One Last Scream

Chapter Eighteen

“Sorry about the interruption,” George said, tucking the cell phone in his sports coat pocket. He’d stepped down to the playing field to take Karen’s call. Now he made his way back up the bleachers. “Where was I?”

“You asked me about the fire,” Caroline Cadwell said.

Nodding, he sat down beside her. “So the police called you late one night in July….”

“Yes, I had no idea Lon put me down on his insurance policy as his emergency contact. There was no next of kin, so they called me to identify the remains.”

“Did you drive out to the ranch that night?”

“Oh, no. They didn’t get the bodies out of there until about two in the morning. Because the ranch was so remote, it took a while for the fire trucks to arrive and even longer to get water in the hoses. In the meantime, the whole upstairs was burnt, along with most of the first floor. You can still see what’s left of the place if you drive a couple of miles outside town. They haven’t leveled it yet.”

Shuddering, Caroline rubbed her arms. “Do you mind if we head inside? I’m starting to feel a chill.”

“Not at all,” George murmured.

“Can you imagine?” she said, heading down the bleacher steps with him. “All that destruction, a house left in cinders, because someone was smoking in bed. But that’s how it happened, just like the old cliche. Lon had a Camel going, and he dozed off. What a stupid waste. Anyway, they asked me to come to the morgue the following morning at 9:30. I don’t know why they put me through it. I mean, the fire was at the Schlessinger ranch. Lon was forty-six and Annabelle was sixteen. The two bodies were a male in his late forties and a female in her late teens. It wasn’t too tough to figure out who they were.”

George walked with her along the playing field toward a side door into the school. It was an ugly, three-story granite building from the Reagan era. Eyes downcast, Caroline kept rubbing her arms. “It was pretty awful,” she muttered. “I had to go into this cold, little room that smelled rancid. I’m sorry, but the stench was horrible. That was one of the worst parts. The bodies were covered with white sheets, and they had them on metal slabs. First, I identified Lon. There was nothing left of his hair. His face was just blood, blisters, and burn marks, but I still recognized him. However, Annabelle-well, she was a skull with blackened skin stretched over it. Her mouth was wide open like she was screaming….”

George noticed tears in Caroline’s eyes. He gently rested his hand on her shoulder.

“I’d known her since she was a little girl,” she said, her voice quivering. “I’d watched her grow up into a beautiful young lady. I had a hard time believing that-thing was Annabelle. The height and body type were Annabelle’s, but I couldn’t say for sure it was her. Then I remembered the bracelet.”

“What bracelet?” George stopped with Caroline as she pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose.

“Annabelle had a favorite bracelet, silver with these pretty roses engraved on it,” Caroline explained. “She wore it all the time. It used to be her mother’s. The bracelet was about two inches wide, and covered up an ugly scar. Annabelle had burned the back of her wrist rather badly when she was a child.

“Anyway, I asked the attendant in the morgue if I could see her left arm. He lifted the sheet and showed me. And there was the wide silver bracelet, almost melded to her burnt skin and bones. Then I knew it was her.”

“That’s how you identified Annabelle’s body?” George asked. He wondered if the local police and coroner realized Ms. Cadwell had based her positive ID on a piece of jewelry around the wrist of a charred corpse.

“Well, what other proof do you want?” she shot back.

“Maybe dental records,” he muttered. “Did they check their dental records?”

“I don’t think so. Why should they?”

Because I know someone who thinks Annabelle could still be alive, George wanted to answer. But he didn’t want to argue with Caroline Cadwell over something that had happened three years ago. She had no reason to be suspicious about the fire. And she’d been very forthright with him.

George held open the door for her, and Caroline strode into the school, murmuring a thank-you under her breath. She stopped and leaned against a trophy case in the school hallway. Wiping her eyes again, she gave him a tired smile. “I always get emotional when I think about Annabelle. I was sort of her honorary godmother. It’s no wonder I had a hard time identifying her remains. If only you knew how pretty she was….”

“But I do know,” George reminded her. “My niece is her twin. I know exactly what you mean. Amelia’s very beautiful.”

