A Wicked Snow (11 page)

The Associated Press reporter, a tight-lipped, aggressive young woman named Marcella Hoffman, staked her claim to the story. She slugged her copy: "Merry Murders and Happy Homicides." A photo that a friend from the Oregon Department of Motor Vehicles had gladly requisitioned for a fee ("pays for some of this year's Christmas") accompanied the article. It was a standard driver's license picture, but it was also the world's first glimpse of Claire Logan. Logan stared with an intensity not usually seen in a DMV photograph. She had shoulder-length hair with a slight wave. Her earrings were medium-size hoops. Her features were patrician and symmetrical. She was beautiful by anyone's measure.

By the end of that first day, the Logans' bodies were slid into body bags and delivered by ambulance to the high school gymnasium. There they joined thirteen others, making a total of sixteen victims discovered at Icicle Creek Farm.
Sixteen dead.
With the exception of the headless woman, all victims had been male. With the exception of Mrs. Logan and her two little boys, all had been adult men.

Queasy from what he'd seen, Bauer checked into a room at the Whispering Pines, drank club soda, and reached for the telephone. His first call was to Portland. The FBI dispatch agent got on the line and told him that agents would be joining him in Rock Point, probably before nightfall.

"Hang tight, Bauer," he said. "It goes without saying that this is more than your garden-variety serial killer."

"I get that," he said. He drank some more club soda.

"Quantico wants a lid on this as much as possible. All the military guys who are victims down there make this not only peculiar, but a little more sensitive than a runof-the-mill body dump."

Bauer didn't need a lecture. "I'm not talking to anyone," he said. "Mostly because I don't know what's going on yet. This is pretty grim down here."

"Right, Bauer. Now don't forget, the sheriff down there is in charge. At least we want to let him feel he is."

The second call Bauer made was to his mother in Idaho. He told her he was working a big case and she's "probably heard about it on the TV news." He also talked to one of his sisters and promised he'd tried to break away from the investigation to get home before the holidays were over.

"But I doubt it," he said. "Tell mom that I love her. Looks like I'll be in Rock Point for a while. I doubt I'll ever see anything worse than this. No matter how long I live."

Around five o'clock, the temperature dropped again, and the snow that had been spitting at the ground throughout the day began to fall with a renewed fury-- more than eight inches in less than an hour. The north-south interstate became a skating rink, and the Oregon State Police did double duty pulling holiday motorists from ditches and away from Jersey barriers. The other FBI agents en route to Rock Point didn't get any farther south than Willamette, an hour away. Despite the white-crowned mountains around them and their obvious love of the beauty of the frozen precipitation, Bauer knew Northwesterners just didn't do that well driving in snow.

Bauer smoked a cigarette and logged a couple hours writing the text for his 302s, the code used by the bureau for interview reports. He braved the weather for a drink and a sandwich at the coffee shop two doors down from his room at the Whispering Pines. It was, without a doubt, the worst Christmas of his life. He imagined all that he missed; his family gathered to celebrate into the evening. By 11 p.m., he tucked into bed in time to watch himself on the news. Sheriff Howe, with his gentle country-fried demeanor was the spokesperson, but Bauer was visible in several of the shots. He wondered if his mom was watching, too.

Bauer didn't know it then, however, but people across the country were riveted to the first broadcasts coming from snowy Oregon. The Logan farm was on its way to being the site of a story that would never be forgotten.

Just after 8 a.m. the day after Christmas, the phone rang in Bauer's room at the "remodeled-for-the-Bicentennial-year" Whispering Pines. It was Bob Howe, the Spruce County sheriff.

"I've got an update for you," Howe said, "a kind of a good news/bad news deal. Guess you ought to know all that's going on down there. Found four more bodies overnight."

Bauer was stunned. "Four?"

"Yeah. We're up to twenty. A few more and we'll top Corona down in Yuba City."

Bauer instantly recalled how a few years before a California migrant labor contractor named Juan Vallejo Corona was convicted of killing twenty-five Mexican migrant workers in what had been the nation's greatest mass killing in history.

"It isn't a contest, sheriff," Bauer said, quickly adding a laugh because he didn't want to offend his only ally. "If it is, it isn't the kind we want to win, right?"

"Guess so. Anyway, two have been preliminary I.D.'d based on their effects. Kind of weird. Turns out two had their wallets tucked inside their breast pockets. Smashed their teeth, yet the perp left their wallets. What a dope. One guy's retired navy from Virginia; other's retired army from one of the Dakotas. We're working on the other two."

"Can I get the names?"

"Yeah," Howe said. "I'll have some stuff for you at the office. Come by any time."

"Thanks. I'll do just that."

"Now, if the fact that we've got a lead on identifying a couple of them is the good news, I do have some bad news, too."

"Yeah?"

Howe went quiet for a moment. "This is big," he said, his voice missing its jovial tone. "We sorta screwed up. Claire Logan's sister made arrangements to have her sister's remains sent to the funeral home, and our guys let the body go."

