by Elle Marr
Shia checks the clock on his phone, then closes his laptop. “I don’t think so. Describe it.”
“A dinky little braided thing. Three strands, different colors. We made them during arts-and-crafts hour the day we escaped.”
I study the arch of his eyebrows and how they rise nearly into his hairline.
Two details from my childhood have now appeared at separate crime scenes. What I don’t know is whether the killer is obsessed with Chet’s legacy or imitating these aspects out of some secret motivation. There are already two victims to this person’s resume. If I can somehow determine his next move and limit the casualties of his nostalgia, I have to try.
Shia stirs his coffee, his eyes never leaving mine. “Yeah, I don’t recall. Maybe we can have our first interview session now, and you can tell me more about it.”
I return his stare a moment longer. He doesn’t know. If Shia, self-appointed archivist to our lives, isn’t aware of that detail, what does that tell me about this killer?
“Why don’t we discuss the basics?” he continues. “What do you know about Chet, his family history, or how he came to those violent . . . impulses?”
Unless—Shia doesn’t want to share the extent of his knowledge up front. Why do I feel like he’s gauging mine? “As much as anyone. The media covered it back when he was being prosecuted. Shouldn’t you already know this?”
He presses his hands flat on the cast-iron folding table. “I’m looking for information that outside parties didn’t capture. I want your firsthand observations or details you heard from Rosemary while down below. What do you know?”
“I told you. Nothing that isn’t already public knowledge. I did a deep dive on the internet when I was fourteen and read everything available on Chet at the time. There was nothing damning that I found—he was an only child born to a frail mother and a young father who abandoned them to pursue a musical career that probably ended in a heroin overdose. Chet was raised by his mother and an alcoholic stepfather. If anything has been published on him since then, I don’t know about it. Besides, does any of that matter? I thought you wanted a day-by-day accounting of my childhood abuse.”
My tone is sharp, biting, and I’m not at all sure why. My mother didn’t spank me, and Chet was interested only in my mother.
Shia opens his journal. He flips backward; page after page is filled with notes, scribbles crawling up the margins. “Chet was a fairly normal kid—played sports with the local neighborhood kids, got okay grades in school—but his teachers recall him hoarding food, toys at his desk, pens, and attempting to keep his friends to himself. Twice, Chet tied up a classmate with jump rope and tried to keep the boy hidden in the field next to the schoolyard. When asked why he did that, Chet replied he didn’t want the boy to leave him.”
I raise my eyebrows at this anecdote as the barista drops off my coffee. “Disturbing, sure. It speaks to Chet’s abandonment issues.”
“You would think. However, his father reportedly came back into Chet’s life when Chet was thirteen and attempted to have a relationship. Chet’s mother gave an interview to the police department when she filed a complaint against his father.”
“How do you have access to police records?”
“It was a public complaint at the time. Akin to a noise complaint nowadays. Or a public safety complaint that she filed on behalf of her son to get Chet’s father, Jameson, to stay away from them. As far as we know, Chet never reestablished a relationship with Jameson.”
I sip my coffee, savoring the froth and sweet caramel at the top of the mug. Today’s temperature is brisk, but as additional clouds grow in size overhead, the humidity thickens to match. “Interesting. What does this have to do with my childhood and what your readers are interested in knowing more about? Why would they care?”
Shia bites the tip of his pen, revealing straight white teeth. He twists the blue plastic in his mouth, as if savoring my question. “Because, Claire. Your grandfather Jameson knew about you.”
I pause from wiping whipped cream with my finger. Shia takes in my shocked silence, looking pleased he had information I wasn’t aware of. He bobs a quick nod. “Jameson knew about you, maybe all of you. Inside your basement, the police found a cardboard box underneath the mattress with a return address from a children’s toy store and originally mailed to an address different from Chet’s. I found it by zooming in on digital photos of the room and of various items that were taken the day you escaped. Then I did a public search of the residents registered at that address twenty years ago. It was him. Your grandfather.”
