by Gregg Olsen
Hoffman gave a fake warm smile, her big teeth reminding Hannah why she and Aunt Leanna had called the woman Dog Face.
“Old friends,” Hoffman said. “I like that.”
A couple minutes later the two women were behind the door of Hannah Griffin’s office.
“Let’s be direct. Okay? What in God’s name do you want?” Hannah said. “What more can you take from me?”
“Such attitude,” Marcella said, setting down her enormous bag. “I want to help you tell your side of the story. I’m a reporter.”
Hannah wanted to lunge, but she held back. “A reporter? As though that gives you license to pop into someone’s life anytime you see fit and wreak havoc. Please, don’t give me that bullshit about being a reporter. What do you want?”
“Such hostility,” Hoffman said, planting herself in one of the pair of visitors’ chairs in front of Hannah’s desk. “You have me all wrong. Didn’t you read my book?”
“It made me ill.”
“The truth can do that. You know that,” she said looking around, “given your job here.”
“I really don’t want to talk to you. I have a family. I want to put this behind me. Can’t you understand?”
“Yes. I talked to Ethan. Nice fellow. Amber sounds adorable. Wish I was going to be in town long enough to see her recital.”
“Leave my family alone.”
“I’m not after your family. I want to get the interview of a lifetime, that’s all.”
“I’m not interested.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I want to talk to your mother.”
Hannah wanted to reach across the desk and strangle Hoffman. Anything to wipe the smug look off her nip-and-tucked face.
“My mother is dead. Didn’t you write the book on it? Or have you forgotten?”
Hannah noticed Ripperton walk past the windows next to her office door. He glanced in her direction and eyed her somewhat anxiously—not because he was concerned about what was being said—but because he didn’t want to miss his chance for lunch with Hoffman.
“Liz thinks she’s alive. So do I,” Hoffman continued.
Hannah’s face must have betrayed her feelings. She didn’t know who Dog Face was talking about.
“Marcus’s mother,” Hoffman said. “Liz Wheaton. We’ve been friends for years. I’m friendly with a lot of the old gang from Rock Point.”
“I’m sure you are. I don’t know Mrs. Wheaton. Never met her.”
“But you’ve just seen her son, haven’t you?”
Hannah didn’t say a word.
“Don’t look so shocked,” Hoffman went on, oblivious. “I have sources. Better than you can imagine. There’s only one little thing I haven’t been able to figure out. And it is a doozy. Where did your mother go after she left Rock Point that night?”
“Who says she left?” Hannah thought about the box of shoes that had been sent to her. She wondered if Marcella Hoffman had been the sender, but she didn’t say anything about it.
“She was too smart. Too smart to let a house burn down around her and a piano fall on her.” Hoffman walked over to the door. “Now, Mrs. Wheaton knew how to find you. And here I am. Are you going to help me find your mother?”
She twisted the knob on the door.
“Or am I going to tell everyone who you are?”
“You wouldn’t. Even you couldn’t do that.”
“Watch me.”
“If I knew, I’d tell you.”
Hoffman was in her nasty mode. “I know you saw Marcus up at Cutter’s Landing. Liz told me. I know that Jeff Bauer went with you. So tell me. Where is she?”
“I really don’t know,” Hannah said, wanting to kill Hoffman. She found herself planning it as they stood there. She would take the cord from the phone and wrap it around her turkey neck. She’d pick up the crystal paperweight that Ethan had given her for passing the bar and she’d smash the woman’s skull. Everything she saw in her office could be a weapon used to end Dog Face’s miserable excuse for a life.
Ripperton knocked on the door and stuck his head inside.
“Lunch still on, Miss Hoffman?” Ripp looked concerned.
The reporter nodded and flashed a warm, but Hannah was sure, phony smile. “Sure. Hannah and I are finished for now. We’re getting together a bit later to continue our interview.”
The air hung with hostility, but Ripperton, the investigator who was forever incompetent and clueless, stayed true to form. He didn’t get wind of anything.
