One Last Scream (4 page)

George mussed his son’s unruly, brown hair. “It’s all right, Jody. We’ll find her.”

He asked the concierge to make the announcement again. Then he put down his shopping bags and turned to Jody. “You stay here and keep your eyes peeled,” he said. “I’ll start on the top floor and work my way down. Have the woman call my cell if Steffie shows up. Okay, sport?”

Jody nodded. George kissed his forehead, then hurried toward the escalator. “Stephanie! Steffie?” he called, loudly. People stopped to stare at him, several of them scowling. He didn’t care. He brushed past shoppers on the escalator, saying, “Excuse me,” over and over again. He yelled out Stephanie’s name a few more times. He kept looking around as he moved from each shopping level, stepping off one escalator and starting up a new one.

As George reached the top floor, where the restaurants and movie theaters were, he felt his cell phone vibrating. He stopped in his tracks. He quickly snatched the phone out of his jacket pocket, then switched it on. “Yes, hello?” he asked anxiously.

“Uncle George?”

“Amelia?” he asked.

“Yeah, hi, listen,” she said. “Has Aunt Ina called you from the cabin today?”

Flustered, he shook his head. “Not yet,” he said into the phone. “She’s supposed to call from that diner near the cabin when they go to breakfast. I’m sorry, Amelia, but I—”

“Uncle George, it’s past noon. She should have called by now—”

“Amelia, honey, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something. I need to call you back.”

“No! Don’t hang up, please! Uncle George, something happened at the Lake Wenatchee house, something horrible.”

He stood by the entrance of a fifties diner with the cell phone to one ear and a finger in the other to block out all the noise. “What are you talking about?” he asked, trying not to sound impatient.

“Remember how when Collin died, I knew before everyone else? Remember that premonition I had? Well, this is the same thing. I
feel
it. I know something happened at the cabin. You probably think I’m crazy. But I’m scared, Uncle George. My gut instinct tells me they’re all dead—Mom, Dad, and Ina. I hope to God I’m wrong—”

“Amelia, I’m sorry, but I’m in the middle of something right now. It’s an emergency. Let me call you back—”

“This is an emergency too, Uncle George! I’m serious—”

“Honey, I’m going to hang up, okay? I—I’ll call you back just as soon as I can, all right?” Wincing, George clicked off the line. He felt awful hanging up on her, but he just didn’t have time for Amelia’s dramatics right now.

He hadn’t even gotten the cell phone back into his pocket when it vibrated again. “Oh, Jesus, please, Amelia, leave me alone,” he muttered. He clicked on the phone, and sighed. “Yes?”

“Mr. McMillan, this is Jennifer, the concierge. Your daughter’s okay. She hadn’t wandered too far. She heard the last announcement, and came right to us. She’s here at the desk, waiting for you….”

“Oh, thank God,” he whispered. “Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you very much.”

Fifteen minutes later, he was walking with the children toward the Pine Street lot where he’d parked the car. George gripped Stephanie’s little hand. He felt as if he’d just dodged a bullet. He’d thanked the concierge, stopped by Pottery Barn to tell the saleswoman all was well, and he’d assured Jody that he wasn’t mad at him for letting Stephanie wander off. But he still had some unfinished business.

He needed to call back Amelia, and he didn’t want to. She’d been babbling on about some
premonition
she’d had that her parents and Ina were all dead.

“Okay, watch your fingers and feet, pumpkin,” he said, helping Stephanie into the backseat. He shut the car door and made sure she was locked in. While Jody climbed into the front passenger side, George stashed the Old Navy and Pottery Barn bags in the trunk. He closed it, and then glanced at his wristwatch: 12:35.

Ina definitely should have phoned by now.

He checked his cell to see if he might have missed a call. There were no messages. The only call had been the one from Amelia.

Pulling at her leash, the eleven-year-old collie led the way. Abby knew exactly where her owner was headed. She had that sixth sense some dogs had. When they came to a split in the forest’s crude path, Abby sniffed at the ground and quickly veered onto the trail that went along the lake’s edge—toward the Faradays’ house.

“That’s a good girl,” Helene Sumner said, holding the leash tightly. A chilly autumn wind whipped across the lake, and she turned up the collar to her windbreaker. Helene was sixty-seven and thin, with close-cropped gray hair. She was an artist, working with silk screens. She had a studio in her house, about a half mile down the lake from the Faradays’ place.

