A Wicked Snow

talked a while longer about her family life with Ethan and Amber. Bauer was a good listener, and in a way, Hannah felt as though he needed to hear every bit of what had happened to her over the years. She knew his own personal life had been a disaster—and he had grown up with everything going for him. Loving family, an excellent education, good job, great personality, but all of that added up to nothing. No wife, nor any children.

Hannah, who had lived under the insidious shadow of a murderous mother, seemingly inexplicably, had achieved everything.

In a stream of consciousness rambling that only served to heighten her own nervousness, Hannah told Bauer about her life as a crime scene investigator and her love for gardening. She talked about the drive up from California and how she hadn’t eaten anything all day. She’d skipped the free pastry at the motel in Janesville. And as she talked, so rapid and seemingly without the need for air, only one disclosure surprised the FBI agent.

“I don’t mention this to anyone, of course,” Hannah said, “but Ethan and I don’t use a real tree at Christmas- time.” She stopped and studied Bauer’s handsome face. “It appears to be the only residual aspect of what happened that remains with me to this day. The weirdest part is that I love trees. I love the woods. But I can’t have a fir or pine in the house.”

“Few could blame you for that,” Bauer said, gently interjecting a word into the nearly one-sided conversation. “A lot of us never thought about Christmas in the same way after that day.”

Hannah sipped her water. “We didn’t even have a tree at all until Amber was three,” she said. “Some things you have to do for your children.”

“I wouldn’t know about that, but I can imagine. You know, I guess, that I never had children.”

She nodded. “So I gathered.”

And so the conversation went, catching up, touching on the points of two lives that had once intersected, and were now reunited. After a while—after Madsen brought in coffee and a plate of cookies piled like a pyramid— they turned their talk to the reason she had come to Cutter’s Landing from Santa Louisa, and he from Portland.

“Warden’s wife made them.” Madsen indicated the chocolate chip cookies. “Instead of tollhouse, she calls them ‘jailhouse’ cookies.” He rolled his eyes before turning to leave.

“They look delicious,” Hannah said. “Tell her thank you. We never knew prison could be so—”

“Civilized,” Bauer broke in.

“Hospitable,” Hannah corrected.

Madsen nodded without turning around. He called over his shoulder as the door shut behind him. “About half an hour and I can take you back to see Wheaton. Warden said so.”

“He looks terrible,” Hannah said of Wheaton after Madsen disappeared. “I’d seen him on that TV interview a few years back, and he wasn’t nearly so heavy.”

The show to which she was referring was a prime-time special hosted by one of the morning news anchors, a blonde with a clipped nose and reshaped brows. The show breathlessly promised an inside look at America’s most infamous criminals. The Wheaton interview had been one of the hyped bits. It was broadcast seven or eight years ago. The Wheaton interview was a complete joke. All he talked about was some acrylic paintings he was creating on small oval-shaped stones. Each was the image of a curled-up sleeping cat.

“I saw that,” Bauer said. “The last few years haven’t been so terrific for Wheaton, that’s for sure.” He was referring to the inmate’s hideous girth and the clear tubing that ran from his oxygen tank to his nose, a plastic lifeline that kept him somewhat mobile.

“He knows where she is,” she said. “I know it. You know it. And he knows we are all members of the club that still gives a whit. The information is ours for the taking,” she said, reaching for a second cookie, then stopping herself as her gut did another somersault.

“The fact of the matter is, Hannah, that Wheaton is on his last legs and he’s looking to jerk a few chains before he goes. I’ve seen this before. ‘Come on gather near my deathbed and I’ll tell you who took the money and where they put it.’ Except it never comes. Nothing ever comes. All they want is someone to talk to because their family flushed them down the toilet.”

Hannah didn’t feel that way.

“He’s going to talk,” she said. “He has to.”

Madsen returned to the dining room. By now his visits to the room with food, coffee, cookies, and a half smile made him seem more a waiter than a prison employee. He told the pair that Wheaton had been returned to the visiting cell and they were free to see him again.

“If you want to finish your coffee, I’ll tell him it’ll be a while.” Madsen actually smiled. “Joking, of course.”

Marcus Wheaton sat behind the scarred wooden table, his hands folded over his ample, nearly breast-like chest, and his battered oxygen tank at the ready.

“How was the salmon?” he asked as Bauer and Hannah entered the room.

Hannah didn’t want to know how he knew the menu. She didn’t want to think he might have had a hand in making the meal. She was already queasy.

“Fine,” she said.

Wheaton looked surprised. “Looked a bit dry to me,” he said.

“We’re not here to talk about prison cuisine,” Bauer said, a little annoyed. “We came to talk about Claire.”

“I’m sure,” Wheaton shot back, fixing his good eye completely on Bauer. “But I’ve invited you here and I’ll tell you what I want you to know. Claire”—he stopped and looked deep into Hannah’s eyes—“your mother is only part of it.”

Hannah felt a wave of nausea and bolstered herself by pressing her knees under the table, with such force she nearly levitated it.

“Fine. Start talking, Wheaton,” Bauer instructed. “Or we’ll leave.”

Wheaton’s face bubbled with mock indignation. “Then go.”

Hannah wanted no part of leaving, not then, so she spoke up. “We’re not going anywhere, Marcus,” she said. “You want to tell us something, so please do.”

Wheaton leaned back in what Hannah noticed for the first time was an office chair reinforced with steel. He seemed satisfied that he had their rapt attention. “First things first,” the big man said. “I don’t really care if you believe me or not. I’m going to die soon anyway,” he said, regarding his oxygen tank. “I’ve wished my own death for twenty fucking years here, and now, the wish is about to come true. A little late, though. I’d have rather died inside. Prayed for it. But no such luck. I’m just alive enough to be booted out of here to make my mother’s life miserable. Sweet, isn’t it?”

No one said anything. The big Buddha was talking like there was no tomorrow.

“I did not kill any of those men. I did not kill your brothers.” He fixed his eye on Hannah. She pressed her hands into her abdomen to quell the uneasiness. “You know this, don’t you, Hannah?”

“I don’t know what I know. I was a child then.”

Bauer instinctively reached over to her, but she refused his gesture. Whatever comfort Hannah needed, she’d find it within herself. Leanna had taught her that. When you have no one, you find you need no one.

“And, though this seems to mean very little to anyone out there, I did not murder the girl, the one the media calls ‘Number 20.’” His tone was indignant, as if he had nothing to do with any aspect of the crime. “It sickens me that she’s nothing more than a number. It has for a long time. Long as I’ve acknowledged that she’s got a name. She was a sweet kid named Serena. I don’t recall her last name.”

“Hjermstad. Serena Hjermstad was her name,” Bauer said. His mind flashed to his visit with Peggy Hjermstad not long after the murders were discovered and how she had wanted to believe that her daughter had been killed at Icicle Creek Farm. Killed anywhere. Anything to stop the cruel hope that looped inside her that her daughter was out there. The woman’s peacock earrings came to his mind. And so did the drawn-to-the-point-of-breaking faces that had belonged to the other dozen or so mothers who had made what must have been the most wrenching drive of their lives—to the Portland offices of the FBI. All sought the same thing: to find closure to the mysteries of their own daughters’ disappearances.

“I don’t know any Serena Hjermstad.” Hannah searched her memory. “I don’t know her.”

Wheaton disagreed. “But you do. You called her by another name, Didi, I believe.”