A Wicked Snow

by Gregg Olsen

  “Jesus Christ,” she said softly.

  “I didn’t do anything but cover up for your mother.” He blinked his good eye.

  “What happened to Didi?” she asked, staring back at Wheaton.

  “She erased her. Like I’ve said, I wasn’t there and I didn’t see it. But from what she told me, Claire swung at her with a chainsaw. It wasn’t on,” he said, as though that were somehow beyond possibility. “She bashed Didi so hard she damn near cut off her head. When she told me what she’d done she used the old saying, you know the one where kids pick dandelions and flick off the flower tops? Mama had a baby and the head popped off? That’s what she said. I thought it was funny back then,” he said, showing for the first time an indication of remorse.

  Now Bauer’s face was pale. Even Madsen who had lingered on the other side of the room looked ill. Hannah steadied herself while Wheaton continued, oddly smiling as he recounted the details of his story.

  When Claire had first told Wheaton about what had happened, he said that he assumed she’d want help with the burial. But when he went out to the supply building, there was no body. Not a drop of blood could be seen anywhere. The place was cleaner than a hospital room.

  Hannah remembered the supply building; it came to her as though she was standing inside it in a dream. It was in perfect order. Her mother was fanatical about having a place for everything… “and keeping everything in its place.” In her mind, she searched the rows of spools of grosgrain and French ribbons, the floral tape, the wire in various gauges. There was shelving to the ceiling in that drafty little room, and yes, a row of jars at the very top.

  Wheaton licked his lips and went on. He was a steam engine now. A big, Day-Glo orange, stinking steam engine with chili-mac dried at the crusty corners of his mouth, and there was no stopping him.

  “She told me she took care of Didi all by herself. You know what? I admired her for that. I thought, what a wonderful woman. She’d have been leader of the pack with the survivors of the Donner Party. Claire was the kind of woman who could shoot, skin, and cook a bear and make love to you on the fur rug she tanned herself—all in the same day. That’s what I thought then.”

  Wheaton said he knew nothing more about Number 20 until the night of the fire.

  “I helped set the fire that night. Yeah, I did pretty much everything the Spruce County prosecutor said I did. But I didn’t kill anyone. After the fire Claire was going to meet me at the five-way stop.”

  Hannah knew that location. Two miles from the farm there was the only other sign of civilization—the convergence of two logging roads and the highway. Locals knew it as “the five-way.”

  “She told me that she loved me,” he said, and saying those words brought a wave of emotion. His good eye seemed to water. “She said, ‘no matter what happens, Marcus, we’ll be together. You’ve proven your love and I’ve proven mine.’ No one was supposed to die,” he said.

  Wheaton cleared his throat. It was followed by a loud hack. Hannah thought he was fighting back emotion, but she wasn’t sure. Bauer urged him to continue.

  “When I left that night, when I took my lighter and started the fuse just as we’d planned, there was no one in the house. No one—not Danny and Erik, not you, Hannah. I swear to God. And I do believe in God. Always have. I found out about them after the sheriff’s deputies picked me up.”

  The steamroller was in overdrive. Hannah and Bauer pushed back and listened. Neither said a word.

  “And I was so happy,” Wheaton said. “I know it sounds so stupid now, but I was. I was so grateful for two things. That you,” the good eye went straight to Hannah, “were spared and that your mother had vanished.”

  Hannah said nothing. She couldn’t think of anything to say. She had no air in her lungs.

  “But the body?” Bauer asked. “The body of the woman—how do you know that it wasn’t Claire’s for sure?”

  “Because she’s too smart. She fucked you. Me. Her kids. The men she slaughtered. She fucked us all. I know now that Didi’s body had been kept in the freezer and brought out like a roast for the night of the fire.”

  “You saw her there?” Bauer asked.

  “Two days after she whacked the girl’s head off, she told me she hit a deer and butchered it herself. Very Claire. I saw the meat in the freezer. It was the biggest hindquarter I ever saw, all wrapped in white paper. ‘It was a buck,’ Claire said to me. ‘Rack the size of a Vega hatchback, eight points.’”

