Authors: Kevin O'Brien
“It’s almost dinnertime,” Lamar said, gently taking her arm. He led the way through a break in the bushes to the parking lot. “They’ll need me back inside. Will you be okay?”
She gave him his jacket back. “Yes. Thank you, Lamar. I’m sorry to drag you down to the basement for nothing.”
He shook his head. “It wasn’t for nothing, Karen, not after what they did to the lights and the door. I think you were being set up. You watch out for yourself, okay? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. You’re one of the nicest people here.”
“Well, thank you, Lamar,” she said. “Thanks very much.”
Biting her lip, Karen watched him lumber away toward the side door. She thought she’d been set up, too. But why?
It was getting dark out, and colder. Shivering, Karen glanced at her watch: 5:05. Poor Jessie had been waiting for her for fifteen minutes. While in the basement with Lamar, Karen had phoned Dr. Chang’s office. Apparently, Jessie was all right.
She pulled out her cell phone again, and dialed Amelia’s cell number. After two rings, she got a recording.
“Amelia, this is Karen,” she said, after the beep. “It’s a little after five, and I’m wondering where you are right now. Can you call me as soon as you get this? We need to talk. Thanks.”
She clicked off the line, and then shoved the phone back inside her purse. She wondered if she’d called that number twenty-five minutes ago while down in that gloomy basement storage room alone, would she have heard a cell phone ringing?
She remembered something Amelia had told her during their first session. She’d said, as a child, she used to talk to herself in the mirror a lot. She’d tried to make a joke of it. “So what do you make of that? Early signs of a split personality?”
Karen wondered if Amelia would claim to have had one of her
blackouts
this afternoon. Would she only remember
fragments
of this incident, too?
She thought she knew Amelia. She’d believed her incapable of killing anyone. She’d been certain about that.
But now Karen wasn’t sure of anything.
“I was sitting there with my blouse off in your Dr. Chang’s examining room for twenty-five minutes and for absolutely no reason, except maybe because I’m the
youngest
female patient he’s had since he started working there. If that isn’t pathetic, I don’t know what is.”
Karen kept checking the rearview mirror while Jessie, in the passenger seat, explained how her emergency checkup had been a total waste of time. Karen needed convincing that Jessie was all right. She also needed to make sure an old black Cadillac with a bent antenna wasn’t following them. But she couldn’t make out much in the rearview mirror beyond a string of glaring headlights behind her on Twenty-fourth Avenue.
She’d decided not to tell Jessie about the incident in the basement. No need to put any more stress or strain on her. At the same time, she hated to think she might be leading a pair of potential killers to Jessie’s home in the Beacon Hill district.
“You know, I don’t like leaving you alone,” Karen said, eyes on the road. “I mean, what if you have another spell in the middle of the night?”
“I highly doubt I’ll be wrapping my arms around another 170-pound man and repeatedly lifting him off his feet tonight. But if I end up doing that, the fella and I would like a little privacy, please.” She chuckled and waved away Karen’s concern. “Quit worrying. There’s nothing wrong with me except I’m old as the hills and big as a house.”
“Sure you haven’t been overworking yourself at the McMillans’?” Karen asked. Jessie had babysat, cooked, and cleaned at George’s house three days during the past week.
“Oh, it’s been a breeze. Those kids are so sweet. And Amelia’s been there practically every day, and she helps out a lot. By the way, I’ve been putting in a good word for you now and then with Gorgeous George. Just planting the seed for when he’s ready to start dating again.”
“You’re wasting your time, Jess. George doesn’t like me much. He thinks I’m a busybody.”
“Oh, phooey, where did you get that idea?”
Karen said nothing. She briefly checked the rearview mirror again.
She hadn’t seen George since the funeral three days ago, where she’d given him a brief, polite hello. Before that, he’d distractedly nodded and waved at her—while on the phone—when she’d stopped by his house on Sunday morning to drive Amelia to the West Seattle Precinct. Amelia’s much-dreaded interview with the police had turned out to be rather benign.
