“What’s usual?” I said and smiled.
“She didn’t say anything about that.”
Starnes didn’t return my smile.
“I’m not asking Mandy. I’m asking you.”
“Forty pounds would be a normal size around these hills,” she said.
“We talkin’ coyote here?”
“Probably.”
“Other option would be a wild dog?”
“Yeah, but….” Starnes stopped and took the report back.
“But what?”
“I’m betting that this killer is not a dog,” Starnes said.
“Not a wild dog, you mean.”
“Yeah, that too. Most wild dogs are on the smallish side since food is in short supply. Hard to grow when you don’t eat much, or regularly.”
“Mandy share anything else worth mentioning?”
“She thinks our creature is a large coyote.”
“And you agree?”
“Until I have more information, yeah, it’s a good … hypothesis.”
“Since scientists don’t guess, right?”
“Working theory, nothing more.”
10
I rode with Starnes to the lab in Asheville in her red truck. It was warm enough, she said, for the dogs to ride in the back. She also said it made us look rural and local to have two dogs in a beat-up red truck driving around Asheville. I could live a long time without that image, but, it was her idea, her gas, and I wanted to meet Mandy. Besides all that, Sam loved to ride in a truck. Even in the back. Must be a dog-thing.
“But you are local,” I said in deference to her image-thing.
“True. But then, you’re not.”
I think the discussion ended there.
Mandy Schuler was just the way Starnes had described her to me on our trip from McAdams County to Buncombe County—a bouncy, petite brunette with black eyes and way too much energy for me.
“The ME sent over that femur you sent a couple of weeks or so back. I worked it alongside of the fragments you delivered to me last week. They all belong together.”
“I suspected as much,” Starnes said.
“I talked to your sheriff this morning, Miss Carver, and he wasn’t happy at all when I sent him the report on the bones,” she said as we followed her into the lab room where she examined items which were brought to her attention.
“I imagine not,” Starnes said.
I gestured to Starnes with my palms facing up. My sign language for not knowing what was going on. I was in the dark as usual.
“I’ll tell you later,” Starnes whispered.
Mandy opened one of the plastic bags that Starnes had brought from our most recent discovery. It contained one of the larger bones. I was guessing one of the arm bones. Skeletal names and placement is not one of my strong suits.
“Oh, my,” Mandy said as she held up the bone in both of her gloved hands, “this has some definite markings on it.”
She studied it closely while ignoring us.
“Maybe more than markings,” she quickly added and took a small knife-like instrument and scraped something from the bone. “I’ll send this to trace.”
“You have separate departments now?” Starnes said.
“Oh, no. Just that we have a new person working an internship and he needs the practice on studying this type of trace evidence whenever it comes in.”
We watched Mandy open a drawer, take out a small tube, and drop the tiny trace from the blade scrapings of the knife-instrument into the vial. She attached a red lid to the top and left us alone in the room.
“Is this a good idea to leave someone like us alone in this room with evidence?” I said.
“I think she can trust us,” Starnes said.
“Not my point.”
“You watch too much television.”
“I don’t watch television,” I countered.
“So what are you worried about?”
“I think it’s called the chain of evidence, or something like that.”
“Where do you get these ideas if not from television shows?”
“I read a lot.”
“Oh,” Starnes said and wanted to say more, but Mandy had returned and was followed by a gangly young man wearing large, dark-rimmed glasses. He appeared to be well over six feet tall with a face full of freckles. He sported a head full of dark red hair that he bound together at the back of his head into a pony tail. He had two earrings on his left ear and a nose ring. He nodded at us without smiling. An image of a Washington Irving character came to mind. I let it pass without comment.
“This is Freddy. I wanted to show him from where the trace had come and that we likely had much more for him this time,” Mandy said as she pointed to the several bags along with the one exposed bone sitting on her metal table.
“Holy Moley,” Freddie said in a high-pitched voice that was not altogether pleasing on the ears. “That’s a small femur.”
“Femur?” I said. At least I knew that was the name of the large bone that connected the pelvic region to the lower leg.
“Bet you thought it was a humerus,” Mandy said.
“Took the word right out of my mouth,” I lied.
Starnes cut a glance at me knowing that my knowledge of bone structure was severely limited. I was certain that her knowledge of my knowledge of any skeleton was understated.
“Your victim here was a short man,” Mandy said.
“Less than five feet eight inches,” Freddie said as he took a tape measure out of his white lab coat and measured the bone carefully without touching it. “Unless the tibia is unusually lengthy, then this person was about five feet tall.”
I watched Freddie scan the table full of plastic bags and bones. He appeared to be searching for something.
“Ah ha,” he said finally and grabbed a plastic bag.
“Stop!” Mandy said to him abruptly. “Put on some gloves.”
“Yikes cripes!” he said in his nearly falsetto voice which was still irritating. “Glad you reminded me.”
