by Bill Crider
There were still a few houses around Milsby, and people still lived in them. One of those people was Mrs. Wilkie, and she was waiting for Rhodes’s knock on her door.
“Are you all right?” she said, peering at him through the screen.
“I’m fine,” Rhodes said. “Just a little tussle with some ghosts.”
“Ghosts?”
“Never mind. Hack said you called in to report some motorcycles.”
“That’s right. I heard them again.”
The porch light made Mrs. Wilkie’s face look old and drawn. Rhodes wondered for a second what he looked like but decided he didn’t want to know. Judging from Mrs. Wilkie’s reaction on seeing him, the answer couldn’t be good.
“Where were they?” he asked.
“They went right past the house,” she said. “Why do they always come back here?”
Rhodes couldn’t tell her. He couldn’t figure it out, himself. If it was indeed Rapper and Nellie she’d heard, they never seemed to learn a thing from their experiences. He would have thought they’d set up in some other part of the county. But no. Here they were again.
Or maybe not. There was nothing to prove it had been them that Mrs. Wilkie had heard.
“I’ll have a look around,” Rhodes said. “I appreciate the call.”
Mrs. Wilkie smiled. “Would you like to come in for a cup of coffee?”
Rhodes didn’t drink coffee, not that he would have accepted the invitation even if he had. He said, “I’d better go look for those motorcycles.”
Mrs. Wilkie said that she understood. “I hope you find them.”
“Me, too,” Rhodes said, though he really wasn’t so sure. His previous encounters with Rapper hadn’t ended very well for either of them.
Rhodes drove around the Milsby area for a while, trying to remember which of the old farmhouses might be vacant but still in more or less good enough repair. It wouldn’t take much to make Rapper and Nellie comfortable, and in fact they’d lived in tents for their last stay in the county. It had been raining then, too, as Rhodes recalled, and he thought they might have learned enough from that experience to look for accommodations that were a little bit more resistant to the elements.
The first two houses Rhodes checked were dark and lonely. On the first, the roof had fallen into rooms and there were no windowpanes left. It might have been a comfortable home at one time, but no one would be living there again.
The second house had a roof but no floor. It was an old wooden structure built up on stone blocks, and something—termites, maybe—had destroyed the flooring. Rhodes stood by a window and played the flashlight beam over the place where the floor had been. On the rough ground there were a couple of trash heaps that hadn’t been made recently. A rat scuttled out of one of them and ran from under the house into the weedy field behind it.
The third house he checked had a light in the front windows. It looked like fluorescent light, though Rhodes doubted that there was any electricity running to the house.
Out in back of the house was a ramshackle chicken house built of corrugated tin. It was plenty big enough to hold a couple of motorcycles.
Rhodes stopped the car at the fence in front of the house and gave his light bar a short buzz. There was a brief whine from the siren, and red and blue and white light flickered over the dark exterior of the house.
Rhodes stepped out of the car. “Hello, the house,” he called.
There was no answer, but after a minute the door opened and someone limped out onto the front porch.
“Hello, Rapper,” Rhodes said.
Rhodes had no idea where Rapper had gotten his name. He’d had it long before the hip-hop nation had given the word its current meaning, and Rhodes was sure that Rapper couldn’t make a rhyme even if he were so inclined, which he most certainly never would be.
Rapper was short, not more than five-seven in his motorcycle boots, with a beer-barrel belly and graying hair that he combed straight back from his forehead in a sort of satanic V. As Rhodes was well aware, Rapper always avoided telling the truth if he could think of a plausible lie. Or even an implausible one.
“Good evening, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “Nice of you to come calling on us. Don’t you think so, Nellie?”
Rhodes could see Nellie standing behind Rapper in the doorway. The origin of Nellie’s name was as much a mystery to Rhodes as Rapper’s. Nellie was thin but fit, with slicked-back hair that Rhodes thought might have had a touch of Nice ’n Easy in it, or something similar, though he couldn’t be sure. No one of Rhodes’s acquaintance had seen Nellie buying hair coloring in Wal-Mart.