Caroline nodded pensively. “You know, it’s ironic. I used to worry about Annabelle spending so much time alone on that ranch in the middle of nowhere. Lon continued to go off fishing and hunting for days at a time.” Frowning, she shook her head. “I just didn’t understand his nonchalance. You see, for several years, we had a-a series of disappearances. Several young women in the area vanished without a trace. A few were even former students of mine. So, maybe I was more sensitive and worried about it than some people. But I couldn’t help thinking about Annabelle, alone on that ranch, a perfect target for whoever was out there preying on young women.” She shrugged. “And after all my concern, Annabelle ended up dying in a fire, started by her father’s cigarette.”

George stared at her. “How many girls disappeared? Did they ever find any of them?”

“At least a dozen or so in a period of about ten years,” she said. “A while back, they discovered the partial remains of a young woman in a forest about twenty miles from here. They never found any of the others. And they never found the killer either.”

“So he’s still out there somewhere?” George asked.

“I think he’s moved on to a different area,” Caroline said, shuddering again. “Like a predator finding a new kill zone. Anyway, it’s been about three years since the last girl disappeared. Her name was Sandra Hartman. She graduated from here just two months before her disappearance. I taught Sandra her sophomore year. She was supposed to meet some friends for a movie, but never showed up.”

“You said this was three years ago?” George asked.

She nodded.

“Was this before or after the Schlessinger ranch burned down?”

“About a week before,” she answered. “Why do you ask?”

“I’m not sure,” George replied truthfully. It just seemed strange that the girls stopped disappearing once Lon Schlessinger had smoked his last cigarette.

Karen glanced at her watch again. It had been almost twenty minutes now. She sat near the phone booth at one of the picnic tables in front of the diner. While waiting for George to call back, she’d gone into the restaurant and ordered a Diet Coke and a serving of fries to go. She’d come back out, sat down, and tried to eat. But she’d been too nervous; and after only a few fries, she’d tossed the bag out. Her soft-drink container was still on the table in front of her.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Amelia’s twin. If Annabelle was alive, it would explain so much.

Months ago, Shane had thought he’d spotted Amelia inside a strange car with a strange man at a stoplight in the University District. Amelia had had only the vaguest memory of it, after Shane had prompted her with a description of what he’d seen. Had he actually spotted Annabelle?

Karen remembered Amelia coming by her place the day before yesterday. She’d been acting so peculiar, and even looked a bit different. Hell, even Rufus had detected something wrong with her, and kept growling at her. Then she’d walked off with Koehler. Karen had figured the other Amelia had walked into her house that afternoon. She’d thought the other Amelia might have killed Koehler.

But there was no other Amelia. It was another person entirely.

How could Amelia-even with multiple personalities-be in two different places at one time?

She’d been in Port Angeles when Koehler had disappeared a hundred miles away in Cougar Mountain Park. And she’d been on a Booze Busters retreat in Port Townsend when her brother had died in Bellingham. The Faradays’ next-door neighbor hadn’t seen Amelia hosing down the dock around the time of Collin’s death. No, she’d spotted Annabelle, washing away his blood after she’d bashed his skull in.

Karen shifted restlessly on the picnic table bench. She gazed at the darkening horizon, and then over the treetops in the direction of the Faradays’ lake house.

Helene Sumner had seen Annabelle, and her boyfriend, Blade, at the house just days before Amelia’s parents and aunt were brutally killed there. The Faradays would have opened the door to Annabelle, believing her to be their daughter. They may not have even lived long enough after that to realize their mistake. In Amelia’s all-too-accurate dream, she remembered her Aunt Ina’s last words before a bullet ripped through her chest: “Oh my God, honey, what have you done?”

Everything started to make sense, if Annabelle was indeed alive. She was the killer. But what was her motive? And what accounted for Amelia having these fragmented memories of her sister’s violent actions?

An SUV pulled into the lot by Danny’s Diner. Karen glanced at her watch again. She got to her feet and checked the phone inside the booth. Had she hung up the receiver improperly after her last conversation with George?

No, there was nothing wrong with the phone, except George’s call hadn’t come through on it yet.

“God, you’re right!” a girl shrieked. “My cell phone isn’t working. Shit! And I told Tiffany I was going to call her.”

Karen saw three young teenage girls, and the haggard-looking mother of one of them, coming around the corner from the Danny’s parking lot. All the girls were talking at once, and loudly, too. But Karen heard one of them over the others: “Look, there’s a pay phone!”

Karen quickly ducked into the booth and closed the folding door. She picked up the receiver, but kept a hand over the cradle lever, pressing it down. “Oh, yeah? Really?” she said into the phone. “Well, I’m not surprised….”

