Raising Cain Read online

  Gallatin Warfield stunned readers and critics alike with his debut thrillers, State v. Justice and Silent Son. Now, against a vivid backdrop of the modern American culture, Warfield unleashes a powerhouse legal thriller that explores the depths of human passion, loyalty, and deception…

  RAISING CAIN

  On a deserted road in rural Maryland a black man lies dead, the victim of an apparent heart attack. His policeman son, Sergeant Joe Brown, refuses to see it as an open-and-shut case and begins to investigate. The trail leads to CAIN, the Church of the Ark, Incorporated, a fanatical religious cult practicing bizarre snake rituals and mind control, and to the group’s powerful, charismatic leader. Then, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Thomas Ruth, the head of CAIN, becomes the next to die.

  The county’s prosecuting attorney, Gardner Lawson, is convinced that even though Brown had the motive, means, and opportunity to kill Thomas Ruth, he didn’t commit the crime. Then, when the cop is charged with the murder, the lawyer makes a decision that will change his life. In a stunning reversal of roles, Lawson’s old nemesis, the arrogant, flamboyant defense attorney Kent King, is brought in to spearhead the prosecution of Sergeant Brown—and Lawson must choose between a career built on bringing criminals to justice and a colleague in need of the best possible defense.

  RAISING CAIN takes us into the inner workings of our criminal justice system and the hothouse atmosphere of friends, adversaries, lovers, and family caught up in a struggle of life and death. In it, Gallatin Warfield explores some of the most compelling issues of our time—from the racial, social, and economic crosscurrents of Maryland’s Appalachian hill country to the dangerous passions that surround a cult. Relentlessly gripping, explosively original, RAISING CAIN pits an innocent man against a system that may not be able to do its job anymore, and a career prosecutor against the ultimate challenge: a search for the truth.

  GALLATIN WARFIELD is the author of State v. Justice and Silent Son. He is a former Assistant Attorney General in the criminal division of the Maryland Attorney General’s office and former chief felony prosecutor in Howard County, Maryland.

  Also by Gallatin Warfield

  Silent Son

  State v. Justice

  For Erin and A.G.

  Always aim for the stars

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1996 by Gallatin Warfield

  All rights reserved.

  Warner Books, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Visit our website at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: September 2009

  ISBN: 978-0-446-56728-2

  Contents

  Also by Gallatin Warfield

  Copyright

  prologue

  Part One: SHADOWS

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  Part Two: CHAOS

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  Part Three: DECISION

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  Part Four: TRIAL

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  Part Five: WITNESS

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  epilogue

  Praise for the novels of GALLATIN WARFIELD

  Many thanks to Artie Pine, my agent, Larry Kirshbaum, president and CEO of Warner Books, and Susan Suffes, Warner senior editor, for their patience, perseverance, and expert guidance in the production of this book. I am forever grateful.

  prologue

  The country road had no name. Originally cut by loggers to access the Appalachian forest, it was now just a dirt path through the trees. Cracks and ruts scarred the surface, and sticker bushes clawed the sides. And it was two lonely miles long.

  The old man’s feet hurt. He had walked halfway and was beginning to tire. Maybe he had made a mistake. Maybe he should not have come this way tonight, attempting the shortcut in the September twilight.

  The air was still, the birds silent. The only sound was the man’s labored breathing and the scrape of his shoes against the gravel.

  This was Tuesday, checkers day at the senior center. He’d spent the afternæn as usual, working the boards with the guys and enthralling them with stories, tales from his thirty years at the service of Eastern Atlantic Railroad. He’d whooped it up, and won some games. But the last one was over at four-thirty, and then he’d slipped up the road for a few minutes. And now it was almost dark.

  His steps quickened, despite his fatigue. Althea was waiting at home with a plate of greens and boiled ham. She was probably worried and a little angry.

  Joseph checked his gold watch and tried to keep up the pace, but the lumpy ground made it difficult. Suddenly there was a loud crack in the underbrush. He stopped and peered into the thicket, looking for movement. Maybe it was a deer; they often ran these woods. But he saw nothing, no gentle brown eyes gazing back. The silence returned. He started walking again.

  After a few more steps there was another snapping sound in the brush. This time Joseph did not stop. Dinner was waiting. He had to get home.

  Suddenly a dark form moved from the woods and blocked his path.

  “Dear God,” Joseph whispered.

  The light had almost yielded to night, but there was still enough of an afterglow for the old man to discern what confronted him. It was a crimson ghost in a satin robe and hood. His face was covered, but his eyes glared through holes in the cloth.

  “What do you want?” Joseph asked shakily. This was not supposed to happen anymore, not today. The Klan had died out around here. Black folks could come and go in peace.

  The ghost moved closer but said nothing.

  “What you want?” Joseph took a shaky step backward.

  The hooded figure moved forward slowly, silently.

  “We don’t need any of this…” Joseph stuttered, “this foolishness.

  … Leave me alone!” He considered running but decided against it.