“We’re always glad to see our old friend the sheriff,” Rapper said, talking to Rhodes as much as to Nellie. “Why, if it weren’t for him, I might still be able to run a fast quarter mile on the track.” He held up his hand and showed off the fingers with the missing tips. “Or I might even still have all my fingers.”
Nellie grinned but didn’t say anything.
“If you’d stay out of Blacklin County, you wouldn’t get into so much trouble,” Rhodes told them. “It might be a good idea for you to leave now, before I have to arrest you for trespassing.”
“Now, that wouldn’t be very friendly, Sheriff,” Rapper said. “And you’d be making a big mistake. Nellie and I aren’t trespassing. Right, Nellie?”
“Not us,” Nellie said. “We’re as legal as the day is long, just the way we always are.”
Rhodes didn’t think that either of them had more than a nodding acquaintance with legality. He said, “You mean you’re paying rent on this house?”
“Didn’t I tell you the sheriff was a smart man, Nellie?” Rapper said. “Didn’t I tell you how sharp he was?”
“You sure did,” Nellie said. “He’s a regular Eckstine.”
“That’s Einstein,” Rapper said. “Eckstine was some old-time singer or something.”
“Oh,” Nellie said. “Well, I’ll bet the sheriff can sing, too. Ain’t that right, Sheriff?”
“You know I’m going to check up on that rental business,” Rhodes said, ignoring Nellie’s remarks.
“Oh, sure,” Rapper said. “We know that. We’d expect you to do that. That’s part of your job. You know who owns this old house?”
“This is the old Jenkins place,” Rhodes said. He wasn’t as good at this sort of thing as Hack was, but he did happen to know about this particular house. “The house belonged to Daniel Jenkins first and then to his son Joel. Belongs to Joel’s son Thomas now. Thomas lives in Houston.”
“Smart,” Nellie said. “Just like you told me, Rapper. Eckstine ain’t got nothing on him.”
“Einstein,” Rapper said.
“Whatever.”
“Yeah. Anyway, Sheriff, we got a rental agreement all signed and everything. We’ve leased this place for a month, and we’re gonna stay right here that whole time. Maybe do a little sightseeing, take a tour of the courthouse, you know the kind of thing.”
“That’s pretty funny, Rapper,” Rhodes said. “You should have your own TV show.”
“I thought you’d like it. Anyway, if that’s all you wanted to know from us, you might as well be moving along. Nellie and I, we were thinking about going to bed. It’s late, and we need our sleep if we’re gonna get up early to start seeing the sights.”
“You know a man named Ty Berry?” Rhodes asked.
“Ty Berry? Sounds familiar. Seems like we might’ve run across him the last time we were here for a visit. Why? He giving guided tours of the courthouse now?”
“Never mind. We still have some old charges against the two of you, attempted murder of a peace officer, little things like that. I’ll be back with a warrant tomorrow.”
“You come right ahead, Sheriff,” Rapper said. He smiled. “We’ve talked to a lawyer about our rights and all that, and you can arrest us if you want to. But we’ll be right back out here in our little rent-house before a cat can lick its ass. You do whatever you feel like you have to do, though.”
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Rhodes knew that Rapper was right. He could arrest them, and maybe even hold them for a while, but they’d be out in a few hours at the most.
“You’ve got a point,” he said. “Maybe I’d better just let you stay here where I can keep an eye on you. That way you might not get into so much trouble.”
“You’re not thinking of depriving us of any of our rights, are you?” Rapper asked.
“Not me,” Rhodes said. “I wouldn’t dream of it.” He started toward his car, then turned around. “You two enjoy your stay here in Blacklin County.”
“We will,” Rapper said. “You can count on that.”
Rhodes could feel Rapper’s eyes on his back all the way to the car.
14
RHODES WENT BACK TO THE JAIL AND WROTE OUT HIS reports. Hack was watching David Letterman on the little black and white TV set on his desk.