Helene had hardly gotten any sleep last night. When those shots had gone off at 2:30 this morning, Abby had started barking. She leapt up from her little comforter in the corner of the bedroom and onto Helene’s bed. The poor thing was trembling. So was Helene. She wasn’t accustomed to being woken up in the middle of the night like that.

Hunting was prohibited in the area, and even if it were allowed, what in God’s name were they hunting at that hour? The tall trees surrounding the lake played with the acoustics, and sounds traveled across the water. Those shots rang out so clearly, they could have been fired in Helene’s backyard. But she knew where they’d come from.

She’d just started to doze off again when another loud bang went off around five o’clock. Helene dragged herself out of bed and threw on her windbreaker. Grabbing a pair of field glasses, she walked with Abby to the lake’s edge, and then peered over at the Faradays’ house. No activity, no lights on, nothing.

She retreated to the house, crawled back into bed and nodded off until 10:30—very unlike her.

An hour ago, while having her breakfast—coffee and the last of her homemade biscuits—Helene had figured out who must have encroached on her sanctuary. Those three loud shots in the early morning hours must have been some kind of fireworks—bottle rockets or firecrackers.

Now, walking with Abby along the lakeside path, Helene gazed at the Faraday place and thought about the daughter, Amelia. She used to be such a polite, considerate girl—and so beautiful. But there was an underlying sadness about her, too. And talk about sad, it was such a tragedy when the Faradays’ son drowned. It had been around that time, maybe even before, when Amelia and her lowlife boyfriend had started showing up at the weekend house without her parents. They were so obnoxious. Helene didn’t care about the skinny-dipping, but did they have to be so loud? She heard their screaming and laughing until all hours of the night, and sometimes it was punctuated by bottles smashing. They trashed the lake, too. Helene would find food wrappers, cigarette butts, and beer cans washed up on her shore after each one of their clandestine visits. Those kids were making a cesspool out of her lake.

About a month ago, when the Faradays had come for a weekend, Helene stopped by with a Bundt cake and offered her belated condolences about Collin. Then, privately, she talked to Amelia about her secret trips there with her boyfriend. “It’s none of my business what you do with him, Amelia,” she told her, walking along the trail beside the water. “But I wish you’d be a little less noisy about it. And so help me God, I’m going to say something to your parents if I see one more piece of garbage in that lake. It’s my lake, too, and I won’t let you and your boyfriend pollute it.”

Amelia stopped and gaped at her with those big, beautiful eyes and a put-on innocent expression. “Oh, Ms. Sumner, I—I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she murmured. “I haven’t come here with my boyfriend. I swear. Shane’s
never
been here. You must be mistaken.”

Helene shook her head. “You can deny it all you want. I know what I saw, Amelia. I’m really disappointed in you….”

Now, as she approached the Faradays’ front porch, Helene figured she’d get the same Little Miss Innocent routine from Amelia as last time. She would probably wake her up—along with her boyfriend—since they’d been lighting off firecrackers until the wee hours of the morning.

But something suddenly occurred to Helene that made her hesitate at the Faradays’ front stoop. Why didn’t she hear any laughing or screaming? People always laughed, yelled, or cheered when they let off fireworks. But there hadn’t been a human sound—just those shots.

Abby sniffed at the front door to the Faradays’ old Cape Cod–style house. She started whining and barking. The collie backed away. She had that sixth sense.

Something was wrong inside that house.

Although Abby tried to pull her in the other direction, Helene stepped up to the door and knocked. Abby wouldn’t stop yelping. “Quiet, girl,” Helene hissed. She tried to listen for some activity inside the house. Nothing. Helene knocked again, and waited. She wondered if she should take a cue from Abby and get out of there. But she knocked once more, and then tried the doorknob. It wasn’t locked.

Abby let out another loud bark, a warning. But it was too late. Helene was already opening the door. From the threshold, she could see up the stairs to the second floor hallway, where a messy brownish-red stain marred the pale blue wall. Baffled, Helene started up the stairs, having to tug at Abby’s leash. Only a few steps from the landing, Helene stopped dead. She realized now that the large stain on the wall was dried blood. Beneath it, Jenna Faraday lay on the floor, her face turned to the wall. The oversized T-shirt she wore was soaked crimson. Her bare legs looked so swollen and pale—almost gray.

Helene gasped. She and Abby retreated down the stairs, and then she noticed what was in the living room. Helene stopped in her tracks. A second dead woman lay sprawled on the floor—a few feet from the kitchen door. She had beautiful, curly auburn hair, but her face was frozen in a horrified grimace. Her burgundy-colored robe and nightgown almost matched the puddle of blood on the floor beneath her. The shotgun blast had ripped open the front of that lacy nightgown. Helene could see the fatal, gaping wound in her chest.

