A Wicked Snow

Chapter Eighteen

The homicide and arson investigators didn’t have it easy—even when they knew Claire Logan had probably advertised for her victims in a military newspaper. They needed to know more than just how, who, and when. The “why” would be helpful, too. But the crime scene was vast and the number of victims was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Only a cop who had worked an apartment fire in Detroit that killed thirty-one had even the remotest point of personal reference. The Logan house and outbuildings had, for the most part, been reduced to ash. The fire that ignited as children across the world dreamed of Santa and presents had burned so hot that no pour patterns survived the inferno. Investigators picked through the rubble in search of clues. Shards of metal and the coils of several mattresses survived, as did the burned-out remnants of the kitchen— a stove, a refrigerator, the ghostly web of a hanging rack for pots and pans. Jeff Bauer observed the police criminalists as they carefully bagged the charred remains of Claire Logan’s house. It was tedious, mundane work and, with the snow against the blackened debris, oddly reminiscent of the old black-and-whites shot at some early twentieth-century disaster like the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco.

From the burned deadfall of Claire Logan’s house, one investigator recovered the blackened and burned figure of what appeared to be an infant. Horror seized him and he called for the others to help while he gingerly cleared away the debris and rubble that nestled the baby’s blackened body. Then he saw the baby’s black face peer from a hole in the debris, its small mouth appearing to cry out in a scream that no one could hear. The crime scene investigator started to laugh—a soft, then loud rolling laugh, the kind meant to get attention.

“It’s a doll,” he said. “It’s just a goddamn kid’s baby doll!”

And it was. A swarm of men in yellow slickers gathered to laugh, too. The kind of laughter that firemen know, and police officers, and EMTs, and even reporters with strong stomachs and the crime beat: the laughter of relief.

The investigator later told a newsman, “After all that we found out there in the fire and out in the earth, I started to expect the worst. What’s another dead baby to this nightmare? Makes my heart sick, those little boys died there.”

Scraps of wood, including a doorframe, the piano, and the floorboards that were pinned under the piano, were sent back East for examination. While the murder of the boys, the woman, and the men found in the ground at the Logan farm were the focus of the growing investigation, the arson was also of critical importance. Speculation ran through town that Claire Logan and Marcus Wheaton had been in on the blaze together. It seemed from statements he made that he protected her, might have even loved her. Della Holm, the postmistress, beat that drum to her customers as they came to the post office to send back gifts that hadn’t suited them. Others gossiped, too. As Bauer and others continued digging—literally and figuratively—they learned more details about the woman and her connection to the one-eyed, son-of-a-bitch slob who was locked up at the jail.

One woman called Bauer at the Whispering Pines Motel and told him the story of the time Claire gave her a ride home from work. She did not want to give her name.

“I needed a job and Claire gave me one. I twisted cedar garland for most of October through December and I was good at it. She said my garland was flawless. She was nice to me. One night when my car wouldn’t start, Claire offered to give me a ride home. Her husband was dead by then. Just after we got onto the highway we hit a deer. I remember the jolt and how the doe lurched to the side of the road. The deer was still alive and making this awful noise, kind of a gurgling sound. Anyway, Claire turned off the car and reached over me to the glove box and grabbed a hunting knife. I saw a gun in the glove box. You know that little light? Well I could see the gun very plainly. Anyway, she got outside and grabbed the deer’s head like she was going to hug the poor thing, then took that knife and slit its throat. She started screaming and I was freaking out. I didn’t blame her. But you know why she was screaming? The deer sprayed blood on her jacket. She was mad at the deer. And I said, ‘Claire, why didn’t you just shoot it? You got a gun.’ And she turns to me and kind of smiles a weird smile. ‘I was pretending it was my husband and I wanted to feel him die.’ Then she laughs and I started laughing. I don’t even know why I’m laughing, except for the fact that she is. I thought it was pretty cold killing that deer the way she did. A bullet through the head would have been quicker.”