“I don’t much like it that Letterman’s stopped giving out that Top Ten list right at eleven o’clock,” Hack said. “You never can tell when he’s gonna do it now. It might be as late as eleven-twenty or so.”
Rhodes didn’t much care. He didn’t often get to watch Letterman. He took some arrest forms out of his desk drawer and got to work.
“All that’d be easier to do on a computer,” Hack said. “You have the form already right there in front of you, and you don’t have to do all the pencil work.”
Rhodes had so far resisted the lure of the computer, though Hack had taught him enough about one to make him comfortable with word processing. Sooner or later he’d have to learn even more, since he was contemplating buying a computer of his own, if only because the Internet would help him locate parts for the Edsel.
“You could be right,” he said. “I’ll talk to the commissioners about getting one for me and the deputies.”
“If you don’t solve Ty Berry’s murder, they won’t speak to you,” Hack said.
“You could be right about that, too. Did Ruth find anything in his pickup?”
“Not that she told me about. And Buddy didn’t find out a thing, either. His report should be on your desk with Ruth’s.”
Rhodes’s desk wasn’t exactly a model of neatness. He shuffled through the papers that covered it and located the deputies’ reports. Hack was right. They hadn’t learned a thing, though Ruth wasn’t through with the pickup yet.
“What about Dr. White?” Rhodes asked.
“He called about a half hour before you got here. Said he’d see you in the mornin’. You know what time it is?”
Rhodes looked over at Hack’s TV set, where Letterman was reading the Top Ten list for the evening.
“I’d guess around eleven-twenty,” he said.
“Pretty close to it. You oughta go on home. Maybe clean yourself up a little before Ivy sees you.”
Ivy was getting used to having Rhodes come in late, though she didn’t seem to like it much. And she particularly didn’t like it when he came in late and beaten up.
“I had a run-in with a tombstone,” Rhodes said.
“See any ghosts?”
“I’m not sure. I saw something.”
“Did it look like a ghost?”
“You mean like Casper?”
“If that’s what a ghost looks like, that’s what I mean.”
“It didn’t look like Caspar,” Rhodes said. “It didn’t look like much of anything. I was too far away from it, and it was moving fast.”
“A ghost would move fast, I guess, not havin’ much weight to slow it down. Be all right with you if Lawton tells the inmates that the ghost is hauntin’ the cemetery now instead of the jail? Sure would quiet things down around here if they thought that ghost was gone.”
“You think they’ll fall for that?” Rhodes asked.
“They’re in jail, ain’t they?” Hack said. “How smart can they be?”
“You might have a point there,” Rhodes admitted. “They’re no Eckstines.”
“Huh?” Hack said.
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. “You had to be there. Go ahead and give it a try.”
“Not me,” Hack said. “That’s Lawton’s job. Or maybe you should do it. It might be they’d take it better if it came from the sheriff.”
It was after lights-out, so Rhodes said, “I’ll do it in the morning.”
“Good enough,” Hack said.
When Rhodes arrived home, Yancey charged out of the kitchen, yapping and yipping. No burglar was ever going to get past him.
Rhodes went on into the living room, where Ivy was reading a romance novel: Wild Texas Wind.
Yancey trailed along behind, but he quit yapping when he saw Ivy, who held up the cover of the book so Rhodes could get a better look at it. Yancey wasn’t interested in the book at all. He turned around and went back to the kitchen.
“I might be wanting to file a lawsuit against that publisher,” Rhodes said. “It looks like they’ve taken a picture of my body and put some other guy’s face on it.”
“That ‘other guy’ is Terry Don Coslin,” Ivy said. “And I’ll bet you could strike a match on those pecs. You’ve heard of him, I’ll bet.”
Rhodes had to admit it. Terry Don Coslin was Blacklin County’s most famous resident. After graduating from Clearview High School ten years earlier, he’d gone to college in Dallas, where someone from a modeling agency had seen him. The rest was paperback history.
“His hair’s longer than I remember,” Rhodes said. “That’s what threw me off.”
“Sure. And guess who the book’s by.”