  But when Wheaton looked at the Icicle Creek Farm truck he could find no evidence that Claire hit anything, let alone a Kong-size buck. No hair, nor any blood. He rubbed his big hands over the front fenders and stared at them. Clean as could be.

  “I can put two and two together,” Wheaton told his visitors. “And you probably could have, too, if the funeral home hadn’t cremated poor Didi’s body—I mean, torso. I know Claire. I know what she’s capable of. She kept that body in the freezer until she needed it. She planned it. She planned everything to get away. She planned making the world believe that she’d died. She’d have her money. Her new life. I was supposed to be part of her future. I wanted to be. I’d have done anything for her.”

  As Wheaton reached for the water, Madsen stood from his seat in the corner and acknowledged another of the warden’s assistants. The sergeant in the visitors’ processing station had asked the other officer to get a message to Hannah Griffin.

  “Your pager’s been going off every five minutes,” he said. “Got to be urgent. You want to use a phone?”

  Still stunned into silence by what Wheaton had told her, Hannah could not speak. She wanted to get the hell out of there. She was back in the waters of Misery Bay with a line of W’s rolling to her neckline. She was drowning.

  “Okay,” she said. She needed the relief. She needed the break.

  Wheaton did, too.

  “Time for his meds, anyway,” Madsen said. “Make your call.”

  Bauer reached over and this time Hannah took his hand. She was trembling. In a flash, the moment when everything changed had come back. Time stood still, and a million pieces of her shattered memory came to her. It all flooded back, a torrent of images. It was that Christmas Eve night in her bedroom—the beginning of the end.

  Marcus Wheaton was nearly manic, which was unlike his lumbering, big-guy persona.

  “We need to get you out of here, Hannah, now!”

  “What’s happening? You’re scaring me.”

  “You ought to be scared. I am. But I’m gonna get you out of here.”

  She noticed the red metal can for the first time.

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t ask. Just keep your mouth still. Let’s go.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the bedroom door, leaving a trail of what smelled like kerosene or gas behind.

  “What are you doing?” Hannah asked.

  “The same thing you’re about to do. What you’re being told to do.”

  Wheaton swung open the door and tucked his head around the corner. When he moved to the side, the scene came into view. It was white. There was white sprayed everywhere.

  “What?” she asked, barely able to get the word out.

  He yanked on her hand and pulled her into the hall, spreading kerosene like holy water on the walls, soaked in white. It was tree flocking, the texture of fake snow.

  “If you don’t come and come quietly, you’ll die. We’ll both die.”

  He pulled her past her mother’s bedroom, past the boys’ room. The doors were shut. With each step more kerosene hit the walls, the floor as it splashed against the ghostly spray of white.

  “Where are Erik and Danny?”

  Wheaton faced her dead-on. His face was stone.

  “You don’t want to know,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

  “Where’s Mom?”

  “Say another word and we’ll both die.”

  Wheaton led her down the stairs, past the Christmas tree, still lit and p
acked underneath with presents, but oddly and hastily sprayed with flocking. Hannah said nothing. She could barely breathe. Her feet were wet; her nightgown damp. Across the yard, to the potting shed; by then he was carrying her.

  “Stay here,” he said.

  She managed a nod.

  What was he doing? Where is everyone?

  Wheaton, looking over his shoulder, ran toward the front door, still open and flooding the front yard with light. He tossed a match or lighter into the doorway and an enormous flash shot across the yard. Near blinding in its brightness, explosive in its suddenness.

  Hannah opened her mouth to scream, but nothing but the empty white of her warm breath emerged. Not a real sound.

  Say a word and you will die, he had told her.

  Across the yard, the house burned and shot smoke into the leaden sky. Snow fell. Hannah retreated to the corner of the shed.

  Wheaton returned a minute later, puffing and agitated. His eyes wild and full of the fear, maybe even for the first time the realization of what he’d done.

