Читать книгу One Last Scream - Kevin O'Brien - Страница 10

Her aunt was staring at her, and asking, “What have you done?” And that was when Amelia shot her in the chest.

All at once, she bolted up and accidentally banged her knee against the steering wheel of Shane’s Volkswagen Golf. Amelia barely noticed the pain. She was just glad to be awake—and out of that nightmare. It seemed so horribly real. She’d even felt the blood splattering on her face as she’d shot her parents and Aunt Ina at close range.

Now Amelia anxiously checked her reflection in the rearview mirror. She touched her hair. Not a drop of blood anywhere. If she’d washed it off, she certainly would remember. It was a dream—vivid and frightening, but still just a dream.

Shivering from the cold, Amelia looked around. It took her a moment to realize she’d fallen asleep in the front seat of the VW. She’d parked in the small, desolate lot of a boarded-up hot dog stand. The unlit, cracked sign had a cartoon of a smiling dachshund. It read: WIENER WORLD! HOT DOG EMPORIUM—WIENERS, FRIES, & COLD DRINKS!

Amelia wasn’t sure where she was, but she could hear cars zooming along on the other side of some evergreen trees across the street from Wiener World. She had to be somewhere close to a highway. She squinted at her wristwatch: 11:15 A.M.

Her head was throbbing and she felt so thirsty she could hardly swallow. She hadn’t had a hangover in several weeks, and this was a painful reminder of what it had been like during her drinking days. Now Amelia remembered the party last night, and how she’d treated Shane so shabbily. She remembered grabbing that bottle of tequila and driving off toward Wenatchee. She’d had this sudden urge to get to the family cabin, and make certain her parents and her Aunt Ina were all right. She’d been convinced some harm would come to them.

Amelia felt around under the car seat for that bottle of tequila. There was still some left, and she took a swig from the bottle. But even the jolt of alcohol didn’t erase the violent images lingering from that nightmare. Something had happened at the Lake Wenatchee house; she was sure of it.

Amelia wished she could remember, but everything was a blank from the time she’d sped away from that party on fraternity row to when she’d woken up here just moments ago. She suffered from occasional blackouts—lost time. It usually happened when she was drinking, but she’d experienced these memory lapses other times, too. On several occasions, people claimed they’d seen her here or there, and Amelia didn’t remember it at all. It was almost as if she were sleepwalking some of the time.

Had she killed her parents and her aunt during one of these sleepwalking episodes? Was it possible?

Amelia put down the tequila bottle, then dug her cell phone from her purse. Squinting at it, she dialed her mother’s cell number. But if they were still at the cabin, the call wouldn’t get through. Sure enough, just as she thought, no luck. Biting her lip, Amelia dialed her Aunt Ina and Uncle George’s house in Seattle. Her Uncle George had stayed home with her cousins this weekend. If something had really happened, he might know about it.

“Could you please make that announcement again?” George McMillan asked the woman at the concierge desk in the Pacific Place Shopping Center.

Nodding, the pretty concierge with curly auburn hair and cocoa-colored skin gave him a pained, sympathetic smile. She picked up her phone and pushed a couple of numbers.

“Stephanie McMillan, attention, Stephanie McMillan.” Her voice interrupted the music on the public address system. “Please meet your father by the first-floor escalators.” She repeated the announcement.

“Thank you,” George said, nervously tapping his fingers on the edge of the desk. He gazed up at the people passing by the railings on all four shopping levels of the vast skylit atrium. No sign of Steffie. He scanned the faces of the shoppers lined up on the escalators. He still didn’t see her. His stomach felt as tight as a fist.

His daughter had wandered off about fifteen minutes ago. Already, George had sweated through his shirt. He imagined every horrifying scenario of what might have happened to her. He saw Stephanie’s face on milk cartons. He thought about the call from the police, asking him to come identify the corpse of a pretty, freckled-faced, auburn-haired five-year-old. He imagined looking for the little strawberry mark on her arm—just to make sure it wasn’t Stephanie’s double. As if there was another like her.