Rhodes looked at the cover again.
“Ashley Leigh,” he said.
“Guess again.”
“I don’t need to guess again. It says ‘Ashley Leigh’ right there on the front of the book.”
“Yes, but that’s not her real name. So guess again.”
“Not Vernell Lindsey,” Rhodes said.
“You got it.” Ivy smiled. “She’s finally made the big time.”
Vernell was a friend of Ivy’s, and she had been writing romance novels for as long as Rhodes could remember. She must have written twenty or thirty. She went to conferences all over the country to meet other writers and editors. But as far as Rhodes knew, she’d never actually sold anything.
“Are you sure?”
“Of course I’m sure. She brought it by after you dropped me off. She was so proud I thought she’d pop. She’s been disappointed so many times, she didn’t want to tell anyone she’d sold it until she had the actual book in her hands. And now here it is.”
“Well, good for her,” Rhodes said. “How is it?”
He was looking at the cover more closely. Terry Don Coslin was holding a woman with hair even longer than his own in a position that looked to Rhodes to be a bit awkward for both of them. But it had the advantage of exposing a considerable length of the woman’s legs. And her low-cut dress exposed a considerable portion of the rest of her.
“It’s great,” Ivy said. “Oh, I know the cover’s kind of hot, but the book’s nothing like that. Vernell’s a real student of Texas history, and the book’s very accurate as far as I can tell.”
“Didn’t Terry Don Coslin change his name, too?” Rhodes asked.
“Not really. He just dropped the Coslin off. He’s Terry Don now.”
“I wonder if I could get me a job holding pretty women like that for money,” Rhodes said.
Ivy got out of the chair, dropped the book in it, and started toward Rhodes.
“I don’t think I’ll allow that,” she said.
The next morning came all too early, as mornings had a way of doing. Rhodes wanted to do at least two things before noon: visit Richard Rascoe and talk to Dr. White. He finished his shredded wheat and skim milk while Yancey nipped at his ankles. He took the cereal bowl to the sink, rinsed it out, and put it in the diswasher before going into the bedroom to say good-bye to Ivy, who was drying her hair. Then he went outside, with Yancey hot on his heels.
There were plenty of people now who though
t of Texas as an urban state, made up mostly of big cities like Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio. It was probably true that most of the population lived in places like that, and of course even in places like Clearview there were elements of urban life that hadn’t been there when Rhodes was growing up. But small towns still existed, even if they weren’t thriving. Rhodes was never more aware of that fact than when he went out into his yard early in the morning.
He could stand there for a long time and not hear a single sound other than a sparrow in the pecan trees or the wind in the leaves. No sound of traffic, no voices shouting in the streets. And then he might hear something after all, a rooster crowing, or maybe the bleating of a goat. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d hear in an urban setting, he thought.
He took a deep breath of air that he liked to think was just as free of pollution as any in the state, and in fact as free of it as air had been a hundred years ago. He knew he was kidding himself, but at least there was no chemical smell such as he’d experienced on his trips to the Gulf Coast or to the Dallas area.
Not that there was anything wrong with places like that if people wanted to live in them. Rhodes just couldn’t see their attraction.
He had a short romp with Speedo and Yancey, who seemed to enjoy it even more than the larger dog, though he was ready to go back inside when Rhodes opened the door. Rhodes let him in and got on his way.
He called Dr. White from the jail. White confirmed that the bullet that had killed Ty Berry came from a .22-caliber weapon, probably a revolver fired at close range.
“No powder burns, though,” White said. “So it’s not like they were face-to-face. And you can have the bullet if you want it, but it won’t help you any. It doesn’t have any shape left at all.”
“What about powder burns on his hand?”
“Not a trace.”
Rhodes thanked him and hung up the phone. Lawton reminded him that he was supposed to tell the prisoners about the ghost, so he went into the cellblock and let them know that there wouldn’t be any more haunting in the jail.
“You right sure about that, Sheriff?” Lank Rollins asked. “I thought I felt a cold chill pass over me last night.”