A car passes by too close to the curb and splashes gutter water onto the sidewalk beside us. I don’t move. “Someone knew we were down there.”
“I know it’s a lot to take in. I would be pretty flummoxed, or whatever you may be feeling, too. But yeah. It seems that way. No matter how I look at it, someone at that address purchased toys for children, then hand delivered them to Chet’s address, where the box ended up in your basement.”
“What kind of toys?”
“What?”
“The toys that this person . . . Jameson . . . purchased. What were they?”
Shia shakes his head. “I don’t know. The only way to know that would be to search Jameson’s purchase history with that company—Yeltsin, I mean. The company I know, at least, was Yeltsin.”
The megawatt toy engineer during the eighties and nineties. They sold every kind of toy imaginable and were behind all the Christmas hysteria for whatever doll or remote-controlled car was the best seller that season. As the major toy company, Yeltsin was also the chief merchandising partner for the era’s kids’ television shows—Undercover Spy, Princess Angels, and Petey the Penguin.
Memories swim before my eyes as I recall the stuffed Petey’s fluffy chest and what would become a faded yellow beak. In the cartoon, Petey always sang songs about friendship and family, and I would sing them after every episode.
“I understand this may be hard for you.” Shia interrupts my thoughts in a small voice. “But what was your interaction with Chet like? Do you think he ever showed any kindness to you, the way that Jameson might have? What is your first memory of Chet?”
Footsteps. The heavy impact of his weight on the steps directly above, in the alcove he built, before punching in the electronic code to the metal door. Then his gait passing into the basement, the creak of the boards as he moved down the stairs and into our world. Once, he tried to play with Lily when she was a baby, and Rosemary flew at him, struck him across the face. He returned the blow, his fist crashing into her cheek. After the pair huffed and puffed and stared at each other another moment, he grumbled something and trudged back upstairs.
There was another time that they fought, really brawled, and Rosemary came away with a black eye. I don’t remember why—only that he said he would kill us all if he didn’t get something he wanted.
“Fear. Violence. Anger.” Speaking the emotions that Chet generated in me as a small child, I internally register how often they come to me as an adult. My own post-traumatic stress disorder mental prison, in which I feel the impulses of fear, violence, and anger all the time. Did I ever have a shot at escaping that?
Shia nods, writing in his journal. “Okay, let’s go back. What do you remember before your half sister Lily was born?”
“Sister. They’re my sisters.”
“Right. Sorry. Any memories of before she was born?”
I think back on those early years and remember only being happy, blissfully unaware—happy to play with Jenessa and to feel my mother Rosemary’s attention was wholly centered on me, even as she and Nora did their best to give both us girls the care that we needed in such a dank environment. I remember realizing, for the first time, that we had no windows after seeing some in a cartoon. The thought didn’t bother me—in fact, it seemed like an advantage to enjoy; I could nap as long as I wanted or sleep as late as I wanted without being woken by a bright, intruding beam of sunshine. “None that’s
fully formed, exactly. Just being cared for by my mothers and playing with Jenessa.”
“By your ‘mothers,’ do you mean Rosemary, Nora, and Bethel?”
“No, Bethel wasn’t there yet. This was before her.”
“Got it.” Shia makes another scribble. He looks up, dark-brown irises contrasting the blue of his pen. “It seems like you recall a pretty normal, easy time growing up—at least initially. Is that right? Would you say that the experience of being born in captivity, underground, was more or less damaging than any other childhood?”
I stare at him like he just suggested organ harvesting as a viable business model. “No, it was damaging. It was fucked up.” The adjacent table’s conversation pauses, the anger in my voice filling the space. I lean closer. “The first few years, I was naive and a child. My mother sheltered us from the knowledge that she and the others were assaulted and sometimes beaten a few times a week by a man fifteen years older than them in a two-room space with no windows. It was when I became older that I began to notice Rosemary’s haggard fatigue, her restlessness, and my own.”