They’d talked with her for only forty-five minutes. They hadn’t asked about her premonition, and hadn’t seemed very interested in where she was at the time of the shootings. The questioning had focused mostly on her family, especially her father, and his behavior during the last few months.
Since then, Amelia had phoned Karen every day, sometimes even twice a day. Karen always took the calls, and tried to reassure her that she’d survive this. Amelia never mentioned whether or not she still felt responsible for the deaths of her parents and her aunt. But Karen knew it was an issue. They would work on it during their next scheduled session on Monday.
In the meantime, Karen reviewed her notes from several of Amelia’s past sessions. She wondered about the origins of her nightmares and those memory fragments, some of which were eerily real. Amelia herself had joked she might have a split personality. But genuine cases of multiple personality disorder were very rare, and all the textbooks pointed out the dangers of misdiagnosing a patient as having MPD. Just the suggestion of it could make certain susceptible patients splinter off into several versions of themselves, worsening their problems, and delaying any kind of real treatment.
Still, multiple personality disorder could have caused Amelia’s blackouts, her
lost time
. Maybe it could also explain why Amelia had been at the rest home today, luring her down to that basement storage room. Lamar had said she was being set up, but for what? Her murder? Was Amelia the host to another personality that was killing everyone close to her?
It started to drizzle, and Karen switched on the windshield wipers. “Jessie, I need your opinion,” she said, eyes on the road. “I have a client who says she’s seeing and feeling things that are happening miles and miles away to people in her family—”
“Are you talking about Amelia?”
“A client,” Karen said, knowing she wasn’t fooling Jessie for a second. “Anyway, what do you think of that? Do you believe in ESP or telepathy?”
She was waiting for Jessie to respond with one of those alternative words for
bullshit
only people over sixty used nowadays:
hogwash, balderdash,
or
bunk
.
“I believe in it,” Jessie said, after a moment. “If we’re talking about picking up signals and pain from other people, then I say, yes, definitely, especially if you’re close to that other person. I’m a believer now. When my Andy was so sick, I felt every pain he had. Sometimes I’d even wake up in the middle of the night with the pain. And I knew it was Andy, suffering.”
Karen glanced over at Jessie. The headlights, raindrops, and windshield wipers cast shadows across her careworn face. Andy was her son, who had died at age twenty-nine back in 1993.
“He was in Chicago and I was in Seattle. Yet, I felt what he was feeling. If I was sick to my stomach one evening, sure enough, I’d hear the next day that he’d been throwing up half the night. If I had a headache or a dizzy spell, that’s what he was having. I’ve never felt so physically sick and horrible as I did his last week, when he was in the hospice. I was there with him, and for a while, I thought I was going to die there, too.”
Jessie let out a sad, little laugh. “You’re going to think I’m crazy, but did I ever tell you that Andy still visits me every Christmas? It was his favorite time of year, you know. When he was younger, he used to go crazy decorating the house for Christmas. If it were up to him, he would have put a Christmas tree in every room. That Christmas after he died, my daughter, Megan, and my granddaughter, Josie, were staying with me. Josie was five at the time. I was about to go to bed when I heard her talking to someone. So I stepped into Andy’s bedroom, where she was sleeping and almost walked into…something that fluttered away, like a bird. It was the weirdest thing. I can’t describe it; it was like a ball of air that whirled around and disappeared. For a minute there, I thought I was going nuts. I asked Josie what was happening. And she said, ‘I was just dreaming about Uncle Andy, Grandma.’
“Something like that has happened every Christmas since,” Jessie continued. “It can be a weird little coincidence, or just this overwhelming feeling, and I know Andy’s there. It’s funny. Even though I know he’s going to show up somehow, he still manages to sneak up on me when I’m not expecting him. So, anyway, I’m no expert on telepathy and ESP and that sort of stuff. But I do know for a fact there are forces out there that keep us connected to the people we love, even after we’ve lost them.”
Karen nodded pensively. She could see Jessie’s block up ahead.
