In The Forest Of Harm (4 page)

FIVE

Mary, do people like Cal Whitman ever get to you in court?” Joan sprawled lazily in the tire swing that hung from the oak tree, watching as Mary and Alex finished their lunch.

“Oh, please don't get her started on that,” Alex mumbled through a mouthful of one of Charlie Carter's special turkey-and-jalapeno sandwiches. “She's not convinced she's hung the right man.”

“Really?” Joan sat up straight in the swing. That Mary might doubt a conviction surprised her.

Mary sipped a diet Coke, a faraway look coming into her eyes. “Not totally.”

“How come? I thought you had that guy nailed from the get-go.”

“His dick was hanging out of his pants when the cops got there,” Mary replied. “Don't you think a man would at least zip his fly before he broke a girl's neck?”

Alex snorted. “Not if he'd raped her, and they were both stoned. It seems weird, but not impossible.”

“Yeah.” Joan spun around once in the tire swing. “Didn't the defense counsel say Cal had no memory of what happened that night?”

Mary nodded. “That's supposedly why he never took the stand.”

“Well, then just take the dumb conviction and run.” Alex finished her last bite of sandwich. “You stew about these things too much, Mary.”

“I know.” Mary frowned at the rust-colored mountains that encircled the little church and its placid grave-yard. “Something about that case just doesn't feel right, though.”

Joan lit a cigarette and shivered. “I envy your courage. I don't see how you can deal with that stuff every day.”

“Our little Mary is tough.” Alex leaned over and tapped Mary on the head. “See how hard that noggin is?”

“No, really,” Joan persisted. “Don't you ever think about quitting the DA's office and doing what Alex and I do? We see a lot of corporate bastardy, but jeez, nobody winds up with their neck broken.”

Mary looked toward her mother's grave. “I can't, Joan,” she answered softly. “At least, not yet.”

They packed up their trash and got back in the BMW. The white clapboard church and yellow meadow disappeared as they recrossed the creek and joined the main road. This time Alex drove more slowly, passing under a glowing bronze canopy of beech trees that rose as tall and magnificent as any cathedral.

The road twisted farther into the mountains. On the right a shallow river spewed white over iron-gray boulders while thick green rhododendrons tangled along its banks. To the left, the mountains thrust upwards with dark pines standing rank and file, thick as soldiers. High above the trees the sun shone gold; down here the mountains filtered the light to shadow, with only dapples of yellow coins dancing through the leaves.

“You know, up close these mountains don't look soft at all,” Joan said as she peered at the woods that crowded against both sides of the road. “In fact, all these trees look kind of creepy.”

“You're just not used to them yet.” Alex grinned over her shoulder. “This time tomorrow, you'll be calling them all by name.”

At a wide, gravel-lined clearing they passed a long cinder-block building that had begun life as a motel, then evolved, as a weathered sign indicated, into the “Demon's Den—A Private Club for Motorcyclists of Distinction.” Currently it was nothing but an empty, rust-streaked shell save for one lone figure who stood beside a wooden placard that read,
Have Your Picture Taken With A Real Life
Cherokee
. The figure was a slender man, with the same dark hair and high Cherokee cheekbones as Mary, but he wore the full eagle-feathered headdress of a Sioux war chief. Mary watched his face stretch in a surprised smile as the BMW flashed by, his right hand raised in greeting.

Joan craned her neck. “Who was that guy? And why is he waving at you?”

“Gosh, I think that's Billy Swimmer!” Mary laughed as she waved out the window. It was amazing how little things changed around here. “I went to high school with him.”

They twisted through a series of turns, then, on the right, between the road and the river, stood a long ramble of a building constructed of chinked logs. Half of it was two-storied, with small grimy windows overlooking the road. The rest of it just meandered along the creek bank, as if the owners had added on to the structure whenever time and money allowed. At the far end, the parking lot widened enough to accommodate a single gas pump and a rusty trash Dumpster. Mary's pulse ratcheted up as if she'd run a mile.

“This is where we need to stop, Alex,” Mary said. She felt Alex's questioning glance, but kept her eyes straight ahead.

“Hey, do they sell cigarettes in there?” Joan asked as Alex nosed the BMW into the parking lot.

