by Bill Crider
“Maybe. We didn’t look around much.”
“She’s dead,” Rhodes said. “Somebody killed her. Somebody took her purse. You have it. I’d say that doesn’t look good.”
Guillermo sat up, and for the first time he looked a bit scared. “I don’t know nothing about that. I don’t know what you’re even saying.”
Rhodes almost believed him. “All right. I’ll take you back to your cell.”
“That’s it?” Guillermo asked.
“That’s it,” Rhodes told him. “Let’s go.”
Guillermo stood up, blinking as if he still couldn’t believe the questioning was over. Rhodes took him back to his cell, along with Lawton, who opened the door and let Guillermo back inside.
When the door was locked, Rhodes said to Lawton, “Let’s get Jorge.”
“Aw, man,” Guillermo said from his cell, “you can’t believe nothing Jorge tells you. Everybody knows he’s a liar.”
“We’ll see,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Rhodes stopped at Hack’s desk while Lawton took Jorge on to the interview room.
“Get Pearson on the radio and tell him to check out Wallace Womack’s place. That’s where the driver of the truck is staying. Name’s Francisco Rey.”
“Sure thing,” Hack said, and Rhodes went on to talk to Jorge.
Jorge was about Guillermo’s age. Like Guillermo, he needed a haircut, but his nose was in better condition. He was considerably more nervous than Guillermo, and he sat rigidly in the chair, twisting his hands while Rhodes watched him. He had a slight tic under his left eye.
Rhodes let him twitch for a while and then said, “Guillermo told me that you were the one who took the purse.”
Jorge’s voice was shaky. “Then he is a liar. I don’t know about a purse.”
“We found one in Mr. Womack’s pickup. The pickup you stole.”
“I didn’t steal it! Frankie borrows the truck all the time. Mr. Womack, he don’t care.”
“You use the truck when you’re out stealing batteries?”
“Stealing? We weren’t stealing.”
“The man who chased you will testify that you were trying to steal his car battery. If you didn’t steal the purse, who did? Did Frankie kill Lynn Ashton?”
The tic under Jorge’s eye had gotten worse, and Rhodes thought the young man might twist all his fingers off if he kept at it much longer.
“I don’t know what you’re saying. Who is this Lynn? We didn’t kill nobody. We were just out for a ride.”
“Lynn Ashton worked in the Beauty Shack across the street from where you were staying. She was pretty, and now she’s dead. Her purse was in your pickup.”
Jorge looked as if he might cry. “I told you, man. We were just out for a ride. We didn’t kill nobody. We didn’t steal any purse.”
“Where’d you get it, then?”
“We found it, that’s where. Just found it. That’s all.”
Rhodes wondered how many times he’d heard the old “we found it” story. Probably hundreds by now.
“Have you already used the credit cards and spent the money?”
“If you got the purse, you know better. We didn’t have it long enough to spend the money or use the cards.”
Another likely story. “You sure about that?”
Jorge looked away. “Maybe we bought a couple beers and some sandwiches.”
“Did you hit her with a baseball bat?”
“Hit? I told you, man, we found that purse.”
“You didn’t tell me where.”
“In the alley.”
“Lots of alleys in this town.”
“The one behind that antique store, where the maricón stays.”
“Now that’s too bad,” Rhodes said.
“Why is it too bad? We found it, like I said. In the trash right there.”
“It’s too bad that you used that word.”
“It’s a bad word, but it’s the one I know.”
“The man who owned the store was Jeff Tyler,” Rhodes said.
“Okay, if you say so. Why is that so bad?”
“Because somebody killed him, too,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 15
Jorge didn’t break down and confess. He was too shocked. He didn’t say much of anything until Rhodes pressed him to explain how they’d supposedly found the purse.
Jorge’s story was that after Rhodes had chased him and Guillermo that morning, they’d gone out to the Womack place. Frankie lived in a little three-room house out there and did whatever needed doing, mowing the lawn, feeding the few cows, riding a tractor to run the weed shredder, but there wasn’t much pay, so Frankie sometimes toured the alleys of Clearview and checked out the trash to see what people were throwing away. Sometimes he’d find something he could sell. After they’d helped him do some yard work and feed the cattle, they drove to town in the old pickup to see what they could find. Today they’d found the purse.