  “They are all gone,” he said. “Erik and Danny are gone. Your mother is gone. I didn’t want it this way, you know me. You know how I feel about the boys. I got them dressed, ready to go, ready to get out of here. But she wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t allow any of it.”

  Ribbons of tears streaked her face. Her fists clenched. It passed through her mind that she had to get past Marcus Wheaton, and that wasn’t happening.

  “I want to get them.” Her voice was a whisper.

  He held her, first to stop her from hurting him, then to comfort her.

  “No, you don’t,” he said. “I’m going now, but know this forever: I never hurt the boys. I never hurt anyone. I could never hurt you.”

  “Why is this happening?”

  “Because Didi’s mother keeps calling.” Wheaton disappeared around the corner of the shed. Hannah heard his truck start and rumble down the driveway. And from then on her life was no longer her own, not really.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  In a small, seemingly airless room that amounted to nothing more than a closet adjacent to the prison warden’s private dining room, Hannah Griffin dialed the telephone number that flashed on the tiny LED panel of her SatNet county-issued pager. It was Ted Ripperton’s office extension at the Santa Louisa crime lab.

  “Ted? Hannah here. What can’t wait?”

  “Where the hell are you?” he asked, ignoring her question. “Ethan said you went away for a couple days. You guys okay?”

  Hannah didn’t want to get personal with Ripp, and she didn’t see how where she was at any given moment was any of his concern in the first place. As lousy an investigator as Hannah believed Ted Ripperton to be, she didn’t want him asking any questions.

  “It’s personal and Ethan and I are fine. Furthermore, you paged me,” she snapped before adding, “a half dozen times.”

  “Eighteen times,” he said. “Even called the phone company, er—telecommunications provider—to make sure your pager wasn’t down. They did some sort of test and said your pager was operational. Said you weren’t answering. And I thought you took the damn thing in the shower!”

  “Very funny,” Hannah said, her impatience amplified with another sigh. She felt her limbs for the first time in an hour. She realized she’d been numb from the interview with Wheaton. “What’s so urgent?”

  “Joanne Garcia’s in critical condition in the ICU at Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Overdosed on Valium and tequila.”

  “Oh dear,” Hannah said. “What happened?”

  “Paramedics came out to her trailer house at ten this morning. The next-door neighbor who’d been keeping an eye on Garcia since we took Mimi into protective custody stopped by to see how she was faring. Garcia didn’t answer the phone or the door. Her VW was in the driveway. The neighbor lady went inside and found Garcia on the sofa. TV going full-tilt boogie. Face blue. We’ve seen it before. This one was nice.”

  “Nice” was Ripp’s way of categorizing suicides, as in nasty or nice. Nasty suicides were the man with a pistol in the mouth and brains sprayed on the television set or the teenage boy hanging from a rafter with underwear around his ankles and a Penthouse on the floor. Nice were the glue sniffers or pill poppers who died before their bodies rebelled with a gag reflex. Nasties were a mess, but they told the story with clarity and precision. Nice were clean, neat, and much harder to read.

  “She leave a note?” Hannah asked.

  “Not that we’ve found so far,” Ripp answered.

  “Do the docs think she’ll make it?”

  “Dunno. Hanging by a thread. I got a call into them for an update. Haven’t heard from anyone for an hour. I know she’s on life support. She’s already lost the baby.”

  The baby. It had slipped Hannah’s mind that Joanne Garcia, mother of Mimi and Enrique, was pregnant with her third child. She’d been through hell with her children; no one could deny it. Enrique was murdered, Mimi was in protective custody, and the baby was dead before it had been born. Maybe the baby, Hannah thought, had been the lucky one.

  “There’s something else,” Ripp continued in his know-it-all voice that annoyed those who knew he didn’t actually know much at all. “Some woman came to the lab today to talk with you. A reporter, I guess. From Ladies’ Home Journal or something—I didn’t get the name of the magazine. She said she wanted to talk to you for a profile she’s writing about female crime scene investigators. She wants to interview me, too. Not as a female, of course, but as a man who works with one of the best.”

