When Blood Cries: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 6)

by M. Glenn Graves

  “You didn’t go through these earlier?”

  “No, I just made a quick scan and noted that they were comic books.”

  “You looking for something in particular?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am,” I said as I opened the fourth one down and found an envelope of photographs. I laid out the pictures one at a time on the desk.

  First there was a sequence of photographs of Mina Beth removing articles of her clothing, a piece at a time for each photo. There was a picture of Abel holding a bottle of whiskey and grinning from ear to ear. There was a shot of Mina Beth sitting by the fire eating some beans out of a can. She was fully clothed in that one. Finally there was a photo of Mina Beth pointing the gun directly at the camera and smiling. It was similar to the framed picture except she was not standing next to a tree in this photo. Each photo had a date on the front, bottom right – October 15th.

  I put the photos back in the envelope and put the envelope in my back pocket.

  “How did you know that those photos were inside one of the comics?” Starnes said.

  “I didn’t.”

  “How’d you even know to look there?”

  “I had looked everywhere else in the room. It was the one place I hadn’t looked. It’s a good place to hide something without really hiding it. Know what I mean?”

  “I reckon. You hide stuff like that, too?” Starnes said.

  “No, I hide things in the wide open spaces,” I said as I thought about Rogers. “My brother Scott used to hide stuff inside of his comics.”

  “And of course you always found whatever he was hiding,” she said.

  “Been a sneaky sleuth for a long time.”

  “And a conniving sister longer,” Starnes said as she left the room in front of me.

  After we finished our stew, Evelyn offered us some homemade apple pie. It was after eight o’clock by the time we were walking back down the wagon path towards the Jeep with Sam jogging ahead of us.

  “Other than a naked woman holding 9mm Luger aimed at the camera, did you notice anything else a little odd in that photograph on Abel’s desk?” Starnes said to me.

  “Other than the location?”

  “Yeah, other than that.”

  Starnes had asked the Gosnells if we could borrow Abel’s photograph of Mina Beth Cody in all of her glory for our investigation. Evelyn said yes quickly, but Adam seemed reticent to depart with the treasure. I turned on the inside light in the Jeep after she had handed me the photograph to view once again. Truthfully, I was tired of looking at the picture.

  “What’s different about Mina Beth in the photo other than the obvious wardrobe issue and the woman we met with at the café in Madison?” Starnes asked.

  “Her figure is slimmer,” I said.

  “Yeah, it is. What do you make of that?”

  “She’s eaten a lot of cheeseburgers at the greasy spoon restaurant where she works since the photo was taken?”

  Starnes shook her head and snatched the photo out of my hand.

  “Turn off the light and drive,” she said.

  I obeyed and turned the Jeep around and we headed back to a place of solitude.

  “Anybody ever take naked pictures of you?’ Starnes said as we approached the Jeep.

  “Yeah, when I was a skinny dipping in the river at the age of nine or ten,” I said.

  “Keep them in the family album?”

  “Not on your life. I burned them all. Then broke my brother’s camera. He was the one who took them. Crossed my mind to break his neck.”

  “Modesty reigns,” she said.

  “Mostly shame. And lots of anger at my brother.”

  “You tell your parents?”

  “Didn’t have to. They had the pictures developed quite by accident.”

  “Your brother get into trouble?”

  “Yeah, but not as much trouble as I think Mina Beth Cody is in,” I said.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The next day we stopped by the restaurant where Mina Beth Cody worked. It was around 9:30 a.m. We figured to beat the lunch crowd.

  “She ain’t here. Not comin’ in today, I reckon. She called and said something come up,” the skinny blond woman said to us as she wiped off the tables with her dirty rag.

  “You have her address?” Starnes asked.

  “Hang on, let me finish wiping down these tables and I’ll look it up for ya,” she said as she moved quickly from table to table.

  Once she was behind the counter, she retrieved a black notebook from a shelf, tore off a sheet from her order pad, scribbled down the address on the back of the sheet, and handed it to Starnes.

  “Be careful when you go up there. She has a big dog,” the blond said.

  “Doesn’t everybody?” Starnes mused as much to herself as to the blond.

  She took the address, thanked the waitress and we headed out.

  “This is just two streets over from the center of town,” Starnes told me as we approached her Escort. “And, good thing we brought Sam.”

  “Always a good thing to bring him along,” I added.

  “I’ll bet you don’t know who Mina Beth’s daddy is,” Starnes said as she parked her Escort on the street in front of the house we had been directed to by the address provided.

  “And just how is it I could have gleaned this knowledge?”

  “Overheard some idle conversation in one of our fine dining establishments be my guess.”

  “I eat most of my meals with you. Somehow we have missed the fine dining establishments, or, maybe not.”

  “Are you taking shots at my cooking?”

  “Not really. Just the part about overhearing idle conversation so as to ascertain the name of Mina Beth Cody’s daddy,” I said.

  “And you’re supposed to be a world-class detective and all,” she smirked.

  “I haven’t looked under that particular rock as yet.”

