One Last Scream

Chapter Nine

Springfield, Oregon-October 2001

Tracy Atkinson felt silly for having reservations about shopping at Gateway Mall that beautiful October night. But there were all sorts of alerts on the news about the spread of anthrax and another possible terrorist attack. Big shopping malls were supposed to be a prime target. She’d been avoiding crowded places for over a month now. The 26-year-old blond dental technician wished she were more like her fiance, Zach, who kept telling her: “Hey, when your number’s up, it’s up, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

He’d had no qualms about getting on a plane yesterday and flying to Boston for a sales conference. She had to admire him for it.

After a half hour inside the shopping mall, with visits to Target and Kohl’s, she started to relax. On her way into Fantastic Footwear, she noticed a backpack left unattended beside a bench. It made her nervous, and she didn’t linger in the shoe store for long before coming out and checking if the backpack was still there. Tracy let out a grateful sigh as she watched a teenage boy grab the backpack and strap it on. Sipping from Taco Time containers, he and his buddies wandered toward the cinemas at the other end of the mall.

“Excuse me, do you own a green SUV with an American flag decal on the rear passenger window?”

Tracy swiveled around and blinked at the middle-aged man. He held a teenage girl by the arm. She was pretty, with gorgeous blue eyes, but her black hair was unwashed. She wore the usual punk attire: black jeans and a black sweatshirt, also unwashed. She sneered at Tracy, and then tried to jerk her arm away from the man. But he didn’t let go, not even when he pulled a wallet from his windbreaker pocket and flashed his badge at Tracy. “I’m Officer Simms,” he said with a polite smile.

He was balding and slightly paunchy, but his eyes had a certain intensity that made him oddly attractive. His smile was nice, too. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I think this young lady keyed the driver’s side of your SUV.”

“It’s just a little scratch,” the girl grumbled, rolling her eyes. “Shit…”

“It’s destruction of private property and vandalism,” the man said.

Tracy gaped at them both. She and Zach had bought the green SUV only two months ago. They planned to start having kids right after they got married, and the SUV, though a bit premature, was part of that plan. Zach called it their babymobile. He’d put the U.S. flag in the window a few days after 9/11. Tracy couldn’t believe this little urchin had keyed their brand-new babymobile. Zach would have a cow.

“Why would you do that?” she asked the girl. Tracy guessed she was about thirteen. “What did I ever do to you? I don’t even know you, for God’s sake.”

The bratty girl merely rolled her eyes again.

“Pointless, just pointless,” the man said, frowning. “Listen, ma’am. Why don’t you walk out to the parking lot with us? You can review the damage to your vehicle, and decide whether or not you want to press charges.”

“Of course,” Tracy muttered, still bewildered. “I’m parked outside the furniture store.”

But then, he was already aware of that, Tracy reminded herself. In order to know who she was, the man must have seen her parking the SUV in front of the furniture store. Obviously, the kid had keyed the babymobile just moments later, the little bitch.

The funny thing was, Tracy hadn’t seen anyone else in the area when she’d left the car forty-five minutes ago. That section of the mall was usually the least crowded. She’d figured the new SUV would be safe there.

She imagined the cop looking for her, and dragging this punk girl around the mall for the last forty-five minutes. Why hadn’t he just asked them to make an announcement over the mall’s PA system? Would the owner of a green SUV, license plate number COL216, report to the information desk? That certainly would have been easier.

“Are you with mall security?” Tracy asked the man. They were walking through the furniture store, the dining room section. He still had the girl by her arm. She seemed to be resisting a little as they neared the exit.

“No, I’m a cop, off duty right now,” he replied. “At least, I was off duty. If you’d like to press charges-and I think you should-I can radio it in to the station and they’ll start filling out the paperwork right away. I’ll drive you to the station. I promise it won’t take that long.”

He held the door open for Tracy, and they stepped outside. It had grown dark out, and chilly. But the lot was illuminated by halogen lights, which gave the area a stark, eerie, bluish glow. There weren’t many cars left in this section. Tracy could see the SUV ahead, and on the driver’s side, one long uninterrupted scratch. It started above the front tire and continued across the driver’s door, then along the back door to the rear bumper. “Oh, damn it,” Tracy muttered.

