A Wicked Snow Read online

  “They’re taking Hannah to the hospital for an exam, then back here,” Sandy went on. “You got any clothes that might fit her?”

  “Yes,” Patty answered. “Hannah and Michelle are about the same size.”

  “Well, she hadn’t barely a stitch on when they found her. She was wearing her nightgown and socks. Soaking wet, too. The poor thing was out in the snow when they found her.”

  Patty mumbled something about Christmas being ruined, hung up, and spun around for her car keys. She hurried to her daughter’s bedroom in search of some- thing for the Logan girl to wear. The room was a mess, and she couldn’t find anything clean. She thought of the Christmas tree and rifled for a package under its fragrant boughs. Ten minutes later, she was at the hospital with a pair of Michelle’s blue sailor-style jeans, brand new panties, socks pulled from under the tree, and a bright red Rock Point Bobcats sweatshirt still warm from the dryer. Patty handed the clothing to a duty nurse, explaining they were for the Logan girl.

  “Where’s her mother?” Patty asked.

  The nurse shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. Seems like she ought to be here, considering what her daughter’s been through.”

  “Can I do anything?” Patty asked.

  “Not that I can think of,” the nurse said. She stuffed the clothing into a plastic hospital garment bag and zipped it up. “Police are going to talk to her. The FBI’s even been called.”

  “Oh dear,” Patty said. “I wonder what’s going on.”

  Entering his mid-twenties, Jeff Bauer was the kind of federal cop that more senior special agents labeled a “greenhorn” or some other antiquated term left from the days of Eliot Ness, or at the very least, before color television. It only meant he was young and, even he had to admit when the occasion called for it, brash. He had graduated with honors from Stanford University with a degree in criminology and psychology. It wasn’t family money that got him to Palo Alto, either, but a widowed mother who typed indexes and rewrote obits for the Boise Statesman and who had the good sense to push her only son into applying for every scholarship she could find. Instead of pursuing a doctorate in psychology as he had once pondered, Bauer enrolled in the FBI Academy in Virginia, where he graduated a respectable thirty-fifth in his class. He had a sandy thatch of hair, clear blue eyes, and the chiseled features that were a gift of genetics, still crisp from youth. He was on the slender, though not slight, side, with a stomach that stayed above his belt and a waistband that didn’t roll. Women noticed him. That alone denied him a kind of welcome among the jaded, craggy-faced, scotch-and-water-gutted agents with thirty years of fieldwork. His first assignment had been in Portland. It was a small office with eighteen agents and five clerical staff. The Federal Building in downtown Portland was undergoing renovations when the new kid arrived for his first work assignment. He shared his cubbyhole office with a U.S. Marshall Service agent who, thankfully, was never around.

  It was barely 5:30, Christmas morning, when Bauer got up, emptied his bladder, and shuffled to the kitchen. He resuscitated an English muffin by sprinkling water on it and running it through the toaster. Bauer pulled the metal ring from the top of a pop can, hooked the tab onto a long chain he had made, and sloshed Dr Pepper into the back of his throat. Warm, sweet. Not too bad. He didn’t wait for coffee to brew. He turned on the radio to listen to Christmas tunes. Karen Carpenter’s butterscotch alto filled the room, and for a blissful, melancholy moment he relaxed, closed his eyes, and conjured images of Christmas at home in Harper, an Idaho paper mill town just outside of Boise. He knew that in a few hours, his sisters would be converging on their mother’s house with presents and a ham the size and weight of a bowling ball. Boise was only an hour from Portland by air, but that Christmas morning Bauer had holiday duty. He was low man on the totem pole.

  A few minutes before six, the phone rang and his sleepy eyes popped open. It was the dispatcher calling. The man’s voice was devoid of humanity or warmth. No Christmas cheer there.

  “You’ll need to get down to Spruce County,” the dispatcher said. “Big to-do down there. Big snow dumping down that way, too.”

