“Over eighty pounds,” she said and then sipped her hot beverage softly once again.
“Big wolf.”
“Yeah.”
“You think bigger than that.”
“I do.”
“Wow indeed. How much bigger?”
“Small adult human.”
“You must be mixing White Magic with your coffee.”
“Tempted, but no, just coffee and my supposition.”
“Didn’t think scientists had many suppositions,” I said.
“Rare, it is, but sometimes we cross over to the dark side, like you detectives.”
“But not without some evidence to prod you in that direction.”
“We like evidence.”
“And?”
“Unless it was a pack of coyotes, this one predator ate nearly every morsel of his victims, including many of the bones.”
“Which rules out a pack?”
“Not enough prints on the ground,” Starnes added.
“And the rain washed away a lot of the tracks,” I said.
“Mother Nature aiding and abetting.”
“So the voracious appetite encourages your supposition?”
“At this moment, it does.”
Starnes’ cell phone sounded from the kitchen. It was the main theme from the Tom Cruise Mission Impossible movies.
“You’re kidding me,” I said to her as she stood up and moved towards the kitchen.
“My boss, the high sheriff Barney Fife Murdock himself.”
Sam joined me in the living room. He was finally dry.
“Where’s Dog?” I said to him.
He turned his large head back towards my bedroom as if to tell me she was in there. He sat down on his haunches.
“May I help you?” I said to him.
He raised his right paw as if pleading his case.
“Food?”
He stood immediately and wagged his tail. It wasn’t that hard to guess what he wanted. I could get that reaction from him almost any time of the day. I looked at my watch. Eight minutes after three.
“Okay…let’s see what we can find for you in the kitchen,” I said as I got up from my comfortable position on Starnes’ couch.
“Damn,” Starnes said into her cell phone as Sam and I entered the kitchen looking for food. We paused near the stove and waited to see what was going on with Starnes and her boss.
“We’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said in the other room.
There was a long pause. I walked back from the kitchen to Starnes’ doorway and peeked into her room. She was sitting on her bed. She rolled her eyes at me. Sam nudged my left leg with his nose.
“Oh, yeah…food.”
I walked back into the kitchen and then over to Starnes’ pantry and found the container of dog food. As soon as I removed the plastic lid by clicking the handles downward, Dog came bounding into the kitchen ready to dine with her new best friend Sam.
“She’s coming with me,” Starnes said to the person on the other end of the call.
I fed both dogs while I waited to hear Starnes’ next line.
“We’ve got a serious problem and we need all the help we can get. You can fire me later,” she clicked off the cell phone.
Starnes entered the kitchen with a disturbed look on her face. She stared at me but said nothing. I could tell that she was miffed.
“Issues?”
“Another murder,” she said.
“Yikes,” I said in the midst of the two dogs chomping down their dry food.
“Anybody we know?”
“Hack Ponder.”
22
All four of us arrived at Ponder’s small store before four o’clock that same afternoon. Dogs were fed and happy. I was feeling less than chipper. Starnes was dour and silent.
I drove my vehicle. The dogs were in the back seat enjoying the ride. It was still overcast, but the rain and fog had abated. The cold had not. I was parked behind Sheriff Murdock’s official car.
“Why does the male ego have to be so fragile?” Starnes said as soon as I turned off the motor.
“Rhetorical question?” I said.
“No.”
“Oh. Well, let’s see…they need the weaker sex to support them, to encourage them, to stroke them and keep up the illusion that they are in charge.”
Starnes smiled for the first time all day.
“I like you,” she said.
“Since our friendship is likely to get you fired, I suppose that’s a good thing.”
“Non-monetarily speaking, of course,” she said.
“Of course. You have details from your boss about this death?”
“Ponder was found in his store … what was left of him.”
“Same MO as with our other victims?”
“Murdock is not a wordsmith, so I don’t have too much solid stuff. I think he now believes that something is amuck in the county.”
“Wow, good for him. Fast study, huh?”
“Stupid is as stupid does,” Starnes said.
“Let’s be kind, okay?”
“I am being kind. The man has no business being the sheriff of anybody’s county. Why mine?”
“You could come back to Norfolk?”
She didn’t answer. We sat in my vehicle for a few more minutes.
“I think we need to go inside before the sheriff comes out and finds us lollygagging about,” I said.
“Lollygagging?” she said as she exited my Jeep.
“Old Southern word from my youth.”
Starnes shook her head. “Let’s go talk with Barney.”
We entered Ponder’s store. The scene was a veritable nightmare if blood, bone, and the proverbial gore makes for a nightmare. Sheriff Buster Murdock was standing over in a far corner away from the door and away from the majority of the bone fragments which seemed to be centrally located near the pot-bellied stove. He had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. I didn’t think the smell was that bad, but apparently he wasn’t used to such crime scenes. Murdock was standing next to one of his deputies who also had a handkerchief over his nose and mouth. At least they weren’t contaminating the crime scene.
Starnes and I approached. We left the dogs inside the Jeep.