“That’s my minivan over there,” the man said, nodding at a blue Dodge Caravan parked nearby. “Come with me, and I’ll radio this in.”

Tracy stared at the girl, who didn’t seem to have an ounce of remorse in her. She just looked annoyed, as if they were bothering her. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Tracy asked.

“Don’t even try,” the man said, dragging the girl toward his minivan. “C’mon…”

The girl didn’t put up much of a fight as the man slid open the back door, put a hand on top of her head and guided her into the backseat. “Buckle up!” he barked.

He shut the door, then opened the front passenger door for Tracy. “I promise this won’t take long.”

Tracy climbed into the front. She watched him walk around the front of the vehicle toward the driver’s side. The minivan was a bit stuffy, and smelled like a dirty ashtray. Tracy immediately rolled down her window a little. She glanced at the girl in the rearview mirror. The teenager was very sullen and quiet. But she stared back at Tracy in the mirror and shook her head. “Stupid,” she grumbled.

“What?” Tracy asked. “What did you just say to me?”

The man opened the driver’s door and climbed behind the wheel. “You should buckle up, too,” he said. “This shouldn’t take long. The station isn’t far from here.”

Tracy automatically started to reach back for her seat belt, but then she glanced out the window at her and Zach’s SUV. It didn’t make sense to leave the SUV behind. Wouldn’t they want to take pictures of the damage? And doing it this way, he’d have to drive her back to the mall later. Following him to the station in the SUV would be easier. She let the seat belt slide back to its original position.

“Say, you know…” Tracy trailed off as she gazed at the dashboard.

He’d said he would radio in a report to the police station. But there was no radio in the car. Then it dawned on her: He’s not a cop.

“Stupid,” the girl repeated.

“Oh, no,” Tracy murmured. “God, no! Wait-”

In one quick motion, the man had her by the throat.

All at once, she couldn’t breathe. Tracy tried to fight him off, pounding away at him and, at the same time, frantically groping at the door. But she couldn’t find the handle. And she couldn’t stop him. He was too strong.

With one hand taut around her neck, he practically lifted her off the seat. He was crushing her windpipe. Tracy thought he’d snap her head off. He held a blackjack in his other hand.

For a second, everything froze, and Tracy caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror.

Nibbling at a fingernail, the girl stared at her. There was something in her eyes, something Tracy hadn’t seen earlier. It was remorse.

Then everything went out of focus. Tracy desperately clawed at the hand around her throat. She felt something hard hit her on the side of her head.

She didn’t feel anything after that.

In the kitchen, it sounded as if the faint, distant moaning might be something in the water pipes, maybe a plumbing problem. The girl had to listen very carefully to hear it. The drip in the kitchen sink, where she’d just washed the dinner dishes, made a more pronounced sound.

She scooped up Neely, the tabby who had been rubbing against the side of her leg for the last few moments. Cradling the cat in her arms, she opened the basement door. She could hear it better: a murmuring that might have been mistaken for one of the other cats meowing. As she started down the cellar stairs, the creaking steps temporarily drowned out that other faint sound.

The 13-year-old stopped at the bottom of the stairs. She stroked Neely’s head. She could hear the woman’s voice from here, muffled and undecipherable, but sounding human now, a woman crying out.

The girl flicked on the light switch as she stepped into the laundry room. The basement was unfinished, with a concrete floor and muddy-looking walls. Above the washer and dryer, there was a small window and a shelf full of houseplants her mother had collected and nurtured in old coffee cans and cheesy planters. One was a pink ceramic pot with WORLD’S GREATEST MOM in faded swirling gold script on it. That held the philodendron with the vines that draped down across the top of the washing machine operation panel.

Exposed pipes and support beams ran across the ceiling throughout the basement. It was from the far right support beam here in the laundry room where her mother had hanged herself nine years before. The girl had found her there at the end of a rope, dressed in a black skirt and her favorite blouse-white with pictures of gold pocket watches and chains on it. One of her slippers had come off, probably when she’d kicked the stool out from under her. It would have been a horrific discovery for almost any child. But by that time, the four-year-old girl had become quite accustomed to death and suffering.

