In The Forest Of Harm
T
his book is dedicated to
Elizabeth and Carter Stringfellow
Praise for IN THE FOREST OF HARM
“BISSELL TIGHTENS THE SCREWS
SLOWLY AND EXPERTLY,
providing some
spectacular, often threatening, mountain scenery along
the wayâ¦. A shrewdly judged female actioner.”
â
Kirkus Reviews
“Sallie Bissell has written an
EXTRAORDINARY
DEBUT NOVEL.
Her characters are vividly alive,
as is the sense of foreboding that starts from the
first page and never lets goâ¦. I strongly
recommend this book to suspense readers.
YOU WILL NOT BE DISAPPOINTED.”
â
Rendezvous
“An incredibly powerful novel. Bissell creates
A SCENARIO OF DANGER AND SUSPENSE
THAT WILL LEAVE YOU BREATHLESS
as you race through your book to find out
what happens next.”
â
Romantic Times
“A CARNIVAL RIDE OF PAIN AND TERROR
THAT YOU WILL FEEL IN YOUR GUTâ¦
It is telling when a new author can make your heart
race as if you were climbing a cliff face and
your palms sweat as if you were gripping
the murder weapon yourself.”
â
The Commercial Appeal,
Memphis
“A NAIL-BITING DEBUT NOVEL OF
PSYCHOLOGICAL TERROR, SURVIVAL,
AND LOYALTY AND FRIENDSHIP.”
â
The Purloined Letter
“THE TALE COMPELS
with its depiction of
desperate camaraderie and descriptions
of gorgeous mountain scenery.”
â
Publishers Weekly
“In a terrific debut,
BISSELL GLUED ME
TO THE COUCH FOR HER ENTIRE
NOVEL
.⦠If you buy one book this year,
make it
In the Forest of Harm
.”
â
Snooper Reviews
“The charm of Bissell's product is her integration
of Cherokee lore into what is otherwise
A GUT-WRENCHING SUSPENSE SET-UP. â¦
BISSELL MASTERFULLY DRIVES THE PLOT
with an arsenal of medium-length horror scenes,
ominous dead, interesting facts about culture
and geography, flashbacks, reflections and
conversational patter.”
â
The Asheville Citizen-Times
“THE SUSPENSE IS EXCRUCIATING.”
â
Spartanburg-Herald Journal
MY THANKS TO:
The Nashville Writers Alliance: Ronna Blaser, Kae Cheatham, Phyllis Gobbel, Martha Hick-man, Nancy Hite, Amy Lynch, Madeena Nolan, Michael Sims, Steve Womack and Jim Young; Dr. Tracy Barrett of Vanderbilt University.
The Flatiron Writers of Asheville, North Carolina: Cathy Argrella, Alan Anderson, Perien Gray, Toby Heaton, and Heather Newton.
My agents, Robbie Anna Hare, whose belief in and hard work for this project were key to its success; and Ron Goldfarb, whose advice and counsel were invaluable.
My editor, Kate Miciak, whose wise suggestions made this a much stronger book.
Finally, to the best friends and first readers any writer could hope forâGenève Bacon, Cynthia Perkins, and Alana White.
Â
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Lyrics quoted on page 29
are from “All the Pretty Little Horses,”
a traditional American folk song.
PROLOGUE
LITTLE JUMP OFF STORE
NANTAHALA NATIONAL FOREST, NORTH CAROLINA
APRIL 11, 1988
Mom? I'm home.” Mary Crow tugged open the back door of the store, releasing the rich scent of curing hams and dried apples into the warm April afternoon. Inside, she could hear the ancient bait cooler wheezing over her mother's favorite oldies station, currently playing a scratchy version of “Hey Jude.”
“Mom?” Mary repeated. “It's me.”
She pushed her glossy dark hair back from her forehead, waiting for her mother's familiar “In here,” but only her own voice echoed through the store.
With a shake of her head, Mary began to weave her way through aisles piled high with everything from laundry detergent to dusty, old-fashioned slop jars. Though her mother had worked here for ten years, the Little Jump Off store had been dispensing mountain merchandise since the days of cracker barrels and pickle jars.
“Mama?” Mary called louder as the bait cooler gave a grinding shudder. “I'm back. Sorry I'm late. I'll help you close up.”
Again, there was no response. Mary felt a sudden odd coolness, as if someone had jerked a sweater from her shoulders. She frowned. Something was strange here. Something was not right.
“Mother?” Her call now rang edgy in the too-still air. She heard footsteps thudding from the store's front porch. Not her mother's light tread, but heavy steps, with a curious rhythm.
Quickly, she turned toward the checkout counter. She rounded the new spring seed display, then stopped, stunned, as if someone had slapped her hard across the face. At the counter the old wooden cash register gaped open like an empty mouth; change splattered on the counter, five- and ten-dollar bills littered the floor. For an instant Mary could only stand and stare, her stomach twisting into a sick, hard knot.