  The reason for the call was some sort of criminal activity, of course, not a weather report. And Bauer was summoned not because he was the most suited for the job, but because he had no family and the bureau director thought he’d be able to “hold down the fort” for a few days. Holding it down, as the agent in charge put it, was hardly a solo job. A handful of agents on a skeleton crew made sure the holidays went better for those with kids, wives, dogs, gerbils, and the other trappings of real life, than those with giant microwave ovens. The dispatcher, a guy named Walter with a Polish last name that no one could pronounce, let alone spell, said that an enormous fire on a Christmas tree farm had resulted in several deaths, most likely members of a family.

  “That’s a case for local law enforcement,” Bauer said. He glanced out the window at the Willamette River, a silver strand with a shoreline dotted with boat hulls. In the glow of the streetlights and the light of an awakening morning on the riverside path below his window, a man and a small boy rode by. Shiny new wheels sparkled in the light.

  “Yeah,” the dispatcher said. “You’d think so, but not after what a volunteer fireman found.”

  The little boy outside fell down and the father ran to pick him up.

  “And what was that?” Bauer asked.

  “The skeletal remains of a man in a uniform found in a grave near the barn.”

  “Uniform?”

  “A Marine lieutenant’s.”

  Bauer set aside his poor excuse for an English muffin.

  “Still there?” the voice asked.

  “Yeah. Do they know who the guy is?”

  “Not yet, but there’s more. A lot more, I guess. After the fireman called his buddies over, they found another grave. And another after that. The weirdest thing is that all—presuming there are no others—have been related in some way to the military. A few had some form of identification, and they have been confirmed as missing for some time. A long time. Years. One guy on the list has been AWOL, they thought, for almost seven years.”

  “What the hell?” Bauer said. “What do you mean presuming there are no others?”

  “They’re up to six. You better get down there. Infrared has already identified four other hot spots. Could be dead animals, of course. Hell, it could be a compost pile rotting under the heavy layer of snow. Who knows? It’s a damn massacre in Rock Point, Spruce County.”

  “Got it,” Bauer said, jotting down the phone number of the local sheriff, Bob Howe.

  “It gets better. Get this, it’s a goddamn Christmas-tree farm.”

  “Great,” Bauer said. “I mean, how appropriate.”

  “Hey, Bauer,” the dispatcher said, “some of the bodies are disfigured pretty bad. Better take some Rolaids with you if you got a nervous stomach for that kind of thing.”

  “Ah, thanks,” he said.

  Bauer threw some clothes into a duffel bag, wishing he’d done the laundry earlier in the week as he’d planned. He yanked the blinds closed and grabbed another Dr Pepper. Rock Point was more than three hours away. He walked to his car and felt the icy fingers of a chill in the air. It looked like snow.

  Chapter 13

  Rock Point, Oregon, lay under a heavy coating of coarse, granular snow of the type that experienced kids insist make the best, the most lethal snowballs. Twinkly lights cobwebbed naked tree limbs flanking the Kiwanis Club’s WELCOME TO ROCK POINT sign, and a three-quarter-inch plywood Santa and his reindeer were parked atop what locals considered the center of the town, the old Wigwam Discount Store. And on the way through town were row after row of single-story wood-framed homes, built for mill workers and their families in the ’20s. Most were perfectly maintained, with yards of lawn and rhododendrons snuggled under curtained windows. It was Christmas, and those converging there would never forget that particular place, that day, the terrible occurrence that brought them together. Northerly wind gus
ts shot spiny darts into Jeff Bauer’s handsome face as he stepped from his car and made his way across the Rock Point High School parking lot. It was the home of the Bobcats, and necessity made it the heart, albeit, a broken one, of the community.

  He’d been told before leaving Portland to go straight to the high school, which was the staging area for the recovery effort.

  Ordinarily—though it was unlikely such a word could be used in conjunction with what was happening in Rock Point—Ressler’s Chapel of Flowers had the county contract to serve as the area’s morgue, but a horrendous traffic accident four days earlier had filled its pair of refrigerator units with a mother, father, and their two children. Only one time before had there been a need for an additional refrigerator, and in that case, another traffic accident, the mortician’s old Kenmore chest freezer was emptied. He lined it with black plastic used to block weeds from growing in the flowerbed, and set it on its warmest “cold” setting. When word got out that multiple bodies were being recovered from a Christmas tree farm outside of town, a decision was made that Ressler’s Chapel of Flowers wasn’t going to do.