A gum-snapping girl with long brown hair stopped in front of the booth while her friends and their chaperone filed into the diner. She fished a credit card out of her little purse. What a 14-year-old was doing with a credit card was beyond Karen. She turned her back to the girl, and kept up her pretend conversation on the phone: “I had no idea. Well, she should take care of that right away.”

After a few moments, Karen heard a clicking noise behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The girl was tapping her credit card against the phone booth window. She glared at Karen, and then rolled her eyes.

Karen opened the door. “Hey, I have another important call to make after this,” she said. “So, you may as well just buzz off, okay?”

“Bitch,” the girl muttered. Then she swiveled around and flounced into the restaurant.

Suddenly, the phone rang. Karen’s hand jerked away from the receiver cradle. “Yes? George?”

“Yeah, hi,” he said. “Listen, I think you’re right about Amelia’s twin. There’s every chance Annabelle is still alive….”

She stood in Karen’s kitchen, gazing at the housekeeper.

Outside, in the backyard, George McMillan’s children played with Karen’s dog. They hadn’t noticed her yet.

“Amelia, everyone’s been searching high and low for you, honey,” the housekeeper said. She furtively glanced over her shoulder at the children, then took another step inside and closed the kitchen door behind her.

“Where’s Karen?” she asked.

“She drove to the house in Lake Wenatchee, looking for you,” Jessie said. “She rented a car. Her own car’s missing. Did you borrow her car, honey?”

“No, I didn’t.” Her eyes narrowed at Jessie. “Do you know if Karen has been to the lake house yet?”

Jessie nodded, and moved over to the cupboard. “She called about fifteen minutes ago from some diner up the road from there. You just missed her.” Jessie pulled a container of lemonade mix from the cabinet. “I promised the kids I’d make them some lemonade. Would you like some, honey? Or maybe a nice cup of tea?”

“Don’t bother yourself,” she muttered.

“Sit down and take a load off, for goodness sake.” She moved over to the refrigerator and took the ice tray out of the freezer. “I’ll make enough lemonade for you, too. You have something cool to drink, and then we’ll call your Uncle George. He’s been worried about you, too.”

She sat down at the breakfast table. “Where is Uncle George?”

“He had to go down to Oregon for some research thingy,” Jessie said, retrieving four tall glasses and a pitcher from another cabinet. “He’ll be back tonight, though. Karen, too. I guess we have to wait before we can reach her on her cell-something about bad phone reception around there.”

Past Jessie’s chatter, she heard the children outside, laughing. The dog let out a bark now and then. She glanced down at the purse in her lap. Inside, something caught the overhead kitchen light, and glistened.

The serrated-edged, brown-leather-handled hunting knife in her purse was a souvenir from the ranch. It had belonged to her father. He’d skinned his kill with it on hunting trips. He’d also used it on some of his women once he’d finished with them.

She remembered back when she was just a little girl, those furtive trips at night had seemed like such long ordeals. But in reality he’d done a quick job on the women they’d picked up together. The longest he’d gone on with one of them had been close to two hours. He’d dug their graves ahead of time, and driven them out to the preselected spot. She remembered those nights alone in the car, listening to the screams, waiting. He’d come back, covered with sweat, and often blood. He’d pull a piece of candy out of his pocket, and toss it to her. “That’s a good girl,” he’d say. “You’re daddy’s little helper.” Then he’d pop open the trunk, get out the shovel, and promise to be back soon.

And he’d kept his promise. He’d always return within a half hour.

A few times, Uncle Duane came with them. Those nights always took longer. And he smelled bad in the car on the way home.

Her father always called it his work.

It wasn’t until a few years after her mother died that her father began to take his work home with him. The longest he ever kept one of them in that fallout-shelter-turned-dungeon was eleven days and nights and that was Tracy Eileen Atkinson. There was something about her that he liked more than the others. For a while, she’d thought he’d never grow tired and bored with Tracy. But he did.

She’d snuck down into the basement and peeked in on her father as he finished Tracy off with his hunting knife. One quick stroke across the neck. She still remembered the startled look in Tracy’s eyes, the thin crimson line across her throat that suddenly unleashed a torrent of blood.

That was when she first coveted her father’s hunting knife. She was thirteen years old at the time.

She still hadn’t tried it out on anyone, yet. Karen was going to be her very first kill with the old knife. She’d had it in her robe pocket when she’d accidentally stumbled into Karen’s bedroom late last night. But the joke had been on her. She’d had no idea Karen had been sleeping with a gun beside her.

