Forgotten (5 page)

Cannon’s face hardened.

“I’m sorry I wasted your time, Mr. Cannon.” Portia rose, unable to meet his eyes, afraid of just what more she might say.

She turned her back and walked out of the office.

“Agent Cahill,” he called to her when she was almost to the elevator. “Wait.”

She paused midstride and looked back over her shoulder as he approached.

“Let’s get one thing straight. I did not choose to represent Sheldon Woods. I was appointed by the court to defend him. And while I understand your feelings about the deal he got, I had a moral and ethical obligation to do the best I could for my client, odious as it might seem.”

“It looks like it all turned out well enough for you.” She glanced around meaningfully at the well-appointed reception area, with its Oriental rugs and plush seating. “I’ll bet that case made your reputation as the criminal defense attorney to go to when the going gets tough.”

“Everyone deserves an honest defense.”

“Even an animal who rapes and murders children?”

“You don’t get to pick and choose who gets to be defended and who doesn’t. Everyone is presumed—”

“—innocent until proven guilty, right,” she snapped. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it before. Better a guilty man should go free than an innocent man punished.”

“It’s the principle our system of justice was founded on,” he pointed out.

“I’ve seen too many of the guilty go free. Very often, they’re set free to kill or rape again.”

“You don’t believe that everyone deserves a fair trial?”

“Fair trial, yes. Sweetheart deals, like the one you got for Sheldon Woods? Uh-uh.” She shook her head. “Frankly, I don’t know how you sleep at night.”

“Well, actually, for a long time, Agent Cahill, I didn’t.” He stuck his hands in his pants pockets, looking unexpectedly self-conscious. “But before you condemn me, keep in mind that thirteen families got to bury their sons. I regret that I was not able to return the remains of every murdered child to his loved ones, but that was the best I could do. Woods would not give up more than thirteen.

“And for the record? Lethal injection would have been far too easy a death for him.”

“Well, that’s one thing we can agree on.” She turned to the elevator where the doors stood open, waiting for her. She stepped in and pressed the button for the lobby without looking back.

J
im Cannon watched the elevator doors close and the light above them descend, floor to floor, as the car made its way to the lobby.

“Well,” he muttered, “I guess she told me.”

He’d been taken to task many times by cops and family members of victims whom his clients had been accused of killing or assaulting, so it wasn’t as if the FBI agent had expressed sentiments he hadn’t heard before. Usually he did his best to not dwell on other people’s opinions of the work he did. He had his reasons and they were damned good ones. His motives were no one’s business but his own.

So why was he still standing here, feeling chastised, because an FBI agent had looked at him as if he were the lowest form of life on the planet?

Something about Special Agent Portia Cahill announced that she was not a woman to be taken lightly. It was in the degree of contempt that had hung on her every word, the way her eyes had challenged him. The way she’d assumed so much about him, about his morals and his ethics.

The words he’d spoken were the truest words he knew. He did believe that every man, every woman, was entitled to the best, the most honest defense possible. He did believe, with all his heart, that no innocent man should ever pay a price for a crime he did not commit, and that if everyone involved did their job the way they were supposed to—the cops, the prosecutors, the defense attorneys—the guilty would not walk free. But all too often someone got lazy, skipped a step or two, lost evidence, missed a witness, and the wrong verdict came down, and the guilty got to walk.

The problem was, you couldn’t always count on everyone to do their best every time. He should have tried to explain that to Agent Cahill.

I suppose any man who’d craft a deal to get a child molester and murderer life in prison rather than the death penalty—a penalty he so richly deserved—shouldn’t be expected to give a damn about the families of his client’s victims.

That had stung the most. The families of the victims were always in the forefront of his mind. Had she intended the insult to cut so deeply? Did she really believe that he had so little regard for the victims of violence?

For all the research she’d done on him, she’d missed some very salient details.

He should have defended himself better, he chided himself as he walked back to his office, but he’d been somewhat distracted by her. She’d come striding into his office, all cool confidence and bold attitude and had thrown him off his best game by knowing way more about him than he knew about her. She’d done her research before she arrived, so the advantage was clearly hers. Was that it, he had to ask himself, or was it because he’d been so struck by her beauty and by the fierceness of her sense of justice, that he’d neglected to explain that crafting the deal for Sheldon Woods in a manner that assured families that their lost sons would be returned had been one of his best moments?