Twenty minutes after Ripp and Dog Face left for their “interview,” Hannah had sufficiently pulled herself together to call Bauer at the Northern Lights in Kodiak. The front desk patched her through, but Bauer wasn’t in and the call went to voice mail.
“Jeff, Hannah here. That bitch Marcella Hoffman paid me a visit just now. She said Marcus Wheaton’s mother told her where to find me. How could that be? I’ve never even met Liz Wheaton. Call me. Hoffman says she’s sure my mom is alive. Please call me. I need you.”
For the next hour Hannah tried to put her mother, Wheaton, and Hoffman out of her thoughts as she attempted to refocus on the Garcia case. Her emotions had frayed, and she knew it. She was on the brink. A series of phone calls did little to provide the calming she needed. A phone call to Ethan at work was a zero; he was “up to his neck in alligators” and could only spare a moment.
“You don’t have to talk to Hoffman at all,” he said.
“It isn’t that simple,” she answered back, almost to herself. “I wish it were.”
Ten minutes later, County Attorney Bill Gilliand came to the door of her office. He seldom stopped as he passed by, preferring to offer a nod of recognition while he kept on moving. Handsome and charismatic, Gilliand was all politics. He saved his personal interaction for when it mattered. Staff meetings, court, and fund-raisers. But this time, the morning she was coming undone, Bill Gilliand strode into her office for the first time.
“Hannah,” he said with a concerned look in his eyes, “I heard that it didn’t go well at the hospital with Garcia. Ripperton says you almost jumped on her.”
I could kill him, Hannah thought.
“It wasn’t that bad, but I guess I was a bit physical,” she admitted to her boss.
“Yes, physical,” he mused. “That’s what we leave for the cops to do,” he said, a veiled reference and a not-so-subtle dig against her husband. “I’d like you to take the rest of the day off.”
She got up from her chair and walked around her desk, leaned back, and sat down on the corner of the desk. It didn’t bring her to Gilliand’s commanding height, but it didn’t make her feel as small as a school-girl, either.
“I’m fine now,” she said. “It was just…”
“I’m not asking. I’m telling you. I think it would be best. We don’t want to get into a problem with Mrs. Garcia, or anyone else for that matter.” He walked a couple of steps to the door and turned around. Then almost as an aside, he offered, “A hospital nurse called and complained. It wasn’t just Ripperton. And actually, hard to believe as it might be, Ripp was concerned about you.”
A few moments later, Hannah stood in the checkout line of Ralph’s Grocery not far from the Griffins’ place on Loma Linda Avenue. She bought a bottle of chardonnay and some Oreos. The cookies were for Amber and Ethan, who shared an incredible sweet tooth. She’d drink the wine. Considering what she’d been through, Hannah intended to drink a lot of it.
Chapter Thirty-five
The Griffin house on Loma Linda Avenue was so still, so hushed, that the omnipresent sputter of the air conditioner irritated Hannah. She wondered how it was that she had not made it a priority to have it repaired. The rumble noise coughed and hummed and rolled. Home early and alone, Hannah glanced over her shoulder as she stepped inside. A small figure ran toward her as she locked the door behind her. It was Amber’s tabby. Hannah ran her hand over the cat’s silky fur and cupped the animal’s chin.
“Are you hungry?” she asked, not wa
iting for an answer. Even at five pounds overweight, the cat always seemed hungry. It padded after Hannah as she went to the kitchen with her small bag of groceries.
It was ten minutes before six. Amber was still at her dance lesson, and Ethan was probably charming the other mothers as they waited in the parking lot of the studio. She emptied a box of brown-and-orange kibble into a dish set on a plastic place mat under the breakfast bar and poured fresh water into another bowl. A happy cat started to eat and purr. Hannah retrieved the bottle of the California chardonnay that she liked more for its label of a braided wreath of oak leaves than she did the taste of the wine, which she sometimes found too sweet and overly fruity. She poured herself a glass, a big glass. The globe of the stemware was almost grapefruit size. Hannah flipped through the mail and settled herself in a chair to watch the TV news before her husband and daughter interrupted her small moment of tranquility. Her mind raced. Her boss had sent her home and Marcella Hoffman was trying to snare an interview by sweet-talking Ripp. As a talk show ran its credits over the pockmarked faces of its guests and its sanctimonious host, she went over to the window to close the white plantation shutters. Coppery light reflected from the neighbor’s windows, the beginning of the evening sun as it dipped slightly lower in the smog-smeared sky.