Two days before, she’d thought she had Karen cornered in the basement of that rest home. But Blade had botched it.

Returning to Karen’s house this afternoon, she’d figured the third attempt would be the charm. But she hadn’t figured on finding Karen gone, and the housekeeper with those two brats here in her place.

She stared at Jessie, hovering over the counter, her back to her. Outside, the children were howling, trying to get the dog to bark. She glanced inside her purse again.

No reason she still couldn’t break in her father’s old hunting knife, no reason at all.

“So honey, where have you been all day, for Pete’s sake?” Jessie asked, pulling something else out of the cupboard. “Karen and your uncle have been calling just about everyone and asking if they’ve seen you. They didn’t leave one turn unstoned as my Aunt Agnes used to say….”

“I borrowed Shane’s car and went for a long drive,” she replied coolly. She studied the way the chubby housekeeper was bent over the counter, and how she had the glasses lined up. She couldn’t see what Jessie was doing. Something was wrong.

Getting to her feet, she stepped up behind Jessie, and purposely bumped her in the arm, hard.

Jessie let out a little gasp, and a prescription bottle flew out of her hand. It rolled across the kitchen counter, and about a dozen light blue cylindrical tablets spilled out.

“Oops!” Jessie said, with a jittery laugh. “Look what you went and did. My arthritis medicine, I forgot to take it this morning.”

She swiped the prescription bottle off the counter, and glanced at the label. “This is diazepam,” she said, locking eyes with Jessie. “It’s a sedative. And they’re not yours. They’re for the old man in the rest home, Karen’s father. That was a silly mistake.”

Jessie nodded and laughed again. “I’ll say. I must be getting senile.” She stirred the lemonade in the pitcher, and the ice cubes clinked against the glass.

She put the prescription bottle down. “The lemonade’s ready, Jessie.” She reached inside her purse again. “Why don’t you call the kids in? And leave the dog outside, okay?”

“They have old yearbooks there at the high school library, right?”

“Yeah, I guess,” George allowed.

Her back pressed against the phone booth’s glass wall, Karen nervously tugged at the metal phone cord. “Could you get Annabelle’s teacher to show you pictures of those girls who disappeared, and then make photocopies? You said she taught some of them….”

“Yes,” he answered tentatively. “But why do you want their pictures?”

Karen hesitated. She was thinking about one of Amelia’s earliest memories: waiting alone in a car by a forest trail at night and hearing a woman scream. When the screaming stops, then we can go home.

“It might sound a little crazy,” she said at last. “But I think if we showed pictures of those young women to Amelia, she might remember some of them.”

“Karen, these girls were all abducted between Salem and Eugene,” he pointed out. “I told you, the Schlessingers put Amelia up for adoption while they were still in Moses Lake. How do you expect her to remember things that happened in Salem when she’s never even been here? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Maybe not,” she said. “But I think Amelia has some sort of window into what’s happening in her sister’s world. She might even believe it’s happening to her. I’m not sure I even understand it myself. But I have a feeling Mr. Schlessinger was somehow involved in the disappearance of these young women. If Annabelle knew about it, then Amelia might recognize one of those yearbook portraits. It might even trigger a memory. It could be the key that unlocks a lot of doors.”

George sighed on the other end of the line. “I think I understood about ten percent of what you just said. But I have every confidence in you, Karen. I’ll make the photocopies for you.”

“Thanks, George,” she said.

She didn’t know how to explain it to him. She didn’t understand it herself. How could Amelia have these premonitions, recollections, and sensations when all the while these things were happening to her sister, Annabelle? If Annabelle had indeed killed Amelia’s family and Koehler, why did Amelia blame herself for those murders?

She’d told Karen that she’d felt the blood splatter on her face while shooting her parents and aunt. She said she’d used her dad’s hunting rifle. “It felt like someone hitting me in the shoulder with a baseball bat every time I fired it.”

Karen wondered how Amelia could feel those sensations.

Yet, it made sense somehow. During their first therapy session together, Amelia had described one of her early phantom pains-a severe burning sensation on the back of her wrist. She’d said it felt like someone was putting out a lit cigar on her. And just minutes ago, George had told her about Annabelle’s bracelet. She’d worn it to hide an ugly burn mark on the back of her wrist from a childhood accident.

