by Bill Crider
“Thinkin’ about what you’re gonna do, I’d say the hog don’t smell so bad after all.”
Boyd got in his van and drove away. Autry already had the Focus up on the wrecker, and he followed Boyd. They’d have to drive about a quarter of a mile before they found a place to turn around and head back to Clearview.
Rhodes and Ruth got their shotguns and flashlights out of the county cars.
“Watch where you walk,” Rhodes told the deputy. “The hogs have torn up the field pretty bad.”
Rhodes hoped he could make it to the woods without falling. Not that he was eager to get into the woods.
“Didn’t you have a problem with some hogs once upon a time?” Ruth asked.
“It was before you came to work with us,” Rhodes said, remembering the time he’d spent in the hospital. “It could’ve been worse.”
They walked a little farther, picking their way carefully, and Ruth said, “Did you get a look at the men in the car?”
“Not much of one. I know that one of them was smaller than the other one and had on a blue shirt. That’s about it.”
“What about the clerk where they stole the gas?”
“I don’t think so. He was busy with a customer.”
“Security camera?”
“There’s one in the store, I’m sure,” Rhodes said. “I don’t know if they have one for the parking lot.”
In fact, he was pretty sure they didn’t. Clearview, Texas, wasn’t exactly the place to go to see all the latest high-tech surveillance equipment in action.
“So we don’t have much to go on,” Ruth said.
“We don’t,” Rhodes said, “but if we run across two men lost in the woods, we can be pretty sure they’re the ones we’re looking for.”
“What about the hunters?”
“They won’t be lost, and like you said, they’re probably gone. I haven’t heard any shooting lately, and I haven’t heard anything from the dogs in a good while, either.”
Almost as soon as Rhodes spoke, they heard shots, two flat cracks from somewhere in the trees.
“Those weren’t rifle shots,” Ruth said.
“Handgun,” Rhodes said. “Somebody’s doing some close-in work.”
“On a hog?”
“The dogs could’ve pulled one down. The hunters could have used a pistol to kill it.”
Ruth was skeptical. “You said you hadn’t heard the dogs, and neither have I. The hunters are gone. Even if they were here, I don’t think they’d be using a pistol.”
“We’ll just have to see what we find,” Rhodes said. “And be careful.”
When they entered the woods, the going wasn’t any easier. There were lots of oaks and pecan trees, which was to be expected. The hogs looked for mast and rooted up the ground as they fed on it. Rhodes stumbled but put out a hand and caught hold of a tree branch to avoid falling.
“I’m surprised a lot of those hunters don’t break their legs,” Ruth said while Rhodes steadied himself.
“I think there have been a couple of them in the ER this year,” Rhodes said.
“You might be there next.”
“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
They started on their way again, and Ruth said, “Where do you think those shots came from?”
“Straight ahead, more or less. It’s hard to be sure, though, in these trees.”
The mist was thicker under the trees, and it was darker than it had been in the field. Rhodes remembered some scary animated movie he’d seen when he was a kid. He didn’t recall much about it other than tree branches grasping at people in the dark, but grasping trees weren’t nearly as dangerous as wild hogs.
Or as people with guns, for that matter.
“Do you hear something?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes stopped to listen. He heard some night noises, a squirrel or a bird in the tree branches, a car on the road a long way off, a screech owl somewhere ahead of them.
“People talking, I mean,” Ruth said when he told her.
“No,” Rhodes said.
“I was thinking about those pistol shots,” Ruth said. “If somebody shot a hog, they’d be hauling it out of here. The dogs would be barking. We’d hear a truck.”
Rhodes had thought the same thing.
“We’d better be careful,” Ruth said.
“I thought we were being careful.”
“You know what I mean.”
Rhodes knew, all right, and he planned to take plenty of care, though it was hard to walk through unfamiliar woods without making noise. The only good thing about it was that they hadn’t had to use the flashlights yet. The lights would have made them good targets.
“What’s that up ahead of us?” Ruth whispered.
“Looks like somebody’s sitting there,” Rhodes said, and they stood still, trying to make out the person or whatever it was.
Rhodes could see a dark bulk lying still near the trunk of the tree. If it was a man, he wasn’t moving. Rhodes moved forward. Ruth moved away from him, and both of them brought up their shotguns.
When they got to within ten or fifteen yards of the figure, it became clear that it was a man. Rhodes called out to him.
“This is the sheriff,” he said. “Put your hands behind your head and don’t move.”
He waited for a couple of seconds, and Ruth said, “Maybe he heard you. He’s not moving.”
“He’s not putting his hands behind his head, either,” Rhodes said.
He punched the button that turned on his flashlight and, holding the light well away from himself, trained the beam on the man. His head was at an odd angle, and his open eyes reflected the light.