The cat snuggled next to Hannah’s feet as she returned to her chair to watch the news. On the screen in front of her, helicopters careened in the air as images of the newsgathering process were paraded. A handsome man with a yellowish suntan and teeth too big for his mouth announced the lead story.
Wine splashed on Hannah’s thigh. It was an involuntary response. She looked at her hand holding the chardonnay as the chilled liquid rounded the lip of the glass and dribbled down the stem. It was almost the feeling of an earthquake, deep and hidden. Hannah set down her wine and stared straight ahead, absentmindedly using her hand to wipe at the spill. Yet all the while, she could not take her eyes off the screen.
“…speculation is running throughout the Northwest that an Alaskan woman named Louise Wallace is the notorious serial killer Claire Logan…”
She set the glass hard on the coffee table. Hannah could feel her heart pump faster and the bile in her stomach rise through her esophagus. She grabbed her hands together and gripped tightly.
The image of an elderly woman flashed across the screen in slow motion. It was brief. Hannah leaned forward as though closer proximity could enhance her view. But it only made the picture appear as though it had been a painting by Seurat, tiny specks of color with soft edges blurring from one side of the screen to the other. Besides, the video was out of focus and the woman’s head was turned in such a way that only the side of her head could be viewed, but not enough so that her profile could be made out. While the newscaster went on, more images filled the screen. A sign for the town of Kodiak. An old car. A dog barking in front of what appeared to be a fishing camp. In the last shot, the same woman held a blue-and-white windbreaker over her head in the fashion of felons who wish a semblance of anonymity, or anyone who has been caught on tape on a video-vérité cop show.
Her eyes fastened to the screen, Hannah’s pulse raced as the anchor went on to another story. Fifteen minutes went by, but Hannah heard none of the other stories. Instead, she thought only of her mother. The ringing phone jolted her back to the moment. She grabbed at the receiver and pressed it to her ear.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hannah?” It was Bauer’s gentle voice. “Are you all right?”
“A little shaky, I guess.”
“You just saw her on the tube, didn’t you?” He let out an audible sigh. “Damn it,” he said, “I wanted to warn you before the news hit down there. Don’t you ever listen to your phone messages?”
Hannah felt the warm and numbing effects of the chardonnay. She glanced at the answering machine. Its red eye mocked her with a steady wink.
“I hadn’t played them yet.”
“Jesus,” he said. “I’m very sorry, Hannah. I wanted to—”
“Is it her?”
Bauer hesitated for a second. “Probably not. I mean, we really don’t know yet. You know the media runs with a story like this faster than we do. They don’t mind burying an apology in agate type in the classified section later or at the end of a newscast. We can’t. We never say we’re sorry, so we don’t like to rush.”
“Do you think it’s her?”
“Could be.” Bauer said. “I honestly don’t know.”
“What are the facts, Jeff?” Hannah reached for her glass and gulped more wine. She glanced at the clock. Their conversation would be cut short at any minute. A little dancer and her daddy would be coming through the front door.
“Sketchy. She’s doesn’t have a ‘Sosh’ number. No driver’s license either. Needless to say, she’s not talking. Not a peep. And get this—she has no fingerprints.”
“You mean she hadn’t left any prints at the scene?” Hannah asked, though after she said so, she knew fingerprints were of no real value. None had been left at the farm to compare with: the whole place was ashes and rubble.
“This lady’s fingertips have been scarred over or something. Somehow erased. She either had some terrible accident at the cannery like she says or she erased them with a blowtorch or an acid dip. I don’t know. But there isn’t a damn thing there. They are completely smooth.”
“I see. What does she look like? The TV shot was so quick, I could scarcely tell.”
“Like an old lady. Kind of tall, graying hair, blue eyes.”