George obviously thought she was crazy to imagine Amelia might recollect those missing young women, because of her special connection with Annabelle. There was no easy way to explain. It was a phenomenon that had mystified Karen years before she’d even met Amelia, back when she’d been in graduate school. Trying to explain it was almost like solving an old riddle: Why did the twin in Zurich have a fever and feel abdominal pains?

“Karen, are you still there?” George asked.

“Um, yes, I’m here.”

“So, you think Amelia and Annabelle’s father was somehow involved in these disappearances,” he said. “Well, I’m with you on that. Sure seems like an awfully weird coincidence to me. The first girl vanished about a year after Lon and his family moved here. And the last one disappeared a week before the fire that killed him. Plus, if what you say is true, and Annabelle is still alive out there killing people, well, it would explain some of her behavior, wouldn’t it? The fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

“Like father, like daughter,” Karen said. “Another thing, if young women started to disappear after Lon moved to the Salem area, they must have stopped disappearing somewhere else.”

“Moses Lake,” George murmured.

“Caroline mentioned that in Moses Lake a neighbor man had molested Amelia.”

“That’s right,” George said. “The cops later found out he was also responsible for abducting and murdering a waitress. Do you think Lon was somehow involved in that, too?”

“Maybe,” Karen said into the phone. “It’s worth checking out.”

She thought about those memory fragments from Amelia’s childhood. In one of them, Amelia’s mother had her in the bathroom and she was asking the child, stripped to her underwear, “Did he touch you down there?” But Amelia had no memory of ever being molested.

“Can you ask Caroline if she knows whether or not this neighbor man was a Native American?” Her hand tight around the receiver, she listened to George murmuring to Annabelle’s teacher.

After a moment, he got back on the line. “No, Caroline says Joy didn’t mention anything about race, just that he was a neighbor.”

“Then Caroline probably wouldn’t know the name of the Moses Lake waitress who was murdered,” Karen concluded.

She heard George talking to Annabelle’s teacher again. Then he came back on the line. “Sorry. Joy didn’t go into that much detail when she told Caroline the story.”

But Karen wanted the details. The incident with the neighbor in Moses Lake had traumatized Amelia to the point that she had to be separated from her family. And yet, she had no clear memory of it or of the family she’d lost.

Lon Schlessinger had shot the neighbor dead. And this neighbor had apparently abducted and killed a local woman. Such a story would have been in the newspapers, at least, the local newspapers.

“Listen, George, I’m heading to the Wenatchee library,” she said. “I want to find out more about this incident with the neighbor. Maybe there’s something about it in the old Wenatchee papers.”

“If it’s any help,” he said, “Amelia was officially adopted in April of ’93, and she spent a few weeks in foster homes before that. So the incident with the neighbor couldn’t have happened any time after February.”

“Thanks. I’ll start in February ’93, and work backward until I find something. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for young women missing-person cases in the area, too. I’ll call you the minute I find something. I should be able to reach you on my cell once I’m out of these woods.”

“Okay. Be careful,” he said.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” Karen said.

“Be careful anyway. I keep thinking about Helene Sumner, and how she spotted Amelia at the lake house this morning. It could have been Annabelle, you know. And she could still be around there.” George paused. “Watch out for yourself, Karen.”

Karen had been right about Amelia. There was something wrong with her.

She stood too close, still clutching her purse and occasionally peeking inside it as if she were hiding some secret treasure in there. And then that strange smirk on her face, it was so unlike the Amelia she knew.

“Oh, let’s give the kids a few more minutes outside with Rufus,” Jessie said, forcing a chuckle. She wiped her hands on a dish towel. “They’re having a blast, and that pooch hasn’t seen this much attention since God knows when.” She nervously gathered up the light blue pills from the kitchen counter. Nice try, old girl, she thought.

Karen had cautioned Jessie that Amelia might be dangerous, and said to call her immediately if she should happen to run into the 19-year-old. Jessie hadn’t taken the warning too seriously. Amelia, dangerous? That sweet thing?

But then, suddenly, the young lady showed up in Karen’s kitchen. No doorbell, no knocking, she just waltzed right into the house, bold as you please. Brazen as the guts of Jesse James, as her Aunt Agnes used to say. That was the first sign that something wasn’t right.

So Jessie closed the kitchen door, to discourage Jody and little Steffie from coming inside, and to keep them out of harm’s way.