  “Not interested,” Hannah said decisively, despite Ripp’s attempt at sucking up. She had no intention of ever opening up that door. She never sought the spotlight, though she had had plenty of chances as Hannah Griffin, and a million times more as Hannah Logan, daughter of the woman who made the greatest escape in criminal history.

  Hannah ended the conversation. “I’ll be home tomorrow. Page me if you need me, but let’s plan on talking late afternoon. And no interviews.” She knew Ripp was an attention seeker of the highest order, so she added, “At least not now.”

  “But I want to,” Ripp said, his voice a little whiny, like a kid being cheated out of a snow cone. “I know it’s about you, but she wants to put me in the article, too.”

  “No. No interviews with anyone.”

  “I’m having lunch with her tomorrow. Got her business card right here. Very nice, embossed. Freelance Writer. Her name’s Marcella Hoffman.”

  The name was like a bullet, and Hannah’s heart tumbled down to her feet. Her head split into two, atom-smasher time. Hannah remained mute. A pair of glazed donut goggles stared at her from a greasy supermarket bakery box. On the open door, she could see the office was labeled PRESS ROOM.

  “Wheaton’s back,” a voice called.

  Hannah turned toward the voice; she sat still, frozen in worry. “I have to go now,” she told Ripp. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Who was on the phone? You look upset.” It was Bauer. He stood in the doorway looking concerned. Hannah looked up and nodded. She was weary, and her eyes brimmed with tears. If she had been any closer to the edge, she would have been on the other side by now.

  “Thanks.” she said. “I’m glad I look the part. This day goes down in history as one of the most draining of my life. And I’ve had a few of those.”

  “That you have. Anything I can do?” Bauer asked, brightening his tone.

  “No, I’m fine. It’s just office stuff,” she lied.

  Hannah made no mention of the journalist or writer or trophy collector or whatever Hoffman could be termed. In reality, she didn’t know what to think about Dog Face’s sudden reappearance in her life. The timing was suspect. The shoes, the interview with Wheaton. All of it. The pendulum was swinging back to the events of that terrible Christmas. What, if anything, did Hoffman want beyond the obvious, the all-important, exclusive interview for the update of the Logan case? How was it that she found her after all these yea
rs? Marcella Fucking Hoffman. Her features were chalk.

  “I’ll be fine,” she said once more, steadying herself against the corner by the doorway. “I’m working a child abuse/murder case and it looks like Mom tried to kill herself.”

  “She a witness, key to the case?”

  Hannah shrugged. “I’m not sure. We’re still sorting it out.”

  Bauer backed off. He knew there would be time to talk later. They’d have to talk to decompress. Whether her pallid complexion had more to do with her phone call about her dead baby case or the business at hand with Wheaton, he couldn’t be certain. They started down the corridor to the interrogation room. He searched his mind for some words to ease the transition back to what they were about to continue, when the door swung open and the one-eyed blob appeared in his seat behind the table.

  “Wheaton, this is all very interesting, but you’re twenty years too late to ‘not confess’ again. So you had nothing to do with the murders. We know. We’ve heard that before. I appreciate what you’ve said about Serena, and I’m sure her mother would like to lay her memory to rest. It has been difficult for the family.”

  “Difficult?” Wheaton turned away and looked at Hannah. “You have no goddamn idea. Try serving twenty years for torching someplace, while the real bad guy, in this case a woman, gets off scot-free.”

  Wheaton could have told Hannah and Bauer to get the hell out of Cutter’s Landing. This was his prison. But he didn’t. He elected to continue.

  “Your mother is alive. I’m sure of it,” he said, still focused on Hannah sitting across from him.

  Hannah felt the air sucked from her lungs, but she managed a response.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Yes, I’m afraid she is,” Wheaton said. He stared at Hannah, sizing her and tracing the lines of her face to see what reminded him of Claire. He thought her nose was very similar, even the shape of her eyebrows.

  Bauer stepped in. “Where?”