He’d heard those arguments before—that he should have let the state find Woods guilty at trial and given him the death penalty that he so richly deserved. Jim had not exaggerated when he’d said that lethal injection would not have been sufficient retribution for all the terrible things Woods had done.

But those who condemned him for the deal he’d struck had not been in the courtroom to witness the procession of heartbroken parents, brothers, sisters, and friends, whose pain was a palpable presence. They were the ones whose prayers had not been answered, the ones who had nothing left to pray for, the ones who could no longer pretend that their loved one would be found alive and that somehow they’d been caught in a very bad dream. These were the families whose only remaining hope was that the remains would be found so that they could bury their dead. They were the ones who, in the end, he’d best served. By finding a way to spare Sheldon Woods’s life, he’d given the victims back to their families. He’d not sought to defend Woods, but once he’d been assigned to handle the case, he’d been determined to make of it what he could, not for his sake, but for theirs.

He wished he’d been able make Special Agent Portia Cahill understand that about him. He wished he knew why it mattered so much to him that she did.

He packed his briefcase with some work he needed to finish at home, wondering if he was bothered more because she’d so easily dismissed him and questioned his value as a human being, or because she’d had the last word.

SIX

P
ortia stood in the dark outside the indoor riding ring and swatted at the mosquitoes that had been feasting on her various body parts for the past five minutes. Not yet dawn, the air was still and heavy and smelled of night. A smattering of low fog, ghostly white, drifted eerily across a nearby pasture.

“Give it a rest, will you?” she pleaded as she smacked her left forearm with the palm of her right hand, only to miss once again.

“You talking to me?” the tall young agent standing at the doorway asked.

“No, I’m talking to these vicious little bastards that seem to think I’m breakfast.” She ducked as another circled her head, its buzzing loud, defiant, purposeful in the morning air. “That’s it. I’m waiting in my car.”

She hurried down the paved drive not caring if she looked like she was running away, though in the dark, she reminded herself, who would know? There were certain things she just couldn’t tolerate. Bloodsucking insects were close to the top of the list.

“The sun doesn’t rise for another two hours and already I’m wimping out,” Portia grumbled as she got into the car and turned on the ignition.

Opening a window would be tantamount to an invitation to the mosquitoes:
Come on in. Drink up!
Figuring she’d done her part already that morning to ensure that the little bastards would live and prosper, she started the car and turned on the air-conditioning.

She toyed with the radio before accepting the fact that her only choice was country music—with or without static. She opted out completely and turned it off. She hummed a few bars of a song, then realized it was one of Jack’s. It reminded her about the CDs he’d given her before she left London—advance copies of his newest album for her and for Miranda. She hadn’t had the nerve to give Miranda her copy. She could kick herself for not having had the presence of mind to have stuck one in her bag before she left the house that morning. Of course, it had been practically the middle of the night; one of the prison’s stipulations for going along with the FBI’s request was that no one within the prison community—except for the warden and one carefully selected guard—would know that Woods had been permitted to leave the compound. Fair enough. It wasn’t something the FBI wanted publicized either. Portia glanced at her watch. The transport should be arriving any minute now.

Portia hummed a few more bars, wishing she could figure out a way to get her sister to at least try to understand Jack. True, he’d never been much of a father to any of his children while they were young, and granted, he hadn’t been much of a husband to any of the women he’d married. He’d been in and out of her own life when she and Miranda were young—Miranda hadn’t exaggerated that—but he had taken to Portia as an adult. She thought perhaps he just might be one of those men who didn’t relate well to small children. Not that that was an admirable thing, but sometimes, that was just how it was. Something you could accept, or not.

Of course, Portia reasoned, she could just be making excuses for him because she’d found that she really liked him, lousy father or not. He was an intelligent, interesting man, and an incredibly gifted musician. He made no excuses for the way he was and never tried to pass off his deficiencies as anything other than what they really were—flaws in his character. That made him one of the most honest people she’d ever met.

Sheldon Woods, she reminded herself, had said the same thing about James Cannon, but what would be Woods’s idea of an honest man? One who knew but didn’t tell where all the bodies were buried?

Woods had been everything she’d thought he’d be, but Cannon hadn’t been what she’d expected. She’d thought he’d be older, maybe, heavy on the sleaze factor, a bit of a hustler. Shifty-eyed, perhaps, unable to make or maintain eye contact. The James Cannon she’d met the day before yesterday had been none of those things. And while he’d been unapologetic over his role in orchestrating Woods’s plea bargain, he’d certainly not gloated over it, either. Within the criminal defense community, Woods getting life without possibility of parole instead of the death sentence had been a definite coup—a win for the bad guys—but Cannon had given her the distinct impression that the deal he’d orchestrated had been as much about the victims and their families as it had been a fulfillment of his obligation to provide a proper defense for his client. Then again, he might just be a very good actor. But he had agreed to get up in the middle of the night to do this today, and for that she was grateful.

