George stared at her. “How many girls disappeared? Did they ever find any of them?”
“At least a dozen or so in a period of about ten years,” she said. “A while back, they discovered the partial remains of a young woman in a forest about twenty miles from here. They never found any of the others. And they never found the killer either.”
“So he’s still out there somewhere?” George asked.
“I think he’s moved on to a different area,” Caroline said, shuddering again. “Like a predator finding a new kill zone. Anyway, it’s been about three years since the last girl disappeared. Her name was Sandra Hartman. She graduated from here just two months before her disappearance. I taught Sandra her sophomore year. She was supposed to meet some friends for a movie, but never showed up.”
“You said this was three years ago?” George asked.
She nodded.
“Was this before or after the Schlessinger ranch burned down?”
“About a week before,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m not sure,” George replied truthfully. It just seemed strange that the girls stopped disappearing once Lon Schlessinger had smoked his last cigarette.
Karen glanced at her watch again. It had been almost twenty minutes now. She sat near the phone booth at one of the picnic tables in front of the diner. While waiting for George to call back, she’d gone into the restaurant and ordered a Diet Coke and a serving of fries to go. She’d come back out, sat down, and tried to eat. But she’d been too nervous; and after only a few fries, she’d tossed the bag out. Her soft-drink container was still on the table in front of her.
She couldn’t stop thinking about Amelia’s twin. If Annabelle was alive, it would explain so much.
Months ago, Shane had thought he’d spotted Amelia inside a strange car with a strange man at a stoplight in the University District. Amelia had had only the vaguest memory of it, after Shane had prompted her with a description of what he’d seen. Had he actually spotted Annabelle?
Karen remembered Amelia coming by her place the day before yesterday. She’d been acting so peculiar, and even looked a bit different. Hell, even Rufus had detected something wrong with her, and kept growling at her. Then she’d walked off with Koehler. Karen had figured the other Amelia had walked into her house that afternoon. She’d thought the other Amelia might have killed Koehler.
But there was no other Amelia. It was another person entirely.
How could Amelia-even with multiple personalities-be in two different places at one time?
She’d been in Port Angeles when Koehler had disappeared a hundred miles away in Cougar Mountain Park. And she’d been on a Booze Busters retreat in Port Townsend when her brother had died in Bellingham. The Faradays’ next-door neighbor hadn’t seen Amelia hosing down the dock around the time of Collin’s death. No, she’d spotted Annabelle, washing away his blood after she’d bashed his skull in.
Karen shifted restlessly on the picnic table bench. She gazed at the darkening horizon, and then over the treetops in the direction of the Faradays’ lake house.
Helene Sumner had seen Annabelle, and her boyfriend, Blade, at the house just days before Amelia’s parents and aunt were brutally killed there. The Faradays would have opened the door to Annabelle, believing her to be their daughter. They may not have even lived long enough after that to realize their mistake. In Amelia’s all-too-accurate dream, she remembered her Aunt Ina’s last words before a bullet ripped through her chest: “Oh my God, honey, what have you done?”
Everything started to make sense, if Annabelle was indeed alive. She was the killer. But what was her motive? And what accounted for Amelia having these fragmented memories of her sister’s violent actions?
An SUV pulled into the lot by Danny’s Diner. Karen glanced at her watch again. She got to her feet and checked the phone inside the booth. Had she hung up the receiver improperly after her last conversation with George?
No, there was nothing wrong with the phone, except George’s call hadn’t come through on it yet.
“God, you’re right!” a girl shrieked. “My cell phone isn’t working. Shit! And I told Tiffany I was going to call her.”
Karen saw three young teenage girls, and the haggard-looking mother of one of them, coming around the corner from the Danny’s parking lot. All the girls were talking at once, and loudly, too. But Karen heard one of them over the others: “Look, there’s a pay phone!”
Karen quickly ducked into the booth and closed the folding door. She picked up the receiver, but kept a hand over the cradle lever, pressing it down. “Oh, yeah? Really?” she said into the phone. “Well, I’m not surprised….”
A gum-snapping girl with long brown hair stopped in front of the booth while her friends and their chaperone filed into the diner. She fished a credit card out of her little purse. What a 14-year-old was doing with a credit card was beyond Karen. She turned her back to the girl, and kept up her pretend conversation on the phone: “I had no idea. Well, she should take care of that right away.”
After a few moments, Karen heard a clicking noise behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The girl was tapping her credit card against the phone booth window. She glared at Karen, and then rolled her eyes.
Karen opened the door. “Hey, I have another important call to make after this,” she said. “So, you may as well just buzz off, okay?”
“Bitch,” the girl muttered. Then she swiveled around and flounced into the restaurant.
Suddenly, the phone rang. Karen’s hand jerked away from the receiver cradle. “Yes? George?”
“Yeah, hi,” he said. “Listen, I think you’re right about Amelia’s twin. There’s every chance Annabelle is still alive….”
She stood in Karen’s kitchen, gazing at the housekeeper.
Outside, in the backyard, George McMillan’s children played with Karen’s dog. They hadn’t noticed her yet.
