Authors: Kevin O'Brien
“Goddamn it, no!” she cried angrily. “Why are you asking me all these fucking questions? Why are you picking on me?”
Dumbstruck, Karen stared at her. Amelia had never snapped at her like that before. And for a moment, Karen wondered if she was talking to the
other
Amelia right now. Between the makeup and her manner, she almost seemed like a different person. Then again, maybe Karen was looking too hard for a
different
Amelia right now.
She took a deep breath, and tried to smile. “I thought I saw you yesterday at the rest home where my father’s staying,” she said calmly. She took a small step toward her. “I—I must have been mistaken. I didn’t mean to jump on your case.”
“Well, you’re scaring me, Karen,” she said with a shaky voice. “I don’t understand why you’re acting like this. What happened?” She glanced toward the front door. “What’s that police detective doing here?”
“If I seem on edge, he’s one reason why,” Karen explained. “He’s
unofficially
investigating the deaths of your parents and aunt. By
unofficially
, I mean he’s snooping around on his own without any backing from the police department. At least, he doesn’t have any backing, yet. He’s got a bunch of crazy theories and notions about what might have happened last weekend. This guy’s bad news, Amelia. You shouldn’t talk to him. And you don’t have to—”
The doorbell rang. Rufus started barking and scratching on the other side of the basement door. The doorbell rang again and again until the chiming was continuous. The study door slid open, and Laird stuck his head out. “Is anyone going to answer that?” he asked, over the incessant ringing and the dog’s yelping.
Karen moved down the hallway, and gave her client a gentle push back into the study. “Laird, I’ll be with you in just one more minute. Sorry about the interruption.” She shut the door to the study. “Rufus, can it!” she yelled. Then she swiveled around and yanked open the front door to find Russ Koehler, with his finger on the bell. “Do you mind?” she growled.
“As a matter of fact, I do mind,” he replied, finally taking his finger off the doorbell. “I’m going to talk with your client whether you like it or not. And the more trouble you give me, the more trouble I’ll make for you—and believe me, I can deliver on that.”
Not backing down, Karen shook her head at him. “Amelia doesn’t have to talk to you—”
“Oh, Karen, never mind, really, please,” she interrupted. She touched Karen’s shoulder as she edged past her toward Koehler. “I don’t want you getting in trouble on my account. I’ll talk to him. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry.”
“No, Amelia, wait—”
But she hurried out the door.
Koehler took hold of her arm, and he grinned back at Karen. “You heard what Amelia said.
Don’t worry
.” Then he led her toward the driveway. “My car’s parked just down the block. We can go for a drive.” He handed her the Starbucks container. “Could you use a tall latte? I bought it for Karen, but she didn’t want it.”
She took the drink, then glanced over her shoulder at Karen. “I’ll call you later, okay?”
From her front door, Karen watched them start down the sidewalk together. “Damn it,” she muttered.
They disappeared behind some tall hedges bordering the neighbor’s yard. But she could still hear Russ Koehler talking. “You know, Amelia, I had no idea you were such a lovely girl….”
Then his voice faded in the distance, and Karen couldn’t hear him anymore.
“I swear, I don’t remember much about that night at all,” she said, quietly sobbing in the passenger seat.
She’d finished the latte he’d given her about ten minutes ago when they’d taken the Issaquah exit off Interstate 90, about a half hour east of Seattle. The empty container was in the cup holder between them. Russ had been a little worried about potential spilling on the plush interior of his new Audi TT Coupe (one of the benefits of marrying into money). He reminded her a few times to be careful with the coffee. Now he could relax a little, and he focused on getting a confession out of this tasty-looking young thing. He figured her Uncle George probably couldn’t keep his hands off her. He couldn’t really blame the guy, either. He was convinced the uncle had manipulated her into helping him kill his wife and her parents.
