A Wicked Snow

barely remember that time. I feel as though I lost a whole year.”

“Dear Lou, oh, my dear.” Morrison felt her throat tighten over the thought of her friend’s cruel ordeal. “I can’t imagine.”

“As much as I keep this inside—because I have to— there is something more that I haven’t told you. Something very important. And even though I know that it is nothing to be ashamed about, I am. I know in my heart that I’m all right, now. Best as I can be…”

“You are wonderful,” Morrison consoled. “You are very dear to all of us.”

Wallace smiled a little and gripped the ball of tissue even tighter and ran it under her chin. “Marge, I was hospitalized after my little boys died in the crash. It was a mental hospital called Evergreen State just south of Seattle. I was there for six months, and it helped me. I did many, many strange things as I coped with my grief. Lithium was good, and though I hate to admit it, shock treatments probably helped me, too. I was able to come to terms with what happened when my sons died. I grew stronger. Stronger than ever.”

While Morrison sat anguished and rapt, Louise Wallace sipped tea and told her friend that her husband left her during the hospitalization at Evergreen State. Few men could survive the loss of their sons. She could no longer face the world as she was.

“My doctor told me the best way to go out into the world—which I really didn’t want to do—was to start over. All over. He said I was reborn. I took it literally. I changed my name and moved as far away from Seattle as I could.”

“You came here to Kodiak,” Morrison interjected.

“Not at first, but eventually. I worked in the canneries for a short while, met Hank Wallace, and we fell in love. In a way, I was reborn,” she said.

“A beautiful butterfly,” Morrison said. “You are. And we love you.”

Wallace walked around the settee to the tea cart and poured herself another cup. “So you see, there is a bit of a problem. Or there could be. There is no Louise Wallace, not really. I mean I am here with you, of course. But there are no records of any Louise Wallace.”

Morrison refused to have any part of that kind of thinking. “You are our Louise—doesn’t matter when you became her. That’s who you are. Besides, you know what we’ve always said of Alaska.”

She smiled and said, “A good place to hide.”

“A good place to start over.”

“Marge?” Louise asked as she turned to the window. “There is one more thing.” Her voice started to crack on the last word.

Morrison stood. “Yes? What is it?”

“Marge, I was driving the car when I lost control…. I was the one driving. I was thrown from the car, but the boys were strapped in the car. There was an explosion and fire.”

“I’m sorry,” Morrison said. “I’m so sorry.”

“Look, Marge, I don’t think I can say this any more plainly. I think my past might be catching up with me. I won’t allow it. I’ve been through too much already.”

Chapter Thirty-one

Our Lady of Guadeloupe Hospital was Catholic to its core, having been built on the ruins of the Santa Louisa Mission after the turn of the century—the nineteenth century. Framed in stately date palms, it was three stories high, a buttery-colored form of stucco walls capped with red Mexican tiles. A clock tower was lost in a relentless windstorm that cut through the region a couple of days after John F. Kennedy was gunned down in Dallas, an occurrence the faithful thought was God’s way of grieving for the slain Catholic president.

Floor-to-ceiling stained-glass windows depicting Adam and Eve and Noah’s Ark were the focal point of the lobby. Adjacent to the windows, a small brass plaque was placed at eye level: A GIFT OF THE WILLIAM GILLIAND FAMILY. It was under those windows that Hannah Logan and Ted Ripperton conferred in the lobby a few days after Hannah returned from Cutter’s Landing. They reviewed the police reports. One held their attention in particular: Berto Garcia’s history of incarceration.

“This changes everything,” Hannah said. “I’ve been doing this a while, and I’m seldom surprised, but really, this is the topper.”

“I smell plea bargain,” Ripp said, almost gleefully. “I like it when we don’t have to do too much heavy lifting.” Ripp playfully flexed a muscle, but Hannah wasn’t amused.

“I don’t like a child killer,” she said. “Let’s go talk to Joanne.”

The Intensive Care Unit was up a flight of stairs on the third floor. Visitor elevators, a note taped over the call button indicated, were being refurbished. Nurses in cranberry scrubs and orderlies in smudged whites milled around by the nurses station. Silent portable fans blew cool air into the horseshoe-shaped group of desks, telephones, and computer terminals.

“We’re here to see Mrs. Garcia,” Hannah told a hefty woman basking in the manmade breeze. “County investigators,” she continued, nodding at Ripp. She didn’t use the word “crime scene” or “criminal investigator,” because of the baggage the words invariably brought.

“Sunshine 4. You’ve got five minutes,” the nurse said, indicating the fourth of the cluster rooms that provided the best in urgent care in Santa Louisa, which Hannah Logan, and others, didn’t think was much praise.

Joanne Garcia was under an octopus of clear hoses and white plastic tubing; a sky-blue sheet was pulled up to her neck. The bulge of her round, but empty, abdomen was still visible under the sheet. If only one thing in the world could be considered cruel, it was a woman who no longer had a baby inside her, but still looked pregnant. Stillborn. Given away for adoption. Whatever. Hannah couldn’t help but be taken back to the moment when she lost Annie, but she removed it from her mind and stared down at Mrs. Garcia.

If Mrs. Garcia had meant to kill herself or if she had only sought to numb the pain of one dead child, a husband in the slammer, and a daughter in protective custody, she had gravely miscalculated. Hannah didn’t tell the woman in the hospital bed that when she was released from Our Lady, she’d be arrested for the manslaughter of her unborn baby. Such cases were difficult to win, but worth it just to make a point.

Hannah’s gaze met Joanne’s puffy and jaundiced eyes.

“I’m sorry about your loss,” she said.

“Me, too,” Ripp muttered awkwardly.

Garcia shifted her weight in the hospital bed and made a slight movement with her eyes, but said nothing. Then she closed her eyes tightly. Ripp retreated near the doorway. A nurse’s aide with a cart of flowers scuttled by.

“You should be,” Garcia finally croaked, her stare hard and cold in Hannah’s direction. “You’ve made a mess of everything. You dug up my baby, my Ricky. And now you—” She cut herself off, before starting up again. “And now my baby, my new baby is gone. All of my children are taken from me.”

“You know,” Hannah said as gently as possible, “I did what was required of me, nothing more. I’m sorry for how it has turned out for you personally. But I didn’t kill your unborn baby, you did.”

Garcia winced and turned her head away, toward the window.

“My daughter Mimi had nothing to do with Ricky’s— Enrique’s—death,” she whispered, still not opening her eyes as tears rolled onto the thin, blue pillow that supported her head. “She never hurt anyone.”

“Of course not. She was just a little girl. What happened?” Hannah did her best attempt at being and sounding sympathetic, but under the surface she could feel hatred rise.

Garcia’s dark eyelids fluttered like two gray moths. “Berto can’t stand the noise kids make. Any noise at all. Even when they laugh or giggle, like happy kids do. I try to keep the kids from him, but you can’t always do that.