Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

His head down, the dog slinked toward the kitchen.

“Don’t even think you’re getting a cookie,” Karen growled, retreating into her office. She checked her address book. Her contact with the Seattle Police from her days at Group Health was Cal Hinshaw, a smart, dependable, good old boy. She found his number, then grabbed the phone, and dialed. She kept glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was sneaking up behind her. She could hear Rufus’s paws clicking on the kitchen floor, but nothing else.

“Lieutenant Hinshaw,” he answered after three rings.

“Cal? It’s Karen Carlisle calling, you know, from Group-”

“Karen? How the hell are you? It’s been an age. Listen, I’m running late for something and just about to head out. Can I call you back?”

“Actually, I just wanted to hit you up for some quick information.”

“Lay it on me. What can I do you for?”

“I’m wondering if you know anything about a Detective Russell Koehler. He just came by asking a lot of questions about one of my clients, and I’m stalling him. Is he on the level?”

“Koehler? Yeah, I know the guy. He thinks his shit is cake. He’s been on paternity leave the last two weeks. He found something in the employee regs that allowed him to take a month off with pay while his wife pops out a kid, not that I’d think for one minute he’d be any help to her. He’s kind of a sleaze. But I hear he knows somebody in the mayor’s office, and gets away with a lot of crap at work. You say he’s flashing his police credentials and asking questions?”

“Yes, about those shootings in Wenatchee last week, the Faraday murder-suicide case. My client is their daughter. I’m wondering why this cop-on leave-is investigating a practically closed case out of his jurisdiction.”

“You got me, Karen. He’s always working some angle.”

She shot a cautious glance toward the front hallway. “Maybe this man isn’t really Koehler. Is he in his midthirties with pale blond hair and blue eyes? Good looking?”

“Not half as good looking as he thinks he is. That’s Koehler, all right. Watch your back with him, Karen.” Cal let out a sigh. “Listen, I need to scram. Let’s get together for coffee sometime and catch up. And keep me posted if you find out why Koehler’s sniffing around this Wenatchee case. You’ve got me curious now.”

“Will do. Thanks, Cal,” Karen replied, and then she hung up the phone.

Grabbing her umbrella, she set the alarm again, and ran out of the house.

“Do you know how much Ina and Jenna were worth?” Russell Koehler asked in a hushed voice. “The Basner sisters had a little over three mil between them.”

Karen leaned over the small table, so she could hear him better in the crowded coffeehouse. They sat by the window. An eclectic art collection hung on the walls with price tags next to each work. About two thirds of the customers sat with their laptops in front of them. Chet Baker’s horn and velvet vocals purred over the sound system.

“Guess who now stands to inherit those millions?” Koehler continued. “Nineteen-year-old Amelia Faraday and her favorite uncle, George McMillan.”

Karen leaned back and shrugged. “So?”

“According to the Faradays’ neighbors up in Bellingham, Amelia was a real hell-raiser. And from Uncle George’s own testimony, we know his wife was banging his brother-in-law. A close friend of Ina McMillan’s confirmed it. So you’ve got a rebel daughter pissed off at her parents, and this cuckolded history professor, both due to inherit a shitload of money. You do the math. One, or both, of them could have done the job on Ina, Mark, and Jenna last Friday night-or they hired someone to do it.”

Karen frowned over her latte. “Well, you’re wrong. Without breaching any therapist-client confidentiality, I can tell you this. Amelia never once complained to me about her parents. If anything, it was the other way around. Amelia said she’d caused her folks some heartache over the years, and wanted to make it up to them.”

“She told you that. She probably figured you’d be repeating it to some cop, like you are right now. How do you know Amelia wasn’t just setting you up?”

“Amelia genuinely loved her parents, Lieutenant. Also, I was with George McMillan hours after he learned of his wife’s death, and he was devastated. It wasn’t an act. If you’re trying to pin the Wenatchee shootings on either one of them simply because they’re in line for some money, then you don’t have a leg to stand on. Besides, three million split between two people isn’t a huge fortune nowadays.”

“Maybe not to you,” Koehler replied, drumming his fingers on the tabletop. “Not everybody lives in a castle , like you do. The police based their conclusion that Mark Faraday was unstable mostly on the testimony of Amelia and her Uncle George, the beneficiaries of this little windfall. I mean, isn’t that pretty damn convenient? Maybe three mil isn’t such a gold mine nowadays, but it’s still a damn fine nest egg. Two people could live very comfortably on that. Not everyone is as lucky as you, inheriting a mansion. Some people have to make their own luck.”

Amelia glared at him. “I don’t think it’s lucky that my father lost his mind. And I’m sure Amelia Faraday and George McMillan don’t feel lucky about what happened to their loved ones.”

“All right, all right, take it easy,” he said, rolling his eyes. “You’d be thinking along the same lines as me if you’d seen the house by Lake Wenatchee. I walked through it the day after. I didn’t go in there suspecting your client and her uncle. But that’s how I felt when I walked out of the place. For starters, there are footprints all around the outside of the house. But there were other partial footprints in the mud they weren’t so sure about. The cops figured that most of the prints belonged to Mark, after examining his slippers. And I’m wondering, what the hell was Mark doing out there in his slippers? He must have gone to check on something, maybe a noise, or maybe one of the women saw someone lurking outside the house.”

Karen shrugged. “He could have been chasing away a raccoon for all we know.” She shook her head. “You’re jumping to conclusions-”

“I saw the bloodstains, Karen. I saw them in the upstairs hallway where Jenna got shot in the face. There was a big stain on the living room floor, where Ina got it…”

Karen remembered Amelia’s description of the scene. It was so dead on.

“But the bloodstain on the living room wall, behind the rocking chair where they found Mark Faraday with his hunting rifle still in his hands, that’s what really stopped me. The bullet entered above his left eye and shot out the back of his head about two inches above the hairline on the back of his neck. The stain on the wall was almost parallel to the top of the rocking chair. He couldn’t have held a hunting rifle to his face that way, not parallel. He’d need arms like an orangutan to manage that. If Mark Faraday really killed himself with that rifle, the barrel would have been at a diagonal slant, blowing off the top-back of his head. The only way the exit wound and the bloodstain on the wall could be like that was if someone else held the rifle parallel to his face.”

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.