He’d asked that she show him where she’d gone on the night her parents and aunt had died. According to police reports, she’d driven to Snoqualmie Falls. But this Issaquah route was sure a screwy way of getting there. Following her instructions, he’d almost gotten lost on all these winding forest roads around Cougar Mountain Wildland Park. He’d finally pulled into a little alcove at the start of a hiking trail, and shut off the engine to his Audi. By the hiking path, there was a little sign with a cartoon of Dennis the Menace wearing a backpack, and the caption “Don’t Be a Litterbug!” Only somebody had crossed out the
Don’t
. No one else was parked in the area. The sun was just starting to set behind the tall evergreens to the west.
“Listen, Amelia, I’m going to make sure you get a break for talking candidly with me,” he said, letting his hand slide down from the gear shift to her seat. His pinky brushed against her thigh. “I’m very well connected. So you can tell me the truth, and we’ll work something out. I don’t really blame you. It was your uncle’s idea, wasn’t it?”
Her head down, she kept crying. She held her purse in her lap. “I haven’t been able to talk to anyone about it, not even Karen.”
“Is he screwing you?” Koehler asked.
Wincing, she nodded. “I’m so ashamed. My boyfriend, Shane, he’s so sweet. I can’t believe I’ve been doing this behind his back. But it’s been going on for—for years now.”
Koehler couldn’t believe his luck. Incest and pedophilia now factored into the story. “How old were you when your uncle started in on you?”
She wept quietly, and set her purse down between the seat and her door. She wouldn’t look him in the eye. She leaned forward, and didn’t seem to realize it made her blouse open in front. Koehler could see one white, round breast, and the rose-colored nipple grazing at the fabric of her blouse.
He moved his hand to her thigh and stroked it. He was starting to get hard. “It’s okay, Amelia. Take your time answering. I’m here for you.”
Koehler couldn’t stop staring at her breasts. He wanted so much to undo the rest of those buttons on her blouse. His head was swimming.
He didn’t notice that she was reaching inside her purse.
All at once, she swung her arm out and hit him in the forehead with something hard. A searing pain shot through his head, and for a moment, all he could see was white. “Fuck!” he howled.
He touched his forehead and felt blood. It was trickling down into his left eye. Blinking, he tried to focus on her.
Then he noticed the gun in her hand.
“They left here together over two hours ago,” Karen said into the phone. She was at her desk, behind stacks of work files. She’d been meaning to straighten them out for months. It was just the busywork she needed while waiting around for Amelia to call. So far, she’d reorganized the
A
through
D
patient records, had two cups of coffee, and given herself a paper cut.
“I tried calling Amelia an hour ago, and nothing,” she continued. “I even called Koehler’s cell phone, and there was no answer there either.”
“I can’t believe she went off with him,” George muttered on the other end of the line.
“And voluntarily,” Karen added. “I tried to stop her. Now all I can think about is Amelia making some sort of confession to that creep. I wasn’t going to call you until I heard back from her. I didn’t want to worry you for nothing. But now I…” She sighed. “Well, I thought you should know. Maybe you want to contact a lawyer or something.”
“I appreciate it, Karen,” he replied. She could hear the TV on and Stephanie laughing in the distant background. “Let’s just wait it out for now. You’re the only one Amelia has confessed to, for lack of a better word. She’s a very smart young woman. She kept her mouth shut with the police and everyone else about her
visions
. Let’s just hope she does the same thing with Koehler.”
“You’re right. I probably shouldn’t have called you this soon.”
“Nonsense, I’m glad you told me, Karen,” he said. “Why should you be the only one who’s worried? Besides, Amelia’s my niece. Jody, Steph, and I are her only living relatives. Or maybe I should qualify that—only
known
living relatives. Listen, I’ve checked the Spokane and Pasco newspaper archives and still haven’t come up with very much on Duane Lee Savitt. All I know is that he was an auto mechanic and, according to the people who worked with him at this garage in Pasco, he pretty much kept to himself. No one seemed to really know him. He had a sister, Joy, who died a few weeks before his rampage at the adoption agency. I kept hoping to find the name of another surviving family member in one of the articles, but no dice. But there was something in his obituary in the Pasco
Tri-City Herald
. They mentioned he was buried at Arbor Heights Memorial Park in Salem, Oregon.”
“Uh-huh,” Karen said. “And—that’s a lead?”
