In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  She snapped her briefcase shut, then turned and began to weave her way to the door. News crews surrounded the Whitman family like hungry dogs waiting for scraps of meat. Calhoun Whitman, Sr., stood murmuring to his attorney, while his wife, Cornelia, huddled beside him, dabbing at her nose with a crumpled tissue. As Mary entered the center aisle of the courtroom, her eyes locked with those of Mitchell Whitman. Cal’s older brother was giving his own interview to a reporter from Channel 9, but all the while he glowered straight at her. Mary had cross-examined him hard when the defense had called him as a witness, and she could tell by his furious eyes that he had not forgotten it.

  “Of course we’ll appeal,” he declared as the reporter shoved a microphone in his face. “My brother was framed. This case was politically motivated.”

  “So who set Cal up?” two different voices demanded as the news cameras whirred.

  Lord, Mary thought. What a zoo. She turned away from Mitchell Whitman and wriggled through a cluster of reporters talking on cell phones. Then she saw two familiar figures sitting in the back row of the courtroom.

  Mary smiled. Tall, blonde Alexandra McCrimmon had been her best friend since their freshman year at college and had followed Mary, for lack of more compelling career plans, into law school afterwards. There they’d met Joan Marchetti, a diminutive Italian who’d lacked the stature to sing opera and fled south to study law. The three women had met when they’d wound up as the only females in their section of Constitutional Law. Mary had felt an instant kinship with Joan as a fellow outsider, while Alex was fascinated by Joan’s sweet voice and scrappy attitude. Joan, who had never met either a cowgirl from Texas or an Indian from North Carolina, was thrilled to find two Southerners who didn’t recoil from her Brooklyn accent or misunderstand her penchant for wearing black.

  They formed a tight bond, and over the next two years, their grit, humor, and determination carried them through the tough Emory curriculum. Afterwards, while Mary had single-mindedly pursued criminal law, Alex and Joan had wound up as corporate attorneys, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Both worked for the same sprawling law firm in one of Atlanta’s newest high-rises. “It’s dog-eat-dog,” Alex liked to say. “But they pay us extraordinarily well to scoop the poop.”

  “Hi, girls.” Mary plopped her briefcase down in the empty chair beside Joan. “How come you’re here? Dull day in corporate takeovers?”

  “We wanted to watch you nail handsome Cal.” Alex eyed Mary’s trademark black suit. “And since you’re wearing Deathwrap without a blouse, we knew you meant business.”

  “So how’d I do?”

  Joan winked. “You’d have made my Uncle Nick proud.”

  “Is this Uncle Nick of the killer lasagna?”

  “No. This is Uncle Nick of the cement overshoes.”

  “Oh.” Mary laughed, always enjoying the comic way Joan referred to her Italian relatives. “That Uncle Nick.”

  “I was a little worried about you for a minute, there, Mary,” Alex teased, slipping back into the west Texas accent she’d tried for years to lose. “For a second I thought pretty Cal was gonna spit you to death.”

  Mary wrinkled her nose. “Pretty gross, huh?”

  “And he’s so good-looking.” Joan sighed. “He probably owns his own tux and likes to dance.” She shook her head. “What a waste!”

  Jim Falkner joined them. He grinned at Mary, his mustache turning up on the ends. “Are you still bugging out for the weekend?”

  Mary had asked, as final arguments began in the Whitman case, if she could take a long weekend off. “I need to go back home,” she’d told Jim cryptically. “I’ve got some unfinished business to attend to.” Jim had agreed, gladly. Mary had earned a rest. She was the finest young prosecutor he’d ever seen.

  “I am,” Mary told him now. “Alex and Joan are going with me.”

  “Camping.” Joan rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? A nice New York City girl like me?”

  Jim smiled at the three women. “Just don’t let Mary get eaten by any bears. We’ve still got a few thousand psychos to put away.”

  “And I bet you’re saving them all for me.” She laughed as she picked up her briefcase, but a chill skittered down her spine. For the first time in twelve years, Mary Crow was going home.

  TWO

  What can I get for you, hon?”

  Lou Delgado smiled up at the waitress, who stood with both her left breast and order pad poised above his right ear. “The usual, Marge. How’s it going?”

