In The Forest Of Harm (11 page)

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 working 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?

He looked at her face. The ends of her mouth quivered upward, as if she were hoping he would find her amusing. Again, he thought of Sandra.

“Yeah, right,” he laughed, realizing that it was just her lame version of a joke. “See ya.”

He hurried outside to the Ford. When he unlocked the door he looked back toward the store. The girl's blank stare had returned to the TV screen, her frosty blue concoction once again plugged into her mouth. No interest in what he was doing at all.

“Lucky for you, fat girl,” Mitch mumbled as he turned the key in the ignition. “Being brain-dead just saved your pathetic little life.”

FOURTEEN

By the time the morning fog lifted, Henry Brank had put several miles between himself and the ghost of Simpson's Bald. He'd awakened before dawn with his heart like a feather, and now he strode along in the bright sunshine with his vitamin-filled sack swaying behind him, singing in anticipation of the day to come.

“Sluts and tramps, chicks and dykes
.
”
He made up the words as he walked along.
“In the woods they're all alike.”

He wondered, as he moved through the trees, what sort of women you would find way up here. College girls camping with their sorority sisters? Or harder, jackbooted women who wore leather and enjoyed fucking their own kind? He'd found both sorts before. Coeds usually flirted with him at first, hoping that would change their fate. The dykes started out swinging, brash as young men, but their best punches consisted mostly of poorly aimed kicks at his groin. Had their little karate instructors not warned them about how easy it was to catch an upturned ankle and twist it into agony? He chuckled as a blue-tailed skink slithered like liquid sapphire off the top of a warm rock. It made no difference to him what kind of women they were. All made good sport for a while, but they all wound up the same.

The thought of them, though, made him move faster through the forest. His breath began to come hard as he traversed the spine of the mountain range he'd climbed just two days before. The trail twisted around boulders that seemed to thrust up from the bowels of the mountains themselves. Though hiking this fast through the warm, thick air strained his back and bad leg, he kept pushing onward, like a shark drawn to the scent of blood.

He stopped only when he reached the ancient black gum tree that marked the trail to the Big Fodderstack fissure. Dropping his sack, he flattened himself against the brown scaly bark, breathing deeply and listening. No voices floated down from the little cave; no pans clattered in preparation of a midday meal. He nodded. He'd pegged it right: the women had broken camp and gone on to wherever they were headed. Probably he could strut up there brash as John Wayne. Nonetheless, he slid his knife from his boot as he eased out from behind the tree. Better to be careful around women.

He crept up the trail silently, his ears keen for any sound another person might make. Although the rocky footpath revealed few clues, he found one fresh track left in a patch of mud. He measured the depth with his finger and smiled. Some not-very-heavy person had recently walked up here in a pair of brand-new boots.

The breeze carried no particular smell of close humanity, so he crawled up to a huckleberry bush that grew where the trail widened into the ledge. He crouched behind its leaves, listening. Nothing. Cautiously he stood and crept onto the ledge itself. It was as he'd expected— an empty granite shelf sticking out from a vacant cave like a pouty lower lip. The only clue that the area had recently been a camp was the small dark circle of a neatly constructed fire. He squatted down and touched it with his palm. The dirt still felt warm.

He sheathed his knife and flopped down inside the cave, rubbing his cheek hard against a crack along one wall that smelled of cigarettes and perfume. Here their odors hung in the air. Deodorant, toothpaste, brandy, coffee. It was even better than he had hoped: in all that reeking bouquet of smells nothing bore the slightest scent of a man. He closed his eyes and imagined the women still here, underneath him, wrapping their legs around him while he thrust himself inside them. How good that would feel. Hot and soft as bread fresh from the oven.

He returned to his pack and fished out a Moon Pie, stuffing it in his mouth while he scanned the woods for their trail. He found it easily. Like most hikers, they had made no attempt to cover their tracks, and their trail of matted-down grass stretched out before him as plainly as if it had been lined off by the highway department. Brank chuckled as he licked the chocolate crumbs from his fingers. There would not be much sport to this, but there would be an awful lot of fun.

“I'll have them in an hour,” he predicted to no one in particular as he reshouldered his sack and set off down the matted grass trail.

The women, though, had not taken some Audubon Society bird stroll. They'd gone up one side of a mountain so steep he thought his lungs would burst before he reached the top. Halfway up, with his shirt wet and clinging to his skin, he sat on a shady log and paused to rest. They're going somewhere special, he decided. Nobody would hike up this high just to watch the leaves change. On a whim he untied his sack and dug out his vitamins. He opened the jar and shook out half a dozen. “I might need some extra C,” he muttered, remembering one of Fate's old caveats about protecting himself against disease. “You never know what sort of germs you might run into.”