“Joan, do you realize how often we have to stop for you to get cigarettes?” Alex said. “I thought people who sang opera weren't supposed to smoke.”

“Why do you think I quit?” Joan's voice quivered extravagantly. “One awful night I realized I had to choose between Verdi and Virginia Slims. Nicotine won, hands down. The evil tobacco empire had me hooked. I was drummed off the stage, a hopeless addict.”

“I thought they said you were too small,” Alex countered.

“Well, that, too,” admitted Joan.

Laughing, Alex shook her head. “That's what I love about you, Joan. Your unerring instinct for melodrama.”

“Hey, you sing opera, you get melodramatic.” Joan shrugged. “What can I say?”

Alex parked the car just beneath the Little Jump Off, North Carolina, Postal Service sign and turned off the engine. “Look at all that wood,” she said, gazing at a line of slender upright hickory logs that stretched the length of the porch.

“Somebody must make bows here now.” Mary's voice was a whisper; her legs had turned to stone.

Alex and Joan got out of the car, but Mary could not move.
Be calm
, she told herself, willing her racing heart to slow.
You wanted to come here
.

As Joan went ahead into the store, Alex paused and looked back. “Mary—are you sure you really want to go in there?”

“No,” Mary answered softly as she stared at the wood-lined porch. “But I've got to try.”

Alex shook her head, her face clouded with concern.

Mary got out of the car and followed Alex up the broad wooden steps. A cowbell jingled as Alex opened the door. Mary stopped for a moment, then she stepped inside. The familiar sweet smell of burned applewood permeated the ancient chinked walls. Where once an old stuffed boar head commanded the stone fireplace, several recurve bows now hung like delicate sculptures from the ceiling. The
Farmer's Almanac
calendar on the wall read 2000 instead of 1988. Otherwise, little had changed. Mary kept her eyes away from the far corner.
You don't
have to look
, she reminded herself.
At least not yet
.

Across the store a dark-haired man was reading a newspaper behind the cluttered counter. He looked up. Mary caught her breath. Not twenty feet away sat Jonathan Walkingstick, her oldest friend and first lover. His dark eyes flashed once as he recognized her; then his face swiftly settled back into the noncommittal gaze that demonstrated courtesy for a Cherokee male.

“Jonathan.” Her usually confident voice peeped out of her throat like a frightened sparrow.

“Mary.” He said her name just as he used to—as if it were some charm that held a special magic just for him. Even now she could feel the caress of his voice all the way across the room.

A blush swept up her neck. “I had no idea you'd be here. I heard you were in the Army. England or somewhere.”

“I was.” Jonathan smiled and shrugged. “But I didn't make a career out of it.”

“So when did you come back here? Has Norma Owle retired?”

“I've been back here since ninety-four. Norma died that fall.”

“Oh.” For a moment Mary didn't know what to say. Her mother was dead, but it seemed to her that everybody else up here should just go on living as they had been, timeless as the reruns of a TV sitcom.

“Well, it's good to see you again. Let me introduce you to some friends of mine.” She babbled inanely, as if after twelve years she'd driven all the way up here just so she could introduce him to Alex and Joan. “We're going camping this weekend.”

She walked toward him. He wore his hair longer than she remembered—tied in a ponytail with a leather thong. The slender muscularity of his youth had thickened into the powerful shoulders of a man in his prime. A postal-service badge hung crooked on his old Army jacket, which covered a faded denim work shirt. A half-finished
New York
Times
crossword puzzle lay next to his cup of coffee, and the bone handle of the knife he called Ribtickler still protruded from his belt, just beneath his left arm. No paunch sagged around his waist and his mouth still tilted upwards in a wide, sensuous curve. Mary glanced quickly at his left hand. His fingers were bare. And he still looked at her as if he'd found some secret part of her only he could see.

She touched Alex's arm, willing her voice to courtroom strength. “Alex and Joan, I'd like to introduce an old friend of mine, Jonathan Walkingstick.”

“Hi.” Joan smiled at him, her dark eyes bright with curiosity. “Nice to meet you.”

“Hello.” Alex spoke softly as she extended her hand.
She knows exactly who he is
, Mary thought.
She remembers
every word I ever said about him.

