A Wicked Snow (17 page)

"Tell the jury," Paine said, "what you saw when you first arrived."

Tanner turned to the jury box and tilted his head. He'd obviously testified in court before. "Oh, it was awful," he said. "There was smoke and flame everywhere. I got there a minute or so behind the truck with the squad. The house was completely engulfed. The barn where they stored a bunch of their stuff was pretty far gone, too. I've never seen anything like it. Never."

"Did there come a time that you saw a person or persons on the property?" Paine asked.

"Yes, ma'am, I did."

"Please tell the jury," she instructed.

"Well," the giant in the box continued, "I parked and ran over to the house, you know, to see if anyone needed help or whatnot. It was hot. Hotter than any fire I'd ever seen in my life. When I came around the corner on the southwest side of the place, I saw him."

"Him?"

"Yes," he said. "The defendant. I saw the defendant, Marcus Wheaton."

"The defendant?"

"Objection. He's already said so," Travis Brinker said, standing. "Asked and answered." Brinker's client was impassive. Some wondered if Wheaton had any other expressions at all. His good eye was as blank as a sprayed and wiped chalkboard. Judge Wells sustained the objection and prodded Paine to move on.

"What, if anything, was the defendant doing?" she asked.

"He was throwing things in his truck and gunning it out of there."

Over the next six days, Paine called her witnesses as though she was creating one of those construction-paper chains; each person was linked to the one before him or her and all led back to Wheaton. The manager from the Portland floral supplier who had sold the flocking material; the FBI chemist who identified the traces found on Wheaton and the charred piano; the firemen and the sheriff's personnel who had recovered the evidence of arson; the deputies who picked up Wheaton the night of the blaze; and others. Link after link, a connection was made. Point A was Wheaton and point B was the fire.

And then there were the exhibits. The crashed piano had been reconstructed by a team of scientists and carpenters in an FBI lab in Virginia. Its appearance brought gasps when brought into Judge Wells's courtroom. Blackened keys, wires spraying forth like a broken box spring. It had been marked with small white-and-red self-adhesive tags with letters and numbers indicating where evidence had been logged. Its broken and missing keys looked like a hillbilly's malicious grin.

But nothing matched the final piece of evidence, which had been argued over by the lawyers for weeks. Brinker thought that State's Exhibit No. 25 was exceedingly prejudicial. Paine argued that she wasn't bringing the exhibit for any other reason than the lab analysis, which recovered cellulose fibers that matched what had been vacuumed from Wheaton's clothes.

Two pairs of boy's shoes that had burned and melted were entered into evidence as State's Exhibit No. 25. She called upon Jeff Bauer to identify the Buster Browns as being among the items removed from the arson site. Bauer, dressed in a fashionable gray chalk-stripe suit and black wingtips, looked handsome and confident. He spoke in a clear, decisive voice.

"Yes," he said, "these are the shoes that I recovered from Icicle Creek Farm."

"How can you be sure?"

He poked his forefinger into the interior of a shoe. Triangular pieces the size of a dime had been snipped from the leather for the lab.

"I can see my initials and the date," he said, pointing to inside one of the shoes. "Right
here
."

Nothing was admitted about who specifically had worn the shoes. It wasn't necessary. Those familiar with the case, which included just about everyone with a TV or newspaper delivery, knew that they had belonged to Danny and Erik Logan. Everyone knew that the boys had been incinerated and only the piano's shield-like form had protected their shoes from complete annihilation.

The same chemist who had authenticated the lab work on the piano returned to the witness box to go over the microscopic and chemical analysis of the shoes. Traces of a fake snow product were found on both pairs.

"We determined the brand--Mighty White," he said. "It was recalled two years ago because of its extremely flammable nature. It had been the suspected source of fires in fourteen states. Four deaths, only, thank God."

If the shoes were bullets aimed at the jury's hearts, they scored a direct hit. One woman, Juror Five, let a tear roll down her cheek.

Paine had one more witness. It was the girl who had lost everything: her mother, her brothers, and her home.

