One Last Scream (26 page)

Salem, Oregon—July 2004

It was 8:50
P.M
., and still light out—still pretty hot, too. But she felt a soft, cool evening wind against her bare legs.

Eighteen-year-old Sandra Hartman cut across the deserted baseball field. Her shoulder-length black hair was freshly washed, and she wore a blue blouse, khaki shorts, and sandals. She warily eyed the empty bleachers. The place kind of gave her the creeps at night, even with the late sunset.

She was on her way to meet some friends at Lancaster Mall. They planned to see
Dodgeball
, of all things. The only reason for going was because a bunch of guys she knew were supposed to show up.

Sandra lived eight blocks from the mall. It wasn’t very pedestrian-friendly right around there. Ordinarily, she would have driven over. But her parents had taken the car for some business dinner her dad had. When she’d mentioned she might go to the movies, he’d insisted she grab a ride from a friend or stay home.

Everyone was still in a panic over the disappearance of Gina Fernetti just ten days before. The story was on TV and in the newspapers. Regina Marie Fernetti was twenty, a journalism major at the University of Colorado, and home for summer break. She and two girlfriends had gone to the Walker Pool on a busy Saturday afternoon. Gina had driven. They’d just claimed a spot on the grass, and laid out their blankets when Gina announced she wanted to get a certain tape cassette out of the car for her Walkman. She left her purse and blanket behind, and went off toward the parking lot with her car keys. When she didn’t return fifteen minutes later, her friends checked the lot. Gina’s car was still there, still locked. They searched the pool area, and had her paged over the public address system. The lifeguards even made everyone get out of the pool for ten minutes just to make sure Gina hadn’t missed the announcement. Gina’s girlfriends finally called Mr. and Mrs. Fernetti who, in turn, called the police.

No one had seen Gina Fernetti since. She’d just vanished.

So Sandra’s father was being a bit crazy-overprotective. To appease him, Sandra had tried to get one of her friends to pick her up at the last minute, but with no luck. They were carpooling over to the mall, and it was already crammed. Sandra figured she could get a ride home later from one of the guys, and her dad would be none the wiser about her walking to the mall alone.

She had about twenty minutes until the movie started, and figured she’d be at the mall in ten. Sandra noticed the street-lights go on as she made her way across the baseball field. She slipped through an opening in the fence, and started down a residential street. She didn’t see anyone else around. It was a bit eerie and unsettling. On a warm night like this, more people should have been out. Was what had happened to Gina keeping people inside with their doors locked?

Sandra picked up her pace, but then suddenly balked when a shadow swept in front of her. She realized a car was pulling up behind her with its headlights on. She glanced over her shoulder: a silver SUV.

Strange, five minutes ago, she’d noticed a silver SUV coming up the road toward her before she’d cut through the baseball field. Was this the same one?

The vehicle slowed down and pulled over to the curb in front of her.

“Shit,” Sandra murmured. A little alarm went off inside her. She quickly crossed the street, and watched the SUV slowly creep over toward her. She walked as fast as she could without breaking into a sprint. She told herself not to run. As long as she pretended not to notice them, they wouldn’t know she was scared and they wouldn’t start chasing her—not just yet. Somehow, maybe it would buy her time. She could be overreacting too. Would someone really try anything in a residential neighborhood, where people could hear her screaming? Plus, it was still kind of light out, for God’s sake.

Then again, the light hadn’t protected Gina Fernetti. She’d vanished in the middle of a sunny afternoon, and no one had heard her scream.

The silver SUV crawled down the street, keeping pace with her. Sandra’s stomach was in knots. Could it be some friend of hers, playing a joke? Well, it wasn’t funny, damn it. On her left, Sandra saw a two-story white stucco house with a car in the driveway and lights on in the front windows. She thought about running up the walkway and pounding on the door.

She casually glanced to her right at that silver SUV. The driver’s window went down. “Hey, Sandra! Are you going to the mall? Do you need a ride?”

It took Sandra a few moments to recognize the driver, and when she did, she let out a weak chuckle. “Oh, my God, you scared the shit out of me.”

