One Last Scream

by Kevin O'Brien

  Not backing down, Karen shook her head at him. “Amelia doesn’t have to talk to you-”

  “Oh, Karen, never mind, really, please,” she interrupted. She touched Karen’s shoulder as she edged past her toward Koehler. “I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account. I’ll talk to him. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”

  “No, Amelia, wait-”

  But she hurried out the door.

  Koehler took hold of her arm, and he grinned back at Karen. “You heard what Amelia said. Don’t worry.” Then he led her toward the driveway. “My car’s parked just down the block. We can go for a drive.” He handed her the Starbucks container. “Could you use a tall latte? I bought it for Karen, but she didn’t want it.”

  She took the drink, then glanced over her shoulder at Karen. “I’ll call you later, okay?”

  From her front door, Karen watched them start down the sidewalk together. “Damn it,” she muttered.

  They disappeared behind some tall hedges bordering the neighbor’s yard. But she could still hear Russ Koehler talking. “You know, Amelia, I had no idea you were such a lovely girl….”

  Then his voice faded in the distance, and Karen couldn’t hear him anymore.

  “I swear, I don’t remember much about that night at all,” she said, quietly sobbing in the passenger seat.

  She’d finished the latte he’d given her about ten minutes ago when they’d taken the Issaquah exit off Interstate 90, about a half hour east of Seattle. The empty container was in the cup holder between them. Russ had been a little worried about potential spilling on the plush interior of his new Audi TT Coupe (one of the benefits of marrying into money). He reminded her a few times to be careful with the coffee. Now he could relax a little, and he focused on getting a confession out of this tasty-looking young thing. He figured her Uncle George probably couldn’t keep his hands off her. He couldn’t really blame the guy, either. He was convinced the uncle had manipulated her into helping him kill his wife and her parents.

  He’d asked that she show him where she’d gone on the night her parents and aunt had died. According to police reports, she’d driven to Snoqualmie Falls. But this Issaquah route was sure a screwy way of getting there. Following her instructions, he’d almost gotten lost on all these winding forest roads around Cougar Mountain Wildland Park. He’d finally pulled into a little alcove at the start of a hiking trail, and shut off the engine to his Audi. By the hiking path, there was a little sign with a cartoon of Dennis the Menace wearing a backpack, and the caption “Don’t Be a Litterbug!” Only somebody had crossed out the Don’t. No one else was parked in the area. The sun was just starting to set behind the tall evergreens to the west.

  “Listen, Amelia, I’m going to make sure you get a break for talking candidly with me,” he said, letting his hand slide down from the gear shift to her seat. His pinky brushed against her thigh. “I’m very well connected. So you can tell me the truth, and we’ll work something out. I don’t really blame you. It was your uncle’s idea, wasn’t it?”

  Her head down, she kept crying. She held her purse in her lap. “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it, not even Karen.”

  “Is he screwing you?” Koehler asked.

  Wincing, she nodded. “I’m so ashamed. My boyfriend, Shane, he’s so sweet. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this behind his back. But it’s been going on for-for years now.”

  Koehler couldn’t believe his luck. Incest and pedophilia now factored into the story. “How old were you when your uncle started in on you?”

  She wept quietly, and set her purse down between the seat and her door. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. She leaned forward, and didn’t seem to realize it made her blouse open in front. Koehler could see one white, round breast, and the rose-colored nipple grazing at the fabric of her blouse.

  He moved his hand to her thigh and stroked it. He was starting to get hard. “It’s okay, Amelia. Take your time answering. I’m here for you.”

  Koehler couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. He wanted so much to undo the rest of those buttons on her blouse. His head was swimming.

  He didn’t notice that she was reaching inside her purse.

  All at once, she swung her arm out and hit him in the forehead with something hard. A searing pain shot through his head, and for a moment, all he could see was white. “Fuck!” he howled.

  He touched his forehead and felt blood. It was trickling down into his left eye. Blinking, he tried to focus on her.

  Then he noticed the gun in her hand.

