One Last Scream

by Kevin O'Brien

  George didn’t need to look at the photocopies he’d made. He remembered Nancy Rae Keller, the talented pianist and part-time waitress, who had disappeared one Thursday night in March 2002 after finishing work at a Corvallis restaurant.

  According to her former teacher, Nancy Rae had had beautiful red hair.

  A loud groan emitted from the fallout shelter door. The jack buckled under the pressure.

  George lunged toward the opening, slamming into the door just as the jack gave way. The device snapped out of place and flew into the pile of debris in the outside room. George was halfway through the opening when he felt the door move. It scraped against his leg, and he winced at the pain. But he didn’t stop until he’d made it out on the other side of the big, heavy door. And all the while, he’d kept his cell phone and Nancy Rae’s name tag firmly in his grasp.

  He knew he’d hurt himself. No doubt his leg was bleeding. But that didn’t matter right now. He’d gotten out.

  And in a way, after five long years, so had Nancy Rae.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Schlessinger ranch-July 2004

  She sat on her bed, painting her toenails-Sassy Scarlet. Her tabby, Neely, was curled up beside her. It was still pretty hot out, so she had the box fan in the window. A U2 song played softly on her boom box. Annabelle wore cutoffs and a sleeveless T-shirt. Her black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.

  She had a friend from school staying over tonight.

  Annabelle hoped to chat a bit with Sandra. But she had to wait first, until her father finished with Sandra down in the basement. He’d been at her now for about a half hour.

  At last, Annabelle heard him clearing the phlegm from his throat and lumbering up the stairs to the second floor. He passed her room without looking in, and continued on to his bedroom.

  Annabelle shoved Neely off her bed, then got to her feet. From her bedroom, she peered into her parents’ room. Her father couldn’t see her, but in a darkened window across from her parents’ double bed, she caught his reflection. He was wearing a T-shirt and work pants. He plopped down on the bed, then lit a cigarette. In a few minutes, he’d go take a shower and wash Sandra off.

  Slipping on a pair of flip-flops, she snuck out of her room, and down the stairs. As she passed through the kitchen, she got a waft of her father’s body odor, still lingering from when he’d passed through just minutes ago. He must have really worked up a sweat down in the basement. Annabelle paused for a moment, as she heard the pipes squeaking and the shower starting in the upstairs bathroom.

  She got another dose of that musky stench as she started down the basement stairs. But at least it was cooler down in the cellar. In the laundry room, she grabbed a bath towel from on top of the dryer. Carrying it into the furnace room, she pulled on the string for the overhead light.

  Annabelle listened to Sandra crying in the fallout shelter, but the sound was muffled. She laid the towel by the big, heavy door, then sat down on it. “Sandra? Can you hear me okay?”

  There was a gasp, and then she cried out, “Who’s there? Is somebody there?”

  “It’s me, Annabelle,” she called to her. “Listen, I can’t talk long-”

  “Get me out of here! Please, please, you have to help me….”

  Why do they always say the same thing? she wondered, fanning at her toes and blowing on them so her nail polish dried faster. Just like Gina, and all the others. She let Sandra scream and beg for another minute, and then finally interrupted her. “Listen, I can’t spring you out of there right now. It’s just too dangerous. But I’ll help you. I promise, you won’t have to stay in there long-”

  “No! You have to get me out of here now! Please, Annabelle, I want to go home, please!”

  It was nice, the way Sandra called her by name. Annabelle leaned against the door. “Hey, Sandra? Please don’t be mad at me for this, okay? He forced me to do it. But I’ll make it up to you, I swear.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” she said, her voice still full of panic. “In fact, my parents will give you money if you help me. I’m sure of it. They’re rich….”

  Annabelle frowned. The offer of money was nice, sure. But an offer of friendship would have been better. She had this notion about killing her father and helping Sandra escape. Of course, then she’d have to go on the run. But she’d already planned for that. For several months now, she’d drawn money out of her father’s account with forged checks and the occasional trip with one of his credit cards to the ATM at Sherry’s Corner. So far, she’d stashed away over three thousand dollars. There was also her mother’s jewelry, and a silver service that belonged to her grandparents. Annabelle figured she had about six or seven grand worth of crap around the house that she could hock.