We watched Freddie put on his gloves, open a plastic bag, and remove a bone. He measured it, again without allowing the tape to touch the bone.
“Like I said,” he looked at Mandy briefly and then returned his eyes to the bone in front of him, “shorty pants, he was. Barely five feet tall. Who was he?”
Mandy looked at us.
“That’s your job,” Starnes said. “You guys tell us who he was.”
“Might need more to go on, like you gave me last time on Mr. Rufus Ramsey,” Mandy said rapidly.
“We got nothing this time. Found a body off a trail on the mountain behind my house. I have no idea… wait a minute,” Starnes said interrupting herself, “We have a clue. Let me know when you have something for me.”
She walked out of the lab room rapidly without another word. I looked at Freddie and Mandy and shrugged. They said nothing. I smiled as awkwardly. That was easy for me. The awkward silence among us did not last long.
“Holey moley, I better go with her. She’s driving and might be leaving me,” I said.
“I need more information,” Mandy called after me as I left the room. I raised my arm and waved it without looking back as I departed.
11
Instead of going back to Starnes’ house, she drove us to Madison, the county seat of McAdams County.
“Might as well go face the music,” she said finally after she had driven more than fifteen minutes from Asheville.
“The sheriff thing,” I said.
“Yeah. I sort of forgot to tell him we were investigating some bones we had found.”
“Sort of.”
“Well, I sort of forgot because I didn’t want him to know that Dog and Sam had retrieved these bones and brought them to us.”
“Think he might be a tad suspicious of our animals and their intent?”
She smiled faintly and drove on several more minutes in silence.
“That and the tampering with evidence thing
,” Starnes said.
“He might think that the teeth marks were made by Sam or Dog or both.”
“Yeah, something like that. But, you know me. I ruled them out already. Compared their teeth, their markings, and measured. Did the whole nine yards on eliminating our dogs from being the criminals here.”
I knew her well enough that I wasn’t surprised with her carefulness.
“So what’s the clue?” I said.
“Randall Lee Carter.”
“Yeah, I would have thought of him too.”
She shook her head in mild disapproval of my sarcasm, sighed, and then told me what she was thinking.
“Randall Lee lives on the backside of my mountain. Close to Tennessee, in fact, I think that’s where his family came from years back. They have a small place. Large family. Randall Lee is the one oddity of the whole clan.”
“How so?” I said.
“Father must be at least six feet five inches or so. Tall dude, as in very. Mother is tall, but a few inches under your height. They have a passel of kids, girls and boys.”
“And this Randall Lee?”
“Fits somewhere in there, middle maybe.”
“Randall Lee is a youngster,” I said, trying to follow her mountain-ish description of things.
“No, no. Randall Lee is somewhere in his late thirties, early forties perhaps. I’m not sure. I think he’s near my age, maybe a year or two behind me.”
“Ah, ha,” I said.
“Ah ha, what?”
“You’re close to forty.”
“Did I say that?”
“No, but you said you were older than Randall Lee and that he was pushing his late thirties pretty hard.”
“Did I say that?” her tone changed as if trying to avoid my subject.
“Yeah, you sort of said that.”
“You changed the subject. Randall Lee is short.”
“Oh. How short?”
“Barely five feet tall, if that.”
“And the rest of the family?”
“Could’ve played basketball for UT, UNC, or NC State?”
“And Boston University?”
“Too far north. Clan wouldn’t have tolerated their children playing with those Yankees up there.”
“So other than the Carter Clan’s proximity to the place where we found the bones, what makes Randall Lee such a good clue?” I said.
“Didn’t say he was a good clue, just a clue. Speaking of clues, I need to clue you in to my adversarial relationship with the sheriff of McAdams County.”
“I thought he hired you to help out.”
“He retained my expertise, but did so reluctantly. Political pressure from his party.”
“Your party?”
“Yeah, but only in name. Anyhow, I was hired by the County Commissioners to fill in for him while he was convalescing a few years back.”
“I recall.”
“Yeah, I bet you do. Anyhow, after he recovered, he felt threatened by me and he wanted to fire me, but the party said no. So, he offered me a job, sort of an adjunctive function where I could help out now and then on cases that involved crime scene analysis and the like.”
“Right up your alley.”
“In a manner of speaking, but, funny thing about those crime scene calls,” Starnes said as we entered the small town of Madison located alongside the French Broad River.
“Few and far between,” I summarized.
“Almost non-existent. Few and far between would be an extravagant embellishment and highly overstated.”
“You like him a lot, do you?”
She shook her head and said nothing else until we parked in front of the jail.
“I tolerate him and he hates my guts.”
“So not keeping him in the loop on this investigation is not a good thing.”
“My only salvation is that he cannot fire me. The commissioners made that clear to him when he pushed through the adjunctive status of my hiring. They allowed it, but told him that he had to retain me. I was simply too valuable to let go.”
“Wow. Power in high places.”