  Rock Point High’s gymnasium was the only building sizable enough for what police were saying would be needed, given the early reports from the Christmas tree farm. The remains of holiday banners touting the HOLLY DAZE DANCE hung forlornly on dank, masking tape–marked cinderblock walls. GO BOBCATS! and WE’VE GOT SPIRIT! YES WE DO! rested in a heap on the gleaming, blond, wooden floor. A trophy case filled with plaques and faded ribbons commanded a space next to the gym’s entrance. More than three dozen people congregated in the gym—and some of those were dead. Bauer introduced himself to the Spruce County coroner, a bald man with an egg-shaped head and marshmallow middle. His name was Bertram Wilder. Dr. Wilder apologized for his damp hands as they greeted each other.

  “Just washed up,” he said.

  Bauer surreptitiously wiped his hands on the back of his trousers and looked just beyond the doctor. He counted the row of midnight blue body bags elevated from the floor on army-issued cots.

  “Eight?” he asked.

  The egghead nodded. “Not counting Claire Logan and her kids.”

  “How many kids?” he asked.

  “Two boys.”

  “Jesus. What about Mr. Logan? Where’s he?”

  “An old case of mine,” the coroner said flatly. “Mr. Logan has been dead for years.”

  “Is everyone else accounted for?”

  “As far as we know. But we don’t know who else is planted out there. If we keep digging, maybe we’ll find some more.”

  Bauer followed the coroner over to the first row of bodies and knelt down as though a closer proximity would provide additional clarity. Thick black plastic had been arranged to protect the floor from any seepage. The coroner pulled on the zipper and the cocoon split open. A sharp odor shot forth, like steam from a putrid, foil-wrapped baked potato. Bauer turned away for a split second to catch his breath before turning his attention back to the corpse.

  Dr. Wilder’s expressionless face twitched a smile.

  “The smell could be worse,” he said. “Ten or twenty times worse if it weren’t for the quick lime.” He opened the body bag more fully and the stench that was nearly intolerable intensified. “Yeah, lime eats the flesh like a flame melts candle wax. Whoever put the bodies in the ground packed them in large quantities of lime first. Wrapped them in the stuff.”

  The odor was so intense, it seemed more a solid than a gas to Bauer, pushing into his windpipe like a plug. It nearly choked him. He let out a hacking cough and found his voice, “I don’t follow you. What do you mean?”

  The doctor smiled his weird grin and examined a pair of rubber gloves for tears by holding them up to the row of fluorescent lights suspended by cables over the basketball floor. He snapped them on and opened the bag farther, pulling the zipper past the sternum and nearly to the crotch. A piece of metal of some importance caught the light and glinted a golden tone through the murky stench that wafted from fabric and flesh. Bauer bent closer. It appeared that the dead man was wearing some kind of a military uniform and the uniform was intact. Filthy, thick with mud, and stiffened by dried bodily secretions, but the fabric was completely intact. Right down to the buttons, brass ones, Bauer thought to himself.

  Dr. Wilder turned the flap of the jacket to reveal a yellow residue. “Lime. See that there.” He pointed with a gloved finger. “Whoever put the bodies in the ground packed them with lime on the inside of their clothes.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Bauer had heard of quick lime being used to dispose of bodies, but not in that manner. Usually the bodies were dredged in lime like drumsticks in flour for Sunday dinner, then buried. Of course, the young agent had heard of the technique—the Nazis used it in Poland during World War II—but the smell and the sight of the putrid corpse

  made him lose his train of thought. Derailed it.

  “I wondered about that, too. Then it came to me. Out here it rains half the year. Our soil is lime-poor because it’s leeched right out of the dirt by the rain. By packing the bodies with lime on the inside of their clothes, the killer kept the lime right where it would do some good.”

  Bauer listened intently. “Wouldn’t it leech out anyway?” he asked.

  “In time… Special Agent…”

  “Bauer,” he said.

