Lies We Bury

by Elle Marr

  The handheld device appears hostile. Capable of blowing up the apartment complex if I input the wrong combination of numbers. I unlock my phone, clearing the image I took of the adjacent forest of trees, and dial.

  “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”

  My tongue feels thick in my mouth. “I—not an emergency, exactly, but—I have something to tell the police.”

  It takes emergency dispatchers less than a minute to pinpoint a caller’s city and street, down to the exact location within a few square feet. In the event that the call is disconnected, the police can go to that address and verify the caller is safe. According to my phone, I’ve already been on the line for sixteen seconds.

  “The Four Alarm murder is linked to the Stakehouse murder. The killer admires leaders relating to—” I scan the words I wrote on a pad of sticky notes. Saying the next phrase, The killer admires leaders relating to Chet Granger, feels more incriminating than it did an hour ago when I crafted my five-sentence anonymous message to the police. I was hoping that by offering up what clues I have, I could wash my hands of the information and let the police do their job—step back and stop involving myself, despite the killer’s interest in me. But staring at the words in front of me, I realize the only fact I’ve supplied points directly back to Chet—and to me.

  What else can I say exactly? The killer left me a note outside of Four Alarm, baiting me with a stuffed animal from my past, which led me to The Stakehouse, where a body was wearing a bracelet like one I used to make with my sisters? Sharing those specifics would only lead the police to add me to a list of possible suspects. Why else would I have that information unless I know the person behind this—or worse, am committing the murders myself?

  “Ma’am? Are you still there?”

  Thirty-seven seconds have elapsed. My fingers grip the phone as I debate my reply.

  Forty-one seconds. “Yes, I—I’m sorry to waste your time; I have to go.”

  Panic jolts through me and I hang up. I shouldn’t have called. Calling was a mistake. Why didn’t I think that through better?

  My phone rings—an unknown number. Do the police automatically call back?

  My hand shakes as I slide the answer bar right. “Hello?”

  “Marissa!” a woman squeals into the receiver.

  “. . . Lily?”

  “Yes!” The word dissolves into a throaty laugh. “I’m back from Switzerland, and I’m dying to share some news with you in person. Are you free now?”

  “What? Like, right now? When did you get back?” My kitchen clock says eleven thirty, and I scheduled another interview session with Shia for the afternoon. “Yeah, I’m free for a few hours. Holy crap, Lil, are you actually home? What happened? Is everything okay?”

  “Fantastic. Everything’s great. Do you still have the Find-My-Family app we downloaded on our phones before I moved?”

  “Oh, yeah. I guess. I didn’t remove it, at least.” She was so insistent she wanted to be able to visualize where Jenessa and I were while she was abroad. Said it’d help her feel more connected.

  “Perfect. You can navigate to my apartment with it. See you soon!”

  I hang up in a daze. The police haven’t called by the time I grab my keys and unlock the door. Before I turn the handle, I check the peephole. No uniforms waiting in the hall.

  A woman sits on the curb when I arrive at a modern apartment building in the middle of downtown. Petite and towheaded, she taps some game on her phone. Narrow shoulders hunch forward, and her feet point together in ballerina flats. Hearing my approach, she lifts her head, and a smile breaks across her heart-shaped face. Lily stands, opens her arms, and reveals a bulging belly in a high-waist dress.

  “Happy to see me?” The bright-blue eyes that always made her seem so innocent as a kid now seem to glint with mischief.

  “You’re pregnant?”

  Disregarding the question, my little sister crosses to me and wraps me in a hug. I shift my hips backward to make room.

  “I’m so happy to see you. But what are you doing here?” I laugh into her hair. “You didn’t want to share you were moving home, and with an extra human?”

  She pulls back to look at me as a cloud of hurt passes down her face, ending in a pout. “Once we decided to move home, I thought it would be a fun surprise. And I didn’t want to promise anything, in case plans changed.”