“Mom?” she called. “Where are you?”
She rushed to the front of the store, then gasped. Cans of baked beans rolled around the floor among boxes of oatmeal and burst bags of flour. Two ruptured six-packs of Coke spewed over the mess.
“Mom? Are you here?” Mary looked down the hardware aisle. Nothing. She checked behind the counter. Again nothing. She ran around to the corner of the store where her mother kept her loom; her heart turned to dust.
There, on the floor, beside a bag of wool scraps, lay Martha Crow. Her blue gingham skirt had been pushed up around her thighs; the front of her blouse was ripped away. Her face was the color of a fresh bruise and a line of large red blotches crawled up her throat.
Mary blinked as everything started to tumbleâher mother, the store, her whole world. Her mind snatched at ideas as a dog might snap at flies. She should go to her mother, she should call the sheriff, she should run out on the porch and scream for help. But her legs felt like rubber, and at that moment she couldn't even remember where they kept their old black telephone. All she could do was stand there, staring mutely at her mother as the Beatles droned on and those heavy footsteps lumbered away.
“Mama!” she screamed, her voice gone tinny with terror.
“Mama?” Mary ran over and knelt beside her mother, pleading, praying.
Please let her open her eyes. Please let her
smile.
“Are you all right?”
Martha Crow did not answer.
With the tips of her fingers, Mary touched her mother's shoulder. Her body was warm, still soft with life, but her chest remained motionless. As Mary gently shook her, a trickle of saliva threaded down from the left corner of her mother's mouth. Her handsâthe hands that just this morning caressed Mary's cheek before she went to school, were bleeding. Every knuckle was scraped and one fingernail had been torn away, as if Martha Crow had fought someone very hard.
“Mama?” Mary shook her again, harder, and pulled the ragged blouse back across her chest. Though her mother's gold wedding band still encircled her finger, the Saint Andrew's medal, the one item of jewelry Mary had never seen Martha without, was gone. With a sob Mary touched the pale spot just above her breasts where the little medallion had always rested; the flesh there had already begun to cool.
She knew then exactly what had happened. Not the how, and not the why, but Mary Crow knew with certainty that the last person to leave this store had gone, taking her mother's life.
“Oh, Mama,” she whispered. “Please don't leave me. . . .” With that plea Mary leaned over and buried her face in her mother's dying warmth, ignoring the footsteps fading from the porch, ignoring the Beatles crooning from the radio, ignoring everything except the thunderous breaking of her own heart.
ONE
ATLANTA, GEORGIA, 2000
Indian bitch!” Calhoun Whitman, Jr., uttered his first words in court as he lunged over the defense table. “Motherfucking squaw!”
Mary Crow did not flinch as Whitman rushed toward her. Jurors scrambled backwards in the jury box while Whitman's defense counsel leapt from his chair and threw himself at his client. Though Whitman was a slender young man, he had quick reflexes and astonishing strength. Even with the beefy attorney clinging to both his legs, Calhoun Whitman, Jr., writhed like a rattlesnake toward the prosecutor's table.
The two bailiffs who normally dozed on either side of the bench jolted forward. With a flurry of grunts, curses and the final sick thud of a skull striking the floor, the three men pinned the just-convicted murderer at the foot of the witness stand. An instant later both bailiffs had their service revolvers pressed against the base of Whitman's brain.
“Oh, my God!” Mrs. Calhoun Whitman, Sr., shrieked over the babble. “They're going to shoot him!”
“Order!” Judge Margaret McLean slammed her gavel on the desk. The sharp rap was swallowed in the din that enveloped the courtroom. “I will have
order
in this court!” She banged the gavel as if she were hammering nails. “Officers, put that man in cuffs and irons!”
“Oh, nooo . . .” Mrs. Whitman sobbed as one bailiff cuffed her son's hands behind his back while the other kept both his foot and pistol wedged against Cal's neck. Mary Crow sat motionless as the bailiffs snapped the leg irons around Cal's ankles and wrestled him to his feet. When everyone in the courtroom had retaken their seats and her heart had stopped its own rhumba in her chest, Mary stood up, as was customary, for Judge McLean to address the accused.
“John Calhoun Whitman, Jr., a jury of your peers has found you guilty of one count of sexual battery and one count of murder in the first degree upon the person of Sandra Dianne Manning. You will be sentenced by this court on Friday, November third, in accordance with the criminal code of the State of Georgia. Until that time, you are remanded to the custody of the State.” Judge McLean scowled down at the strikingly handsome young man who now stood gasping before her in his torn Armani suit. “Take him away.”
The two bailiffs grabbed Cal Whitman by his manacled arms and hustled him toward the door, his leg irons rattling like a cascade of dropped change. When they passed in front of the prosecutor's table, Cal locked his knees and elbowed both officers.
