In The Forest Of Harm

by Sallie Bissell

  Finally, he spoke, his voice tolling like a bell on the still air. “Why’d you come back up here, Mary?”

  “For fun.” Mary flinched at the ludicrousness of her reply. “For a long weekend of camping.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t doing a little investigating of your own?” His eyes measured her face.

  Mary met his gaze evenly. Like all good cops, the sheriff was adept at hearing the unspoken; but like all good attorneys, she was skilled at cloaking the true meaning of her words. “I was taking my friends to Slickrock Springs,” she replied, using the English name for Atagahi.

  “I see.” He nodded at her. “That’s good. I’d hate to think a pretty girl like you was up here nosing around a dusty old unsolved murder.”

  “Actually, I had my hands full with other things.” Mary glanced at the troopers who were hauling Brank’s body out of the cabin.

  “Well, I don’t think you gals need to worry about anything here. This all seems pretty much like self-defense, although the DA in Robbinsville will want to talk to you.”

  “That’s not a problem,” said Mary.

  Logan stood and looked down at her, his eyes now kind. “Mary, can I give you a little advice? Go on back to Atlanta. Forget about us up here. There’s a whole bunch of criminals down in the city for you to hang. Up here, you’ve got nothing but a million acres of bad memories.”

  “A million acres of memories, Sheriff,” Mary corrected him. “Not all of them are bad.”

  With a brief smile he said good-bye, then left her. This was the second time she’d had an official conversation with Stump Logan. Time and a legal degree of her own had not made the process any easier.

  Two troopers zipped Mitch Whitman into a body bag, while two others stood jimmying long sticks, wrangling the rattlers out of the pit at Jonathan’s direction. Inadu were honored by the Cherokee. She knew Jonathan would never have left any to starve in the bottom of a pit.

  Two more helicopters landed—one a medevac air rescue, the other bearing the bright logo of the Asheville TV station. The second disgorged two men carrying video cameras and one snappily dressed reporter. Mary watched as he shoved a microphone in Stump Logan’s broad face, then stood in front of the cabin himself, regurgitating what he had been told for the viewers of the evening news.

  A beefy-armed state trooper appeared, holding up a blanket for her.

  “It’s time to go, ma’am,” he said, eyeing the blood-soaked bandage wrapped around her shoulder. “Medevac’s waiting.”

  “But I need to return this man’s jacket.” Mary looked over at the snake pit, but Jonathan was no longer standing there.

  “Sorry, ma’am. I’ll see that he gets it. The DA’s waiting for you at the hospital in Robbinsville.” He offered his arm; apparently his duty was to help her to the helicopter.

  “But it’s vital that I speak with him,” she protested. The trooper just looked at her, his face unmoved. Sighing, she scooped up the rock Jonathan had given her and accepted the officer’s arm. Stump Logan ordered the TV crew to stop filming as the cop escorted her to the helicopter. She searched for Jonathan, but she saw only a sea of gray uniforms topped with Smokey the Bear hats.

  “Could you wait just a moment?” Mary lagged behind the officer, her shoulder throbbing with a vicious heat.

  “No, ma’am. We gotta go. Sorry.”

  Stump Logan yelled something as she felt the trooper’s arm gently but firmly propelling her toward the chopper. Alex and Joan were already on board—Joan was having the wound on her foot treated while Alex sat clutching Homer on her lap. The trooper directed Mary to a seat over which a paramedic hovered, anxious to take a look at her shoulder. Panic rose in her as she was nudged up the steps to the passenger bay.

  Two troopers strapped her into the seat. Scanning the crowd, Mary saw policemen, the cabin, even the two body bags laid out on the front porch, but no Jonathan. Where could he be, she wondered, craning her neck to peer around the paramedic who was inflating a blood-pressure cuff on her right arm.

  “One fifty-two over ninety-six,” the young man reported. “That’s pretty high.”

  “Yeah, well, getting shot raises your numbers,” Mary snapped as she continued to search the crowd. Had Jonathan gone without saying good-bye?

  Suddenly a tall figure pushed through the knot of troopers watching the chopper. One officer’s hat went flying; he turned and grabbed at the man who was trying to get past. Mary leaned over the paramedic and yelled out the still-open door.

