Mama always says has names but she doesn’t remember them. I laugh behind my hand. Next Mama erases her lines and draws the outline of Oregon. Oregon always looks to me like a square waving its arms. Look at me, America! People don’t like it when others try to take all the attention by waving their arms or jumping up and down. We have to wait our turn to speak.

  Mama draws a straight line up and down and a straight line side to side—our road. “What street is this?” she asks.

  “Redding Street,” we answer. We’ve been asked this one before.

  “And what is the cross street?”

  “Cross street? Like a cross?” I make the sign of Jesus’s cross.

  “No, the intersecting street. The one that meets Fir Street. Anyone?”

  Twin and me think for a minute before I remember. “Pouch Street!”

  “Yes, but it’s pronounced ‘pooch.’ Not ‘powch.’”

  Twin sticks her tongue out at me.

  Mama wipes down the chalkboard again and takes a seat at our table. One chair is empty—it’s really a crate but we call it a chair—because that’s Sweet Lily’s spot. She’s still napping. “Now, once we’re out of here, what do you do?”

  “Mama?” I ask raising my hand just like she taught us. “You usually write it down on the board when you ask us. So we can look at the answers. And tell you them.”

  She shakes her head and long hair falls into her face. She pushes it back behind her ears. I push my hair back behind my ears, too. “Not today, honey. Today, I need you both to remember the next steps on your own. Can you do that for me? We’ve been talking about it for a week.”

  “But why does it have to be today?” Twin’s eyes get all big and she looks like Sweet Lily for a second. “Can’t we go tomorrow?”

  Mama leans over and says, “Hush now. I know you’re scared, but we can’t stay here any longer. The man is going to bring someone else here to live with us soon, and we’re too big for this place. Look around us. There’s no room!” Her voice gets all high like a seagull’s. She watches us to make sure we understand.

  “But. The outside. You said it was scary and we shouldn’t want to go. That bad monsters live outside and we were safe in here.” Twin’s voice rises to match and I stay quiet. I agree with Twin.

  Mama lets her head fall in her hands. “I know. I know, you’re right. I’m sorry, okay? I didn’t know what to tell you when you started asking . . . I didn’t know what to say to make it okay . . . to make this . . . okay. But I’m going to need your help tonight.”

  Twin stands up and pushes back from the table. “You said what happened to Mama Bethel can happen to you or to us. You said it!”

  Mama looks at Twin all sad. She reaches out a hand to touch her but Twin yanks her arm back. “I know I did. And that’s true. People do die out there. But we all do. We’ll die in here if we stay.”

  I start to cry. Dying is for old people. We’re all young people. Mama Rosemary doesn’t have any gray hairs like old people.

  She takes my hand and reaches across for Twin’s hand and Twin doesn’t move away. “We have to leave, girls,” she says in a soft voice. “You’re getting bigger. He’s already starting to notice you.”

  “Notice how?” I ask.

  Mama looks up like she sees something on the wood beams. Twin yanks her hand away and Mama’s voice is rocky. “Like the man notices me.”

  Nine

  Outside Four Alarm, navy slickers clump together in the misty rain—police officers and a forensics team. From what Pauline told me in her office, day two of the investigation is progressing at the rate of day one—slowly, and with the police maintaining guarded secr
ecy against the public. Those not in uniform who are granted access are watched like shoplifting teens—which won’t bother me any. My sticky fingers were good at grabbing makeup and accessories, but it was only a phase; I was glad to turn eighteen and leave a midsize juvenile record behind. Now I limit my thievery to fruit.

  Around me, policemen and a few people in suits speak in quick sentences. No one appears as lost as I do.

  “You think this started on the dark web? Another murder-for-hire plot?”

  “Oh, come on, Reynolds. Don’t start that crap again. You think everything’s the dark web. Besides, we don’t know enough about—”

  “Dude, I just had a life-changing doughnut this morning. You got to try the . . .”

  The conversations run together. I finger the thick camera strap around my neck. The yellow press pass lanyard lies flat against the cotton of my long-sleeve shirt.

  “Claire Lou?” a man grunts as he approaches me. His pale skin is flushed pink. “Sergeant Yann Peugeot. I’ll show you to the area we’re allowing the media. Follow me.”