"Call Hannah Logan!" she said.

No one could have ever confused Leanna Schumacher of being frivolous. She and her Rod had lived quiet, steady,
background
kind of lives on the Oregon coast. But as the date of Hannah's day in court came nearer, Leanna was oddly focused on appearances. She insisted Hannah wear a dress for the trial and took her to the only halfway decent ladies' dress shop in Misery Bay, Marcia's Fine Things, to buy one. Hannah hadn't worn a dress since her brothers' memorial service in early January. Dresses weren't practical at Icicle Creek Farm.

"Can't I wear jeans?" she asked.

"I know this isn't fun," Leanna said, "but it's important you look your best; folks will be watching. Even though we've got no say in how people think, they'll be judging you."

On the morning of March 30, everything seemed to be speeding around Hannah like the faces on the other side of a carousel. Aunt Leanna had placed a tan-and-light-blue Gunne Sax dress on the motel room bed. She took a few minutes to smooth out the fabric with her long, slender, and very freckled fingers.

"You'll look just beautiful in this," she said. "The color will pick up the lovely hue of your eyes."

Hannah had forgotten what color her eyes were, and the fabric's subtle mix of blue and brown did little to clue her in. She hadn't looked at her own face for weeks. She hated to see her eyes staring back at her from the silvery field of a mirror.

"I think I'll look stupid, Auntie," was all she could come up with, though she put the dress on. They watched television while they got ready to meet their escort to the courthouse. Leanna called Rod at the Speedy Mart, and the two talked while she waited for hot curlers to warm. She burbled something about how Hannah seemed to be holding up "despite the pain of the hour." She whispered an I-love-you and disappeared into the little foyer in front of the hotel bathroom.

"Hannah," Leanna called out from the noise of the hairdryer, "you'll be just fine, honey. I know it. You're from tough stock."

Hannah flopped on the bed and stared up at the ceiling, and the world around her spun. Little bits of silvery glitter clung into the dried cottage cheese surface. She started counting the glints of glitter, regarding each as a star in the Milky Way. She wondered what it would be like to be anywhere else just then. She had a duty, and she'd been told so nearly from the day she had been rescued from the farm. Ten minutes later, the pair was headed for the door. Aunt Leanna put the plastic
MAID SERVICE PLEASE
hanger on the doorknob and pressed the steel door shut.

"Hungry?" she asked as she slipped her room key into her purse.

Hannah shook her head. "I don't think so."

"You have to eat. You have to put some fuel in that tummy of yours."

Hannah put her hand on her stomach. "I'm gonna barf," she said. Her pale skin color backed up her words.

"That doesn't surprise me one iota," Leanna said. "If you don't eat, you won't feel better. You need something to settle your stomach."

The Rock Point Inn coffee shop was crowded, though it might have been less so if the area roped off with a
PARDON OUR MESS
,
WE
'
RE PREPARING TO SERVE YOU BETTER
! sign had been in use. Smoke hung in the air mixing with morning scents of frying bacon, perked coffee, and Listerine.

Jeff Bauer waved Leanna and Hannah to a booth in the back. He looked tired, his blue eyes puffy from lack of sleep, his hair askew. While the federal government was not prosecuting the case, they were there to help nevertheless. The men murdered at the Christmas tree farm had been the victims of interstate robbery, and some speculated, kidnapping. Pending the outcome of the Wheaton case, there was always the possibility of filing federal charges.

The star witness in both circumstances was Claire Logan's daughter, a girl with the budding breasts dressed in a brand-new Gunne Sax dress.

They ordered big breakfasts, not because they were particularly hungry, but to shut up the waitress who persisted on recounting every special the establishment offered. Toast and coffee for the adults, cereal for Hannah, would have sufficed. Hannah put down her fork. Her eggs stared at her with unblinking yolks and weepy, clear edges.

"I'm sorry to put you through this," Bauer said.

"We all are," Aunt Leanna said. She reached over and patted Hannah's hand, but it brought no real response.

