Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Shane sighed. “Okay, okay, I’ll shut up. I’m sorry. Let’s just go back to my place and talk, okay? Nobody’s there right now.”

“Well, nobody’s out here right now, either,” she said, pouting. “That’s why I wanted to come here-so we could be alone. But you’re acting like you don’t want to be alone with me.”

“That’s not true, sweetheart.” He stopped rowing, and they drifted for a few moments.

“You’re treating me like I’m a stranger,” she said, wiping a tear from her cheek. “I’ve felt it ever since we met on the island. You’ve been pulling away from me. We’re out here alone in this beautiful, romantic spot, and all you want to do is go home.”

“I’m sorry, Amelia.” He shrugged and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to pull away. I just can’t figure out what you’re up to today. I-”

“What I’m up to today?” she repeated, giving him a wounded look. “What does that mean? You sound like you don’t trust me.”

“Of course, I trust you.”

“Prove it,” she said, reaching into the knapsack again.

“What?”

“I said, prove it. Prove to me that I have your trust.” She pulled a revolver out of the knapsack.

Shane recoiled, and the boat rocked a bit. “What the hell? Amelia…”

Tears in her eyes, she pointed the gun at him.

“Sweetheart, what are you doing?” he whispered. If he’d had a little buzz from the Wild Turkey, he was very sober now. He stayed perfectly still.

“I want to see if you really trust me, if you love me,” she said.

Gaping at the gun, he shook his head. “I–I didn’t know you had that. Where did you even get that?”

He shrunk back as she got to her feet. The boat swayed back and forth, but she kept the gun trained on him. “Oh, Jesus, be careful,” he murmured, wincing.

She sat down close to him. Their legs pressed against each other, knees bumping. Shane tried not to make any sudden moves.

She stared into his eyes. “A minute ago, you said you didn’t mean to pull away from me. If I put this gun in your mouth, would you pull away?”

“Sweetheart, please stop….”

“Then you don’t trust me,” she cried. “You don’t love me. I might as well use this gun on myself. Don’t you see? You’re all I have left, Shane.”

“Don’t, please, Amelia. Just-just-just put that thing down.”

She held the revolver a few inches from his face. He was so terrified, he could hardly breathe.

“Prove to me that you love me,” she whispered. “Let me put this in your mouth. Can’t you trust me that much? Just for a couple of seconds? If you won’t let me, I swear to God, I’ll shoot myself right here. I mean it.”

He shook his head.

“Fine,” she muttered, then she suddenly turned the gun on herself.

“No!” he screamed. The sound seemed to echo over the lake.

She froze. Her eyes wrestled with his.

“You can put it in my mouth,” he said. “If it’s that important to you, go ahead.”

Shane told himself that she’d had the chance to shoot him ever since they’d gotten out on the lake, if that was what she wanted to do. In some totally screwed-up way, maybe she was right; he’d have to trust her, and this was one way of showing it.

But as she turned the gun toward him, he felt his stomach lurch. Shane thought he might be sick. His hands shook on the oars. “Why?” he whispered. “Amelia, why are you doing this?”

Her forehead was wrinkled in concentration, but there was a strange coolness about her, too, a determined gaze past the tears in her eyes.

She brushed the end of the gun against his lips.

Shane opened his mouth wider, and tasted the dirty metal on his tongue.

“I’m doing this to make certain you love Amelia,” she said.

He sat there, trying not to shake, and counting the seconds while she kept the gun in his mouth. It struck him as bizarre, the way she’d said Amelia instead of me , as if Amelia were someone else entirely: “I’m doing this to make certain you love Amelia.”

The notion that she might not be Amelia didn’t occur to him at all. Shane didn’t have a chance. Before the thought even entered his head a bullet already had.

She dipped her hand in the cold lake water to rinse it off. Blood had sprayed on her face and hair, too. She licked her lips and tasted it: salty and warm. Then she bent over the side of the canoe and washed off her face.

Shane had flopped back so violently that the boat had almost tipped over. Water had sluiced in, and one of the oars had gotten knocked into the lake. Now he lay there on the floor of the canoe in an awkward contortion. The small puddle of water lapping around him was almost completely red now.

She checked his wallet. There were only seventeen dollars in there. She kept ten. She’d noticed the ring on his right hand earlier. It was gold with a beautiful black onyx stone. She twisted it off his finger and dropped it into her purse. Wiping off the gun, she carefully placed it beside his lifeless hand. Then with the one oar they had left, she paddled toward the little island. The small patch of land was still unoccupied. She let the canoe hit the muddy bank. Climbing out of the canoe, she stepped knee-deep into the icy lake. She hoisted the knapsack over her shoulder. She had a change of clothes in there, among other things.

Giving the boat a shove, she watched it drift away from the shore.

Then she turned and headed for dry land.

“Sorry I didn’t call back sooner,” Karen said into her cell. She walked along Boylston Avenue at a brisk clip. She wore a trench coat over her black jeans and her dark green V-neck sweater.

She’d cancelled all her afternoon appointments before running out of the house. It was eleven blocks to her destination, and Karen was in a hurry. She might have taken a cab, but this wasn’t a phone conversation she wanted to conduct in the back of a taxi. She’d turned down Boylston to avoid the crowds and the traffic noise along the main drag, Broadway. This street was more residential, with an eclectic mix of brand-new and very old apartment buildings. Trees lined the parkways, and their fallen leaves covered the sidewalk. Karen hadn’t encountered too many other pedestrians taking this route.

“I wasn’t ignoring you, Detective,” she explained on the phone. “The last couple of hours, I’ve been busy making calls, hoping to find out where Amelia might have gone. You see, I probably should have told you this morning, but, well, Amelia stayed over at my place last night.”

“Is that so?” Jacqueline Peyton said on the other end of the line. “You knew we wanted to get in touch with Amelia. And yet you deliberately kept her from talking to us. Why?”

Karen hesitated. She didn’t want to say anything to incriminate Amelia or herself. Hell, she didn’t even want to be talking to the police right now. But if there was another Amelia out there endangering people’s lives, then the police had to be told. At the same time, the Amelia she knew was probably scared, confused, and hiding somewhere, like at the lake house in Wenatchee. And Karen didn’t want to see her hurt.

Yet, she’d slipped her dad’s revolver into her purse before leaving the house a few minutes ago. Exactly who she intended to use it on she didn’t know.

“I’m sorry,” she said at last. “But I’m Amelia’s therapist, and my first duty is to my client. She’s a very sweet, very confused young woman-”

“Did she meet with Koehler on Sunday?” Jacqueline Peyton pressed.

“I can’t say,” Karen replied, picking up her pace. “I can’t tell you anything we discussed in confidence-”

“You know, Karen, that won’t hold up in court.”