The young FBI agent's face turned red. "Jesus, Sheriff, we haven't even processed the body. Get it back."

Howe sighed. "I'd like to, but I'm afraid we're a little too late."

"Get a court order. The body is evidence."

"The body," the sheriff said in a very quiet, very embarrassed voice, "is gone." His words trailed off into near whisper.

Bauer got on his feet. "What do you mean, gone?" he asked.

"Cremated. The sister had the body cremated. We're talking Urn City. I told you we screwed up."

Bauer couldn't contain his outrage, though he surely made an effort to do so. He spat out his words: "Jesus Christ! That's a fuck-up, big time! The body hasn't been identified, hasn't been processed for prints or trace. We didn't even have a head!"

Howe was surprised that this nice kid from Idaho would even raise his voice. It wasn't his fault that incompetence ran through the ranks of law enforcement in Spruce County. "I know," he said. "I know. You think you're telling me something I don't know? You think we're a bunch of loser locals, one step from being a rent-a-cop at some discount store? We made a mistake and my guys are real sorry."

Bauer bit his tongue. He knew the answer to his next question, but asked anyway.

"I don't suppose anyone took any tissue samples?"

Sheriff Howe continued to sputter in palpable embarrassment. "Sorry," he muttered. "None taken."

Bauer looked for a smoke. "There is a problem here, you know. We've got a body--rather we
had
a body-- without a head and no real way to identify her."

"It's Claire Logan," Sheriff Howe said.

"How can you be so sure?"

"Her daughter Hannah said so. She looked at our Polaroids and I.D.'d her mother. Said, 'that's my mom.' Said it was her mom's pink bathrobe. No doubt about it. Said she and her brothers got it for her for Christmas." They each opened a gift Christmas Eve."

To blow up at the sheriff would only make matters worse. Bauer said nothing more.

"I'd like to talk to her, okay?" he asked.

"She's staying with her aunt, nice lady from the coast. They're checked in at the Rock Point Inn. The kid's pretty messed up. Lost everything and everyone. Her mom, her brothers, her dad years ago... she's an orphan. Got to be rough."

"And you showed her that photo of her headless mother?"

"Look, Bauer, we might be yokels out here, but we're not cruel. We masked off that part of the photo. All she saw was the torso. She doesn't know about her mom's head being missing. Give us some credit, okay?"

The two-tone myrtle-wood decor of the Rock Point Inn lobby was the hotel's signature feature and had been since the place was built in 1949. The lumber was harvested and milled in the town of Molten on the central Oregon coast. It was a rare wood, prized for its swirling grain and combination of light and dark. The wood was sold in tourist shops as boxes, tabletops, and lamp bases. No one who saw the lobby of the Rock Point Inn with its floor-to-ceiling myrtle wood would ever forget it.

Bauer asked for Sheila Wax, the victims' assistance officer who was assigned to the Logan girl, apparently the sole survivor of her entire family. Wax showed up, coughed a hello, and ushered him into a secluded area near the lobby bar. Over her coat-rack shoulders, he could see the figure of a slight girl, bent over.
Maybe reading a book
? He wasn't sure.

"Her aunt is over at Ressler's making funeral arrangements. You know her brothers are dead, too."

Bauer suppressed a grimace and nodded as pleasantly as he could.
Of course
, he thought,
the aunt was at Ressler's mortuary. She's the one who ordered her sister's remains cremated
.

"How's the girl holding up?" he asked.

"I'd say, not too bad considering all she's been through. Really, if you ask me--and you did--she's holding it together like a little trooper," Wax said, then shrugged. "But God knows what she's really thinking. She
seems
okay."

She led him away from the lobby to a seating area with two couches and an overstuffed ottoman. A young girl sat quietly with her back facing them.

"Hannah, this is Jeff Bauer. He's with the FBI. He's here to help figure out what happened at your tree farm."

She turned around, and the first thing that Bauer noticed was her brown eyes, enormous and so very sad. Though she wasn't particularly thin for her age, she looked small. Her frame had been gulped up by a Bob-cats sweatshirt.

"Okay," she said. Her braces caught the light. "I'll do what I can, but I don't think I can help that much. I mean, I really don't know what happened for sure."

Bauer sat down, knowing it was not the first time this ground would be trod, and with the ongoing discoveries at Icicle Creek Farm it would not be the last. He'd never interviewed a child before; in all, he'd barely conducted two dozen 302s since he'd been assigned in Portland, and all of those were adults investigated for racketeering and money laundering.

"I know this is a very bad time, Hannah. I don't want to add to your grief, but Mrs. Wax is correct. I'm here to help."

Hannah studied the FBI man's face. The muscles in her throat constricted so tightly, she felt as if she'd suffocate. She needed help, and she wanted to believe that the man with the sparkly blue eyes and messy sandy hair that hung over his forehead was the one to give it to her.

"Okay," she said, moving her eyes downcast and tucking her small hands into her lap.

"Good. First of all," he said, "I want to tell you that I'm very sorry about what happened to your family. I am so very, very sorry."