  We enter the narrow vestibule I stood in two days ago. Exposed pipes I didn’t notice before are suspended from the vaulted ceiling above the winding iron staircase. Peugeot’s auburn crew cut bobs a few feet ahead. Past the restrooms and through a black-painted door, we descend stairs to the level below. The steady bass of a man’s voice carries from somewhere nearby. “Haven’t heard of anything like this for twenty years.”

  I suppress the urge to look over my shoulder, to confirm no one is looking directly at my ponytail. “Sergeant Peugeot?”

  “Yes?” He sidesteps a man carrying a bulky trash bag. Dark eyebrows tent on his wide forehead—five-head, my middle school classmates would have snickered—as he holds open the door at the end of the hallway. A faint orb of light shines from the cellar, and a response chokes in my throat.

  We’ve already traveled underground. One more level deep shouldn’t scare me; I’ve been in storage units, walk-in closets, and other confined places that should remind me of my time as a child, locked in the interior compound Chet built to contain his secrets, but they don’t; I always deemed myself lucky to not have that part of my life incapacitate the rest. Even as I learned from my classmates that I was the zoo animal no one would ever stop pointing at. Missy Mo, bred in captivity.

  But here. In the darkness below, where anyone could whirl on me and recognize the fear of being discovered and the self-loathing stark across my face, it’s different. The fear is visceral. Alive. Like a towering creature with stank whiskey breath that might jump into my skin and commandeer my body—blurt out the truth, unleash the ugliness I know resides within me. I haven’t been inside a cellar since we escaped. The smells of burned toast and fresh urine rise from my memory, along with the nagging feeling of shame.

  “Ms. Lou?” Peugeot’s gruff expression drops. “Hey, Claire. You okay?”

  Chin up. Shoulders back. Don’t let anyone know your past, my mother’s voice warns in my head. They’ll reject you for it. Be scared of you. “Fine. Thanks.”

  He hesitates, then steps down and out of sight. I follow him. Aluminum racks stand against the concrete squares of the walls. Sacks of flour and grain and plastic containers of spices and sugar line the shelves. The cellar extends longer than it should, past the building’s foundation, making the air cold—damp—the farther in we go. Construction lamps placed along the walls offer better light than the weak bulb hanging from the wooden rafters. I avoid a stack of plastic patio chairs covered in cobwebs and identify a hole in the back along the wall. Broken wooden boards lay piled on the cellar floor.

  Rosemary’s voice again: Chet is a light sleeper, baby.

  “Hey! Hey, don’t touch that!” Peugeot yells to someone. At the end of the cellar, he turns left into the hole, stepping clear of the steel organizer shelf pushed to the side. Quickly, he pivots back into the storage space and levels a finger at my chest. “Stay here.” He disappears.

  A woman in a black dress shirt punctuates something on a clipboard with a stab of her pen, then ascends the steps into the restaurant. I’m alone.

  My pulse throbs in my fingertips where they clutch my camera. I lift the lens and snap a few images of the shelves, the containers of rye, the weak light above, and the gaping cleft in the wall.

  Pauline said they were desperate for new photos of the brewery that no one else has. It’s after four o’clock on the second day of this investigation. What photo could I possibly get that hasn’t already been taken?

  Voices come from the hallway above, and before I think better of it, I tiptoe to the opening and slip inside. More construction lamps illuminate the space. An alcove precedes a tunnel that continues straight, before another tunnel veers diagonally to the right. A group of uniformed officers stands around three small orange cones that form a triangular outline.

  A dank smell sinks into my lungs. I’ve seen a dead body before. Once, as a child. But this is my first time being so close to the site of a murder. Metal hooks protrude from the wall at hip level along three-foot intervals.

  “Anything else?” Peugeot speaks to a woman wearing a slicker.

  She folds her arms. “The bartender who found her was the only person to go into the cellar on Saturday after two p.m., and we’re still trying to track down where the restraint materials came from.” She waves a manicured hand at the extending paths. “Chains along the walls and some blood splatter across the dirt there.”

  “How’d the bartender find this place?”