“Who you know and what party you align yourself with.”
“The rules of survival don’t seem to change much.”
“Probably never will,” Starnes said.
12
Buster Mabry Murdock had been the sheriff of McAdams County for more than ten years. He was well into his prime, and, as far as doing actual police work, some would have stated quite frankly he had passed it. Since I didn’t know the man, I had no opinion. Starnes had not yet offered an opinion as to his law enforcement skills or to his managerial acumen as the head honcho with people to manage in the sheriff’s office.
I only knew a good sheriff when he or she came across my radar simply because of my past experience. My father was the best ever, but then, that opinion would likely be one that was formed due to my relationship and love for the man who had paid the supreme sacrifice while serving the good and bad people of Pitt County, Virginia. Added to the fact that my father taught me much of what I know about investigations, I think his skill set would hold up quite well under the most rigorous scrutiny. But then, as I confess, I am severely prejudiced in this opinionated evaluation. Still, when I measured others against my father’s abilities, most folks failed to come close.
We walked into BM’s office which was an inner office just off to the right from what might be referred to as the outer office. I can get technical when I need to.
First thing I noticed was that Buster did not stand when we walked into his inner sanctum. He looked up from the papers he was holding as if reading and then leaned back. His portly upper torso was large enough to stretch the buttons on his white shirt and reveal unnecessarily the fact that he was not wearing an undershirt. His badge had been pinned on crooked also.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he said in a condescending tone.
With my keen intuitive skill-set, I deduced that he was addressing Starnes, so I looked around for some place to sit and listen to the fallout. I figured that this was not going to be pretty, so I spotted a chair behind Starnes near the door. I sat down as quickly as I could. Two thoughts on that decision to sit near the door. One, I wanted to listen until he crossed the line with my friend. That would be fun to hear. Two, I could escape before his wrath came down on the likes of me.
Starnes stood her ground and seemed to relax, readying herself for the verbal reprimand sure to come next.
“No sense in bringing you into the thing before I had enough evidence to support my suspicions,” Starnes said without raising her voice or flinching.
He was seemingly taken aback by her calm, factual statement. One point for Starnes. Sheriff, zero.
“I need to be kept in the loop on all ongoing investigations,” Buster said.
“Your time is much too valuable for you to be chasing rabbits if they prove to be non-homicidal.”
“You found some damn bones in the county. Whoopin’ friggin’ do. We have bones all over these mountains.”
“True enough…and, that would be yet another reason not to bother you until I had something substantive.”
“You can’t go using county resources on all your wild goose chases.”
“Agreed.”
“Is that all you have to say for yourself?”
“What else do I need to say?”
“Why did you use county resources without asking me?”
“I didn’t.”
“I have a report on my desk from the lab in Asheville along with a bill for their work that proves otherwise.”
Starnes looked down at the papers in front of Buster. She evidently could read upside down, saw what she was looking for, and reached over his desk and removed a paper from his pile.
“What are you doing?” he said still with his patronizing tone.
“Taking that bill and making sure I pay for it,” she said as she folded the paper and put it in her shirt pocket. Starnes two, Sheri
ff Murdock still zero.
“You still were wasting county resources by wasting time as an employee of this office.”
“Not an employee of this office. County hired me on a contractual basis. You do recall that?”
It was now three-zip in favor of my friend. I was enjoying this.
“You should’ve been doin’ work I needed done.”
“You didn’t give me any work to do. Thought I’d chase those rabbits since the bones I found were human.”
“We got tons of human bones in these hills. We don’t go out and investigate every little pile of bones we come across.”
“They were fresh.”
“How you know that?”
“Crime lab report,” she said pointing to the papers on top of his desk, the ones he had been looking at when we entered his office.
Starnes was pitching a shutout and doing quite well.
I crossed my legs at the ankles and leaned back against the wall. I was enjoying this because I knew that Starnes could hold her own. I had seen her go up against the likes of Captain Thomas J. Wineski’s verbal diatribes in the Norfolk Police Station back when Starnes worked there and managed the crime lab. Wineski discovered early on in his relationship with Spud and Nadine Carter’s little girl Starnes, that she knew what she knew and you had better know what you were talking about before you drew swords on her.
“Okay, I read that. Report said that the bones belonged to Rufus Ramsey.”
“That was Mandy Shuler’s findings. I suspected it before I got that word from her,” Starnes said.
“How could you possibly suspect it?”
“Searched his cabin and discovered that Rufus hadn’t been home in several days. Checked that out as well. Talked with Hack Ponder where Rufus bought supplies. Hack allowed that Rufus hadn’t been around for several days. He was generally a regular at the old store. Made me suspicious.”
“And he was killed by some varmint in the woods as he was walking home one day. Surprise, surprise. We got wild animals that live in these mountains, woman. Don’t you know nothing?”
Outcast In Gray: A Clancy Evans Mystery (Clancy Evans PI Book 7) Page 6