  Free-spirited Lily went rogue after deciding college wasn’t for her. She and her then-brand-new girlfriend, Bianca, decided to move to Europe. Lily has been quiet these last few months, replying to my texts with stunted answers, and she stopped accepting my video calls. I thought she was going through a phase, or maybe that she and Bianca had broken up, as relationships during your early twenties often do. I guess I was half-right; the phase should last about nine months.

  “How are you?” I stare down at her belly, then back up to Lily’s beaming face. Full cheeks suggest the time we’ve spent apart has been good to her, and she seems happy about the baby. “Are you a surrogate?”

  She giggles, a husky sound, just the way I remember it. Warmth spreads along my limbs, and I can’t deny how good it is to see her.

  Here. In this city. During this week. Did Lily return home for the anniversary, too? Is she here, knowing about Chet’s parole and intending to . . . do something next week? Doubt and concern mingle together as I search her face for that glint that sparkled upon my arrival.

  “No, I’m not a surrogate. Jesus, Em.” She rolls her eyes, then crosses her arms beneath a swollen bosom.

  I lift both palms up. “Hey, I’ve thought about it. It’s a handsome check at the end of it, and you’re helping someone, right? No judgment.”

  Lily’s smile fades. “Actually, Bea and I got a sperm donor over in Geneva. We wanted to start a family. Realizing I was going to have my own family made me want to come home to Oregon. For good,” she adds. “You’re here now, so we figured Portland was a good spot to settle down.”

  “And Jenessa.”

  “What about her?”

  “Jenessa is here, too.”

  Lily pauses. “Oh. Well, all the more reason.” She resumes a broad grin. Since Lily and I grew up separately from Jenessa, I sometimes forget that the pair of them never really bonded. Of the seven years I lived in Chet’s compound, only three of them were shared with Lily; she remembers less of it with Jenessa than I do.

  We enter the lobby and pass a potted lily of the valley, lush with its green leaves and white bell-shaped buds, which my sister points out with pride—her first addition to the space. As we take the elevator to her fourth-floor apartment, I wonder whether I should have waited for Jenessa to visit with me. To share in this welcome home to our little sister. When the elevator stops, Lily takes my hand, swinging it back and forth as we walk down the hall, limping with the uneven gait she’s had almost her whole life.

  Calling Jenessa on the drive here didn’t earn me a return call—I tried, at least. When we were kids, she and I couldn’t help fighting over Lily like she was a toy, at times pulling her between us until Rosemary made us stop. We would often try to lure Lily to play with one of us individually, by dangling either her favorite toy or the prospect of a game; the winner would get five minutes of uninterrupted play time with Lily before her attention fluttered elsewhere, or indeed, the older sister got bored. We even called her Sweet Lily, because Rosemary and Nora were always commenting what a sweet baby she was, despite losing her birth mother.

  In hindsight, we had such limited sources of entertainment—and even affection—that I don’t blame us for treating Lily’s love as a trophy.

  The fourth-floor hallway is peaceful, empty it seems, on a Wednesday at noon, and I wonder whether anyone else—the media or Rosemary—is aware Lily’s returned.

  Pauline wired payment for the hour I spent at The Stakehouse yesterday and the two hours last night that it took to touch up the Post employees’ photos. As I was selecting images from The Stakehouse that I thought might be o
f interest to her, I made sure to exclude photos of the body—trash bag over its head, behind the kegs and undisturbed. Revealing that I was there in advance of the police would start an avalanche of questions—even as Pauline would, no doubt, pay top dollar for something that unique and which only the Portland Post could offer readers.

  The gray-painted apartment door already bears my sister’s signature decoration: several pots of her favorite flower, the Stargazer lily, flank each side. Vibrant pink, black-freckled, narrow petals lean forward as if they sense my anxiety.

  “Ready?” Lily turns to me with a smile, limping from the tight rotation. She reaches for my hand, and I help to steady her. “Sorry. Pregnancy has really thrown off my balance. The old hitch has flared up again.”

  “No problem. And yes. I can smell the muffins from here.”