“Stupid whore!” he raged at Mary, his blond hair falling into his face. “Cherokee lesbo cunt! You're gonna pay for this!” Then he threw back his head and spit. Everyone gasped. A milky wad of saliva curved through the air, then plopped on Wynona, the small gray soapstone figure of an Indian goddess that Mary kept on her table at every trial. As his spit dripped from the little statue, Cal's pretty mouth stretched in a triumphant, mocking grin.
“Out of those spike heels, you're just a skinny piece of brown cooze!”
Mary felt her face grow hot. She despised men like Whitman, men who played rough with women and then expected their money or their power to put things right. She pressed her hands flat on the desk and leaned toward him, knowing the warm scent of her perfume would linger in his memory as an ever-present reminder of the day she hung him.
“Have a good time in jail, Cal,” she murmured, not bothering to hide the pleasure in her voice. “I hear a few of the larger inmates are looking forward to being with you.”
“I'll get you for this!” Cal screamed at her as the bailiffs dragged him out of the courtroom. “I swear to God I will!” The door slammed behind him, but his threats echoed crazily down the hall, fading only when they locked him in a padded, soundproofed cell.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, thank you for your service. This court stands adjourned.” With a brisk nod at the jurors and a sharp glare at Whitman's attorney, Judge McLean withdrew to the calm blue interior of her office. Then the true bedlam began.
Mary looked at the sputum-drenched Wynona and shook her head. At last this case, this crime of passion which some wag in her office had termed “the muff snuff,” was over. Atlanta had been shocked when the younger son of one of its wealthiest real-estate developers had been charged with raping and then killing a Gap salesgirl, but when the papers had implied that political forces had put pressure on the DA's office to charge Calhoun Whitman, Jr., with the crime, the whole city had gone nuts. All Mary knew was that the case landed on her desk. Although the late Sandra Manning had shown a proclivity for multiple sex partners, the evidence had pointed overwhelmingly to Whitman. Her boss and the mayor and even the governor had wanted this political bombshell out of the papers, so Mary had gone to trial with the evidence she had. For the past two weeks she had prosecuted. Today the jury had convicted.
Kate Summerfield, the chief crime reporter for the
Journal-Clarion
, was the first to corner Mary.
“Hey, Mary, doesn't this make six convictions for six indictments?”
Mary fought the urge to grin and raise one fist in triumph. It would be better if the press did not find out how good it felt to nail scum like Whitman. It was a rush better than coffee, better than skydiving, maybe even better than a talented man lingering between your legs. She glanced down at her papers and answered Kate's question with a modest nod. “Handsome Cal makes six.”
Kate gave a low whistle. “That's amazing for one so young. Say, is it true that the old Cherokees chopped off one hand if someone killed a man, but two hands if someone killed a woman?” She scribbled in a long, skinny notebook that looked more suited for grocery lists than front-page headlines.
Mary laughed. “Who on earth told you that?”
“Read it somewhere. Is this old Cherokee tradition why you never bargain when the victim's a woman?”
“To tell you the truth, I've never thought about it one way or the other.” Mary smiled, but did not elaborate. Actually, Kate had gotten it right. The old Cherokees were hand-lobbers and she didn't bargain when the victim was female, but Mary didn't want anybody attributing that to her over breakfast tomorrow morning.
“Is this the first time you've convicted someone from a prominent Atlanta family?”
It's the first time I've convicted someone whose aunt plays
bridge with my grandmother
, Mary thought, but again she smiled. “Kate, I go after whoever Jim assigns me.”
Kate was about to ask another question when Mary felt a light touch on her arm. She turned. Her boss, Jim Falkner, stood there. He gave her a brisk hug, enveloping her in a cloud of oxford cloth and Old Spice aftershave. “Nice job, kiddo. You okay?”
“I'm fine.” Mary held on to his comforting solidness for a moment. “Just glad it's over.”
Jim scanned the courtroom in the unobtrusive manner of an ex-detective. “Let's get out of here,” he said softly, his wary gaze lingering on Cal Whitman's older brother, Mitchell, as Mitchell draped a consoling arm across his weeping mother's shoulders. “We've gotten three more phone calls this morning.”
“Same old same old?” Mary, as an assistant DA, had grown accustomed to a certain number of threats per case. Usually the callers commented upon her gender (cunt, bitch, whore) or her ethnicity (Cherokee cunt, half-breed bitch, Injun whore). The press, though, had used a small forest of newsprint on the Whitman case and the threats had risen proportionately.
“Not exactly.” Jim's gaze flitted from person to person like a mosquito searching for a place to light. “Now they've used the B-word.”