  “In time, Agent Bauer, but not nearly as rapidly. By keeping the lime next to the corpse, it eats away at the flesh ten times faster. At least. Who’s to say, really? It is only an estimate. Not every vile and disgusting thing known to man has been cataloged and measured. But the quick lime and the water and the enzymes present in the human body turn the corpse into a slurry. It’s like a churning, a Waring blender of—for lack of a better word—gunk.”

  Ignoring signs posted over the doorway, Dr. Wilder lit up a cigarette and looked about the gym for a place to drop his match. When he found none, he let it land on the floor before rapidly grinding it out.

  Bauer spoke up. “Are all the victims in uniform?”

  “All, insofar as we can tell, are dressed in some kind of a military uniform. There’s another similarity, or so it seems. While we can’t be sure given their decomposed condition, most appear to be older gentlemen. I’d say fifties and sixties.”

  “Any I.D. made?”

  Dr. Wilder drew a deep breath through his Camel and shook his head. The filterless end of the cigarette was wet and mashed from his clenched lips.

  “That’s the kicker. None of these guys have any teeth.” The bald-headed doctor blew two channels of smoke out of his nose and watched warily for the agent’s response.

  Bauer’s face remained stone. “No teeth?”

  “Yes, it appears whoever murdered these fellows knew how to work a sledge hammer or something of the sort. I’ve never seen anything like it, except maybe in cases in which a face is bashed in by a steering wheel in the course of a head-on. But not deliberate. Postmortem, I’m sure. It’s strange. All of the corpses are missing their smiles.” Wilder touched his lips and let out a short, peculiar laugh. It was the kind of embarrassed laugh some- one makes when they know they’ve said the wrong thing.

  A small group of uniformed county personnel swarmed the scene. They were worker ants and the bodies were their blue egg cases. Moving from one to another, officers took pictures and cataloged whatever seemed pertinent.

  A young cop came up and offered a cup of coffee. Bauer happily took it. The stench had permeated everything, even his taste buds. The coffee was lousy, but at the same time it was the best he ever tasted. At least, Jeff Bauer needed something in his mouth and throat.

  “You want to see the survivor?” the officer asked as Bauer gulped. “Hannah Logan, Claire Logan’s daughter. She’s thirteen or fourteen. They’re processing her now and taking her to the Inn and Sheriff says you can see her there. It would be better for her, less threatening than the county building, I guess. Poor kid’s really shaken up. Got no family, no place
to stay.”

  It was only years later that Hannah Logan would piece together details of what happened in Rock Point that Christmas Eve night and the very early morning hours of Christmas Day. Some things were stored in memory, like smelly, moldy trinkets in a lead-lined box. She couldn’t get to all of her memories, even if she had tried. In fact, she said little about what happened during the first hours, and not surprisingly, even less as the years went by. She remembered how a fireman had given her his coat back at the farm. She would flash on that image time and again as she surveyed that copy of Life magazine that featured similar photographs— along with the horror of that snowy night. She remembered how they took her to a small room at the department they called the “Victim Assistance Room” or the—in cop-speak buzzing around her—”VAR.” She had a vague recollection that she looked terrible. A crust of blood on her hair had dried, leaving it matted to her head. She wore the Bobcats sweatshirt and jeans given by the sister of the sheriff’s dispatcher. She sat with her arms folded, to conceal her budding breasts. No one had thought to bring her a bra.

  VAR officer Sheila Wax was a wiry woman with a pack-a-day smoker’s baritone and glasses that hung on a chain around her neck and moved to and fro as she walked, the bony plate of her chest rising and falling with each step. Part of her strategy for dealing with the shell-shocked victims of crime was called “whisking.” She had to keep the victim’s thought processes stirring from one idea to the next. Dwelling on a thought, on a task, could mean a breakdown. No one wanted to deal with the screams of someone falling apart, no matter how justified such a response might be. Those who said they didn’t mind, that they wanted to be needed by the fragile and the cracked, were liars. Sheila Wax wasn’t compassionless. She cared about doing a good job. But Wax also had a twenty-two-pound Tom turkey in the oven and a house full of relatives milling around a table that she still had to set. She handed Hannah a can of pop and a bag of chips.