“Not much,” Mary replied, her own breath coming in short gasps. “It’s a stiff climb, but it won’t last more than half an hour.”
“That’s what you said two hours ago,” Alex growled, shifting the backpack on her shoulders and wiping the sweat from her forehead. “There’s not going to be much left of me after these damn bugs get through.”
They pushed on, climbing a steep path that blazed with red sumac. The forest slanted away to their right, trees stretching up from a waist-high carpet of electric-green ferns. Soft pine needles brushed delicate fingers against their cheeks, and at a rushing mountain stream, Alex pointed to a cluster of thick black berries that dangled from the pink stem of a poke plant. “That looks like one of those sci-fi films where the earth’s been nuked and the plants are fifty feet high and the people are the size of ants.”
“Don’t talk so much, Alex,” Joan said grumpily, her face the color of a stop sign. “It takes too much effort to listen.”
They climbed higher, the rush of the creek growing fainter and fainter until they heard it no more and finally saw it only as a silent flash of distant silver far below them.
“How much farther now?” Joan panted, slurping from her canteen as they plodded along.
“Over this ridge,” Mary promised. “Then we’re there.”
They walked on, no longer stopping at creeks or listening to birds, just doggedly planting one foot ahead of the other, determined to make their destination. They crested the mountain, then Mary led them around the jutting roots of a massive overturned maple.
“There.” She grinned triumphantly and pointed below them. “Atagahi.”
A hundred yards away, ringed by huge boulders, a clear green pool glistened iridescent as a hummingbird in the sunlight. The calm waters glittered like an extravagant emerald on the finger of a czar.
Alex gasped. “Good grief! That looks more like Acapulco than Appalachia.”
“It even smells different.” Joan sniffed the air. “More like flowers instead of forest. And there aren’t any of those awful bugs!”
But Mary couldn’t speak. Atagahi was even more beautiful than she remembered. She could almost hear her mother’s laughter tinkling up over the water as they’d lain floating on their backs, watching white clouds sail across a blue sky.
Hurrying now, the three women picked their way among the rocks to the spring, ditching their backpacks under a drooping willow tree, their aches and complaints forgotten in the excitement of reaching their destination. At the lowest rim of rock they knelt and dipped their hands into the water.
“Hey, it is warm.” Joan looked up at Mary in surprise. “You weren’t kidding.”
“How deep is it?” Alex was peering into the fluorescent green depths.
“I’ve never known anyone who’s touched the bottom.” Mary sat down and began to unlace her boots. “But in a minute I’m going to try.”
She undressed. Her clothes made a small pile on the rock. She stood naked in the warm sun for a moment, then she poised on the edge of the pool and dived, her skin flashing pale bronze as she arced over the water. Seconds later she surfaced ten feet away, her black hair slicked back and shining.
“This is incredible!” she cried exultantly. She arched her back and exhaled, floating, letting her weary arms and legs relax in the warm green water.
“Did you touch the bottom?” Alex called, fumbling with the buttons on her shirt.
“Nope. I saved that just for you.”
“Are you sure nobody will see us naked?” Joan, who felt uncomfortable in the dressing rooms of Bloomingdale’s, peered around anxiously.
“Only that gun-toting red wolf we heard last night,” Alex replied. “And of course the ghost who slept outside our tent.”
“Oh shut up, Alex!”
Mary closed her eyes and smiled as her friends’ voices danced in the air. They could swim or not, as they pleased. She would be content to float here for the rest of her life. In a few moments, though, she heard a western Yee-hiii! and felt a splash. Alex swam beside her; a moment later Joan did, too.
Her mother’s body is sleek as an otter’s. Martha smiles in the sun and dives headfirst into the spring as if she might find diamonds hidden in the deep green water. Her head breaks the surface and she calls to Mary. “Come on in, baby. Don’t be afraid. I won’t let anything hurt you!” Mary strips down to her bathing suit and leaps into the water with far less grace than her mother. Down, down she goes, bubbles nibbling at her toes like tiny fish. She looks back up above her and sees the sun shining gold through the water and she gives one strong kick and surfaces in the honeyed air.
