Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

With a heavy sigh, Karen started to scan over the newspaper records again. This time, she wouldn’t skip over any days. Her eyes were getting blurry from too much reading, too much driving, and too little sleep. But she kept searching for the story she’d missed.

Hunched in front of the warm, wheezing microfiche-viewing machine, she read every headline on the first few pages of every edition of the Columbia Basin Herald until she found a front-page headline on Monday, November 16:

CHILD ABDUCTION SPARKS

SHOOTING DEATH

Dead Man Linked to

Disappearance of Moses Lake

Woman, Possibly Others

MOSES LAKE: The apparent abduction of a 4-year-old girl on Sunday led to a police standoff and the shooting death of a man, now linked to the disappearance of a Moses Lake woman in October.

Six hours after Lon Schlessinger, 34, reported his young daughter as missing, he led police to the house of a Gardenia Drive neighbor, Clay Spalding, 26. Police arrived at the scene at 5:45 P.M. to see the child escaping from a bedroom window in Spalding’s ranch house. The girl was dressed in only her underwear. When Spalding began to chase after the terrified child, Schlessinger shot him with a Winchester hunting rifle. Spalding, an unemployed artist, was pronounced dead on arrival at Samaritan Hospital at 6:20.

Police found the child’s clothes inside Spalding’s home. They also made another startling discovery in the unkempt residence: a wallet full of identification and a locket, both belonging to Kristen Marquart, 22, a waitress and Moses Lake resident who has been missing since October 14.

Marquart was last seen leaving her place of employment, The Friendly Fajita, on Broadway in Moses Lake. Authorities are now reexamining the disappearance of three other young women in the Columbia Basin area for a possible connection to Spalding.

According to Miriam Getz, 70, who lived next door to Spalding for two years, her neighbor was “quiet and considerate, but very strange, something of a loner.” She added: “He made people uncomfortable, and I think he enjoyed doing that.”

Getz reported that the Schlessingers had asked if she’d seen their missing daughter at 11 A.M. on Sunday. She later spotted the child in Spalding’s backyard, and immediately telephoned the Schlessinger house. In a 911 call to Moses Lake Police, Lon Schlessenger said he intended to confront his Gardenia Drive neighbor.

Lon Schlessinger shot Clay Spalding in front of four Moses Lake policemen, and apparently, seconds later, the panic-stricken little girl ran into her father’s arms. If Lon was in any kind of trouble for taking the law into his own hands, there was no indication of it in the article. They tactfully avoided calling Amelia by name, but did mention: “Lon Schlessinger is a ranch foreman at G. L. Durlock, Inc. in Grant Country. The Schlessingers have been Moses Lake residents for five years. They have two children.”

There was a photograph of Clay Spalding on page two. Karen remembered Amelia’s description of her neighbor, the nice Native American man with beautiful, long black hair. He’d converted a backyard toolshed into a playhouse for her. She’d eaten cookies in there at a little red plastic table.

The driver’s license photo of Clay Spalding showed a swarthy, handsome man with straight, near-shoulder-length black hair and a slightly defiant look in his dark eyes. According to the article, two years before, Spalding had inherited the ranch house on Gardenia Drive, along with a large sum of money, from the home’s previous owner. Prior to moving to the Schlessingers’ neighborhood, Spalding had lived on the Potholes reservation.

Two paragraphs later, the article pointed out that of the four recently reported missing women from the area, Eileen Sessions was the only one confirmed dead. Her remains had been discovered in a forest at Potholes State Park, not far from the reservation.

Still, perhaps not to show too much bias against the alleged child snatcher, the article quoted Naomi Rankin, a friend of Clay Spalding’s, as well as a longtime Moses Lake resident: “I’ve been very close to Clay for several years. He was a brilliant artist and a lovely person. I don’t think he was capable of hurting another human being, especially a child.”

Karen wondered how Amelia could have only a vague, pleasant memory of this neighbor man, and not recall any of those nightmarish events from that October afternoon. “I liked him,” Amelia had said, “but I don’t think I was supposed to be around him.”

“I don’t get why we’re supposed to stay in a hotel tonight,” Jody said.

He sat in the front passenger seat with one foot up on the dashboard. Stephanie was in back, sorting through an old Bon Marche bag of kids’ books, puzzles, and toys that had been on the Ping-Pong table in Karen’s basement. The junk had originally belonged to Karen when she was a child. Jessie used to break out the bag of toys whenever Frank Junior or Sheila came to town and brought their kids to visit old Frank-anything to keep the children entertained for a while. She figured Stephanie would need something to while away the next few hours at the hotel.

There was a sci-fi convention in town, as well as an endodontists’ convention, just her luck. All the hotels were full. But the clerk at the Edgewater Hotel had taken pity on her and found her a room at the Doubletree over by Southcenter Mall. Her timing was doubly awful, because of rush hour. They sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on southbound I-5.

“I’d rather be in hell with my back broken,” Jessie muttered, one hand on the steering wheel of George’s car. She glanced in the rearview mirror again: no sign of Karen’s Jetta or a black Cadillac. That was one consolation. If Karen was worried about them, they weren’t in any danger right now. Nothing was going to happen to them in the middle of this traffic jam. Nobody was moving.

“Jessie, why do we gotta stay at a hotel?” Jody asked again.

“Oh, um, your dad thought it would be a good idea,” she lied. “They-they’re doing some work on the power on your block for the next few hours. We won’t have any electricity, and rather than rough it, we’re gonna live high on the hog at a nice hotel for the next few hours.”

“They’re waiting until night to screw around with the electricity?” Jody said. “That’s kind of dumb. You’d think they’d do it during the day-when we don’t need the electricity so much.”

“So write to your city councilman,” Jessie said. “There’s stationery at the hotel, and there’s also pay-per-view TV with new movies, and room service. You’ll love it, Jody, I promise. With the room-service dinner, they give you these little bottles of ketchup and mustard. It’s really neat. The best part of all is you don’t have to do your homework while you’re there.”

She figured he wouldn’t argue or ask questions about that.

“I hate mustard!” Stephanie announced from the backseat.

“Well, you can just keep it for a souvenir, sweetie,” Jessie replied. “They also have little bars of soap and little bottles of shampoo. And here’s hoping they have an honor bar for dear old Jessie.”

Once the kids were settled, she would treat herself to a glass of wine, or rather, Karen would treat her. That bizarre episode with Amelia had really shaken her up. She’d never seen Amelia act that way before, so creepy and smug, like a totally different person. And it was pretty darn unnerving to hear she was supposed to have been on the lookout for a black Cadillac today. That big, old beat-up car had been parked down the block from George’s house since before Jody even got back from school. She wondered if anyone was sitting inside it, and if they were still there, waiting for her and the kids to come back.