Lies We Bury(26)

Another thought freezes my movements: Did Chet know about these bracelets? We made them only the one day, the day we escaped, but did he see them when he came downstairs?

I inch closer and get down on my knees. I’m eye level with the trash bag. The feet. The bracelet that resembles those we made during arts and crafts with Rosemary.

Suddenly, the body slides, falls, then bangs into the back wall, and I scramble away on the cold floor, expecting it to reanimate and beg me to take it out of here. The trash bag has nearly come off the person’s head. Tears pool in my wide eyes, watching the body. Waiting. Anticipating.

With a trembling hand, I pull up the tip of the plastic bag until a face is revealed. I don’t look. I can’t, not directly.

Lifting my camera from around my neck, I focus the frame on sallow skin and a round jawline. Then I press down on the shutter button with my thumb.

Click.



I zigzag among cars on the freeway, not sure where I’m going until I spy the exit I took this morning. Outside the same coffee shop, Shia raises his head, a shaggy mane of black curls, from over a journal as I approach. A puzzled smile breaks across his face. “Claire. Back so soon?”

Standing at the same spot that I left only hours ago, I feel numbness flood through me. Shock. Fatigue. Confusion.

After wiping the handle of the cooler, then sprinting through the kitchen of The Stakehouse, I slowed my walk through the club and ignored the bartender’s announcement—Candy’s onstage! You’re leaving?—barely making it to my car before the shaking began.

Part of me wanted to be wrong about the location—wanted the killer to be wrong about me. I didn’t have some special insight into a killer’s mind or riddles, just because I was born into a situation normally seen in horror films or because I share genetics with Chet.

But he wasn’t wrong; neither of us was. I did find the body. Now I have to wait until the strip club staff and the police find it beneath that specific beer.

Pierre Arktiq. Pierre Arktiq. If I roll the name around in my head with an American accent, it sounds like—

Arctic. Pierre Arctic. Peter in French. Or Petey.

In that cartoon from my childhood, Petey the Penguin lived in the Arctic.

“Claire?” Shia looks at me with pinched eyebrows. “I asked if cash would be okay. I already went to the bank.” He lays a hand across a white envelope on the table. Crisp one-hundred-dollar bills peek from the top of the open flap. From the looks of Shia’s Boy Scout concern, I’m willing to bet there are ten of them without counting.

“That’s fine. Thanks.”

“Are you okay? You look pale.”

My tongue feels thick. I thought the Petey stuffed animal was there to lure me to take photos of Four Alarm. At no point did I think it was meant to serve as a clue to the next location—a bridge between the first dead body and the second. And if that’s the case, what does that bracelet I saw in the cooler mean?

“I need to ask you something,” I say and slide into the chair opposite. A barista approaches us, and I order another coffee, eager to blame my nerves on something normal like caffeine. “Do you know anything about a bracelet or some jewelry? I mean, one that would be significant to my childhood?”

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.”