They swam for an hour, diving, splashing, laughing, letting the warm water soothe away the rigors of the trail. Joan sang little bits of Rigoletto ; Alex tried to yodel. It was only when their fingertips shriveled like prunes that they decided to climb out and relax in the sun.
“Mary, I’ve got to give you credit. I was doubtful at first, but this was worth every sweat-soaked step,” Alex declared, positioning herself spread-eagle on a sunny boulder.
“I agree.” Joan dug through her clothes on the rock and stepped into her underpants. “It’s just too bad you have to walk so far to get here.”
Alex looked over at her and frowned. “Why are you getting dressed? I’m not moving an inch until the sun goes down.”
“Misericordia girls don’t sit around naked in the woods,” answered Joan primly. “Sister Mary Xavier would have a stroke.”
“I’m getting dressed, too,” Mary told them. “I want to go back up the trail and sketch that old maple tree.”
“You mean I’m the only one who’s going to rest au naturel on this rock?”
“Looks like it,” said Mary.
“Suit yourselves, then,” Alex sighed with contentment. “I’m going to stay buck naked in the woods for as long as I possibly can. Tuesday will come soon enough, and then ugh! It’s back to suits and heels and panty hose.”
Joan frowned as Mary pulled on her jeans and quickly laced her hiking boots. “You won’t be gone long, will you?”
“No. The tree’s just up there, behind those boulders. My mother and I used to sketch underneath it.” She pointed at the high ridge behind them. “I’m going to make a couple of drawings. It shouldn’t take me more than half an hour.”
Alex lay flat on her back, one knee bent, one arm under her head. Her hair shone gold and the sun made her skin glow like the petals of a lily. She squinted up at Mary. “Hey, Killer, throw me a PayDay before you leave, will you?”
“And my smokes?” Joan added.
Mary dug the candy and cigarettes out of Alex’s backpack. She tossed the candy to Alex, the cigarettes to Joan.
“Thanks.” Alex grinned. “We’ll be right here stoking up on nicotine and sugar. Holler if you need us.”
“Right.” Mary looked at her friends and smiled. They looked like goddesses fresh from a hunt, lying with their faces raised to the sun. Thank you, she said silently to the Old Men as she glanced at their distant peaks and began to climb up to the tree. Once again, you have been kind.
THIRTEEN
Mitch Whitman grinned like a college boy as he stepped up to the Delta Air ticket counter. “Hi,” he said, cracking a wad of chewing gum. “I’m Mitchell Whitman. Flight 646 to Washington. My ticket should be on your screen.”
A skinny black woman with long purple fingernails checked her computer. “You purchased this morning on-line, billed to your American Express card?”
“That’s correct.” Mitch Whitman continued to grin.
“I need to see a picture ID.”
Mitch dug out his driver’s license from his wallet and handed it to the girl. She glanced briefly at his face, then pecked some more numbers into her computer.
“Any seating preferences?”
“An aisle seat near the front, if you’ve got one. I like to stretch my legs.”
“Are you checking any luggage?”
“No. This fits
overhead.” Grinning, Mitch held up an unforgettably gold Georgia Tech gym bag as if it were a bowling trophy. The girl giggled.
“And did anyone other than you pack your bag?”
“Nope. I haven’t left it unattended either, and nobody has asked me to carry any packages for them.”
“I guess you know the drill.” The girl smiled at Mitch, her dark eyes coy.
“I’ve been on a plane a couple of times before.”
“Well, then, Mr. Whitman, you have a nice flight.” She handed Mitch a boarding pass. “Concourse A, gate seven. Departs at 3:05.”
“Thank you.” Mitchell gave her one final smile. “You’ve been terrific. I might write a letter to your boss.”
The girl giggled again. Mitch winked, then he picked up his gym bag and headed toward the gate. It was only when he was out of her sight that he stashed the boarding pass in his back pocket and headed toward the down escalator. After losing himself in a crowd of chattering Arabs, he made his way over to the line of rental car companies.
“Hi,” he said to another young black woman who stood at the Avis counter. “I need to rent a car for the weekend.”
“Driver’s license and insurance card,” the woman said perfunctorily, slipping her lipstick in a drawer.