His son, Jody, eleven, was supposed to have been keeping an eye on her. George had taken the kids to Old Navy in downtown Seattle this morning. His wife, Ina, had made out a shopping list that included the kids’ clothes and some other things she wanted him to get. After Old Navy, he’d stopped by Pottery Barn in the Pacific Place Shopping Center to pick up candles—specifically, “eight-inch pillars in fig.” George had had a big bag from Old Navy weighing down one arm and Steffie hanging on the other. He wasn’t sure if fig was tan, brown, or green. Or maybe it was purple—no, that was plum. He had unloaded Stephanie on her brother, then went in search of a saleslady.

At the time, he kept wondering why the hell Ina needed these stupid candles now. She wasn’t entertaining any time soon. Why didn’t she just buy them herself when she got back from Lake Wenatchee? Considering the company and their situation, George hadn’t been up for the trip this weekend. Besides, someone had to look after the kids. Jenna and Mark had volunteered Amelia’s services as a babysitter, but George didn’t have much confidence his niece could handle the task, at least not for the entire weekend.

The last few months had been pretty rough for everyone. The drowning of his nephew, Collin, had hit George awfully hard. Collin had had a special bond with his Uncle George, and he’d been like a big brother to Jody. His death had devastated two families, not just one. George walked around in a dark stupor for weeks afterward. Maybe that explained why he couldn’t see what was happening between Ina and his brother-in-law.

Once George discovered the letter Ina had started to Mark, he realized his wife must have wanted him to see what was happening.

In fact, it had already happened—in the Hotel Alexis. “Dear Mark,” she’d scribbled on the hotel’s stationery.

As I write this, you’re in the shower. I still feel you all over me, and inside me. I know what we did was wrong. I’m not arguing with you about that. But we’re two good people, who are hurting. We’ve found something with each other, something that made our pain and loneliness go away. I’m not sure if it’s love. But I do know I’ve always felt a connection with you. You haven’t—

That was as far as she’d gotten before she’d half crumpled up the note and thrown it away—in their master bathroom, for God’s sake. It lingered there at the top of the trash in the silver wastebasket from Restoration Hardware. George noticed the note while sitting on the toilet. She’d obviously wanted him to see it. Otherwise, she would have tossed the letter away in the hotel room, or torn it up and flushed it down the toilet, or at the very least, buried the damn thing under some used Kleenex in the trash.

Ina didn’t deny her indiscretion.

“You left that love letter in plain sight,” George pointed out. “God, what were you thinking? What if Jody had found it? Hell, I know what you were thinking….” He kept his voice low. They were in their bedroom, and he didn’t want Jody and Stephanie, downstairs, to hear. “It’s pretty obvious you wanted me to find out about you and Mark.”

“Now, why in the world would I want that?” she asked, shaking her head.

“I don’t know. Why did you want it, Ina?”

George wondered if she’d been dropping any more clues about her infidelity. The note—with its cringe-worthy prose—mentioned Mark was taking a shower. Had she bothered to bathe at the Alexis that evening, or did she want her addlebrained husband to detect the scent of another man on her?

“I can’t understand how this happened,” he said finally. “You don’t love him. Did you think screwing Mark and letting me find out about it would make me want a divorce? Is this your way of trying to end it for us? You haven’t said you’re sorry.”

Flicking back her long, curly auburn hair, she turned and headed for the door. “I have to get dinner started,” she murmured.

“Do you love him?” George asked pointedly. The question made Ina stop in her tracks. “Or did you just use him to sabotage us? For chrissakes, he’s your sister’s husband, Ina. Tell me the truth, do you love him?”

Facing the door, she shrugged awkwardly. “I don’t really know,” she whispered. She started to cry, but kept her back to him. “I’m so sorry, honey. Do you hear that? I’m apologizing. I’ve screwed everything up but good. Maybe I did want you to know. You’re probably right about that. God, I feel so shitty about this. You’re a good man, George, and a good husband. You deserve better…”

He stared at her back, and wondered if this was a variation of the It’s Not You, It’s Me speech. “I’ll be honest. Right now, I’m so furious at you, and so hurt, I’m not sure I have it in me to be forgiving. I need to know if it’s worth a try. Do you want to stay in this marriage?”

