A Wicked Snow

by Gregg Olsen

  “It has been a long time,” he said. “You’re never outside of my thoughts. I hope you know that.”

  “I try to forget, but if I succeeded, I’d forget the good that came of this. Most of that good came from you.”

  Bauer didn’t know what to say. He’d been an FBI agent for more than twenty-two years and he’d never been touched so deeply.

  They talked a bit more. She told him that she was a CSI, was married, and had a daughter. She had worked hard, despite a media machine hungry for every detail, to remain out of the spotlight. Her life was her own and she wasn’t about to be plucked from obscurity by someone playing games with her past.

  “My husband’s a cop,” she said. “No shrink needs to tell me why, but that’s what he was when I fell in love with him.”

  Bauer asked about the shoes, and Hannah described their condition, the grocery bag packaging, and how it came to be delivered to her. She also indicated she’d saved the packaging.

  “In case you want to test it for DNA,” she said.

  When Bauer dug for her thoughts on why the shoes had been sent to her, Hannah drew a blank. She couldn’t imagine what possessed someone to do such a thing, nor could she figure out how she could have been found in the first place. Her name had vanished from the pages of newspapers and magazines at least a dozen years ago.

  “I’ve made my life a disappearing act,” she said.

  “Only one person’s done it better,” he said, an obvious reference to her mother. Hannah let the remark pass, knowing the two of them shared more than a history. They both believed that Claire Logan, the female boogie man, the woman whose name had been used by parents threatening their children when they didn’t take out the garbage or pull all the weeds from the garden, was alive. She was out there somewhere. Maybe she was frightened that one day she’d be discovered. Maybe not. Maybe she didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, even now.

  “Anything else but the package of shoes? Anything out of the ordinary happening down there?” Bauer asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Hannah said, hesitating slightly. “I didn’t tell Judge Paine. I haven’t told anyone. Not even my husband. But I have received a number of hang-up calls over the past month. Maybe a half dozen or so. I started keeping a log in my date book.”

  “Anything said? Anything to indicate any calls were associated with your mother’s case?”

  Silence fell for a moment. “Only one got through. The receptionist gave me a message memo that a call came from my mother. It was out of the blue. Just like that. Your mother called. I didn’t say anything at the time because…” her voice went quiet once more. “Because,” she took in a breath, “I didn’t know how to explain why I was alarmed my mother had called. I thought, at first, that it was a mistake.”

  “I see. What of the hang-ups? At the office? At home?”

  “Both—which is the troubling part. Our home number is unlisted. When I tried to trace the call back by using the redial function, the operator said that the call was ‘out of area.’ There have been a few cases of my own, including one I’m working now, in which people weren’t happy with me. But those calls are local and are stopped easily.”

  She was thinking of Joanne Garcia. Joanne had called four times with epithets and threats since the investigation into her son’s death and daughter’s abuse had begun. She had even promised to make sure that Hannah didn’t “dig up anyone else’s baby.” A visit from Ripp indicating that obstruction of justice charges could be filed against her had put the brakes on Garcia’s campaign for revenge.

  “Hannah?” Bauer’s voice cut in. “You still there?”

  Snapped back into the conversation, she apologized. She said she’d been distracted by someone outside her office.

  “I’ll send an agent from the L.A. office to get the package,” he said.

  “Fine. I’ll be here most of the day. But Mr. Bauer—”

  “Jeff,” he cut in.

  “Okay, though it sounds peculiar, Jeff, be discreet. Outside of Ethan no one knows I’m Claire Logan’s daughter. I intend to keep it that way. For good.”

  “Understood,” he said, “but I think you should know something from this end. I heard from Marcus Wheaton not long ago.”

  The name was a shockwave of its own, bringing back memories that Hannah held tightly within.

  “Not that it is connected to the shoes,” Bauer said, “but I’m going to Cutter’s Landing on Friday to see Wheaton.”

  There was a long silence. Bauer waited until Hannah spoke. “What does Marcus want?” Her tone was ice.

