One Last Scream

by Kevin O'Brien

  “If it’s any help,” he said, “Amelia was officially adopted in April of ’93, and she spent a few weeks in foster homes before that. So the incident with the neighbor couldn’t have happened any time after February.”

  “Thanks. I’ll start in February ’93, and work backward until I find something. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for young women missing-person cases in the area, too. I’ll call you the minute I find something. I should be able to reach you on my cell once I’m out of these woods.”

  “Okay. Be careful,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” Karen said.

  “Be careful anyway. I keep thinking about Helene Sumner, and how she spotted Amelia at the lake house this morning. It could have been Annabelle, you know. And she could still be around there.” George paused. “Watch out for yourself, Karen.”

  Karen had been right about Amelia. There was something wrong with her.

  She stood too close, still clutching her purse and occasionally peeking inside it as if she were hiding some secret treasure in there. And then that strange smirk on her face, it was so unlike the Amelia she knew.

  “Oh, let’s give the kids a few more minutes outside with Rufus,” Jessie said, forcing a chuckle. She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “They’re having a blast, and that pooch hasn’t seen this much attention since God knows when.” She nervously gathered up the light blue pills from the kitchen counter. Nice try, old girl, she thought.

  Karen had cautioned Jessie that Amelia might be dangerous, and said to call her immediately if she should happen to run into the 19-year-old. Jessie hadn’t taken the warning too seriously. Amelia, dangerous? That sweet thing?

  But then, suddenly, the young lady showed up in Karen’s kitchen. No doorbell, no knocking, she just waltzed right into the house, bold as you please. Brazen as the guts of Jesse James, as her Aunt Agnes used to say. That was the first sign that something wasn’t right.

  So Jessie closed the kitchen door, to discourage Jody and little Steffie from coming inside, and to keep them out of harm’s way.

  The young woman in Karen’s kitchen seemed too hard-edged and cold. Though unable to put her finger on it, Jessie detected something off about her, the strange way she acted, looked, and talked. Then Jessie caught a glimpse of something glistening in her purse. It was a knife.

  She remembered Karen’s warning. She also remembered where she’d last seen those light-blue pills that had made old Frank so dopey and tired. They were in the spice cabinet, beside the aspirin and Karen’s vitamins. She thought she was being so clever with the lemonade routine. If Amelia was indeed dangerous, sedating her was one way to nip the situation in the bud and not do anyone harm. Jessie figured that once Amelia was down for the count, she could call Karen, and the police, if necessary.

  But she’d been foiled even before slipping the stuff in her surprise guest’s glass.

  Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

  Trying not to shake, Jessie dropped the diazepam tablets back inside the prescription bottle. She could hear Jody and Stephanie in the backyard, laughing, and barking along with Rufus.

  Leaning against the counter, the young woman picked up one pill Jessie had missed. “Why were you trying to drug me, Jessie?” she asked. She handed her the tablet. “Did Karen warn you that I might be unstable?”

  “What in the world are you talking about?” Jessie put the prescription bottle away, and then moved to the refrigerator. “That’s just silly,” she added, plucking a lemon from the shelf. She closed the refrigerator door, and reached for the knife rack.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” Suddenly the girl grabbed her by the wrist. She hit Jessie in the chest with her elbow. Whether or not it was an accident, it hurt like hell.

  Jessie staggered back, and the lemon rolled across the floor. “Good Lord! I was just going to cut up a lemon for the lemonade!” She rubbed her chest and winced.

  “It’s a mix. You don’t need to do that,” she shot back. With a quick jerk, she released Jessie’s wrist. “Now, go call the kids in, Jessie. They’ve been out there with that mutt long enough. I’d like to see my little cousins.”

  Trying to catch her breath, Jessie glanced toward the backyard.

  Rufus started barking furiously. A second later, the front doorbell rang.

  Jessie turned toward her. “Well, I–I better answer that before Rufus has the whole neighborhood over here,” she said loudly, competing with all the yelps and barks. Jessie didn’t wait for a response. She swiveled around and quickly headed for the front door, almost expecting the young woman to grab her.