He touched her shoulder very gently and Hannah shuddered slightly. Her eyes welled up and she started to cry. Bauer didn't know what to do next.
What's appropriate
? He stood there, his hand on her shoulder, for a few moments and watched Hannah wrestle for composure. He felt sorrow, deep gut-wrenching sadness. But more than anything, a twinge of shame, too. He felt badly that his job called upon him to add to her misery by probing for information at the worst moment in her young life.

"Can you tell me what happened?" he asked gently.

Hannah drew her knees up to her chest. "I was asleep," she said. "I heard some yelling coming from outside. I sleep with my window open a little. Even in winter. It was my mother yelling at Marcus."

"That would be Marcus Wheaton," Bauer confirmed.

She nodded. "Right. Marcus worked on the farm, but he was also a friend of my mom's. Mine, too. He lived in a trailer my mom brought in so he'd have a place to stay. He worked for us as a handyman and tree cutter."

"What was your mom yelling?" Bauer asked.

Hannah pondered the question for a moment. "I couldn't make out the words at first; I hadn't woken up all the way. I went to my window and I saw them by the wreath shed. Marcus was carrying the big gun we use to flock the trees. We call it the sno-gun. He had the tank, too."

"What time was it?" Bauer asked. "Do you know?"

"I looked at the clock when I got up. It was 11:40," she said. Bauer noticed that she seemed proud that she could be so precise.

"That's a great help," he said. "What happened next?"

"I don't really know. I went back to bed and a half hour later I woke up a second time. Smoke was coming into my room. I opened the door and it was so black and dark and thick. I didn't know what to do. I called out for my mom--her room is next to mine. But she didn't say anything. I went back to the door, opened it, and crawled on my hands and knees. The floor felt cold."

The pace of her story accelerated. It was as if Hannah Logan wanted to get the whole tale out between a single pair of breaths. She was a runaway train. Inhale... tell the world what happened... exhale. "The floor was wet. I couldn't see what it was, but I could smell it. I put my hands to my face in the dark and I could smell it." Tears fell down her cheeks.

"What? Smelled
what
? The smoke?"

Hannah shook her head rapidly. "No," she answered. "Well, yes, I smelled the smoke. But when I held my hands to my face... I smelled the snow."

"Snow?" Bauer scratched his head. He didn't get it.

Hannah nodded. "Not
real
snow. I smelled the snow stuff we use on the trees. Marcus had sprayed the snow all down the hallway, down the stairs... the house was covered inside with snow."

Bauer was utterly perplexed. The image of a house with floors and furniture coated in fake snow just didn't compute. "Why would anyone do that? That stuff is flame retardant."

"No. No," she said, starting to cry. "Mom used the old stuff. We had a shed full of it. Got it half price because it wasn't any good. You see, it wasn't safe. It burned up."

Sheila Wax caught Bauer's eye. The VAR woman was beside herself with alarm. The girl had gotten herself out of the house and to safety when she obviously wasn't supposed to. Wax knew it and so did Bauer: She'd been left to die.

"I went to my brothers' room," Hannah continued, crying harder, "and I tried to get in. I couldn't. The door was stuck. I called for Erik and Danny. But they didn't answer. I called for my mom again, but she didn't hear me."

Between sobs, the kind of deep, guttural cries that break the listener's heart, she told the FBI agent she didn't see anything that night but a burning house, barn, sheds, even their car.

"I never saw anyone until the fireman came. I never saw my mom, my brothers, or Marcus. Everyone was gone. Everything was burning." Hannah stared down at her lap and went quiet.

"I think she's had enough," Sheila Wax interrupted. "Maybe a break now?"

Bauer agreed, but he had one more question ricocheting around his mind. He took a deep breath and mulled it over for a moment. He wanted to know what Hannah could tell him about the other bodies police were finding planted around Icicle Creek Farm like a human crop.

"Hannah," he said very gently, "we discovered something else at the farm. Something very, very bad."

Her eyes fixed on Bauer, but she said nothing.

"Others may have died there, too. Besides your mother and brothers."

He used the word "may" to soften the incontrovertible facts.

"Who?" she asked.

"We were hoping you could tell us. It appears that some men, some army guys, were found dead." Again he chose words that he hoped would lessen her fear, soften the blow, and yet help in the investigation.

But Hannah became agitated and stood up. Sheila Wax glared at Bauer and moved closer, as if to brace the girl from falling.

"I don't know," she said, crying loudly. "I really don't know. Anything. Anything more."

The interview was over and Bauer knew it.

Later that night at the Whispering Pines, over a cold beer, a greasy tuna-melt, and an impossibly limp kosher dill spear, Bauer flipped through a folder Sheriff Howe had left at the hotel's front desk. He felt rotten. He'd made a young girl cry.
Real nice
. Among the papers were the names of the first non-Logan victims to be partially identified by Spruce County authorities. One was a man from Deer Lake, Idaho. Bauer called the Portland office.