  “They left here together over two hours ago,” Karen said into the phone. She was at her desk, behind stacks of work files. She’d been meaning to straighten them out for months. It was just the busywork she needed while waiting around for Amelia to call. So far, she’d reorganized the A through D patient records, had two cups of coffee, and given herself a paper cut.

  “I tried calling Amelia an hour ago, and nothing,” she continued. “I even called Koehler’s cell phone, and there was no answer there either.”

  “I can’t believe she went off with him,” George muttered on the other end of the line.

  “And voluntarily,” Karen added. “I tried to stop her. Now all I can think about is Amelia making some sort of confession to that creep. I wasn’t going to call you until I heard back from her. I didn’t want to worry you for nothing. But now I…” She sighed. “Well, I thought you should know. Maybe you want to contact a lawyer or something.”

  “I appreciate it, Karen,” he replied. She could hear the TV on and Stephanie laughing in the distant background. “Let’s just wait it out for now. You’re the only one Amelia has confessed to, for lack of a better word. She’s a very smart young woman. She kept her mouth shut with the police and everyone else about her visions. Let’s just hope she does the same thing with Koehler.”

  “You’re right. I probably shouldn’t have called you this soon.”

  “Nonsense, I’m glad you told me, Karen,” he said. “Why should you be the only one who’s worried? Besides, Amelia’s my niece. Jody, Steph, and I are her only living relatives. Or maybe I should qualify that-only known living relatives. Listen, I’ve checked the Spokane and Pasco newspaper archives and still haven’t come up with very much on Duane Lee Savitt. All I know is that he was an auto mechanic and, according to the people who worked with him at this garage in Pasco, he pretty much kept to himself. No one seemed to really know him. He had a sister, Joy, who died a few weeks before his rampage at the adoption agency. I kept hoping to find the name of another surviving family member in one of the articles, but no dice. But there was something in his obituary in the Pasco Tri-City Herald. They mentioned he was buried at Arbor Heights Memorial Park in Salem, Oregon.”

  “Uh-huh,” Karen said. “And-that’s a lead?”

  “Someone had to pay for the burial, and his headstone, if there is one. It’s a pretty safe bet that person knew Duane, too. But so far, that party is nameless. I checked the office hours for Arbor Heights Memorial Park, and they’re closed right now. But I’ll get in touch with them tomorrow morning. Keep your fingers crossed they still have billing records from 1993.”

  “I will,” Karen replied tentatively. “That-that’s great, George.”

  She didn’t want to remind him it was a long shot that Duane Lee Savitt had been Amelia’s uncle. If he had been, and they discovered something in Amelia’s childhood to explain her condition today, then George might be gathering evidence to exonerate his niece for murdering her parents, and his wife.

  She wondered if George was aware of that. Or was he still so convinced of Amelia’s innocence that such a notion hadn’t even occurred to him?

  Until yesterday, Karen had felt exactly the same way. It helped that George knew about Amelia going off with Koehler. And it helped that he was doing extensive research into what had happened at the adoption agency.

  But Karen still felt as if she were the only one worried about Amelia-and what that young w
oman was capable of.

  Russ Koehler was shivering. He wore a T-shirt, and nothing else. She’d made him strip off his shoes, socks, trousers, and underpants after they’d veered off the main hiking trial. Then she’d told him to remove his shirt and start tearing it into small, thin strips. Every forty or fifty feet that they stomped through those woods, branches from shrubs scraping at his naked legs, rocks and sticks chewing away at his cold, bare feet, she made him tie a strip from his shirt to a branch. He’d been marking a trail for her return trip.

  “Once I feel we’ve walked far enough, I’m going to leave you here-alone,” she explained coolly. “I’ll take down these trail markings, so it’s not going to be easy for you to find your way out. Even then, you won’t have any money. You won’t have your clothes or your precious car. And I’ll be far, far away, where you won’t ever find me.”

  Russ was ordinarily quite proud of his body, but now he clutched what was left of his shirt over his genitals. They were shrunken up from the cold. He felt so vulnerable with her walking behind him, staring at his naked ass. She didn’t tease him, giggle, or make any lewd comments as they continued through the forest. She seemed so passionless, almost detached from everything. And that scared the shit out of him.

