The Girl Who Survived(11)

As she headed upstairs to her bedroom, she glanced at her watch. Barely after six. “Good enough,” she said, and changed from jeans and a sweater into her favorite baggy PJs.

She caught sight of herself in the mirror, looking pale and wan, the flannel pajamas at least a size too large, her teeth discolored from the red wine.

“Pathetic,” she told her reflection. Where most twenty-seven-year-olds would just be gearing up for the night, she was shutting herself in. She’d tried the party scene, frequented clubs, met others her age, but since college, she hadn’t had a lot of interest in going out. Probably one of the reasons she and Brad hadn’t made it work. One of many.

She returned to the main level, topped off her glass and, in the living room, glanced at the bookcase flanking the fireplace and saw the one photograph she had of the two of them. Standing together, hoisting up champagne glasses in front of palm trees, while the Florida sun set behind them. A large crack had split the glass, evidence of their last fight, but Kara thought it appropriate to display the picture, fissure and all, even if it did remind her of the splitting ice on Cold Lake all those years ago.

Don’t go there. She closed her mind to that train of thought.

And to Brad.

He was, as they say, history. She switched on the gas fire, sat on the couch and patted the cushion next to her so Rhapsody would join. The dog hopped up. Remotely she turned on the TV, a flat-screen mounted near the fireplace. From habit she channel-surfed, past the shopping network, cooking channels, home improvement and the likes of Gator Busters and Real Gold Diggers until she found the news where the Cold Lake Massacre was front and center, relevant once more due to Jonas McIntyre’s reversed conviction and imminent release. “Awesome,” she muttered, and listened as a reporter recounted well-known facts while pictures of her family and the mountain home they’d shared filled the flat-screen. “Just . . . awesome.”

The reporter recounted the story of that bloody night.

The facts, summed up, were: Four people murdered: Samuel McIntyre and his wife, Zelda McIntyre, and two of their children, Samuel McIntyre Junior and Donner Robinson. Also dead at the scene: Detective Edmund Tate, a cop who had been vacationing for the holidays at a nearby home and who was credited for saving the life of Kara McIntyre, youngest daughter of Samuel and Zelda.

And still missing? Marlie Robinson, daughter of Zelda McIntyre and Zelda’s first husband, Walter Robinson. Marlie hadn’t been seen since late that night.

The elder Samuel McIntyre’s second son, Jonas, who had miraculously survived the attack himself but had been severely injured, had been tried and convicted for the heinous crimes.

Now, due to new information, Jonas McIntyre’s conviction had been overturned. He was being released after spending nearly two decades, over half his life, behind bars. Jonas, the reporter noted, had always sworn his innocence.

The police were reopening the very cold case.

Any information from the public would be appreciated.

“This just in,” the anchor said, glancing down at his desk, then looking up sharply. “We have breaking news. We’ve just got a report that Jonas McIntyre was released this afternoon. Our reporter at the prison is standing by . . . Marilyn?”

“What?” Kara whispered, staring at the screen, and sure enough a female reporter bundled in a red ski jacket with the station’s logo slashed across one shoulder was squinting against the falling snow. Behind her loomed the stark walls of Banhoff Prison.

Kara stared at the screen, at the huge, concrete structure that housed some of the worst criminals in Oregon’s history. She’d been in that building, visited Jonas there, noting the guard towers and razor wire atop the cement walls. She swallowed hard, her heart pounding in her ears. Jonas was out? Already? And no one had told her?

A red chyron with the words: JONAS MCINTYRE, CONVICTED IN THE COLD LAKE MASSACRE, HAS JUST BEEN RELEASED FROM PRISON.





CHAPTER 4


Oh. God.

Kara’s knees went weak.

The reporter was speaking and Kara tried to concentrate. “That’s right, Elliot, we just learned that Jonas McIntyre walked out of this prison earlier this afternoon. He’d been originally scheduled to be released later this week, and we don’t yet know why the date was changed but—”

The rest of the report was a blur.

Kara stared at the screen, not seeing the news desk or reporter or even the prison, not hearing the report. Instead, she was caught in the web of images of that frigid, horrid night. Her mind spun to what she did remember: the red and blue lights of the police vehicles strobing to reflect on the snow. Jonas, bloody and unconscious on a stretcher, being carried to an ambulance. Her own chattering teeth, wet hair and near-frozen skin as she was wrapped in a towel by a woman police officer. Cops—dozens of them surrounding the house. Yellow tape, one end flapping beneath the low-hanging branches of a snow-laden fir.

She’d been in shock but unhurt, a doctor in the ER had said to a kind, heavy-set woman from Child Services who wore a hand-knit stocking cap and smelled of lavender. Aunt Faiza had rushed into the police station, her face red. She tried not to cry but had failed miserably. Shaking and sobbing, she’d held a numb and silent Kara tight.

Now Kara blinked, realizing tears had drizzled down her cheeks. Angrily, she swiped them away.

Jonas was free?

How had she not known?