The girl still watered her mother’s plants when she did the laundry twice a week, like some people tended to flowers on a grave.

She continued on to the furnace room, where the muffled cries didn’t seem so far away anymore. She could make out parts of what Tracy was screaming: “Please, please…can somebody hear me? Help me! My parents have money! They’ll pay you…please! God, somebody…”

She knew the woman’s name, because she’d looked at her driver’s license: Tracy Eileen Atkinson. Born: 2-20-1975; Ht: 5-06; Wt: 119; Eyes: Brn.

She reached up and pulled the string attached to the furnace room light that dangled from the ceiling. She stared at the big, heavy metal door to the bomb shelter. He’d lodged a crowbar in the door handle, so no matter how hard Tracy pulled and tugged at the door, it wouldn’t budge.

“Can anyone hear me? Please! Help me!”

If Tracy was like the others before her, she’d grow tired and stop screaming for help in a day or two. And a day or two after that, he’d grow tired of Tracy and slit her throat.

But until then, Tracy would learn that if she cooperated with him, he would give her some food scraps, maybe even an orange or an apple. If she put up a fight, she wouldn’t get anything, except maybe cat food.

Neely meowed, and the girl continued to pet her head as she approached the bomb shelter door. “There now, Neely,” she said.

“Is someone out there? Hello?”

She leaned close to the thick metal door. “I can hear you,” she called softly. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, yes. Oh, thank God! You have to help me…”

“Listen,” she said. “I just want you to know. I didn’t touch your car. He’s the one who scratched it up.”

“What? I don’t care…you’ve got to let me out of here…. Are you still there?”

Tracy started screaming and pounding on the metal door. But the sound was so muffled outside the bomb shelter, it was quite easy to ignore.

Stroking Neely and pressing her cheek against the tabby’s fur, she turned away from the door. She pulled the string to the single overhead light, and the furnace room went dark once again. She switched off the light in the laundry room, then ascended the basement stairs.

She could hardly hear Tracy anymore-unless she tried. And even then, it was just a faint, distant moaning.

Seattle-six years later

“Your father always loved my fried chicken.”

Jessie seemed so flattered by the way Frank gorged on her chicken, Karen didn’t have the heart to tell her that he’d attacked his serving of shepherd’s pie with the same relish last week-and that was the most revolting dish the rest home cafeteria served. “Well, Dad obviously misses your cooking,” she said.

Frank sat in a hardback chair with Jessie’s home-cooked dinner on a hospital table in front of him. He was dressed in a plaid shirt, yellow pants, a white belt, and slippers. He had a towel in his lap in lieu of a napkin. He’d turned into a very messy eater in the last few years.

Sitting with Jessie on the foot of his hospital bed, Karen was dressed in a black skirt and a dark blue tailored shirt. Sometimes, watching her father gnaw away at a meal-especially finger foods-was pure torture for her. Corn on the cob and spareribs were the worst, but fried chicken ranked high up there, too. Forcing a smile, she could only glance at her father momentarily before turning away.

Karen looked out his window, and the smile vanished from her face.

There it was again-the old black Cadillac with the bent antenna. She’d seen the car several times the last few days. She’d started noticing it after that Saturday Amelia had come to her about the deaths of her parents and aunt. Twice the banged-up Cadillac was parked on her block; another time it cruised along the drive at Volunteer Park while she’d been running laps around the reservoir. She’d spotted the same vehicle in her rearview mirror on her way to pick up Jessie this afternoon. And now it was in the parking lot at the convalescent home.

Karen got to her feet and moved to the window. From this distance, she couldn’t tell if anyone was in the car.

“Frank, slow down,” Jessie was saying. “The chicken’s all yours. It’s not going anywhere. Take your sweet time.”

“Jessie, come here and look at this,” Karen said, gazing out the window. Jessie waddled up beside her. “See that Cadillac out there, the one with the broken antenna? Does it look familiar? I think someone in that car has been following me.”

Rubbing her chin, Jessie squinted out the window. “You know, I’m not sure. These old peepers aren’t what they used to be. I-”

Karen heard the chair legs scrape against the tiled floor. She swiveled around to see her father with his mouth open and eyes bulging. He pounded at his chest. “Oh, my God, he’s choking!” she cried.

