Outcast In Gray

by M. Glenn Graves

  “What kind of strange noises?”

  “The kind that cause children to tease you.”

  “Can you explain that?” Rosey said.

  “Yeah, I can, but you won’t believe me. I told the principal and he laughed at me. I told some of my colleagues, fellow teachers, the ones I was close to, and they laughed at me as well. Apparently I was the only one who heard the noises, besides my students. I stopped talking about it with my colleagues, stopped talking about it altogether with anyone, and simply did my best to help K.C. survive that year.”

  “What did it sound like, the noise she made?”

  “Howling,” she said.

  Yikes, I thought.

  “And that went on the whole year,” I said.

  “There was one other thing that happened, as I recall. Those years are the time when some of the students began that boyfriend/girlfriend kinda thing. K.C. had a crush, I call it, on Rufus Ramsey. But Rufus had his eye on Dottie Higgins. I remember that because Dottie came to me and we talked a lot. Sensitive child that she was, we talked a lot about it.”

  “You know this from observation?” I said.

  “Well, after our Christmas break, and the kids quieted down and K.C. stopped howling so much, I guess they didn’t have as much outside time on the playground and spent more time exercising in the gym … those pairings started up. When K.C. was spurned by Rufus, she came to me. Didn’t tell me a lot, but told me enough so that I could piece it together. I tried to give her that line about more fish in the sea advice, but for a young kid who thought she was in love, well, my advice only went as far as the edge of my mouth. It didn’t help her.”

  “She do anything?” Rosey said.

  “Stopped playing with the kids, spent more time alone, quietly fumed, and became the poster child for disappointment. Mercifully, the teasing stopped. The kids found other prey to go after. At that age, there are always weak ones and strong ones. Ironically, when K.C. pulled away from her peers, she became one of the strong ones. I saw it in her eyes. I remember her eyes.”

  I wasn’t prepared to share K.C.’s story with this woman, but something in me wanted to know what she might know about K.C.’s beginning and her relationship with Aunt Jo.

  “You know anything about K.C. and her mother?” I said.

  “I know that my friend Jo Starling raised her. I know that she and I lied to the authorities when we listed her as the legal guardian. I know that Jo did yeoman’s work raising that child by herself and loved her dearly. That’s about all I am prepared to tell you. I figure they can’t do anything to me now that I’m an old woman and nearing death. But that story from back then is Josephine Starling’s story, along with K.C.”

  “So, you know about how Aunt Jo found her and all that ensued from that encounter,” I said, still trying to not tip my hand.

  “Aunt Jo, is it? Wow, didn’t know any outsiders like you had that kind of relationship with my friend.”

  “Met her through Starnes Carver.”

  “Oh, my. Now there’s a handful if ever there was. What a child. What a woman. Say, what is that girl doing these days?” Eula said.

  “She works as an investigator for the sheriff’s department in the county.”

  “Figures. She was always finding stuff that no one else found and figuring out things that others weren’t even concerned about. Inquisitive mind. Very capable. And, she had a mouth on her. She spent a lot of time sitting outside of my room because of her attitude and her mouth.”

  “Attitude?”

  “Well, her remarks. If she didn’t agree with something I said, she would correct me in front of the class.”

  “Not a good habit,” Rosey said.

  “Not with me!”

  “I can see that,” I said.

  “So, you and Starnes are friends?”

  “Yeah, good friends. First met her in Norfolk. She was a crime scene investigator, lab technician and a few other good traits.”

  “And what’d you do?” Eula said.

  “I was a policewoman in those days. Now, I’m a detective.”

  “Police or private?”

  “Private.”

  “Are you any good?”

  “She’s pretty good,” Rosey said in answer to the question. I kept quiet.

  “Well, it’s good you brought along some PR with you. Never did like to hear folks brag, even if it was true.”

  “Anything result, Eula, from the rejection that K.C. had from her love interest, Rufus?” I said.

  “Yeah, you could say that. She tried to kill Dottie Higgins.”

  45

  The story that Eula Robertson told us about K.C. Starling’s attack on Dottie Higgins was short. It happened, she said, when they were coming back to the room one day from lunch. Eula figured that Dottie must have said something to K.C. Whatever she said provoked the child, and she jumped on her. Fortunately, Eula said that she was close enough to see it happen and she pulled K.C. away from Dottie. However, K.C. had her mouth on Dottie’s throat and was about to bite her when she pulled her away and stopped the attack.

  “She left some teeth marks, but didn’t break the skin. Dottie was a little chunky back then, so that extra flesh probably saved her.”

  “What happened to K.C.?” I said.

  “Suspended for a few days. Jo and I talked it over, and then I falsified some reports to allow K.C. to remain at home. Jo home schooled her the rest of that year.”

  “And your class didn’t suspect anything?” I said.

  “I’m a wily woman, Clancy Evans. I do what has to be done to protect all of my children. It was only for a couple of months as I recall. It worked out okay. No one was killed. K.C. was protected. So were my other kids.”

  We thanked Eula for her time and information. She thanked us for the visit and told us to come again, and that we might need to hurry up any return visit.

  Rosey was heading the truck back towards Starnes’ place.

