When Blood Cries

by M. Glenn Graves

  “According to what you told me from Slater’s account, Mina Beth crosses in front of her and then suddenly attacks her. I would think that Mina Beth, who outweighs Slater by a good, what, twenty pounds maybe, maybe more, would try to pin her to the wall, immobilize her, and take her weapon. I have to assume that the weapon is holstered at this point when the attack begins.”

  “Slater said that she drew her weapon after Mina Beth attacked her the second time.”

  “Now, I am Slater and up against the wall, pinned … somehow I draw my weapon. How do I draw my weapon? I am outweighed, pinned and fighting for my life not knowing what this prisoner is going to do but having to imagine the worst. I need both hands to get her off of me.”

  I watched Starnes closely as I tried to act out the scene from what Starnes had related regarding Sally Slater’s report on the shooting.

  “Slater said that she was able to throw Mina Beth to the floor, but Mina Beth was able to get up and attack Slater the second time.”

  “So the question is when did Slater draw her weapon and shoot?”

  “She told me,” Starnes said, “that after Mina Beth attacked the second time, she drew and fired her weapon.”

  “And you said you assume one shot was fired, the kill shot?” I said.

  “Until I can talk with her further, yes. I have to assume that.”

  I walked over to the wall. I searched both sides of the restroom door, searching for a slug embedded in the wall. I dropped to my hands and knees looking for a slug lodged somewhere in the floor. I found nothing.

  “You did say it was a through and through shot?” I said.

  “Yeah. I saw the body and talked with Slater. It was her story as well.”

  “So where’s the slug? Did the other deputies help evaluate this crime scene? Did they even treat it as a crime scene? Maybe someone cleaned the area and found the slug. What did they with it?”

  Starnes looked up at the ceiling, searching for something there. Now and then she would look at me and shake her head.

  “You ask some really good questions for a private detective. You’ve never worked a crime scene, have you?” she said.

  “I watched one of the world’s best crime scene investigators for a while.”

  “Well, that’s a really good question, the one about the slug,” Starnes said when she spotted nothing on the ceiling.

  “Where was the body found?”

  “Body was over here,” Starnes said as she moved further to the right of the restroom door.

  “And Mina Beth’s head after she fell?”

  “About here,” Starnes pointed to a spot on the floor which indicated that her head was in the direction of the cell area with her feet back towards the restroom.

  “The women about the same height?” I asked.

  “No, I think that Mina Beth is a little taller than Slater.”

  I walked over to the corner where the wall comes out from the restroom door forming a right angle with the adjacent wall and comes towards the hallway making the hallway narrower as one walks toward the cells. In the corner where the right angle forms and touches the floor, I found the slug. It was embedded in the floor just inches from the corner wall molding.

  “Here’s the slug,” I said as I took out my penknife and dug the slug from its lodged position.

  “Let’s try something,” I said. “You stand there where Slater said she was and I will get on my knees here.” I knelt in front of Starnes facing the wall and the position where Slater said Mina Beth was when Slater drew and fired.

  “This won’t work,” Starnes said. “The entry wound was not directly in the front … more to the side of the head.”

  “Which side?” I said.

  “Oh, I see the problem. If the slug is over there, then Mina Beth would have to have been facing the left, towards my office and the door to the outside.”

  “And if that slug is in the floor, that means the shot was in a downhill trajectory, indicating that Slater was standing over her, but not standing directly at her side, more like an angle between Mina Beth’s front and side, like this,” I said and shifted so that Starnes was still where Slater said she was but I was now facing the restroom door at an angle.

  “Looks more like a professional hit, Mina Beth kneeling and Slater standing over her.”

  “And someone moved the body,” I said.

  “Yeah, it would appear so.”

  “So this position is the only way that fits the scene here.”

  “But it wasn’t point blank,” Starnes said. “There wasn’t much powder residue on Mina Beth’s temple. Slater must have been standing back a few feet away … like this,” she said and moved.

  “There was no fight,” I said. “Slater shot her as she was kneeling and then lied to you. She killed her intentionally. I’ll bet you anything that Mina Beth was begging for her life.”

  “Damn,” Starnes said as she walked back towards her office and left me kneeling on the floor by the restroom door.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Come on,” Starnes said to me as she removed a 9mm Glock from the desk drawer and put a tag on it. “I need to take this to Asheville for a ballistics test. I assume you’d rather ride than hang around here.”

  “Riding is good.”

  “I’ll grab an envelope from the back room and meet you at the car,” she said.

  I had a thought.

  “May I see that?” I said.

  Starnes handed me the Glock with her thumb and index finger gripping the end of the barrel.

  “Where’s the casing?”

  “Don’t know,” Starnes said.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?” I said.

  “It wasn’t back at the scene of the shooting, so I assumed that Slater picked it up, or someone else picked it up.”

  I smelled the gun.

  “It hasn’t been fired.”

  “What?” Starnes said.

  “This weapon has not been fired recently. This was not the gun used in the shooting.”

  Starnes removed a small plastic bag from her coat pocket, held it up to examine the slug which she had placed in the bag earlier.