"Can I go back to the room and wait there?" Hannah asked, pushing back from the table.

"No," Bauer said, "you'll have to wait with the bailiff in a special witness room they've put together for you."

"Can Aunt Leanna come?"

"Sure, she can. Since she's not a witness and she's your guardian."

Bauer searched his pants pocket for his money clip, left money on the table, and picked up the receipt. When he looked up, everything had changed. Hannah started to shake and cry. Leanna reached her arms around her niece and held her as they walked passed the cashier. She held tight.

Hold on and the hurt will move from you to me, my love,
she thought
.

She ushered the girl off to the side of the elevator near a shimmering grouping of potted dracaenas.

"It'll be okay, honey," she said softly.

Hannah buried her face into the soft folds of her aunt's shoulder. Bauer looked on awkwardly. He reached over and touched Hannah's hand. It would be all right, he said once more.

"Just tell them what you know," he said. "No one is going to hurt you. You're gonna be fine."

Though he clearly meant well, his words fell flat. Hannah kept her face pressed into the fabric of her aunt's new dress. Tears left wet marks on the white of the dress collar.

"I'm not afraid of testifying ...I am ready for that, I am. I'm just wondering if what they are saying is true." Her eyes had welled up once more. Pools of tears crested against her lower lashes.

"What is that, dear?" Aunt Leanna said. "Tell me."

"Maybe Mom might come."

Leanna gave her niece another hug. "Not likely. You have no reason to worry about her." Leanna and Bauer had read the same reports in some of the fringe media that cruelly and outlandishly suggested Claire Logan would return to Spruce County.

From behind Hannah's back, Leanna shot Bauer a harsh look.

"It'll be all right," she said once more. "I don't think Claire will be here. Don't pay attention to anything you hear or see in the papers or on television. You know better than that." She sat Hannah in a chair and motioned to the special agent to follow her to the other side of the room.

"What's with the cold stare?" he asked.

Leanna kept her voice low. "Honestly, Mr. Bauer, don't you get it? She
wants
to see Claire. She
loves
her still. She's still a girl and she doesn't know how deep her mom was in this whole nightmare. You have your theories. I have mine. I don't know just how bad my sister was, but I do believe she's responsible for what happened out at her place. She
had
to be. But to that little girl, she's a mother who's missing."

"Or dead."

"I doubt that with my heart and soul. She'd never let anyone get the best of her."

"So you've said."

"Yes, I have. I can think she's a bitch, a killer, and a child abuser. I can think she's about the worse thing God ever put on this earth ...I can think she's the kind of mistake that only the devil can spawn. But really, none of that matters. Not to Hannah. To Hannah, Claire is only one thing, neither good nor bad."

"And that is?"

"Her mother."

Bauer nodded. He knew Leanna was right. Just then, Hannah emerged from the restroom, her eyes red, but her face brave and full of resolve. It was obvious that she had splashed water on her face; damp tendrils of her hair clung to her forehead. She had pulled herself to- gether. She was going to get through this. She even managed a smile.

"Let's go to the waiting room," she said.

By the end of the morning, Hannah Logan had told her story. It was the only time she'd ever do so publicly.

Hours away in Portland, a half-dozen field agents drank artificially sweetened, boiled coffee and passed around a sheet of paper. They smoked and laughed and talked about the trial as though it was a Trail Blazer's basketball game. The little scrap of paper was a "T" chart. On one side was the word "Fry," on the other, "Cry." The words were a younger agent's idea of clever. "Frying" was never an option in the Wheaton case. Not at that time, anyway. Agents indicated with their initials what they thought the girl would do. If she wept and appeared indecisive, Marcus Wheaton would get off. If she held firm, he'd fry.

Or at least be sent to prison.

While the men in Portland were betting on the outcome of a trial in which they had no real involvement, Wheaton's defense attorney was walking the tightrope between doing a good job for his client and beating up a little girl. Hannah Logan's statements to the police had troubled Travis Brinker. Not for what she had disclosed to investigators, but for what she hadn't. At no point in her dealings with the police had she indisputably pointed the complete blame of the fire on the handyman.