Though every entrance to the Deckard County Courthouse was equipped with a weapon detector and security for this trial had been doubled, Mary could tell by the way Jim kept ruffling his thick gray mustache that he was concerned. The B-word for Atlanta cops was
bomb
: ever since the Olympics, the police treated calls that threatened them as warnings from God.
“Hey, Falkner, let me borrow your handkerchief,” she said.
Jim frowned as he dug in his back pocket. “You coming down with a cold?”
“I need to clean off Wynona.” Mary nodded toward the little soapstone figurine. “Cal spit on her.”
“Ugh.” Jim pulled out a white linen handkerchief. “Just keep it. Or better yet, throw it away. Handsome Cal may have rabies for all we know.”
Jim turned to confer with one of the cops on security while Mary dried Wynona. As she dropped his handkerchief into the wastebasket and slipped Wynona into her pocket, she could tell from the hum behind her that the press was interviewing the distraught Whitmans. Maybe she could slip through the crowd unnoticed.
She snapped her briefcase shut, then turned and began to weave her way to the door. News crews surrounded the Whitman family like hungry dogs waiting for scraps of meat. Calhoun Whitman, Sr., stood murmuring to his attorney, while his wife, Cornelia, huddled beside him, dabbing at her nose with a crumpled tissue. As Mary entered the center aisle of the courtroom, her eyes locked with those of Mitchell Whitman. Cal's older brother was giving his own interview to a reporter from Channel 9, but all the while he glowered straight at her. Mary had cross-examined him hard when the defense had called him as a witness, and she could tell by his furious eyes that he had not forgotten it.
“Of course we'll appeal,” he declared as the reporter shoved a microphone in his face. “My brother was framed. This case was politically motivated.”
“So who set Cal up?” two different voices demanded as the news cameras whirred.
Lord, Mary thought. What a zoo. She turned away from Mitchell Whitman and wriggled through a cluster of reporters talking on cell phones. Then she saw two familiar figures sitting in the back row of the courtroom.
Mary smiled. Tall, blonde Alexandra McCrimmon had been her best friend since their freshman year at college and had followed Mary, for lack of more compelling career plans, into law school afterwards. There they'd met Joan Marchetti, a diminutive Italian who'd lacked the stature to sing opera and fled south to study law. The three women had met when they'd wound up as the only females in their section of Constitutional Law. Mary had felt an instant kinship with Joan as a fellow outsider, while Alex was fascinated by Joan's sweet voice and scrappy attitude. Joan, who had never met either a cowgirl from Texas or an Indian from North Carolina, was thrilled to find two Southerners who didn't recoil from her Brooklyn accent or misunderstand her penchant for wearing black.
They formed a tight bond, and over the next two years, their grit, humor, and determination carried them through the tough Emory curriculum. Afterwards, while Mary had single-mindedly pursued criminal law, Alex and Joan had wound up as corporate attorneys, specializing in mergers and acquisitions. Both worked for the same sprawling law firm in one of Atlanta's newest high-rises. “It's dog-eat-dog,” Alex liked to say. “But they pay us extraordinarily well to scoop the poop.”
“Hi, girls.” Mary plopped her briefcase down in the empty chair beside Joan. “How come you're here? Dull day in corporate takeovers?”
“We wanted to watch you nail handsome Cal.” Alex eyed Mary's trademark black suit. “And since you're wearing Deathwrap without a blouse, we knew you meant business.”
“So how'd I do?”
Joan winked. “You'd have made my Uncle Nick proud.”
“Is this Uncle Nick of the killer lasagna?”
“No. This is Uncle Nick of the cement overshoes.”
“Oh.” Mary laughed, always enjoying the comic way Joan referred to her Italian relatives. “
That
Uncle Nick.”
“I was a little worried about you for a minute, there, Mary,” Alex teased, slipping back into the west Texas accent she'd tried for years to lose. “For a second I thought pretty Cal was gonna spit you to death.”
Mary wrinkled her nose. “Pretty gross, huh?”
“And he's so good-looking.” Joan sighed. “He probably owns his own tux
and
likes to dance.” She shook her head. “What a waste!”
Jim Falkner joined them. He grinned at Mary, his mustache turning up on the ends. “Are you still bugging out for the weekend?”
Mary had asked, as final arguments began in the Whitman case, if she could take a long weekend off. “I need to go back home,” she'd told Jim cryptically. “I've got some unfinished business to attend to.” Jim had agreed, gladly. Mary had earned a rest. She was the finest young prosecutor he'd ever seen.
“I am,” Mary told him now. “Alex and Joan are going with me.”
“Camping.” Joan rolled her eyes. “Can you believe it? A nice New York City girl like me?”
Jim smiled at the three women. “Just don't let Mary get eaten by any bears. We've still got a few thousand psychos to put away.”
“And I bet you're saving them all for me.” She laughed as she picked up her briefcase, but a chill skittered down her spine. For the first time in twelve years, Mary Crow was going home.