  “They come, they eat, sometimes I get a decent tip out of the deal.” Marge cracked a wad of gum.

  “You aren’t referring to me, are you?”

  Chuckling, Marge gave him a wink, then retreated to the counter. Lou settled back in the booth, appreciating the rhythmic jiggle of her bottom against the snug blue polyester of her uniform. All in all, the Copper Pot Diner was not a bad place to meet clients. The corner booth stayed empty in the late-night hours, the fluorescent lights allowed him a full view of the front door, and the waitresses knew how to keep their mouths shut if any cops came nosing around. Not a bad place at all, considering.

  He drummed his fingers on the table and checked his watch. His next client should come walking through the door any minute. A young man, Lou thought, remembering the call from Perry that afternoon. Perry was an attorney who always sent Delgado his dirtiest jobs. Usually he was up-front about what needed to be done, but today the old shyster had been tight-lipped, saying only the new client was “someone you might recognize.” Lou enjoyed coyness about as much as a root canal, but he had agreed to meet the guy. What the hell, he decided. He could use the money. Private dicking in Dixie was not the most lucrative of professions.

  Headlights flashed across the front window as Marge placed a mug of coffee and a piece of pecan pie on the table. Delgado forked up his first bite as the door of a black Porsche opened. As a figure emerged from the car, Lou relished the warm, sticky sweetness that filled his mouth, then turned his dark eyes intently to the door.

  A man wearing khaki trousers and a pale blue button-down shirt entered. The newcomer stood well over six feet, with broad shoulders and a thick neck. Ex-high school quarterback, Delgado guessed. Too tall for a wrestler. Not the right color to play hoops. His dark blond hair was combed back from his forehead, and he wore his shirtsleeves rolled up to reveal the taut muscles of his forearms. Pumps iron, too, Lou decided. The young man scanned the diner like a lunchroom bully looking for his next victim, then nodded at Lou and strode toward the booth.

  “Mr. Delgado?” The young man extended his hand.

  “Right.” Lou tried not to wince as powerful fingers mashed his fleshy paw.

  “Mr. Perry sent me.”

  “Have a seat.” Lou nodded at the other side of the table.

  The young man slid into the booth and pulled a pack of Camels from his pocket. He flicked one out of the pack, touched what looked like a solid gold lighter to one end, and dropped both lighter and cigarettes back in his pocket, every movement precise as a close-order drill. He inhaled as if pulling the nicotine all the way down to his toes. Marge bustled back over, order pad in hand.

  “You need a menu, sugar?”

  He barely glanced at her. “Bring me a glass of water. With lots of ice.”

  Lou studied the young man as Marge went back to the counter. He looked familiar, like one of those actors in a late-night infomercial. The Porsche in the parking lot and the Rolex strapped to his wrist spelled money, but he was too young to have accumulated that kind of wealth on his own. Daddy’s got dough, Lou decided. Junior’s in some kind of trouble and Daddy’s going to grease the slide.

  “Okay.” Lou started with his dependably disarming smile. “Tell me why a guy like you needs a guy like me.”

  “I need to find out someone’s habits.” He blew a plume of smoke toward Lou.

  Delgado grinned. “You got a girl who’s running around on you?”

  “I wouldn’t need a pri
vate detective to take care of that, Mr. Delgado,” the young man replied curtly, pulling a newspaper clipping from his pocket. “I want to find out about this woman, here.” He shoved the article across the table.

  Lou looked down at the paper. The girl leaving the Deckard County Courthouse looked attractive, in a crisp, I-mean-business way. Long legs, nice tits, but all subdued behind an expensive black suit and a leather briefcase. He recognized her before the kid’s fingers left the page. Mary Crow. Lou knew people who cursed this woman on a daily basis.

  “So what did the famous Ms. Crow do to you? Not get all your speeding tickets dismissed?” Lou kept his voice light as Marge set a tall glass of water down on the table, ice tinkling.

  “She just convicted my brother of murder.”

  Lou’s face brightened. Suddenly it all fell into place. He had seen this guy on television. Not commercials, but the news. Every station in Atlanta had shown him sweating like a pig on the witness stand at his brother’s trial. He didn’t have the movie-star good looks of his killer brother, but the hair, the eyes—and the arrogance—were the same.