“So tell Amelia if she’s feeling a connection to someone who has died recently, and she’s seeing things, well, she’s not really all that crazy, at least, no crazier than yours truly.”
“I didn’t say it was Amelia, remember?” Karen felt obliged to say.
“Oh, yes, that’s right,” Jessie replied, deadpan.
She turned down Jessie’s block, and checked the rearview mirror again. No one seemed to be following them. Despite Jessie’s protests that she was double-parked and getting wet in the rain, Karen walked her to her front door. She made Jessie promise to call if she felt dizzy or short of breath. Jessie assured her that she’d be fine.
But Karen was worried about leaving Jessie alone, and it wasn’t just because of her little spell earlier, scary as that had been. No, it was because of the other scare Karen had experienced, in the rest home’s basement. Whoever had come after her might decide to go after Jessie.
“Listen,” she said. “I don’t want to worry you, but I read in the
Post-Intelligencer
there have been some robberies in this neighborhood. So lock your doors tonight, and set the alarm.” It was a fib about the robberies, but she wanted Jessie to take precautions.
“Well, there isn’t a thing in here worth stealing,” Jessie replied, unlocking her door. “I hardly ever set the alarm.”
“Well, set it tonight, for me, okay? Humor me.”
“Okay, okay, I’ll batten down the hatches. Worrywart.”
Karen hugged Jessie in the doorway, then scurried back into her car. She started up the engine, but sat in the idle car for a moment. The windshield wipers squeaked back and forth, and raindrops pattered on the roof.
She thought about how Jessie had felt her son’s pain, though two thousand miles away from him. Had Amelia made the same kind of connection with her family members when they were killed? Were her nightmarelike visions of their murders a form of telepathy?
Until this afternoon, Karen would have never considered it a possibility. But perhaps Amelia hadn’t really felt a telepathic connection with her loved ones at the time of their deaths.
Maybe she was connected to the person who had killed all of them.
In the shadows of a tall evergreen at the edge of the lot next to Jessie’s house, she stood in the rain. The hood to her windbreaker was up, covering the top of her head. The old Cadillac was parked around the corner. She already knew where Karen’s housekeeper lived; it hadn’t been necessary to follow Jessie down the block. But she’d wanted to hear what Karen and Jessie were saying to each other. So she’d climbed out of the Cadillac and skulked into the neighbor’s yard. She’d only caught snippets of the conversation through the sounds of the wind and rain. It was sweet how Karen had been so worried about Jessie, and even kind of funny, because they’d both be dead before the week was through.
Karen probably had only a slight inkling of how close she’d come to having her throat slit in the basement at the rest home an hour before. Now there was no mistaking it; Karen had seen her. It wasn’t the same as last week’s brush with her in the corridor outside the old man’s room. This time, Karen wouldn’t just
ask
if she’d been at the rest home. She’d
accuse
. And this time, the innocent routine or the blackout excuse wouldn’t work. Karen would keep pounding away at her for an explanation.
So she’d have to move fast and kill her, before the bitch started talking about her to other shrinks or maybe even to the police. Karen slept every night alone in the big relic of a house. The dog was a slight obstacle. But she’d killed plenty of animals in her time. This one wouldn’t be a problem. And there were plenty of ways to break into that old house, plenty of opportunities.
She watched Karen duck back inside her car, then she just sat idle in the driver’s seat for a few minutes. What was Karen Carlisle thinking about right now?
She had a thought of her own, and it made her smile. She was wondering what they’d tell that senile old man at the rest home next week when he asked why the visits from his daughter had suddenly stopped.
“Hi, this is Amelia. Sorry I can’t take your call. Leave a message, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can. Bye.”
Beep.
“Amelia, it’s Karen again at about 6:15,” she said into her cell. She’d just pulled into her driveway and switched off the ignition. The rain had subsided to a light drizzle. “Listen, I’m home now. So call me, either at home or on my cell. It’s important. Talk to you soon, I hope.” She clicked off the line, shoved her cell phone in her purse, and reached for the car door handle. But she noticed something in her rearview mirror, and suddenly froze. She saw the silhouette of a man as he came up her driveway, toward the car. He was tall and slender with short hair so blond it was almost white. The streetlight was at his back, so she still couldn’t see his face. He wore gray slacks and a dark suit jacket with the lapels turned up to protect him from the drizzle. As he reached the back of the car, Karen quickly locked her door.
