In The Forest Of Harm (12 page)

FIFTEEN

Joan felt the shadow first. A small interstice of darkness fell across the bright sunlight that bathed her face. A cloud, she thought. But the chill did not move. Reluctantly she opened her eyes to see what was obstructing the light that had just a moment ago warmed her so deliciously. A colossus stood above her. Its face blocked the sun, and she could see nothing but a black shape haloed with a corona of blinding light.

“Mary?” she asked tentatively, an instant before she looked down and saw that the figure stood barefooted. Dark hair covered the tops of the feet; the nails were thick as claws. A snippet of bright green grass clung to one dirty toe. Joan opened her mouth to speak, but the foot moved. Fast, as if stomping a cockroach, it slammed down on her throat, crushing her vocal cords. When she next opened her mouth it was only to suck in air, to hang on to the slender thread that tethered her to this life.

“You make one sound and I'll sic my little friend on you.” A man's coarse whisper rasped flat on the air. He held up a long, twisting snake. Joan stared at it, unable to take her eyes off its darting, flicking tongue.

“Did you say something?” Alex's voice rose in a question, somewhere to her right.

Joan struggled beneath the foot to reply, to warn Alex, but faster than any thug she'd ever seen on the subway the man knelt and pressed the edge of a hunting knife flat against her throat. The blade felt like ice beneath her jaw and her pulse throbbed hot against it.

“One word and this rock'll look like a hog-killing.”

“What?” Joan heard the surprise in Alex's voice. She squirmed to see her raising up on one elbow; then Alex, too, registered what was happening. “What the fuck . . .” she began.

The man turned suddenly and dangled the snake over Alex. Her blue eyes grew huge and wide and she began to gulp air as if she'd just come up from the bottom of the spring.

He sheathed his knife and arranged the snake in a heavy coil on Joan's chest. The creature rose up like a cobra, its eyes glittering like shiny black seeds. Panic surged inside her. “Don't you move, now,” the man said. “I'd hate for you to get bit.”

The man pulled some thin rope and a red bandana from inside his shirt and forced the bandana between Alex's jaws. He knotted it at the back of her head, then rolled her, unresisting, on her side, pulling her arms and legs tight behind her and binding them with the rope.

“Be still!” the man ordered as Alex stared speechless and terrified, her back arching like an inverted hobby-horse.

He tied her arms and legs, then patted her hip as if he'd just won a contest in a rodeo. Licking the tip of one index finger, he reached for Alex's nipple.

“No!” Joan screamed before she realized what she'd done. The man jumped and turned back to her. His eyes blazed and she saw the index finger that had been bound for Alex's breast stop and curl into a fist. It rose, then roared down out of the sky like lightning and collided with the bridge of her nose. Bones snapped as her face melted in a furnace of pain.

“You don't tell me no,” the man said. “You may be Trudy's partner, but don't you ever tell me no.”

The man looked down at her. His face darkened with a deeper rage, then he smiled slightly, as if some good idea had just occurred to him. He forced Joan's mouth open. His hands smelled like rotten meat and the cloth he stretched between her jaws tasted like kerosene. He pulled her head forward by her hair and tied the cloth tight against the base of her skull. Her tongue seemed to double, to triple in size. There was not enough room for it and the rag in her mouth. She tried to suck in more air, but she couldn't.
This is how you will die
, she realized.
You
will not be stabbed.You will not be bitten by the snake.You will
die simply trying to breathe in air.

The man put the snake around his neck and raised Joan's arms high above her head. He pulled up her sweatshirt. The air felt cold on her bare breasts, the sandstone boulder rough against her back. She saw nothing beyond the black underside of her sweatshirt. She tried to keep breathing as she felt hands jerking her underpants down the length of her legs.

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
she began to repeat inside her head, picturing the pretty pink rosary beads that she'd left, where, in her jewelry box? In the bathroom drawer with her birth control pills? She couldn't miss taking any of her pills; she had a date with Hugh Chandler in just a few days.