Not far from the second woman’s body, Mark Faraday’s corpse sat upright in a rocker. At least, Helene thought it was him. Blood covered the robe he wore. The butt of the hunting rifle was wedged between Mark Faraday’s lifeless legs, with the long barrel slightly askew and tilted away from his mutilated, swollen face.

One hand remained draped over the gun, his finger caught in the trigger.

“What about that woman who lives down the lake from the cabin?” George asked. “Your dad told me they’ve used her phone in the past for emergencies. Do you know her number?”

“Oh, God, Ms. Sumner,” Amelia murmured on the other end of the line. She sounded as if she were in a daze. “I forgot all about her. We have her number written down someplace, but I think it’s shoved in a desk at home in Bellingham.”

“Do you know her first name?”

“Hold on for a second, Uncle George. I’m about to go through a tunnel.”

“I thought you’d pulled over. You shouldn’t be on your cell while driving—”

“God, you sound just like Dad. It’s okay. I have friends who text-message while driving.”

“Well, then they’re idiots,” George said to dead air. She must have entered the tunnel.

Holding the cordless phone to his ear, he glanced toward the living room windows. From this spot in the kitchen, he could see through the sheer curtains to the front yard. He’d sent Jody and Stephanie outside so he could phone Amelia and talk to her without the kids hearing. They didn’t need to know he was worried about their mother.

While driving home from downtown, George had gotten more and more concerned. Ina had
promised
to call and check in with him this morning.

There were no messages on the answering machine when he’d gotten home with the kids, except two from a panic-stricken Amelia, both within the last hour. Her premonition that Ina, Mark, and Jenna had all been killed seemed preposterous, but unnerving, too.

“Remember how when Collin died, I knew before everyone else?” she’d asked. What George remembered was Amelia claiming after the drowning that she’d
seen
it all—in her mind. She didn’t think Collin had accidentally fallen off the dock and hit his head on those pilings. She insisted there was more to it than that. She had a feeling.

George remembered when Amelia had made all those wild claims. He and Ina figured their sweet-but-screwed-up niece was looking for some attention. Amelia must have felt like an also-ran alongside her winning younger brother. Back in 1992, Mark and Jenna had been trying to have a child. Finally, after weeks of foster parenting, they adopted beautiful four-year-old Amelia. They didn’t think anyone could eclipse her—until two months later, when Jenna learned she was pregnant.

Amelia adored her little brother. But apparently she became a handful. Mark and Jenna lost more sleep on account of Amelia’s nightmares than the baby’s feedings. And even when Collin was supposed to sleep through the night, Amelia always woke him up when she jumped out of bed shrieking. The nightmares hadn’t yet subsided when Amelia started developing phantom pains and faked illnesses. “It feels like someone’s twisting my arm off, Uncle George!” he remembered her screaming during a family Thanksgiving at his and Ina’s house. It took several minutes for her to stop crying. According to Jenna, two days later, Amelia claimed her arm was still sore, though she didn’t have a mark on her. Other times, she said it felt as if someone were hitting her or kicking her. There were several trips to the doctor and the hospital emergency room for absolutely no reason. By early high school, certain phantom aches and ailments prompted Jenna to rush Amelia to a gynecologist. Jenna had confided to Ina that she thought someone might have been molesting Amelia. But the doctors found no physical evidence of this whatsoever.

Amelia started drinking in high school, too. Despite all her problems, she was a near-A student, and extremely sweet. She had a good heart. If someone sneezed in the next aisle at the supermarket, Amelia would call out, “God bless you.” George guessed that her eagerness to please, along with peer pressure, must have started her drinking. She’d been to several therapists, but none of them really worked out until she recently started seeing this one, Karen Somebody. Amelia liked her a lot, but George wasn’t sure if this Karen person was doing any good.

The one who seemed to get through to Amelia best was Ina. Since Amelia had started school at UW, they’d seen a lot more of her. Ina relished the admiration of this college girl. They had their Girls’ Nights Out together at trendy restaurants and college bars. They also teamed up for shopping expeditions and the occasional pedicure/manicure at Ina’s favorite day spa. She got to be Amelia’s fun aunt and confidante.

George wondered if Ina was better at being a fun aunt than a serious wife and mother. It was a terrible thought to have. And just an hour ago, he’d made a deal with God that he would try once again to make it work with Ina.