“Sorry,” said the girl behind the wheel, smiling. “I wasn’t really sure if it was you or not. I’m headed to the mall. Do you need a lift?”

Sandra hesitated. If she accepted the ride, she’d feel obligated to invite her along to the movie. It was the polite thing to do. But she really didn’t like this girl very much. In fact she hardly knew her. She was a sophomore, two years behind her. It was weird how the girl had called out to her from the car window like they were good friends. The only other time they’d ever talked was in the school cafeteria two months before. The sophomore had approached Sandra while she’d been eating lunch with her friends.

“You must be Sandra Hartman,” she’d said. “You wouldn’t believe how many times people mistake me for you.”

“Oh, really?” Sandra had said, with a baffled smile.

“Yeah, I can totally see the resemblance now. We’re almost like twins.”

“Well, huh, maybe. Anyway, nice meeting you,” Sandra had said. Then she’d turned away. Her friends at the table had started teasing her. “Who the hell was that?” Sandra had whispered. And then one of her friends had told her.

That had been the only other time she’d talked to Annabelle Schlessinger.

“Sandra? Are you headed to the mall?” Annabelle asked from the driver’s seat of the SUV.

She worked up a smile and nodded. She figured her dad was probably right. In the wake of Gina Fernetti’s disappearance, it wasn’t smart to walk around alone at night. And it was starting to get dark. She’d be better off riding the rest of the way. So what if Annabelle ended up tagging along to the movie with her? There was no reason to be snobby toward her. In fact, Sandra realized as she stepped closer to the SUV and locked eyes with Annabelle that there was indeed a resemblance between them. “I’m meeting some friends to see
Dodgeball
. Do you want to join us?”

Her mouth open, Annabelle stared back at her and blinked. Stopping, Sandra saw tears well up in Annabelle’s eyes. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I—I really wish I could go to the movie with you guys, more than anything,” Annabelle murmured. Then she cleared her throat, and straightened up behind the wheel. “Thanks anyway, but I can’t,” she said, more control in her tone. She gazed at the road in front of her. “I’m headed to the mall to run an errand for my father. Hurry up, get in.”

Sandra walked around the front of the car, a bit puzzled by Annabelle’s strange reaction to such a casual invitation. At the same time, everything was coming out all right for her. She had a ride to the mall with no strings attached. She didn’t have to spend the rest of the night with Annabelle clinging to her.

“Oh, you’ve got the air-conditioning on in here,” Sandra said, sliding into the front seat. “Feels like heaven.”

Annabelle said nothing. She stared straight ahead.

Once Sandra shut the passenger door and buckled her seatbelt, the SUV started to inch forward. After a few moments, Sandra glanced at the speedometer: 10 mph. “What, are you afraid of getting a ticket?” she asked. “Why are you going so slowly?”

Annabelle didn’t answer. The SUV crawled past the end of the block toward a turnaround area by some woods. The headlights and interior lights went off, and suddenly they were swallowed up in darkness. “What the hell’s going on?” Sandra asked.

The car stopped. Hands on the wheel, Annabelle wouldn’t look at her. Instead, she glanced up at the rearview mirror. “I’m sorry, Sandra,” she muttered listlessly. “I guess you haven’t met my father.”

“What?” Sandra checked the rearview mirror, and saw a shadowy figure suddenly spring up from the floor. She gasped.

All at once, he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. It happened so fast, she couldn’t fight him off. He slapped a wet cloth over her mouth. It must have been soaked with some chemical, because it burned her face. Sandra’s eyes watered up. She tried not to breathe in, and desperately clawed at his hand.

But he wouldn’t let go. Almost unwillingly, she gasped for air, and then realized it was too late. Sandra had never experienced this sensation before. She wasn’t passing out, or falling asleep, or even fainting. No, this was something different.

Sandra Hartman felt herself surrendering to something very close to death.

Seattle—three years later

“Nope, sorry, I still haven’t seen hide nor hair of Amelia,” Jessie said into the phone. In front of her on the McMillans’ kitchen table, was a pile of laundry, still warm from the dryer. “No calls either, except from Karen, checking up on me about a half hour ago.”