“I got him!” Jessie pushed her aside and rushed behind the chair where Karen’s father sat, writhing. Within a moment, the big woman scooped him up out of the chair and locked her chubby arms around his stomach. Jessie jerked her forearms under his ribs-lifting him off his feet with every squeeze. Once, twice, three times, four times. Then a piece of food shot out of his mouth.

Karen’s father let out a cry, and then he gasped for air. He seemed to sag in Jessie’s arms. She lowered him back into the chair, and patted his shoulder. Karen hovered over him. “Just sit there and get your breath back, Poppy,” she said. He seemed okay, just a bit shaken.

But Jessie wasn’t so well off. Karen gazed at her. She staggered toward the bed and plopped down on the edge. Wincing, she put a hand over her heart. The color had drained from her face, and she started wheezing.

Karen hurried to her side. “Jessie, are you okay?

She didn’t respond. She just sat there, struggling for her breath.

Karen snatched up the phone and called for the doctor on staff. “There’s a woman here with breathing problems. Could you come to room 204, quickly please?”

As she hung up the phone, she heard Jessie say, “Aren’t you-aren’t you supposed to say ‘stat’?”

Karen sat down on the bed, and gently patted her back. “I’d feel like an idiot saying ‘stat;’ that’s for the nurses and doctors. How are you?”

Jessie nodded. “I just overdid it a bit. I’ll be peachy in another minute or two.” She glanced over at Karen’s father and started to chuckle. “Well, I’m glad he didn’t let my having a coronary slow him down.”

Frank was sitting up and gorging on his fried chicken once again.

Karen managed to laugh, but she noticed Jessie wincing again. She stayed at her side until the doctor arrived with a nurse. Dr. Chang felt Jessie’s throat, then put a stethoscope to her chest. He asked if she could walk with him to his office down the hall. Jessie nodded. But she seemed a bit unsteady on her feet as Dr. Chang and the nurse led her out of the room.

Karen hated to see her looking so feeble. Jessie was her rock. She couldn’t have managed without her these last four years.

Now that she’d moved her dad into Sandpoint View, Karen was getting pressured by her older brother and sister to sell the house. But she didn’t want to sell it yet. She kept Jessie on three days a week. They often took these trips to the convalescent home together.

Her father’s face and hands were a greasy mess. Karen got him cleaned up. Then she washed off the plate and utensils in his bathroom sink, along with Jessie’s Tupperware containers. All the while, she thought about Jessie, down the hall, being examined by Dr. Chang. The reality of it was, Jessie wasn’t much younger than Dr. Chang’s regular patients here.

One good thing, at least she hadn’t heard an ambulance yet. Whenever there was a severe medical emergency, they sent for an ambulance and rushed the patient to University Hospital. Many of the ones from this place died on the way.

Karen finished drying off Jessie’s Tupperware, and then checked on her father again. He’d moved into the cushioned easy chair, and was dozing peacefully. She decided to give Dr. Chang another five minutes with Jessie before going to his office and finding out how she was doing.

She glanced outside her father’s window, and once again focused on that beat-up, old black Cadillac. Was someone really following her? Maybe one of her patients? Most of her clients weren’t a threat to anyone, except maybe themselves. Every once in a while she got a truly disturbed new patient. But Karen sent those to a more qualified specialist.

Some of them didn’t like being sent away.

Karen looked at her dad again. He was snoring now. He wouldn’t be going anywhere for a while.

Grabbing her purse, she retreated down the hallway to the side door, and then out to the parking lot. The cold wind hit her, and Karen shivered as she headed toward the old, black Cadillac. She wanted to get the license plate number. She still had a few connections with the police department from when she’d worked at Group Health Hospital, counseling the occasional crime victim or criminal. She could pull a few strings and maybe get a trace on the plates through the Department of Motor Vehicles.

Approaching the car, she didn’t see anyone inside. She wasn’t close enough to read the license plate, but started to reach into her purse for a pen and paper. Then she heard a faint, distant wail, and Karen stopped in her tracks. The siren’s high-pitched cry grew louder and louder.

