Kevin O'Brien - One Last Scream

Naomi Rankin wasn’t picking up either. This was Karen’s third message in ninety minutes for Clay Spalding’s friend. She now understood how telemarketers felt pestering a total stranger. In the last two messages Karen had tried to sound friendly and professional. She hadn’t mentioned Clay or the Schlessingers. She’d just left her name and phone number, and said it was extremely urgent that Naomi call her back.

Though she didn’t want to say too much on the answering machine, Karen decided to start explaining herself for message number three. “I’m sorry to keep calling,” she said. “But I’m a friend of Amelia Schlessinger’s. I’m hoping that name is familiar to you. I understand, years ago, you and Amelia had a mutual friend. If I could talk with you for just a few minutes, I-”

There was an abrupt click on the line. “Listen, if you call here one more time, I’ll get the cops on your ass.”

“Naomi?” Karen asked meekly.

“I don’t have to talk to you,” the woman growled. “Shit, I thought I’d heard the last from you assholes fifteen years ago. Get a life, okay?”

“Please, don’t hang up,” Karen said. “I’m not calling to harass you-”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you aren’t,” she muttered. “I’ve heard it all. There’s nothing new you can tell me. So piss off.”

“Naomi, wait! You want to hear something new ?” Karen had a hunch this would get her to listen. “Right now, the police are digging up corpses at the old Schlessinger ranch outside Salem. Young women started disappearing in the Salem area back in 1993, when Lon Schlessinger moved there from Moses Lake. Isn’t that about the same time women stopped disappearing around Moses Lake?”

There was a silence on the other end of the line.

“Naomi?”

“Who are you?” she murmured.

“I’m a friend of Amelia’s, and she doesn’t recall much about her childhood in Moses Lake. But she does remember a Native American man-a neighbor who was very kind to her. You and Amelia seem to be the only ones from around there who don’t think Clay was a monster.”

“So, I’m not totally alone. Amelia, of all people….”

“I read about what happened. Naomi. And from the way you reacted to my call, I get the impression people must have harassed you for defending Clay in the newspapers.”

“And on local TV, too,” Naomi said. “For a while there, I averaged about eight threatening calls a night. I also got my share of hateful stares at work and around town. If you really want people to hate you, just speak up for someone who’s been labeled a serial killer and a child molester. For years, I still received those creepy calls, even after I changed my number. I didn’t let them list me in the phone book until about three years ago.” She sighed. “I’m sorry about earlier. I wasn’t sure who you were when you left those first two messages. I thought it was some sort of scam or a telemarketer. But then you mentioned the name Schlessinger, and I just got sick to my stomach. It was a real blast from the past.” She paused. “So, they found bodies on the Schlessingers’ property.”

“That’s right,” Karen said. “Lon’s been dead for three years. His ranch house burned down with him in it.”

“You know, I always knew Clay was framed for that woman’s disappearance,” Naomi said. “Now it all starts to make sense. Lon killed those women. You’ve read the newspaper account of it, so you know the story. He was in Clay’s house earlier that day, hours before he shot Clay. He could have planted that waitress’s wallet and necklace while he was there looking for his runaway kid. God, all this time I thought the cops had planted that stuff. I knew for a fact Clay couldn’t have abducted that waitress. He and I were together the night Kristen Marquart went missing.”

“Did you tell that to the police?”

“Of course. I practically screamed it from the rooftops. But no one believed me. I was in love with Clay for several months. So no one really took me seriously and, after a while, I just made them angry. A lot of people in that neighborhood already had a negative opinion of Clay, anyway. He didn’t quite fit in on Gardenia Drive.”

“Because he wasn’t white?” Karen asked.

“Oh, I guess that might have had a little something to do with it,” she admitted. “But Clay carried around a chip on his shoulder after inheriting that house. He felt everyone still regarded him as Izzy’s yardman. I think he did things to piss people off. He stopped mowing the lawn, and let the place go just to prove he wasn’t a yardman any more.”

“I heard from his neighbor that he used to display some of his art on the front lawn, too,” Karen said.

“Who did you talk to?” Naomi asked. “The old lady?”

“Miriam Getz.”

“Yeah, she had it out for him. She and two of Lon’s cop friends were the main witnesses who said Clay was trying to molest Amelia that day.”

“Well, I don’t think she was lying to me, Naomi,” Karen said delicately. “Outside of the art displays and letting his lawn ‘going to pot,’ as she put it, Miriam didn’t seem to have any problem with Clay as a neighbor. But her mind changed when she saw what happened that day.”

“She might not have been lying about what she saw,” Naomi pointed out. “But she sure jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“Well, she saw a little girl in her underwear, crawling out of Clay’s window, screaming for help,” Karen said. “I’ve tried to figure out how not to jump to the same conclusion Miriam did. I’m thinking along the same lines as you, Naomi. Lon Schlessinger was pure evil. He must have set Clay up. I think you’re right about him planting the wallet and the locket. But this incident with Amelia…”

“Lon used to beat her and her twin,” Naomi said. “Did you know that?”

“No, but I’m not very surprised.”

“He hated Clay from the word go. I don’t know if it was because Clay was Native American, or because of his long hair, or the artwork on the front lawn. But Lon despised Clay. Maybe that’s why the little girls turned to Clay when their dad started abusing them. They knew they had an ally with Clay. God knows, they couldn’t go to their mother. She was totally clueless. Amelia ran away to Clay’s house several times, more than her twin. I remember Clay saying Lon had Annabelle on a tighter leash, and she was afraid of him. She was a lot more obedient and likely to give in to her father’s demands. Clay used to teach art to the kids on the reservation, and he knew about children. He said Amelia was a little rebel. That’s why she and Clay got along so well. They both had that defiant streak.”

“And as the more rebellious of the twins, Amelia probably got more severe and frequent beatings,” Karen said.

“Right,” Naomi said. “I saw some of the bruises on that little girl. It was revolting.”

“Why didn’t you report it to the police?”

“Clay tried. One time, when Amelia was over there, he touched her back and noticed her cringing. He asked her if anything was wrong, and she said, ‘I think I was a bad girl again.’ Then she showed him her back, and it was all black and blue and purple. Clay could hardly keep from going over to the Schlessingers’ and kicking the shit out of that son of a bitch. I talked to him on the phone, and got him to calm down. I told him to take a few Polaroids of the bruises and then we could go to the police. Well, he did that, only he reported it to some cop who was a fishing buddy of Lon’s. Clay didn’t know. This cop didn’t do a damn thing except ask Clay how he’d gotten the little girl to take off her blouse. They twisted it around. After Clay was shot, these stories circulated that he had photos of the little Schlessinger girl naked. But those were pictures of her bruised back, which he’d tried to give to the cops.”