When Blood Cries Read online

  When Blood Cries:

  A Clancy Evans Mystery

  M. Glenn Graves

  Kindle Edition

  © Copyright 2015 M. Glenn Graves (as revised)

  Wolfpack Publishing

  6032 Wheat Penny Avenue

  Las Vegas, NV 89122

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced by any means without the prior written

  consent of the publisher, other than brief quotes for reviews.

  ISBN: 978-1-64119-894-3

  To my love, my friend… Cindy

  Table of Contents:

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  About the Author

  And in process of time it came to pass,

  that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground

  an offering unto the Lord. And Abel,

  he also brought of the firstlings of his flock

  and of the fat thereof. And the Lord

  had respect unto Abel and to his offering:

  But unto Cain and to his offering he had

  not respect. And Cain was very wroth,

  and his countenance fell. – Genesis 4:3-5,

  King James Version

  Chapter One

  Thomas J. Wineski and I were traveling west from Norfolk on Highway 58 across the bottom of the state of Virginia. He was driving because he insisted the only way he would permit me to go with him was to let him drive. Sam the Wonder Dog normally accompanied me on these adventures, or Rosey, my long-time friend from childhood. Rosey was off somewhere in the terrain of Eastern Europe doing some clandestine operation for some unnamed alphabet agency of the United States government. His manifold skills and military training made him an ideal contractual client for the military, paramilitary, and agencies in need of his wondrous talents. His abilities were generally more than I needed in my casework as a detective, but I manage to overlook his excessive attributes and easily force myself to find solace with him as a travel companion, to say nothing of a well-trained body guard.

  One of Rosey’s unusual skills was in the field of languages. He received an advanced degree from Oxford focusing upon English, but somehow in his spare time there he managed to study and master several more languages. I was never certain as to the exact count, but I knew it was somewhere north of seven.

  Sam was not making this trip because attending funerals was not a priority for him. Likewise, Rosey was glad that he was elsewhere in the world and not part of this trip although he did not know that. That is to say, Roosevelt Drexel Washington would be glad he had chosen to work for Uncle Sam had he been around to invite on this mission.

  It was at this moment in the ride across Virginia that I missed Rosey’s conversational skills in light of my present company. Likewise, Sam was a better conversationalist than my present companion was. Wineski minced words, and when he did speak, it was abrupt. He possessed the social delicacies of a hippopotamus in an antique shop. We had worked together on the Norfolk Police force in another life. He had been my boss once upon a time. He was still very much a friend.

  “Where’s the dog?” Wineski said and surprised me. It was his first utterance since we had left the Tidewater area. We passed a sign that informed us that the city of South Boston was approaching.

  “Neighbor is keeping him.”

  “Neighbor must like you.”

  “Wendell likes dogs. Well … that might be an overstatement. Wendell likes Sam,” I said.

  “Wendell?”

  “Wendell Sparks. Former US Postal Worker. Walked a beat delivering through rain, sleet, and snow. Never bitten.”

  “Impressive. Sunshine as well?”

  “Pardon?”

  “You said ‘rain, sleet, and snow.’ I assume he worked in sunshine as well.”

  “Your attempt at humor?” I said.

  “It surfaces at odd moments. Where’s your friend Washington?”

  Wow. Two questions inside of a minute. Wineski was on a roll.

  “Don’t know.”

  “This side of the Atlantic or the other?”

  “Somewhere in Europe, but I have no idea the longitude and latitude,” I said.

  “Gets around,” he grunted.

  “Yeah.”

  I was having a hard time mustering any conversation myself. Wineski and I had known each other for years, but we did not share intimate secrets regarding our lives. Our points of contact in recent years have been working murder cases together upon occasion. He was the official side and I was the private investigator he called in to assist. Friends forever.

  Our trip to the mountains of western North Carolina was the first one I could ever remember that was not related to a crime. We had a mutual friend who had just lost her mother. We were headed to the funeral somewhere north of Asheville. After my experience in the Virginia highlands a few months ago, I was not too excited about returning to any mountainous terrain.

  “Starnes give much notice of leaving?” I said.

  “A month.”

  “She working?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “Seems a shame. She’s the best with a crime scene.”

  “Hell, Starnes is good at anything she does. She’d be a helluva street cop if she’d quit that detail crap.”

  “You guys need that detail crap,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  “How old was her mother?”

  “Don’t know,” Wineski said.

  “You’re a bundle of information.”

  “Here,” he said without taking his eyes off the road while he shoved a file folder in my direction. “Read that. It’ll answer your questions.”

