A Wicked Snow Read online

  Praise for A Wicked Snow

  “I loved this book. Real narrative drive, a great setup, a gruesome crime, excellent exploitation of another-worldly location, fine characters… As good as it gets.”

  —Lee Child

  “Wickedly clever! A finely crafted, genuinely twisted tale.”

  —Lisa Gardner

  “Olsen writes a real grabber of a book. If you’re smart, you’ll grab this one!”

  —Linda Lael Miller

  “A compelling story, tightly woven, that kept me riveted to the final page.”

  —Susan R. Sloan

  “An irresistible page-turner. The suspense builds and builds until the heart-pounding finale.”

  —Kevin O’Brien

  “A top-notch thriller, a powerhouse of a book. You will not put this suspenseful, engrossing book down.”

  —Donna Anders

  “Olsen knows the dark currents that can flow beneath family secrets and has crafted a mesmerizing thriller.”

  —Jay Bonansinga

  “Tightly plotted, gripping, terrifying, riveting.”

  —Allison Brennan

  Praise for Gregg Olsen

  “Olsen is a top-notch writer.”

  —Michael Connelly (on Starvation Heights)

  “Olsen tells the story in a mesmerizing manner that leaves the reader both haunted and fascinated by what they have read.”

  —Cleveland Plain Dealer (on Abandoned Prayers)

  “A compelling and fascinating tale of family psycho-pathology taken to the extreme; a real page-turner.”

  —Jonathan Kellerman (on Bitter Almonds)

  “Olsen is a ferociously talented writer.”

  —New West (on The Deep Dark)

  “Gregg Olsen’s work is absolutely top notch, masterful. Gregg takes his rightful place among crime masters: Ann Rule, Jack Olsen, Joseph Wambaugh, and Joe McGinniss.”

  —Dennis McDougal (on Cruel Deception [Mockingbird])

  “Wonderfully researched …searing and brilliant. A must-read!”

  —Ann Rule (on If Loving You Is Wrong)

  “A very sexy book that is as disturbing as it is seductive.”

  —Darcey O’Brien (on Confessions of an American Black Widow)

  ALSO BY GREGG OLSEN

  The Deep Dark

  If Loving You Is Wrong

  Abandoned Prayers

  Bitter Almonds

  Cruel Deception (Mockingbird)

  Starvation Heights

  Confessions of an American Black Widow

  A Wicked Snow

  Gregg Olsen

  PINNACLE BOOKS

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  For Susan and Michaela

  On the Oregon farm she ran,

  Claire Logan hatched a plan.

  She told the men they’d better hurry,

  “Come out West and we’ll marry.”

  But just how many did she bury?

  One, two, three, four…

  —A jump-rope verse from the 1970s

  Contents

  Prologue

  BOOK ONE Reunion

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  BOOK TWO Ashes

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter 13

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  BOOK THREE Mother

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Chapter Forty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  The girl remembered the snow and the evil that had come with it. She shuddered at the very idea of the velvety white shroud over a mountaintop—the drifts of cream around fence posts on the country lane of a Christmas card. For many, such images brought to mind the beauty of the winter season and the holidays that hang from a frosty bow. But not for her. It wasn’t just the snow, of course. It was what came with it. Whenever she saw or felt the cold heart of winter, she thought of her mother.

  A snow scene brought a thumping of her heart and the shadowy image of a woman in wine-colored cover-alls and a navy-blue down-filled vest. Vapors formed a halo around the woman’s head, though the girl knew the irony of the image. She knew it was her mother. And her mother was far from an angel in every way that could be imagined. The face, however, was blank in her memory. The girl was unsure what color eyes her mother had or if her nose was straight or slightly crooked like her own. She knew their coloring was the same, but nothing more. Nothing she could swear to. She had done a good job of trying to forget just what her mother looked like. She stopped wondering if, as she approached her mother’s age, she looked like her. In her mind’s eye, the girl’s mother was bent over doing something in the snowy dark of a nighttime long ago. Pink bloomed on a white blanket. What was it? The girl allowed herself to try to peer into the space just beyond her mother’s shoulder. She strained to see. She wanted to tap her, to get her attention. Why are we doing this? But no action, no words came. And then, the fleeting image evaporated like the smoke from a candle.

  The girl would grow into a woman. She’d marry. She’d become a mother herself. Yet she’d hold everything inside. She’d tell no one. What happened could be squeezed from her brain only by the force of her considerable will. She alone could release it. Still, she took no chances. She’d live a life away from the snow that chilled her heart and brought tears to her eyes. She’d keep a house free of powdered sugar, white granular laundry detergent, and anything else that reminded her of the icy darkness that she fought so hard to forget. No snow globes from airport gift shops. No ski trips to Vail. Nothing to trip a memory from rearing its breathless visage and reminding her of what she knew she had to forget.