  “He’s a famous lawyer around these parts. Name is E.E. Cody. The double E’s stand for Ezekiel Elijah. Brother Cody’s been practicing law since, gosh, I’ll bet he’s been at it nearly fifty years. He pretty well runs the county as long as the Democrats are in power.”

  “How long has that been?” I said.

  “Seems like forever. Likely depends upon one’s disposition toward Democrats or politics in general.”

  “And you think forever?”

  “The political arena is not my gig.”

  “But you have an opinion about Democrats.”

  “I do.”

  I waited and nothing was forthcoming.

  “You gonna tell me?”

  “Need to know,” she said and shook her head.

  I smiled and decided to change subjects.

  “And why are you telling me about Mina Beth’s father?”

  “’Cause it ain’t gonna be easy to convict her of anything with a daddy like that.”

  “You’re getting ahead of yourself. She’s simply another suspect at this point,” I clarified. “And, as far as we know, not much of a suspect as yet.”

  “True, but … well, we’re running out of genuine, honest-to-goodness, take-them-to-court suspects. Every time we find somebody we like for this, they either die or prove themselves innocent.”

  “It’s been tough.”

  Sam jumped out of the car and walked alongside of me as we approached the front door of the house. I allowed Starnes to knock since that seemed to be her official duty in our investigation thus far.

  We all three jumped back when we heard a loud crash against the door. On the heels of that crash we heard ferocious barking coming from a dog inside the house. Judging by the resonance of the bark, I could imagine that the dog was the size of a horse. Or larger.

  Mina Beth’s door was made of wood except for three small windows at the top. The small windows were about a foot from the top door jam and maybe four inches square set equidistant apart. As tall as I was, I could not see into the house through those windows. However, I was able to look up int
o those little windows and what I saw was a dog’s face looking down at me. As I said, I was just guessing the size of the canine-horse.

  “Look up there,” I said to Starnes.

  “Damnation,” she said. “That’s one mammoth beast.”

  “Appears at least twice, maybe three times the size of Sam.”

  “Maybe twice the size of my Escort.”

  “And Sam fits inside your Escort.”

  “And Sam’s a large Labrador Retriever,” Starnes said.

  “You gonna knock again?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  I reached in front of her and knocked on the door. There was a vicious scratching sound, aggressive barking, and some undetermined noises chiefly perpetrated against the door on the inside. In our careful assessment of the situation, it was becoming clearer by the minute that Mina Beth’s dog was not thrilled with company, at least not our company.

  “Whattaya want?” a voice from inside yelled out.

  “Mina Beth?” Starnes said.

  “Yeah.”

  “This is Sheriff Starnes. We need to speak with you.”

  “What about?” the voice said.

  “Mina Beth, I need you to open the door and talk with us.”

  “Who’s with you?” the voice asked.

  “My friend Clancy Evans is here with me,” Starnes said.

  “Anybody else?”

  “We have a dog.”

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t feel like talkin’ today.”

  “Sorry about that,” Starnes said, “but we have to talk. It’s about Abel and the gun he gave you.”

  Silence ensued for several moments. The growling, scratching, and indeterminate noise continued unabated from the other side of the door. Then all became quiet.

  A horrible feeling passed over me just at that moment. Foreboding. I shoved Starnes to the right and I dove to the left. Sam bounded in my direction as the first shots were fired into the door from the inside. I counted five, but when I looked back at the door, I could see six holes. Missed one in all the excitement.

  Starnes and I both had our weapons drawn by this point. I had to move some lightweight metal porch chairs quickly out of the way so I could get to a section of the wall between the door and the first front window on the porch. Starnes was upright by now and leaning against the wall on her side of the door. She had more space between the door and the window on her side than I had on mine.

  “Mina Beth, I don’t think it is a good idea for you to be shooting at us.”

  Silence.

  “You better call for backup,” I said to Starnes.

  She clicked on her radio and got Deputies Bevel and Slater to answer. They both were about three to five minutes away somewhere downtown. She told them what was happening and to get their butts to Andrews Street as fast as they could. One of them answered, “Copy that.”

  “Mina Beth, can you hear me?” Starnes shouted again.

  More silence.

  “I think she may have gone out the back,” I said as I jumped off the porch and headed around the side of the house. Sam was right behind me. When I neared the back, a small red pickup was spinning its wheels as it backed out from behind Mina Beth’s house. The window was down and a handgun emerged pointing in my direction. I dove behind some trashcans as I shoved Sam in that direction in front of me. The shots hit the metal cans but I escaped unscathed. Sam was injury free as well. I was thankful once again.

  By the time I reached the service road that traveled along the back of each house on Andrews Street, the red pickup had entered a main side street and was speeding away from the scene.

  I heard a horn blowing furiously so I ran to the front of the house. Sam galloped ahead of me. Starnes was sitting in the Escort and motioning for me to come on. Sam and I jumped into the small car and we headed out.

  “You don’t really think you are going to catch her in this thing,” I said.

  “You wanna run after her?”

  “Okay, but this is laughable.”

  “What do you think she has under her hood?” Starnes asked.

  “I have no idea, but it’s got to be bigger than what you have.”

  “So, we’ll trail her from a distance.”

  “That we will,” I said.