  “Jonathan!” she called.

  “Hey!” He shook the big trooper off easily and ran up to the chopper just as the rotors started to turn with a heavy whump .

  “Aren’t you coming too?” Mary called.

  He backed away from the turning blades and held his hands out. He can’t hear me, she realized in despair.

  “Aren’t we taking everybody with us?” Mary glared at the paramedic.

  “This medevac’s full. Your boyfriend will have to ride with the troopers.”

  Mary turned back toward the open door. Jonathan watched her helplessly for a moment, then he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Hey, Mary—Would you ever think about saving my seat again?”

  His words resounded inside her head. He had remembered! For an instant she tried not to cry, but it was hopeless. As the big rotors turned, tears began to spill from her eyes for the first time in twelve years.

  “Yes!” she cried.

  He frowned and shook his head, unable to hear her above the din.

  Nodding extravagantly, she lifted her arm as the paramedic began to close the door, and gave him a thumbs-up sign.

  Jonathan grinned and turned his own thumb up.

  The hatch closed, the helicopter tilted to the right, and they rose into the sky. Laughing and crying, she waved out the tiny window as his face became smaller and smaller until finally it was just a bright dot on the golden meadow; then she could see him no longer. She looked down at the red-flecked stone he’d given her. Suddenly, she knew. This was the stone she’d sought for so long— the seventh stone! It lay in her palm. Finally, she was free!

  The paramedic held out a disposable thermometer. “You want to do this now or later?” he called above the engine’s roar.

  “Later,” she answered, the tears still flowing down her face.

  She leaned her head back against the seat and looked down at the Old Men. Although they were brilliant with autumn now, by this evening the thick white mist would float up from the forest and conceal them once again. Disgagistiyi, Dakwai, Ahaluna. Though they had not given her back her past, they had offered her a future rich with promise.

  “Keep your secrets for now, Old Men,” she told them softly. “I’ll be back. Crows always know the straightest way home.”

  If you enjoyed Sallie Bissell’s debut novel,

  IN THE FOREST OF HARM, you won’t

  want to miss her next exciting thriller!

  Look for A DARKER JUSTICE from

  Bantam at your favorite bookstore

  in spring 2002.

  And turn the page for an early peek. . . .

  A DARKER JUSTICE

  SALLIE BISSELL

  Coming in hardcover from

  Bantam Books in spring 2002.

  PROLOGUE

  PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

  NOVEMBER 21, 2001

  Squeeaak. The first time it came so softly into her awareness that she thought she’d imagined it. She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them wide, trying to concentrate on the pages in front of her. Then she heard it again. Squeeaak. A cry of sorts, but soft, like the complaint of an unoiled hinge or the cracked leather heel of a shoe. Squeeaak.

  “Carmen? Is that you?” Judge Rosemary Klinefelter looked up from the small puddle of golden light that the lamp cast upon her desk, puzzled by the sound that seemed to come from her empty courtroom. The clock had struck nine as she began reading this page, and she would have sworn that her secretary Carmen had left ho
urs ago with the rest of the judicial staff workers. Judge Klinefelter cocked her head to listen again, but the squeaking stopped. Only the distant hum of an airplane outside disturbed the silence of the room.

  She shook her head and returned her attention to the opinion she was proofing. She was working late tonight, adding her signature to the documents of her last case, trying hard to clear her desk. Tomorrow would be Thanksgiving, and she and her husband Rich were flying to Miami to board a ship that would ultimately deposit them on one of St. Bart’s sandy beaches. Smiling, she glanced up at the three framed photographs clustered beneath her lamp—her daughter Emily unpacking at Penn, her son Mark in his Navy uniform, and Rich, grinning from beneath a hard hat as they broke ground for one of the skyscrapers he’d designed. She sighed and rubbed a smudge from his picture. How wonderful it would be to get away, just she and Rich, with nothing facing them but sapphire blue sky and an aquamarine ocean.