He knocked on her window. “Karen?” he called. “Karen Carlisle?”
She stared at him through the rain-beaded glass. He was very handsome, with chiseled cheekbones and pale-blue eyes. She guessed he was in his early thirties. “Yes? What do you want?” she called back.
He grinned, and made a little whirling motion with his hand like he wanted her to roll down the window.
Karen started up the car engine again. She pressed the control switch, and with a hum, the window lowered only an inch before she stopped it. “I said, ‘
What do you want?
’” she repeated loudly.
As he reached into his suit jacket, Karen tensed up, until she realized he was pulling out his wallet. He opened it, and showed her a Seattle Police Department identification card.
Det. Russell Koehler
it said, under a very macho-somber photo of him. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Amelia Faraday,” he said, almost too loudly, as if he wanted to get across to her that he was becoming annoyed by the window between them. “You’re her therapist, aren’t you?”
Karen flicked the switch, lowering the window some more. “Yes, I’m her therapist,” she said. “What’s this about?”
“I’m investigating the deaths of her parents and her aunt.”
“I thought the police had already determined that Mr. Faraday shot his wife and sister-in-law and then himself,” Karen replied warily. “Besides, the shootings happened in Wenatchee. Isn’t that out of your jurisdiction?”
“Let’s just say I have a special interest in the case.”
Despite what had happened in the rest home basement and all her new uncertainty about Amelia, Karen still felt very protective of her. She shrugged. “Well, I can’t tell you much, at least nothing Amelia has shared with me during our sessions. That’s strictly confidential; I’m sure you understand.”
He chuckled. “I wouldn’t dream of treading on your doctor-patient confidentiality. But the fact of the matter is, Karen, I’ve read the police reports. Amelia came to your house on Saturday afternoon, saying she had a premonition about something bad happening at the family getaway at Lake Wenatchee. That doesn’t quite count as a doctor-patient session, does it?”
She stared back at him. “I treat any client emergency as a professional session.”
“Really? So are you going to charge her for Saturday?” he asked pointedly.
“That’s none of your business,” Karen replied.
He smirked—that same cocky grin again. “You know, Karen, it looks like I’ve started off on the wrong foot with you. The thing is, I don’t believe Mark Faraday shot anyone. I think someone else killed Mark, along with his wife and sister-in-law. Maybe you’d be more willing to cooperate if we sat down together over a cup of coffee and you let me explain where I’m coming from.” He glanced over her shoulder at the house as if it were her cue to invite him in, and then he smirked at her. “‘Where I’m coming from,’ that’s one of those therapy terms, isn’t it?”
Karen eyed him warily. She wasn’t about to invite this guy into her home. She still wasn’t a hundred percent sure he was really a cop. “There’s a coffee place on Fifteenth called Victrola. It’s about a five-minute walk from here. I’ll meet you there in ten. I just need to make a call.”
“Who are you calling? Amelia? Or your lawyer?”
Karen flicked the switch and started to raise the window up on him. “Neither.”
He grabbed the top of the window to delay its ascent. “You aren’t
hiding
Amelia, are you?”
She released the switch for a moment. “No. Why do you ask that?”
“Because I’ve been trying to get in touch with her since one o’clock this afternoon, and she’s MIA. No one knows where she is—not her uncle, her roommate, or her boyfriend.” He glanced back at the house again. “Are you sure Amelia’s not in there? That’s an awfully big place for just one person. Do you live there alone?”
“It’s my father’s house. He’s in a rest home with Alzheimer’s. So, yes, I’m living here alone. And yes, I’m sure Amelia’s not in there.”
“And you don’t have any idea where she might be?”