  BEFORE IT PUT US ON the map, we were a county known for tight-grained lumber and the finest run of Chinook that the Northwest had ever seen. Our schools were good; our roadways safe. But a decade after the incident, we’re left with a reputation that belies our hearts and our way of life. For Spruce County, this has gone on too long. It is time to bury this story and move on. We urge a “no” vote on the annexation of the Logan property for a possible public park and memorial.

  —Editorial, Spruce County Lumberman, ten years after

  BOOK ONE

  Reunion

  Chapter One

  The sun cut over the jagged edge of the San Gabriel Mountains. Sharp and bright, its rays hacked through the haze from the millions who crawled to work on the hot, gummy freeways of the Los Angeles basin fifty-five miles away. Magenta clouds of bougainvillea softened the chain-link fences corralling the cinder-block homes lining Cabrillo Avenue, the busiest street into Santa Louisa. As Hannah Griffin drove to work on a sunny August morning, a newsman’s voice dro
ned on about the date being the anniversary of President Nixon’s resignation. Even at that hour, Hannah was not the first to pull into the parking lot of the Santa Louisa County Courthouse where she had worked in the crime investigations unit for the past five and a half years. She guided the burgundy Volvo wagon into a spot east of a stand of eucalyptus that ran along the median. Messy trees, ugly trees, she thought. But when the temperature hit the ninety-degree mark as had been warned by the weather-man, shade would make a difference before the day was over. Hannah craned her neck and reached for a cardboard shield her husband had bought her to prevent the dashboard from cracking in the heat. On one side was a pair of cartoon sunglasses with eyebrows arched over the lenses. On the other, foot-tall letters: Call 911! Emergency!

  Santa Louisa County was an hour and a half northeast of Los Angeles. It was a world away from California’s most imitated and chided city. Santa Louisa, the county and the town that shared the same name, was nothing but a Southern California footnote. Santa Louisa’s biggest industry was agriculture. Flower seeds grew in a zigzag afghan that gave the monotony of the landscape a Crayola jolt with strawflowers and bachelor’s buttons. A welcome sign into town invited tourists to have a BLOOMING GOOD TIME. Hannah, her husband, Ethan, and their daughter, Amber, made the pilgrimage to the flower fields every spring. Amber looked like her father—at least Hannah thought so as she studied her profile. Amber’s nose was a slight ski jump, like Ethan’s. Her blond hair was wavy, as was Ethan’s. Whenever Hannah told Ethan their daughter resembled him, he’d exaggerate a cringing reaction. It was, Hannah knew, an act. In reality, Ethan was very handsome, and if Amber looked like him, she’d grow up to be a good-looking woman. That spring, as in the others, the couple took turns snapping photographs of their eight-year-old, up to her waist in yellow and blue.

  “I promise this’ll be the last year,” Hannah lied as she framed Amber in one more gorgeous exposure. Then a quick second shot, too.

  Of course, there will always be a next year. Hannah had an old Life magazine she had kept for years… the reason why it has followed her for two decades was not important, not now. In the back of the magazine there was a photo spread of a little girl posed in her father’s fireman’s uniform. Boots nearly swallow her stubby limbs; the helmet, an awning over her face. But as the years pass, the little girl grows into the uniform. By the end of the series, a pretty young woman stands next to her mother and father, helmet askew, grin as wide as the pages allowed. Hannah liked that kind of continuum. She’d always wanted that for Amber because it had eluded her.

  Before getting out of her car, Hannah caught her reflection in the mirror. Her eyes were puffy, and she rubbed them with her forefinger. In her early thirties, she knew that popping out of bed after four hours’ sleep exacted a price. And yet with her dark blond hair streaked by the California sun, freckles across the bridge of her nose, and enormous brown eyes, she was lovely even on a bad day. Even so, she thanked Max Factor for cover-up stick as she walked across the lot. Ted Ripperton, CSI lead, met her by the door.

  “You’re here early,” he said, a paper coffee cup in hand.

  “No more than any other day this summer. Make that this year,” she said. “Glad you came in early yourself. I’m going to see Joanne Garcia this morning.”

  “She expecting you?” Ripp asked, tilting his coffee awkwardly to suck the nipple-lid for the last drop.