The ambulance sped up the street, its red flashers swirling on the roof. It turned into Sandpoint View’s parking lot. “Oh, my God, Jessie,” she murmured to herself.

Running back to the side door, she ducked inside and raced down the hallway toward B wing, where Dr. Chang had his office. But as she turned the corner, Karen came upon about a dozen elderly residents hovering outside the TV room. Roseann was trying to get them to disperse. “C’mon now, clear the door, folks,” she was saying. “The paramedics need to get to Peggy, and you’re blocking the way.”

Karen approached her. “What happened?”

“Peggy Henderson fell and hit her head,” Roseann whispered. “There’s blood everywhere. I think she might have had a minor stroke, too, poor thing. Dr. Pollard is in there with her now. Help me get these people out of here.”

Karen glanced in the TV room, and saw the frail old woman lying on the sofa, with the other doctor on staff and a nurse hovering over her. Two bloodstained hand towels were wadded up in a ball by their feet. Pollard was checking her vital signs. Karen didn’t have much time for more than a glance. Two paramedics were barreling down the hallway with a collapsible gurney.

Karen turned to Dwight, a tall, spry 85-year-old who was a bit of a know-it-all. Except for his slippers, he dressed as if ready for a round of golf, in a green cardigan sweater and plaid pants. Among those gawking at poor Peggy, he was the least likely to budge. “Dwight, we need you,” she said urgently. “Could you help me get these people to clear the way?”

The old man relished being an authority figure. “All right, let’s give them some room here!” He kept clapping his hands and poking at his fellow residents’ shoulders and backs until they shuffled aside. Of the dozen or so spectators, two had walkers and one was in a wheelchair. Karen helped corral them down the hallway while the paramedics rushed into the TV room.

In the middle of all the commotion, she saw a young brunette in a windbreaker emerging from a nurse’s station alcove down the corridor. Karen froze. “Amelia?” she called.

The young woman glanced at her for a second, then hurried farther down the hallway. Karen started after her. “Amelia? Wait a minute!” She wondered why she was running away. Up ahead, the young woman ducked into a stairwell. The door was on a hydraulic spring, and still hadn’t closed all the way by the time Karen swung it open again. She heard footsteps echoing in the dim gray stairwell. The walls were cinder block, and the unpainted concrete steps went down to a lower level and then to the basement. Karen paused at the top of the stairs and peered over the banister. She could see a shadow moving on the steps below. “Amelia? Is that you?” she called.

Karen rushed down the stairs, pausing only for a moment when she heard a door squeak open on the basement level. A mechanical, grinding noise suddenly resounded through the stairwell, probably from the boiler. She continued down the steps to the landing and pushed open the door. Karen found herself in a long, dim corridor. Two tall metal oxygen cylinders stood against the wall, along with a broken-down metal tray table on wheels. Someone had left an old rusty crowbar on top of it. Straight ahead, Karen saw the open door to the boiler room. She poked her head in. The room was huge, with a grated floor, a big old-fashioned boiler, a furnace, and a labyrinth of pipes and ducts. She didn’t see anyone. Most of the maintenance people went home at 2:00 P.M. on Saturdays.

“Amelia?” she called, over the din from the boiler.

Turning, she glanced back at the corridor. A set of double doors farther down the hall was gently swinging in and out. She would have noticed if they’d been moving before. Had someone just ducked into that room?

Karen hadn’t been down here since Roseann had given her an employee tour of the place months ago. If memory served her right, there was a storage room beyond those swinging doors. Approaching them, she cautiously glanced over her shoulder at the passageway to another part of the basement. She didn’t see anyone, just two large bins full of dirty laundry.

Karen pushed open the swinging doors, and stepped into the dark, cavernous room. The spotlights overhead seemed spaced too far apart, leaving several large, shadowy pockets amid the clutter. To Karen’s right was a graveyard of broken gurneys, metal tray tables and other hospital equipment. There were also about a dozen more tall oxygen cylinders.

“Is someone in here?” she called. “Amelia? Can you hear me? It’s Karen.”

