In The Forest Of Harm (29 page)

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 hours 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.

“I think it's wonderful,” she said, winking at Alex as she caught the bride's gaze. “Christmas will just start a day early this year. These Texas McCrimmons really know how to celebrate.” Wyatt held her closer and danced her past the long table that stretched along one entire side of the billowy white tent. The evening was more crisp than cold, and the strategically placed space heaters remained unlit. At one end of the table stood an enormous wedding cake topped with flowers; at the other end a fountain bubbled with champagne. In between lay all manner of Christmas delicacies, from Georgia sugared pecans to great platters of Texas barbecue, interspersed with conveniently placed bottles of Jack Daniel's whiskey. A number of Stetson hats bobbed among the crowd of bare-headed Atlantans, but nobody seemed to mind. The Texas McCrimmons and the Carters from Georgia got along famously, finding as all Southerners can, common ground in good food and strong whiskey.

The song ended. Wyatt escorted her off the dance floor, next to the only other woman dressed in the same long, elegant green gown as Mary.

Joan Marchetti grinned at Mary. “Some bash, huh?”

“I'll say. I nearly cried.”

“Me, too,” said Joan. “Particularly when that bagpiper cranked up and led them away from the altar. Jeez! They call that
music
?”

“I think it's some kind of tradition with them,” Mary explained. “Means good luck or lots of children or something.”

Joan rolled her eyes. Mary studied her friend in the soft, diffused light. Joan, too, had been a victim of that camping trip from hell. She'd been raped and beaten—her nose broken so severely that even the simple act of breathing had been nearly impossible. Today, the only evidence of her injuries was a tiny red scar curled alongside one nostril. Her Uncle Nick had gotten her the best plastic surgeon in Manhattan. The results were amazing. Her skin had regained its creamy luminosity, and her dark Italian eyes again flashed with life.

“Alex makes a beautiful bride, doesn't she?”

Mary nodded, recalling the little stone church all bedecked in green holly and white orchids and Joan's voice soaring high into the air, the notes floating so perfect and beautiful that everyone held their breath. “She looked gorgeous. And you sang like an angel.”

“Thanks.” Joan smiled, then leaned over to whisper in Mary's ear. “I was hoping Jonathan might be here. . . .”

Mary hastily shook her head. “I haven't heard from Jonathan since my grandmother died. He sent me a card from Little Jump Off.”

“You miss him a lot, don't you?” Joan asked it softly.

Mary nodded. “I miss both of them a lot.” An odd little bubble of sadness encompassed the two friends, then the band started up again. As Hugh Chandler, Joan's longtime boyfriend, appeared from the buffet table and swept Joan onto the dance floor, Mary again felt Wyatt's hand on her arm.

“May I have another dance, Ms. Crow?” he asked, courtly as ever.

“I'd love to, Wyatt.” Mary winked at Joan as she and Hugh swirled into a sea of couples. “Dance on, girlfriend,” Mary called. “We don't get the Strutters every day.”

As Joan and Hugh whirled away, Wyatt began a languid two-step, perfect for the soft, soulful version of “Honeysuckle Rose” the Strutters were playing. He led her so perfectly to the rhythm of the music that goose bumps ran down her spine.

“If I didn't know better, I'd say you'd taken dancing lessons.”

“I spent one miserable year at Miss Forte's Ballroom Academy,” Wyatt drawled. “I was thirteen and stood eyeball to collarbone with every girl in the class.”

Mary laughed. “You must have learned something, though.”

“Oh, I'm terrific when I have the right partner,” he replied, swooping her in another quick, sexy circle.