  She imagined, after several days in captivity, Sandra would bond with her. And if she helped Sandra escape, Sandra would do the same for her. Like in Thelma and Louise, life on the lam with her new best friend would be an adventure. She and Sandra already looked alike. People would probably mistake them for sisters, or even twins. That would be nice.

  “Sandra, I left you something in there,” she said. “That stuff he used to knock you out, it’s chloroform, and sometimes it burns your face. I knew he’d be using it tonight, so I left you a little jar of Noxzema under that old rag in the corner. It’ll help soothe the irritation. I left some chewing gum there, too.”

  He always starved them for the first twenty-four hours. The promise of food and water always made them more cooperative, especially after an initial bout with true hunger. Some of them were probably even grateful to get the cat food.

  “Annabelle, I really, really want to go home. He hurt me. I’m in pain….” She started crying again. “I miss my momand dad. Please, please, help me….”

  Annabelle let her cry for a few moments. “I’ll help you escape, Sandra,” she said, finally. “But it’s impossible tonight. Just hang in there, okay? And listen, if I get you out, I can’t possibly stay here. You’ll have to help me get away. Can you do that? Do you promise to help me make a clean break and go start somewhere else?”

  “Yes, of course!” Sandra answered, almost too quickly. “I promise. I’ll do anything you want. Just get me out of here! Please…”

  “Sandra?” she said, her face pressed against the crack in the big door.

  “Yes?”

  “Earlier tonight, you asked me to go to the movie with you,” Annabelle said. “Were you just inviting me out of politeness, because I was giving you a ride? Or did you really want to hang out with me? Because I’m not sure if I fit in with your friends-”

  “Oh, no, I–I wanted you to come with us,” Sandra replied. “I wasn’t just being polite. I like you, Annabelle. You seem very nice.” But the tone of her voice smacked of desperation, as if her life depended on giving the right answer.

  And, of course, it did.

  With a sigh, Annabelle got to her feet and gathered up the bath towel. “I need to go now,” she said. “I don’t want him to know we’re in cahoots-”

  “No, God, please, don’t go. Annabelle, don’t leave me here…please….” Sandra started pounding on the other side of the door.

  Annabelle turned away. She reached up and pulled the string to the overhead light in the furnace room. Standing in the darkness, she listened to Sandra Hartman begging her to stay and talk just a little longer.

  It felt kind of nice.

  Wenatchee, Washington-three years later

  SEARCH CONTINUES FOR MISSING MOSES LAKE WOMAN said the headline near the bottom of page 3 of the Columbia Basin Herald for October 21, 1992.

  Karen had found it almost by accident. She’d been at the Wenatchee library for forty-five minutes now, scanning microfiche files, moving backward from February 1993. She was searching for a news story, but didn’t quite know what kind of headline to expect, maybe something like Child Snatcher Shot Dead or Dramatic Rescue Reveals Waitress-Killer.

  So far, she hadn’t come up with anything, except a slight crick i
n her neck from all the tension. She tried not to rush through the files, but after scanning the headlines on the first five pages of every edition for two months, she started skipping days. Karen kept reminding herself that she wasn’t in any hurry. Amelia was supposed to meet her here in an hour.

  She hadn’t heard back from Jessie, yet. Nor had George phoned with an update. Most surprising of all, Detective Peyton hadn’t returned her call. And so far, she hadn’t found a damn thing in the Moses Lake newspaper files, until now.

  There was a photograph of the missing woman: a thin, pale-looking blonde with big eyes and short, curly hair. Karen read the caption: “Kristen Marquart, 22, was last seen leaving work at The Friendly Fajita on Broadway in Moses Lake last Wednesday night.”

  According to the article, Kristen’s car was still in the restaurant parking lot the following day. Investigators determined the car had been tampered with, but they didn’t say exactly how. Kristen, a graduate of Eastern Washington University, had been missing for a week when the article was written.