  Suddenly, she jumped. She heard another noise. Not a squeak this time, but a single thump, like a book being dropped on a carpeted floor. She frowned. Carmen wouldn’t stay past 5:30 unless asked, and asked nicely. Could it be one of her clerks, coming back in for something and trying not to disturb her?

  No, she decided, dismissing the chill that crept up her spine. It was probably just the cleaning crew, trying to finish early because of the holiday. Quickly, she pushed away from her desk and rose from her chair. She crossed her office in three strides and turned the deadbolt into place, then she tried the heavy brass doorknob, just to make certain it was locked. It did not budge. Now safe from all disruptions, she could get her work done.

  “You’re getting dotty, kiddo,” she murmured, suddenly aware of the joggity rhythm of her heart as she brushed a speck of lint off the black judicial gown that hung on the back of the locked door. “You’re way past due for a stretch on the beach.”

  She recrossed the room and settled back in her chair, wondering if she was being visited by the ghost that reputedly walked this courthouse at night. Boots, they called him. Supposedly the spirit of some maligned bootlegger seeking exoneration for an erroneous murder conviction.

  She tried to re-focus on her work, but she felt edgy, inadvertently tensed for Boots’ next manifestation. The words that she’d written that morning seemed to squirm like small black bugs on the pages.

  “Come on, Your Honor,” she scolded herself formally, trying to pump herself up. “Just two more pages to proof, then you’re out of here. Let the ghost or the cleaning people have the damn courtroom. Beginning tomorrow you can make love all night and have a massage every morning.”

  Again, she tried to read. This time the letters formed words that made dull but legal sense—her learned opinion about whether a bank could cancel its own cashier’s check. Searching for errors and typos, she scanned down the lines Carmen had typed from her own handwritten notes. Finding none, she turned the page and released the breath that she had been unconsciously holding. Three more paragraphs, then she could sign her name and get out of here. She started reading aloud, hurrying. Finally, she came to the last line. She uncapped the heavy Mont Blanc fountain pen she always used to sign her opinions, then she heard the third noise. Not a squeak, this time. Or even a thud. This time she heard a series of soft bumps moving from left to right across the courtroom, plaintiff to defendant side. Could they be footsteps, she wondered, staring at the doorknob, waiting for it to turn.

  “Okay,” she said aloud, suddenly irritated with both the noises and her own Nervous-Nelly reaction to them. “That’s it. I’m calling security.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed the three-digit code that connected her with the two-man security crew in the basement. The phone rang four, five, six times, but no one answered. “They’re probably outside smoking,” she muttered, hanging up in disgust.

  Irritated, she picked up her pen and scrawled her name, Rosemary Rogers Klinefelter, with a flourish. The very act gave her courage. After all, she was a Federal judge in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, not some nitwit who spooked at spectres.

  Suddenly she remembered a memo she’d seen on Carmen’s desk. The courthouse had experienced a number of cases of vandalism lately. Obscenities spray-painted on the second floor men’s room, files in the clerk’s office strewn all over the floor. Everyone assumed the vandals had sneaked in during the day, and done their mischief while court was in session. But maybe they broke in at night and did their damage then. Maybe they were just outside the door now, quietly spraying fuck and dickhead on her hundred-year-old burled walnut paneling.

  “Bastards,” she cried, all at once furious at the idea of anyone desecrating her courtroom. She reached down and opened the bottom drawer of her desk. The old Colt

  .32 had been her Aunt Esther’s chicken-coop gun, but within its limited range, it shot straight and true. She cocked the hammer, fuming. No pimply-faced punks were going to trash her courtroom.

  She tiptoed to the door and pressed her ear against the crack. Now she heard nothing except the rapid thud of her own heart. For a moment she wondered if she wasn’t just tired: if her imagination hadn’t embellished the thousand tiny noises that empty buildings make, but then she decided no, she wasn’t. She’d definitely heard three separate, distinct noises that had no business coming from a locked courtroom. With determination, she reached for the wall switch and turned off the lights behind her. All she had to do was open her door and flip the light switch on the other side of the wall. The whole room would be illuminated instantly, and when she caught the little bastards who were spray-painting her walls, she’d train this gun on them until she could get security on the line.

