A Wicked Snow

“Her brothers’ shoes,” she said. “Exhibit Number 25.”

Bauer tilted his head toward the phone and held his chin with his free hand. He sank into his chair like a melted chocolate. “Jesus,” he said, “why would anyone want to do something like that?”

“Because people are basically fuckheads,” Paine answered. The coarseness of her language seemed appropriate; though he’d never heard a woman, a judge of all people, say the term fuckhead.

“Speaking of which,” Bauer said, “Marcus Wheaton’s getting out of prison soon.”

Paine let out a loud sigh. “So I heard. I doubt it, but anything’s possible these days.”

“I got a note from him. Says he’s willing to talk. He wants to tell us what we’ve always wanted to know. Or so he says.”

Paine lit a cigarette. Bauer could hear her suck the smoke deep into her lungs.

“He’s had plenty of time to think of a story. I wouldn’t bank on him saying much, other than he loved Claire and blah, blah, blah… she done him wrong, like some crying-in-your-beer country song.”

“I guess so,” Bauer said. “But I’m going anyhow. I still like Willie Nelson. By the way, did Hannah say if there was a note?”

“She didn’t. And I didn’t ask. Should have, I know. I was just so startled to hear from her and so angry that someone would dredge up the past and shove it on her doorstep in such a cruel, outlandish way.”

“Like a fuckhead,” he said.

“You got that right.”

Paine declined Bauer’s request for Hannah’s contact information.

“She’s started a new life and she can contact you if she wants to,” she said. “I know that you can find her if you wanted, anyway. But don’t. Stay away from your databases. Let her come to you.”

The house on Loma Linda should have been quiet at that hour. It should have been still as the warm summer night. At 2 a.m., the sprinklers hissed outside in the backyard, kicked on by a timer that ensured the Korean grass would never scorch to brown. Amber’s guppy tank sent a pool of light across the hall. Aunt Leanna’s Seth Thomas ticked the hours like a bomb. Ethan snored softly, oblivious to Hannah’s unhinged torment. She pressed her face against a pillow, trying to suppress the recollections that were coming after her in a nightmare that had been absent for years. It was no use. She shivered. It was cold. Even awake, she could still see the nightmare. The woman in the coveralls was there. The woman—a nearly gauzy figure, though Hannah knew it was her mother— wore coveralls that were not blue. They were wine colored, she had long thought as the ephemeral memory took shape. She bent closer to the figure she saw in her mind’s eye. The fabric was blue, mottled with splashes of red, a color that her brain had blurred and processed and whirled into a reddish hue. Hannah knew why it was that color and the realization nearly stopped her heart. As if she could control the memory, she focused on the vest. It had been slashed somehow and was leaking bits of white fluff, floating above her mother’s head, mixing with a light snowfall.

A voice called out. It was a harsh, but controlled whisper. It came from the faceless woman in the cover- alls.

“Now that you’re here, Hannah, you might as well be helpful. Get a shovel.”

The girl of Hannah’s memory did as she had been taught. She obeyed the strident command without hesitation. Mechanically, she spun around, ran across the snow, and returned from the potting barn. Her fingers froze around the staff of a shovel. She stepped closer to her mother, noticing for the first time that they were standing in front of an open trench.

“Are you going to help me? Start filling it in.”

In her jagged memory, Hannah tried to see what was in the trench, dirt falling from the shovel onto something in the dark of a deep hole. Something gleamed. As dirt fell, the movement sent light to brass buttons. But it was more than that. The figure in the hole stirred slightly.

The man in the hole was still alive, maybe barely so. But his chest heaved. Hannah could not see his face. Her mother had already covered it in a white powder.

“Hurry up,” she said, her tone decidedly impatient. Not unnerved at what they were doing. Just annoyed that Hannah wasn’t doing what needed to be done.

“I have a mess to clean up tonight and three pies to bake in the morning.”

The red of blood oozed and bloomed against the snow.

Hannah broke down and cried into her pillow. She had helped her mother. She had done so without question. But that wasn’t the worst of it. And deep down, she was sure that God would never forgive her for what she had done.

Hannah sat up with a start. The nightmare was bad enough, but it wasn’t what woke her. A pair of headlights glowed from behind the blinds, splintering the light like a moonlit picket fence. She could barely breathe. Just as she was about to rouse Ethan, the lights dimmed slightly as the driver pressed the accelerator and drove off into the California night.

Chapter Eight

From a grimy window that needed a dousing of sudsy water and a squeegee, Hannah watched the sun shine against the backlit trees on the eastern side of the parking lot. Had the car she’d seen outside her window been a terrible dream? Had she only heard what her mind wanted to tease her with? Her eyes were slightly puffy and underscored by the dark circles of a sleepless night. She’d looked better; much better, and she knew it. She could hear a puffed-up, self-satisfied Ted Ripperton in the hallway talking about the Garcia case and how he was going to “nail that bitch for killing her son.” She shut her door and went to her desk. In front of her were photographs of tragedy and love. Pictures of Enrique Garcia taken at the autopsy were blurry Polaroids of the unspeakable tragedy of abuse and possible murder of a child; framed snapshots of Ethan and Amber occupied another corner. Her husband and daughter smiled in a way she doubted Enrique or his sister, Mimi, could have ever experienced— carefree, worry-free. Her husband and daughter wore smiles that indicated they had been enveloped in uncompromising love.

At a few minutes before 10 a.m., Hannah answered Paine’s call from Spruce County.

“Oh,” was all she could manage when the former prosecutor confirmed that the shoes more than likely were genuine.

“I’m sorry,” Judge Paine said. “And I’m worried.”

“It’s some prank, isn’t it?” Hannah asked.

The judge didn’t know. “It well could be, but I think it would be foolish to treat it as such. Hannah,” she said haltingly, “I contacted Jeff Bauer. I didn’t tell him where you are. But I told him I’d tell you where he is.”

“Portland,” Hannah said.

“Why, yes. How did you know?”

“I read it somewhere,” Hannah said. She didn’t want to say that she’d tracked Bauer’s career for years. She’d never let go of him because he’d done so much for her. “How is he?” she asked.

“Fine, I suppose,” Paine said. “He’s concerned. He wants to help. I think you should call him. Here’s the number.”

Hannah pretended to take it down; on the “B” page of her address book, where she’d written it years ago. Just in case. Paine promised to do a little more digging at Spruce County, but she was unsure how much she could really find out.

“It’s been a while since I’ve busted heads over there. You don’t know it when you’re building them, but reputations fade, my dear,” she said somewhat ruefully. “My name used to invoke the fear of God, or at least a few hours in the cooler for contempt. Now, I can’t even get the cleaning lady to do my refrigerator once a week.”