A Wicked Snow

she’d seemed a figment, a bedtime story, and a ghost story.

Most who knew Hannah assumed that she’d been orphaned as a little girl, which was only partially true. Her father had indeed died when she was in grade school. Her mother? That was the subject of great debate. Hannah wasn’t quite sure.

Not an hour later, Hannah’s phone rang. It was Judge Paine, and she sounded slightly unhinged.

“Hannah,” she said, “I’m terribly sorry. This is very, very bad. I truly am at a loss for what has happened.”

“Just what has happened?”

Paine chose her words carefully. “It turns out the evidence vault has indeed been compromised. Can you imagine that? It appears that some things are, in fact, missing.” She sighed heavily, and air escaped her lungs like a balloon stuck with a railroad spike. “I really don’t know what to say. This is very upsetting.”

“What else is missing? And,” Hannah said, before allowing a response, “who could have done this?”

Judge Paine admitted—hated to admit—she had no idea. No one she spoke to had a clue. The evidence review log, volume no. 4, was still in pristine condition. The Logan file hadn’t been looked at for more than eighteen months when a criminology student from the University of Oregon came to review it for a term paper. The retired judge was insistent that the college student couldn’t have taken the shoes.

“This girl was very nice. Very smart. She interviewed me and several other ‘old timers’—even sent me a copy of the paper she wrote. Because of the sensitivity…” the judge continued, searching for words and drawing on a cigarette, “the magnitude of your mother’s case, I think you should get the authorities involved. At least talk to somebody.”

When she hung up, Hannah did so knowing that there was only one person to call, an FBI agent named Jeff Bauer.

Chapter Seven

Jeff Bauer used to think about the Claire Logan case every day. Every night, too. It was like a leaky faucet dripping incessantly in the night down some hallway laid out with razor blades and broken glass; he could do nothing but just keep coming after the irritating and omnipresent noise. Got to shut it off. Thoughts of the woman simply couldn’t be extricated from his mind. They became a part of his every routine, from shaving in the morning (the white peaks of Gillette shaving foam sometimes reminded him of the snow banks) to eating an English muffin for breakfast (he’d had one that first morning on the case), it had always been there. For a time, whatever he did, wherever he went, Claire Logan was a kind of permanent memory tattoo. For a time, he marked his success on how many days had elapsed that he hadn’t thought of her. After ten years, his personal best for staving off thoughts of Logan was a mere nine days. After nearly twenty years, a month or two would pass before she came to mind. The relationship (some thought “obsession” was a more accurate description) with a woman whom he’d never met had cost him, too. Though he disputed it, his fixation on the Logan case had helped ruin two marriages.

Some two-plus decades after Claire Logan became a part of his life, Special Agent Bauer was back in the Portland field office of the FBI following a five-year stint in Anchorage, Alaska. In Anchorage, the handsome six- footer with a rangy physique and ice-blue eyes had been the case agent in charge of a sting operation that resulted in the arrest of forty-four men and women who had smuggled stolen artwork and other antiquities from Russia to the United States. Most of the arrested were baggage handlers and ticket agents, though two had been top pilots with a major U.S. airline. It was a great assignment—the second best, he told reporters when he made the rounds, of his career. He threw himself into it with utter devotion. He earned a commendation from the Justice Department and a divorce petition from his second wife.

Two events had come together within a week of each other that brought forth a torrent of memories. The first was a brief letter and a notice sent by officials at the Oregon Bureau of Prisons and Rehabilitation Facilities and the state’s star prisoner. The second was a phone call.

The notice was for a parole hearing for Marcus Wheaton, the sole individual convicted in the Logan tragedy. The hearing would be a formality and would end with the former handyman’s release. He’d earned more good time than any man in the history of the state, but because of his crime—and its notoriety—he’d been passed by a dozen times. State law would not permit incarceration a single day beyond his twenty-year sentence.

Bauer wouldn’t have bothered much with the notice if a message from Wheaton himself hadn’t accompanied it.

Dear Mr. Bauer:

Soon the state will set me free. My lawyer tells me there is no possibility that I can be held beyond my sentence, despite the debate raging in Salem. I plan on disappearing and living the rest of my days away from the spectacle that has become my existence here in prison. Before I can do that, I need to exorcise the ghosts of the past. Maybe you do, too. I know things. I do.

In our Savior’s arms,

Marcus James Wheaton

The debate to which Wheaton had referred was a hastily crafted resolution that a legislator from southern Oregon had pushed before colleagues and media at the state capitol earlier in the year. The representative was a known publicity seeker, a woman who piously harangued against violent crime and was swept into office three terms prior as “a mom who cares.” Fading into the crowd of lawmakers was not to her liking and every once in a while she climbed back onto her soap-box. She had sought the spotlight by attempting to bar Wheaton from release by applying present-day sentencing standards for his crime. No one thought it would go anywhere, and in the end, it didn’t. Justice, no matter how unfairly administered, cannot easily be rewritten.

At five minutes past nine, Bauer set down his coffee and reached to stop the ringing of the phone on his desk.

“Bauer here,” he said.

“Special Agent Jeff Bauer?” The husky voice of a woman was somewhat familiar.

“You’re talking to him,” he said.

“I wasn’t sure I’d be able to reach you so early. This goes under the heading of what I guess we used to call a blast from the past, Agent Bauer. This is Veronica Paine. We need to talk.”

“Judge Paine?” He asked, though he knew there could be only one—the one he’d once called “Veronica Paine-in-the-ass.”

“Retired, thankfully,” she answered, letting a touch of levity break the tenseness of her voice. They extended a few pleasantries, though no mention was made of the investigation and trial that had given them their connection for life. Paine told the federal cop that she’d followed his career and congratulated him on the sting in Alaska. He returned a similar favor by telling her how happy he had been when she’d been appointed to the bench.

Paine told Bauer that her husband had died following an afternoon of pruning the apple trees they’d espaliered along a fence. They had been blessed with two daughters, both of whom were living in southern California. Bauer shared nothing of a personal nature. He didn’t really have anything to say. His marriages had gone belly-up and neither of his wives had given him any children. At divorce time, buddies at the Bureau had told him he was lucky to be without the burden of child support payments. He went along with their congratulations, but deep down, he was as sorry as a man could be.

Then it was the judge’s turn once more. She told him of the call from Hannah Griffin.

“Hannah?” he asked. “Our Hannah?”

“Yes,” she said, “Claire Logan’s daughter. Our Hannah.”

She went on to tell him Hannah had been the recipient of some evidence that had been stolen from the Spruce County property vault.