by Elle Marr
“Normal.” He squints at me with a reassuring smile. “And you haven’t been interrogated by police on the minutiae in a while. You have a lot of darkness to navigate but nothing to be ashamed of.”
His words trigger another memory, more recent than the ones we’re diving into—a theory. From a conversation I overheard outside the brewery and a thread I saw on an online forum for Portland crime lovers: the murders were committed for fun; anyone can hire someone to provide that kind of fringe sport if you know where to look. “Have you spent much time on the dark web?”
Shia pauses his sip of beer. “Isn’t that a bit of a non sequitur?”
“I mean, a little. But I’m not the only one with darkness. I heard someone talking about . . .” Although Shia is aware that I’m taking photos for the Post, I don’t want to advertise that I’m eavesdropping on law enforcement. “Well, what is it? The dark web.”
Shia drums his fingers on a laminated menu. “It’s part of the regular web. An overlay network that uses the internet, but you need certain software to access it. Because it’s encrypted, there are a lot of offbeat activities that go on there.”
“And how do you know about it? What’s a mild-mannered journalist doing, poking around there?”
Shia examines me. My suspicion. “To be honest with you, a lot. I weighed theories about your family—your locations, your backgrounds, what went on in your basement—against what other people had dug up over the years. A lot of conspiracy theorists, and those interested in your family, are users. They think the government knew about Chet’s secret family.”
“Fantastic.” Sarcasm steams through my words. Knowing now how dedicated Shia is to this book, he probably knows some of these users by name.
Shia sinks into a deep nod, folding his hands across his flat belly. Curly black hair falls from behind his ear. “Claire, I want to be candid with you. I can tell it’s not always easy to explore these moments, particularly if you weren’t aware of certain details or if you’ve repressed them. Are you getting something out of this arrangement? Is it helping you the way you thought it might?”
The more I learn about his tenacious research, the less I view Shia as some wide-eyed creative. But after a beer and the wine I drank at home, the anger I felt upon coming here shifts to indifference. “I mean, it’s bringing up a lot of stuff for me, sure. Did I tell you about the stuffed animal?”
He shakes his head.
“Off the record.” I lean forward.
Shia cocks his head at me, as though not fully trusting this potential gift. A black tattoo—a spiral fern—is visible on the left side of his neck, the kind I’ve seen on rugby players from New Zealand. He clicks the recorder to pause. “Of course.”
“I think the Four Alarm killer knows me. Like, knows who I am and my background as Chet’s offspring. Do you think other people may have tracked my steps like you did? Could someone else do the same thing?”
“I mean, it’s possible.” He cringes, as though speaking a truth he’s not sure I’m ready for.
I’m ready. I’ve been aware of the perverts and weirdos since I was thirteen. I’ve always known they’re out there. Just didn’t realize they’d all find me at once or become so frenzied around this particular anniversary. “What are you getting out of this? Besides your publisher’s paycheck.”
Shia crosses his arms and leans backward. “Isn’t it usually my job to ask the questions?”
“Tit for tat today.”
He purses his lips into a thin line. “Okay. Like, did I grow up in a basement also?”
“Let’s start there, sure.”
The thin line breaks into a small smile. “The high-level summary is, I grew up atypically, too. My mother dumped me off at a fire station when I was a year old, and I shuffled through the foster-care system my entire childhood. As a result, I think I’ve always been attracted to stories that demonstrate resilience. That we aren’t defined by our beginnings or by the choices our parents made for us. We can define ourselves. I think that’s what you’ve done, and I want to highlight that.”
“That . . . was not what I was expecting.”
Shia lifts his pint to me before taking a drink. “Happy to surprise you.”
A moment passes between us, the tenuous trust I felt with him growing. He’s got some darkness, too.
“I have a theory,” I resume. “At the first crime scene, there was a stuffed animal outside the entrance. It was the same as my stuffed animal in the basement; at the second crime scene, the body wore a bracelet like I used to make with my sisters. Knowing that, let me rephrase: Do you think the killer knows of me, the way that you do, or does the killer know me personally?”