  Rufus was going crazy outside. Jessie could hear Jody talking to him. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?” His voice, along with Rufus’s barking, seemed to come from the side of the house now.

  Jessie flung open the front door, and recognized Chad, a tall, stocky, soft-spoken man in his early thirties. He was one of Amelia’s patients, and he looked like he was sorry he’d rung the bell. “Is Karen here?” he asked, over the dog’s yelping.

  Jessie could only guess how frazzled she appeared, and Rufus, straining at his leash, was leading the two children around from the side of the house toward the front stoop. Poor Chad looked as if he just wanted to flee. “Um, I have a five o’clock appointment with her,” he explained, with an apprehensive look over his shoulder.

  “Down, boy! Take it easy!” Jody chided Rufus.

  “Down, boy!” Stephanie echoed.

  A hand over her heart, Jessie stared at him. “Karen-she had to cancel her appointments today.” She glanced back toward the kitchen. “Um, didn’t you get her message, Chad?”

  “Oh, nuts, I probably should have checked my answering machine,” he replied. He bowed down toward Rufus. “Hey, there, pooch.”

  “Don’t go away, okay?” Jessie said, distractedly. “Stay there. You too, kids. I’ll be right back.”

  With trepidation, she headed down the hall toward the back of the house. She edged past the kitchen entryway and gazed into the empty room. The back door was wide open.

  Jessie hurried to the door, and then looked out at the backyard: no one.

  Biting her lip, she closed the kitchen door and locked the deadbolt. Then she tried the door to the basement. It was already locked. No one could have gone down there.

  Right beside her on the kitchen wall, just inches from her head, the telephone rang. Jessie almost jumped out of her skin. She quickly snatched up the receiver. “Yes, hello?”

  “Is this Karen?” a woman asked.

  “No, this is her housekeeper,” Jessie replied, again, her hand on her heart. She stepped out to the hallway as far as the phone cord would allow. She saw Chad, Rufus, and the children still at the front stoop. Chad was crouched down, petting the dog and talking to the kids.

  Jessie sighed. “Karen isn’t in,” she said into the phone. “Can I help you?”

  “I’m looking for Amelia Faraday. I’m her roommate, Rachel.”

  “Amelia isn’t here right now. She-um, well, she just left.”

  “Do you know if she’s coming back?”

  I hope not, Jessie thought. But she merely cleared her throat and said. “I’m not really sure, hon. Is there something I can do for you?”

  “Well, this is kind of an emergency,” Rachel explained. “If you see her, please, tell her to call me immediately. I’ve got the police ringing the phone off the hook here. They’re looking for her.”

  “Really?” Jessie murmured.

  “It’s pretty awful news,” Rachel said. “It’s about her boyfriend…”

  “You mean Shane?” Jessie asked.

  “Yeah, you know Shane Mitchell?”

  “Yes, I do. Is he okay? What’s happened?”

  “He, um, well, he’s dead,” the girl explained, a little crack in her voice. “They found Shane in a canoe, drifting in Lake Washington by the 520 Bridge. It looks like he shot himself.”

  Meredith Marie Sterns was a pretty brun
ette who had disappeared the summer after graduating from East Marion High School in 1999. She had a dimpled smile and “Rachel” hair copied from Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle in Friends.

  “Meredith spent most of that June backpacking around Europe with a friend,” Caroline explained.

  George stood over the Xerox machine, making a photocopy of Meredith’s graduation portrait. They were the only ones in the high school’s administration office; everybody else had gone home already. They had several old yearbooks piled on the secretary’s desk beside the copier.

  “I remember the Sterns were so worried that something might happen to Meredith while she was wandering around Europe,” Caroline continued. “But it was less than a week after she’d returned home that it happened. She went with some girlfriends to see the Fourth of July fireworks at the park. I guess it was about twenty minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start when Meredith excused herself to go use the restroom. And she never came back….”

  George once again studied the photo of the girl with the Rachel hair. “She was so excited about going to Chicago in the fall,” he heard Caroline say. “She’d been accepted into Northwestern. She was going to be a drama major.”