He dropped the vitamins back in his sack and saw Buster, coiled tightly against the remaining Moon Pies. With one hand he unbuttoned his shirt as he lifted the snake from the sack with the other.

“How're you doing, old Buddy?” He looked into the snake's beady black eyes.

The snake darted his tongue toward him. It didn't appear hungry or in pain. Brank cuddled it under his chin.

“We're gonna have some fun here in a little while,” he promised as the creature slithered around his arm, seeking warmth. “You help me out, I'll give you something real good to eat.”

The snake coiled tighter in response.

“Atta boy.” Brank unwrapped the reptile and tucked it inside his shirt. “Just sit still for a little while longer.”

The snake felt cool against his damp belly. He retied his sack and climbed on.

When he finally crested the mountain he stopped in a shoulder-high thicket of red elderberries. He settled himself to listen and looked out at the hundred lesser mountains that rolled away from him. At first the breeze brought nothing but the echo of a flicker drilling a tree. Then, all at once, on a puff of wind from the west, he heard the same voices he'd heard the night before.

They floated up so clearly you could almost hear what they were saying. Words, then laughter, then something that sounded like someone singing. Suddenly he knew exactly where they were—Slickrock Springs, a hidden-away place the Indians considered holy. An easy walk from here. He grinned as he pushed out from between the dense branches. Slickrock Springs meant bad medicine for a white man, but today the Great Spirit would just have to make an exception.

Brank waded into a tangle of wild fox grapes, zigzagging silently through the thick foliage. In twenty minutes he'd reached the edge of the spring. Out of breath, he looked up.

Slickrock had always reminded him of a small volcano—a broad mound of giant sandstone boulders rising fifty feet to cradle the hot spring that gurgled in the center of them. He could still hear the women's voices, fainter though, as if they hovered on the air above his head. An outcropping of rock jutted forth a third of the way from the top. If he could climb up there, he could see what awaited him without being detected.

He hid his sack and rifle under a hawthorne bush, then began to climb. By wedging his toes and fingers into the cracks between the boulders he could pull himself up like a lizard scaling a wall. But the sandstone offered little purchase; once, his foot slipped out of a crack, banging him noisily against the rocks. Panicked, he pressed himself against the boulder, praying the women hadn't heard. He held his breath through a long bubble of silence, then their conversation resumed. With sweat now streaming from his forehead, he climbed on. Just below the outcropping he balanced on his toes, stretching full length and reaching up until his fingers curled around the edge of the ledge. Then he hoisted himself up. Every muscle in his back and shoulders screamed, but with one final effort he thrust with his feet and managed to fling himself belly-down on the ledge, gasping, sweat stinging his eyes.

When his heart had slowed to a gallop, he turned around and straightened up. If he stretched as tall as he could, he would be able to peer over the rocks and see what was going on. Higher and higher he rose, until finally everything came into view.

“Sweet fucking shit,” he whispered, as the world suddenly turned gold around him. “It's Trudy. And one of her sidekicks.”

Two women lay on the boulders beside the pool. One had dark hair and wore a sweatshirt and underpants. Trudy, however—the one that took his breath away—lay naked. She had a mane of blonde hair that looked like a puddle of sunlight. Her arms cradled her head and lifted her breasts towards him. The rosy points of her nipples rose to the mountain air. Her belly was flat and ended in the small mound of her crotch, the inner workings of which were hidden by a thatch of darker blonde hair. She had the longest legs he'd ever seen. She was eating a candy bar while her friend smoked a cigarette. One would laugh, and the other would join in. The sound jingled on the air like a wind chime. He watched them until he could stand it no longer. With his penis stiff as steel he crouched down on the ledge and relieved himself in three quick strokes. A tornado ripped through him as he splattered against the rocks.

“Ahhhh, Gott,” he groaned, his heart rattling inside his chest.

He crouched, trembling, on the ledge until the fire inside him cooled to an ember. He needed to find out for certain if they were alone. Carefully, he stretched up again. The women lay there happy, content. No guns or fishing tackle had been left beside them by boyfriends who might have gone off to explore. Except for a pile of cast-off clothes and two bright backpacks under a tree, his sister and her little pal could have been dropped down from heaven purely for his own enjoyment. He watched as she rearranged herself on the boulder, then he squatted back down on the ledge.

He looked up into the sky. A wide V of Canada geese flapped southward across a field of blue while the sun fell like warm honey on his forehead. A crazed, delirious hum spun in his brain as he began unlacing his boots.

“At last,” he whispered, offering his thanks to whatever gods had delivered unto him that day his rightful and most long-awaited prey. “Trudy, old girl, in a few minutes you're finally gonna belong to me.”