A Darker Justice Read online

  BANTAM BOOKS

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  About the Author

  Also by Sallie Bissell

  Praise for Sallie Bissell’s Novels

  Preview of Call the Devil by His Oldest Name

  Copyright Page

  For

  Lolita Bissell

  With love and gratitude

  Jesus, Jesus, rest your head

  You have got a manger bed

  All the evil folk on earth

  Sleep in feathers at their birth

  —TRADITIONAL APPALACHIAN CHRISTMAS CAROL

  My thanks to:

  The Nashville Writers Alliance for years of friendship, support, and encouragement.

  Marc Archambeault, Geneve Bacon, Bill Bissell, Rochelle Groom, Toby Heaton, Heather Newton, Sharon Oxendine, Cynthia Perkins, Michael Sims, and Diana Stoll for first readings and technical advice.

  Madeena Spray Nolan and Alana White for endless patience and enthusiasm.

  And to Kate Miciak, for once again making me go deeper.

  PROLOGUE

  SIXTH U.S. CIRCUIT COURT

  Cincinnati, Ohio

  November 21

  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’d begun 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 rumble of an airplane overhead 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 rubbed a smudge from his picture and sighed. How wonderful it would be to get away, just she and Rich, with nothing facing them but sapphire blue sky and an aquamarine sea.

  Suddenly she jumped. She heard another noise. Not a squeak this time, but a single thump, like a book dropped on a carpeted floor. She frowned. Carmen wouldn’t stay past five-thirty 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. Decisively she pushed away from her desk and rose from her chair. She crossed her red-carpeted office in three strides and turned her dead bolt into place, then she tried the heavy brass doorknob, just to make certain her door was locked. It did not budge. Now safe from all disruptions, she could get her own 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 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 were 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 refocus on her work, but she felt edgy, inadvertently tensed for Boots’s next manifestation. The words that she’d written this morning seemed to squirm like small black bugs on the pages, not forming clauses or sentences or anything that made sense.

  “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.”

  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 Nellie reaction to them. “That’s it. I’m calling security.”

  She picked up the phone and dialed the code that connected her with security. The phone rang four, five, six times, but no one answered. “Probably outside smoking,” she muttered as she hung up in disgust.

  Annoyed, 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 Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, not some nitwit who spooked at ghosts.

  She remembered a memo she’d seen on Carmen’s desk. The courthouse had experienced a number of cases of vandalism lately. Obsceniti
es spray-painted on the second-floor men’s room, files in a 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, fumbling for her revolver. The short-barreled 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 pimple-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 beating 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 invariably 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. She reached for the wall switch and turned off the lights behind her. All she had to do now was open her door and flip the light switch on the other side of the wall. The whole courtroom 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 dead bolt. It made a soft click, the door shuddering slightly as the bolt slid out of the lock. 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 deep 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, though, 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. Her attacker forced her wrist backward, almost to the point of snapping; then, with a single ruthless motion, he flicked the gun from her hand. The pistol clattered against the back of the witness stand, then fell somewhere on the dark floor.

  “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 carpet. Hands explored all of her now, racing up her fleshy thighs, plucking at her panty hose.

  She realized, then, that this was 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 dark figure was strong. He sat down on top of her, pinning her legs beneath him, wrenching her hand so hard, it felt like 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 pinprick on the left side of her neck, then her limbs grew soft and heavy, like loaves of unleavened dough. She watched her attacker move the 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 rag doll’s, she felt him push her arms into her own black judicial robe and lift her to the chair.

  She thought back to her children when they were young—her daughter’s voice—musical as a little flute; the sweaty, sweet smell of Mark in her arms. Then she thought of Rich, his arms around her as they sailed on a boat bound west, skimming over the waves, into a luminous and fiery sea. She lingered there a moment, as if to bid farewell, then she began to scream in silence, watching as the young man smiled and unsheathed a long, dark sword that glittered like death in the moonlight.

  CHAPTER 1

  DECKARD HILLS COUNTRY CLUB

  Atlanta, Georgia

  December 23

  “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 and 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, they danced their own private sway in the middle of the room, laughing and kissing at the same time. Mary closed her eyes and offered a silent prayer of thanks. Just fourteen months earlier 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 nearly beaten 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 country club ballroom. At one end of the table stood a huge 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 Atlantans, but nobody seemed to mind. The Texas McCrimmons and the Carters from Georgia got along well, 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 a long, elegant green gown identical to Mary’s.

  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 in the 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; her dark Italian eyes again flashed with life.

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

  Mary nodded, recalling the little stone church bedecked with emerald and scarlet-berried holly and white orchids and Jo
an’s voice soaring high into the air, the notes floating so perfect and beautiful that everyone instinctively 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 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 music’s rhythm 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.