“Okay, Jessie, thanks,” George said on the other end of the line. “Jody should be home from school in about an hour. Could you take him with you when you go to pick up Steffie at Rainbow Junction Daycare?”

“You asked me that this morning, and I will,” Jessie said. “Now, can I tell you something? That cleaning woman of yours isn’t worth the powder to blow her to hell. There are dust balls behind your sofa and under the cushions, I found three old French fries, a plastic barrette, some popcorn and forty-seven cents in change.”

“Well, you can keep the barrette, but I want the forty-seven cents,” George said. “You sure everything’s okay there?”

“Peachy,” Jessie assured him. “I’m folding laundry, and after this I’m taking out your recycling. Pretty exciting, huh?”

“Well, take a break, for God’s sake,” George replied. “I’ll talk to you later, Jess.”

She hung up the phone, and finished folding the clothes. Then Jessie got the recycling bin out of the pantry, and carried it out the kitchen door. She lumbered up to the edge of the driveway and let out a groan as she set the bin on the front curb.

Jessie paused to take a look down the block. She spotted a black car parked about four houses down on the other side of the street. But it wasn’t Karen’s Jetta, and that was the one she was supposed to be on the lookout for.

This car was just a beat-up old Cadillac.

With a sigh, Jessie turned and headed back for the house.

Karen took the turnoff at Coles Corner to Lake Wenatchee Highway. The scenery along Stevens Pass had been gorgeous: the mountains and rivers, the trees so vibrant with their fall colors, and even a few small waterfalls. But she’d barely noticed any of it. She couldn’t stop thinking about what George had discovered, that Amelia had a twin sister.

No wonder Amelia had developed so many neuroses, having been torn apart from her twin at such a young age. With the sudden absence of her sister, Amelia might have taken on her twin’s persona. Perhaps she assumed her sister felt abandoned, angry and bitter, even destructive. And maybe Amelia was adopting those traits during her blackouts while the twin sister part of her took over. That
lost time
Amelia experienced kept her from knowing about this sister-half and her activities.

“Or maybe they’re just alcohol-related blackouts,” Karen muttered to herself. “And you’re making way too much of this twin thing.”

She passed a sign for Lake Wenatchee State Park, and knew she was on the right track, at least as far as her driving was concerned. According to Helene’s directions, she would be at the Faradays’ lake house in another fifteen minutes.

Amelia’s separation from her twin certainly explained other things: the nightmares and those phantom pains and “faked” illnesses that had plagued her all the way through adolescence. Karen had read accounts of twin telepathy when she was in graduate school. Some were rather dull, dry studies. “Though separated, both twins picked the red ball for the first two experiments, and the green ball for the third, and the red ball again for the fourth. The choice patterns of the separated twins matched in 96 percent of the test cases.”

Other accounts were a bit more like a
Twilight Zone
episode. Karen recalled one story about a 55-year-old businessman who woke up in the middle of the night in his Zurich hotel room with severe abdominal pains and a high fever. The doctors in the emergency room at the hospital couldn’t find anything actually wrong with him, and his fever went away by the next morning. He got back to the hotel to find a message from his sister-in-law in Columbus, Ohio. His twin brother had been rushed to the hospital the night before with a ruptured appendix.

Karen remembered one of her professors dismissing such stories, though apparently dozens of similar cases were on record.

Had young Amelia, with her unexplained maladies, been feeling the pains and illnesses of her twin sister? Karen remembered some of Amelia’s descriptions.
It felt like someone was kicking me…. Like my arm was being twisted off…It felt like someone was putting out a lit cigar on me….

She wondered about the awful things being done to Annabelle Schlessinger when her estranged twin sister—miles and miles away—had felt those horrible sensations. What kind of violence had that child endured? Amelia had said she’d stopped experiencing the phantom pains and illnesses about three years ago, when she was sixteen. And Annabelle Schlessinger had died at age sixteen.

Perhaps Amelia’s violent nightmares while growing up had been the result of some kind of telepathy. Maybe she was picking up real incidents as they happened to her twin.

Karen could almost imagine her professor laughing at her for such far-fetched speculation. It might not hold up with an American Psychological Association review panel, but there were all sorts of phenomena that couldn’t be easily explained. And twin telepathy was one of them.