Thick eyebrows glue together. “Stuffed animal? From your childhood? What one was that?”
“You don’t know?” A sinking sensation floats in my belly.
“Wait. It’s not . . . what was his name . . . Peter the Pelican?” Shia looks at me, his upper lip raised in doubt.
“Petey. He’s called Petey the Penguin.”
“That’s right. You were photographed holding him in the hospital. I remember now.”
Relief swims across my eyes. “Okay. Whoever’s behind this could be a tabloid fan or someone who has a personal connection to me. So that doesn’t narrow down the pool.”
“No, I guess not.”
We’re silent a moment, and the brewery’s patrons, the music, laughter, and clinking glass, seem to rush forward. A clamor incongruent with our discussion, with what is driving each of us to meet.
Shia pays for our meal, insisting that he’ll write off the expense later. We agree to dig into the activity hours that Rosemary established to provide us with routine in our next session.
On the drive home, exhaustion pulls like weights on my eyelids, but Shia’s words rebound in my head. Despite his suggestion that he can use my memories, capitalize on my history just like the other grubby vultures, he is providing context for the many people emerging from the woodwork. And speaking to Shia about meeting Chet gave me the idea for a plan tomorrow.
After stunted, failed attempts as a teenager to gain clarity from Rosemary, to get specifics when I asked questions about my origins, it’s time to try again. This week—this killer—doesn’t really leave me the option.
Twenty
The next day, rolling hills sprawl before my windshield on the winding road to Arch. Spruce firs and pine trees, my friends growing up, line the road as if welcoming me home. There weren’t many trees around where our house was located in the desert of Oregon, but the few there were felt like wise caretakers watching out for us, vigilant throughout time and able to confirm that whatever crisis was occurring, whatever we had already lived through, would pass.
Along the highway, patches of black earth from a recent wildfire interrupt the greenery in sporadic bursts, marking the areas where firefighters were unable to succeed in subduing the flames. Seems I’m not the only one who acquired new scars.
I didn’t want to come home, let alone remove myself so far from Portland, where the Post could call at any minute with a request for coverage. The update this morning on the “tunnel murders”—what the Four Alarm and Stakehouse crimes are now being called—was less than encouraging. Gia Silva continues to be the chief person of interest, while Topher Cho, on the other hand, has been cleared of suspicion. Having taken the liberty of scrolling through Topher’s social media posts, I have to agree. The mix of selfies and inspirational quotes about achieving one’s dreams didn’t strike me as belonging to a killer, even one who’s interested in boosting his acting career.
Meanwhile, Gia’s got a history of living on the street, of drug use, and of ties to local drug lords who’ve committed serious crimes, including murder. But as a nineteen-year-old girl, she’s only ever occupied the periphery of those incidents. Counterintuitively, the police seem to think that’s why she’s the ringleader—the brains behind it all. And at one point, she was found sleeping in the tunnels below Four Al
arm—a direct link between Gia and the first victim.
Without more to go on, I’m returning home and hoping for some big reveal in Arch. Following bread crumbs of details I’m remembering with Shia is the only thing I’ve done that resembles progress. Rosemary’s recollections of a time when so many of my own experiences were a blur may be the light bulb I need.
Downtown Arch is picturesque. Shadows from today’s overcast skies cut the painful glare of the river that runs through the town. Boutiques and some larger, corporate shops have replaced family-owned standbys, reminding me that life continues to roll forward even when I wish it would stop forever and Monday would never come. The ice-cream shop run by the Wilkinsons still pulses; a few early-bird customers enjoy a cone beneath the store’s awning, searching for relief from the region’s dusty, dry air.
I pass the elementary school where I attended grades three through six. After a year of adjusting and minimal homeschooling as she had done with us underground, Rosemary was told I had to transition to public school and a normal life. Wounding emotions limp to mind, recalling the way other kids avoided me for months—they had all heard I was demon spawn and born of incest. I was isolated that first year, until Lily joined me when she was admitted to kindergarten.
