A Wicked Snow

Still stunned into silence by what Wheaton had told her, Hannah could not speak. She wanted to get the hell out of there. She was back in the waters of Misery Bay with a line of W’s rolling to her neckline. She was drowning.

“Okay,” she said. She needed the relief. She needed the break.

Wheaton did, too.

“Time for his meds, anyway,” Madsen said. “Make your call.”

Bauer reached over and this time Hannah took his hand. She was trembling. In a flash, the moment when everything changed had come back. Time stood still, and a million pieces of her shattered memory came to her. It all flooded back, a torrent of images. It was that Christmas Eve night in her bedroom—the beginning of the end.

Marcus Wheaton was nearly manic, which was unlike his lumbering, big-guy persona.

“We need to get you out of here, Hannah, now!”

“What’s happening? You’re scaring me.”

“You ought to be scared. I am. But I’m gonna get you out of here.”

She noticed the red metal can for the first time.

“What’s that?”

“Don’t ask. Just keep your mouth still. Let’s go.”

He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward the bedroom door, leaving a trail of what smelled like kerosene or gas behind.

“What are you doing?” Hannah asked.

“The same thing you’re about to do. What you’re being told to do.”

Wheaton swung open the door and tucked his head around the corner. When he moved to the side, the scene came into view. It was white. There was white sprayed everywhere.

“What?” she asked, barely able to get the word out.

He yanked on her hand and pulled her into the hall, spreading kerosene like holy water on the walls, soaked in white. It was tree flocking, the texture of fake snow.

“If you don’t come and come quietly, you’ll die. We’ll both die.”

He pulled her past her mother’s bedroom, past the boys’ room. The doors were shut. With each step more kerosene hit the walls, the floor as it splashed against the ghostly spray of white.

“Where are Erik and Danny?”

Wheaton faced her dead-on. His face was stone.

“You don’t want to know,” he said. “Let’s get you out of here.”

“Where’s Mom?”

“Say another word and we’ll both die.”

Wheaton led her down the stairs, past the Christmas tree, still lit and packed underneath with presents, but oddly and hastily sprayed with flocking. Hannah said nothing. She could barely breathe. Her feet were wet; her nightgown damp. Across the yard, to the potting shed; by then he was carrying her.

“Stay here,” he said.

She managed a nod.

What was he doing? Where is everyone?

Wheaton, looking over his shoulder, ran toward the front door, still open and flooding the front yard with light. He tossed a match or lighter into the doorway and an enormous flash shot across the yard. Near blinding in its brightness, explosive in its suddenness.

Hannah opened her mouth to scream, but nothing but the empty white of her warm breath emerged. Not a real sound.

Say a word and you will die, he had told her.

Across the yard, the house burned and shot smoke into the leaden sky. Snow fell. Hannah retreated to the corner of the shed.

Wheaton returned a minute later, puffing and agitated. His eyes wild and full of the fear, maybe even for the first time the realization of what he’d done.

“They are all gone,” he said. “Erik and Danny are gone. Your mother is gone. I didn’t want it this way, you know me. You know how I feel about the boys. I got them dressed, ready to go, ready to get out of here. But she wouldn’t have it. She wouldn’t allow any of it.”

Ribbons of tears streaked her face. Her fists clenched. It passed through her mind that she had to get past Marcus Wheaton, and that wasn’t happening.

“I want to get them.” Her voice was a whisper.

He held her, first to stop her from hurting him, then to comfort her.

“No, you don’t,” he said. “I’m going now, but know this forever: I never hurt the boys. I never hurt anyone. I could never hurt you.”

“Why is this happening?”

“Because Didi’s mother keeps calling.” Wheaton disappeared around the corner of the shed. Hannah heard his truck start and rumble down the driveway. And from then on her life was no longer her own, not really.

Chapter Twenty-six

In a small, seemingly airless room that amounted to nothing more than a closet adjacent to the prison warden’s private dining room, Hannah Griffin dialed the telephone number that flashed on the tiny LED panel of her SatNet county-issued pager. It was Ted Ripperton’s office extension at the Santa Louisa crime lab.

“Ted? Hannah here. What can’t wait?”

“Where the hell are you?” he asked, ignoring her question. “Ethan said you went away for a couple days. You guys okay?”

Hannah didn’t want to get personal with Ripp, and she didn’t see how where she was at any given moment was any of his concern in the first place. As lousy an investigator as Hannah believed Ted Ripperton to be, she didn’t want him asking any questions.

“It’s personal and Ethan and I are fine. Furthermore, you paged me,” she snapped before adding, “a half dozen times.”

“Eighteen times,” he said. “Even called the phone company, er— telecommunications provider—to make sure your pager wasn’t down. They did some sort of test and said your pager was operational. Said you weren’t answering. And I thought you took the damn thing in the shower!”

“Very funny,” Hannah said, her impatience amplified with another sigh. She felt her limbs for the first time in an hour. She realized she’d been numb from the interview with Wheaton. “What’s so urgent?”

“Joanne Garcia’s in critical condition in the ICU at Our Lady of Guadeloupe. Overdosed on Valium and tequila.”

“Oh dear,” Hannah said. “What happened?”

“Paramedics came out to her trailer house at ten this morning. The next-door neighbor who’d been keeping an eye on Garcia since we took Mimi into protective custody stopped by to see how she was faring. Garcia didn’t answer the phone or the door. Her VW was in the driveway. The neighbor lady went inside and found Garcia on the sofa. TV going full-tilt boogie. Face blue. We’ve seen it before. This one was nice.”

“Nice” was Ripp’s way of categorizing suicides, as in nasty or nice. Nasty suicides were the man with a pistol in the mouth and brains sprayed on the television set or the teenage boy hanging from a rafter with underwear around his ankles and a Penthouse on the floor. Nice were the glue sniffers or pill poppers who died before their bodies rebelled with a gag reflex. Nasties were a mess, but they told the story with clarity