  We met and passed the two deputies and motioned for them to follow. Starnes radioed them as we sped along the main thoroughfare of Madison losing ground by the second to the small red truck which was quickly disappearing in front of us. She told the deputies to pass us and give pursuit. They did and we trudged along in the Escort while the deputies in the police car moved on ahead and disappeared as well.

  Starnes called them back and told them to keep her posted every few minutes.

  The deputies let us know that they had the red truck in sight and were giving chase on Highway 25 headed towards Weaverville. Starnes called the NC Highway Patrol and told them what was happening. They alerted two cars in the area and said that they would set up a road block northwest of where Highway 25 met and crossed I-26.

  The deputies called back a few minutes later and reported that they had lost the red truck. Starnes told them to stop where they were and that we would be there in a moment or so. By the time we arrived, ten minutes had passed and the deputies were talking with one of the patrolmen who had answered the call. The patrolman said that the red truck had not come in his direction toward Weaverville, so it was determined that the vehicle must have pulled off of 25 on a side road and the deputies simply did not see it do so.

  Starnes asked the patrolman to stay put and that we would go back towards Madison along with the deputies’ car and see if we could ascertain just where they had lost the truck.

  There were too many options. Too many side roads connect with Highway 25, so our mission was futile.

  We drove back to Madison. Starnes called the highway patrol and thanked them for their assistance. The deputies felt badly about what had happened, but Starnes, to her credit, refused to chastise them because of the difficulty of car chases. It’s a dangerous business and if you don’t do a lot of them, it is easy to lose the vehicle you are pursuing. At any rate it seemed easy enough for our little group to have lost the one we wanted.

  I comforted myself with the illusion that we still had a viable suspect who got away in her little red truck.

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Starnes insisted that I drive my Jeep when we went to visit the home of Ezekiel Elijah Cody, Mr. Democrat of McAdams County. Sam joined us for the adventure. It seemed like a good time for him to stay close. Perhaps Mina Beth Cody had gone to see her father after she had tried to kill the new sheriff and the sheriff’s friend. Run to daddy. The large dog the size of a horse was no doubt still with her wherever she was.

  Lawyer Cody’s mansion was an oversized structure made of rocks gleaned from the western North Carolina mountains and perched on the top of a mountain overlooking a significant portion of McAdams County. Judging from the size of the house it appeared to have some thirty to forty rooms on three levels. I might be embellishing the existence of five or so rooms. The paved driveway from the main road to the front door of the house was 1.5 miles long. No embellishment there. Fact. I measured as we approached.

  A maid answered the door. The butler’s day off.

  “We would like to speak to Mr. Cody,” Starnes said to the lady.

  “May I tell him who’s calling?”

  “Sheriff Carver.”

  She closed the door and left us on the outside. So much for genuine Southern hospitality. Perhaps it was because Mr. Cody was such a renowned criminal defense attorney and his clientele were so well defended by him that they were mostly loose in the region. You never know who is knocking on your door, and you cannot be too careful. Maybe the maid was armed as well.

  She returned in a few minutes and permitted us to enter the hallway.

  “Mr. Cody will be down in a moment,” sh
e said.

  The maid left us standing underneath a framed Confederate flag that looked as if it had been in the Civil War. Scars on it were from burns as well as from bullets. A small plaque underneath the framed flag gave the date of 1861 but no other information. Across from the flag were two portraits. One was Robert E. Lee and the other one was Ulysses S. Grant. Between the two men was a small framed American flag. There was no date under it.

  “Good evening, ladies,” said the aging gentleman who descended the stairs towards us.

  “We’re looking for your daughter, Mina Beth,” Starnes said. “We need to speak with her about the death of Abel Gosnell.”

  “Are you seeking to arrest her?” he asked.

  “Not at present, but we have some questions for her.”

  “Is she under suspicion of something?”

  “She’s a person of interest,” Starnes said.

  “I’m afraid I can’t be of any help to you in this regard,” he said. “I have advised my daughter not to speak to anyone except her attorney.”

  “Who might that be?” I asked.

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m Clancy Evans, a friend of Sheriff Carver.”

  “Oh, yes, indeed. The detective from the city of Norfolk, down here to help the poor souls in McAdams County see evidence of true detective work.”

  I wanted to hit him. Something fierce came over me, but I decided it wouldn’t do our case any good for me to give in to pistol whip him and his assumptions. That, and except for his mouth, he seemed defenseless.

  “I’m just offering some assistance,” I said as meekly as I could force myself to say it.

  “Is Mina Beth Cody here with you, Mr. Cody?” Starnes asked.

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that for you. You see, I’m her lawyer and I have to watch out for the best interest of my client.”

  “No doubt. But here’s the thing, Mr. Cody. If you are aiding and abetting Mina Beth Cody, then you are hereby under arrest for harboring a fugitive. You see, I am at this moment charging Mina Beth Cody with assaulting a police officer and with attempted murder against both of us earlier today. I will also add resisting arrest to those charges because of the dangerous pursuit that ensued when she refused to talk with us. Now, you either have her come talk with me right now, or you can go with us back to the jail and enjoy an interval of incarceration yourself.”