  He wouldn’t get far, not in these woods.

  The ghost lifted a canvas bag in a latex-gloved hand and seized Joseph’s wrist with his other. That, too, was gloved, and it felt cold against his dark skin.

  “Stop this now!” Joseph begged. “Please!”

  The hand gripped tightly and led Joseph to a tree off the pathway.

  “Don’t,” Joseph said, trying to squirm out of the grasp. He was beginning to sweat, and his heart was pounding.

  His arms were forced around the tree, and his wrists were wrapped in a thick piece of cloth. Then the wrists were bound together with a cord.

  “Awww…” Joseph moaned. “Why you doin’ this to me?” He thought of Althea and his greens steaming on the table. He should have gone right home after checkers, the way he was supposed to.

  The ghost silently hefted the canvas bag.

  Joseph twisted his neck, trying to see. “Don’t!” he yelled, straining to look. What was happening?

  The ghost stood behind him, and Joseph pulled and yanked against the cord, but it was too tight. He couldn’t turn,
and he couldn’t see. “Please!” he begged. “Stop this!… Please!”

  The ghost rustled the bag close behind, and Joseph stopped struggling and held his breath. What was happening now? Suddenly he felt something move against his neck. It was scaly and muscular, encircling his throat like a writhing rope.

  “Nooooo!” Joseph screamed in panic. The one unreasoning terror in Joseph’s life had a forked tongue. It was an absolute, incurable phobia. He hated snakes.

  “Uhhhh!” Joseph twisted his head wildly, trying to throw the reptile off, but the ghost had looped the snake so it would stay in place.

  “Get it off!” Joseph hollered, “Get it off! Please!” The snake’s belly muscles contracted.

  The ghost was impassive as the struggle continued.

  Joseph was gasping now, and his chest was tightening. “Uhhh…”

  He’d only touched one snake in his life, and it had almost killed him. A buddy had put it in his car as a joke. It brushed his leg while he was driving, and he’d panicked and almost crashed. He’d abandoned the car on the side of the road and never returned.

  “Get it…” Joseph moaned. He could hardly breathe now, and his chest was burning. Grandma had warned that a snake would take him if he didn’t behave. And so he was a good boy, very, very good. But that didn’t stop the nightmares, the sweaty dreams of slithering hell.

  The snake finally slipped to the ground, and Joseph let out a gurgling gasp. But the ghost picked it up and put it back in place.

  Joseph tried to struggle, but his strength was gone. He had been bad and Grandma had put him in the shed. And now the snake was here to take him away.

  Finally, Joseph groaned and slumped against the tree. The ghost moved forward, cut the cord and removed the material from his wrists, then lowered his body to the dry earth. The snake was still entwined around his neck. He snatched it below the head and flung it into the underbrush.

  Joseph’s eyes were rolled back, and he was breathing in trembling gasps. The ghost raised his hood and bent down to check for a pulse. The old heart was barely beating.

  He dragged the body back to the road and obliterated the dragmarks with a tree limb. Then he knelt and examined his victim again. Joseph was struggling for life, his chest shaking with each breath. Consciousness flickered, and Joseph blinked, trying to focus. His chest ached and his voice was gone, but he was awake. He moaned.

  The ghost froze. Maybe he was reviving. Joseph moaned again and arched his back. The ghost looked into his face.

  “Rrrrrrr…” Joseph cried out, his eyes wide. He was trying to speak, but the words wouldn’t form.

  The ghost pulled away and jerked his hood down.

  Joseph’s lips soon went slack, and he closed his eyes. His chest stopped heaving, and he let out a long, slow breath.

  The ghost peered at him through the eyeholes in the hood, waiting for something to happen.

  The body lay quiet now. The ghost checked his pulse. The old heart was finally still.

  The ghost scanned the area a last time and smoothed the dust. Then he dashed into the forest and was lost in the night.

  Part One

  SHADOWS

  one

  State’s Attorney Gardner Lawson stared at the handgun on the table. He was alone in a cubicle at police headquarters. It was six P.M., and the detective bureau was deserted. He picked up the pistol and rotated its cylinder, listening to the click-click-click as the feeder port passed the barrel. It was empty now, but last night there had been five .357 magnum rounds in those holes, and a young farmer named Tom Payson had fired two into his wife, two into his son, and one into his own brain. Three people dead, just like that, all because the August drought had wiped out the corn crop, or some other silent demon had seized Tom and thrown him over the edge.

  Gardner put down the weapon and lifted the cover of a police report. “MURDER-SUICIDE. CASE CLOSED,” the bottom line read. It had been signed by the investigating officer and the chief. There was a space below that for the endorsement of the State’s Attorney. Gardner removed a pen from his jacket and slowly wrote his name. Then he snapped the cover shut and shoved the folder under the gun.