Brinker asked Wheaton to go through Hannah's statements one more time. Was there anything, he posed, that could be disputed?

"Gently disregarded," Brinker reminded his doughy client. "This is a bit dicey, you know. After all, her mother is missing, her brothers are dead, and she is basically an orphan."

"You have reminded me about that already," the prisoner said.

"And I will continue to do so. She is not the enemy, Marcus. She is their
ammunition
. If she can paint you in some degrees of sympathy, it will go a long way toward absolving you of some of the more sinister aspects of this particular crime."

"You said it again."

"What's that?"

"The phrase. That annoying phrase... this
particular
crime."

"So I did. Sorry. Now, take a look at her statement to Bauer. Let's see if anything is a bit more clear."

"...I liked Mr. Wheaton. We all did. We trusted him."

Both men scanned the document.

"...that night I went to the wreath shed after dinner and Mr. Wheaton was there working on something. "We talked for a while. I put the ribbons back in the storage cupboard and went back inside the house."

The pages flipped at the same time. Both looked up, made eye contact, and went back to their reading:

"Yes, I did see a kerosene can in the shed. I even asked about it."

"She never asked about that," he said.

Brinker underlined the statement. "
Never
," he wrote.

"I saw my mom kissing Mr. Wheaton one time. It was last year around Halloween, I think."

"Halloween? Are you sure?"

"I know it was Halloween," she said, "Because we'd be getting ready for Christmas season. Decorations had to be put up. Halloween was always the beginning of our busy time."

In reality, Hannah had told the Halloween story so many times, she didn't know if it was a genuine event or a memory that she had planted in her own mind through frequent recitation. As she grew older, the blend of hearsay, fiction, and reality was hard to break down into its purest elements. How does someone decipher the truth from what is stirred into their mind by television, radio, books, TV, newspapers? Hannah Logan tried. Very hard, she did.

She recalled it had been a Friday night and she had stayed up to watch
Midnight Special
because Leif Garrett was performing. She loved Leif Garrett.
What girl didn't?
She had fallen asleep on the sofa when she awoke to the sound of voices in the kitchen. It sounded like her mother was laughing. It was so good to hear her laughter. When Hannah's father was alive, her mother seldom laughed. After his death, she never did. A sleepy smile came to Hannah's lips that night, and she got up to say good night before going upstairs to her own bed.

"I felt so stupid," Hannah told Bauer later. "I wish I had knocked. I mean, my mother could have visitors. She could have a boyfriend. My daddy was dead. My mom worked hard and she deserved some happiness. She didn't want to be alone and she said so several times. But I didn't expect it to be
him
. Marcus Wheaton had his arms around her. She had her back to me. Marcus put on this really fake smile and said something like 'Look what we have here, Claire.' My mom turned around, pushed him away real fast, and almost as quickly went to me and slapped me kind of hard. Then she said in a mean voice, a voice I can still hear, 'Why don't you knock, Hannah?' I told her I was sorry, but she wouldn't have any of it. She wouldn't accept my apology. I didn't do anything wrong. It was the
kitchen
. Who knocks before going in the kitchen?"

And so, on the eighth day of the Wheaton arson trial, Veronica Paine and the People of Spruce County rested. Hannah and her brothers' shoes had said it all. The defense put on a meager handful of character witnesses, but even Liz Wheaton couldn't save her son, though she cried like a rainstorm and told the jury that her son was the victim of an evil woman.

"He was," she said between sobs, "a really good boy. Deserved a lot better than Claire Logan."

It took the jury less than three hours to bring back a verdict--and two of those hours were occupied with buckets of Kentucky Fried Chicken and the usual sides.

The
Lumberman
managing editor acted like an editor for the first time in his life. He held the front page of the next day's paper to carry the headline that told the world that Wheaton was going away for a long time:
FIREBUG GUILTY
!
WHEATON GETS
20
YEARS BUT QUESTIONS STILL UNANSWERED
.