Bauer wrote his thoughts in a report he knew he’d probably never officially file. He wasn’t a forensic psychiatrist; he was a federal cop and his job was to catch a killer, not profile one. Even so, he kept a notebook of observations that he hoped would help him find young Hannah’s mother:

Claire Logan is a classic loner. Her pleasant façade masks a bitter and angry woman. No one is good enough; no one is worth anything. Her ambitions and desires take precedence over all others and their needs and wants. She has no close friends. Her only living family member appears to be an older sister. Her first husband died in an accident, and there was some suspicion of Claire’s possible involvement. None was proven. She was—is—a very controlling woman. With the exception of Marcus Wheaton, she’s never been able to retain an employee longer than a single Christmas season. Those who knew her insist that she was brilliant, abrasive, and full of grandiosity when it came to her business and her lifestyle.

A week after the remnants of the Logan house were flown in a commercial aircraft’s cargo hold to the labs at Quantico, word came back to Bauer and the others working the case that an accelerant had, in fact, been used to burn down the house. Significant traces of acetone were found on the doorframe and floorboards. The piano, however, was clean. This puzzled Bauer at first, until he remembered the original location of the piano— the second floor. Bauer felt a chill. The brave little girl had been the final intended victim.

The volunteer fire department’s pump truck had arrived eleven minutes after the call—a remarkable, an incredible, response for a rural area, but the two-story farmhouse was already a blazing shell when the team arrived. They said it looked like the sun had crash-landed on Icicle Creek Farm. As the steam rose from the spray of their hoses, they knew little property and no people could have survived such an intense fire. Oddly, like a blackened monument, it was the piano that stood alone in the center of the debris. And as the days passed, that monolithic burned-out instrument commanded the most attention. The piano was of considerable interest because the bodies of the two boys and the headless woman had been sandwiched between it and the floor.

Further chemical microscopic analysis revealed an abundance of cellulose and mica particles found in the area under the piano. At first it was thought to be packing material, but a sharp-witted chemist put two and two together—the chemicals and the business of the tree farm. The acetone and the cellulose were two components of Christmas-tree flocking material. The cellulose provided the puffy white bulk of the spray and the mica added silvery sparkles that some revelers found especially festive. Hannah Logan had told investigators that she had seen Wheaton with the sno-gun that night…and as she felt around in the smoke, she touched a coating of spray flocking on the hallway and the stairs. Bauer theorized that Wheaton used the flocking to increase the speed of the fire. Traces of kerosene were also identified.

A photo lineup showing Marcus Wheaton’s one-eyed mug among five others (his lawyer would argue that the lineup was unfair because each of the other men had two eyes) got a positive identification from a salesman for Cascade Floral, Inc., a Portland wholesaler. Beyond mums and roses for the floral trade, the company specialized in supplies for Northwest tree growers. Among their product lines were various brands of cellulose and rayon flocking. When the FBI agent showed up to ask about the various products they sold, the counter salesgirl tried to sell him on buying rayon over cellulose.

“Half the price, twice the markup,” she said, assuming he was there to place an order for his own farm and tree lot. “It fluffs nicely. Looks very real.”

The agent explained that he wasn’t a grower in search of flocking, but an FBI agent looking for answers. He didn’t say which crime. But the girl seemed to know. She pressed the “call” button of the intercom mounted next to her telephone and summoned her manager. A minute later, a short butterball of a man emerged from his corner office and confirmed that Icicle Creek Farm was a customer.

“Not a big customer, but steady,” he said. “Paid on time and always took the two percent cash discount. Could use more like Icicle Creek.”

It took the manager all of ten seconds to identify Wheaton.

“His is a face you’d never forget,” he said, using the eraser end of a pencil to indicate the Icicle Creek Farm’s handyman.

Several days into the LOMURS investigation, the first of what would eventually become scores of Claire Logan “sightings” made the broadcast airwaves. Sheriff Howe and Bauer were drinking coffee when a deputy came in and told them to turn on the old TV that sat on a shelf above departmental service awards and certificates for community involvement.