“I think he’s dead,” Ruth said.
Rhodes directed the beam at the man’s chest, and then he saw the dark stains on the front of a blue shirt.
“It wasn’t a hog that we heard being shot,” Ruth said.
They walked over to the man and shined both flashlights on him. He was the smaller of the two men Rhodes had seen, the one who’d been driving. He hadn’t shaved in a day or so, and his clothes looked as if they hadn’t been changed for a while.
“This probably explains those pistol shots we heard,” Rhodes said. “This is a crime scene now.”
“Unless it was an accident,” Ruth said.
“Possible. Not likely.”
“We can’t work the scene very well in this weather,” Ruth said.
“We’ll do the best we can,” Rhodes said. “I’ll get started. You go back and radio Hack and tell him to get Duke and Buddy out here to patrol the area. Tell him to put out a bulletin, and tell him to spread the news that there’s an armed and dangerous man on the loose out here.”
“An armed and dangerous man with no description.”
“That’s right. I couldn’t tell anything about him. Probably average size and weight, and that’s all.”
“People will love to hear that,” Ruth said. “Milton Munday will love it even more.”
Milton Munday was the Clearview radio station’s muckraking talk show host, and Rhodes knew Ruth was right. Munday would work himself into a frenzy about a nondescript madman with a gun.
“We have to let people know anyway,” Rhodes said.
“I know. I’ll talk to Hack.”
“Bring the camera back with you.”
“I will.”
“Don’t tell Hack any more than you have to.”
“I won’t,” Ruth said. “Do you think there are any clues lying around here?”
“Not a chance,” Rhodes said.
The ground around the tree had been rooted up by hogs, and sticks and leaves lay all over the place. The hunters might or might not have been there, though someone other than the dead man certainly had been. It was just that it was hard to tell where anyone might have walked because the hogs had torn up the ground.
“It would be handy if somebody had dropped a driver’s license,” Ruth said.
“How many times has that happened?”
“The key phrase in that being ‘not around here,’” Rhodes said.
“Sure would make life easier if it did happen.” Ruth shined her light on the dead man. “What about him?”
“We’ll need to get him out of here,” Rhodes said.
“How will we do that?” Ruth asked. “He’s bigger than we are.”
“Have Hack call the EMTs.”
“It won’t be easy for them to get back in here.”
“We need the justice of the peace, too,” Rhodes said. “To declare the man dead.”
“The JP won’t like having to come out here any more than the EMTs will.”
“That’s why they pay him the big bucks,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 3
The JP wasn’t happy, but he didn’t complain much. He declared the man dead, and the EMTs drove the ambulance to the edge of the woods. They got the dead man out without messing up the scene too much. Rhodes was glad he didn’t have to help carry him and then ride in the ambulance over the bumpy field.
Ruth and Rhodes had searched for half an hour or more while waiting for the JP and the EMTs. They hadn’t found anything that looked like a clue, which was what they’d expected. A bit more surprising was the fact that Rhodes hadn’t found anything on the body other than a few coins, a cell phone, and a pocketknife. The man’s wallet was missing.
After the EMTs and the JP were gone, Ruth asked, “Do you think our victim was robbed?”
“Could be,” Rhodes said, but he didn’t really believe it.
“Are we going to secure the area?”
“I don’t think the hogs will be back,” Rhodes said, “and I know the hunters won’t.”
“What if the killer comes back?”
“Never happens. Why don’t you stay on patrol and be sure you drive by places where you can be seen. Let people know we’re out and about.”
“You think this is connected to all the other trouble we’ve been having with hogs lately?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes had been wondering about that. “I hope not, but we’re in the right area for it.”
“Mrs. Chandler’s place, you mean.”
That was the place, all right. Rhodes had been called out there several times lately, and it hadn’t been pleasant.
“You want me to come back and work the crime scene in the morning?” Ruth asked.
“No, I’ll do that,” Rhodes said. He wanted to look around a lot more of the area, and it was getting too dark to see things. He’d wait until morning, and he had another job for Ruth. “Tomorrow I want you to go over that car we impounded and see if you can find anything that’ll help us. Fingerprint it first.”
“All right, but didn’t you say the car was stolen?”
Rhodes nodded.
“Well, you know what that means.”
Rhodes knew. Fingerprints all over the place, and no telling how many different ones.
“Just do the best you can,” he said.
“I will, but it’s going to take me a while,” Ruth said.
“The county commissioners love to pay overtime,” Rhodes said, and they both laughed.
“Sounds good to me,” Ruth said.
* * *
Rhodes drove back to town and went to the jail to write his reports. He hated to write the one about the damage to the county car. It seemed as if he had more trouble with cars than he should.