“Amelia, everyone’s been searching high and low for you, honey,” the housekeeper said. She furtively glanced over her shoulder at the children, then took another step inside and closed the kitchen door behind her.
“Where’s Karen?” she asked.
“She drove to the house in Lake Wenatchee, looking for you,” Jessie said. “She rented a car. Her own car’s missing. Did you borrow her car, honey?”
“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes narrowed at Jessie. “Do you know if Karen has been to the lake house yet?”
Jessie nodded, and moved over to the cupboard. “She called about fifteen minutes ago from some diner up the road from there. You just missed her.” Jessie pulled a container of lemonade mix from the cabinet. “I promised the kids I’d make them some lemonade. Would you like some, honey? Or maybe a nice cup of tea?”
“Don’t bother yourself,” she muttered.
“Sit down and take a load off, for goodness sake.” She moved over to the refrigerator and took the ice tray out of the freezer. “I’ll make enough lemonade for you, too. You have something cool to drink, and then we’ll call your Uncle George. He’s been worried about you, too.”
She sat down at the breakfast table. “Where is Uncle George?”
“He had to go down to Oregon for some research thingy,” Jessie said, retrieving four tall glasses and a pitcher from another cabinet. “He’ll be back tonight, though. Karen, too. I guess we have to wait before we can reach her on her cell-something about bad phone reception around there.”
Past Jessie’s chatter, she heard the children outside, laughing. The dog let out a bark now and then. She glanced down at the purse in her lap. Inside, something caught the overhead kitchen light, and glistened.
The serrated-edged, brown-leather-handled hunting knife in her purse was a souvenir from the ranch. It had belonged to her father. He’d skinned his kill with it on hunting trips. He’d also used it on some of his women once he’d finished with them.
She remembered back when she was just a little girl, those furtive trips at night had seemed l
ike such long ordeals. But in reality he’d done a quick job on the women they’d picked up together. The longest he’d gone on with one of them had been close to two hours. He’d dug their graves ahead of time, and driven them out to the preselected spot. She remembered those nights alone in the car, listening to the screams, waiting. He’d come back, covered with sweat, and often blood. He’d pull a piece of candy out of his pocket, and toss it to her. “That’s a good girl,” he’d say. “You’re daddy’s little helper.” Then he’d pop open the trunk, get out the shovel, and promise to be back soon.
And he’d kept his promise. He’d always return within a half hour.
A few times, Uncle Duane came with them. Those nights always took longer. And he smelled bad in the car on the way home.
Her father always called it his work.
It wasn’t until a few years after her mother died that her father began to take his work home with him. The longest he ever kept one of them in that fallout-shelter-turned-dungeon was eleven days and nights and that was Tracy Eileen Atkinson. There was something about her that he liked more than the others. For a while, she’d thought he’d never grow tired and bored with Tracy. But he did.
She’d snuck down into the basement and peeked in on her father as he finished Tracy off with his hunting knife. One quick stroke across the neck. She still remembered the startled look in Tracy’s eyes, the thin crimson line across her throat that suddenly unleashed a torrent of blood.
That was when she first coveted her father’s hunting knife. She was thirteen years old at the time.
She still hadn’t tried it out on anyone, yet. Karen was going to be her very first kill with the old knife. She’d had it in her robe pocket when she’d accidentally stumbled into Karen’s bedroom late last night. But the joke had been on her. She’d had no idea Karen had been sleeping with a gun beside her.
Two days before, she’d thought she had Karen cornered in the basement of that rest home. But Blade had botched it.
Returning to Karen’s house this afternoon, she’d figured the third attempt would be the charm. But she hadn’t figured on finding Karen gone, and the housekeeper with those two brats here in her place.
She stared at Jessie, hovering over the counter, her back to her. Outside, the children were howling, trying to get the dog to bark. She glanced inside her purse again.
No reason she still couldn’t break in her father’s old hunting knife, no reason at all.
“So honey, where have you been all day, for Pete’s sake?” Jessie asked, pulling something else out of the cupboard. “Karen and your uncle have been calling just about everyone and asking if they’ve seen you. They didn’t leave one turn unstoned as my Aunt Agnes used to say….”
“I borrowed Shane’s car and went for a long drive,” she replied coolly. She studied the way the chubby housekeeper was bent over the counter, and how she had the glasses lined up. She couldn’t see what Jessie was doing. Something was wrong.
Getting to her feet, she stepped up behind Jessie, and purposely bumped her in the arm, hard.
Jessie let out a little gasp, and a prescription bottle flew out of her hand. It rolled across the kitchen counter, and about a dozen light blue cylindrical tablets spilled out.
“Oops!” Jessie said, with a jittery laugh. “Look what you went and did. My arthritis medicine, I forgot to take it this morning.”
She swiped the prescription bottle off the counter, and glanced at the label. “This is diazepam,” she said, locking eyes with Jessie. “It’s a sedative. And they’re not yours. They’re for the old man in the rest home, Karen’s father. That was a silly mistake.”
Jessie nodded and laughed again. “I’ll say. I must be getting senile.” She stirred the lemonade in the pitcher, and the ice cubes clinked against the glass.