The young woman in Karen’s kitchen seemed too hard-edged and cold. Though unable to put her finger on it, Jessie detected something off about her, the strange way she acted, looked, and talked. Then Jessie caught a glimpse of something glistening in her purse. It was a knife.

She remembered Karen’s warning. She also remembered where she’d last seen those light-blue pills that had made old Frank so dopey and tired. They were in the spice cabinet, beside the aspirin and Karen’s vitamins. She thought she was being so clever with the lemonade routine. If Amelia was indeed dangerous, sedating her was one way to nip the situation in the bud and not do anyone harm. Jessie figured that once Amelia was down for the count, she could call Karen, and the police, if necessary.

But she’d been foiled even before slipping the stuff in her surprise guest’s glass.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Trying not to shake, Jessie dropped the diazepam tablets back inside the prescription bottle. She could hear Jody and Stephanie in the backyard, laughing, and barking along with Rufus.

Leaning against the counter, the young woman picked up one pill Jessie had missed. “Why were you trying to drug me, Jessie?” she asked. She handed her the tablet. “Did Karen warn you that I might be unstable?”

“What in the world are you talking about?” Jessie put the prescription bottle away, and then moved to the refrigerator. “That’s just silly,” she added, plucking a lemon from the shelf. She closed the refrigerator door, and reached for the knife rack.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Suddenly the girl grabbed her by the wrist. She hit Jessie in the chest with her elbow. Whether or not it was an accident, it hurt like hell.

Jessie staggered back, and the lemon rolled across the floor. “Good Lord! I was just going to cut up a lemon for the lemonade!” She rubbed her chest and winced.

“It’s a mix. You don’t need to do that,” she shot back. With a quick jerk, she released Jessie’s wrist. “Now, go call the kids in, Jessie. They’ve been out there with that mutt long enough. I’d like to see my little cousins.”

Trying to catch her breath, Jessie glanced toward the backyard.

Rufus started barking furiously. A second later, the front doorbell rang.

Jessie turned toward her. “Well, I–I better answer that before Rufus has the whole neighborhood over here,” she said loudly, competing with all the yelps and barks. Jessie didn’t wait for a response. She swiveled around and quickly headed for the front door, almost expecting the young woman to grab her.

Rufus was going crazy outside. Jessie could hear Jody talking to him. “What is it, boy? What’s going on?” His voice, along with Rufus’s barking, seemed to come from the side of the house now.

Jessie flung open the front door, and recognized Chad, a tall, stocky, soft-spoken man in his early thirties. He was one of Amelia’s patients, and he looked like he was sorry he’d rung the bell. “Is Karen here?” he asked, over the dog’s yelping.

Jessie could only guess how frazzled she appeared, and Rufus, straining at his leash, was leading the two children around from the side of the house toward the front stoop. Poor Chad looked as if he just wanted to flee. “Um, I have a five o’clock appointment with her,” he explained, with an apprehensive look over his shoulder.

“Down, boy! Take it easy!” Jody chided Rufus.

“Down, boy!” Stephanie echoed.

A hand over her heart, Jessie stared at him. “Karen-she had to cancel her appointments today.” She glanced back toward the kitchen. “Um, didn’t you get her message, Chad?”

“Oh, nuts, I probably should have checked my answering machine,” he replied. He bowed down toward Rufus. “Hey, there, pooch.”

“Don’t go away, okay?” Jessie said, distractedly. “Stay there. You too, kids. I’ll be right back.”

With trepidation, she headed down the hall toward the back of the house. She edged past the kitchen entryway and gazed into the empty room. The back door was wide open.

Jessie hurried to the door, and then looked out at the backyard: no one.

Biting her lip, she closed the kitchen door and locked the deadbolt. Then she tried the door to the basement. It was already locked. No one could have gone down there.

Right beside her on the kitchen wall, just inches from her head, the telephone rang. Jessie almost jumped out of her skin. She quickly snatched up the receiver. “Yes, hello?”

“Is this Karen?” a woman asked.

“No, this is her housekeeper,” Jessie replied, again, her hand on her heart. She stepped out to the hallway as far as the phone cord would allow. She saw Chad, Rufus, and the children still at the front stoop. Chad was crouched down, petting the dog and talking to the kids.

Jessie sighed. “Karen isn’t in,” she said into the phone. “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for Amelia Faraday. I’m her roommate, Rachel.”