“How do you know it’s Hack Ponder?” Starnes said to Murdock.
“Customer saw it happen,” he said and pointed to the front door and then moved in that direction. We followed him.
Once he was safely outside, he took the white mask away from his mouth and nose and breathed deeply, exaggerated breathing you could say.
“The customer?” Starnes said to him.
He pointed to a small grove of trees near the river where another deputy was standing alongside an elderly woman who was sitting on some stacked cinder blocks.
“She saw it all happen?” Starnes said.
“We think, but she’s not tellin’ us much. I think she’s still in shock.”
Murdock walked over to the deputy and the elderly woman. The deputy was smoking and not paying much attention to anything including his own cigarette. The woman appeared to be in a trance of sorts. She was sitting on her hands leaning forward. Her eyes were dilated. She was mumbling something.
Starnes squatted down in front of her to about eye level. She patted the old woman’s leg and smiled kindly at her. The woman offered no change of expression.
“I’m Starnes Carver,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened?”
The woman nodded slowly. Her gaze into the unknown changed as she moved her head so that her eyes met Starnes’ eyes. No change of expression.
“Hack Ponder was attacked,” Starnes said leading the witness. Bad investigative technique, but in this case acceptable.
The old woman nodded.
“What’s your name?” Starnes said.
“Mamie,” she said still watching Starnes closely. “Mamie Shelton.”
“You live around her, Mamie?”
“Less than a mile up there,�
� she pointed to the road across from the store and heading west in front of the Ivy River Church of God.
“You walk down here?”
“I walk ever’where if I go anywhere.”
“Were you inside the store when it happened?” Starnes said.
She shook her head. “I was just comin’ up to the door and there it was.”
“What was?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”
“And you are sure that it was Hack Ponder?” Starnes said.
“I heard him yellin’ out for mercy … ‘Lord have mercy!’ he yelled out several times. I recognized his cranky old voice. Known that old varmint for years, ever since I wuz a grown woman, married with kids. Hack was a teenager when he showed himself around our holler. Came a’courtin’ my youngest, Ellamay, but I chased him off when I found them almost naked behind the wood pile one August night. Never did trust that old coot until after Ellamay was married and gone, moved over to Tennessee with her husband and youngins’.”
“Can you describe what it was that attacked Hack Ponder?”
“Don’t rightly know how to tell ya.”
“Can you try?” Starnes said.
“Don’t think so. You see, I see visions time to time and sometimes things get all mixed up, ya know, confused and all. I think I seen a vision when I looked into that store while Hack was being eaten alive.”
Starnes looked at me as if she wanted some clue about how to proceed. Before I could offer a suggestion, Sheriff Murdock pulled Starnes to a standing position and took over the interview.
“Look, Mamie,” he said using his official voice, “we got ourselves a crime here. At least I think we have a crime. Now we need to know what or who you saw in that store attack old Hack Ponder.”
Mamie Shelton stared at him for several seconds and then shifted her gaze to that distant, unknown realm once more. I had the feeling she was trying her best to remember what she had seen.
“Beelzebub,” she said finally.
“What?” Murdock said.
“Name for the devil,” I said.
“Whose name for the devil?” Murdock said.
“Archaic. Biblical reference.”
“Never heard of it,” he said.
“Figures,” Starnes said.
“What does that mean?” he said to her.
“Didn’t figure you to be a church-going man,” she answered.
“I been to church a time or two, just never heard that name before.”
“Why do you think it was Beelzebub?” Starnes asked Mamie.
Murdock stepped in front of Starnes as if cutting off whatever communication might be forthcoming.
“You and your friend here can go back inside the store and look for clues. I’ll interrogate this witness,” he said.
Starnes turned and walked away without comment. I was thinking about several things simultaneously, all the while I was trying desperately to hold my tongue. I figured that anything I might add to the conversation would get me abruptly removed from the county and get Starnes fired on the spot. Not that either of those things would be bad, but I knew that Starnes was heavily involved into solving this case as was I.
It was a struggle, but I walked away without a word.
I followed Starnes to the Jeep. She stood for a few moments at the rider’s side door without opening it.
“Let’s go back inside and see if we can find anything substantive,” I said to her backside.
“As long as that idiot’s out here conducting that interview, he won’t discover anything of a substantive nature for sure,” she turned and headed towards Ponder’s store.
As we headed toward the entrance to Ponder’s store, I looked over at Murdock and Mamie just to see if they were engaged in a dialogue. Mamie was in a trance, the deputy was lighting another cigarette, and Murdock was looking at us.
I waved at the sheriff. He didn’t wave back.
23
A crowd was gathering as we approached the entrance to Ponder’s store. Starnes abruptly turned towards the crowd instead of entering the supposed crime scene. I stopped at the door and watched her to see where she was headed.
A short balding man maneuvered himself through the crowd and greeted Starnes. They acted as if they knew each other. I decided to investigate this renewed acquaintance. Ever the astute detective on the prowl of possible evidence, clues, and meaningless conversations.