  Gripping the revolver tightly in her right hand, she turned the deadbolt. It made a soft click, the door shuddering slightly as the bolt slid out of the lock. The doorknob felt cool against her sweaty palm as she turned it to the right. Slowly, she pulled the door open. The cooler air carried the familiar smell of her courtroom—a combination of lemon furniture polish and leather-upholstered chairs. Grasping the gun, she took a step forward, peering into the darkness. Moonlight from the tall windows on the left wall cast everything in shadow—the courtroom chairs looked like dark hulks on the other side of the bar. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she groped for the light switch on the wall. Her left hand fumbled against the plaster. Where was that stupid thing? She’d turned it on and off a million times. The edge of her palm brushed against the fixture. There! She had it! Now she would see what was going on.

  Suddenly, before she could reach any of the three switches that would set her courtroom ablaze with light, she felt someone grab her right arm, hard. They forced her wrist backward, almost to the point of snapping, then with a single ruthless motion, flicked the gun from her hand. The pistol clattered somewhere behind the witness stand.

  “What?” was the only word she could utter before the same someone moved behind her, twisting her arm viciously against her spine. Something banged against the back of her knees, and before she could draw a breath she’d fallen to the floor. Hands explored all of her now, racing up her fleshy thighs, plucking at her panty-hose.

  She knew, then, that this was far worse than a mouse, far worse than vandals spraying curses on her walls. She curled her free hand into a claw and tried to swipe at her attacker’s eyes, kicking and squirming with all her strength. But the black-masked figure was powerful. He sat down on top of her, pinning her legs beneath him, wrenching her hand so cruelly she felt as if it was caught in a vise.

  “What do you want?” she managed to croak. Surely not her. She was sixty-two, soon to be a grandmother, of sexual interest to no one but her husband.

  “To kill well,” he whispered.

  Judge Rosemary Rogers Klinefelter felt a tiny pin prick on the left side of her neck, then her limbs became soft and heavy, like loaves of unleavened dough. She could no longer raise her arms or lift her legs. She watched him move the squat prosecutor’s chair to the center of the room, realizing queasily that she
could do nothing to stop whatever this man intended for her. With her body limp as a doll’s, she felt him push her arms into her own black judicial robe and lift her to the chair.

  She thought of her children when they were young— her daughter’s voice, musical as a little flute; the sweaty, sweet smell of her son in her arms. Then she thought the last thing she would ever think—Rich, his lips on the nape of her neck, his arms around her as they sailed on a boat bound west, skimming over the waves, into a luminous and fiery sea.

  CHAPTER ONE

  ATLANTA, GEORGIA

  DECEMBER 23, 2001

  Come on, Mary. You haven’t danced with me in years.” With a broad grin, Wyatt Prentiss held out his hand. Behind him, the Darktown Strutters Jazz Machine launched into a sinuous version of “Brazil,” a trio of trombones keeping the hot, pulsating rhythm at a slow boil.

  Mary Crow smiled. How could she refuse? The Strutters were Atlanta’s most seductive band—when they played everyone not confined to a wheelchair jumped to their feet and moved to the beat. She grabbed Wyatt’s hand; together they rode the music like a wave, gliding across the floor, holding each other tight.

  “Who’d have thought anybody would get married the day before Christmas Eve?” Wyatt turned Mary in a tight, sexy circle that brought the bride and groom into her view. Mary’s oldest and dearest friend, Alexandria McCrimmon, now Mrs. Charles Ensley Carter, was dancing with her new husband. Though the Latin music throbbed around them, the two danced their own private sway in the middle of the tent, laughing and kissing at the same time. Mary closed her eyes and offered a silent prayer of thanks. Just eighteen months ago Alex had accompanied Mary on a camping trip in the Nantahalah Forest. The trip had turned bad when Alex had been abducted by a psychopathic trapper. Ultimately, she’d been airlifted from the Appalachian forests, half-naked and beaten nearly to death. That Alex was functional at all was astounding. That just an hour ago she had married a man who had never once faltered in his love for her, Mary considered a true gift from God. She smiled at Wyatt. He had no idea what an utter miracle this wedding was.