“My mother had blue eyes. Has blue eyes.”
“Are you going to be okay?”
“How tall is she?”
“Tall enough,” he said. “Look, we don’t know anything. So sit tight. Are you going to be all right?”
“I’ll be fine. Ethan will be home soon.”
“Good. Hey, got your message about Liz Wheaton. We’re running her information now. I’ll let you know as soon as I get anything of interest. Sit tight.”
“Okay. Call me with anything at all. I mean it.”
Hannah hung up. Her timing was good. She heard Ethan park the cruiser and she heard Amber’s little feet run up the sidewalk to the front door. She did her best to shake the worry and concern, the coiled snakes of mixed emotions, from her face.
“Mommy!” Amber’s exuberant voice called out. “We’re home!”
Chapter Thirty-six
Bauer removed the plastic sheathing from a motel-room glass and poured himself a couple shots of Wild Turkey as he contemplated his next move. After the interview with Louise Wallace, he and S.A. Ingersol conferred about some details she’d learned about Liz Wheaton through Social Security and Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles.
“No shit,” he said when Ingersol told him that Marcus Wheaton’s mother had transformed herself and was working at, of all places, the Spruce County Clerk’s Office.
“She’s packed on at least sixty pounds, stopped bleaching her hair,” Ingersol said, excitedly, clearly enjoying the revelation. “And looking at the DMV photo in front of me, I’d say she probably had a little nip-and-tuck on her face, too.”
“I vaguely remember her as a faded party gal who could have used some work. And that was twenty years ago.”
“What’s more,” Ingersol went on, “she’s been a micro-film copier technician for Spruce County for almost a decade. She calls herself Liza Milton—Milton being the name of one of her old tricks, some dope that actually married her.”
Veronica Paine was stunned when Bauer called her cell from Kodiak with the revelation. Photos from the fire, torsos of dead men in uniform, and witness statements fanned out in front of her. She let out a sigh. She’d never noticed Marcus’s mother in all her years as a judge, and admitted she felt more than a little foolish.
“How could I have been so blind?” she asked.
“Ingersol tells me that the DMV photo looks nothing like the shots taken during the trial. You wouldn’t know it was the same wo
man,” Bauer said.
Further, Paine had seen the news report, but had regarded it with about as much credibility as the other dozen or so Claire Logan sightings over the years.
“It’s a guess, of course,” Bauer said, “but I think Liz Wheaton—or whatever her name is—sent the shoes to Hannah Griffin.”
Paine wasn’t so quick to jump to conclusions—a holdover from her days on the bench when hearing all sides was a necessary element to critical decision making. She conceded it was a good bet, however.
“If Wheaton’s mother worked in the Clerk’s office, she’d easily have access to the exhibits, like the shoes. Even though we keep a tight rein on them, they are public records, you know.”
“Right,” Bauer said, sipping his Wild Turkey, “but why would she send them to Hannah? Why do that?”
“I don’t know. I’m not a fortune-teller. But it seems to me that she must have wanted to elicit a reaction. Maybe to hurt Hannah or shock her into doing some-thing—like go with you to see Marcus.”
“I’ve thought about that. But why? Hannah was just a kid when the place burned down.”
Paine let out a laugh. “Haven’t you learned the key to investigations yet?”
Bauer was a little irritated by the question. Paine was enveloping her words in a kind of schoolmarm effect that he found a little condescending.
“What’s that, Judge?” He did his best to remain polite.
“Not everything makes sense, Jeff. There isn’t absolute meaning in everything these nut cases do. They’d like you to think so. The public would like it, too. But the fact is, sometimes people do crazy things.”
Bauer finished his glass and eyed the bottle, contemplating another drink.
“Maybe so. Thanks, Judge.”
“What’s your number at the Northern Lights?” she asked.
He gave it to her, hung up, and started to pour.
Ethan Griffin got out of the shower, dried off his thick, black hair, wrapped a towel around his love handles, and planted himself on the edge of the bed. Hannah was sitting up, the newspaper on her lap. She was not reading.