  “I’m not sure. You know that Oregon can’t hold him much longer. His time is about up. His health isn’t great, and the state has no cause to keep him beyond his original sentencing—no matter what you’ve read.”

  “Oh,” Hannah lied, “I’d forgotten that it was coming up. I haven’t thought about Marcus for a long time.”

  It was another deceit. It was the kind of lie she had told herself. She thought about Marcus all the time, but she felt comfort in her thoughts. He was in prison. She knew where he was. He’d tried to contact her after the trial. His mother phoned her Aunt Leanna once in Misery Bay on Oregon’s southern coast, urging her to bring Hannah to the prison to see the man who’d once loved her mother. Leanna refused.

  “How often do you think about her?” Bauer asked, meaning Hannah’s mother, of course. There was no other her.

  “The only time she doesn’t come to mind is when I’m deep into my work,” Hannah said, her voice catching a little. “It sounds pathetic, I’m sure, but I’m always a little too grateful for a really heinous case.”

  “It takes something real ugly to chase it from your mind,” Bauer said. He felt sorry for her. “There’s a lot to chase.”

  “You know,” she said, her hands trembling, “the peculiar thing is that I’ve read Twenty in a Row so often that sometimes I’m not sure what I remember and what others wrote. Sometimes I think some memories that I hold to be true are just planted.”

  Bauer had a copy of the book on his bookcase. He instinctively glanced in its direction at its mention, its worn binding showing its age. “Twenty,” as aficionados of the case called it, was the first book on the Logan case and considered by most to be the best.

  “One day,” Bauer said before they said their goodbyes, “we’ll know what really happened.”

  “Maybe so,” Hannah said, wishing she didn’t care anymore. “I hope so.”

  The hours flew by, though later, Hannah would plead with Ethan that she didn’t even know what had preoccupied her to such a degree. It was not like her. Not at all. She was, she knew, a mother before anything else. A little after five, Hannah looked at her watch and jumped from her chair. In that instant she remembered how she had promised Ethan, who was busy with an inane ethics meeting, that she’d pick up Amber. How could she be late? She raced toward the after-school care offices, but by the time she arrived, they were closed. A janitor who spoke no English, at least that he admitted to, shrugged when she mentioned her daughter’s name. Ten minutes later, she was in the driveway of their house on Loma Linda. Ethan’s car was not out front, and her heart sank even lower.

  Where was Amber?

  “Honey!” she called out, but no one responded. “Amber, honey! Where are you?”

  Hannah was frantic by then. She ran through the house, swinging open doors and pulling the covers from her daughter’s unmade bed. She fell to her knees and peered under the bed.

  “Let’s not play the hiding game!” she called out. “If we are, then I give up. Come out.”

  She knew that was a ridiculous hope. They hadn’t played that game for months, maybe longer than a year.

  For any parent, the moment when a child is thought to be missing is the longest moment of a lifetime. Guilt, shame, fear, and hope converge in a stunning force that squeezes the breath from a person’s lungs, male or female. Catch a breath. Take a second. She’s here. She’s with her father. She’s at Maddi
e’s.

  Hannah dialed Maddie’s house, and Elena Jackson answered, her voice annoyingly chirpy, given the circumstances.

  “Hi, Hannah. How are you? Saw your name in the paper about that terrible case you’re working.”

  “Oh yes,” she answered, glad for the chance to calm her voice. “Is Amber over there?”

  “No. Is everything all right?”

  “I’m sure she’s with her dad. Sorry. Got home late. A million things on my mind and I forgot to call Ethan.”

  She thought of the woman walking her dog. Maybe she’d come by again. Maybe this time, she took Amber from the day care. Setting the phone down, Hannah noticed the red eye of the answering machine blinking at her. She pushed the button.

  “Four new messages,” the auto voice intoned.

  There were three hang ups, each one ratcheting her fear to a new level.

  Not more. Not her?

  Hannah felt the warm flow of tears down her cheeks as she strained to hear. The last call was Ethan’s voice. In the background she could hear the sounds of a public place, the clatter of dishes. Maybe music.