  Once we were out in the world, medical professionals ran all the tests and suggested all the expensive procedures to make us whole—As if you weren’t born underground, they said with self-assured nods. They would fix us, mostly using Chet’s insurance, which a lawyer argued should be extended to us as his biological children. Rosemary didn’t want anything to do with him once we were free, and she initially went hysterical at the lawyer’s proposal. Then the doctors sat her down and laid out our medical needs as they saw them; she relented. The vitamin D deficiency I had was treated with therapeutic drugs for six months until my biochemistry normalized, Jenessa was given braces to correct a painful overbite (although Rosemary saw to it with our daily flossing that none of us had any cavities), and Lily was granted a pro bono surgery on the congenital defect that had left her with an extra toe.

  As an infant, it wasn’t an issue; she crawled everywhere on her knees. When she started walking, she complained of increasing pain that led her to favoring the other foot. One surgery turned into two, then a third when she was a teenager and past her final growth spurt. The last I heard, her foot ached when it rained very hard, like a meteorological barometer, but the pain was minimal. The medical bills beyond that first pro bono surgery, however, were not, and both Rosemary’s and Lily’s settlement money went quickly.

  Lily opens the door, and stacks of boxes greet us at the narrow entryway. “Welcome to our home,” she says.

  “Bonjour, ma belle!” French rings out from the kitchen; then Bianca peeks around the corner wearing a chef’s apron. Lily had texted that fresh baked goods would be waiting for me, and I knew that Bianca, first as a baker in Portland, then as a culinary student in Switzerland, wouldn’t disappoint. She strides forward and kisses me on both cheeks; I stop myself from flinching backward. The girl who instigated Lily’s disappearance from my life when she suggested they pack up and leave the country has never earned a cozy place in my heart.

  “Bianca is super content to see you, if you can’t tell,” Lily says with a grin.

  “Oh my God, you did it again.” Bianca moans, shaking wavy brown hair at her shoulders. “Just stick to one language, honey. Or, you know, maybe skip talking at all.”

  I hold my breath. Lily gives a feeble cough. “Did what, babe?”

  “Thought in French in your head and translated it to crappy English. Only eighteenth-century maids are ‘content to see’ anyone.” Bianca’s smile is cramped, and I wonder if I interrupted a fight by arriving when I did.

  “It’s fine—I knew what you meant, Lil.” I reach for her hand, but she pulls away.

  “No, Bianca’s right,” she says, her voice hoarse. An overhead light fixture makes her eyes appear glassy. “My American mannerisms and slang have dipped. Being immersed in Swiss culture for five years, speaking French, and learning some German and Italian with Bianca, I went all in, I guess.”

  “Of course you did. You were living abroad,” I say.

  Bianca glances over her shoulder. “Try living with her now.” She heads back into the kitchen.

  Lily rubs her arms and turns her face to the wall.

  Is this always my little sister’s life? Or just the tail end of a passing tiff? I touch her elbow, upset by this welcome from Bianca.

  “I did go all in; she’s right. The new continent and culture made me feel like . . . like I could escape everything, you know? Create a new identity for myself.” She looks past me before meeting my concerned gaze.

  The number of times I’ve wished that is probably in the thousands by now. “Yeah. How successful was that? Did you pick up any wigs or adopt a thick accent?”

  The left side of her mouth tips up. The angst pinching her eyes lessens, and some of her normal warmth returns. Her hands find the top of her belly. “I was pretty close.”

  We walk into the kitchen to find a tray of a dozen freshly baked muffins cooling on a tile counter. The layout flows into a small sitting room with an L-shaped sofa that occupies the corner, beneath a broad rectangular window. Natural light streams into the space, notably absent of Bianca. Floorboards creak from the neighbors overhead. I pause by the oven and breathe deep. “I’m starved. Can I?”

  She nods. I reach for the closest muffin. It’s still hot when I begin peeling back the wrapping, and I wait for it to cool enough to eat. “So why did you really come home?”

  Lily tenses, her delicate features tightening. “What do you mean? I told you. I wanted the baby to be close to family.”

