In the Forest of Harm

Read an Excerpt

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.

“What can I get for you, hon?”

Lou Delgado smiled up at the waitress, who stood with both her left breast and order pad poised above his right ear. “The usual, Marge. How’s it going?”

“They come, they eat, sometimes I get a decent tip out of the deal.” Marge cracked a wad of gum.

“You aren’t referring to me, are you?”

Chuckling, Marge gave him a wink, then retreated to the counter. Lou settled back in the booth, appreciating the rhythmic jiggle of her bottom against the snug blue polyester of her uniform. All in all, the Copper Pot Diner was not a bad place to meet clients. The corner booth stayed empty in the late-night hours, the fluorescent lights allowed him a full view of the front door, and the waitresses knew how to keep their mouths shut if any cops came nosing around. Not a bad place at all, considering.

He drummed his fingers on the table and checked his watch. His next client should come walking through the door any minute. A young man, Lou thought, remembering the call from Perry that afternoon. Perry was an attorney who always sent Delgado his dirtiest jobs. Usually he was up-front about what needed to be done, but today the old shyster had been tight-lipped, saying only the new client was “someone you might recognize.” Lou enjoyed coyness about as much as a root canal, but he had agreed to meet the guy. What the hell, he decided. He could use the money. Private dicking in Dixie was not the most lucrative of professions.