George continued to listen to the dead air on the phone, and he stared out the window. One of the neighbor kids—Jody’s friend, Brad Reece—joined the children on the front lawn. And now the boys were tossing around a Frisbee and ignoring Stephanie.

“Uncle George, are you still there?”

“Yes,” he said into the phone. “I thought I might have lost you.”

“The old lady’s name is Helene,” she said. “Helene Sumner in Lake Wenatchee. I’ll call directory assistance and get the number—”

“No, let me.” He grabbed a pen and scribbled down the name. “I don’t want you making all these calls while you’re driving. By the way, where are you? Where’s this tunnel?”

She hesitated.

“Amelia?”

“I just got off the I-90 bridge. I was—I was visiting a friend in Bellevue.”

“Well, listen, if you have nothing else going on, you’re welcome to come over—”

“Um, I can’t right now, Uncle George. I’m going to see my therapist. Maybe later tonight, huh?”

“Okay. I’ll call this Helene Sumner and see if she’ll check on the house for us. I’ll phone you the minute I hear anything.”

“My cell’s running out of juice. Let me give you Karen’s number in case you can’t reach me. Karen Carlisle, she’s my therapist. Got a pencil?”

“I’m ready.” George scribbled down the Seattle phone number as she read it off to him. “I’ll call you. And stop worrying. I’m sure everything’s fine.”

Speeding along I-90 in her boyfriend’s car, Amelia clicked off the cell phone and tossed it onto the passenger seat. She clutched the steering wheel with both hands, and started to cry.

Uncle George had said everything would be fine. But he didn’t know what she knew. Amelia hadn’t told him the whole story. She’d failed to mention that, in all likelihood, she’d killed her parents and Ina.

Amelia had also lied about where she had been. After waking up at the deserted Wiener World parking lot, she’d driven around for ten minutes until she’d found the freeway entrance. Then she finally saw a sign telling her where she was: Easton, Washington—a little city ninety miles east of Seattle. It was also about halfway to Wenatchee—and
from
Wenatchee. Had she been there last night? Had Easton been a stopover so she could sleep a few hours on her way back from murdering her parents and aunt?

Shane had left three messages on her cell, wanting to know where she’d taken his car. Amelia was driving past Snoqualmie when she called him back. She lied and said she’d had a sudden urge to see the Snoqualmie Falls last night. Yes, she’d gotten a
little
drunk, and decided to sleep it off in the car in the Snoqualmie Lodge parking lot. Yes, she was all right. She just felt awful for taking his car and for the way she’d acted at the party last night.

She couldn’t tell Shane the truth. The only person she could really talk to was her therapist, Karen.

Funny, the two people in whom she confided the most were both women in their thirties. They weren’t alike at all. Karen, with her wavy, shoulder-length chestnut hair and brown eyes, had the kind of natural beauty other women admired, but only the most discerning men noticed. She was very down to earth, but still had a certain class to her. She could look elegant in just a pair of jeans and a black long-sleeved T-shirt. Meanwhile, Amelia’s Aunt Ina was very flashy and fun, sometimes even over the top. All eyes went to her whenever she walked into a room. She was Prada to Karen’s Banana Republic.

Amelia remembered how lucky she’d felt when her cool Aunt Ina had decided to spend more time with her. They went to art galleries, the theater, and all these terrific, hip restaurants. But then Amelia had started seeing Karen, who was so compassionate and kind. After a while, she stopped confiding in Ina, who wasn’t a very good listener, anyway. Amelia realized her favorite aunt could be pretty selfish. Sometimes she felt like Ina’s pet—just this silly, admiring college girl who tagged along in her frivolous aunt’s shadow.

Selfish, manipulative bitch, Amelia remembered thinking last night as she’d aimed the hunting rifle at her Aunt Ina. Amelia’s not your fucking pet.

It was as if someone else were speaking for her—and killing for her. Yet Amelia remembered pulling the trigger. She remembered the jolt from the gun—and the loud blast.

God, please, please, don’t let me have done that. Make it not be true. Let them be all right.

She pressed harder on the accelerator.

Watching the road ahead, Amelia wiped her eyes, and then reached for the cell phone on the passenger seat.

She had Karen on speed dial.

“Frank, you need to put down the knife,” Karen said in a firm, unruffled tone.