  “Hannah,” he said, with an irritated tone that she barely knew, “I’m trying to be understanding. But this is too much. You have too much on your mind. Or something. Amber’s with me. We’re getting something to eat. You know if I’d have left our daughter waiting alone, you’d have filed for divorce. Pull yourself together.”

  Ethan was right, of course. He almost always was. At that moment, she hated him for his cool head. She was floundering; a big messy mix of worry and fear had consumed her and held her hostage. There is a moment of truth for everyone, and Hannah knew hers had been squandered long ago. But knowing this only made her sick to her stomach at what she’d done—what she had somehow allowed to happen. She’d heard Ethan talk about family members, mothers mostly, who’d done nothing to save their children from unspeakable horrors of men with damp, sticky fingers, probing under the covers. She’d seen cases of her own come through the lab—the fragments of lives interrupted before they’d begun. Hannah had a sixth sense about cases like that. The Rorschach of bloodstains on a sheet. The minute tear in a child’s underpants. A man’s pubic hair under a murder victim’s broken nail. Each spoke to her in a loud and menacing voice. They told her the words she hadn’t heeded when she could have.

  Stop it. Only you can save them.

  Chapter Nine

  Hannah sat up and stared into the darkness. Ethan rolled away, as though moving to allow her space to get in and out of bed. But she sat there, still. Her breathing so labored, so slow, she could see her nightgown rise and fall like a malevolent tide. In her sudden lurch to awakening, the memories she had sought to hold deep inside flooded her consciousness. There was no escaping them. As the foggy memory of the worst of days came into sharper focus, the words played in her head like the backbeat to a song that refused to die. She turned to Ethan, afraid she was saying them in a voice loud enough to be heard.

  I should have killed her myself, she thought. I should have killed her when I had the chance.

  A partial memory played…

  It was about half an hour before midnight when an unexpected noise outside converged with the chill of a snowy December night and woke Hannah. She was only a thirteen-year-old girl then, but even so, she held a kind of strength within her that kept her both caregiver to her brothers and unwitting confidant to a mother she had ceased really trusting. But that night, more than ever, something was wrong. Certainly, she could feel and taste Christmas. Yes, there was the anticipation of a morning of surprises. All of it. But whatever spell the season had held in years past was annihilated by voices outside. It was her mother and Marcus Wheaton. Their declarations and murmurs overlapped, and it took Hannah a minute or two to grasp what they were saying.

  She heard her mother first. It sounded as if she was calling out from across the snowy driveway in front of the wreath maker’s shed.

  “Get moving! We have about ten minutes, and as you know, ten minutes is barely a breath of time to do anything right. If you can’t do it, I’ll take care of the boys myself.”

  Marcus said something, but Hannah was unsure what it was.

  Then her mother called out. “Pull yourself together. Jesus! Act like a man.”

  Hannah strained to hear. Although the words were incongruous with the holiday, she allowed herself to think that they were arguing over the assembly of gifts or something. Maybe for the boys? A pair of bikes? She got up and quietly crept to the window.

  She knew, despite his job as her mother’s so-called handyman, Marcus Wheaton wasn’t mechanically inclined.

  Then Wheaton called out, but his voice remained lower and therefore harder to decipher. Snow was falling and the wind sent a breeze that snapped the Santa banners that were hanging in the yard. Molly, the Logan’s black lab, barked. There was commotion out there, but the two figures in the yard were maintaining some kind of control. This wasn’t, thankfully, a knock-down, drag- out fight like they’d engaged in in the past. Hannah peeled aside a window shade to get a better view. Light seeped into the room, and she rubbed her eyes. She stared down from her window to the odd and snowy scene.

  Vapors of white puffed from Marcus Wheaton’s mouth. She’d tease him tomorrow about being a dragon or something. She waited to see bikes or whatever wheeled across the white yard, but nothing happened. Her mother was nowhere in sight, and Wheaton disappeared. Whatever they were doing was over. Whatever they’d been up to had to be some kind of Christmas surprise for her brothers. Hannah crawled back in bed, pulled the covers up to her neck, and fell asleep.

