Desperate Measures: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 5)

by M. Glenn Graves

  “We’re working on it. Do you know anything about your daughter’s backup plan?”

  Fletcher continued to scream and didn’t answer Rosey’s question.

  “This wire here,” Rosey pointed to the floor in front of Fletcher’s cross. “How does it work?”

  “Connected to a battery,” he grimaced more. “Creates a spark and sets the cross on fire if it is crossed over or… ahhh … touched.”

  “Where’s the battery?” Rosey said.

  “Behind me, behind the wall. You can’t get back there,” Fletcher said. “You can’t get to the battery without crossing the wire. It circles me.”

  “So how do we get him down from his cross?” I said to Rosey.

  Rosey studied the way that Fletcher was bound to the cross. Sandy had used multiple ropes and chains. The faint order of kerosene made it obvious to us that once the fire started, it would burn with rapid heat making it intense and difficult to extinguish. Also making it impossible to quickly release Fletcher from his captivity.

  “Activate the fire mechanism by crossing the wire and let the battery do its dirty work. Let the fire start, rush in and put it out before it burns him too severely,” Rosey said to me.

  “That’s the best … you can come … up … with,” Fletcher said.

  He had stopped screaming but it appeared that he was still in intense pain.

  Owens approached us from behind. I turned to see that he had Sandy handcuffed to a large, structural pole some thirty feet behind us. The pole appeared to be some ten inches in diameter. I noticed several other poles around the vast room offering support to the levels above us.

  “Rock and a hard place, huh?” Owens said.

  “Anybody but Fletcher, I would say yes,” I said.

  “I don’t deserve this,” Fletcher was adamant.

  “You probably deserve this and a lot more. Good thing we’re the good guys and are trying to find a way to get you out of this. Let’s not talk about what you deserve,” I said. “Conversation and conclusions won’t go your way.”

  I turned to see that Sandy was now sitting on the floor. She had used her back and slid down the pole. Her back and head were propped against the pole with her hands cuffed behind her. She was smiling.

  I walked back to her. “Tell us how to get around the sensor wire,” I said.

  “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “Let the law take care of him. You don’t want to kill your father.”

  “I most certainly do want to kill him. Besides, you already have me for the murder of Lee and for helping Lee kill Melody. What’s another individual or two?” she said.

  “Could plead extenuating circumstances, mental defect, and a host of other possible defenses. But if you don’t help us with the preacher, that’s pre-meditated murder. There are three witnesses here against you. You have to help us.”

  She smiled again.

  “I don’t have to do any such thing. In fact, I think I will just sit here and wait for you to decide your course of action and enjoy the moments ticking away.”

  I hurried back to Rosey and Owens.

  “This family is something else,” Owens said.

  “Yeah, and little sister there, she may be the prize one of all,” I said.

  “What do you mean?” Owens said.

  “I think she has a plan C. I think she has another trigger mechanism, a timer. I think the girl thought of every contingency.”

  “I think the girl wants her father to die right here,” Owens said.

  68

  “Scumbag or not, I can’t just stand by and do nothing,” Rosey said as he left us in a run and headed towards the stairs to the main floor. “I’m looking for a fire extinguisher,” he yelled back over his shoulder to us.

  “What is he thinking?” Owens said.

  “Put the fire out once it starts,” I said.

  “A kerosene fire,” Owens commented.

  “You got a better idea?”

  We stood there looking at the desperate man hanging in front of us. He was no longer screaming, but that could change in a moment once a fire would ignite. I looked back at Sandy. She was laughing softly to herself. I walked back to her. It wouldn’t hurt to try one more time. Maybe there was yet some spark of compassion or forgiveness in her.

  “Tell us how to get around your trigger devices,” I said.

  She raised her head and looked at me without looking at me. Her eyes were glazed over as if the trance was complete now. What appeared on her face was hardly what I would call a natural smile. Sinister might be a good word for what I saw.

  “This is for you, Momma,” she said as if speaking to someone she could see close by.

  She was not talking to me. That was obvious.

  The sound that fire makes once ignited when an accelerant is used reminds me of a gust of wind in a small space. It’s that whoosh blast that gets your attention. In the flash of a moment, whatever has been torched explodes in that sudden whooshing sound.

  I turned to see Fletcher engulfed in flames. Despite the fact I detested the man, my heart sank a little. Immediately his screams reached a crescendo that we had not yet heard. The flames swallowed him completely without mercy.

  “Merciful Jesus!” Owens said. “Is there anything we can do to cover him?”

  Owens was looking around for something, probably a blanket or large cloth. I joined the search. I heard footsteps running in the distance but closing fast. It was Rosey returning from upstairs. He had a small kitchen-type fire extinguisher in his hand.

  “It’s all I could find,” he said as he began to spray Fletcher and the ignited cross.

  The screaming intensified. The sight of a human on fire was horrendous. Rosey sprayed Fletcher around his head and shoulders. He then worked his way down from his neck to his feet moving as quickly as the small extinguisher would allow. I thought he was going to accomplish the task.

  “Help me,” we could hear Fletcher scream.