Smiling, Mitch dug in his wallet again and pulled out a whole stack of identification. “Driver’s license is on top. Whatever else you might need is there, too.”
The woman stared at the license for a moment, then began to fill out a form. “Mitchell Keane,” she read as she keyed his name into her computer. “Athens, Georgia.”
An hour later, his identities and alibis firmly established, Mitch Whitman tucked his black Porsche in a dark corner of the long-term parking lot, and sped toward the mountains in a new white Taurus, his gear and rifle stashed in the trunk.
He roared, as much as the rented Ford could roar, north along Highway 441. Though filmy clouds wisped through the blue sky, the air held a sullen heaviness that reminded him more of August than October. He rolled down the window and drove faster, letting the wind ripple through his hair. His heart was beating fast. He’d killed elk and moose and one old black bear, but this would be different. This would be his first assassination.
“Too bad I can’t put it on my resume,” he said aloud, his thoughts suddenly turning to all his friends from Tech, who were getting ready to go to Veracruz and lay the groundwork for his dam. Though they’d all watched Mary Crow demolish him in court, nobody had said a word about it. No doubt they were all laughing at him behind his back. That idea made him sick with fury. After he got through with Mary Crow, everyone would know he was nobody to fuck with.
“All this because of my stupid shithead brother,” Mitch said as he punched the Taurus up to ninety. Cal had been a fuck-up since the day he was born. At nine he’d super-glued a fellow Cub Scout’s protuberant ears to his head. When he was fourteen he’d been thrown off the school tennis team for screaming obscenities at a line judge. By the time he was sixteen he had been arrested twice for selling drugs. His father had bailed him out of juvie while his mother consulted a battery of adolescent psychiatrists. Drugs were prescribed, more involvement in sports was encouraged; one idiot shrink suggested that Cal start boxing at a gym. That, of course, was the one thing he responded to. By the time Cal followed Mitch into Georgia Tech, he had several new drug addictions, a fearsome right cross, and a temper that could turn on a dime. Who knew how much money his father had doled out, bribed with, and ultimately pissed away in attorney’s fees to keep Cal out of jail. Mitch sighed. He’d done his share of helping Cal, too, but now he was sick of it. The time had come to close the great sucking hole that his brother’s life had become.
“A fuck-up you were born, Cal. And a fuck-up you will die,” he promised as he punched on the radio. “After I get Mary Crow, I’m coming after you.”
By midafternoon, he crossed into Ramon County. “Thaddeus Whitman country,” Mitch mused aloud. All his life he’d listened to his father expound about their ancestor, the great Thaddeus Whitman. About how way back in the eighteen hundreds Thaddeus had ridden up here from Charleston on a mule, then found fat gold nuggets in a stream on Cherokee land. Ultimately he’d headed a contingent of white Georgians who rode to Washington and convinced Andrew Jackson that it would be advantageous to fledgling America if the peaceful Cherokees were relocated as far away from that gold as possible. For years Thaddeus’s old musket had hung above the fireplace in his father’s library. Now he, Mitch, had a musket of his own, all set to relocate yet another Cherokee. Mitch smiled. There must be some kind of karma in that.
He drove on, cruising through a string of ramshackle towns that clung to the highway along with the kudzu-draped trees and fencerows. As the sharp smell of curing tobacco stung his nose, he pictured Thaddeus riding in on his mule. What had this country looked like when the old codger had discovered his fortune? Not nearly as pathetic as this, he decided as he pulled into a single-pump gas station that sold Cokes and lottery tickets from a grimy office decorated with a hundred battered hubcaps. Mitch dropped a twenty-dollar bill in front of a toothless old man who dozed at the desk. Not as pathetic as this at all.
He topped off his tank and pulled back on the highway. The mountains lay before him like giants slumbering under blankets of orange trees. As the cooler air chilled the skin on the back of his neck, he was suddenly back in that courtroom, Mary Crow hard at him.
“Are you close to your brother, Mr. Whitman?” she’d asked, a faint rosy blush now rising from the cleavage between the lapels of her black suit. She wore no blouse. Hell, she might not even be wearing a bra.