  And Hannah, now grown, a mother herself, still couldn’t let the rest of the story play in her mind. She finally fell asleep. It was after two.

  The next day was filled with paperwork for Hannah, though interrupted more than occasionally with thoughts of Jeff Bauer. Hannah examined documents she hoped would prove that little Enrique Garcia had been murdered by his violence-prone father, Berto. Each line needed to be examined. Tedious, to be sure, but necessary. It was difficult and slow going, with eyes bloodshot from lack of sleep. A visit from Ripperton didn’t make it any easier. He sauntered into her office like he owned the place. There was boldness in his manner, more exaggerated than usual. It was obvious that he was still proud of his investigative work on the Garcia case. Hannah noticed that the white circles around his eyes were pronounced. He had been tanning again.

  “Ted, this isn’t a good time,” she said a little too harshly when he asked if they could go over the Garcia interview report.

  “Someone,” he said somewhat snidely, “got up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.” Next, he paused and dropped a nugget of information that made her nearly jump from her chair.

  “Now Joanne Garcia says Mimi killed her brother,” he said.

  Hannah was stunned. “What?”

  “I know you heard me, but I’ll say it again. Mimi Garcia is the one who drowned the baby. Joanne says that she and Berto covered it up to spare the girl from living with such a horrendous deed.”

  Hannah set down her paperwork. “That’s complete bullshit.”

  “I wish. I just got off the phone with her so-called lawyer—Deke Meyer. They want to work out a deal so that Mimi can be spared any emotional trauma.”

  If it hadn’t been so serious, Hannah would have laughed out loud. Ripp had a lot of nerve casting aspersions on anyone. He was, she was sure, the world’s worst at what he did. Deke Meyer was merely in the bottom ten percentile of his profession.

  “Joanne Garcia is the biggest idiot or bitch. Maybe both. We’re going to put her away for a long, long time. This is complete bullshit,” she repeated, raising her voice. “Using a little girl to bail them out—unbelievable!”

  “I’m just the messenger,” Ripp said, faking a cringe while he dropped another file on her desk before exiting, “remember?”

  Alone once more, Hannah felt the color drain from her face. The Garcias were
not going to get away with what she was sure was the most outrageous defense a parent could fabricate. It disgusted her. Despite what she’d heard, she still couldn’t concentrate. She tried Deke Meyer’s office, but his secretary (his fourth wife, Sheila) said he was out “running errands or something.” Her mind was preoccupied, and she couldn’t focus on anything other than the conversation with the FBI agent. At 11:30, she looked at her watch and called Ethan. When he answered his phone, she told him about her conversation with Bauer.

  “He’s going to see Marcus on Friday,” she said.

  Ethan knew his wife better than anyone. He knew what she was going to say next and was already exasperated by her, so he said it out loud.

  “You’re thinking of going up there, aren’t you?”

  “I am,” she answered, her words surprising her a little. “I guess I am.”

  “Hannah, haven’t you been through enough?” he asked. “Haven’t we all? Remember when you told me— promised us—that Orlando would be the last time you went chasing after your mother? I hate to say it. I hate to think it, but you’ve got to pull yourself in and stop this before we go through this over and over.”

  “This isn’t about her,” she said, stiffening in her chair. “Someone out there knows who I am. Don’t you get it? This could ruin our lives.” Her voice started to crack. “It could destroy everything.”

  Ethan was in a no-win situation, and he knew it. “You’ve made up your mind. I already know that. Let’s talk about it tonight,” he said. His voice was uncharacteristically flat. There was no talking about it. The absence of emotion had more to do with resignation than lack of genuine concern. Ethan had stood by his wife as she chased the memories that haunted her. She’d pursued four Claire Logan sightings since their marriage. She’d gone after her mother when news agencies reported appearances in Orlando, Pittsburgh, Tulsa, and Cabo San Lucas. And though Ethan knew this time could be like all the others—a literal dead end—it appeared a bit more promising. The shoes were either a prank or a taunt. He wondered if Claire Logan herself had sent them.