Page 70 of Snow Creek

“Lake Crescent.”

“Boat.”

“Accident.”

“All three drowned.”

“Hudson, Carrie and Ellie.”

“The Burbanks.”

“Ellie.”

“Never found.”

Laurna stops long enough to open her purse and take out a photograph. She slides it across the table. I look down, then we lock eyes.

“She’s a ringer for Sarah Wheaton,” I say.

“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, itlookslike 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.

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