  “We talked last night,” Hannah answered. “At least, she listened.” She unloaded her briefcase and spread out the Garcia case file. The fourty-four-year-old investigator’s eyes darted around the room, more indicative of a person who couldn’t focus on a damn thing than a man who didn’t have the skills to do so. Hannah had gone to county attorney Bill Gilliand twice to register complaints about Ripp’s work—two times more than she had ought to have. Both complaints had been made in her first two weeks of service. She felt so foolish. She didn’t know Ted Ripperton’s wife’s maiden name was Gilliand. Geneva Ripperton had been born Geneva Gilliand. Ripp’s job was a family favor.

  “I’m between things,” he said. “You want me to go out to Taco Trench with you?”

  “Her home is in Valle los Reyes,” Hannah said, without giving Ripp the satisfaction of a glare.

  He shrugged. “Well, they should raze the whole damn place.”

  “Not everyone marries well or is handed a good job.”

  “Don’t go there, Hannah.”

  “Or you’ll tell?” She let a beat pass. “You know I’m only kidding,” Hannah lied as she studied the photo on the top of the file once more. A little girl’s eyes stared from a Polaroid. Mimi Garcia was five. She had sullen hazel eyes.

  “We’re leaving at nine thirty,” she said, taking off an earring and reaching over to the phone. That was her signal to Ripp that he was to leave. Thankfully, he took the hint. Hannah watched him turn down the hall to the little room where coffee was brewed and lunches consumed by the lab staff and a few of the clerks who hadn’t learned that in the various legal professions everything is about association. Of course, Ripp didn’t care about that. He had a job for as long as voters kept his brother-in-law in office. And for as long as Geneva put up with him. Hannah knew it was only a matter of time and he’d be a school crossing guard on the west side of town. Maybe he’d even end up in Valle los Reyes? That, she thought, would be so sweet.

  Hannah took a Dr Pepper from the vending machine, a bad habit she’d started when a case kept her coming into the lab in the wee hours before Lotta Latte on Cabrillo opened its drive-thru window for the morning commute. Her eyes scanned the break room’s notice board. A rental cabin at Big Bear beckoned, but the idea of the mountains chilled her so much she shuddered. A flyer for a cat that had been homeless had met with success. It had “Thank You, Katie Marino,” scrawled across it. Hannah smiled, flipped the top on her soda can, and shuffled off to her cramped office. She was beat, but resolute. The Garcia case was just the kind she loved to work. It would suck her in like a whirlpool until justice was done. She had some calls to make and reports to scrutinize—the benefit of being promoted into a supervisory job that no one else had really wanted.

  Before taking her chair, Hannah saw a small box atop her heaping pile of incoming mail. It was addressed to her, but with a middle name that caused her pulse to jackhammer.

  HANNAH LOGAN GRIFFIN

  She tore at the brown wrapper with a nail file she retrieved from a tidy desk drawer. Logan. No one called her that. No one knew. Carefully, but quickly, she turned back the sealed edges of the box. A musty odor and a glimpse of dark, nearly winy, color startled her so much, that the container slipped from her hands and fell to the floor.

  For a second, she could not take her eyes off the carton. She averted her gaze only long enough to glance through the narrow glass window that ran the full length of her office door and provided a view of the county crime laboratory. Please, no one come in. In one rapid movement, she swiveled her chair and picked up the brown wrapper that had enclosed the contents for shipping. The address was written in permanent marker in an odd combination of printed letters and cursive script. There was no return address. On the backside of the brown paper, Hannah could see that the sender had simply cut apart a grocery bag to cover the box for mailing. Red ink spelled out S-a-f-e-w. For a second, she wondered how the box could have been delivered to her desk in the first place. It could be anything, from anyone. Even a bomb.

  But the instant she saw it, she knew. The package was not a bomb. It was something far worse.

  Hannah brushed wisps of dark blond hair from her forehead. The office was warm, though she could hear the air conditioner hum through the overhead ducts. As tears rained from her eyes, she fumbled for a tissue. She blotted and then studied the tissue as though the tears had been blood.

  The postmark indicated the package had come from Los Angeles. Jesus Christ, L.A. was only the second largest city in the country. Anyone could have dumped it into a bin and walked off to a job, a bus statio
n, LAX. She felt the burning warning of bile rise in her throat, telling her to fight the urge to vomit, swallow hard, or look for a trash receptacle. Extending the tip of her shoe, Hannah peeled back the rest of the tissue concealing the contents of the box. She did so gingerly, the way one might gently kick a dead rattlesnake to ensure that the venomous reptile was no longer a threat. A swatch of black and brown caught her eye. Her stomach knotted. Her first glance had not misled her. Dear Jesus, sweet Jesus.