  Caroline had a story like that for every one of the missing young women. Part of George wanted to hurry up and just get the photocopies made. The sooner he hit the road, the sooner he’d be home with his kids. He was worried about them.

  But he didn’t rush through the task at hand, and he respectfully listened to Caroline’s reminiscences for each missing girl. The stories broke his heart. Each one was somebody’s daughter, sister, or fiancee. Each one had dreams and plans for her future. Each one had disappeared without a trace.

  Twenty-two-year-old Nancy Rae Keller was an accomplished pianist who had performed in several concerts. She’d been earning some extra money as a waitress at a fancy restaurant called The Tides in Corvallis. The last person to see her alive was the restaurant manager. Nancy Rae had finished up her shift one Thursday night in March 2002 and headed out to her car. Nancy Rae’s car had still been in the restaurant’s parking lot on Friday morning. George couldn’t see it in the black-and-white photo, but according to Caroline, “Nancy Rae had the most beautiful red hair.”

  The youngest to disappear was Leandra Bryant, nicknamed Leelee. The 15-year-old had been babysitting for two toddlers until 10:30 on a Saturday night in April, 2001. The children’s father had offered to drive her home, but Leelee lived only two blocks away and insisted on walking. She should have been safe. But somewhere along those two blocks in a quiet, residential area of Salem, Leelee Bryant vanished.

  The last among the missing young women was Sandra Hartman, the 18-year-old who had disappeared on her way to the mall to meet some friends for a movie.

  George looked at the slightly grainy photocopy of Sandra’s graduation portrait, and he saw a resemblance between the beautiful dark-haired senior and Amelia. It was the last photocopy he’d made. The Xerox machine still hummed for a moment before it wheezed and then switched off.

  “Were any of these girls friends of Annabelle’s?” he asked.

  Caroline arranged the yearbooks by year. “No, only two of the girls were in school at the same time as Annabelle. And I don’t think either one of them ever had Annabelle over to their homes or anything. And, of course, I’m sure they never went out to the Schlessinger ranch.”

  George remembered Erin Gottlieb telling him that she hadn’t set foot in the place. “That ranch in the middle of nowhere,” she’d called it.

  “You said the ranch house is still there?” he asked.

  “Yes, but it’s just a burnt-out shell now,” Caroline replied. “There’s hardly anything left of it. I don’t think anyone’s been out there in years.”

  George studied the photocopies again-all those pretty young women who had disappeared. “Could I ask you for one more favor, Caroline?”

  She nodded. “Sure.”

  “Could you tell me how to get to the Schlessinger ranch?”

  Chapter Nineteen

  WENATCHEE-23 MILES said the sign just past Leavenworth.

  With a breathtaking view of the Cascade Mountains, the quaint Bavarian village was a big tourist attraction in central Washington, and one of the Route 2 landmarks Karen was supposed to look for on her way to the Wenatchee Public Library. The waitress at Danny’s Diner had given her directions. Just to be sure, Karen telephoned the library on Douglas Street, and found out that, yes, they were open until 8:00 tonight; and yes, they had available both the Wenatchee World and the Columbia Basin Herald, which served Moses Lake. The microfiche files for both newspapers went back thirty years.

  White-knuckled, Karen gripped the steering wheel and studied the winding, hilly highway ahead.

  She realized now it was Amelia’s twin in the hallway and basement of the convalescent home the day before yesterday. “Do it now,” she’d heard Annabelle whisper. “Get her!”

  Karen had heard the same hushed voice last night: “She’s got a gun, for chrissakes…I can’t…goddamn mutt…” At the time, Karen had figured Amelia must have been talking in her sleep. But now, she knew it had been Annabelle, probably whispering to Blade.

  If Annabelle had accidentally stumbled into her room last night to kill her, where had Amelia gone? Karen was positive Amelia had fallen asleep in the guest room last night. Some time later, perhaps before that predawn intrusion, a switch had been made. Karen wondered if Amelia had left on her own accord. Or had Annabelle-after so many years with her father-also become an expert at making young women vanish without a trace?

