A Wicked Snow

Chapter Thirty-three

Kodiak sheriff Kim Stanton had known Louise Wallace since he was a teenager when she helped coordinate the search and rescue youth group of which he was a member. Stanton was almost never angry. His good nature formed the rock-solid foundation of a deserved reputation as a gentleman in a land that was sometimes short on such men. Even in his dealings with the under-belly of Kodiak, poachers and pot growers, he was considerate and fair. No one had ever seen him yell at a perp or toss one to the ground.

Stanton had been on a shopping trip to Kodiak’s minuscule mall with his wife when the deputy agreed to assist in bringing Louise Wallace in for questioning.

“The Feds think Mrs. Wallace is who?” Stanton was not happy. His black hair bristled. “This isn’t going to happen here. Mrs. Wallace? Claire Logan? I’d be laughing my ass off if I weren’t so pissed off.”

Louise Wallace, dressed in black slacks, a white cotton top, and tennis shoes, sat in a chair outside Stanton’s office while S.A. Bauer finished briefing the local sheriff. Stanton shook his head in disbelief and shot a look of sympathy in Louise’s direction. She was a considerate and sensitive old lady. It wasn’t that she looked the part. She was.

Louise smiled at Stanton when their eyes met. She sat quietly, with the windbreaker folded on her lap. She refused a soda when one of the younger deputies offered it.

“I’m just talking to her,” Bauer said to Stanton. “We’re just going to have a conversation. She’s agreed to it.”

The two men talked a while longer, and Bauer emerged first.

“Do you want a lawyer?” he asked Louise. Stanton stood by and shrugged in embarrassment.

“No. Don’t see that I need one. Or do I?”

“We’re just going to talk,” he said. “Sheriff Stanton will be with us every step of the way. All right?”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Wallace,” Stanton interjected. “This won’t be long. Then you can go home.”

Wallace nodded and smiled. “It’s all right. I want to clear this up and get home. I have a houseguest.”

The three went into a room next door to the employee break area. It was no larger than a storage closet and outfitted with a table and chairs. Over the next forty-five minutes, Louise Wallace told her tearful story of her sons who had died in the car accident. She told the men how she had come to Kodiak to start over.

“Look at me, Kim. You’ve known me for twenty years, since you were a boy. I’m Louise. I’m not what he says I am, nor could I ever be.” She glared at Bauer. “I lost everything and started over here. I didn’t use my Social Security number because I didn’t want any part of my life catching up with me.”

“I don’t blame you,” Stanton said. “I had no idea about your boys. I’m sorry.”

Wallace looked at him with gratitude. Bauer knew he was standing on thin ice. He was the outsider. She was tough and convincing.

“I just want to be left alone,” she said.

Stanton felt guilty about making Wallace relive the past and apologized several times for the intrusion. He didn’t see anything sinister about her or her story. She was the woman who had done so much good for so many on the island.

Bauer was less convinced. “We’ll check out your story, of course,” he said.

She nodded. “I expect you will.”

“No family? No one who knew you before you came here?”

She shook her head. “Not anyone that I can recall. I really wanted a fresh start. I never looked back to the Lower Forty-eight after I came here.”

She was unflinching as the kid-glove interrogation worked its way to a close. She seemed like the nice old lady next door, though Bauer reminded himself of a recent case that had made the Oregon news, a kindergarten teacher who killed her husband before going to teach a full day—as if nothing had happened.

Wallace explained it was true that she had no driver’s license. She didn’t get one for the longest time, because she wasn’t driving much anyway.

“Then I started driving, you know, a little. Finally, a lot. And before you knew it I was too embarrassed to admit I didn’t have the license. Everyone knew me, so it never came up. As far as my I.D. was concerned.”

Stanton didn’t help matters much. He was hanging on her every word, nodding in agreement as if she were preaching and he was seeing the light. Bauer thought of the fingerprints, or the lack of them, on his I.D. badge.

“Can I see your hands?” he asked.

“Kind of a strange request,” she said, staring him straight in the eye. “But all right.” She put her hands on the table. She wore two rings; both were gold with channel-set diamonds.

“Could you turn them over? I’d like to see them face up, if you don’t mind.”

Her hesitation was brief. She rolled them over. All of the fingertips were a darker shade of pink than the rest of the flesh.

Bauer remained expressionless. “What happened to you?”

“Cannery accident,” she said, her eyes riveted to Bauer’s. “I was cleaning equipment with the sulfuric wash. I misread the proportions of the activator and… well before I knew it my gloves were eaten away at the tips.”

“I think I remember hearing about that,” Stanton said. “Dad worked at the cannery.”

“Yes,” she answered. “I believe he did. I think your father was one of the men who helped me.”

When the interview was over, Bauer had little more than before he’d picked up Louise Wallace. He didn’t let on what he’d found out about her Evergreen State Mental Hospital alibi. He knew that the institution had burned down. All records went up in flames.

A Kodiak reporter and photographer was already outside the sheriff’s office, more a testament to the fact that word travels fast on an island than that the reporter was particularly resourceful. One other person had also arrived: Marge Morrison, who stood by the door of her pickup waving her arms. She called out Wallace’s name.

“We’re not going to let them do this to you,” Morrison shouted across the oil-soaked parking lot. “We’re getting you a good lawyer! Cover your face, dear, and get in my truck!”