“I swear it,” Jorge said. “We found it in the trash. We did take some of the money and buy some beers, but that was all. We didn’t kill nobody. I swear it.”
Rhodes took him back to the cell, and Lawton locked him in. When Rhodes returned to the outer office, Pearson was there with the purse.
“I went out by the Womack place,” he said. “No sign of Francisco.”
Rhodes hadn’t thought there would be. Frankie was most likely long gone by now, halfway to Houston or San Antonio or Mexico. Especially if he’d killed Lynn Ashton and Jeff Tyler. Rhodes gave Pearson an abridged version of what he’d learned from Guillermo and Jorge.
“Womack see him today?”
“Sure. Him and his friends, but not since this afternoon.”
No help there, Rhodes thought.
“What if they’re telling the truth?” Pearson said.
Hack snorted. “Who tells the truth these days? Aside from me and Lawton, I mean.”
Rhodes ignored him and told Pearson that he could get back to his regular patrol and Rhodes would take a look at the purse. Pearson said so long to Hack and left Rhodes to his purse inspection.
Rhodes was careful not to touch the outside of the purse. It was smooth gray leather, and he knew there would be fingerprints all over it. They’d mostly belong to Francisco and his pals, though.
Lynn’s cell phone wasn’t in the purse. Her wallet was, but it didn’t hold anything of interest. Her credit cards were still inside it, which didn’t mean that Frankie and his friends were honest, just that they hadn’t had time to use them yet. The phone, however, had been irresistible.
Rhodes sighed, put the purse in the evidence room, and went to see Guillermo, who was lying on his bunk.
“It’s uncomfortable in here,” Guillermo said by way of greeting. “It’s too hot, and there’s no TV.”
“It’s a jail,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah, but even us prisoners have some rights.”
“You do, and one of them is not to talk to me if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t mind talking, man, but I could use a better mattress.”
“What about a cell phone?” Rhodes asked.
“Yeah, that, too. Would be nice to talk to somebody. Besides you, I mean. No offense.”
“None taken,” Rhodes said. “You didn’t have a phone when you were booked.”
“Can’t afford one. Frankie, he has one.”
“I think he has two,” Rhodes said.
“My nose hurts,” Guillermo said. “It’s hard to breathe when it’s so hot in here.”
“We’re talking about Frankie’s cell phones, not your nose. Two cell phones.”
“I don’t think there’s two.” Guillermo squirmed on the bunk. “Just the one he bought at Walmart.”
“You’re forgetting the one in the purse,” Rhodes said.
Guillermo turned his head away. “I don’t know about that one.”
“It’ll be easy to trace. Those things all have a built-in GPS.” That wasn’t true, but Rh
odes thought Guillermo might not know it. “We’ll track it down tomorrow. You might as well tell me.”
Guillermo turned back to face Rhodes. “Okay, if there was a phone in the purse, Frankie’s the one that took it. Jorge and me, we don’t have it.”
“How many calls did he make?”
“I didn’t say he made no calls.”
“Free calls,” Rhodes said. “How could he not make calls?”
“He might have called his mother. She lives in Matamoros.”
Rhodes had been almost certain that Frankie had the phone. Now he knew for sure. He also knew he was unlikely to see Frankie again.
“His mother’s a nice lady,” Guillermo said. He glanced at Rhodes’s belt line. “She’s a really good cook, man. You’d like her.”
“I’m sure I would,” Rhodes said. “Good night, Guillermo.”
* * *
Rhodes drove home and thought over all that had happened that day. It had been a long one, and two people wouldn’t be seeing the next one come along. Lynn Ashton and Jeff Tyler. The two deaths had to be connected, but Rhodes couldn’t see how. Rhodes wondered about Lonnie, who Rhodes thought wasn’t telling everything he knew. Why would he hold back if he didn’t have anything to do with Tyler’s death, or Lynn’s? He should be the first to want the murders solved.