“I—I can’t say for sure,” she whispered. “I’m not certain about anything right now.”

“Hey, Dad!” Jody called from downstairs. “Dad?”

George brushed past her on his way to the bedroom door. “Goddamn you for doing this,” he growled. Then he went downstairs to their son.

Ina wasn’t the only one feeling uncertain. In the weeks that followed, it got so that George wasn’t sure if he wanted to stay married to her, either. They’d been having problems for at least two years. They’d seen a counselor—six counselors, in fact—until she found one she liked: a “feelings physician” (at least that’s what it had said on her shingle) with gobs of turquoise jewelry and green-tinted glasses. George hadn’t noticed any medical degrees hanging on her wall, but she’d insisted on being called “Doctor.” After twenty minutes of stroking a mangy cat in her lap and listening only to Ina, she’d suggested a trial separation. George had walked out on the session. Ina still went to her once every two weeks on her own. All too often Ina quoted her: “Dr. Racine says I should assert myself. Dr. Racine says I need to be more selfish. Dr. Racine says I need to take time to focus on myself.”

He really had to hold his tongue when Ina came out with lulus like that. Ina was beautiful, funny, and intelligent, but as Ina’s sister, Jenna, often said, “Ina’s only really happy when it’s all about Ina.”

George had already known that about her. But he’d been in love. He used to feel so lucky. He was just a history professor with a modest income and, somehow, he’d landed this gorgeous woman who had so much class and style. Plus, she and her sister were loaded. The money part never really mattered to him. But Ina could have easily paired off with some hotshot millionaire who played polo and drove a Porsche. George hadn’t even owned a car when he’d met her, and his idea of a terrific time was sitting on the beach, gobbling up a new biography of FDR. And yet he was the one she wanted.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he’d always been afraid she would get bored with him. And now that she had, it broke his heart.

Just recently, he’d started imagining his life without her. He thought about a divorce—after fourteen years together. She would get the house, of course. They’d bought it with her money—a four-bedroom split-level in West Seattle. She’d gone nuts decorating it. He wouldn’t miss it. He’d do just fine in an apartment somewhere near the University District, so he could be close to school. But the place would need at least two bedrooms for when Jody and Steffie visited. Visits with his kids, allotted time with them; the notion made him sick.

He wanted to keep the marriage going for the kids. Yet Ina wasn’t exactly the most nurturing mother around; at least, it seemed that way lately. All of Ina’s shortcomings had become glaringly obvious once he knew about her and Mark. He studied the way she treated Jody and Stephanie, and noticed when she ignored them, or was curt with them, or when she had them fetching things because she was too lazy to get off her ass. “Jody, honey, get me my purse…”).

Then again, maybe he was just hypercritical of Ina because somewhere along the line, while wrestling with all his hurt, confusion and anger, he’d fallen out of love with her.

He had to be fair. She wasn’t a bad mother. And he was in no position to criticize Ina’s parenting skills right now. At least Ina had never lost one of the children while shopping.

It had happened so quickly. George had gotten a saleswoman in Pottery Barn to help him, and together they’d found the stupid eight-inch pillars in fig. She’d been ringing up his sale when Jody had come up to the counter and squinted at his father. “Where’s Steffie?” Jody had asked, scouting out the general vicinity. “Didn’t she come back to you, Dad? She said she was gonna…”

“But I left her with you,” George had murmured.

She’d been missing for almost twenty minutes now. In his jacket pocket, George felt her inhaler. Stephanie had asthma. What if she was having an attack right now?

He couldn’t get past the awful feeling that he’d never see his daughter again. God, please, if I can find Stephanie, I’ll work things out with Ina. I’ll do whatever she wants. I’ll even go see that stupid Dr. Racine with her. Just please bring Steffie back to me.

Jody had been peeking into different shops on the shopping mall’s main level. Now he hurried back to George at the concierge desk. Shaking his head, Jody looked so forlorn. “Dad, I’m sorry,” he said, his lip quivering. “It’s all my fault—”

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.