Karen shook her head. “No, I don’t.” She flicked the switch, raising the window again. “I’ll see you at Victrola in ten minutes,” she said over the humming noise. She watched him in the rearview mirror as he turned and strutted down the driveway toward the street. Then she looked at her house, and couldn’t help wondering,
Are you sure Amelia’s not in there?
Climbing out of the car, Karen kept her eyes riveted on the house, watching for any movement within the dark windows. She should have turned on a light before running out the front door this afternoon. At least she’d remembered to set the alarm. She glanced at her wristwatch: 6:25. It was strange to feel so nervous about walking into a dark house by herself at this early hour. But then, it had been a very strange day.
Karen approached the front stoop, then tested the doorknob. Still locked; that was a good sign. She unlocked the door and opened it. Flicking on the light, she headed for the alarm box and quickly punched in the code.
She paused for a moment, and felt a pang of dread in the pit of her stomach. Something was wrong. Why wasn’t Rufus barking? She anxiously glanced around, then ventured down the hallway to the kitchen. Switching on the light, she hurried to the backdoor. Still locked. Good. She noticed the basement door was ajar. She turned on the light at the top of the stairs and peered down at the steps. “Rufus?” she said. “Here, boy!”
Nothing. Karen shut and locked the basement door in practically one swift motion. She headed toward the front of the house again. “Rufus?” she called out. “Where are you?”
Poking her head in the living room, she stopped dead. The dog was trying to sneak down from the lounge chair her father had had recovered to the tune of $850 only ten months ago. Naturally, it had become Rufus’s favorite spot to nap, when no one was around. “You stinker!” she yelled. “No wonder you didn’t bark when I came in. You know you’re not supposed to be on that chair. Some watchdog. I could have been strangled, and you wouldn’t care, as long as it didn’t interrupt your nap.”
His head down, the dog slinked toward the kitchen.
“Don’t even
think
you’re getting a cookie,” Karen growled, retreating into her office. She checked her address book. Her contact with the Seattle Police from her days at Group Health was Cal Hinshaw, a smart, dependable, good old boy. She found his number, then grabbed the phone, and dialed. She kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was sneaking up behind her. She could hear Rufus’s paws clicking on the kitchen floor, but nothing else.
“Lieutenant Hinshaw,” he answered after three rings.
“Cal? It’s Karen Carlisle calling, you know, from Group—”
“Karen? How the hell are you? It’s been an age. Listen, I’m running late for something and just about to head out. Can I call you back?”
“Actually, I just wanted to hit you up for some quick information.”
“Lay it on me. What can I do you for?”
“I’m wondering if you know anything about a Detective Russell Koehler. He just came by asking a lot of questions about one of my clients, and I’m stalling him. Is he on the level?”
“Koehler? Yeah, I know the guy. He thinks his shit is cake. He’s been on
paternity leave
the last two weeks. He found something in the employee regs that allowed him to take a month off with pay while his wife pops out a kid, not that I’d think for one minute he’d be any help to her. He’s kind of a sleaze. But I hear he knows somebody in the mayor’s office, and gets away with a lot of crap at work. You say he’s flashing his police credentials and asking questions?”
“Yes, about those shootings in Wenatchee last week, the Faraday murder-suicide case. My client is their daughter. I’m wondering why this cop—on leave—is investigating a practically closed case out of his jurisdiction.”
“You got me, Karen. He’s always working some angle.”
She shot a cautious glance toward the front hallway. “Maybe this man isn’t really Koehler. Is he in his midthirties with pale blond hair and blue eyes? Good looking?”
“Not half as good looking as he thinks he is. That’s Koehler, all right. Watch your back with him, Karen.” Cal let out a sigh. “Listen, I need to scram. Let’s get together for coffee sometime and catch up. And keep me posted if you find out why Koehler’s sniffing around this Wenatchee case. You’ve got me curious now.”
“Will do. Thanks, Cal,” Karen replied, and then she hung up the phone.
Grabbing her umbrella, she set the alarm again, and ran out of the house.