  “Says he came down per usual to check on the garnish he was pickling and saw the hole where it was boarded up previously. When he waved his phone’s flashlight into the space, the body was visible.”

  “Right. So gunshot to the head. But Lew said possible fatal force. Was there bludgeoning before the gunshot?”

  “Looks like it. Pretty sloppy. I’ll keep your guys posted on any new conclusions we come to.”

  While Peugeot gives her his full attention, I snap one, two, three photos of the cones, the metal hooks, before I turn and slide back through the wall. The dry goods appear as I left them. The door to the restaurant opens with a flush of warm air, and I casually lean against a sack of flour. A man descends the stairs.

  Peugeot reenters the cellar through the hole in the wall. “Get what you needed?”

  I lift my camera in response. “Yup.”

  “Good. Pauline Adebayo better stop bothering me now.”

  “Hey, Sergeant.” The man who just arrived jerks his thumb toward the restaurant hallway. “Chief is looking for you.”

  My guide rubs his chin. “Looks like we’re going to cut your visit short, Portland Post.”

  We head back upstairs. A serving tray of cups filled with steaming coffee is out on the bar counter beside a plate of pretzels. I wrap three of them, freshly baked and still warm, in a dinner napkin and stuff it in my coat pocket. I’m a nervous eater; I can never help the urge to squirrel away food in case bad times hit.

  Outside the brewery, back in the afternoon rain, Peugeot turns to me. “Good to meet you, Lou. I guess we’ll be seeing more of you around here.”

  My stomach clenches. “Why would that be?”

  Peugeot narrows blue-green irises. “Because you’re the new crime photographer for the Post. Right?”

  “Oh. Yeah, I’ll be seeing you.”

  He glances at me from the side of his eye, then approaches a woman in an orange poncho.

  I walk down the street to where I parked, goose bumps percolating along my skin. As if someone’s gaze traces my form, settling on the shoulders I always thought were too narrow, inherited from Chet.

  “Excuse me,” a male voice calls out.

  I turn. Behind me, a man in a leather jacket and glasses smiles. My muscles instantly tense. We’re the only ones on this side road, and some instinct tells me to keep walking.

  “Hey, excuse me,” the man says as I resume a quick pace. “Missy, I just want to talk.”

&
nbsp; I stop dead. A knot of anger forms in my belly. Climbs my chest and swells into rage.

  It’s the person who left me the note. Hearing that nickname for the first time in Portland reinforces my desire to run, but not before I kick this man in the groin and make him sorry he stopped and spoke my secret aloud. Even as my self-preservation instincts wonder whether he could be the killer.

  “What do you want?” I ask.

  He steps backward, taking in my expression. Slowly, he retrieves a business card from his jacket pocket and offers it to me. “Ms. Mo. Or do you prefer Ms. Lou? I’m sorry to sneak up on you like this, but I didn’t think you’d appreciate me approaching you at the brewery. I’m a journalist.”

  Shit. “You say that like you’re proud.”

  Brown eyes so dark they could be black widen behind thin frames. “Ah, more importantly, I thought you might need someone to talk to.”

  I scan his tentative mien, the square temples that loosely resemble a LEGO, and can’t help thinking it’s not fair. I’ve worked hard to establish a normal life. I just moved to start fresh again. Who is this guy that he’s found me so quickly? My fingernails curl into my palms, piercing the thick pads of my skin, and I focus on the sweet bite of pain.

  “Not interested.” I turn on my heel. I’d love it if he followed me just past the stop sign and down the hill to the secluded copse of trees I parked beside, where I can test my bottle of pepper spray.

  “Missy, you’ve got a lot to consider with this year being the twentieth anniversary of your escape, and—”

  His footsteps nip at my heels, and I reach into my shoulder bag, my fingers fumbling for the aluminum tube. “Leave me alone!”

  “I just thought, with Chet’s release next week, you might be interested in sharing your feelings.”

  I freeze. Shift my feet in a circle until I face the man again. “What?”

  “You didn’t know? This year was also the first time Chet was eligible for parole. The parole board granted it.”

  I stare at him. His off-center nose, the thick eyebrows, and the mouth that keeps moving, making words I don’t quite grasp. The traffic on the main thoroughfare a block away dulls to a murmur.