The hands pried her legs apart, then squeezed her sex as someone might coax juice from an orange. It burned from the outrage while her legs jerked as if she'd just grabbed an electrical wire.

Blessed art thou among women
. . .

The hands traveled up her belly to her breasts, pinching her nipples with sharp fingernails. She gasped with pain, but then the fingernails disappeared, replaced by a hot wet mouth that sucked her right breast until it went numb. She squirmed to get away, to fold herself into the rock, but the hands grabbed her hips and jerked her forward. They grabbed her thighs and pushed her legs so wide apart she feared they would snap off like twigs.
I am
not wet
, she thought,
this will not work
, and she tried to twist back into the woods or the rocks or even into the dark green depths of Atagahi itself. But she could not move. A weight pinned her legs flat as something began to batter an entrance to her vagina.

Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
He rammed into her harder; she couldn't remember any more of the rosary she'd known since she was four. She thought of Times Square and the Christmas windows on Fifth Avenue and her Aunt Carla the ex-Rockette. Her legs would not break off like this. Aunt Carla could put on her tap shoes and turn this man's balls to hamburger and the smile would never leave her face.
Un vero angelo,
her mother laughs when she talks about Aunt Carla. Joan thought of her mother and her mother's kitchen, where the sun slants across the red linoleum floor and the walls are redolent of garlic and lemons and the yeasty smell of dough rising. Renata Tebaldi, her mother's favorite soprano, sings from the stereo.
Giovanna
, her mother calls her by her Italian name. She wished with all her soul that she were back in that bright, warm, infinitely safe kitchen. If she could ever get back there she would never leave again.

He pummeled into her until finally, like a poorly stitched seam, her tissue tore and gave way. The stranger was within.

Time stopped then. Joan felt the beginning of each stroke, its path and its thumping end. She endured each without thought as to when this might cease, knowing only that when the choking in her head met the fire that was ripping up through her vagina, she would die. Surely God would grant her that mercy. Finally, just as she decided to quit breathing, she felt something spew up into her, and it was over. He quivered inside her for an instant, then shrank away. The hands left her hips; a coolness enveloped her.

Then she left, as fully as he did. She flew to a faraway place where her grandmother squabbled with Mrs. Cannanero about the best place to buy tomatoes, where nuns smelling of lavender repeated their prayers like pigeons cooing, and where, on an afternoon just like this one, you could get a hot dog and an egg cream and feel like the world belonged to you.

SIXTEEN

Mitch Whitman sighed at the aging Dodge pickup trundling ahead of him. Though its right taillight had blinked for the past twenty minutes, the truck had ignored an obvious turn and chugged on into the mountains ahead of him, one worn back tire wobbling.

Behind the truck, Mitch held his temper in check, trying to ignore the oily fumes that spewed from the bouncing tailpipe. Several times he'd been tempted to pull around and pass the vehicle with his middle finger raised, but something held him back. Two Confederate flag decals decorated the Dodge's battered bumper, and a lethal-looking pump shotgun lay racked across the back window. The brawny left arm of the driver periodically emerged to heave empty Budweiser cans out the window, and every half-mile or so the passenger's cowboy-hatted head would peer back to see if Mitch still followed them. Between the two men Mitch could see the smaller outline of a blonde woman who wore a black leather jacket with the collar turned up.

Wonder if they're brothers
, he thought.
Wonder if that girl
belongs to the driver or the passenger?

He scowled as another beer can sailed toward a pine tree. Probably neither, he decided. Probably all three are from the same litter. Isn't that what they do up here?

Just as he started to pull off the road to let the beer drinkers get farther ahead, they abruptly turned down a narrow gravel path that slid off the edge of a cliff.
Wonder
what they're going to do
, he thought, watching as the old Dodge became just two red taillights bouncing down the mountain.
Fuck, probably, then fight
. Mitch felt a sick ripple in his gut.
What would it be like to put it to your sister?