  Karen saw the second-to-last paragraph, and grimaced. “Oh, God, here it is,” she murmured to herself.

  Kristen Marquart’s disappearance is the most recent in a rash of missing person cases in the Columbia Basin area, all young women. In August, Juliet Iverson, 20, vanished while picnicking with friends at Soap Lake. In March, Othello resident Lizbeth Strouss, 24, disappeared after finishing her night shift at a convenience store. Earlier in March, Eileen Sessions, 27, of Moses Lake vanished after dropping off her two children at day care. After 17 days, her remains were discovered near a hiking trail in Potholes State Park forest near the Potholes Reservation.

  Four women had vanished in eight months, and the authorities didn’t have any suspects. Karen had been hoping to find a story like this, and now that she’d found it, she felt horrible. These women weren’t just part of some puzzle. They were real.

  And it seemed even more likely now that Amelia’s birth father was a monster.

  Karen wondered if he’d abducted and killed any more young women before moving to Salem. Or had Kristen Marquart been the last?

  Staring at the screen in front of her, Karen realized she must have scanned past the news story about Lon Schlessinger shooting the neighbor who had allegedly molested Amelia. That neighbor was also blamed for the murder of a waitress. Was the murdered waitress Kristen?

  With a heavy sigh, Karen started to scan over the newspaper records again. This time, she wouldn’t skip over any days. Her eyes were getting blurry from too much reading, too much driving, and too little sleep. But she kept searching for the story she’d missed.

  Hunched in front of the warm, wheezing microfiche-viewing machine, she read every headline on the first few pages of every edition of the Columbia Basin Herald until she found a front-page headline on Monday, November 16:

  CHILD ABDUCTION SPARKS

  SHOOTING DEATH

  Dead Man Linked to

  Disappearance of Moses Lake

  Woman, Possibly Others

  MOSES LAKE: The apparent abduction of a 4-year-old girl on Sunday led to a police standoff and the shooting death of a man, now linked to the disappearance of a Moses Lake woman in October.

  Six hours after Lon Schlessinger, 34, reported his young daughter as missing, he led police to the house of a Gardenia Drive neighbor, Clay Spalding, 26. Police arrived at the scene at 5:45 P.M. to see the child escaping from a bedroom window in Spalding’s ranch house. The girl was dressed in only her underwear. When Spalding began to chase after the terrified child, Schlessinger shot him with a Winchester hunting rifle. Spalding, an unemployed artist, was pronounced dead on arrival at Samaritan Hospital at 6:20.

  Police found the child’s clothes inside Spalding’s home. They also made another startling discovery in the unkempt residence: a wallet full of identification and a locket, both belonging to Kristen Marquart, 22, a waitress and Moses Lake resident who has been missing since October 14.

  Marquart was last seen leaving her place of employment, The Friendly Fajita, on Broadway in Moses Lake. Authorities are now reexamining the disappearance of three other young women in the Columbia Basin area for a possible connection to Spalding.

  According to Miriam Getz, 70, who lived next door to Spalding for two years, her neighbor was “quiet and considerate, but very strange, something of a loner.” She added: “He made people uncomfortable, and I think he enjoyed doing that.”

  Getz reported that the Schlessingers had asked if she’d seen their missing daughter at 11 A.M. on Sunday. She later spotted the child in Spalding’s backyard, and immediately telephoned the Schlessinger house. In a 911 call to Moses Lake Police, Lon Schlessenger said he intended to confront his Gardenia Drive neighbor.

  Lon Schlessinger shot Clay Spalding in front of four Moses Lake policemen, and apparently, seconds later, the panic-stricken little girl ran into her father’s arms. If Lon was in any kind of trouble for taking the law into his own hands, there was no indication of it in the article. They tactfully avoided calling Amelia by name, but did mention: “Lon Schlessinger is a ranch foreman at G. L. Durlock, Inc. in Grant Country. The Schlessingers have been Moses Lake residents for five years. They have two children.”

  There was a photograph of Clay Spalding on page two. Karen remembered Amelia’s description of her neighbor, the nice Native American man with beautiful, long black hair. He’d converted a backyard toolshed into a playhouse for her. She’d eaten cookies in there at a little red plastic table.