  “Listen, Amelia,” he said, glancing over his shoulder for a second. “Your plan isn’t going to work. If you’re on the run, you won’t be able to collect your inheritance. Your uncle will get it all. Everyone will think you did it alone.”

  “Then do you think I might be better off if I just killed you here?” she asked, without a hint of irony or sarcasm in her voice.

  “Jesus, no,” he gasped. “No, no. I’m saying we can make a deal, and pin the brunt of it on your uncle. He manipulated you, didn’t he? And I told you, I know people who have a lot of clout….”

  “Tie another strip to that evergreen branch, will you?” she said.

  His hands shook violently as he tried to make a knot around the branch with the shirt strip. Russ glanced up at the darkening sky. Within a few minutes, the forest would be swallowed up in blackness, and he’d be lucky to see his hand in front of his face.

  He turned to her, and clutched the torn shirt in front of his crotch. “I–I’m never getting out of here, am I?” he asked.

  “Well, you have a lot of challenges,” she said, the gun pointed at him. “You’ll have bears, coyotes, and maybe even a cougar or two to contend with. Most of the real interesting creatures in these woods come out at night. Did you ever hear that story about the woman who went camping in the woods while she was having her period, and she got mauled to death by a bear? Apparently, the bear smelled the blood, and he tracked her down. So, I’d watch that cut on your forehead, Russ. It could be your death sentence out here. Now, turn around and keep walking. Just a little farther, we’re almost there.”

  He stared at her for a moment. She was screwing around with him. He could tell. She planned to kill him in these woods. Turning, he continued to stagger through the brush. His feet were cold and bleeding. “Listen, Amelia,” he said, starting to cry. “My wife just had a baby, for God’s sake. You can’t kill me…please. My son’s only a week old.”

  “If your baby son’s so important, why weren’t you with him today? Why didn’t you buy a station wagon instead of your flashy sports car?”

  “Please…” he repeated. Just a few feet ahead, there was a small clearing in the forest. He noticed a large, oblong rock on the ground. It was about the size of his fist. He imagined bashing her brains in with that rock, once he had her down.

  He weaved forward and continued to make sobbing noises for her benefit. He was banking on the element of surprise. She wouldn’t expect a weeping, sniveling man to suddenly attack her. The rock was just in front of him now. He stumbled, then hurled himself to the ground. He even let out a defeated cry. Then he grabbed the rock.

  A loud shot rang out.

  The rock flew from his gasp. A spray of blood hit him in the face. It felt as if his hand had exploded. He howled in pain. Grabbing his wrist, he brought his hand up to his face so he could focus on it.

  To his horror, Russ Koehler saw a bloody, bone-exposed stub where his index finger used to be.

  “You fucking bitch!” he yelled, real tears streaming down his face. Curled up on the ground, he held onto his mangled hand, and glared at her.

  Expressionless, she stood over him with the gun.

  “Goddamn you!” he hissed. “You’ve been jerking me around for the last hour, and I’ve known it. You have no intention of leaving me alive in these woods.”

  She nodded. “You’re right about that.”

  “You’re stupid,” he said, gasping for air. “Everyone on the police force knows I’m checking on you. When I disappear, they’ll figure out it was you. And when they find my body-”

  “Oh, they won’t find you, not right away,” she cut in. “What I was telling you earlier about all the wild animals in these woods, that wasn’t bullshit. They’ll take care of you, the hungry ones. They’re always hungry. Some of them will even bury your bones. I learned that from him. He didn’t bury every one of them, you know. Sometimes, he just let nature take its course. If there’s enough exposed flesh and enough blood-and enough carnivorous creatures around to smell it-then, it isn’t always that necessary to bury a dead body.”

  “Jesus, you’re insane,” he murmured, still curled up on the ground. “Did you hear what I said, Amelia? You’re in-fucking-sane, you stupid-”

  “I’m not Amelia,” she said. “I’m Annabelle. And you’re the one who’s stupid-for not seeing that earlier.”