  This was Gardner Lawson’s world: a daily diet of mayhem and sorrow. As the chief prosecutor in a remote western Maryland county, Gardner had seen a lot of Tom Payson cases. Too many to count. At forty-five years of age, he was beginning to tire. He’d been prosecuting crime for two decades. He was tall and imposing, a courtroom wizard. But he was running out of steam.

  Buzzz… The pager on Gardner’s belt vibrated against his abdomen. Gardner sat forward, rubbed his dark eyes, and brushed a wisp of graying hair behind his ear.

  Buzzz…

  He removed the pager and squinted at the number display, adjusting the distance so he could read it: 777-3454. Carole. His ex-wife. There was a second readout after the number: 911. Emergency.

  Gardner grabbed for the phone. A 911 from Carole could only be about one thing: Granville. His son was in trouble.

  He fumbled with the buttons, misdialed, and redialed. The phone rang.

  “Hello?” It was the voice of an eleven-year-old.

  “Gran?” Gardner’s heart was racing.

  “Dad!”

  You okay?”

  “Yeah. I just paged you.”

  “I know. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing? You paged me with a nine-one-one. That means emergency.”

  “It is an emergency.”

  Gardner sighed. He’d delivered the “never cry wolf” sermon a hundred times. “What’s the matter?”

  “I have a spelling test tomorrow.”

  Gardner fought a smile. For a spunky sixth-grader, that was an emergency. “Did you ask Mom for help?”

  “She’s not here. She’s over at Aunt Vera’s.”

  Gardner felt a rush of heat under his collar. Granville should not be left alone. He was still too young. “When’s she coming back?”

  “Hour or so.”

  “What about your dinner?”

  “She’s gonna bring a pizza.”

  Gardner firmed his jaw. There were a million ways Carole irritated him, but he was not supposed to let it show, not in front of his son.

  “Can you help me, Dad?”

  Gardner checked his watch. They were well on the downside of six o’clock, and Jennifer was expecting him back at the State’s Attorney’s office soon.

  “Can you, Dad?”

  “Of course,” Gardner finally said. “Read me the list, and we’ll go through it.”

  Granville ticked off twenty words, and Gardner copied them down. “Okay, ready?”

  “Yup.”

  “Turn your book facedown.”

  “It’s closed.”

  “Okay. Here we go….”

  For the next half hour, Gardner quizzed Granville on the spelling of passage, and parrot, and potato, and the other words on the list. Suddenly there was a voice in the background.

  “Mom’s here,” Granville whispered. “Got to hang up.”

  “Okay,” Gardner whispered back. “Good luck on the test. And Gran…”

  “Yeah, Dad?”

  “Go easy on the nine-one-one. Remember the wolf boy.”

  Granville laughed.

  “Love you son, love you very much. See you soon, I hope.”

  “Love you, too, Dad.” And he hung up.

  Gardner stared at the phone for a moment. Then he stood up and stretched. His leg was cramped, and his lower back ached. He was getting old. He massaged his calf, but the pain didn’t go away. The muscles were sore from too much jogging on the old wheels.

  Gardner walked to the lieutenant’s office and placed Tom Payson’s gun and report on his desk. Then he half-timed it down the hall, past the security post, and out of the station. The workday was finally done. And Jennifer was waiting.

  Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Munday looked at the woman sitting across the conference room table. Her left ey
e was puffed up with a bruise, her lip was cracked, and a grimy tear streamed down her cheek. She was gripping her hands so tightly her knuckles were white.

  “It’s all right,” Jennifer said softly. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”

  The woman stared blankly.

  “We’re going to nail him,” Jennifer said firmly. She was a terminator in court, a lithe, brown-haired dynamo in round-lensed glasses. “If you testify, he’ll be locked up for a long time.”

  The woman released her grip slightly.

  Oh no, Jennifer thought, don’t waffle on me.

  The woman shook her head. “Can’t,” she moaned.

  Jennifer touched her arm. “You must, Cathy. Without your testimony we have no case. I explained that. You have to tell the judge what happened.”

  “Can’t,” Cathy repeated.

  “I know you’re afraid—”

  “That ain’t it.”

  “What is it?”

  “I still love him.”

  Jennifer tried to stay cool. She’d played this scene fifty times before. “Love” was an abuser’s best defense. “You have to do this,” Jennifer said. “You have to. For yourself. I know it’s hard, but there’s no choice. He could kill you next time.”

  “He’d never do that.”

  “He almost did.”

  A tear ran down Cathy’s other cheek, but she didn’t say anything.

  Jennifer knew it was over. Under state law, a wife could not be forced to testify against her husband. She could do so voluntarily, but she couldn’t be coerced, no matter how serious her injury.

  “Please,” Jennifer urged. “Think about your future….”

  But Cathy’s body was rigid. She was going back to Billy.

  “I’m sorry, Miss Munday, I love him and he loves me. I can’t do this to him.”

  “But look what he did to you!”

  “Sorry,” Cathy repeated. She stood up. “He’s gonna change.”

  Jennifer grabbed her arm. “No, he’s not! He’s going to do it again!”