She put the prescription bottle down. “The lemonade’s ready, Jessie.” She reached inside her purse again. “Why don’t you call the kids in? And leave the dog outside, okay?”
“They have old yearbooks there at the high school library, right?”
“Yeah, I guess,” George allowed.
Her back pressed against the phone booth’s glass wall, Karen nervously tugged at the metal phone cord. “Could you get Annabelle’s teacher to show you pictures of those girls who disappeared, and then make photocopies? You said she taught some of them….”
“Yes,” he answered tentatively. “But why do you want their pictures?”
Karen hesitated. She was thinking about one of Amelia’s earliest memories: waiting alone in a car by a forest trail at night and hearing a woman scream. When the screaming stops, then we can go home.
“It might sound a little crazy,” she said at last. “But I think if we showed pictures of those young women to Amelia, she might remember some of them.”
“Karen, these girls were all abducted between Salem and Eugene,” he pointed out. “I told you, the Schlessingers put Amelia up for adoption while they were still in Moses Lake. How do you expect her to remember things that happened in Salem when she’s never even been here? It doesn’t make sense.”
“Maybe not,” she said. “But I think Amelia has some sort of window into what’s happening in her sister’s world. She might even believe it’s happening to her. I’m not sure I even understand it myself. But I have a feeling Mr. Schlessinger was somehow involved in the disappearance of these young women. If Annabelle knew about it, then Amelia might recognize one of those yearbook portraits. It might even trigger a memory. It could be the key that unlocks a lot of doors.”
George sighed on the other end of the line. “I think I understood about ten percent of what you just said. But I have every confidence in you, Karen. I’ll make the photocopies for you.”
“Thanks, George,” she said.
She didn’t know how to explain it to him. She didn’t understand it herself. How could Amelia have these premonitions, recollections, and sensations when all the while these things were happening to her sister, Annabelle? If Annabelle had indeed killed Amelia’s family and Koehler, why did Amelia blame herself for those murders?
She’d told Karen that she’d felt the blood splatter on her face while shooting her parents and aunt. She said she’d used her dad’s hunting rifle. “It felt like someone hitting me in the shoulder with a baseball bat every time I fired it.”
Karen wondered how Amelia could feel those sensations.
Yet, it made sense somehow. During their first therapy session together, Amelia had described one of her early phantom pains-a severe burning sensation on the back of her wrist. She’d said it felt like someone was putting out a lit cigar on her. And just minutes ago, George had told her about Annabelle’s bracelet. She’d worn it to hide an ugly burn mark on the back of her wrist from a childhood accident.
George obviously thought she was crazy to imagine Amelia might recollect those missing young women, because of her special connection with Annabelle. There was no easy way to explain. It was a phenomenon that had mystified Karen years before she’d even met Amelia, back when she’d been in graduate school. Trying to explain it was almost like solving an old riddle: Why did the twin in Zurich have a fever and feel abdominal pains?
“Karen, are you still there?” George asked.
“Um, yes, I’m here.”
“So, you think Amelia and Annabelle’s father was somehow involved in these disappearances,” he said. “Well, I’m with you on that. Sure seems like an awfully weird coincidence to me. The first girl vanished about a year after Lon and his family moved here. And the last one disappeared a week before the fire that killed him. Plus, if what you say is true, and Annabelle is still alive out there killing people, well, it would explain some of her behavior, wouldn’t it? The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
“Like father, like daughter,” Karen said. “Another thing, if young women started to disappear after Lon moved to the Salem area, they must have stopped disappearing somewhere else.”
“Moses Lake,” Ge
orge murmured.
“Caroline mentioned that in Moses Lake a neighbor man had molested Amelia.”
“That’s right,” George said. “The cops later found out he was also responsible for abducting and murdering a waitress. Do you think Lon was somehow involved in that, too?”
“Maybe,” Karen said into the phone. “It’s worth checking out.”
She thought about those memory fragments from Amelia’s childhood. In one of them, Amelia’s mother had her in the bathroom and she was asking the child, stripped to her underwear, “Did he touch you down there?” But Amelia had no memory of ever being molested.
“Can you ask Caroline if she knows whether or not this neighbor man was a Native American?” Her hand tight around the receiver, she listened to George murmuring to Annabelle’s teacher.
After a moment, he got back on the line. “No, Caroline says Joy didn’t mention anything about race, just that he was a neighbor.”
“Then Caroline probably wouldn’t know the name of the Moses Lake waitress who was murdered,” Karen concluded.
She heard George talking to Annabelle’s teacher again. Then he came back on the line. “Sorry. Joy didn’t go into that much detail when she told Caroline the story.”
But Karen wanted the details. The incident with the neighbor in Moses Lake had traumatized Amelia to the point that she had to be separated from her family. And yet, she had no clear memory of it or of the family she’d lost.
Lon Schlessinger had shot the neighbor dead. And this neighbor had apparently abducted and killed a local woman. Such a story would have been in the newspapers, at least, the local newspapers.
“Listen, George, I’m heading to the Wenatchee library,” she said. “I want to find out more about this incident with the neighbor. Maybe there’s something about it in the old Wenatchee papers.”
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