A Wicked Snow

interrupting,” she said, switching gears. “You look like the cat that swallowed the canary, Special Agent Bauer. What can you tell me?”

Bauer didn’t want to respond to her at all. But experience with the woman had proven that Hoffman refused to be ignored. “Not a thing,” he said. “Wish we did. I’d tell you just to get you off my back.”

She let out an exaggerated laugh. “Very funny. Really, what’s happening here? I knocked on Hannah’s door first. No answer. Funny, isn’t it?”

“Not as funny as you think,” Hannah said. She glared at Hoffman, and Bauer defused the confrontation by pushing Hoffman aside.

“I’ll say this once nicely,” Bauer cut in. “Please leave her alone. Go find another story. Can’t you dig up anything else to write about?”

“Nothing as good as this,” Hoffman snipped, undaunted. She looked around the scene.

Sheriff’s deputies and firemen went about their business as the steamy smell of burning materials drifted through the slowly blackening air.

Hoffman stood her ground and lit a cigarette. “Any of you seen Liza?”

Neither responded, but the look on their faces told her what she needed to know.

“Liz Wheaton. Marcus’s mother,” Hoffman repeated.

“What is she doing here?” Hannah asked.

Hoffman let out her skin-crawling laugh once more. “She’s the reason we’re all here.”

It was Bauer’s turn to jump on Hoffman. The veins in his neck pulsed. He could feel his hands tighten as though he were going to punch her. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

Hoffman stepped back. “This is no big deal, so don’t get hostile with me.” She sucked on her cigarette. The ember glowed like one of the devil’s eyes. “Why not? Why shouldn’t Liza be here? We wouldn’t be here without her. I told you this was like some goddamn reunion! The Claire Logan Case Reunion. I like that. Maybe I’ll lead with that on the show I’m doing for Fox.”

Hannah flashed to Joanne Garcia at the hospital and how she had wanted to throttle her. The same feeling of rage pulsed through her now. She fought it while wondering if she did grab DF and snap her neck, whether Bauer would stop her. Probably not, she thought. He hates her as much as I do.

“You’re one sick bitch,” Hannah said, edging toward Hoffman.

Bauer stepped between the two. He was more interested in hearing what Hoffman could say about Liz Wheaton than refereeing a fight between the reporter and her big “Get.”

“What do you mean, the reason we’re here?”

“Didn’t they teach you how to work your sources at the FBI academy?” she asked, crushing out her cigarette with the heel of her boot. “Liz or Liza or whatever she wants to be called and I became friends when I did my ten- years-after update. I told you that. She got a job at the court clerk’s office in Spruce County. Small county. Not enough workers who can alphabetize or type, I guess.”

A sheriff’s deputy called for additional assistance from one of the volunteer firemen with a halogen light, wanting him to illuminate the inside of the house. The man ran over to the front door.

Hoffman kept her eyes on Bauer and Hannah, clearly enjoying her moment of revelation. She told them that when she and Liz/Liza became friends she pressed her to get her an interview with Marcus Wheaton. Wheaton had refused; he didn’t like the way he looked.

“Camera shy. The pig,” Hoffman muttered.

“He is very heavy,” Bauer said. “He’s quite ill, you know.”

Hannah said nothing. She looked past Hoffman to the gazebo and the moonflowers, and fleetingly her childhood in Rock Point came to mind. The good times. The times before her father had died—had been murdered, she corrected herself. The times before Marcus Wheaton, Didi, and the men in uniform—the Silver Eagles, as her mother called them.

Hoffman paid Hannah no attention. As observant as she prided herself on being, she was no great student of human behavior and emotions. She couldn’t see anguish or rage unless it was broadcast at her through a TV screen. She went on to say how Liz came up with the idea to track down Hannah.

“Believe you me, I had nothing to do with it. She did it on her own.” Hoffman fixed her gaze on Hannah and continued. “She knew Marcus would see you. She convinced herself he’d tell you where to find your mother. Or at least where he thought she might be.”

“How did she find me?” Hannah asked, her stomach once more churning.

“Through prison and parole records. Copies of victims’ names are kept with the file for notification if someone is released, or escapes.”

Hannah shook her head. “But my name’s not on the list.”

“I know,” Hoffman answered. “I mean, that’s what Liza told me. She said your uncle’s and aunt’s names were included in the file. It wasn’t that hard to find you after that. I mean any pimply-faced kid from a collection agency could do it. Liz sent the shoes. Wanted to get your attention. I guess it worked.”

Bauer’s appearance had grown hot. He wanted to knock Hoffman across the face.

“Liz is going to prison,” he said. “You might be getting that jailhouse interview yourself—on the inside.”

Hoffman laughed. “What’s the charge? She didn’t break the law. And I certainly didn’t.”

“She stole government property. The boys’ shoes were property of the state of Oregon. And Ms. Hoffman, if there’s a way to tie you into it—any way at all—you’re going down, too. I’ll do whatever I can to see you pay.”

“You should be thanking me—” Hoffman started to say.

“Hey!” the deputy with the halogen light called out. Everyone turned to the sound of his voice, ratcheted up with urgency and fear. “Got another one in here. Another body!”

Liz Wheaton had survived the Kodiak fire. It had been her body the deputy had discovered on the floor of Louise Wallace’s kitchen. She was airlifted to a hospital in Anchorage where she was treated for smoke inhalation and burns on both hands and portions of her neck. Her recovery would not be swift, but she’d make it. She’d be well enough to face charges back home in Rock Point. Federal charges were also a possibility. What’s more, among the things recovered from her purse was a list of names and phone numbers, including Bauer’s room number at the Northern Lights, the Griffins’ home and work numbers, and Veronica Paine’s cell number. Everything smelled of White Shoulders perfume, heavy and sickeningly sweet. A bottle had broken and doused the contents of her purse. To those who had come to know Liz Wheaton, it had become the smell of fear and lingering hate. Testing would be needed to confirm it, of course, but gunshot residue appeared on the sleeve of a sweater she’d been wearing. If GSR was the only tie to a firearm—and to Judge Paine’s murder. Investigators expected a search of her place in Rock Point would turn up more.

“A mother’s love can be deadly,” Bauer deadpanned to agent Ingersol when they spoke on the phone.

“As devoted as she was to Wheaton, he’d never returned the favor. He’d never given up the one thing she wanted—the whereabouts of Claire Logan.”

Bauer looked out the motel window. The “Vacancy” sign had been dimmed. The media was flocking to the island in numbers that had never been seen.

“In a way it was a sick triangle.” he said. “Maniac Killer, Crazed Mother, and Duped Lover.”

As word of the fire and the secrets it seemed to reveal filtered through the island grapevine, the healing process of the ladies of the First Methodist would not come easily. They had been devastated by Louise Wallace’s betrayal and heartbroken over the death of their beloved friend, Marge Morrison.

Unable to sleep, Hannah sat up in her room at the Northern Lights and tried to pack, certain that Claire Logan had escaped the island. After learning that a woman traveling alone and matching Louise Wallace’s physical description was at the Anchorage airport for a red-eye to Seattle, Bauer took the first flight to Anchorage. He’d arranged for the plane to suffer a “mechanical failure” and endure a two-hour delay. Manufacturing such delays was a common tactic to slow down a felon’s escape route while the Feds figured out what to do.

At 2:45 a.m. a bleary-eyed Bauer and two other agents from the Anchorage field office boarded Alaska Airlines Flight 21 with an eye on the passenger seated in 4E, first class. She was listed as Lucille Watson. The gate agent admitted that her passport photo was dark and a little on the fuzzy side; however, he was sure she was the woman in the First Methodist cookbook, Louise Wallace.