A Wicked Snow

“My mother’s name still holds a lot of power,” Hannah muttered before she thanked Paine and said good- bye.

Hannah considered calling Ethan to let him know what the judge had said, but she knew he’d want her to “take the ball and run the rest of the way.” Ethan was the type to use a sports metaphor for nearly every occasion. Instead, she dialed the Portland field office of the FBI and asked for Special Agent Bauer. Her stomach twisted and she pressed her hand against her abdomen to stifle the pangs of anxiety. She pulled off an earring and pressed the phone against her ear. After a minute that ticked like an hour, a somewhat familiar voice got on the line. While Bauer’s voice had deepened with age, his manner was still compassionate. For an instant, Hannah let herself feel safe.

“Hannah, is it really you? Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes, Mr. Bauer. It’s me.” Hannah shifted in her office chair. “Once again, it’s me, a little angry and a little bewildered.” She kept her confident tone; at least she imagined that she kept it. So many thoughts were racing through her, it was very difficult. She didn’t want Bauer to think she was weak, not when he’d done so much to ensure that she’d be strong. And safe.

“It has been a long time,” he said. “You’re never outside of my thoughts. I hope you know that.”

“I try to forget, but if I succeeded, I’d forget the good that came of this. Most of that good came from you.”

Bauer didn’t know what to say. He’d been an FBI agent for more than twenty-two years and he’d never been touched so deeply.

They talked a bit more. She told him that she was a CSI, was married, and had a daughter. She had worked hard, despite a media machine hungry for every detail, to remain out of the spotlight. Her life was her own and she wasn’t about to be plucked from obscurity by someone playing games with her past.

“My husband’s a cop,” she said. “No shrink needs to tell me why, but that’s what he was when I fell in love with him.”

Bauer asked about the shoes, and Hannah described their condition, the grocery bag packaging, and how it came to be delivered to her. She also indicated she’d saved the packaging.

“In case you want to test it for DNA,” she said.

When Bauer dug for her thoughts on why the shoes had been sent to her, Hannah drew a blank. She couldn’t imagine what possessed someone to do such a thing, nor could she figure out how she could have been found in the first place. Her name had vanished from the pages of newspapers and magazines at least a dozen years ago.

“I’ve made my life a disappearing act,” she said.

“Only one person’s done it better,” he said, an obvious reference to her mother. Hannah let the remark pass, knowing the two of them shared more than a history. They both believed that Claire Logan, the female boogie man, the woman whose name had been used by parents threatening their children when they didn’t take out the garbage or pull all the weeds from the garden, was alive. She was out there somewhere. Maybe she was frightened that one day she’d be discovered. Maybe not. Maybe she didn’t give a flying fuck about anyone, even now.

“Anything else but the package of shoes? Anything out of the ordinary happening down there?” Bauer asked.

“I’m not sure,” Hannah said, hesitating slightly. “I didn’t tell Judge Paine. I haven’t told anyone. Not even my husband. But I have received a number of hang-up calls over the past month. Maybe a half dozen or so. I started keeping a log in my date book.”

“Anything said? Anything to indicate any calls were associated with your mother’s case?”

Silence fell for a moment. “Only one got through. The receptionist gave me a message memo that a call came from my mother. It was out of the blue. Just like that. Your mother called. I didn’t say anything at the time because…” her voice went quiet once more. “Because,” she took in a breath, “I didn’t know how to explain why I was alarmed my mother had called. I thought, at first, that it was a mistake.”

“I see. What of the hang-ups? At the office? At home?”

“Both—which is the troubling part. Our home number is unlisted. When I tried to trace the call back by using the redial function, the operator said that the call was ‘out of area.’ There have been a few cases of my own, including one I’m working now, in which people weren’t happy with me. But those calls are local and are stopped easily.”

She was thinking of Joanne Garcia. Joanne had called four times with epithets and threats since the investigation into her son’s death and daughter’s abuse had begun. She had even promised to make sure that Hannah didn’t “dig up anyone else’s baby.” A visit from Ripp indicating that obstruction of justice charges could be filed against her had put the brakes on Garcia’s campaign for revenge.

“Hannah?” Bauer’s voice cut in. “You still there?”

Snapped back into the conversation, she apologized. She said she’d been distracted by someone outside her office.

“I’ll send an agent from the L.A. office to get the package,” he said.

“Fine. I’ll be here most of the day. But Mr. Bauer—”

“Jeff,” he cut in.

“Okay, though it sounds peculiar, Jeff, be discreet. Outside of Ethan no one knows I’m Claire Logan’s daughter. I intend to keep it that way. For good.”

“Understood,” he said, “but I think you should know something from this end. I heard from Marcus Wheaton not long ago.”

The name was a shockwave of its own, bringing back memories that Hannah held tightly within.

“Not that it is connected to the shoes,” Bauer said, “but I’m going to Cutter’s Landing on Friday to see Wheaton.”

There was a long silence. Bauer waited until Hannah spoke. “What does Marcus want?” Her tone was ice.

“I’m not sure. You know that Oregon can’t hold him much longer. His time is about up. His health isn’t great, and the state has no cause to keep him beyond his original sentencing—no matter what you’ve read.”

“Oh,” Hannah lied, “I’d forgotten that it was coming up. I haven’t thought about Marcus for a long time.”

It was another deceit. It was the kind of lie she had told herself. She thought about Marcus all the time, but she felt comfort in her thoughts. He was in prison. She knew where he was. He’d tried to contact her after the trial. His mother phoned her Aunt Leanna once in Misery Bay on Oregon’s southern coast, urging her to bring Hannah to the prison to see the man who’d once loved her mother. Leanna refused.

“How often do you think about her?” Bauer asked, meaning Hannah’s mother, of course. There was no other her.

“The only time she doesn’t come to mind is when I’m deep into my work,” Hannah said, her voice catching a little. “It sounds pathetic, I’m sure, but I’m always a little too grateful for a really heinous case.”

“It takes something real ugly to chase it from your mind,” Bauer said. He felt sorry for her. “There’s a lot to chase.”

“You know,” she said, her hands trembling, “the peculiar thing is that I’ve read Twenty in a Row so often that sometimes I’m not sure what I remember and what others wrote. Sometimes I think some memories that I hold to be true are just planted.”

Bauer had a copy of the book on his bookcase. He instinctively glanced in its direction at its mention, its worn binding showing its age. “Twenty,” as aficionados of the case called it, was the first book on the Logan case and considered by most to be the best.

“One day,” Bauer said before they said their goodbyes, “we’ll know what really happened.”

“Maybe so,” Hannah said, wishing she didn’t care anymore. “I hope so.”

The hours flew by, though later, Hannah would plead with Ethan that she didn’t even know what had preoccupied her to such a degree. It was not like her. Not at all. She was, she knew, a mother before anything else. A little after five, Hannah looked at her watch and jumped from her chair. In that instant she remembered how she had promised Ethan, who was busy with an inane ethics meeting, that she’d pick up Amber. How could she be late? She raced toward the after-school care offices, but by the time she arrived, they were closed. A janitor who spoke no English, at least that he admitted to, shrugged when she mentioned her daughter’s