She studied the rows of boxes to her left, some neatly stacked as high as five feet. But others had been torn open, revealing their contents: toilet paper rolls, lightbulbs, paper towels, soap bars, and cleaning supplies. One huge, open carton held bedpans that gleamed in the dim light. Still more boxes were opened and emptied, lying discarded on the floor.

As Karen ventured deeper into the room, she wondered what the hell Amelia would be doing down here. And if it had indeed been Amelia she’d seen upstairs, why had she run away?

Something crunched under her shoe. Karen stopped and gazed down at the thin shards of glass on the floor. Then she looked up toward the ceiling. The hanging spotlight above her was broken. She studied the line of spotlights; most of them had been shattered. No wonder there were so many dark areas in this cellar room. Someone had made it that way.

“Who’s down here?” she called.

Karen didn’t move for a moment. Her eyes scanned the rows upon rows of boxes, some sections engulfed in the shadows. About twenty feet away, she detected some movement amid the maze of cartons. Suddenly, a dark figure darted between the stacks.

Karen gasped. It looked like a man in black clothes, with a stocking cap on his head. She hadn’t seen his face; he’d moved too quickly.

Her heart was racing, and she started to back up toward the double doors. She thought she heard something-a faint murmuring.

“Do it now!” a woman whispered urgently. “Get her!”

Karen turned around and ran for the exit as fast as she could. Flinging open the double doors, she retreated down the basement hallway. As she reached the metal table by the stairwell, she paused and glanced over her shoulder. The storage room doors were still swinging in and out. But no one had come out after her.

She noticed once again the rusty crowbar on top of the table and snatched it up. She took a minute to catch her breath. With her gaze riveted on the swinging doors, Karen reached into her purse for her cell phone.

She had Roseann’s number on speed dial. Her friend answered after two rings: “Sandpoint View, this is Roseann.”

“Ro, it’s Karen,” she said, still trying to get her breath.

“Where did you disappear to? One minute, you’re with me working crowd control, and the next-”

“I’m in the basement,” Karen cut in. “I followed someone down here. I can’t explain right now. But could you send Lamar down?” Lamar was an orderly around thirty years old, one of the sweetest guys Karen knew. But he also had a linebacker’s build, a shaved head, and an ugly scar on his handsome face. With his formidable looks, Lamar would have made a good bodyguard. And that was what Karen needed right now, because she’d made up her mind to go back into that storage room.

“Tell Lamar I’m by the door to stairwell C, right across from the boiler room. And could you tell him to hurry, please?”

Karen clicked off the line, and stashed the phone back in her purse. She kept her eyes on the double doors, now motionless. She clutched the crowbar tightly in her fist, and waited.

“Are you going to call the police?” Lamar asked.

He’d given Karen his white orderly jacket to keep her warm, and she felt so small wrapped in it. They stood by a set of concrete steps leading down to a fire door to the convalescent home’s basement. The old door, with chicken wire crisscrossed in the fogged window, had had a fire alarm attached to the inside lever. But someone had managed to dislodge the mechanism. Karen and Lamar had found the door half open during their search of the storage room. Five overhead lights had been broken-and recently, too. Using Karen’s cell, Lamar had phoned Marco, the head of maintenance. Marco had been in the storage area shortly before going home at 2:00 P.M. According to him, all the lights down there had been working fine three hours ago.

The outside stairwell to the basement was nearly hidden behind a row of bushes on the side of the long, two-story, beige brick building. But from where Karen stood, she had a clear view of the parking lot. The black Cadillac wasn’t there anymore.

Lamar nudged her. “So, are you going to call the police, Karen?” He spoke with a very crisp Jamaican accent.

Frowning, she shook her head. Even with her old connections on the force, she’d sound pretty stupid trying to explain what had happened. She’d followed someone down to the basement, to the storage room. She’d seen a man, but couldn’t really describe him. She’d heard a woman whispering to him. It had sounded like they’d planned to attack her or kill her-she couldn’t be sure. And oh, yes, one more thing: the young woman she’d followed down to the basement was a client, and a friend of hers.

“So, do you think you might have a stalker?” Lamar asked.

“I–I’m not sure,” she said, shrugging. She was thinking about last Saturday, when she’d spotted someone who looked like Amelia in the corridor outside her dad’s room.

“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.