“Quick! She’s on the tube. Flip on channel six!”

“Who?” the sheriff asked.

“Claire Logan!” the deputy replied, pushing past the round table with the morning’s paper and an overloaded ashtray. He turned the knob and rolled the dial to Channel Six. An attractive female reporter in a tan raincoat and a robin’s-egg-blue scarf stood in slushy snowfall gripping a microphone and pointing to a strip mall twenty yards behind her. Despite the frigid air, her hands were bare. Her showy lacquered talons couldn’t be contained in gloves.

“…police responded after a Salem woman reportedly spotted Logan at this washateria just west of the university…”

Bauer and Howe were flabbergasted. Both wondered what the Salem police thought they were doing talking to the media. Why hadn’t they bothered to notify the Spruce County authorities, not to mention the FBI?

“What the hell?” Howe said. Anger showed on his face. Even his ears were dipped in red. He slammed his fist on the table with such force that a weaker man would have yelped. “Get that cocksucker Reid on the line,” he barked at the deputy. “RIGHT NOW!”

The deputy spun around and went for the phone.

Chuck Reid was the police chief for Salem, Oregon’s capital, a jurisdiction that was big on pulling over boozedup legislators, busting hookers on the stroll, and cleaning up the vices that appear to go hand in hand with government work. Violent crime wasn’t a part of the mix. Not usually. And criminals the likes of Claire Logan were never caught in places like Salem. Just didn’t happen.

The TV reporter asked a woman of about thirty what she had seen. The woman held a baby with curly brown hair to her shoulder and rocked back and forth as she spoke.

“It was her, all right,” she said. “I saw her picture on the news and the next thing I knew she was standing in line with me waiting for the change girl at the Laundromat. It was Claire Logan… I’m sure of it.”

As the reporter interjected little pieces of the story, the number of the dead, the missing money, and the fact that what was purported to be Claire’s body had been destroyed, the deputy hurried back into the room.

“Got Chief Reid on the line.” The deputy’s eyes bulged. “Says he’s sorry. And sounds like he means it.”

Bauer watched as Sheriff Bob Howe let the police chief of Salem have it with both barrels. His Andy Griffith demeanor vanished in an instant, and for a split second it looked as if he were going to tear the roof off the jail. But Bauer thought it was justified—every word Sheriff Howe uttered Bauer could have easily echoed.

“We’ve got a major investigation here, Reid. I know sure as hell you’ve been reading the papers and watching television news. We’ve got bodies stacked up in our gymnasium, for crying out loud. And you guys do this without so much as a phone call? What the hell are you doing… grabbing a bit of glory for yourselves?!”

After half a minute’s tirade, complete with spittle foaming the corners of his mouth, the sheriff grew quiet and appeared to listen to Reid. Another minute passed and he ended the dialogue. “Talk to you later,” he said. His tone was congenial, without being apologetic. His ears were no longer red.

“It wasn’t Claire Logan the woman saw doing her laundry. It was a local gal with the friends to prove it. The alias wasn’t an alias, after all. She left her goddamn wallet at home. That idiot from Channel Six pushed a story out there when she already knew better.”

“Not the first time that’s happened,” Bauer muttered. Despite allowing the woman’s body from under the piano to be cremated, he liked Sheriff Howe.

Later, a ticket taker reported seeing Claire Logan at a bus station in Portland; a jealous woman reported her husband’s mistress was Claire; and a woman from Rock Point was sure she saw Claire at the Fred Meyer on Colfax Avenue. If the woman from Rock Point got away with murder, she didn’t go unnoticed. At least it seemed that way.

Was she dead or not? Had she engineered the most astonishing disappearance in criminal history? The FBI broke tradition, and for the first time since Clyde Barrow’s love and partner in crime, Bonnie Parker, and a San Francisco antiwar protester/fire bomber named Colleen Deming, a woman’s name was added to the FBI’s Most Wanted List.

Della Holm, the Rock Point postmistress, hung the poster all over the tiny post office.

“Local girl makes good,” she said to customers.