Lynn’s purse worried Rhodes, too. Maybe it had been in the trash, maybe not. What if Guillermo and his friends had found it inside Tyler’s store and killed him for it? As unlikely as that seemed, it could’ve happened. Tyler, jealous of Lynn’s relationship with Lonnie, might have killed her and taken the purse. The possibilities multiplied when Rhodes thought of things that way. Lonnie might have found out what Tyler had done and killed him, then thrown the purse away. Or … Rhodes was too tired to go on with that train of thought. It was time he went home and got some rest.
* * *
Yancey greeted Rhodes at the door, but he wasn’t as enthusiastic as usual. The late hour might have had something to do with it. Rhodes took a quick bath and went into the bedroom, where Ivy was reading Terrorist Terror.
She put someone’s business card in the book to mark her place, closed the book, and put it on the nightstand by the bed.
“What you need is a sidekick,” she said. “Somebody who knows martial arts. Like Wade Winslow.”
“Who?”
“In the book,” Ivy said. “Wade Winslow. He’s Sage Barton’s new sidekick. He knows something called Chen Shuan. He studied with somebody named Professor Lansdale in East Texas.”
“A sidekick like that would come in handy, all right,” Rhodes said, thinking about his recent encounter at the Environmental Reclamation Center. “This morning, somebody told me what I needed was more angst. Some kind of secret sorrow, like a dead sweetheart.”
“You have a live sweetheart,” Ivy said. “Want me to prove it?”
Rhodes realized he wasn’t so tired, after all.
* * *
“Is ‘turkey bacon’ an oxymoron?” Rhodes asked Ivy the next morning while he was eating breakfast.
Ivy was putting food in Sam’s bowl while the cat pretended not to be interested. She looked up and said, “You mean like ‘artificial grass’?”
“That’s it,” Rhodes said. He held up the piece of bacon he’d been eating. “What do you think?”
Ivy walked over to the table, and Sam waited until she was well away from him before he’d deign to eat.
“You think the bacon tastes funny?” Ivy asked.
Rhodes shook his head. “No. I just wondered if you could call something ‘bacon’ if it wasn’t associated with a pig.”
“Considering your adventures with pigs,” Ivy said, “I’d think you’d be glad this bacon came from a turkey.”
Rhodes grinned. He’d had more than his share of adventures with pigs, all right, though they weren’t really pigs, not exactly.
“They were wild hogs,” he said, “and they’re overrunning the county. Before long they’ll be taking over the town. You just wait.”
“Maybe we should go into business for ourselves,” Ivy said. “We could sell wild hog bacon. It might be a big hit.”
“Anything to get rid of the feral hogs,” Rhodes said, and that ended the discussion, though Rhodes still thought he was right about the oxymoron.
* * *
After breakfast, Rhodes skipped his usual visit with Speedo, but he got Ivy’s assurance that she’d see to Speedo’s needs and let Yancey out for a romp. Sam didn’t care one way or another what Rhodes did.
As soon as he left the house, Rhodes went to Ballinger’s Funeral Home. The building had once been a mansion owned by one of the richest families in town, and Clyde Ballinger lived in back in a much smaller building that had been the servants’ quarters. He was an early riser, and Rhodes knew he’d be up and about.
Ballinger answered Rhodes’s knock and told him to come in. Rhodes entered what once had been a small living room but was now Ballinger’s unofficial office. There was something different about it, and it took Rhodes a second or two to realize what it was. The desk, usually covered with old paperback books with trashy covers, was almost bare.
“You quit reading?” Rhodes asked.
Ballinger grinned. He might have been a mortician, but he was always cheerful. “Nope. Got me this.” He picked up a rectangular leather-covered object that looked like a notebook of some kind and flipped it open. “It’s an e-reader.”
“A what?”
“An e-reader,” Ballinger said. “It’s kind of like a computer, but for reading. You can put thousands of books on this one reader.”