  “Curious stuff, right?” he said.

  “Without question. What do you make of it?”

  “Let me guess. You’re thinking that K.C. Higgins had a motive for getting rid of Rufus, Randall Lee, and Dottie; however, Hack Ponder remains a mystery as to any connection and possible motive for her,” Rosey said.

  “Hack figures in there somewhere. Should’ve asked Eula about old Hack.”

  “We could go back,” he said.

  “Another day. I think we tired her out sufficiently this time around.”

  “She likes to talk, and I would imagine she gets lonely.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet she does,” I said.

  “And I was amazed at her ability to remember such details about something that occurred so long ago,” he said.

  “Sometimes those unusual incidents in our life make indelible imprints on our brains. Hard to forget some things.”

  We stopped at one of Athens’ local restaurants for lunch. Why they named the place The Stagecoach was beyond me. In the center of the small parking lot was an old stagecoach that looked like an abandoned prop from a movie set. The red paint was fading rapidly and it was in serious need of some repair. I felt perfectly at home when I parked Starnes’ old red truck. There was no disconnect with the ambience.

  I forced myself to eat a hamburger and some fries since they didn’t have a club sandwich on their menu. The hamburger was pretty good. The fries I could’ve lived without. Limp and greasy. Rosey had the same except that he had them put cheese on his burger. He ordered onion rings instead of fries. The onion rings were better than the fries. He was kind enough to share his rings after he saw my disappointment with the droopy fries.

  “I wonder what Starnes is doing. She should be finished with K.C. by now,” I said while chewing my last bite of burger. “I should call her.”

  “You should call her,” Rosey said.

  “What a novel idea.”

  “I’m full of those.”

  “You’re full of something,” I said and keyed number t
wo on my speed dial for Starnes Carver.

  It went straight to voice mail.

  “She’s not answering,” I said.

  “Could be out of range. This is a kinda mountainous place around here.”

  “She’s not that high up on Gabriel’s Creek,” I said.

  “Maybe she turned her phone off.”

  “She never turns off her phone. She has to maintain a tight relationship with Buster Murdock.”

  “Sure, I get that. Check with Rogers.”

  I called Rogers.

  “Hello, Dearie. How’s life in the trenches?”

  “You sound cheerful.”

  “I have the same disposition all of the time.”

  “Don’t I know it. Check your GPS for the location of Starnes Carver. I need to find her.”

  “She missing?”

  “I doubt it, but she’s not answering her phone. I’m just checking on her.”

  “Okay … I get no reading on her. She must have her phone off.”

  “She never turns her phone off.”

  “Well, missy, the GPS is not registering. I can pick up nothing on her. I can check her last known location for you; in fact, I can give you her last several locations, almost minute by minute,” Rogers said.

  “Do tell.”

  “I will tell. Let’s see, at 9:00 o’clock this morning she was on Carver Creek Road in Laurel Ridge.”

  “That’s where she lives.”

  “Okay, then by 9:40 a.m. she was located at Gabriel’s Creek in McAdams County.”

  “That’s where K.C. Higgins lives. That’s where she was headed for the interview.”

  “That’s the last signal I have on her. Around 10:20 or so, the signal ends,” Rogers said.

  “What do you mean it ends?”

  “Well, chief, that means she either turned it off, or someone else turned it off, or she fell off of the planet. And since you tell me that she never turns her phone off, I’d say one of the other two options would be the answer.”

  “Nothing after 10:20 this morning?” I said.

  “Nada. It has remained blank ever since.”

  “I’ll get back to you. Thanks, Rogers.”

  “As you please, Madame.”

  I had Rogers on speaker phone so Rosey could hear it all. He shrugged as he so often did.

  “I smell a road trip,” he said.

  “You think I’m being too cautious, that we should go back to Laurel Ridge and wait for her to come home?”

  “Considering the fact that we are in the throes of a quadruple murder investigation, I think we need to head over to Gabriel’s Creek and have a look-see. Don’t forget, if she’s lost, Sam and Dog are also lost.”

  It was close to 2 in the afternoon when we arrived at K.C. Higgins’ place in Gabriel’s Creek. It was in the fifties and the sun was out. Great winter weather for the mountains.

  There was no sign of my Jeep, the two dogs, or Starnes. I took my 9 mm from the small of my back and checked my clip to be sure it was full. Since I had done that earlier this morning and hadn’t shot anybody during the day, I figured it was still good to go. In my line of work, it never hurts to double or triple check. A mistake with one’s ammo could be fatal.

  Rosey checked his as well. Old habits.

  We walked slowly toward the front of the house. Our firearms were pointing to the ground at our sides. The door opened and K.C. looked out.

  “Need something?” she said to us.

  “Looking for Starnes,” I said.

  “She’s not here.”

  “Did she come by to talk with you this morning?” I said.

  “Can’t say she did.”

  “She was headed this way.”

  “Don’t think she made it. Sorry I can’t help you.”

  We turned to leave knowing that the GPS tracker from Rogers had given this as her last known position. K.C. was lying and that was not good. I had to admit that it was possible that K.C. was not home earlier when Starnes had arrived. So my feeling that she was lying was not really giving her the benefit of the doubt.