“Did you help plan the escape?”
“No, I was seven. I couldn’t plan anything, but I recognized the same tension in myself that my mother had been exhibiting for years. I knew Jenessa felt it, too, when we were big enough that we started knocking into each other, then hitting each other. There was no more space. Either more people had to die or we had to get out.”
I take a moment to gulp back the rest of my latte while Shia writes something else. He looks up and watches me; I see it from the corner of my eye while I examine the tables around us. A couple leans back in their chairs, each typing something on her phone while their feet touch underneath; a woman in a long, wraparound scarf reads a book; and a male student hovers over an open textbook displaying an anatomical depiction of the human body. Through the window of the coffee shop, I see people lining up to place their orders, the queue stretching back to the front door.
“How do you think being born into that situation affected you as an adult?” Shia asks.
I sigh, recalling the feeling of being belowground, in the two different storage spaces this week. “I don’t know. Badly?”
“More specifically. Can you recall when you decided that being belowground was negative? How did your mother react to it? Your sisters?”
“What do you mean?”
“As in, how did Rosemary manage being kidnapped as a twenty-year-old, being thrown in with another woman, Nora, then eventually watching the third woman, Bethel, die in childbirth? How did she deal with it, and how did you and your sisters deal with that trauma in such close proximity?”
An image from my childhood returns, of Rosemary crying in a corner after trying to do something, I don’t know what. “I . . . I can’t remember.” Flashes of running from one end of the compound to the next, of racing Jenessa, then Lily, back and forth, rise in my head, then disappear as quickly as they came. A frame, as if from a movie, snaps forward, of Chet looking at me, no more than a foot away. He reaches for me with something like hunger in his gaze, and Rosemary flies at him, clawing him across the face. He beat her then.
Their fights weren’t only about him playing with Lily.
I stand up, pushing my chair backward. “I . . . I can’t handle this. It’s too much.”
Shia stands, too. “Let’s take a break. Five minutes?”
“No, I can’t right now. I’m at my max. I’m sorry.” I grab my shoulder bag, withdraw my keys, and begin walking. It takes me another two blocks before I realize I started off in the wrong direction and have now completely turned myself around. My knees buckle, and I sit down on a nearby bench advertising a real estate company.
Sitting with Shia for twenty minutes and answering his simple questions is more time than I’ve spent thinking about my childhood in years.
Recalling his bombshell about Jameson—did Rosemary know someone else was aware of our existence? I do the math. Jameson would have been about sixty when I was born. Is he still alive today?
The spidery fear that crawled across my skin upon seeing the bracelet on the body in the cooler returns. Could Jameson be the one leaving these details behind at crime scenes? If he sent me the original stuffed Petey, desiring a relationship with us, he could be sending a signal that he desires one now. The person leaving me messages and clues is responsible for two murders. Chet had it in him—the violence, the disregard for human life. Maybe Jameson does, too.
My phone vibrates in my pocket. Pauline is calling me.
“Claire? I have more good—I mean bad—news. What’s the soonest you can get to The Stakehouse in North Portland?”
Thunder rumbles overhead, drowning out the rest of her words. Without waiting for the address, I hoist my bag onto my shoulder and walk in the direction of my car.
Thirteen
Shouts rise from the interior of the strip club, and all heads outside the building turn toward the sound.
Oz and I exchange a look.
“Think it’s another body?” he asks. A crime reporter’s dream. Bright-green eyes squint together, and full lips turn up at the corners. Naturally dusky skin gives him the appearance of an omnipresent tan.
I don’t answer. Instead, I stare down at bullet points about my family, which I scribbled on a notepad not unlike the one Oz was using outside Four Alarm. Knowing I couldn’t arrive too quickly and reveal I’d already been to The Stakehouse, I sat in my car two streets over, researching local news stories from the last twenty years on my phone. Tried to ignore my camera and the horrifying images it now contained.