  I took the folder and found a hastily cut-out obituary plus some details about McAdams County, North Carolina. There was another sheet that gave some specifics on Madison, the county seat of McAdams. There were two or three pages of maps downloaded from the internet.

  “You always prepare for funerals this way?”

  “Habit. Can’t help it.”

  I read the obituary. Nadine Carver died on October 16th. If she had lived until October 30th, she would have been seventy-two. She was survived by her husba
nd, Spud Carver, of the home. It didn’t say how old he was. She was also survived by a daughter, Starnes Carver, formerly of Norfolk, Virginia, and now of the home. No other siblings were listed. There was a sentence about some cousins, aunts and uncles, but no names appeared in the paper. It did say that Nadine Carver was a loving wife to Spud for fifty-four years. Some quick math informed me that she married as a teenager. She was a member of the Piney Ridge Community Church where she taught Sunday school and worked in the nursery for more than forty years. Nadine no doubt had her faults, but disloyalty was not one of them.

  “Learn anything?” Wineski broke into my silent reading.

  “Yeah. Starnes had a good mother on paper.”

  “Many look good on paper.”

  “Not in our line of work.”

  “Dead-on.”

  “How long has Starnes been gone from the Norfolk squad?” I said.

  “Close to six months.”

  “You miss her?”

  “Everybody can be replaced.”

  “Not what I asked.”

  “I know what you asked. She did good work.”

  “Would you take her back if she changed her mind?”

  “In a heart beat, but she ain’t gonna change her mind. Her father’s been diagnosed with advancing Alzheimer’s. Her pain is just getting started.”

  “Sounds like you have some experience,” I said.

  “I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “How much further?”

  “Sound like one of my kids,” Wineski snapped.

  “Just a question.”

  “We’ll stop in Asheville and spend the night since we got a late start.”

  I opened the file he had handed me earlier and took out one of the maps. I estimated our location based on my faint memory of South Boston. I estimated that we had another six or so hours to travel before reaching Asheville. Give or take Wineski’s speed.

  “I’m hungry,” I said.

  “And the potty,” he said.

  “Now that you mention it. Why don’t we stop and take a break from driving?”

  “We’ll stop when we get into North Carolina. Winston-Salem is a good place to eat and tinkle.”

  “It’s your car,” I said with a hint of a womanly threat.

  “Yeah, and don’t you forget that…. hey, what do you mean by that?”

  “If I wet on the seat, it’s not my fault,” I said trying to keep a straight face. It was easy. Years of practice with my adversarial mother. It is in fact an ongoing practice of sorts.

  Wineski pulled the car over onto the shoulder and slammed on the brakes. He pointed to the woods on the other side of the ravine by the road.

  “Really know how to show a girl a good time,” I said as I climbed out of the car to answer the now urgent call. Funny how that occurs when somebody just mentions the notion.

  Chapter Two

  Despite the maps Wineski had downloaded, the written directions from Starnes, and the assurance of Wineski that he knew where he was going, we got lost somewhere north of Asheville the next day. McAdams County is a large county with lots of unpaved roads veering off in all directions from the paved ones. Many of the churches in the county are unfortunately located on the unpaved roads. They’re also on top of knolls, hills, mountains, and hidden meadows which happen to be remote. The settings are quite lovely, even beautiful. One could even call them idyllic. They are definitely pastoral and remote. A wrong turn here and there, and the next thing you know you are bewildered. Bewildered is a fancy word which I often use to mean lost. Welcome to rural America, mountain style.

  The funeral was to begin at eleven. We arrived at 11:30 which is nothing short of a miracle considering just how bewildered we were.

  The Piney Ridge Community Church was a white-framed wooden structure with a steeple. Inside the open steeple was a bell. I imagine that there was a long rope that hung from the bell into the foyer where kids were chastised more than once for ringing the thing. The church where I was coerced in attending in my hometown of Clancyville, Virginia had no such rope hanging in the foyer. I would have been bound to ring it had it been there.

  Small would be an exaggeration to describe the Piney Ridge structure. It would seat about 50 people if you packed them in like sardines. I can’t state that with severe confidence since Wineski and I never made inside to see firsthand. I was judging the size of the smallness from the outside of the quaint structure.

  Starnes Carver was standing outside near the steps smoking an unfiltered cigarette. I was impressed but only a little. Takes guts, courage, and a death wish to smoke those things. She appeared to be frazzled, but then with Starnes it was often difficult to distinguish a frazzled demeanor from her usual mood. We had worked together on several cases. She was a female version of Wineski. I could ponder with amusement what a marital relationship between the two of them would resemble. The Hundred Years War comes to mind.