“Someone had to pay for the burial, and his headstone, if there is one. It’s a pretty safe bet that person knew Duane, too. But so far, that party is nameless. I checked the office hours for Arbor Heights Memorial Park, and they’re closed right now. But I’ll get in touch with them tomorrow morning. Keep your fingers crossed they still have billing records from 1993.”
“I will,” Karen replied tentatively. “That—that’s great, George.”
She didn’t want to remind him it was a long shot that Duane Lee Savitt had been Amelia’s uncle. If he had been, and they discovered something in Amelia’s childhood to explain her condition today, then George might be gathering evidence to exonerate his niece for murdering her parents, and his wife.
She wondered if George was aware of that. Or was he still so convinced of Amelia’s innocence that such a notion hadn’t even occurred to him?
Until yesterday, Karen had felt exactly the same way. It helped that George knew about Amelia going off with Koehler. And it helped that he was doing extensive research into what had happened at the adoption agency.
But Karen still felt as if she were the only one worried about Amelia—and what that young woman was capable of.
Russ Koehler was shivering. He wore a T-shirt, and nothing else. She’d made him strip off his shoes, socks, trousers, and underpants after they’d veered off the main hiking trial. Then she’d told him to remove his shirt and start tearing it into small, thin strips. Every forty or fifty feet that they stomped through those woods, branches from shrubs scraping at his naked legs, rocks and sticks chewing away at his cold, bare feet, she made him tie a strip from his shirt to a branch. He’d been marking a trail for her return trip.
“Once I feel we’ve walked far enough, I’m going to leave you here—alone,” she explained coolly. “I’ll take down these trail markings, so it’s not going to be easy for you to find your way out. Even then, you won’t have any money. You won’t have your clothes or your precious car. And I’ll be far, far away, where you won’t ever find me.”
Russ was ordinarily quite proud of his body, but now he clutched what was left of his shirt over his genitals. They were shrunken up from the cold. He felt so vulnerable with her walking behind him, staring at his naked ass. She didn’t tease him, giggle, or make any lewd comments as they continued through the forest. She seemed so passionless, almost detached from everything. And that scared the shit out of him.
“Listen, Amelia,” he said, glancing over his shoulder for a second. “Your plan isn’t going to work. If you’re on the run, you won’t be able to collect your inheritance. Your uncle will get it all. Everyone will think you did it alone.”
“Then do you think I might be better off if I just killed you here?” she asked, without a hint of irony or sarcasm in her voice.
“Jesus, no,” he gasped. “No, no. I’m saying we can make a deal, and pin the brunt of it on your uncle. He manipulated you, didn’t he? And I told you, I know people who have a lot of clout….”
“Tie another strip to that evergreen branch, will you?” she said.
His hands shook violently as he tried to make a knot around the branch with the shirt strip. Russ glanced up at the darkening sky. Within a few minutes, the forest would be swallowed up in blackness, and he’d be lucky to see his hand in front of his face.
He turned to her, and clutched the torn shirt in front of his crotch. “I—I’m never getting out of here, am I?” he asked.
“Well, you have a lot of challenges,” she said, the gun pointed at him. “You’ll have bears, coyotes, and maybe even a cougar or two to contend with. Most of the real interesting creatures in these woods come out at night. Did you ever hear that story about the woman who went camping in the woods while she was having her period, and she got mauled to death by a bear? Apparently, the bear smelled the blood, and he tracked her down. So, I’d watch that cut on your forehead, Russ. It could be your death sentence out here. Now, turn around and keep walking. Just a little farther, we’re almost there.”
He stared at her for a moment. She was screwing around with him. He could tell. She planned to kill him in these woods. Turning, he continued to stagger through the brush. His feet were cold and bleeding. “Listen, Amelia,” he said, starting to cry. “My wife just had a baby, for God’s sake. You can’t kill me…please. My son’s only a week old.”
“If your baby son’s so important, why weren’t you with him today? Why didn’t you buy a station wagon instead of your flashy sports car?”
“Please…” he repeated. Just a few feet ahead, there was a small clearing in the forest. He noticed a large, oblong rock on the ground. It was about the size of his fist. He imagined bashing her brains in with that rock, once he had her down.