  “This is definitely a 9mm slug,” she said. Then suddenly, Starnes walked back to her desk, opened the bottom right hand drawer and removed a large manila envelope. She dumped the contents on the desk. I walked over to her to get a closer look at what she was doing.

  She held up a slug from the manila envelope and the one housed in the plastic bag. She stared at both of them for several minutes. Then she handed me the two items.

  I put the slug next to the plastic bag so as to allow a closer inspection of the two slugs. As far as I could tell, the markings on the two slugs appeared to be the same. We would need a microscope to get a positive ID match.

  “The Luger,” Starnes said pointing her index finger to her right temple and making a shooting sound. “I’ve been snookered.”

  “Snookered?”

  “Hoodwinked,” she said.

  “How I miss the good old days when language was zesty and colorful.”

  “Duped, conned, taken-in, deceived, tricked, lied to … damnation,” Starnes said as she slammed the two slugs on her desk without releasing them from her hands.

  “It could’ve happened to anyone,” I said to console her.

  “Yeah, but it happened to me. I’m the scientist. I’m the lab rat, the technician … it is not supposed to happen to me. I’m the careful one. You did the crime scene stuff that I do. I don’t like this end of the job.” She pointed to the desk and the large pile of paperwork.

  “Nobody likes this end of the job, I suspect. But it has to be done.”

  “You suspected something,” she said as she sat down.

  “I always suspect something. I trust no one.”

  “But this was a deputy, a law enforcement official.”

  “Yeah, they kill people too.”

  “Protect and serve.”

  “Good mo
tto.”

  “Not if it doesn’t mean anything to the person who pledges it.”

  “That’s true in any profession.”

  “Damn. I’m sick.”

  “No consolation that Mina Beth likely killed Abel and perhaps even Betty Jo?”

  “Not for Abel.”

  “You told me Mina Beth would have gotten off, that good lawyer stuff. Remember?”

  “Doesn’t mean I wanted her executed.”

  “No, it doesn’t mean that. But sometimes justice has a twisted logic to it.”

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s go to Asheville. We need some verification. You might bring the Luger along just in case you want to have it tested again.”

  We were eating lunch in the Silver Spoon in downtown Asheville. Starnes was using her fork to move her Greek Salad around on the plate giving the appearance of eating while actually doing nothing but exercising her right hand with the fork. I was enjoying my Chef’s Salad and crackers. We were waiting on the results of the ballistic test since Starnes had asked them to do a rush job because of what she suspected as well as the events of the last few days.

  Rogers called and interrupted my salad fare.

  “Whatcha got?” I said.

  “A connection.”

  “Go.”

  “Sally Slater is a daughter to Eden Ramsey Ramsey.”

  “Ramsey Ramsey,” I repeated to be sure she had meant to say the name twice.

  “Yes, Eden Ramsey married Lamech Ramsey, of different clans. One from McAdams County and the other from Yancey County. Anyhow, Eden Ramsey is a first cousin to Evelyn Briggs Gosnell. Are you with me so far?”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Eden was raised by Evelyn’s parents when Eden’s parents, Garrett and Martha Ray, both died of pneumonia in 1948. Anyhow, do the math. Eden and Evelyn Gosnell are first cousins. Sally Ramsey Slater is a first cousin once removed to Evelyn and a second cousin to her children, Cain, Abel, and Adah Mae Carter. Adah Mae died in infancy.”

  “Good research.”

  “Of course. Anything happening on your end?” Rogers said.

  I used my official voice as if I was dictating the recent developments of the case.

  “Entering the recent data into my log on the computer,” I said to Starnes as I held my right palm over the small microphone in my cell.

  “Your computer calls you automatically?” she asked.

  “Only when I have asked the computer to check on something and then report back,” I explained.

  “Heck’ofa program you have there,” Starnes said.

  I nodded and continued to dictate the facts of our recent experiences.

  “You want my opinion?” Rogers said.

  “Go for it.”

  “Sally killed Mina Beth for family reasons. Used to be called blood vengeance.”

  “Yeah, I got that. But which family member?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “Point taken. You have a guess about which family member?”

  “I don’t guess. I go where the data takes me. My money would be on Evelyn because of what her parents had done for Sally’s mother, Eden, years ago.”

  “Rather than doing it for Evelyn’s children, especially Cain and Abel?” I said.

  “Yes, that would be my reasoning. I have found no strong connection between Sally Slater and her second cousins, the Gosnell siblings. My money’s on cousin Evelyn.”

  “But as you say, what difference does it make,” I repeated.

  “Well, it might make a difference as to where Sally would go and hide.”

  “Sometimes you are a very ....” I stopped in mid-sentence. I could only imagine what Starnes was thinking as she listened to my end of the conversation.

  “End of report,” I said and closed my phone.

  “You know,” Starnes said, “you have a strange relationship with your computer.”

  I told her what Rogers had found in her research.

  “I didn’t know any of that,” she confessed.

  “Didn’t show up in the background search, huh?”

  “Don’t usually do a family genealogical file on deputies. Generally it goes word of mouth, you know, Old Tom is kin to Ralph. That sort of thing.”