He pulled her closer. She nestled her head on his shoulder and closed her eyes again. His cheek was smooth and soft and he clasped her hand against his chest so tightly she could feel the beating of his heart. She smiled, ruefully. Every unmarried woman in Atlanta would give her eyeteeth to be dancing with Wyatt Prentiss, the youngest man ever to make partner at Dawson, Church & Gahagan, yet all she could do was compare him with Jonathan Walkingstick. How Wyatt's muscled shoulders were sculpted at the gym instead of earned in the forest; how the hair on the nape of his neck grew bristly instead of soft; how he smelled of expensive sandalwood cologne, rather than Jonathan's Ivory soap.

Stop it
, she scolded herself.
You and Jonathan gave it a
shot, but it didn't work out. Now let it go.

“You okay?” Wyatt was looking down at her.

“Fine,” Mary assured him. “Just trying to keep the beat.”

Wyatt held her closer as the sax player took a long, smoky solo, then the husky-voiced singer began again. Just as the singer started the last chorus, Wyatt began dancing her quickly over to the other side of the floor.

“Is something wrong?” Mary said, lifting her head at his abrupt movements.

“Unless I'm seriously double-parked, I think someone wants to talk to you,” said Wyatt. “There's a big, mean-looking cop motioning me over.”

Mary looked up, astonished. Wyatt hadn't been joking. On the far side of the tent stood Martel Madison, former tackle for the Atlanta Falcons, now a Deckard County Sheriff's deputy assigned to the Courthouse. Although Martel stood with his cap under his arm, trying to look inconspicuous in the frock-coated crowd, he was failing miserably. Two hundred eighty-five solid pounds of armed, deputized power was hard to miss.

“Martel?” Mary failed to keep the surprise out of her voice. “What are you doing here?”

“Mr. Falkner said to come get you. He needs to see you right now.”

“What's the matter?” Mary had nothing on the docket; she wasn't scheduled to even show up in court until after New Year's.

“Don't know. He's up in his office with Santa Claus pants on, talking to some dude from DC.” Martel shrugged. “I just got the call to come here and take you back to the courthouse, ASAP.”

“Like this?” Mary gestured at the green silk maid-of-honor dress that wisped around her ankles. Surely Jim Falkner wouldn't actually call her away from Alex's wedding reception to come back to work.

Martel shrugged again. “I just do what they tell me, Ms. Crow.”

Mary looked around. Already some of the wedding guests had begun to stare, curious about why an armed officer had intruded on the festivities. “Okay, Martel,” she sighed. “Go wait in your squad. I'll be there in a second.”

She watched as Martel disappeared through the tent flap, then she turned back to Wyatt.

“Looks like you'll have to finish this dance with someone else.” She smiled apologetically.

“Can't do without you, can they?”

“I guess not.” Usually, she didn't mind being called back to work. Tonight she did. Tonight was her best friend's wedding. Tonight was the most fun she'd had in a long, long time.

Wyatt squeezed her hand, which still rested in the crook of his arm. “I'm sorry you have to go, Mary. Any chance we could get together over the holidays? We could go to Mack Church's eggnog frolic. It's the day after Christmas.”

“I don't know, Wyatt. Jim Falkner keeps me pretty busy.”

“Well, don't say no yet. Call me if you get free. We'll just make an appearance, then go do something fun.”

“Okay. I'll try.” She pecked him on the cheek, then she began to move through the crowd toward Martel's squad. She wished she could say good-bye to Alex before she left, but she and Charlie stood engulfed by a crowd of well-wishers. As she twisted through to the edge of the tent, she glanced back over her shoulder. Alex had seen her and was looking at her, her expression at once knowing and sad.

“I have to go!” Mary mouthed.

Alex nodded. Smiling, she gave her a thumbs-up sign, then blew her a kiss.

Mary stopped for a moment, wanting to freeze Alex's image like a photograph. A clear winter evening, the tent looking magical as a snowflake, Alex beautiful and happy and waving good-bye. From here on, their lives would go down different paths. Mary would still know her dearest friend, but never again in quite the same way as before. She swallowed as sudden tears stung her eyes, then she walked out from under the canopy and turned toward the squad car. Alex had a man to love. Mary probably had another one to hang.