“Good to meet you.” Jonathan smiled his old lopsided smile; the blood seemed to sizzle through Mary's brain. “Where are you ladies headed today?”

“Someplace called Atagahi,” Alex replied.

“That's a pretty good walk.” He shot a curious glance at Joan's shiny new boots and stiff jacket. “You guys camp a lot?”

Mary shook her head. “We're taking it easy. I'm going to do some sketching, they're just going to relax. We should be home late Sunday.”

“Going through the Ghosts?”

Mary smiled. “Maybe.”

“Ghosts?” Joan looked at Mary. “What does he mean,
ghosts
?”

“It's nothing,” said Mary. “Just a weird spot in the trail.”

Jonathan asked, “Got tents and bags?”

Mary nodded again. “Alex's boyfriend loaned us some real high-tech stuff.”

“Well, watch out for the weather. We've already had one snow, and it's only October.”

For a moment, an awkward silence sprouted between them, then Joan spoke. “You got any Virginia Slims up here?”

“In the back left corner by the magazines.” Jonathan pointed to the rear of the store.

“Any PayDay candy bars?” Alex was poking around the potato chip display.

“Middle aisle, over the outboard motor oil.”

Alex and Joan went where he directed, leaving the two of them in silence.

Mary cleared her throat. “I thought I saw Billy Swimmer over at the Den. Has he started posing for the tourists?”

Jonathan nodded. “Ever since he lost his public job. Billy's doing everything he can, trying to raise enough money to get his fiddle out of hock. He's got a gig waiting with some bluegrass band.”

Mary laughed. “Did he and Tammy Taylor ever get married?”

“Yeah. About three months after their son Michael was born.”

“And you're the postman and bowyer?” Mary looked toward the back of the store where a number of bows hung unstrung against the wall. Longbows, recurves, double recurves—each one glowed in the shadowy light, elegant tributes to the skill in his powerful fingers. Mary could remember a time when those same fingers had smoothed the recurves of her own skin as expertly as they now shaped hickory and maple.

“Yeah. The bowyer, the fletcher, the candlestick maker. Three days a week I'm the postman, too.” He looked into her face for a moment as if he wanted to say something else, then he laughed and retreated into polite-ness. “How about you? Happily married, I bet. With two kids and a Volvo.”

Mary felt her blush deepen. “No, actually not. My work keeps me pretty busy. I'm an assistant DA in Atlanta.”

“Lena Owle read you were famous down there. Said they called you Killer Crow or something.”

Mary laughed. “Lena shouldn't believe everything she reads in the papers. So how about you? Two kids and a Volvo?”

He shook his head. “I was married for a while in Britain, but it didn't work out.”

A Polaroid photograph taped to the cash register caught her eye. In it, Jonathan stood with his arm around a small, beautiful woman with luminous skin.

Mary pointed at the photo. “Isn't that . . .”

“Jodie Foster,” he said proudly. “They filmed
Nell
up here. I was in the courtroom scene at the end.”

“Hey, congratulations.” Though she liked Jodie Foster, Mary had avoided that movie. Stereo and Technicolor brought the mountains too close for comfort.

“Just my five minutes of fame.”

He laughed, then Joan's New York accent rang through the store. “Mary—come check this out.”

Mary turned. Joan stood in front of a large cork bulletin board cluttered with the various chits of paper that marked peoples' passage up here—photos of hunters with trophy bears, notes advertising Plott hounds for sale, handwritten messages from one hiker to another. Mary walked over beside her.

Joan was looking at some photographs. They resembled Wanted posters, except the photos were not the mug shots of criminals, but people who had disappeared into the forest and never returned. They were pictures desperate relatives had ripped from family albums—one girl's high school graduation photo, another a gap-toothed little boy in an old Milwaukee Braves baseball cap grinning over a string of fish. Mary had seen the yellowed images so many times she felt like the missing people were old friends. Alice Andrews, nineteen, disappeared October 1, 1976, when she wandered away from a camp-out with friends. A year later Jimmy Reynolds, eight years old, let go of his father's hand on Butler's Bald for just a minute and was never seen again. Most people who got lost up here were found. Those two, though, had vanished. When she'd lived here they had haunted her, seeming to call to her through the trees every time she walked home alone.