Snow Creek(50)

“I think so. I think it is Ellie, Detective. My sister and my brother-in-law’s bodies were recovered a few days after the accident. The lake is deep. We were lucky we found them. I don’t think she’s down there. I think she’s here.”

She taps a pink nail against the border of the photograph.

“That’s her.”

“Like I said, it looks like her.”

“The detective told me after the autopsy, they had overdosed on drugs and were too stoned to save themselves. I disagree. They weren’t druggies.”

I feel for her. Family members are often clueless about what transpires between the times they see each other at family gatherings like Christmas, birthday parties, Fourth of July. What appears to be simply overindulging on alcohol on a holiday, might be a daily occurrence. I can see why Clallam County ruled it an accident. It was more than plausible. Couple with a hidden addiction drags their daughter down to the bottom of Lake Crescent, one of the deepest lakes in Washington. Over the past century, more than forty-five people have disappeared, presumably drowned, and are somewhere on the bottom of the lake.

“What do you think happened to them?”

Her gaze is now steely.

“My sister and her husband were murdered,” she says, her eyes firing at me.

“What makes you say that?”

“I found something. I told the detectives, they didn’t want to hear it. The case was closed. No one wants a story about a family dying in one of the area’s most beautiful tourist attractions. They just wanted to leave it be.”

I ask for details.

“Who do you think did it and what did you find, Ms. Volkmann?”

She takes a breath. “I think Ellie killed her parents.”

I can tell that saying those words are difficult for her. The betrayal of a daughter like that is rarely noted in the annals of crime. Matricide and patricide are almost always the work of a son.

“That’s a pretty big leap for a fifteen-year-old,” I say.

“Right. I know. Listen to me. She’d been messing up at school, chatting with boys on her phone. What’s typical today,” she remarks, “is a nightmare for any parent. So they forbid her to go out. She was mad about that. When that didn’t work, they took away her phone.”

“That’s like cutting off a teenager’s arm,” I say.

She nods. “Or their brain.”

My eyes glance back to the photograph and I ask her to continue. She tells me how the police ruled it accidental and she kind of went along with it, said she didn’t want to make a big thing of it at the time because she didn’t want anyone to think badly of Carrie.

She stops, takes another tissue.

It was the week after the memorial service at Sunset Memorial Park in Bellevue, she tells me. Laurna Volkmann directed a Guatemalan moving crew to take some things to storage. Her sister’s house was a large one, stuffed with things that became a love/hate test for Laurna. She’d watched the Japanese expert on a TV show explain how to edit down the things that do nothing for you. That even make one anxious.

As the young men helped her ready the house for painting and staging, Laurna said, so many of the things she had elected to keep were items that had a strong connection to her sister. A pair of childhood sleds she and Carrie had used every winter even when there was only a dusting over the hillsides by their house. Pictures from a family trip to Six Flags four years ago. She also found some belongings of Hudson’s, that were precious and related to his family. As he hadn’t any family that she could remember at that time, she put all of those in a box and then found her way to Ellie’s bedroom.

Her niece’s room was beginning to show the stirrings of the transition from teen to adult. The last time she’d been there, it had been painted French Poodle Pink. And while Laurna adored the color, it was almost too much, even for her. Now, the pink was gone for a pale gray hue. So was the shelving that had once held up a collection of plush animals. In its place were books and boys. One wall was plastered with images of celebrities and Abercrombie boys, their pouty lips and eyes aimed at her.

Laurna shifted her gaze to the shabby chic desk. An open book sat just as Ellie had left it. Laurna sat still for the longest time, she told me, her home movies playing in her mind. It was like she was sleepwalking or something. Foggy. Sad. In need of another stiff drink.

She ran her hands over the comforter. It was silk and cool to the touch. Smooth. When she put her hands down to lift herself up, she felt something under the hand closest to the headboard.

It was a small notebook, spiral bound, with a unicorn sticker on its purple cover.

Ellie was still at that spot in life that teeters, sometimes unsteadily, toward adulthood.

She smiled, thinking of the girl that had been a joy until the past year. Ellie, Laurna knew, would have been her favorite niece forever, even if she had a thousand nieces. Carrie had complained a little and said that she wondered if she’d make it through dealing with a teenage daughter.

“Mom did,” Laurna had reminded her.

Carrie gave her a knowing smile. “Touché.”

That was the week before the accident.

It was the last time they spoke… Sisterhood is one of the world’s most impenetrable bonds. It can only break if a husband’s mother has something to say about it.

I get up and give Ms. Volkmann some water from a small table behind us. She takes it and starts drinking. I know she’s weighing what she’s about to tell me.