Lies We Bury(18)

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.”