A new plastic jungle gym lies in place of the old metal one that used to stand in the sandbox. A phantom itch tickles my chin as the road veers left and I drive on by. It was there that Vera Hutchinson called me a dirty mutt while I was hanging upside down on a bar. Startled by the insult, I slipped from the metal and split my chin open on the ground.
The houses age as I make a right, becoming smaller in size. Chipped paint and dilapidated sideboards warped by the arid heat signal that I’m almost there. A lone dog trots beside the road, balancing to avoid the ditch. Uneven mange is visible from my driver’s seat as I pass, but the dog looks alert—on the hunt for something besides trashed leftovers. He pauses to pee on a discarded Christmas tree, brown and brittle in April. Despite all the updated fixtures and new businesses thriving in downtown Arch, not all of the town’s neighborhoods have changed for the better.
Outside a faded yellow house with a modest front porch, I put my car in park. Before I can consider turning around and grabbing some liquid courage at the local liquor store, the front door opens, followed by the screen door. Rosemary steps forward, her hands folded beneath her ample chest and wearing a smile that matches. Straight black hair that hasn’t faded with time is piled in a wild bun, and she wears sweatpants stained with something dark. Her solid red shirt reminds me of when I was twelve and she slept in that exact outfit for a week, unable to rouse herself to change or bathe.
“Hi, Rose—” I stop myself. “Hi, Mom.” I step from the driver’s seat and leave the door unlocked. No one followed me all the way out to Arch, and everyone already knows who I am here. They wouldn’t let me forget it.
Rosemary darts a look for any spying neighbors, then waves me forward. “Come, come. Let’s get inside.”
The urge to roll my eyes pulls upward like a magnet. I focus that energy into a tight-lipped smile. “Mom, when is the last time you were out of the house?”
She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, as if genuinely worried someone might see her this way, then shrinks back into the shadows of the porch roof. Her thin skin is more papery in appearance than I remember it. She’s turning fifty this year, but dark circles beneath her dim brown eyes and those deep lines at the corners peg her as closer to sixty. “Hurry up—it’s going to rain.”
As if on cue, thick clouds clap overhead. Drops of water find my head, my shoulders, and then I’m walking quickly into the house I swore I would only return to when someone died. Internally, I note the irony: someone did.
Musty air enshrouds me like a veil the moment I pass over the threshold. The shag carpet from the 1970s that I always felt was akin to Mary Poppins’s bag—you never knew what you might find in its thick fringe—was old when Rosemary purchased the house back in the early 2000s. We bounced around from apartment to apartment in Portland, trying to find the right spot, before realizing we couldn’t remain where we’d been imprisoned. We moved to Arch when I started school, and Rosemary found this one-story. She used as little of the settlement money as possible, as she knew she might never work a real job again. And aside from the year she dished out ice cream on Main Street when Lily needed a new surgery, she hasn’t.
“Lemonade?” Rosemary calls over her shoulder. She walks past the front room that’s filled with cartons and has been since I turned sixteen. Labels across the cardboard tops identify the supplies she uses for her Etsy embroidery business: yarn, needles, a loom, and various colors of thread. When it was clear the money was running out, Rosemary turned to the skills she learned as a kid, and she tried to teach me, too, however terrible I was at it.
“Sure.” I move a box that reads SHIPPING SUPPLIES written in permanent marker.
“You talked to your sister lately?”
“Which one?” I murmur.
“What’s that?” Glasses clink from the kitchen, and I can picture her reaching up to the highest shelf in the cabinet to the left of the sink for what she deems the Good Cups—actual glass instead of the plastic kind we used growing up because we kept breaking everything.
“I said, which one? They’re both in Portland.”
Rustling in a drawer stops, and I know she’s paused in riffling through all the drink-mix packets she’s stored up over the years. She walks back into the front room where I sit wedged between cartons and a stack of coats she laid across the headrest of the couch. “Lily’s back? From Switzerland?”