“Do you know how much Ina and Jenna were worth?” Russell Koehler asked in a hushed voice. “The Basner sisters had a little over three mil between them.”
Karen leaned over the small table, so she could hear him better in the crowded coffeehouse. They sat by the window. An eclectic art collection hung on the walls with price tags next to each work. About two thirds of the customers sat with their laptops in front of them. Chet Baker’s horn and velvet vocals purred over the sound system.
“Guess who now stands to inherit those millions?” Koehler continued. “Nineteen-year-old Amelia Faraday and her favorite uncle, George McMillan.”
Karen leaned back and shrugged. “So?”
“According to the Faradays’ neighbors up in Bellingham, Amelia was a real hell-raiser. And from
Uncle George’s
own testimony, we know his wife was banging his brother-in-law. A close friend of Ina McMillan’s confirmed it. So you’ve got a rebel daughter pissed off at her parents, and this cuckolded history professor, both due to inherit a shitload of money. You do the math. One, or both, of them could have done the job on Ina, Mark, and Jenna last Friday night—or they hired someone to do it.”
Karen frowned over her latte. “Well, you’re wrong. Without breaching any therapist-client confidentiality, I can tell you this. Amelia never once complained to me about her parents. If anything, it was the other way around. Amelia said she’d caused her folks some heartache over the years, and wanted to make it up to them.”
“She
told
you that. She probably figured you’d be repeating it to some cop, like you are right now. How do you know Amelia wasn’t just setting you up?”
“Amelia genuinely loved her parents, Lieutenant. Also, I was with George McMillan hours after he learned of his wife’s death, and he was devastated. It wasn’t an act. If you’re trying to pin the Wenatchee shootings on either one of them simply because they’re in line for some money, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. Besides, three million split between two people isn’t a huge fortune nowadays.”
“Maybe not to you,” Koehler replied, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Not everybody lives in a
castle
, like you do. The police based their conclusion that Mark Faraday was unstable mostly on the testimony of Amelia and her Uncle George, the beneficiaries of this little windfall. I mean, isn’t that pretty damn convenient? Maybe three mil isn’t such a gold mine nowadays, but it’s still a damn fine nest egg. Two people could live very comfortably on that. Not everyone is as lucky as you, inheriting a mansion. Some people have to make their own luck.”
Amelia glared at him. “I don’t think it’s lucky that my father lost his mind. And I’m sure Amelia Faraday and George McMillan don’t feel lucky about what happened to their loved ones.”
“All right, all right, take it easy,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’d be thinking along the same lines as me if you’d seen the house by Lake Wenatchee. I walked through it the day after. I didn’t go in there suspecting your client and her uncle. But that’s how I felt when I walked out of the place. For starters, there are footprints all around the outside of the house. But there were other partial footprints in the mud they weren’t so sure about. The cops figured that most of the prints belonged to Mark, after examining his slippers. And I’m wondering, what the hell was Mark doing out there in his slippers? He must have gone to check on something, maybe a noise, or maybe one of the women saw someone lurking outside the house.”
Karen shrugged. “He could have been chasing away a raccoon for all we know.” She shook her head. “You’re jumping to conclusions—”
“I saw the bloodstains, Karen. I saw them in the upstairs hallway where Jenna got shot in the face. There was a big stain on the living room floor, where Ina got it…”
Karen remembered Amelia’s description of the scene. It was so dead on.
“But the bloodstain on the living room wall, behind the rocking chair where they found Mark Faraday with his hunting rifle still in his hands, that’s what really stopped me. The bullet entered above his left eye and shot out the back of his head about two inches above the hairline on the back of his neck. The stain on the wall was almost parallel to the top of the rocking chair. He couldn’t have held a hunting rifle to his face that way, not parallel. He’d need arms like an orangutan to manage that. If Mark Faraday really killed himself with that rifle, the barrel would have been at a diagonal slant, blowing off the top-back of his head. The only way the exit wound and the bloodstain on the wall could be like that was if someone else held the rifle parallel to his face.”