One Last Scream

“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.”

Karen automatically shook her head. “But he was in a rocking chair. It might have tipped back-”

“Yeah, yeah, one of the Wenatchee cops gave me the same song and dance about the rocking chair. That might account for Faraday’s blood and brains being where they were on the wall. But there’s still the exit wound. You can’t explain that away. And I’ll tell you something else there’s no explanation for: the whereabouts of both Amelia and her Uncle George on the night of the shootings. Their alibis aren’t worth shit. Uncle George says he was home with the kiddies at the time of the murders. But he could have easily driven to Lake Wenatchee, pulled off the killings, and driven back while the kids were in bed. It’s about 150 miles from Seattle to Lake Wenatchee and, driving at night, he could have cinched the round-trip in less than five hours. The guy had the motive and the opportunity.

“As for your client, she ditched her boyfriend at a party around eleven, and then went for a ‘drive.’ No one saw her or talked to her for the next twelve hours. The coroner estimates her parents expired sometime between two and three in the morning. The aunt died a little later, closer to dawn. They think she must have lingered for a while, after being shot. Either way, that’s three or four hours after Amelia left the party, plenty of time for her to get to Lake Wenatchee. She told the police she’d driven as far as Snoqualmie Falls, then fell asleep in a parking lot. Hell, you’d think she’d try to be a little more creative with her alibi.”

“She couldn’t have driven to Lake Wenatchee,” Karen argued. “There wasn’t enough gas in her boyfriend’s car to get her there and back. And Amelia didn’t have the money or credit cards to buy gas.”

“So, she could have siphoned some gas. Or maybe she just drove to some designated spot and met her uncle. Then he could have driven the rest of the way so they could pull off the job together.”

“That’s crazy,” Karen whispered. “I saw Amelia on Saturday afternoon, and I got a good look at the clothes she had on, the same clothes she’d worn to the party the night before. Everyone was shot at close range. There would have been bloodstains.”

“Yeah, so? She could have easily changed into something else before she started shooting, and then discarded the bloody clothes later. Or maybe she let Uncle George do the shooting.”

Karen just shook her head at him.

“Obviously, you’ve considered the possibility that Amelia killed them,” he pointed out. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be so fast with your counterarguments about her clothes and the gas in her boyfriend’s car. You must have discussed this with her. What did she say to convince you she was innocent? I’d like to hear it, Karen. You convince me.”

“I didn’t need convincing,” Karen replied. “I know Amelia. I know she couldn’t kill anyone.”

He cracked a tiny smile. “I’m pretty good at reading people, Karen. And I could tell just now you really weren’t sure you believed what you were saying. I’m certainly not buying it.”

It was all she could do to keep from squirming in her chair. “You grossly overestimate your powers of perception, Lieutenant,” Karen managed to say. “And it’s got you jumping to a lot of wrong conclusions. You’ve already made up your mind about Amelia and her uncle, haven’t you? Anything I tell you that doesn’t fit into your preconceived scenario, you simply disregard. Why bother even talking to me? Have you talked to Amelia yet, or her uncle?”

Koehler nodded. “The uncle, yes. But he clammed up pretty tight after a few questions. As for your client, she keeps giving me the slip.”

“Then your investigation isn’t official police business, is it?” Karen said.

Grinning, he shrugged, “Well, I…”

“Before coming here, I called a friend of mine on the police force,” she went on. “He said you’re on paternity leave right now. What’s your angle, lieutenant? Why is this so important to you that you’d take time away from your wife and newborn baby to investigate a case that isn’t even in your jurisdiction?”

“Because I care about the truth,” he said, with a straight face.

“I’m pretty good at reading people, too, Lieutenant. And you’re full of shit.” Karen got to her feet. “I’ve talked to you all I want to right now. If you come around my place again asking me a lot of questions, you better bring your checkbook, because I’m charging you for my time.”