He felt everyone looking at him. He knew he’d sweated through his shirt; he could feel the cold, soggy stains beneath the sleeves of his suit. Mary Crow had hammered at him for almost an hour, yet her clothes were still dry, her eyes just as bright as before. Christ, did she never need to pee or eat or get a drink of water?
“I suppose.” His voice came out in a croak.
“Would you lend him a tie if he needed one?”
What the hell kind of trick question was this? Loaning Cal a tie was not important. “Yes,” he replied.
“A clean shirt?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re in the custom of sharing your things with your brother?” She smiled at him, her eyes innocent as a dove’s.
He gulped, despising the way this woman made him squirm. “I suppose I am.”
“So since we’ve already established that you knew Sandra Manning, and had gone out with Sandra on more than one occasion, may we then assume that you might even share Sandra Manning with your brother?”
“Objection!” the defense attorney shouted as a rumble of suspicion rolled like soft thunder through the courtroom.
Mitch blinked and tried to relax his grip on the steering wheel of the car. His knuckles had grown white and the ends of his fingers were tingling. He took a deep breath and flexed his hands. He had to stop revisiting that awful hour. Right now he didn’t need to relive his discomfort in the courtroom with Mary Crow. Right now he needed to consider his options when he came upon Mary Crow in the forest, face-to-face.
He shrugged his shoulders hard, trying to soften the muscles in his neck. The best thing to do would be to put a bullet in her brain when she was away from the two others, then slip back into the trees. But what if that opportunity did not present itself? Most women wouldn’t even go to the bathroom by themselves. In a forest they’d probably stick together like glue. If he sniped them with his rifle, they’d scatter like chickens. That would not do. He would have to think of something else.
As he tried to tap the feeling back in his fingers on the steering wheel, it came to him. Just wait, he realized. Wait until they’re asleep. Most likely they’ll all be in the same tent. You won’t even need the rifle. Just slip out of the trees, then pop, pop, pop with the Beretta and Mary Crow won’t be coming after anybody anymore. By the time they find her body, you’ll be w
orking on your tan in Veracruz.
He sped on, until he came to a gas station where bright handmade quilts flapped behind a sign that read FISHING & CAMPING SUPPLIES. There, he made a hard turn and pulled in.
He locked the Taurus and walked inside. Behind the counter a fat blonde girl sucked on a pale blue drink as she watched wrestling on a minuscule TV. There was a prettiness about her, despite her weight and heavy makeup, that reminded him of Sandra Manning. A sudden sadness struck him. I’m dirty now, too, he realized. And I’ve got Cal to thank for that.
All the things people ran out of—motor oil, toilet paper, baby food—lined several shelves beside the beer cooler. At first he didn’t see what he wanted; then, between dashboard fuses and light bulbs, he found it. Duct tape—giant gray rolls of the stuff you could temporarily mend most anything with.
Quickly, he grabbed three rolls of the tape, then found two packages of clothesline. Not the nylon shit that slipped, but the cotton kind that got tighter when it got wet. On his way to the cash register he added a carton of Camels and a pack of spearmint gum. Might as well get everything while I’m here, he decided. There won’t be any stores in Injun country.
He placed his items on the counter. With a heavy sigh the girl pulled her attention from the wrestlers that flailed away on the tiny TV screen and looked at Mitch’s purchases.
“You got a clothesline needs fixin’?” she asked with a nervous laugh, black eyes glittering like marbles beneath green shadowed lids.
“Maybe.” He pushed his sunglasses higher on his nose.
She rang up his bill. “Thirty-five seventy-two with the cigarettes.”
He dug out a fifty from his pocket. She counted out the change in his hand, pudgy fingers brushing against his palm.
“Have a good one,” she chirped as she closed the cash drawer. “Don’t go tyin’ nobody up.”
For an instant he couldn’t breathe. Was he that transparent? Could this yokel read the inside of his head like a road map? If she could tell what he was planning, then she could turn him in to the cops. Suddenly he was keenly aware of the Beretta nestled beneath his left arm. Should he put a bullet in her head before she lifted the phone?
In The Forest Of Harm Page 11