Karen kept a lookout for the street signs. Along the forest road, she could see the placid lake peeking through the trees. She finally spotted a sign, with a red and white checkered border:

D
ANNY’S
D
INER

Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner

You’ll Come Up a Winner!

1 MILE AHEAD

That was the restaurant both Amelia and Helene had described to her—the one near the gravel road that led to the Faradays’ lake house.

Karen still didn’t know what she expected to find when she got to the cabin. She might have driven all this way for nothing. If Amelia was hiding out there, Karen would calm her down and talk to her. They certainly couldn’t put off going to the police any longer. Hell, they were both probably
persons of interest
in Koehler’s disappearance, and about a notch away from
fugitive
status, if not there already. But Karen was still determined to protect Amelia, and make sure she got the help she needed.

Up the road a piece, she saw Danny’s Diner, a small chalet-style restaurant with flower boxes in the windows and four picnic tables in front. The parking lot was big enough for a dozen cars, and at the moment, half full. As Karen drove by, she noticed the phone booth by the front door.

Eyes on the road, she reached over for her cell phone, and tried to dial her home number. A mechanical voice told her, “We’re sorry. Your call cannot be completed. Please hang up and try again.”

Helene was right, cell phones didn’t work around here. That would make things extremely difficult if she ran into trouble at the cabin. She had to prepare herself for the possibility that Amelia was indeed at the cabin, but not at all herself right now. She might even have Blade with her.

Karen noticed the turn off to Holden Trail, a gravel road that sloped down and wound through the forest. The tiny stones made a hail-like racket under her rental car, and the occasional divot gave her a jolt. Karen had an awful foreboding feeling in the pit of her stomach, along with nerves and hunger, too. She hadn’t eaten all day.

She spotted a turnaround on her left. Helene had told her to ignore that one. The inlet the Faradays used was up ahead. Karen slowed down. She could see a little plateau off the bay with enough room for two small cars. As she inched into the spot, Karen could see other tire marks in the gravel and dirt.

After the two-and-a-half-hour drive, Karen’s legs cramped a bit as she climbed out of the rental. Grabbing her purse, she took another look at the gun inside. Along with the tire tracks, she noticed a cigarette butt and footprints, too. It looked like more than one person.

So Amelia hadn’t come here alone this morning. She must have been with Blade.

Karen saw the footprints again as she made her way down the trail, which was mostly dirt, but some patches were covered in gravel. There were a few stone steps, too, and an old wooden railing at a few precarious spots. She caught a glimpse of the lake between the trees. Finally, the terrain started to flatten out. Karen could see a clearing and the Faradays’ house ahead.

A crude flagstone path led to the front stoop of the weathered, two-story Cape Cod home. Karen tried to peek inside the windows as she passed. But it was dark in the house, and she couldn’t see anything beyond her own timid reflection.

Strips of yellow police tape with
CRIME SCENE—DO NOT CROSS
written on them had been taped across the front door. But someone had torn past them, and the loose tape strips now fluttered in the wind. There was also a notice taped to the front door—a green sheet of paper with a police shield logo and
CITY OF WENATCHEE POLICE DEPARTMENT
along the top. Karen glanced at it. There were two paragraphs of legal jargon, but the last words were in bold print:
NO TRESPASSING—VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECTUED
.

Obviously, someone else had already ignored those warnings. Karen was about to knock on the front door, but hesitated. If Blade and Amelia were in there, did she really want to announce her arrival?

Biting her lip, Karen tried the doorknob. To her amazement, the door wasn’t locked. Slowly, she opened it. Reaching into her purse, she took out her father’s revolver, and then stepped over the threshold. All the blinds were half drawn, and the windows closed. It was dark and stuffy inside the house. Nearly every stick of furniture had been dusted for fingerprints. A dirt trail covered the carpet and floors, obviously from all the police traipsing in and out of the crime scene. By the fireplace, Karen noticed the rocking chair where Amelia’s father was found. Behind it, she saw the large splotch on the wall, now a rust color. There were bloodstains on the beige carpet, too, beneath the rocker, and also a few feet away, where George’s wife must have been shot. Everything was just as Amelia—and Koehler—had described it.