Rhodes had heard of e-readers, but he’d never seen one. It didn’t seem much like a book to him.
“Let me show you,” Ballinger said. He switched the machine on and handed it to Rhodes. “Take a look.”
Rhodes looked. The screen showed what appeared to be a table of contents.
“Those are the books on the reader,” Ballinger said. “I have about ten so far, but I’ll have more.”
Rhodes looked at some of the titles. The Desperado, Renegade Cop, The Cheaters, To Kiss or Kill, Dig My Grave Deep. They sounded like Ballinger’s kind of material, all right.
Except for one of them.
“Terrorist Terror?” Rhodes asked.
Ballinger gave him a grin. “You know me. I can’t resist a story about a crime-busting sheriff who just happens to be based on a person I know. Just got it downloaded today.”
“I’m nothing at all like Sage Barton.”
“If you say so.”
“I do say so.”
“It even has pictures of the covers,” Ballinger said, changing the subject.
“I thought you liked finding things at garage sales,” Rhodes said.
“Can’t do that much anymore, what with the Internet. People snap up anything they think they can sell on eBay, and that doesn’t leave a lot for me. Sad thing is, I’ve read most of those on the reader before. I just thought it’d be fun to have them.”
“Anything by your favorite writer?”
“Who do you mean?”
“You know. The one who writes about the Eighty-seventh Precinct.”
“Ed McBain,” Ballinger said. “Nothing on there by him yet. He’s dead, you know. No more books about Carella and Hawes and Meyer Meyer. It’s a shame.”
Rhodes handed the reader back to Ballinger, who shut it off and set it on the desk.
“Speaking of a shame,” Rhodes said, “what about the autopsy reports on Lynn Ashton and Jeff Tyler?”
“Dr. White left those for you,” Ballinger said. He opened a drawer, took out a couple of folders, and passed them to Rhodes. “Have a seat and look them over.”
Rhodes did. He didn’t find anything he hadn’t already known or suspected. Lynn Ashton had been killed by a blow to the head that had driven splinters of her skull into her brain. Tyler had been shot with two .38 caliber bullets. It was the bullet in the head that had killed him.
“Carella and the gang at the eight-seven would have this one wrapped up by now,” Ballinger said when Rhodes closed the second folder.
“It’s only been twenty-four hours,” Rhodes said.
“Well, maybe they wouldn’t have,” Ballinger said. “They’d have some suspects, though.”
“I have suspects,” Rhodes said.
“Randy Lawless, right?”
Rhodes’s face must have shown his surprise.
“You didn’t know?” Ballinger asked.
“No,” Rhodes said. “I didn’t.”
“I thought everybody in town knew about those two.”
“Nobody’s mentioned them to me.”
“Then let me be the first.”
Randy Lawless was an attorney, the best at criminal defense in the county if reputation meant anything. He and Rhodes had a more or less friendly relationship, though they were occasional adversaries in court. He was also a married man, like most of the others that Lynn Ashton had been seeing, at least the ones Rhodes knew about.
“Details?” Rhodes asked.
Ballinger shook his head. “Not a one. I heard it from somebody a few weeks ago. I’m usually the last one in town to hear things like that, so I figured it wasn’t much of a secret.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a secret,” Rhodes said, “but I didn’t know about it.”
“Well, now you do.”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “Now I do.”
* * *
Rhodes left Ballinger’s office, and before he could start the county car, Hack called him on the radio.
“That reporter’s here,” Hack said. “She wants to know all about Jeff Tyler.”
“I’m officially promoting you to the office of spokesperson for the Blacklin County Sheriff’s Department,” Rhodes said. “Tell her what she wants to know.”
“I don’t know anything,” Hack said.
“Tell her that.”
“She’s not gonna like it. She wants to talk to you.”
“She’ll have to find me first,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 16
Rhodes had intended to go to see Randy Lawless next, but Lawless didn’t open his office until nine, and it was still only eight thirty. That was all right. Rhodes had another idea he wanted to try out first, so he drove out to Seepy Benton’s house.