Everyone else around her was going berserk, but she tried to remain calm and keep eye contact with the 73-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. The unshaven man had greasy, long gray hair and a ruddy complexion. His T-shirt was inside out, with food stains down the front. The pale green pajama bottoms were filthy, too. In his shaky hand he held a butcher’s knife. He looked more terrified than anyone else in the nursing home cafeteria. Just moments ago, he’d accidentally knocked over a stack of dirty trays from the bus table. He’d bumped into the table, backing away from an overly aggressive kitchen worker.

“Drop the goddamn knife,” growled the short, thirty-something man. He wore a T-shirt and chinos under his apron. Tattoos covered his skinny arms. He kept inching toward the desperately confused patient. “C’mon, drop it! I don’t have all day here!” He kicked a chair and it toppled across the floor, just missing the old man. “You hear me, Pops? Drop it!”

“Get away from him!” Karen barked. “For God’s sake, can’t you see he’s scared?”

Two orderlies hovered behind her, along with a few elderly residents wanting to see what all the fuss was about. The rest home’s manager, a handsome, white-haired woman in her sixties named Roseann, had managed to herd everyone else out of the cafeteria. She stood at Karen’s side. “Did you hear her, Earl?” Roseann yelled at the kitchen worker. “Let Karen handle this. She knows what she’s doing!”

But Earl wasn’t listening. He closed in on the man, looking ready to pounce. “You shouldn’t steal knives out of my kitchen, Pops….”

“No—no…get!” the Alzheimer’s patient cried, waving the knife at him.

Wincing, Karen watched the frightened old man shrink back toward the pile of trays. He was barefoot, and there were shards of broken glass on the floor.

Roseann gasped. “Earl, don’t—”

He lunged at the man, who reeled back. But the knife grazed Earl’s tattooed arm. A few of the residents behind Karen gasped.

The little man let out a howl, and recoiled. “Son of a bitch!”

One of the orderlies rushed to his aid. Grumbling obscenities, Earl held on to his arm, as the blood oozed between his fingers.

“No…get!” the old man repeated.

“It’s okay!” the orderly called, checking Earl’s wound, and pulling him toward the cafeteria exit. “Doesn’t look too deep….”

“Fuck you ‘it’s okay’,” he shot back. “I’m bleeding here.”

Shushing him, the orderly quickly led Earl out the door.

Karen was still looking into the old man’s eyes. “That was an accident, Frank,” she said steadily. “We all saw it. No one’s mad at you. But you should put down the knife, okay?”

Wide-eyed, he kept shaking his head at her. He took another step back toward the glass on the floor.

“Frank, how do you think the Cubs are going to do this season?” Karen suddenly asked.

She remembered how during her last visit with him, he’d chatted nonstop about the Chicago Cubs. But he’d talked as if it were 1968, back when he’d been a hotshot, 33-year-old attorney in Arlington Heights, Illinois with a beautiful wife, Elaine, and two children, Frank Junior and Sheila. The old man in the stained T-shirt and pajama bottoms used to dress in Brooks Brothers suits. The family moved to Seattle in 1971, where they added a third child to the brood, a baby girl. Frank started his own law firm, and did quite well in Mariner town. But he’d always remained a Cubs fan.

Though she knew it was typical of Alzheimer’s patients, Karen still thought it was kind of funny that Frank often couldn’t remember the name of his dead wife or the names of his three children and seven grandchildren. But he still recalled the Cubs’ star lineup from 1968.

“How do you think Ernie Banks is going to do, Frank?” she asked.

He stopped, and his milky blue eyes narrowed at her for a moment. “Um…you need—you need to keep your eye on Ron Santo. This is—this is going to be his year.” He lowered the knife. He suddenly seemed to forget he was holding it.

“I thought you were an Ernie Banks fan, Frank,” she said. “You know, there’s some glass on the floor behind you. Be careful.”

He turned and glanced down at the floor. “Yeah, you got to love Ernie. Who doesn’t?”

Karen felt her cell phone vibrate in the back pocket of her jeans, but she ignored it. She took a few steps toward him. “You know, you ought to put down that knife. Should we get some ice cream?”

He frowned at the knife in his hand, and then set it on one of the cafeteria tables.

“Does ice cream sound good to you, Frank?” Roseann piped in. “I think Karen has a good idea there. You recognize Karen, don’t you?”

The second orderly carefully reached for the knife and took it away. A few of the residents behind Karen sighed, and one elderly man clapped.

Karen put her arm around Frank. Between his breath and his body odor, he smelled awful. But she smiled at him. “You recognize me, don’t you, Poppy?”