A Wicked Snow

charges.

The star witness in both circumstances was Claire Logan’s daughter, a girl with the budding breasts dressed in a brand-new Gunne Sax dress.

They ordered big breakfasts, not because they were particularly hungry, but to shut up the waitress who persisted on recounting every special the establishment offered. Toast and coffee for the adults, cereal for Hannah, would have sufficed. Hannah put down her fork. Her eggs stared at her with unblinking yolks and weepy, clear edges.

“I’m sorry to put you through this,” Bauer said.

“We all are,” Aunt Leanna said. She reached over and patted Hannah’s hand, but it brought no real response.

“Can I go back to the room and wait there?” Hannah asked, pushing back from the table.

“No,” Bauer said, “you’ll have to wait with the bailiff in a special witness room they’ve put together for you.”

“Can Aunt Leanna come?”

“Sure, she can. Since she’s not a witness and she’s your guardian.”

Bauer searched his pants pocket for his money clip, left money on the table, and picked up the receipt. When he looked up, everything had changed. Hannah started to shake and cry. Leanna reached her arms around her niece and held her as they walked passed the cashier. She held tight.

Hold on and the hurt will move from you to me, my love, she thought.

She ushered the girl off to the side of the elevator near a shimmering grouping of potted dracaenas.

“It’ll be okay, honey,” she said softly.

Hannah buried her face into the soft folds of her aunt’s shoulder. Bauer looked on awkwardly. He reached over and touched Hannah’s hand. It would be all right, he said once more.

“Just tell them what you know,” he said. “No one is going to hurt you. You’re gonna be fine.”

Though he clearly meant well, his words fell flat. Hannah kept her face pressed into the fabric of her aunt’s new dress. Tears left wet marks on the white of the dress collar.

“I’m not afraid of testifying …I am ready for that, I am. I’m just wondering if what they are saying is true.” Her eyes had welled up once more. Pools of tears crested against her lower lashes.

“What is that, dear?” Aunt Leanna said. “Tell me.”

“Maybe Mom might come.”

Leanna gave her niece another hug. “Not likely. You have no reason to worry about her.” Leanna and Bauer had read the same reports in some of the fringe media that cruelly and outlandishly suggested Claire Logan would return to Spruce County.

From behind Hannah’s back, Leanna shot Bauer a harsh look.

“It’ll be all right,” she said once more. “I don’t think Claire will be here. Don’t pay attention to anything you hear or see in the papers or on television. You know better than that.” She sat Hannah in a chair and motioned to the special agent to follow her to the other side of the room.

“What’s with the cold stare?” he asked.

Leanna kept her voice low. “Honestly, Mr. Bauer, don’t you get it? She wants to see Claire. She loves her still. She’s still a girl and she doesn’t know how deep her mom was in this whole nightmare. You have your theories. I have mine. I don’t know just how bad my sister was, but I do believe she’s responsible for what happened out at her place. She had to be. But to that little girl, she’s a mother who’s missing.”

“Or dead.”

“I doubt that with my heart and soul. She’d never let anyone get the best of her.”

“So you’ve said.”

“Yes, I have. I can think she’s a bitch, a killer, and a child abuser. I can think she’s about the worse thing God ever put on this earth …I can think she’s the kind of mistake that only the devil can spawn. But really, none of that matters. Not to Hannah. To Hannah, Claire is only one thing, neither good nor bad.”

“And that is?”

“Her mother.”

Bauer nodded. He knew Leanna was right. Just then, Hannah emerged from the restroom, her eyes red, but her face brave and full of resolve. It was obvious that she had splashed water on her face; damp tendrils of her hair clung to her forehead. She had pulled herself to- gether. She was going to get through this. She even managed a smile.

“Let’s go to the waiting room,” she said.

By the end of the morning, Hannah Logan had told her story. It was the only time she’d ever do so publicly.

Hours away in Portland, a half-dozen field agents drank artificially sweetened, boiled coffee and passed around a sheet of paper. They smoked and laughed and talked about the trial as though it was a Trail Blazer’s basketball game. The little scrap of paper was a “T” chart. On one side was the word “Fry,” on the other, “Cry.” The words were a younger agent’s idea of clever. “Frying” was never an option in the Wheaton case. Not at that time, anyway. Agents indicated with their initials what they thought the girl would do. If she wept and appeared indecisive, Marcus Wheaton would get off. If she held firm, he’d fry.

Or at least be sent to prison.

While the men in Portland were betting on the outcome of a trial in which they had no real involvement, Wheaton’s defense attorney was walking the tightrope between doing a good job for his client and beating up a little girl. Hannah Logan’s statements to the police had troubled Travis Brinker. Not for what she had disclosed to investigators, but for what she hadn’t. At no point in her dealings with the police had she indisputably pointed the complete blame of the fire on the handyman.

Brinker asked Wheaton to go through Hannah’s statements one more time. Was there anything, he posed, that could be disputed?

“Gently disregarded,” Brinker reminded his doughy client. “This is a bit dicey, you know. After all, her mother is missing, her brothers are dead, and she is basically an orphan.”

“You have reminded me about that already,” the prisoner said.

“And I will continue to do so. She is not the enemy, Marcus. She is their ammunition. If she can paint you in some degrees of sympathy, it will go a long way toward absolving you of some of the more sinister aspects of this particular crime.”

“You said it again.”

“What’s that?”

“The phrase. That annoying phrase… this particular crime.”

“So I did. Sorry. Now, take a look at her statement to Bauer. Let’s see if anything is a bit more clear.”

“…I liked Mr. Wheaton. We all did. We trusted him.”

Both men scanned the document.

“…that night I went to the wreath shed after dinner and Mr. Wheaton was there working on something. “We talked for a while. I put the ribbons back in the storage cupboard and went back inside the house.”

The pages flipped at the same time. Both looked up, made eye contact, and went back to their reading:

“Yes, I did see a kerosene can in the shed. I even asked about it.”

“She never asked about that,” he said.

Brinker underlined the statement. “Never,” he wrote.

“I saw my mom kissing Mr. Wheaton one time. It was last year around Halloween, I think.”

“Halloween? Are you sure?”

“I know it was Halloween,” she said, “Because we’d be getting ready for Christmas season. Decorations had to be put up. Halloween was always the beginning of our busy time.”