A Wicked Snow

tombstone. When it finally fell and Amber ran to her, Amber held her hand out as if she were presenting the gift of all gifts. Most children think so. Most mothers agree.

But not Hannah Griffin.

“Those go under the pillow, honey. Better do it fast. You never know when the Tooth Fairy will show up.”

“Sure I do. She comes at night. Don’t you want to see my tooth?” Amber kept her hand outstretched.

“No, not now. You know how I feel. It will never be more beautiful than when it was in your mouth. You know, Mommy loved it most when it was part of your smile.”

Amber smiled proudly, the empty space in her grin a black trap door.

“Go put it under your pillow, baby.”

And so she did.

Ethan thought that for someone who had worked with the grisliest of evidence, had talked to the vilest of criminals, and had examined the most intimate areas of the human body with a microscope, a kid’s tooth wouldn’t or couldn’t repulse.

“I can’t play the Tooth Fairy,” she said flatly. “Not now, not ever. And you know that. I have a thing about it. A phobia for which there’s no name.”

“Odontophobia,” Ethan shot back, his dark brown eyes sparkling with the satisfaction of coming up with the perfect word. He smiled. He had trumped his wife, and that always felt good.

Hannah knew what he was doing and suppressed a smile.

“That’s the fear of teeth. I’m just disgusted by teeth that have been excised from the human body.”

“So you’ve said, but Jesus. It’s just a tooth.”

“Yeah, but they creep me out.”

“Just a tooth. Don’t you want to fetch it from under her pillow and leave a dollar tonight?”

Hannah refused. “I can’t explain it. But nothing makes my stomach turn more than the idea—not even the sight of one—but the idea of a little piece of human enamel with a tail of bloody pulp.”

“Just a little baby tooth.”

“Just a no. You do it.”

Veronica Paine was sixty-seven and retired from a long career on the bench, serving her last four years as a Supreme Court Justice in Salem, Oregon. She had expected to be carried out of the temple of justice on a stretcher as a very old lady, so consumed with being a part of the judiciary was she. But when breast cancer struck at age sixty-one and a radical mastectomy was the course of treatment, Paine decided that puttering around in her lilac and fern garden, and visiting with her seven grandchildren were too precious to miss. Besides, she told colleagues, she didn’t have a taste for the legal profession anymore.

“Too political,” she said. “I liked it better when I thought it was about right and wrong and not about how much money either side had.”

She was watching the Today show and working the New York Times crossword puzzle when her phone rang. It was just after 8 a.m.

“Mrs. Paine?” The caller’s tone was cautious. “Judge Paine?”

“Who’s calling?” she demanded. Her voice had a kind of harsh, gravelly timbre that was intimidating, especially to defense lawyers. Judge Paine was not tentative in her words; she never had to be. She commanded a conversation just as she had once held dominion in her courtroom before a small lump took away her breast and her career and, with its own twist of irony, gave her back her life.

“Judge…” Again hesitation came from the voice. “This is Hannah Griffin.”

Hannah knew her last name wouldn’t bring any particular recognition. How could it? Before the retired judge could respond with irritation or confusion, she jumped back in with, “I used to be Hannah Logan.”

There was a quiet gasp followed by silence, then a deep, husky-sounding breath.

“Is this a joke?” Paine asked.

“I wish. But this is very real.”

“Our Hannah Logan? Claire’s daughter?”

“Yes,” she said.

“I don’t believe it.”

“I wish I wasn’t, but I am.”

A flood of questions followed and Hannah informed her that she was a criminal investigator, married to a wonderful man—a police officer. She told her about her daughter, Amber, and even about the baby she had lost. She was glad she had years of background to share. She was grateful because each detail kept her from the purpose of the call. She talked about her life in California and how she had never returned to Rock Point or Spruce County.

“Never saw a reason to,” she said.

Judge Paine understood. She told Hannah she had hoped her life had turned out well.

“We all wished the best for you,” she said. “We’ve—I’ve—thought of you often. It has been what? Eighteen, nineteen years?”

“Twenty this December,” Hannah said. “We’re coming up on twenty.”

After a few more minutes of small talk about their lives, Rock Point, the fact that the younger woman had followed in the footsteps of the woman she had telephoned out of the blue that morning, Hannah explained she had something important to ask.

“What is it, dear?”

“I couldn’t think of anyone else to call,” Hannah said. “I need some help and I thought of you.” She explained about the package she had received and what was inside. Judge Paine was stunned into silence, then anger hit. The very idea of someone picking at a scar healed so long ago was such a cruel prank.

“What is wrong with this world these days?” she asked. “Why on earth do some people feel compelled to engage in this kind of nonsensical harassment?”

“I don’t know and that doesn’t concern me right now. Two things do. Who sent the shoes to me and how did they get them? They look like the ones you might have used in court. They look very genuine.”

Paine processed the information and remained resolute. “They can’t be. That evidence is in a vault. No one can get in there…we bought the vault because of your—your mother’s—case,” she said. “You know, souvenir hunters and other ghouls who think they can make some money by selling stuff to the tabloids or some Japanese collector of criminal memorabilia.”

“I guess,” Hannah said, realizing for the first time there could be someone out there collecting artifacts from her mother’s case. “They appear to be Erik’s and Danny’s,” Hannah said, referring to the shoes. “They have your identification number written inside—in one shoe of both pairs. State’s Exhibit Number 25.”

Paine hated being wrong, and it was a good thing that she seldom was. “I can’t imagine who would take something like that from the vault,” she said, feeling for a cigarette and her silver-plated lighter, etched with her name and LAWYER OF THE YEAR. She rolled the flint-striking gear against the callused edge of her right thumb. The flame came and she drew on a cigarette, talking all the while.

“This breach of security is very troubling,” she added.

“I’m concerned,” Hannah said, “not so much because the evidence vault was violated, but that someone could find me after all these years. I thought I’d faded off the radar screen for good.”

“I’ll go down to the courthouse myself if I have to. I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Hannah thanked the judge and gave her her office telephone number.

“Unfortunately, it isn’t a direct line,” she said. “Please don’t tell anyone we spoke. If you miss me, don’t leave a message, other than that you’ve called.”

It felt very strange, very unsettling, to hear Veronica Paine say her mother’s name. After all the notoriety, all the infamy, that had attached to her mother, the name Claire Logan seldom came from Hannah’s own lips. It was curious and she knew it. God knew that Claire Logan had been a Jeopardy answer and a Trivial Pursuit question more than a time or two. Yet it was peculiar to hear “Claire Logan” uttered by someone who actually knew her. Hannah had certainly heard her mother’s name mentioned countless times, but when others had spoken of her,