  The driver’s license photo of Clay Spalding showed a swarthy, handsome man with straight, near-shoulder-length black hair and a slightly defiant look in his dark eyes. According to the article, two years before, Spalding had inherited the ranch house on Gardenia Drive, along with a large sum of money, from the home’s previous owner. Prior to moving to the Schlessingers’ neighborhood, Spalding had lived on the Potholes reservation.

  Two paragraphs later, the article pointed out that of the four recently reported missing women from the area, Eileen Sessions was the only one confirmed dead. Her remains had been discovered in a forest at Potholes State Park, not far from the reservation.

  Still, perhaps not to show too much bias against the alleged child snatcher, the article quoted Naomi Rankin, a friend of Clay Spalding’s, as well as a longtime Moses Lake resident: “I’ve been very close to Clay for several years. He was a brilliant artist and a lovely person. I don’t think he was capable of hurting another human being, especially a child.”

  Karen wondered how Amelia could have only a vague, pleasant memory of this neighbor man, and not recall any of those nightmarish events from that October afternoon. “I liked him,” Amelia had said, “but I don’t think I was supposed to be around him.”

  “I don’t get why we’re supposed to stay in a hotel tonight,” Jody said.

  He sat in the front passenger seat with one foot up on the dashboard. Stephanie was in back, sorting through an old Bon Marche bag of kids’ books, puzzles, and toys that had been on the Ping-Pong table in Karen’s basement. The junk had originally belonged to Karen when she was a child. Jessie used to break out the bag of toys whenever Frank Junior or Sheila came to town and brought their kids to visit old Frank-anything to keep the children entertained for a while. She figured Stephanie would need something to while away the next few hours at the hotel.

  There was a sci-fi convention in town, as well as an endodontists’ convention, just her luck. All the hotels were full. But the clerk at the Edgewater Hotel had taken pity on her and found her a room at the Doubletree over by Southcenter Mall. Her timing was doubly awful, because of rush hour. They sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on southbound I-5.

  “I’d rather be in hell with my back broken,” Jessie muttered, one hand on the steering wheel of George’s car. She glanced in the rearview mirror again: no sign of Karen’s Jetta or a black Cadillac. That was one consolation. If Karen was worried about them, they weren’t in any danger right now. Nothing was going
to happen to them in the middle of this traffic jam. Nobody was moving.

  “Jessie, why do we gotta stay at a hotel?” Jody asked again.

  “Oh, um, your dad thought it would be a good idea,” she lied. “They-they’re doing some work on the power on your block for the next few hours. We won’t have any electricity, and rather than rough it, we’re gonna live high on the hog at a nice hotel for the next few hours.”

  “They’re waiting until night to screw around with the electricity?” Jody said. “That’s kind of dumb. You’d think they’d do it during the day-when we don’t need the electricity so much.”

  “So write to your city councilman,” Jessie said. “There’s stationery at the hotel, and there’s also pay-per-view TV with new movies, and room service. You’ll love it, Jody, I promise. With the room-service dinner, they give you these little bottles of ketchup and mustard. It’s really neat. The best part of all is you don’t have to do your homework while you’re there.”

  She figured he wouldn’t argue or ask questions about that.

  “I hate mustard!” Stephanie announced from the backseat.

  “Well, you can just keep it for a souvenir, sweetie,” Jessie replied. “They also have little bars of soap and little bottles of shampoo. And here’s hoping they have an honor bar for dear old Jessie.”

  Once the kids were settled, she would treat herself to a glass of wine, or rather, Karen would treat her. That bizarre episode with Amelia had really shaken her up. She’d never seen Amelia act that way before, so creepy and smug, like a totally different person. And it was pretty darn unnerving to hear she was supposed to have been on the lookout for a black Cadillac today. That big, old beat-up car had been parked down the block from George’s house since before Jody even got back from school. She wondered if anyone was sitting inside it, and if they were still there, waiting for her and the kids to come back.

  “Are we gonna be at the hotel soon?” Stephanie asked.