As the reporter interjected little pieces of the story, the number of the dead, the missing money, and the fact that what was purported to be Claire’s body had been destroyed, the deputy hurried back into the room.
“Got Chief Reid on the line.” The deputy’s eyes bulged. “Says he’s sorry. And sounds like he means it.”
Bauer watched as Sheriff Bob Howe let the police chief of Salem have it with both barrels. His Andy Griffith demeanor vanished in an instant, and for a split second it looked as if he were going to tear the roof off the jail. But Bauer thought it was justified—every word Sheriff Howe uttered Bauer could have easily echoed.
“We’ve got a major investigation here, Reid. I know sure as hell you’ve been reading the papers and watching television news. We’ve got bodies stacked up in our gymnasium, for crying out loud. And you guys do this without so much as a phone call? What the hell are you doing… grabbing a bit of glory for yourselves?!”
After half a minute’s tirade, complete with spittle foaming the corners of his mouth, the sheriff grew quiet and appeared to listen to Reid. Another minute passed and he ended the dialogue. “Talk to you later,” he said. His tone was congenial, without being apologetic. His ears were no longer red.
“It wasn’t Claire Logan the woman saw doing her laundry. It was a local gal with the friends to prove it. The alias wasn’t an alias, after all. She left her goddamn wallet at home. That idiot from Channel Six pushed a story out there when she already knew better.”
“Not the first time that’s happened,” Bauer muttered. Despite allowing the woman’s body from under the piano to be cremated, he liked Sheriff Howe.
Later, a ticket taker reported seeing Claire Logan at a bus station in Portland; a jealous woman reported her husband’s mistress was Claire; and a woman from Rock Point was sure she saw Claire at the Fred Meyer on Colfax Avenue. If the woman from Rock Point got away with murder, she didn’t go unnoticed. At least it seemed that way.
Was she dead or not? Had she engineered the most astonishing disappearance in criminal history? The FBI broke tradition, and for the first time since Clyde Barrow’s love and partner in crime, Bonnie Parker, and a San Francisco antiwar protester/fire bomber named Colleen Deming, a woman’s name was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List.
Della Holm, the Rock Point postmistress, hung the poster all over the tiny post office.
“Local girl makes good,” she said to customers.
Chapter Nineteen
A woman who appeared to be at least fifty, certainly old enough to know that her bird legs and paunchy tummy didn’t qualify her to wear the short skirt she had on, approached the front desk of the Whispering Pines Motel. Never mind that the ensemble was ludicrous for Oregon in the winter (and probably, given the conservative nature of that part of the state, wrong in any season). She lugged a purse the size of an overnight bag. She knew who she was looking for; she’d seen the fellow on the news the night before. The young FBI agent from Portland was standing there checking his messages. She’d come in person to deliver hers.
“Mr. Bauer?” she asked.
Bauer felt a chill down his spine as he turned around to face Marcus Wheaton’s mother, Liz. Her voice had a husky, steeped in bourbon, quality. He, too, had heard her on the news the night before.
“Liz Wheaton,” she said, extending her hand. “I got the message that you wanted to see me about my son. So here I am. And you know what I want to tell you?” She steamrolled ahead. “I want to tell you what you need to know to get this whole damn thing over with.”
Bauer shook her hand. It was as cold as a crab claw. “Hello, Mrs. Wheaton,” he said, “I’m glad to see you. Is this a good time to talk?”
The motel manager looked on. His eyes bulged. “I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. Actually,” she added, “it is not a good time. But here I am. I am a mother and that’s why I’m here. Mr. Bauer, my son might be a lot of things—fat, stupid, lazy, ugly.
“I see,” Bauer said. “Let’s sit down.” He motioned to a corner by the pop machine and the day-old Danishes left over from the free continental breakfast.
“Let’s not and just say we did.” Her voice was harder-edged in person than on TV when she was whining about her son being railroaded. “I want you to know that Marcus is a good boy, a decent young man. If he were killing those men and had killed those two little boys, I’d have known about it. I am his mother, for Christ’s sake. I know my son! He could never hide anything like that from me.”
The manager pretended to read the day’s paper while he listened to every word. Bauer longed for a private room with a stenographer and a yellow pad.
“Mrs. Wheaton,” Bauer said, “supposing you tell me what your son had to do with the fire and the murders. He was there, you know.”
“Of course he was there.” Her voice was rising and her pumps were digging into the Berber carpet like cat claws. “He worked for that bitch-on-wheels, Claire Logan. And like I told you, he was stupid. He was in love with her. Get it? She was the woman of his dreams. Don’t ask me why. Don’t even try to explain it. I told him over and over that she was just using him. ‘Go to town and get this! Harvest twenty-five more trees before lunch. Clean the goat barn!’ She had him on a string ten feet long!”
“I see. He was in love with her?”
Mrs. Wheaton set her suitcase-size handbag on a chair and stooped to fish through it for a lipstick. Sample- size containers of all kinds spilled out. She scooped them up, grabbed the shade she wanted, and started applying it to her thin lips, going over the edge to make them fuller. All the while talking.
“Mesmerized is more like it. Claire Logan mesmerized him. And for what? She’s knocking off all these old guys for their money, life insurance, I bet, and what is he getting? Nothing. He’s getting screwed. She screwed him big time. She left my boy and flew the coop.”
“How do you know that? I mean how do you know she’s not dead?”
“Listen, I know. I know because I’ve met Claire a time or two. Been out to the place. Met the kids. Poor Erik and Danny. I feel bad about the kids, I really do. I have a soft spot in my heart for kids,” she said.
Liz Wheaton hoisted her purse from the chair seat. “Because she’s as cold as a witch’s tit in a brass bra. She’s like some reptile. All Claire cares about is money. She’d do anything for money.
With that she turned around and walked out the door.
Three doors down from the mortuary was the main local branch of the Oregon State Bank. A phone call made by Bauer that afternoon had secured an appoint- ment with Darwin Graves, the bank manager. Graves was a pleasant fellow with a moon face speckled with acne scars. He smelled of Clearasil and Head & Shoulders shampoo. He wore a brown knit tie and a plaid shirt, rolled up to the elbows.
“I can’t give you any records,” Graves said, ushering Bauer into his office.
Bauer was nonplussed. It was part of the game. “I understand,” he said. “I’ll get a subpoena here tomorrow.”
“All I can do is confirm whether she had an account here or not.”
“That will be fine.”
Graves flipped through a manila folder. If it was meant to telegraph that he had more to say about Claire Logan and her accounts at Oregon State, then it worked like a charm.
“She doesn’t,” the bank manager said.