“Amelia isn’t here right now. She-um, well, she just left.”

“Do you know if she’s coming back?”

I hope not, Jessie thought. But she merely cleared her throat and said. “I’m not really sure, hon. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Well, this is kind of an emergency,” Rachel explained. “If you see her, please, tell her to call me immediately. I’ve got the police ringing the phone off the hook here. They’re looking for her.”

“Really?” Jessie murmured.

“It’s pretty awful news,” Rachel said. “It’s about her boyfriend…”

“You mean Shane?” Jessie asked.

“Yeah, you know Shane Mitchell?”

“Yes, I do. Is he okay? What’s happened?”

“He, um, well, he’s dead,” the girl explained, a little crack in her voice. “They found Shane in a canoe, drifting in Lake Washington by the 520 Bridge. It looks like he shot himself.”

Meredith Marie Sterns was a pretty brunette who had disappeared the summer after graduating from East Marion High School in 1999. She had a dimpled smile and “Rachel” hair copied from Jennifer Aniston’s hairstyle in Friends.

“Meredith spent most of that June backpacking around Europe with a friend,” Caroline explained.

George stood over the Xerox machine, making a photocopy of Meredith’s graduation portrait. They were the only ones in the high school’s administration office; everybody else had gone home already. They had several old yearbooks piled on the secretary’s desk beside the copier.

“I remember the Sterns were so worried that something might happen to Meredith while she was wandering around Europe,” Caroline continued. “But it was less than a week after she’d returned home that it happened. She went with some girlfriends to see the Fourth of July fireworks at the park. I guess it was about twenty minutes before the fireworks were supposed to start when Meredith excused herself to go use the restroom. And she never came back….”

George once again studied the photo of the girl with the Rachel hair. “She was so excited about going to Chicago in the fall,” he heard Caroline say. “She’d been accepted into Northwestern. She was going to be a drama major.”

Caroline had a story like that for every one of the missing young women. Part of George wanted to hurry up and just get the photocopies made. The sooner he hit the road, the sooner he’d be home with his kids. He was worried about them.

But he didn’t rush through the task at hand, and he respectfully listened to Caroline’s reminiscences for each missing girl. The stories broke his heart. Each one was somebody’s daughter, sister, or fiancee. Each one had dreams and plans for her future. Each one had disappeared without a trace.

Twenty-two-year-old Nancy Rae Keller was an accomplished pianist who had performed in several concerts. She’d been earning some extra money as a waitress at a fancy restaurant called The Tides in Corvallis. The last person to see her alive was the restaurant manager. Nancy Rae had finished up her shift one Thursday night in March 2002 and headed out to her car. Nancy Rae’s car had still been in the restaurant’s parking lot on Friday morning. George couldn’t see it in the black-and-white photo, but according to Caroline, “Nancy Rae had the most beautiful red hair.”

The youngest to disappear was Leandra Bryant, nicknamed Leelee. The 15-year-old had been babysitting for two toddlers until 10:30 on a Saturday night in April, 2001. The children’s father had offered to drive her home, but Leelee lived only two blocks away and insisted on walking. She should have been safe. But somewhere along those two blocks in a quiet, residential area of Salem, Leelee Bryant vanished.

The last among the missing young women was Sandra Hartman, the 18-year-old who had disappeared on her way to the mall to meet some friends for a movie.

George looked at the slightly grainy photocopy of Sandra’s graduation portrait, and he saw a resemblance between the beautiful dark-haired senior and Amelia. It was the last photocopy he’d made. The Xerox machine still hummed for a moment before it wheezed and then switched off.

“Were any of these girls friends of Annabelle’s?” he asked.

Caroline arranged the yearbooks by year. “No, only two of the girls were in school at the same time as Annabelle. And I don’t think either one of them ever had Annabelle over to their homes or anything. And, of course, I’m sure they never went out to the Schlessinger ranch.”

George remembered Erin Gottlieb telling him that she hadn’t set foot in the place. “That ranch in the middle of nowhere,” she’d called it.

“You said the ranch house is still there?” he asked.

“Yes, but it’s just a burnt-out shell now,” Caroline replied. “There’s hardly anything left of it. I don’t think anyone’s been out there in years.”

George studied the photocopies again-all those pretty young women who had disappeared. “Could I ask you for one more favor, Caroline?”

She nodded. “Sure.”

“Could you tell me how to get to the Schlessinger ranch?”