  “Apparently the cousins, Sally and the Gosnell brothers were not close,” I said.

  “Never heard a word from anyone about them being associated,” Starnes added.

  We left the restaurant and headed back over to the lab.

  “There’s no answer at Sally Slater’s house,” she said as she closed her cell phone.

  “You expect her to hang around after she has assassinated a prisoner?” I said.

  “Interesting word you use there.”

  “Would you call it something else?” I said.

  “Reciprocity comes to mind.”

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  There were no surprises from the ballistics report for the slugs and the two guns involved. The slugs were a dead match since both came from the same gun. There was sufficient identical rifling so that there was no doubt the same weapon killed both Abel and Betty Jo. The one slight surprise was that the same gun also killed Mina Beth Cody. Instead of using her own official weapon, Deputy Slater had taken one of the Lugers from our evidence locker and used it. Some might call it poetic justice that Mina Beth died from the same weapon she had used to murder two others. I saw no poetry in her death. As far as the justice was concerned, it appeared to be a bit skewed for my taste.

  Paul Slater returned one of Starnes Carver’s many calls and left-messages as we were walking out of the Sheriff’s Office in downtown Madison. He told her that Sally had left him a note two days ago telling him that she was sorry to leave, sorry that she had to take their vacation savings, and sorry about putting him through all of this mess. She told him she loved him at the end of the note. Starnes said that Paul sounded a bit pathetic.

  “Why didn’t he call yesterday and tell you all of this?”

  “Said he couldn’t believe it at first, and then when he thought about it some more, decided that he would go looking for her. Said he drove to every spot he could think of where she might be holding up. No luck.”

  “Gone, but not forgotten.”

  “She’ll turn up sooner or later. They all do.”

  “Now and then one or two slip through the cracks, you know.”

  “She’s not that smart,” Starnes said.

  “Don’t always have to be smart to get away with murder. Sometimes you just have to be lucky, and keep your mouth shut. And get away.”

  “Well, Sally can at least keep her mouth shut. Not sure about that luck factor.”

  “You gonna look for her?” I asked.

  “Got one or two places I wanna go check, but I’m not going to waste too much time on this.”

  “Your constituents might prefer otherwise.”

  “You’re kidding, right. I’d say that the majority of my constituents think that she’s some kind of hero,” Starnes said.

  “I doubt if Ezekiel Elijah Cody and his political allies think that way.”

  “Yeah, I reckon I owe it to them to search diligently. I’m really tired of all this.”

  “It gets that way sometimes. That’s why perseverance is an attribute.”

  “How many more people will die from those damn German Lugers?” Starnes asked as she closed the office door behind us and we headed to her Escort and to home.

  I had no answer for her, so I kept quiet and allowed her question to become rhetorical.

  After we had supper, Starnes put on her coat and headed towards the front door.

  “You leaving me again?” I said.

  “You can come along. I’ve got two stops.”

  “I can guess one, where else are you going?” I said.

  “How on earth can you guess where I am headed?”

  “Intuition.”

  “So tell me, O Swami, where is it I’m going?”

  “Probably headed out to see
Adam and Evelyn up at Spillcorn. I must say it’s a heck of a time to drive in that direction, but knowing you and your mountain blood, that’s one of the two spots.”

  “Okay, lucky guess. I am going there, maybe not tonight, but I’d like to go there and check with them.”

  “You mean go there and check if Sally is hiding somewhere close by.”

  “Unless she left the county completely, it would be a good spot to hide out for a few years,” Starnes said.

  “As to the other place you are headed, I have a hunch, not a guess, just a wild notion that you are going back to see that strange old woman, Josephine Starling.”

  “You think you’re so smart.”

  “I try.”

  We took Sam with us as we headed out. Our first stop was Aunt Jo’s and her mountain medicine regimen. I figured that Starnes wanted the future foretold and Aunt Jo was the one who could come closest to that. Since the days were getting longer and the time had recently changed due to the government’s daylight savings program, we still had some shadowy sunlight as we walked up to Aunt Jo’s place in the hollow.

  The door opened suddenly while Starnes was still knocking.

  “Been expecting you,” she said as she gestured for us to enter.

  We sat down and Aunt Jo left us for a moment or so. She returned quickly with some hot tea already poured, ready to drink.

  “Daytime mixture. Some jasmine and other good spices to stimulate the senses,” she said. “Now, you found your murderess, so why do you need me?”

  “You don’t know?” Starnes said.

  “I didn’t say that. It is simply good for you to tell me why you have come.”

  “I want the killing to stop,” Starnes said rather innocently.

  “The killing won’t ever stop, child. Perhaps you need to change your line of work so you won’t be exposed to it as often.”

  “If I read the papers or watch the evening news, I’m exposed to it. At least this way I get to make a dent in it, or try to. It’s what I do. I simply don’t like all of the killings.”

  Starnes sounded a lot like me. Perhaps my feelings were beginning to rub off.

  “No one in her right mind likes the killings, child. Just remember that you are part of the solution in the long run of things.”