  “Sure, I understand that. But why now?” I’ve always been direct with Lily. Call it the result of having only a small circle of people to trust.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Lil, I—you do realize this year—next week is—”

  A loud crash sounds from down the hall, where I assume the bedrooms are. Lily grabs a muffin and bites off a mouthful, then another, despite steam still rising from the nooks and crannies. She inhales through her nose as she chews.

  “You know, I’m so glad you got to see the place. But I think maybe we should grab lunch another time this week. Can we do that?” She plucks another muffin from the tray and places it in my hand. “I’ve got loads of boxes to unpack still.”

  “Are you sure? I’m happy to stay and help.”

  Lily casts another glance behind me. The apartment is quiet. “Well, we do have a stupid amount of to-go containers to organize. I hate that job.”

  “Perfect. I’ll find which top goes with which plastic bowl. Point me to them.”

  She limps to a stack of cardboard filing boxes. “Thrilling stuff.”

  I settle onto the floor and get to work, separating the round covers from the square ones. In truth, I loathe mismatched plasticware; it’s never apparent which lid goes with which bottom, and I usually toss what comes with my Thai order after I’ve finished eating. But if this eases something about Lily’s tense afternoon, I’m all for it. Lily measures out shelf liner, then begins cutting identical copies for the cupboards.

  Once I’ve stacked her three dozen containers according to size, Lily rewards me with the first genuine grin since she announced my presence to Bianca. “Thanks so much, Em. You’re a lifesaver.”

  Hearing the nickname she always had for me—my first initial, M—fills me with a sense of home. “I’m happy to help,” I reply, genuinely meaning it.

  She walks me to the door. Once I’m at the elevator, I wave goodbye to Lily, who stands beside her potted flowers.

  “Tell Bianca I said thanks?” I lift the now-cooled muffin.

  Lily nods, too enthusiastically. “Of course.”

  I return her forced smile, then step inside the elevator. Whether it’s pregnancy hormones or something else, the way Lily seemed so broken when Bianca was in the room was disheartening. Overprotective sister or not, I don’t like it, and I have to wonder whose idea it was to move home—maybe one of them wanted to return and the other didn’t, and that’s what’s causing tension. Or the fact that they’re about to welcome a baby into their lives. Or maybe I’m just on edge about everything, about this year.

  Outside the building, I take off toward the boulevard. A dog barks from a patio restaurant to
my right, and I recognize two of the greatest words in modern English visible in the bagel shop window: Free Wi-Fi.

  Finding a seat at a raised counter overlooking foot traffic through the window, I order a coffee and unwrap my second muffin. Shia and I agreed to meet in another hour, and I could use this free time to research whoever is behind these murders.

  Using my phone’s browser, I type in the phrase serial killers. Truthfully, I should have done this yesterday or the day before, but I’ve been so distracted with reunions and remembering things about my childhood—finding myself humming songs that I used to sing with my sisters that I haven’t thought of in years, imagining footsteps coming from outside my bathroom door while I’m showering, waking up recalling the bland taste of spaghetti and red sauce with no salt or pepper—that I haven’t made the time.

  The internet doesn’t disappoint. According to a website called Serial Killer Basics, modern murderers are likely to be white males, in their midthirties, with a penchant for violence and two or more kills. Statistically, that’s the most common profile in metropolitan areas, although institutional biases may have led criminologists to overlook serial killers of other ethnicities. So my killer could be anyone. Great.

  Whoever is behind the appearance of these two dead bodies—be it Topher Cho, Gia Silva, or someone else—they are linked to the author of the note I received. That person seems intent on drawing a connection between my childhood and these present-day deaths. Although Chet might fit the physical bill of a serial killer, the only death I know he made happen was Bethel’s when he refused to take her to the hospital when she was hemorrhaging after giving birth.

  Tabbing over to the Portland Post’s web page, I find the latest update on the Four Alarm victim, the dancer. According to the medical examiner, she died from fatal force to her head and not the gunshot subsequently fired—confirming the speculation I overheard in the brewery. The bruises she sustained are consistent with being forcibly abducted and restrained. No sign of sexual assault.