  No sooner had Fletcher yelled his plea at us, a burst of a liquid seemingly from nowhere covered Fletcher and Lenny and their crosses. Then a sudden burst of fire from yet another source ignited the accelerant on both. The crosses, along with Fletcher and Lenny, roared into intensified flames. We had to back away. It was too much heat for us.

  I looked at Rosey who was staring at the small canister in his hand.

  “It’s empty,” he said as Fletcher’s screams subsided some. “There’s nothing we can do.”

  “She meant to kill him and she made every plan to that end. We couldn’t have stopped this unless we stopped her from putting him on that cross,” I said.

  The fire increased so much that the three of us were forced to move further back to where Sandy was secured to the pole. As I turned to look at Sandy and her wicked smile, my eyes caught Sam who was sitting nearby on his back haunches watching the inferno. I wondered what he was thinking.

  Sandy had stopped smiling. She was now laughing.

  “He was a corrupt man, but I’m not sure he deserved this,” Owens said.

  “Can’t choose how we’ll die,” Rosey said. “If we get caught in someone else’s trap, we’re at the mercy of whatever devious plan they have for us.”

  “And if we happen to be the creators of that crap, then it is a note of irony that we get what we give. Karma,” I said.

  “Perhaps,” Rosey said, “but still, there sure is a lot of evil in the world.”

  “Yeah,” Owens said. “And lots of evil in here.”

  He touched the area on his chest that housed his heart.

  “Too much,” I said.

  Owens had already called for an ambulance even before Rosey had gone for the small fire extinguisher. I watched for a few moments, but couldn’t take it any longer. I released Sandy from the pole, re-cuffed her hands behind her back, and took her along with Sam upstairs.

  I think Fletcher was dead before I could get out of that damnable place. Owens and Rosey stayed with the inferno.


  There was no reason to call the fire department since the fire was contained inside the cement walls of the basement. Besides that, Fletcher would not have survived his captive position on that burning cross even if the fire department had arrived in record time. His daughter made sure of that. She had devised enough measures to ensure that her father would never escape, no matter what we tried to do.

  “I want to see him die,” Sandy insisted as we walked away from that massive chamber of death. She turned to look and I pushed her into the long concrete tunnel.

  “Upstairs. Let’s go,” I said.

  “I wanna stay and watch.”

  “You’ve seen enough,” I said.

  “I want to see it all.”

  “More the reason you shouldn’t see it. Now move,” I said and shoved her a little harder towards the stairs.

  She stopped once more to watch the last flickers of the flames as the dance of death ended the life of Reginald Fletcher. He was no longer moaning. I gave up giving Sandy directives. I walked past her, grabbed the chain in the middle of the cuffs and began dragging her away from the final embers of the fiery ordeal. In vain she fought against my efforts, but I was stronger and more determined.

  Finally we had moved far enough into the dimly lit hallway of the basement so that Sandy could no longer see anymore of her handiwork in what I imagined to be an altar room for their religious sacrifices. We came to the stairs and the doorway to this concrete world had closed behind us.

  “There a switch down here to open that?” I said pointing to the top of the stairs.

  “If I don’t tell you, then we’ll just have to stay down here. Trapped. Maybe we’ll all just die.”

  Miss Attitude.

  Something snapped inside me and I decided that I had taken more than I could from this girl. I turned and hit her hard squarely on the nose with my fist. Blood poured out from the blow to her face and she fell backward onto the cement floor. Her nose was obviously crooked, probably broken.

  “Damn you,” she wailed and began to cry.

  Wow. She finally showed some emotion.

  “Where’s the switch?” I said in a harsh tone.

  “Find it yourself, bitch!” she said as she spit the nose blood from around her mouth.

  I collected myself, took a breath, and immediately decided that I felt a little better. I had succumbed to my baser instincts as a human creature, but I had to admit that it did feel pretty good. Hitting her again would have been a move toward brutality. Her hands were handcuffed behind her back.

  I used the dim amber light to look for a likely object which might open the door above. I spotted the object on a wall to the right of the steps near the first amber light of the tunnel. It was a small replica of Molech. I grabbed the bull head and twisted. The door above opened. Fletcher was consistent, if anything.

  I helped Sandy to her feet. Her nose was still bleeding. A lot. We climbed the stairs as the disgusting stench of burning flesh continue to fill my nostrils. I was getting sick.

  I walked her to Owens’ car and put her in the backseat. I slammed the door with more force than necessary. As I moved to the front of the car, I noticed Sam for the first time. He was sitting down in a small plot of grass nearby and staring at the young woman in the backseat of the police car.

  “Penny for your thoughts,” I said to him.

  He whined a little, shifted from one front leg to the other, and then sat down, all the while continuing to gaze at Sandy.

  “You’re responsible for three deaths,” I said to her through the open window of the car.

  “Yeah, well, I only regret one of them, sort of,” she said.

  “I’m guessing that would be Melody’s.”

  “Yeah, I suppose. She didn’t have to die after all. But, everybody’s time comes sooner or later. So, well, what can I say?”

  “You’re a cold-hearted bitch,” I said.