“This is my friend Clancy Evans,” Starnes said by way of introduction to the balding man. “Clancy, this is Reverend Bobby Lee Smathers.”
He extended his right hand and I shook it.
“He’s the pastor of the church here,” Starnes said as she pointed to the building across the street from us on top of the small hill. The Ivy River Church of God. I could read the large marquee adjacent to the church house. The name was in large block letters. There was some smaller letters written underneath that name which I could not read without moving closer. I made a mental note to do that as soon as I could.
“So you know Mamie Shelton,” I said to him.
“I reckon I do. Baptized all of her children save one. Little Eben would have none of it. Had a fear of the water that was beyond reason. Kid thought he would drown if he touched a toe in the river. Never did go swimming or nothing. Wouldn’t even fish on the banks. Strange youngin’.”
“She’s having a difficult time telling us what she saw,” Starnes said.
“She sees visions, you know,” Reverend Bobby Lee said.
“Regularly or just on Sundays?” I said.
Reverend Bobby Lee Smathers turned and looked at me harshly. He obviously did not have a highly developed sense of humor when it came to his religion.
“Your friend here,” he said and pointed at me as he spoke to Starnes, “she a real smartass?”
“She is, but we often get to the bottom of things despite her approach with people.”
“After she has a vision it takes several days afore she can talk about it,” he explained.
“She enter a trance like state?” I said.
“Never asked her that. Can’t say for sure. Just know that she sees things we normal folks don’t see, can’t see, and maybe have no desire to see. Mamie is special.”
“Just our luck that she would be the one to see the killer,” I said to no one in particular.
“You have any suspects?” Reverend Bobby Lee said.
“Nothing specific,” Starnes said.
“But we have loads of hunches,” I followed.
“Man or beast?” he asked.
Starnes and I looked at each other. I read the amazement in her eyes as surely as she read it in mine.
“Why do you ask that?” I said.
“Mamie’s visions hardly ever have people only in them. In fact, I can’t recall a single one in my lifetime that didn’t have some wild thing connected somehow. She’s big on wolves, you know.”
“Wolves,” Starnes repeated. It wasn’t a question. I think she wanted to be sure that she had heard Reverend Smathers clearly.
“Yeah. She’s been seeing wolves for years now. I think the first time was after I had preached a sermon on a passage from Isaiah about wolves lying down with lambs. She came to me a few weeks later and told me about her vision.”
“A wolf and a lamb lying down together,” I said.
“Naw, it didn’t have much to do with my sermon nor with the scripture I had read. As I recall it was this woman from another country who turned into a wolf or something like that.”
“Sounds like a bad dream,” I said.
“Naw, it’s a vision. Mamie Shelton has this thing. She goes into a trance and sees things that we can’t see. She’s not asleep. She ain’t dreamin’ either. She’s alookin’ off yonder, either in the past or the future. I never could tell which. But she ain’t dreamin’, I tell ya. She’s alookin’ at something with her eyes wide open. Lasts for hours, sometimes days. I first thought it wuz one of those seizures
, you know. ’Cept she weren’t moving around in no violent way, you know, convulsing about. Didn’t swallow her tongue neither.”
“And it takes her several days before she can talk about it?” I said for clarification about one of his earlier statements.
“Usually. At least a day or two or three. So, if Mamie saw something in Ponder’s store, and if’n she thought it wuz a vision, then, well, I ’spect she won’t be able to tell ya nothin’ until a few days from now.”
“So you’re telling us that Mamie has a hard time separating reality from visions,” I said.
“I don’t know if’n I’m tellin’ you anything of the sort. I jest know’d Mamie for more than forty years and I can tell for certain that if’n she believes that she had a vision, well, she ain’t wired like the rest of us. The way she was actin’ back there with you two… I ’spect she believes it wuz a vision. Don’t matter none at all that it wuz, as you say, reality or a fact. If’n she thinks it wuz a vision, then it wuz a vision. Give her some time. She’ll come around and tell ya what she saw.”
“Thanks for the heads up, Reverend Smathers,” Starnes said as we turned to walk back to the store.
“Glad I cud be of some help. Let me know if anything else turns up that I cud help with.”
I nodded and smiled at him. I raised my right palm to him as if waving goodbye.
As we entered Ponder’s store I noticed that Sheriff Murdock was still interviewing Mamie Shelton. That is to say, he was standing near her and waiting for her to speak while he was looking in our direction. I also noticed that he was pacing in front of her talking while staring at us. Mamie was watching him without saying a word. Interesting interview.
Starnes and I walked around the small store for several minutes. Time really has no meaning when one is investigating a potential crime scene. You simply look, study, think about what things might have looked like before this incident occurred, and remain bewildered until you have an inspiration. Inspirations don’t always come.
You also spend your time looking at the actual part of the scene that has been disturbed. You look for anything which might be out of place or odd.
I walked in one direction while Starnes traveled in the other direction. We met each other twice. The second time we were standing at the front door where we had entered the building.
Outcast In Gray: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 7) Page 11