Karen followed the investigators’ trail toward the kitchen, but abruptly stopped at the sound of something creaking. It seemed to have come from upstairs, but she wasn’t sure. With the gun in her trembling hand, Karen listened and waited for the next little noise. She counted to ten, and didn’t hear anything. She told herself it was just the house settling. She crept into the kitchen. It had gingerbread trim on the shelves and a yellow, fifties-style dinette set. Through the window in the kitchen door, she noticed the yellow police tape again, only this time, it was intact and crisscrossed over the entry.

There was another door in the kitchen, open about two inches. Beyond that, all Karen could see was darkness. She moved the door, and it creaked on the hinges. She froze. Was that the same sound she’d heard earlier?

She gazed at the wood-plank stairs leading down to the pitch-black basement. Turning to look for a light switch by the door, she saw something dart past the kitchen window. Karen gasped. For a moment, she was paralyzed. She didn’t know what to do. It had looked like a person, but she’d only caught a glimpse of her—or him. Whoever it was, they must have been outside, peeking in at her. And they’d moved away from that window so quickly, all Karen had seen was a human-shaped blur.

Clutching the revolver, Karen made her way toward the front door again. She kept checking the windows for whoever was outside the house, but didn’t see anybody. “Amelia?” she called. Karen edged toward the door, which she’d left open. She still had the gun poised. “Amelia, is that you? It’s Karen. Amelia?”

A dog started barking. “Who’s in there?” someone called from outside.

Karen looked out, and saw an older woman with close-cropped gray hair, glasses, and a bulky gray sweater. She had a collie on a leash. “Hush, Abby,” she whispered.

Karen quickly stashed the gun in her purse. “Are you Helene?”

Scowling at her, the old woman nodded. “Are you the one I talked to on the phone earlier?”

“Yes,” she said, catching her breath. “I’m Karen Carlisle, Amelia’s therapist.”

“Well, Amelia must have skedaddled,” Helene said. “No one’s in there. I checked a little while ago.”

Karen closed the door behind her. “You went in there after I warned you not to?”

Helene shrugged. “Why should I listen to you? I don’t even know you. Anyway, the place is empty.” She bent down and scratched her dog behind the ears. “I have no idea when she left. Like I told you on the phone, I saw only Amelia earlier, though it sure sounded like two people were here.”

Karen nodded. She was thinking about the double footprints on the dirt trail that led to the house. “Ms. Sumner, before today, when was the last time you noticed Amelia here?”

“Well, she and that boyfriend of hers were carrying on out by the lake a week ago Monday,” Helene answered, still hovering over her dog.

“The Monday before the shootings?” Karen asked. She was almost certain she’d had a therapy session with Amelia that Monday. “The fifteenth?”

Helene nodded.

“Are you sure?”

Helene nodded again emphatically. “Monday is my shopping day. When you get to be my age, and you live alone, different rituals become like your companion….”

Karen nodded. She knew exactly what the old woman meant, and it scared her a little that she was already becoming so set in her ways.

“So Monday afternoon, before I headed out to the store, I took Abby for a walk, and I saw Amelia and that creepy young man by the lake. The way they were carrying on, I think they might have been doing drugs.”

“What time was this?” Karen asked.

“Smack dab in the middle of the day, around one o’clock.”

Karen shook her head. It didn’t make sense. If she remembered correctly, her appointment with Amelia that Monday had been in the early afternoon. “Are you sure of the time?” she pressed. “Are you sure it was Amelia?”

Frowning, Helene stopped petting her dog and straightened up. “Miss, I may be old. But I’m not senile—not yet, at least.”

“I’m sorry, but I’m almost positive I was with Amelia, in Seattle, around that exact same time.”

Helene scowled at her. “Well, if you were with Amelia on that Monday afternoon, then who was that girl I saw by the lake?”

“Jessie, could you do me a huge favor?” Karen asked. She was in the phone booth by the entrance to Danny’s Diner. “Could you drive over to my place and check something out for me?”

“Now?”

“I know my timing stinks with rush hour about to start, but this is important.”