Evidence of Murder

the snow.

I was screaming at him. I’m surprised the neighbors didn’t notice-but then it wasn’t anything new. He kept walking away, ignoring me.” Her chin sank to her hand again. Frank scribbled a note, obviously not concerned with Miranda rights. Technically, since Ellen Wheeler had not been placed under arrest, they did not apply. But Theresa knew anyway that she would not recant her confession. Unlike Evan, Jacob’s mother had not tried to destroy the evidence of her guilt. She had brought it home and kept it safe.

“He always ignored me, as if I only existed on this planet to serve him. I gave him life. And then I gave him the best life I could provide. Why the hell did I deserve so much contempt?” She didn’t look to them for an answer. Theresa guessed she had given up expecting one.

“So you circled around the back of the tree to get in front of him.”

“Yes.”

“And picked something up?”

Ellen took a while to answer that one, a sob brewing underneath the skin of her face. “A piece of wood. A branch, I suppose, but it was fairly big. I don’t know why. I didn’t even know it was in my hand until I hit him with it.”

The sob began to leak out, in tiny but steady teardrops.

“What happened then?” Theresa prompted.

“He stood there and glared. I saw blood start to ooze from under his hair, but he didn’t seem hurt. Furious enough to kill me, though he didn’t raise a hand. I was so angry”-she looked to Theresa for understanding, one mother to another-“and at the same time I was horrified. I’d never struck him before in his life, never. I couldn’t believe it.”

Theresa had been there, so angry with her child that she had felt sickened at herself for such rage. But never, thank God, to the point of violence.

“I walked past him. He didn’t say a word. I threw the branch away somewhere, I don’t remember where, I just didn’t want to touch it anymore. I turned and looked back, but he didn’t follow me, didn’t want to come home. He had sat down next to the tree.”

Now she turned her face up to Frank. “That’s what happened, isn’t it? My baby sat down by that tree and just died. I came back here and drank coffee and let him freeze to death.”

His mouth worked once or twice before he found a gentle way to ask, “You didn’t go back to check on him?”

She wiped the moisture from her face with a quick, cat’s-paw-like gesture. “I wasn’t going to go chasing after him this time. He was going to have to face the fact that he needed me, or he could…freeze to death. The one time I decided to be firm with him and stick to it, and he died. He died.”

She let her head fall back against the armchair, spent. The story had ended. Theresa didn’t know whether she should feel sympathy or revulsion, or what would be wrong with both.

“Ellen Wheeler,” Frank began. “I’m placing you under arrest for the murder of Jacob Wheeler…”

CHAPTER 23

“It’s about time.” Rachael slammed her textbook shut and had her coat on before her mother even thought about taking hers off. “They’re leaving at seven and you know how cranky Dora gets if she has to wait for me.”

“Huh?”

“Skiing tonight! Can I borrow twenty bucks too? In fact, can I just have it, since I kind of lost track of what I owe you so far? Forget the skis, I’ll just rent some. Come in, into the garage, go go go!”

Theresa did not mention that she had just solved another teenager’s murder, or how precious life could prove to be, or that Rachael should be glad she still breathed instead of fretting about a social engagement. Theresa merely slid her body back into the driver’s seat, which had managed to cool to frosty in the approximately ten seconds since she had left it, and pulled out onto the road. “Skiing?”

Rachael tossed an impossibly large sack over the seat back-no doubt containing her boots, gloves, scarf, phone, makeup, and probably her iPod, so that she could add the peril of deafness to an already hazardous sport. “You never pay attention, Mom. Remember the birthday party last weekend? Dora and Jenna said I should come on this ski trip with them? Gun it, you can make this light.”

Theresa hit the brakes on purpose. Since Rachael had gotten her license, it had become important to demonstrate safe driving skills. “When will you be home?”

“Probably eleven.”

“More like ten.”

“No, eleven.”

“How about nine thirty?” The light changed, and they moved forward.

“Why ten?”

“What part of ‘school night’ don’t you understand?”

“Okay. But it’s your cousin who’s going to pick us up, so if I’m home late you’ll have to take it up with her.” Rachael had mastered the art of the preemptive strike.

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

“You know, if I had my own car, this wouldn’t even be an issue.”

Theresa, however, had mastered the art of selective hearing. “Uh-huh. Are you dressed warm enough?”

“Warmly. It’s an adjective, l-y.”

“Do you want a ride or not?”

“I’m perfectly warm.”

She eyed her daughter’s pants. “They don’t look like snow pants.”

Rachael bubbled up at the interest. “Exactly! They’re new. They’ve got this cottonlike fabric but it’s practically waterproof, like good nylon.”

“Nylon isn’t waterproof. It’s the weave and the treatment-”

“But it’s thin and flat, so you don’t have to look like a toddler in a snowsuit. They’re great. You can tell I have a butt in them.” She put her hands underneath her as if making sure.

“Actually, I was okay with not being able to tell.”

“Well, of course. You’re a mom. You’d have me in a burka if you could.” For all her fondness for the new pants, however, she seemed to be wrestling with them, wrenching both arms behind her back until one hand emerged with a small white tag. “Man! That thing was driving me crazy.”

“That’s not true about the burka. I just don’t get this skiing-at-night thing. It’s bad enough you have to hurtle down a snow-covered hill, but you have to do it in the pitch dark as well? What keeps you from running into trees? Or each other?”

“Um, maybe the huge floodlights they have along the slopes? They’re lit up like a Walmart. And I have a light stick.”

They pulled onto her cousin’s street. “But do the trees have light sticks?”

“There they are! I told you Dora would be ticked if I got here late.”

She dropped the clothing tag into the ashtray and dragged her large bag forward from the backseat. The car had not yet come to a complete stop before the passenger door opened. “See you, Mom.”

Theresa snatched her daughter’s arm and held it, arresting Rachael in midflight. “Be careful.”

Rachael tried to pull her arm away. Perhaps annoyance and overexcitement made her say, in the callous way children can have, “There won’t be any bank robbers on the ski slopes, Mom.”

“I mean it. That’s a large area, it’s dark, and it’s very cold out.”

“Okay.” Rachael took the time to look into her mother’s eyes and repeat the word before making her escape.

Theresa watched Rachael join her relatives, then waved to her cousin, now shepherding the girls into a minivan. She hadn’t been worried about bank robbers, only broken bones and bad sprains and frostbite.

Not to mention that the last girl she had seen in a snowy woods had been very, very dead.

Arriving home for the second time that evening, she grabbed the junk from her car and dropped it on her