  I turned back around.

  “K.C., have you been home all day?”

  “Right here, Miss Evans. Been working with my dogs. I hope you find her,” she said and close the door.

  Rosey looked at me and shook his head.

  “This be potentially bad,” he said.

  46

  We were sitting in the truck about five hundred yards from K.C. Higgins’ gravel road. We had found a private lane off to the right hidden from the main highway in Gabriel’s Creek. It was a good location for us to sit and ponder our next move.

  “We need to do a surveillance of the perimeter,” he said.

  “Is that military talk?”

  “That’s basic reconnaissance talk, lady. We need to walk around to see what we can see. Starnes just might be secured some place and she’s waiting on us to help her.”

  “I just hope she’s waiting on us,” I said.

  We left the truck and meandered our way towards K.C.’s place.

  “You take the inside route, about fifty to hundred yards away from her house. Do a semi-circle while I do the same about 200 or so yards away. Let me know if you see or hear anything. A bobwhite whistle will alert me that you have found something.”

  “A bobwhite?”

  “You don’t like bobwhite’s whistle?” he said.

  “Can’t say that I have an opinion about bobwhite’s whistle. Any particular reason that you selected that bird?” I said.

  “I like his whistle,” he said and ran off to do his semi-circle search.

  I maintained my fifty to one-hundred-yard arc around K.C.’s place. Now and then I could see her house through the trees. I moved quietly, making sure that I remained hidden. Per Rosey’s orders, I doubled back on my arc once I reached the other end. No doubt that was in case I had missed something on my first pass through.

  When I arrived close to my original starting point, I waited a few minutes to see if Rosey would join me. He didn’t.

  I listened a bit for the bobwhite sound, but heard nothing.

  I decided to go find him. I walked to where I thought a two-hundred-yard mark might be and began an arc like my first one. Now and then I found his trail and followed it. I met him coming back on his second pass through in the opposite direction.

  “Found nothing,” he said.

  “Ditto here.”

  “We need to go deeper. Let’s stay together now. I’m guessing that we should try a five hundred yard arc this time. That’s far enough away that K.C. might have some out building or some way of holding Starnes and the dogs without anyone hearing sounds from dogs or humans. At least not at her place,” Rosey said.

  I followed his lead since this was more in keeping with his training. It seemed to be that we walked forever before he stopped and said that we were deep enough into the woods.

  “We cover more ground if we split up,” I said.

  “We could, but then I might have to rescue two women and two dogs.”

  “Your trust in me is so rewarding.”

  “We aim to please. Let’s stay together, okay?”

  “I’m at your disposal,” I said.

  We had been at our maneuvers for close to two hours when we came across the fresh carcass of an animal about the size of one of our dogs.

  “Damn,” Rosey said.

  “Yeah, me too. Any way of telling if that’s one of ours?”

  “No, too mangled. Mostly eaten.”

  “It looks like that first carcass we came across weeks back. Mostly eaten.”

  “This is not human, though,” Rosey said. “The bones left are definitely a four-legged critter, possibly a dog. Hard to say. Not enough left to go on.”

  “There’s a blood trail,” I said.

  I pointed in a direction away from K.C.’s place.

  Rosey nodded and we followed it until the trail ended. It simply disappeared and we were left with nothing to follow bu
t our instincts. Rosey pointed in the direction we had been walking and we continued on that way.

  At some point I had lost perspective on how far away we might be from K.C. Higgins’ place. I was simply following my friend, Rosey, as we traipsed through the thick woods. After another half hour of walking, we encountered a trail. It was running basically cross-wise to our hike through the woods.

  “Which way?” I said.

  “Your guess is as good as mine,” he said.

  “Now we can split up,” I said.

  “Nope,” he shook his head. “Still a bad idea. I think we need to stay together. This is not a Sunday school picnic.”

  “What on earth would you know about Sunday school picnics?”

  “Long time ago and far, far away. I used to go to church.”

  “Back when you were civilized,” I said.

  “You’re not much of a Christian either, lady. How long’s it been since you were at a church related function like a picnic?”

  “I can’t remember. Must be a while ago. Point taken. But I still maintain that you have long since forgotten what a church social is all about.”

  “Nay, Madame. It’s about fun, fellowship, frolic, and good things. This little adventure chasing down some wild critter bent on killing people has none of that stuff connected with it.”

  “That Oxford education is paying dividends,” I said.

  “Yes’im, it is. I be a learned man and sensitive too.”

  “Right, Mr. Sensitivity.”

  “Stay with me, sweet lady. Your chances of staying alive are better.”

  I knew he was only halfway joking. I also knew that he was right. My chances of staying alive were far brighter if I kept pace with my friend in these woods.

  More walking and nothing to show for our efforts. Rosey stopped to rest, more for me than himself was my suspicion. I took advantage of his generosity and sat down on a tree fall just off the trail. We had decided to turn right and follow that end of the trail. We had no idea where this was taking us. Check that—I had no idea. I had the feeling that Rosey knew precisely where we were in relation to K.C. Higgins’ house and kennel.