The crunching of tires on the gravel drive drew her attention to the light-colored van that cautiously approached the barn. It pulled up to the very front of the building and came to a stop. Moments later, two men emerged from the vehicle’s front, then four more came out of the rear, all dressed in dark blue shirts with FBI in white on the backs. In the lights from the barn, Portia watched the van’s rear side panel slide back. She recognized the guard who jumped out as CO DeLuca, who’d brought Woods into the visitors’ room both times she’d been there. As all the agents stood by, James Cannon hopped out, followed by Woods, still dressed in his orange prisoner’s garb, his cuffed hands and ankles secured by chains to a ring around his waist. He was led into the barn, his gait encumbered by the hardware, agents on either side and behind him, Cannon the last in line.

Portia got out of her car and hurried to catch up. Once Woods was inside, the doors would be locked behind him, and she’d be embarrassed if she had to bang on the door to be let in. Her long legs carried her quickly across the distance, and she arrived at the door just behind Cannon. Hearing her approach, he looked over his shoulder, but did not greet her. She filed in behind him, and the door was closed and locked by a tall, sleepy-looking man who she recognized as being from Bureau head quarters, though she couldn’t remember his name. She nodded to him as he locked the door, and noted that he, like all the others, was heavily armed. Portia smiled to herself. John Mancini was taking no chances. If Sheldon Woods was going to try to escape, he’d look like a piece of Swiss cheese before he came within ten feet of the door.

Inside the riding ring, a burly man wearing jeans and a frayed T-shirt held the reins of a chestnut mare. The horse stood calmly by as if being saddled up and led out of her stall in the middle of the night was an everyday occurrence.

“So, who’s got the keys?” Woods demanded, looking from one guard to the other. “Come on, get these things off me. I only have an hour.”

“Ummm, Sheldon?” Portia stepped forward. “Aren’t we forgetting something?”

“What?” He turned to her, an annoyed expression on his face.

“You’re supposed to give me information, then you get to ride.”

“No, first I ride, then you get to ask your questions.”

“There aren’t going to be any questions,” Portia stood with her feet apart, her hands on her hips. “You’re going to give me exact instructions on how to find Christopher Williams’s grave, then you get a leg up.”

“Actually, what I believe I said was, I’d tell you what you wanted to know when I was high in the saddle. Not before.”

Portia gestured for the man holding the mare to step forward, then turned to the guards.

“Undo the ankle and waist restraints, but keep the cuffs on his hands.” To Woods, she said, “Once you’re in the saddle, you give me what I want, then your wrist cuffs come off. You mess with me, you’re back off that horse faster than you can blink. Understand?”

“Agent Cahill, you insult me. We had a deal. You kept your end of the bargain, I will keep mine.” His eyes lit up as he watched the horse approach. “Ah, aren’t you a lovely thing. A bit long in the tooth, as they say, but lovely.”

He shuffled closer. “And I’ll bet you had some fire when you were younger, eh? Well, didn’t we all?”

The guard holding the key glanced at Portia and she nodded. With a wary look at Woods, he knelt down to unlock the ankle cuffs, but Woods barely noticed. He was still crooning to the horse.

“Help him up,” Portia told the man holding the reins.

“No, no, I don’t need any help.” In one surprisingly smooth movement, Woods had leaped to grab the pommel and swung himself into the saddle. He closed his eyes and smiled as he put his feet in the stirrups. “My, but it’s been a long time. But as they say, some things you never forget.”

He addressed the groom, asking, “What’s her name?”

“Molly Blue” was the response.

“Nice. Well, Molly Blue, let’s take us a little…”

“Woods.” Portia made no effort to disguise her impatience.

“Oh, right. Sorry. I forgot.” Woods smiled down at her. “You wanted some directions.”

She took a small recorder from her pocket.

“Go ’head,” she told him.

He leaned forward to pat the horse’s neck. “From here, you want to head north…”

He rattled off a series of highways and back roads leading increasingly close to the Pennsylvania border.