Everything I found on us was in order: Chet abducted and held a woman, Nora, for two years before he decided to take my mother, Rosemary. Nora then gave birth to Jenessa. No doubt disappointed at the limited inventory, with Nora being out of commission post-natal, Chet saw fit to introduce a third woman, Bethel, to his harem. By Rosemary’s account, Bethel was a slight woman, and the stress of imprisonment particularly affected her; her hair fell out in clumps. After Rosemary gave birth to me and Nora to Jenessa, Bethel eventually died on the same mattress giving birth to Lily.
No mention of Jameson at Chet’s trial. According to archived newspaper articles online, there was plenty of speculation about what kind of rearing Chet had, but no parents came forward at the initial hearing or at the full trial, and Chet hadn’t been born in the area. It was only after Chet was in prison that the family history I discovered online as a teenager came to light: Jameson abandoned his wife and young son. She remarried, and Chet’s stepfather beat them both nightly.
While part of me is satisfied that I did glean and retain the correct information at fourteen years old, another is disappointed there isn’t more to analyze. Shia’s publisher’s enthusiasm for this book makes all the more sense.
The forensics team strides inside the building, passing the medical examiner on his way out. I recognize the man with salt-and-pepper hair from Four Alarm. Turning to Oz, I find him consulting his notes. “Has there been any progress on the brewery murder?”
He inhales through his nose, as though it pains him to say. “Yeah, the chief of police is looking at two people.”
“Who?” It’s only been two days. I haven’t come close to identifying someone, and I may have more clues than Chief Bradley.
“A nineteen-year-old homeless girl named Gianina Silva and the bartender who found the body at Four Alarm, Topher Cho.”
An image of a tall man with thick black hair and a friendly voice rises to mind from when I stepped into the brewery and took photos. Stay safe out there, he had said. Was that Cho?
“Wait, what does Gia—Gianina—look like?”
“I don’t know.” Oz shrugs. “Haven’t seen a photo of her—I just know she’s young and known for drug dealing downtown.”
The petite blonde with brittle hair and dark roots looks me up and down again in my memory. Ask around for Gia. “Why her?”
Oz blows air from his cheeks. “Di
d you hear that gunshot at Four Alarm yesterday? It was right after you left. The kid who pulled the trigger was waving it around like an idiot when it went off. Apparently it was Silva’s, and she doesn’t have a license for it. It also matches what the M.E. believes was used on Eloise Harris.”
“The first victim. The stripper.”
“You got it.”
“But a teenage girl? She doesn’t strike me as a killer.” I think back to our chance meeting in front of the bakery and the way in which she eyed the cigarette burn on my inner elbow. Maybe she’s an opportunist in that she thought I was high—but a murderer?
Then I recall my conversation with the Stakehouse bartender. Did Eloise Harris owe Gia money?
“Nope. And that’s what’s frustrating,” Oz says, flipping his notepad closed. “I did some digging on Silva, and she had straight As before she dropped out of high school. She seems to be like any other kid you see on the street. They’re all runaways or drug addicts, or both, and the city doesn’t do enough to help them, so they piss off the rest of us by hanging out in downtown, and we all demonize them.” He takes a breath, catching my surprise. “Sorry. I . . . my brother was homeless for a while.”
I give a slow nod, remembering the teenager at Four Alarm wearing the Mickey Mouse retro hoodie. Most of the group around him appeared dirty and tired but harmless. “What about Topher Cho?”
Oz resumes a more curious expression. “Cho . . . now he’s someone who might make more sense. He’s got a misdemeanor from a fight with an old girlfriend—apparently things got physical between them, and she filed a complaint. He’s a bartender-slash-actor and been trying to get an agent from some hotshot agency since he moved to Portland. A murder where he works could, in theory, provide more publicity. Get him more attention as the guy who found the body first. It’s a stretch, but it fits better than a nineteen-year-old with no priors.”