He turned his gaze away from the bouncing taillights and sped up the road, for once grateful that Cal was the only sibling he had to contend with. His burst of speed was short-lived, though. The road twisted like a strand of curling spaghetti, and the Ford's automatic transmission hesitated, unable to decide between second and third gears. As he gained altitude the wind that whistled through the trees grew so cold he had to raise the window and turn the car's heater on. He couldn't imagine what it would be like to haul up these mountains on foot.

“Maybe old Thaddeus actually earned some of that gold,” he said, grimacing at the thought of dragging a mule up into this flinty, dark wilderness.

For an hour he crept along a crumbling asphalt road that twisted through the peaks. According to his map, the Little Jump Off Trail should be up here, but he saw no hiking trails leading off the highway, nor any signs pointing to anyplace called Little Jump Off. Frustration heating his insides, he parked on one side of a wide curve and unfolded the Geological Survey map he'd bought in Atlanta. Pale green swirls like huge fingerprints indicated mountains and altitudes on the paper; darker lines followed the contours of the land. Red-and-white candy stripes illustrated medium-duty roads, broken black lines were jeep trails, and faint dotted lines represented footpaths. According to the map, Little Jump Off lay in the far right corner of the page, a dotted line springing from the single candy stripe that twisted through the sprawling Unicoi range. He checked his compass and his GPS positioner. By all indications, Little Jump Off should be exactly where he now stood.

“Well, fuck,” he said aloud. “Does the U.S. Government not even know where this shit hole is?”

He scowled at the map, wondering if maybe Lou Delgado had been right. Stopping Mary Crow would not stop any ongoing investigation of him. Still, she might well be the only one who could piece it all together. The only one who had the
passion
to piece it all together. He'd felt it, on the witness stand.

“Mr.Whitman, now that we've established that you not only
knew the deceased, and that you would have, if need be, included
your brother in some of your moments together, how would you
now describe your relationship with Sandra Manning?”

“I'm not sure I understand your question.” Though he was
exhausted, he was still determined to play his own version of coy.
He was not going down easy for this Mary Crow. He saw his
brother sitting beside his attorney, smirking at him. Cal was actually enjoying this! And he was up here sweating, trying to save
both their asses.

“I mean, would you describe your relationship with Sandra
Manning as platonic? Romantic? Intimate?”

Suddenly, his brain locked up. He knew every eye in the courtroom was staring straight at him, but all he could do was look at
Mary Crow, his mouth moving in some vapid semblance of speech.

Then she pivoted, like a cat pouncing on a bird. “Were you
not intimate with Sandra Manning, sir?” she demanded. Her
voice flicked like the end of a whip.

“I'm . . . I'm not sure what you mean.” It seemed to him he
squeaked like a mouse.

“Intimate means sexual, Mr. Whitman,” she said, in his face,
hard.
“Sexual
means that the two of you engaged in sexual
intercourse. I'm assuming you know what sexual intercourse
means, Mr. Whitman. If you don't, I'll be quite happy to pause to
let you consult your little brother!” She smiled at him then, her
eyes the color of stone as everyone in the courtroom howled. His
friends, the reporters, even Stacy Lamb, a girl from school he'd gotten to know. Cal was roaring, even his ashen-faced attorney was
smiling as the judge pounded her gavel.

“You fucking bitch.” Sitting in the car, he suddenly wanted to tear her picture into shreds. “When I find you, I'm gonna make you pay.”

Yeah, right
, he thought.
But first you've got to find her.

He studied the map once more, then decided to start all over again, back at that fat girl's convenience store. He must have taken a wrong turn somewhere. He restarted the Taurus and for what seemed like hours he twisted through the mountains. Sometimes the scenery looked vaguely familiar, sometimes the contorted, acid rain-scalded trees made him wonder if he wasn't on another planet. He squeezed his eyes shut as a headache began to throb at the base of his skull. Just as the sun began to set he rounded a curve, skirting a peeling white concrete building that had once been a motel. In its weedy parking lot sat a lone figure dressed in buckskins and a full feathered headdress. Beside him stood a small, hand-lettered sign that read
Have Your Picture Taken With a Real Life
Cherokee.
A rangy brown hound dog sat at the Indian's feet, his long pink tongue flopping from one side of his mouth.