  Wide eyed, he stared at her as she aimed the gun at him again. “NO! NO, WAIT! GOD, PLEASE….” He screamed and screamed. But there was no one around to hear him.

  And no one heard the gun go off…three times.

  “Hello?”

  Karen heard a baby crying in the background on the other end of the line. “Yes, hello,” she said. “Is Russ Koehler there, please?”

  “Who is this?” Mrs. Koehler asked, sounding haggard.

  “My name is Karen Carlisle.” She glanced at her wristwatch: 10:35. “Um, I’m sorry to call so late, but I’ve been trying to get ahold of your husband, and he’s not answering his cell phone.”

  “I know, I’ve been trying to reach him too,” she replied. “What’s this about? How do you know Russ?”

  “He came by my office today regarding an investigation,” Karen explained. She figured the less she said about it, the better. She decided not to mention Amelia, who still hadn’t gotten in touch with her. “Um, Detective Koehler was supposed to call me back, and never did. I was just checking in.”

  “Well, he isn’t here,” Mrs. Koehler said abruptly. “If you happen to hear from him, Miss-”

  “Carlisle,” Karen finished for her.

  “Yes. Well, tell him his wife and son are waiting up for him.”

  Karen heard a click on the other end of the line, and then-nothing.

  Chapter Twelve

  “Your homework assignment this week is to be good to yourself,” Karen said, walking out of her office with her last patient of the day. Cecilia was a divorced forty-something woman with curly gray-brown hair and low self-esteem. Karen opened the front door for her. “List ten things you consider life’s little pleasures and do three of them for yourself this week. Treat yourself, okay?”

  Nodding, Cecilia smiled at her. “Okay, Karen. Thanks. See you next Monday.”

  Ordinarily, Karen would have gone back into her study and jotted down some notes about the session, but she still hadn’t heard back from Amelia. Twenty-four hours, and still no word. No one had heard from her-not George, Shane, or Amelia’s roommate.

  Karen always switched off her cellular and set the home phone answering machine for immediate pickup during client sessions. Between each of her three sessions today, she’d anxiously checked her messages.

  With Cecilia out the door, Karen made a beeline to her purse, which
was on the chair in the front hallway. She dug out her cell phone and clicked on the messages display. There was one. She recognized Amelia’s cell phone number. She knew it by heart, now. Karen pressed the playback code. “Hi, Karen. You’re not answering at home, either. You must be with a client. Um, looks like you called me a bunch of times. Sorry, but I’ve been out of town, and I switched off my phone. I just had to get away from everything and everyone. Shane and my Uncle George left a ton of messages too. I didn’t mean to worry you guys. Anyway, I’m back. Call me, and I’ll answer this time, I promise! Bye.”

  Baffled, Karen played the message again. It didn’t make sense. Amelia was acting as if yesterday with Koehler had never even happened.

  She hit the last caller return, and Amelia answered after two rings. “Karen, is that you?”

  “Hi, Amelia. I just got your message.”

  “And I just got all of yours. Sorry if I gave you a scare. I should have told you-”

  “You were out of town?” Karen asked, cutting her off.

  “Yes. I rented a car and drove up and down the coast. Now that my credit card’s working again, I-”

  “And you just got back today?”

  “Yes, about an hour ago. I blew off a morning class. Why? What’s going on, Karen?”

  “Did you happen to have a blackout over the weekend? Any lost time?”

  “Why do you ask that?” Amelia replied, a sudden edge in her voice.

  “Well, I…” Karen trailed off at the sound of someone on the front stoop. Rufus started barking in the kitchen. Then the doorbell rang. “Amelia, just a minute,” she said, moving to the door. She glanced through the peephole to see a petite, very pretty black woman and a stocky, Caucasian man in his late forties with a bad comb-over. From their somber expressions, office clothes, and the odd pairing, Karen figured they were police detectives.

  She backed away from the door. “Listen, Amelia,” she whispered into the phone. Rufus’s barking competed with her. “I have to call you back.”