  “Sorry we’re late,” I said as we walked up to her.

  “Not important. Glad you came.”

  “You out here waiting on us?” Wineski said.

  “No. Got tired of listening to the preacher.”

  “I thought that was the idea with a funeral,” Wineski said.

  “He’s one of three. We’ll be here a while.”

  “Which one of the three?” I said.

  “Numero uno,” she said as she took a long drag and then flung the butt to the ground.

  “I take it your mother was popular in the community and the church,” I said.

  “My mother was an institutional saint. She did whatever needed to be done in this church. They used and abused her. I think they wore her out, if you ask my opinion. I don’t care for church work. Too many martyrs, too many demands, too much pretense,” Starnes said and then lit another unfiltered cigarette. Lady had cast iron lungs along with her bad habit.

  “Should we go inside?” I asked.

  “Only if you’re a masochist,” she answered.

  “Won’t the people be expecting you to be in here for this?” Wineski said.

  I was thinking the same but afraid to ask.

  “I don’t give a damn what they expect or what they think. My mom’s dead and I want to bury her body. I don’t need all this external crap that goes with dying. Makes me sick.”

  “You want to go somewhere?” I said.

  “Can’t really. I have to stay here and wait on the eternal homilies to hopefully end before the rapture and then take my father home. He’s inside practicing endurance.”

  “And the burial?”

  “Up the back hillside at our place. Family plot up there. We’ll have some men in the community carry the casket to the gravesite. I have a cousin who will say a few words over Momma. He’ll be brief. Thank God for small favors.”

  Seemingly from nowhere an older woman appeared and approached our little group of misfits. Starnes looked up and smiled.

  “Hello Aunt Jo,” Starnes said.

  “Hello, child. You okay?” she asked her.

  “I’ll make it,” Starnes said as the woman took her hand and gently stroked it.

  “You will, indeed,” she said. “Don’t fret too much. Nadine is in good hands.”

  “Thank you, Jo.”

  The old woman moved off and vanished from our sight. Starnes took out another cigarette, lit it and inhaled a few drags without speaking. A crutch. I hadn’t noticed that she had finished the one she had lit moments earlier. I couldn’t be for certain that she was smoking them. She might have just been lighting, puffing a little, and then throwing them away.

  Wineski joined Starnes by lighting up his own brand. I tried to remain upwind from them so as not to contract cancer while standing outside of the church house. The three of us were silent for a long time. There wasn’t much to say, just a lot of sadness I could feel coming from Starnes despite her hard core disposition and the nicotine ambience. Losing a mother, like losing a father, is tough on the spirit.

  �
�Relative of yours?” I asked as I nodded in the direction the old woman who had just left us.

  “Old friend of mine.”

  Starnes Carver was not an emotional woman. She was an excellent crime scene technician. Details were her thing. Her by-the-book, type-A personality lent itself to the profession she had chosen years ago. Still young, somewhere shy of forty, I was guessing, she was attractive in a no-holes-barred kind of way. Not that she tried to hide the fact she was a woman, she just wore the kind of clothes that did a good job of hiding the fact that she was feminine. Her goals in life were to do her job and do it well. Finding a man and getting married was probably not on her to-do list. I would think that many men would find her abrasiveness threatening, to say nothing of her intellect. She also lacked the skill of backing down.

  My evaluation of my friend caught up with my brain quickly. She reminded me of me.

  Her abrupt demeanor added to the by-the-book style of work made her less than adorable. In fact, in Norfolk she had few friends except for Wineski and me. Most folks did not like her overly candid deportment when it came to crime scene investigations, or to general conversations.

  Carver was also an excellent police officer before she took the road of forensic evidence gathering. Wineski once told me that she was a marksman with a pistol. He said she could shoot the eye out of a squirrel at a hundred yards. I never was sure just how he knew that since most of the pistol qualifying was done with a target outline of a person rather than a squirrel. Embellished metaphorical language no doubt.

  The church bell rang suddenly and startled me. Wineski and Starnes threw what was left of their third or fourth cigarette off to the side of the church steps among the few hundred others cast there long before we had arrived. The doors opened and a man in a black suit that didn’t fit him too well came down the steps in front of the casket. Starnes walked around the casket and took the arm of an elderly man I assumed to be her father. Two or three people followed close behind them. I figured that they were some kinfolks.

  Judging from Starnes previous remarks, I assumed that the other two preachers ran out of things to say. Early dismissal.