  “A product of a loving father who taught me how to get what I want in life. Must be good genes, you know,” Sandy said.

  “Can’t blame it totally on the genetic pool,” I said.

  Sam barked once, softly.

  69

  It was close to ten o’clock on the same evening of the day that I found out exactly how Melody Mace Legrand had died. The motive for her unnatural death was older than the religion practiced by Reverend Reginald Fletcher. The monster of jealousy had visited the human family once again. I seem to recall some stories from the early days of Sunday school training about that. Primal stories. We humans are a sad lot. We seem to keep repeating the sins of our forbearers. You’d think that one day a generation might get it right and see the stupidity of it all. You’d think. And you’d be wrong. At least so far.

  I was pondering my detective life, the distasteful stuff I all-too-frequently encountered, and the sleazy people I met along the way while I performed my job. I was sick at my stomach as much from my thoughts as from the stench of burning flesh still in my nostrils. And those images of Fletcher and Lee hanging on the cross. Then the fire.

  Sleep would not come easily on this night.

  “You wanna eat something before the interrogation begins?” Owens said to me.

  We were back at the police station. I was sitting at an empty desk fiddling with a pencil and a paper clip. Owens was standing nearby drinking some coffee. Rosey was leaning against a wall while Sam was resting comfortably in the middle of the floor forcing all of us to walk around him if we had change locations.

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said.

  “I don’t joke around about food.”

  “I couldn’t eat if my life depended on it. You go, I’ll stay here. I need to do some processing. I have to go see a father tomorrow and tell him what I know.”

  “Everything you know?”

  “That’s what I’m processing,” I said.

  “You stayin’ or goin’?” Owens said to Rosey.

  “I’ll stay with the lady and the dog. You go find something. You have to keep your strength up,” Rosey said.

  Owens stepped over Sam’s long, black body. The dog never flinched. Out cold.

  “You can go eat,” I said to Rosey.

  “Like you. Not hungry.”

  “I think I hate people,” I said.

  “You don’t hate me,” he said.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You don’t hate Owens.”

  “No, I don’t hate him either.”

  “We be people, me and Owens. That’s two,” he said.

  “Okay. I hate most people.”

  “Some days life is no fun a’tall,” he said. “Would you feel better if Fletcher and Lenny and Sandy were all behind bars instead of only Sandy?”

  “I’d still feel pretty bad for Melody and all that she got caught up in.”

  “We live and die by our choices. You can’t choose for everybody. We bound to make mistakes, we humans, that is.”

  “Choosing a religion should not be one of the choices in life that gets you killed.”

  “No, that’s true. Unless you be a martyr for the cause. But, you have to use good judgment when choosing a religion. It needs to fit you and your values. I think Melody was exploring and it cost her.”

  “Dearly.”

  “You think you might feel like eating later, on the way back to Boston?” Rosey said.

  I smiled at him. “Yeah, maybe. I just need some more time.”

  “I have all the time in the world,” Rosey said. “You want me to sing that line?”

  “Rain check,” I said.

  70

  Rosey and I were sitting at the large one way window that overlooked the interrogation room in Owens’ police station in Weston, Massachusetts. We were staring at Owens and Sandy. If they happened to look in our direction, they would see themselves in a rather large mirror on the wall inside their room. Still, they knew we were watching. I should say that Owens knew. In all likelihood, Sandy was oblivious to everyone and everything around her.

&
nbsp; Owens was methodical. Some observers might add slow to his interrogation technique.

  “Your birth name is Sandra Chatterworth,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “That your full name?” he said.

  “What difference does that make?” she said.

  “Just trying to be sure that we have the correct information about you.”

  “Sandra Michelle Chatterworth. My full birth name given to me by my mother.”

  “Is it okay if I call you Sandy?” Owens said.

  “I don’t care what you call me. What is it you want to know that you don’t already know?” she said.

  “Did you kill Melody Legrand?”

  “No. My brother Lee killed her. I merely watched him do it.”

  “Did you ask him to kill her?”

  “Duh. Of course I asked him to do it. It was part of the ritual cleansing thing of the church. I couldn’t have done it by myself.”

  “Did you kill Reginald Fletcher?”

  “I killed a man who called himself that. His real name was Chester Chatterworth.”

  “Your father?”

  “Yeah, he was my dear old daddy. He was also a bastard and an egomaniac. I have other words to describe him. You want to hear those as well?”

  “The fact that he was your father is sufficient for me.”

  “Not for me. I am glad he is dead.”

  “Did you kill your brother, Lee Chatterworth or better known as Lenny Johnstone?” Owens asked.

  “Yeah, I killed him too. He killed my boyfriend, Raney Goforth. I had to kill him. He shouldn’t have killed Raney. There was no need to do that. It was just meanness, that’s all. Plain old meanness, just like daddy.”

  “Is this your testimony, that you killed both Reginald Fletcher and Lee or Lenny Johnstone, and you participated in the murder of Melody Legrand?”

  “I did. But it had to be, don’t you see? Don’t you get it?”

  Owens shoved a pad of paper in front of her that had a pen lying on it.

  “Write it all down, just like it happened,” he said.