  “You’re that Whitman kid’s brother,” said Lou.

  The young man nodded. “I’m Mitchell Whitman. Son of old Cal the real-estate king and brother of handsome Cal the killer.”

  “Sorry.” Lou shrugged. “It seemed like a pretty airtight case.”

  “They set it up to look that way. My father has made a lot of money in his life, and a commensurate number of enemies. The only way they could get to him was through my brother.”

  “And the prisons are filled with innocent men.” Delgado sighed. How many times had he heard that? “Just tell me how I figure into this.”

  Whitman drained half the glass of ice water, then set it down. “Like I said, I want to know as much about Mary Crow as you can tell me. Where she goes, what she does, who she does it with.”

  Lou choked out a little laugh. “Look, kid, I’ll tell you right now I don’t mess with officers of the court. And I sure as hell wouldn’t mess with Mary Crow. I saw her going after you on TV. She squeezed your balls pretty hard.”

  “Nobody’s asking you to mess with anybody.” Whitman ignored Delgado’s testicle remark. “I’m only interested in information.”

  Lou frowned down at the newspaper article. “So what terrible things do you figure she does on the side? Pose for porn? Fuck the mayor?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Delgado. That’s what I would be paying you to find out.” Whitman bypassed the ashtray on the table and flipped his cigarette on the floor, grinding it out on the linoleum with the heel of his hand-sewn boot.

  Lou gave up on his pecan pie. For some reason this Mitchell Whitman made him feel like he was sitting next to someone flicking matches at a half-empty gas can. Better to just get this over with, he thought, and be gone. “Okay. So I tail Ms. Crow. Then what?”

  “Then report back to me. I’m sure this isn’t anything you haven’t done before.”

  Lou looked at Whitman for a long moment. Something told him there was a lot more to this, but something else told him it was better not to ask what. Suddenly an idea occurred to him.

  “Okay,” he said confidently, trying to regain control of the conversation. “You put five grand down on the table right now and you’ll have me for twenty-four hours. Then I’m out of it, totally.” Lou grinned. Rich people were the cheapest skates of all. A price tag like this would kill the deal cold.

  Instead, Mitchell Whitman reached for his wallet and pulled out a blank check. Without blinking, he uncapped a fountain pen from his pocket and scrawled in: five thousand dollars.

  Lou looked at the check as Whitman slid it across the table. It was already signed by Bill Perry and drawn on the Perry & Hendrix account. Thanks to Daddy’s money, no trouble would ever come back to lie in this kid’s crib.

  “To be so young, you know the ropes pretty good,” Delgado said.

  “I’m a graduate student in applied computer science at Georgia Tech, Mr. Delgado. In six weeks I’m going to be installing a computer-operated hydroelectric dam on a small, very beautiful little island off the coast of Chile. I’ve spent the past three months helping my family wade through this pile-of-shit persecution. I would do most anything to leave the country without having to worry about my brother and the overzealous Mary Crow.”

  For the first time Mitchell Whitman smiled. Involuntarily, Lou stiffened. Whitman had a cold kind of mirth Lou had seen only once before, on an old man in Chicago who’d claimed to be the Führer’s personal skinner-of-Jews. Jesus, he thought. Who is this kid?

  “So have we got a deal?”

  “Meet me here, eight o’clock Saturday morning. You’ll get a twenty-four-hour slice of Ms. Crow’s life. But I’m warning you, if she makes me, or any of my people, then I’m outta there and you and Perry are out five grand.”

  “Not a problem,” Whitman said as he slid out from the booth and stood up. Delgado saw that his thighs were thick as small trees, and that he looked over the diner as if assessing how much firepower he would need to turn the whole place into a pile of greasy, smoking rubble.

  “Saturday morning, kid. Then we’re history.”

  Delgado watched as Whitman walked out into the night, the neon lights of the diner making the back of his neck glow a sick shade of green. He hopped into his car, the Porsche’s lights came on, and Mitchell Whitman roared off, tires squealing against tarmac.

  “Jesus.” Delgado shook his head. “If that kid’s engineering the future, then we’re all fucked.”

