A Wicked Snow

Chapter Four

Despite her worries, unfounded as she knew they had to be, Hannah Griffin was about to find out that hell had frozen over. And that was a good thing.

Ted Ripperton hadn’t done anything right since 1993. And most of the observers in the Santa Louisa County Courthouse who were not related to him readily conceded as much. Ripp, with his leathery tan face and eyes popping from white rings of flesh left by tanning goggles, had his head so far up his ass that he needed a snorkel to breathe. At least most thought so. Hannah kept her opinions to herself, but she never defended him when others complained about his work ethic (as lax as could be), his personality (boorish and cocksure), even the way he dressed (Hush Puppies with black socks, khakis, white shirt, and a navy suit coat). Ripp was tolerated because he had to be. But a few days into the Garcia investigation he surprised them all, including Hannah. He stopped her in the hall on her way to the cluttered warren of cubicles and minuscule offices that were supposed to support the functions of the DA’s office, but really kept people apart like eggs in too-tight cartons.

He held up a manila folder. “Did you know Mimi Garcia had a little brother?” he asked. Coffee rings on the folder and powder from a bakery donut on his navy sleeves indicated what he’d had for breakfast.

Hannah didn’t know what he was talking about. Police interviews hadn’t disclosed anything about a son. Her brown eyes fixed on the white goggle-rimmed eyes of the county’s best, worst, and only full-time gumshoe.

“Here it is,” he said. Ripperton handed over the file slowly as though he was passing it on to a co-conspirator. He looked around. “And that’s not all. He’s dead.”

“Dead?”

“Yeah. Died of SIDS two and half years ago over in Landon. I found mention of it—I mean found mention of the kid—when I ran a DMV search on Berto Garcia. Came back that’d he’d been stopped for speeding and was cited for not having his son in a car seat.”

“His son?” Hannah fanned the pages and set her purse on the floor. “Jesus,” she said, “Joanne never said a word about a son.” Her mind flashed to the Tonka truck on the room divider. Too new to be Berto’s childhood relic; not played with enough to belong to Mimi. The toy, she thought, must have been the little boy’s.

“Nope,” Ripperton said, a smug smile now in place. He’d found something good and he knew it. “I guess she had reason to keep her mouth shut on that.”

Of course she did. Hannah Griffin had worked another case at the beginning of her career with similar facts. A child had been beaten up and hospitalized with a broken collarbone. X-rays revealed a previous fracture of the tibia that had healed long before, despite the fact that it hadn’t been set properly. The child survived, but further and long-overdue investigation by Hannah and her paralegal indicated he hadn’t been the first to suffer in the household. It turned out that the child’s older brother died three years before. Parents told friends and family members their son had died of SIDS. The hospital had been told the boy fell from a tree fort while playing in his backyard. No one—not the police, not the caseworker assigned to the family—bothered to check out the family’s residence. They lived on a treeless lot. There was no fort. Besides, what parent would allow a three-year-old to play in a fort off the ground in the first place? Furthermore, a SIDS case involving a three-year-old?

The little boy’s body was exhumed; charges were filed, and six months later, both parents were on paid vacations as guests of the California Department of Corrections.

Hannah sighed and read the report Ripp had given her. The little boy’s name was Enrique Garcia.

“The mother says her son turned blue and she was unable to revive him. Father was at home and made the call for emergency aid. Both parents reported that such an incident had never occurred previously…”

Hannah felt her arms draw closer to her own body. More than anything in her job she hated the prospect of an exhumation. Plowing the earth for the remains of the dead made the bile rise into her throat.

“I’ll get Judge Newell to issue the order,” she said stiffly. “We’re going to exhume Mimi Garcia’s little brother.”

By the end of the afternoon, Judge Bernice Newell lived up to her reputation as the DA’s best friend in the judiciary. Judge Newell almost never turned down a request for a warrant. It was true she dotted the i’s and crossed the t’s, and could seldom be faulted. Lawyers for the defense despised her. She was hardly impartial. She had a statue of Lady Justice on her desk. Super-glued across its eyes were reading glasses instead of a blindfold. It was kitschy and jokey, but it spoke volumes.

Hannah Griffin didn’t notice her as she left for the day. But a woman waited in the lobby of the Santa Louisa courthouse drinking a cup of black tea from a paper cup. She pushed her long, dark hair behind her ears and tapped her pointed shoes in time with the Muzak undulating over the marble floors. A Helen Reddy song, she thought. Maybe Cher? She smelled of White Shoulders perfume and spearmint gum. When Hannah walked by, the woman smiled and raised a hand as if to wave. But the friendliness of the gesture was not returned.

Hannah, of course, had no idea who she was. She had no idea of the hope the woman had for her. The hope that she’d bring her close to the one she’d loved and lost.

The next day before work, Hannah dropped Amber off at school, as she did nearly every morning at half past eight. She handed Amber a tissue from her purse as she drove.

“You missed a spot,” Hannah said.

Amber had worked the entire evening on an oil pastel of a lioness and her cub; smudges of rust and tan colored the bottoms of her palms. Hannah handed her a Wet-Nap left from a drive-in chicken place. She kissed her daughter good-bye as she pulled up to the bus turnaround. A school crossing guard opened the passenger door to let the girl out.

“I love you,” Hannah said with a warm smile.

In a habit she picked up from her mother, the eight-year-old rolled her eyes, more for the benefit of the crossing guard than any real statement of her affection for her mom.

“Love you, too,” she said.

As she watched Amber run off, her pastel drawing fluttering in the morning breeze, Hannah felt satisfied about her daughter in a way that she knew she had missed for herself. She was safe, without fear, and she was loved. Later that afternoon, like all the others, Ethan would take a late lunch break from the precinct and pick up their daughter for dance class.

And Hannah Griffin, lab coat over her linen suit, would do what she hated more than just about anything in the world. She was going to peer inside the dead body of a child.