Mitch pulled in. Maybe this Real Life Cherokee could tell him where the Little Jump Off Trail was.

“Hidy!” The Indian seemed to awaken as the shiny white Ford pulled beside him. He hopped up and walked over to the door, the dog ambling close behind.

The war bonnet topped a small, thin man with several teeth missing from his lower jaw. He grinned at Mitch. “Want your picture taken with a real Cherokee Indian?”

Mitch tried not to laugh. Though the Indian's sharp features were a dusky cinnamon, his manner was obsequious, his accent more Gomer Pyle than Sitting Bull.

Mitch was about to shake his head when suddenly an idea came to him—unbidden, yet full-blown and beautiful. A gold nugget dropped from the ancestral lap of Thaddeus Whitman. It might entail another murder, but after three, who would be counting?

He pushed his sunglasses higher on his nose and gazed sternly at the Indian. “Are you familiar with this area?” he asked, assuming his father's best command voice.

“I reckon I am,” the Real Life Cherokee said. “Lived here all my life.”

Mitch turned off his engine. “Do you know a trail called Little Jump Off?”

“Why, sure. It's over near the Tennessee line. You're way lost if you're looking for that.”

Mitch dug in his wallet and flashed Mitchell Keane's Georgia student ID in front of the Indian's eager eyes. “My name's Keane. I'm with the Deckard County Sheriff's Department. I have urgent business with an attorney of ours who's supposedly vacationing on the Little Jump Off Trail.”

The Indian gave a big grin. “You mean Mary Crow?”

For a moment Mitch didn't know what to say. He hadn't expected this feathered fool to actually know Mary Crow. “Possibly,” he replied carefully. “Can you identify her?”

“About this tall.” The Indian held up one hand at eye level. “Too skinny for my taste. Pretty, though. And smart as a whip.”

“You know her?”

“Sure. Grew up with her, till her grandma stole her away to Atlanta.”

“Look, I'm not familiar with this territory. If you can guide me to Mary Crow, there's a thousand dollars in it for you.” Mitch pulled five hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and held them between two fingers. “Half now and half when I reach her.”

The Indian's eyes widened. He looked as if he'd never seen that much money in his life. He swallowed hard. “Let me go get Jonathan Walkingstick,” he said. “He's the real tracker. Mary and her friends went up to Atagahi. Me and Jonathan can lead you up there in no time.”

“The more trackers, the less pay,” Mitch said decisively. “You bring in your buddy, your cut goes down by half.”

The Indian took off his headdress, revealing badly cut dark hair sweat-plastered to the angular bones of his skull. He shrugged, disappointed. “Well, okay. I can get you where they're going. How about we leave at daybreak tomorrow?”

“How about we leave now,” Mitch insisted. “Like I said, my business is urgent.”

“We won't have but a few hours before dark.”

“The pay goes down tomorrow.” Mitch held firm.

“You can't go like that.” The Indian eyed Mitch's thin yellow T-shirt and blue jeans. “It's cold up there.”

“My gear's in the trunk,” Mitch explained. “I can be ready in five minutes.”

“I'll need to go home, then. Change my clothes and get a pack.”

Mitch unbuckled his seat belt. “By the time you get back here, I'll be ready to go.”

“Okay. Give me half an hour.”

Mitch watched as the Indian tucked his headdress under his arm and hurried over to an ancient Toyota pickup. The dog trotted after him, leaping into the truck bed. Mitch scratched his head, amazed at how easily the Indian believed him. No wonder old Thaddeus had been able to move these nitwits to Oklahoma. “Hey, what's your name?” he called, half expecting the guy to say Crazy Horse.

“Billy Swimmer,” the Indian replied as he tugged open the door of his truck and chugged off to get his supplies.