  THREE

  Good grief, Alex. We’re spending two nights in the Nantahala National Forest, not scaling K-2.”

  Mary stood in the parking lot of her condo, skeptically eyeing the contents of Alex’s red BMW. The bright October sun sparkled off the open trunk, revealing a bulging teal backpack crunched in between a folded tent, a giant cooler of food, and a gas stove that looked like an early Russian space satellite.

  Alex pushed the tent to one side. “Charlie had all this stuff and insisted we take it. I couldn’t turn him down. He even packed us a lunch.”

  Mary set her backpack down on the bumper. “Charlie had all this fancy gear?” Charlie Carter, a lanky, gregarious veterinarian who had hiked most of the Appalachian Trail in a pair of worn-out Keds, was Alex’s boyfriend. They’d met the morning she’d brought her dog Daisy in to be spayed, and by the time Daisy’s stitches had healed, Charlie and Alex were officially a couple. Since Alex had always tried to rehabilitate every hurt and abandoned animal she saw, Mary thought Charlie a perfect choice for her friend. She’d never seen Alex happier with a man.

  Alex rearranged the stove. “He bought this stuff to do Bryce Canyon with his old girlfriend, but she got the cramps and couldn’t go.”

  “Hadn’t she heard of Midol?”

  Alex squinted one eye. “I think they had some other issues.” The ends of her blonde hair brushed against the collar of an orange safety jacket she was wearing over her favorite red plaid shirt. “Anyway, he even bought us three of these jackets, just so we wouldn’t get shot by deer hunters.”

  “Greater love hath no man than to buy his honey a safety vest.” Mary didn’t have the heart to tell Alex that they would be hiking far too high in the mountains to even see a deer, much less a deer hunter. “What’s Charlie going to do while you’re gone?”

  “He’s giving a paper next week at a veterinarian convention in Toronto.” Alex laughed. “ ‘New Advances in Flea Control.’ Charlie’s a major player in fleas.”

  Mary smiled, concealing a small pang of loneliness as they shoved her backpack in the trunk. It had been a long time since she’d had a man willing to buy her a safety vest and pack her a nice lunch. Most of her lovers spooked quickly—unnerved by the grisly evidence files stacked on her dining room table or saddened by the small shrine of family photographs on her bedroom dresser. Rob Williams, the last man she’d been serious about, had voiced it perfectly when he kissed her between her breast
s and murmured, “Sorry, babe. That broken heart just doesn’t have enough room in it for me.”

  Alex peeled off her Day-Glo vest and tossed it in on top of the camp stove, then she saw the small metal tool-box Mary held in her hand. “Hey, isn’t that your old paint box from college?”

  Mary nodded. “I thought I might do some sketching.”

  She balanced the box on the fender of Alex’s car and snapped open the lid. Inside was a neat array of pencils, a palette knife, a couple of tubes of aging oil paint and a small sketch pad. Also nestled amid the art supplies were two tattered ticket stubs to Dances with Wolves and a photograph of four college girls grinning from a bright red London phone booth.

  “Look!” Alex pointed at the photo. “That’s us and the Willis twins! I haven’t seen them in years . . . this paint box goes back a long way.”

  “We go back a long way, Alex,” Mary reminded her, closing the box and shoving it between the tent and the sleeping bag. “I’ve lost count of all the crazy trips we’ve taken together.”

  “Which reminds me.” Alex frowned. “You want to tell me why we’re going camping in North Carolina? We haven’t camped since college.”

  “Why shouldn’t we go camping? It’s a wonderful way to spend a vacation.” Unconsciously, Mary fingered Wynona, tucked deep in the pocket of her jeans.

  “Mary, I know you. I know what you like to do on your vacations. Your idea of fun is art galleries and book-stores and having hot coffee rolled in on a cart from room service. In all the years I’ve known you, never once have I heard you yearn to go sketch the piney woods of North Carolina.” Alex slammed the trunk and turned to face her. “So. What’s up?”

  Mary looked at her oldest friend standing tall—shading her china-blue eyes against the sun, fully utilizing the lighthouse beam of a gaze she’d perfected in law school. She sighed, knowing that she was standing before the one person who could read her like an eye chart. Finally, she took a deep breath and said, “I want to go back to Little Jump Off.”