  Her cell phone went off, and Karen realized she was finally out of that call-restricted area. Eyes on the road, she blindly reached inside her purse. She checked the caller ID: her home phone number. “Hello?” she said into the phone, a bit wary.

  “Karen, it’s me, Jessie. Thank God I didn’t get that stupid ‘Your call cannot be completed as dialed’ recording again.”

  “You’re still at the house,” Karen said. “Is everything okay?”

  “Hardly. I have terrible news.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I still haven’t told the kids. They’re in the kitchen with Rufus. Shane is dead. That poor dear boy, can you imagine? It looks like he shot himself….”

  “Oh, my God,” Karen murmured, the cell phone to her ear. “Are you sure? How did you find out?”

  “Amelia’s roommate told me. She called looking for Amelia. That’s the other thing, Amelia showed up here quite unexpectedly, acting very strange….”

  A car horn blared. Karen suddenly realized she’d been drifting into the oncoming lane. A pickup truck barreled toward her. She jerked the wheel to one side. Tires screeched as she swerved back into her lane, and beyond, onto the shoulder off the highway. For a few, fleeting, gut-wrenching seconds, she thought the car would flip over.

  “Good Lord, what’s happening?” she heard Jessie ask.

  Karen caught her breath, and veered back into her lane. “Nothing, I just need to get off this road, that’s all.” She saw a turnoff to an apple orchard ahead, and took it. Slowing down, she crawled over to a gravelly turnaround area for the one-lane road. Then she put the car in park. She listened while Jessie told her about the disturbing episode with Amelia, who “just wasn’t acting like her sweet self.”

  Yes, Jessie said, she’d called the police after Amelia had made her hasty exit, and a patrolman had stopped by. He’d checked around the premises, and that was it. “He seemed to think I was a major kook,” Jessie said. “I mean, Amelia never really threatened me or anything. But she had that knife in her purse, and it gave me the heebie-jeebies. Still, the worst thing she actually did was hit me in the chest when she grabbed my arm, and that might have been an accident. And here I was, trying to slip her some of those knockout pills, because you told me she was dangerous.”

  “Jessie, she is,” Karen said. “She’s very dangerous.”

  “I know, I believe you,” Jessie replied. “Bu
t when I told this patrolman that the police were looking for her, he didn’t know a thing about it.”

  Apparently, Amelia Faraday had not yet officially become a person of interest in Detective Koehler’s disappearance.

  “Anyway, we’re still at your house,” Jessie said, her voice a little shaky. “The cop said they’d call back here if he found out anything more. But I want to get these kids home.”

  “Have you talked to George, yet?” Karen asked.

  “I thought I’d wait until we were safely at home before giving him the latest developments. I didn’t want to worry him.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Karen sighed.

  She stared out past the windshield at the starter trees in the orchard, lined up in a row. Their leaves fluttered in the breeze, and dusk loomed on the horizon. Her heart ached, and she wanted to cry for Shane, but there was no time.

  She didn’t for a minute believe he’d shot himself.

  “Listen, Jess, please, be careful driving home,” she said at last. “Make sure you aren’t being followed. Keep an eye out for my car-and that black Cadillac.”

  “What black Cadillac?” Jessie repeated.

  “The old black Cadillac with a broken antenna. It was following me around over the weekend. I told you-”

  “Oh, Lord, honey, how do you expect me to keep track of all this stuff?” Jessie said, exasperated.

  “Well, just watch out for it now, okay?”

  “I’ve seen it, for Pete’s sakes. A car matching that description was parked just down the block from George’s house earlier today. It was still there when Jody and I left to pick up Steffie.”

  “Oh, my God,” Karen murmured. “Listen, Jess, don’t go back to George’s. Better not stick around my place, either. Take the kids to a hotel, and make sure you’re not being followed. Just hide out there for a while, order room service, and watch pay-per-view movies. I’ll handle the bill. Call me once you get settled in, okay?”