Rosemary’s face lights up, then drops like a sheet. Lily didn’t tell her—that she was returning home or that she was already here. I’ll bet she doesn’t know that Lily is pregnant, either. My heart actually hurts for Rosemary a moment, watching her alternate between joy and sadness as she processes what this news might mean. Then a corduroy jacket brushes my cheek, a reminder that Rosemary loved her things, her comforting possessions, more than us—more than providing us with a clean home where clothing was put away and boxes didn’t fall on kids when they were studying on the floor. The feeling of pity goes away.
“Yeah, she is. Just a week ago or something. Recently. You haven’t spoken to her?”
Rosemary purses thin lips. “Not yet. She’s a good girl, though. She’ll call.”
Lily—my free spirit of a sister—call, because it’s the right thing to do? Not likely. She’s always lived by her own rules. While the rest of us have felt encumbered by our history, Lily seemed liberated by it. We already lived the worst there is in this world, she’d say. What are the odds of something like that happening to us again?
The rustling in the kitchen resumes, and I take a moment to admire the number of storage bins Rosemary has managed to fit in the rectangular space. The couch and love seat that have occupied this room since forever haven’t moved, only now they come with a blanket on the cushions—presumably to cover the wear and tear of twenty years.
“Do you think it’s time for new furniture? This couch is ancient.” A spring digs into my left cheek, as if protesting my critique.
Rosemary returns with two glasses of swirling opaque liquid. Thunder growls outside in the distance. “Too expensive. These are perfectly fine. Besides, there are good memories on them.” She goes to place our lemonade on the wooden table, but finding no space available, she nods to me. “Can you?”
I move the closest box to the floor, and she puts down our cups. Her hands free, she moves another carton from the couch to the floor beside her, then props her feet up on it.
“It’s gotten pretty bad, hasn’t it?” She looks around the room. Beneath the cardboard boxes are plastic containers. Through the side of one, the spines of binders I used in the fifth grade are visible: SCIENCE, READING, and SOCIAL STUDIES. Adjacent boxes are labeled in Rosemary’s square handwriting—BAKING WARE, BROKEN DISHES, LILY’S TRAINING BRAS, MARISSA’S DENTAL
EQUIPMENT. During middle school, I had to wear a head guard while I slept. In my defense, everyone grinds their teeth at that age—twelve years old is a stressful time, especially if you’re called Pissy Missy.
Rosemary heaves a deep sigh. “I should probably get rid of some stuff. You want any of it?” She waves a flat palm like she’s on a game show, showcasing product.
“Afraid not.”
“No, I get it. I probably wouldn’t give it to you, even if you said yes.” She laughs, a hard sound. “Difficult to part with things you’ve grown used to seeing. Once you’ve had them taken away at one point, that is.”
I don’t know whether she’s referencing being imprisoned by Chet or the furniture company that came a few years ago to repossess a dresser she’d bought online after she failed to make the final payment. I sip my lemonade instead of commenting. My mouth automatically sours as the drink’s sugar lights up my tongue.
“Oh! Do you want to see the changes I made to your bedroom?”
I follow her down the hall. A thin layer of dust crests the framed photos of Lily and me decorating the walls. We pass Lily’s room, still swathed in baby-pink everything. By the time she got old enough to find she preferred other colors—bright creams and sunny yellows—Rosemary had given up trying to find a job in between her intermittent bouts of depression; she didn’t have the money to buy us new bedroom decor. However, when Lily and I each turned eighteen, we did receive the money set aside for us from the settlement: $40,000. We could have decorated our rooms in crushed velvet if we wanted, but by that point we were ready to move out.
I turn in to the last door on the left, opposite Rosemary’s master bedroom, and face the scene of my adolescence. Stark white was always my style from the time I was allowed to choose things for myself. White bedspread, white drawers, white binders. The only color visible is the blue marker I used to decorate the binders, still stacked on the pale wooden desk, and black circles where I accidentally dropped cigarettes while blowing rings out my bedroom window. My arm tingles, and I absentmindedly touch my scars.