“Once you get to Oldbridge,” he continued, “you want to head out of town past a large red barn. I don’t recall the name of the road, but you can’t miss the barn. About a mile farther down the road, you’ll look to your left, and you’ll see a hill with a tall straight tower rising up from its crest. There will be a road that intersects there. Take a left and follow it until you get to the dirt road that leads up to the tower.”

“What kind of tower?” Portia frowned. “Like a cell phone tower?”

“No, no, it’s some kind of monument. Stone. It’s the highest point around.” Woods fixes her with a withering stare. “If you can’t find it, you’re not much of an investigator.”

“Okay, so we see the hill and the monument…” She ignored the jab.

“It’s maybe a quarter mile down the road after you make the turn,” he told her.

“Then what?”

“Then you stop the car at the top of the hill and get out.”

“Don’t try my patience, Woods, it’s hot in here and it’s going to be a long day digging in the heat.”

“Hey, your choice.”

“Get. On. With. It.”

“Okay, so you’re at the top of the hill—there’s an old cemetery there, did I mention that? Pre-Revolutionary War, I think, judging by the dates on some of the headstones.”

Portia gestured with her hand for him to continue. She was rapidly running out of patience.

“There’s a cluster of pine trees off to the left, and a sort of rock pile behind the trees. Again, you can’t miss it. You’ll find what you’re after right in front of the rocks, between the tallest two trees—they sit about twelve feet apart, or did, last time I was there.” He nodded to her, then turned back to the groom, who still maintained a hold on the mare. “I’d like my ride now.”

“Woods.” She called to him as he edged into the ring on the horse, walking it as if trying to get a feel for it. “Woods. I’m talking to you.”

He threw a glance over his shoulder, but did not stop.

“God have mercy on you if you’re lying.”

Woods laughed and nudged the horse into a trot. “Haven’t you heard, Agent Cahill? God has no mercy for the likes of me.”

Portia walked to the door and without being asked, the agent at the door unlocked it. She was halfway to her car when she heard someone calling her name. She turned to see James Cannon jogging toward her. He wore washed-out denims and a blue polo shirt that matched his eyes.

“I’d like to come with you,” he told her.

“Why?”

“I was there when every one of the other boys was found. I want to be there for Christopher Williams as well.”

“Sorry. You have to ride back to the prison in the van with Woods. That was the deal, counselor. Cannon in the van on the way out, Cannon in the van on the way back.”

“You got what you wanted. What difference does it make now?”

“Because maybe—just maybe—he might decide to play this game again sometime. But if I break my word now, there won’t be a next time.”

The barn door swung open, thumping dully against the outside wall, and two agents emerged. As they walked toward her, Portia called out to one, “Shay, find out who has the jurisdiction in and around Oldbridge, Maryland—local, county sheriff, the state. Call them, talk to whoever’s in charge and tell him or her—and only that person—what’s going on. Have them meet me there with a crime scene team. If Christopher Williams is there, we’re getting him out today and I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes while we do it.”

To Cannon she said, “Mr. Cannon, thanks for doing your part to make this happen. We appreciate it.”

She walked away and got into her car. Making a U-turn in the drive, she looked back, but he was gone.

Two hours later, the car’s external thermostat read eighty-five degrees, and Portia knew that the temperature would only continue to climb as the day progressed. Combined with the rising humidity, it was sure to become increasingly uncomfortable. She parked at the foot of the tower that stood just as Woods had described it: by itself, atop a hill, the tallest point around. There were pines exactly where he’d said there would be, and she could see the makeshift rock wall that ran behind them. The tower did appear to be some sort of monument, as Woods had suggested. She got out of the car and walked closer to see if she could read the words inscribed about eight feet up, but they were badly eroded. She started toward the pine grove that Woods claimed marked Christopher Williams’s resting place.

There was no path to follow, and here and there pale granite headstones, almost flush to the ground and worn by wind and weather over the years, were obscured by grass long overdue for cutting. She knelt to push aside the tall green leaves from one on which the date was barely visible—12
DECEMBER
, 1723—and the name, not at all. When they were children, she and Miranda used to make rubbings of the headstones in an old cemetery not far from where they lived. Today the thought of two young girls playing in a graveyard made her shiver.

Portia was careful to watch where she walked, not wanting to willingly tread on the ancient graves, but it was almost impossible to avoid. Several times she stubbed her toe on stone that only rose above the soil by inches.

At the pines, she hesitated momentarily, then walked between the two largest and looked for the spot Woods had described. If he were to be believed, Christopher’s grave lay just two feet from where she stood. Silently she prayed for the lost boy beneath the ground.