He also knew that Hack would be ready for him, but Rhodes didn’t give him a chance to get started.
“Any calls I need to worry about?” he asked before Hack could get a word in.
“Just the usual,” Hack said.
“’Less you want to count the steaks,” Lawton said.
Lawton was the jailer and Hack’s partner in their many attempts to annoy Rhodes, who thought of them as the Abbott and Costello of Blacklin County, not that he’d ever tell them that. To Rhodes, they even looked like the comedy team, Lawton being short, stout, and round-faced, while Hack was taller and thinner. He had a thin mustache.
Hack was clearly annoyed by Lawton’s comment. As the straight man, Hack was supposed to start the routine, which, if things went as usual, would confuse Rhodes as much as “Who’s on First.” Rhodes knew it would be a mistake to ask what steaks Lawton was talking about, but he did it anyway.
“The ones that got shoplifted over at the HEB,” Hack said.
The HEB was Clearview’s newest grocery store, and in fact its only grocery store if you didn’t count Walmart. Most people living in Clearview didn’t even remember the A&P or the Safeway that had flourished many years earlier, much less the smaller mom-and-pop stores that had long since disappeared.
“Somebody shoplifted steaks?” Rhodes asked.
“Rib eyes,” Lawton started, but Hack held up a hand. Lawton shut up.
“Rib eyes,” Hack said, as if Lawton hadn’t spoken. “They had ’em on sale. I don’t like ’em all that much myself, not as much as I like a good filet. I know people say a rib eye is better ’cause of the fat, but I don’t like fat. I like a good filet or the tender side of a T-bone.”
“You cook yours well done?” Lawton asked.
“I never do. I like mine about medium or even medium well, but I don’t like to cook all the juice out. Some people, now—”
“Hold on,” Rhodes said. He knew they were leading him on, taking revenge for his not telling them about the hog, but he couldn’t stand it any longer. “Who stole the steaks?”
“Rib eyes,” Lawton said.
Rhodes sighed. “Who stole the rib eyes?”
“Some entrepreneur,” Hack said.
“That’s a pretty big word,” Lawton said.
“The sheriff knows what it means. You do know what it means, don’t you?”
“I know what it means,” Rhodes said. “I don’t know what it has to do with stolen rib eyes.”
“Well,” Hack said, “that’s how we caught the guy.”
“We?” Lawton echoed.
“Okay, that’s how Buddy caught him.”
“So he’s under arrest?”
“Right back there in the cells,” Hack said.
“Won’t be eatin’ any rib eye tonight,” Lawton said.
“Just tell me what happened,” Rhodes said.
“You gonna tell us about the hogs and about that dead man you found?” Hack asked.
“I’ll tell you. After I find out about the rib eyes.”
“Buddy caught the guy who stole ’em,” Hack said.
“‘Caught’ ain’t the right word, exactly,” Lawton said. “He found him, is more like it.”
“Found him where?” Rhodes asked.
“Being an entrepreneur,” Hack said. “Side of the road not far from the county line.”
“He was sellin’ rib eyes out of the back of his car,” Lawton said. “Had him a little sign and ever’thing. He was askin’ a dollar a pound.”
“Just about sold ’em all before Buddy found him,” Hack said.
Lawton nodded. “It was a real good price.”
“Times like this, a fella can’t afford to pass up a bargain,” Hack said. “Now, about that hog.”
Rhodes didn’t try to put them off. He told them the whole story.
“So the car’s in the impound lot already, and there’s one man dead and another one on the run,” Hack said. “That about it?”
“That’s about it,” Rhodes agreed.
“All because some fella stole some gas,” Lawton said. “That’s just not right.”
“There was more to it than the gas,” Rhodes said. “There’s always more to it when somebody gets shot.”
“The fella that got away,” Hack said.
“What about him?”
“You think he did it?”
“He’s the number one suspect,” Rhodes said.
“What about those hunters?” Lawton asked. “I saw this movie once about some fellas that stumbled onto a bunch of hunters. Didn’t turn out so good for ’em.”
“Deliverance?” Hack asked.
“Coulda been. I think a hog was mentioned in that.”
“Was a pig. Burt Reynolds sure was good in that one.”
“That other guy didn’t come out so well,” Lawton said. “What was his name?”
“Ned Beatty,” Rhodes said.
“That’s the one,” Lawton said. “Felt sorry for him.”
“Good thing you didn’t stay out there in those woods all by yourself tonight,” Hack said. “What with them hunters roamin’ around and all.”
Rhodes thought about the gunshots he’d heard just before the hog stampede. He hadn’t thought about the shots again because of all the excitement that had come right afterward, but now he did. There’d been too many shots for the hunters to be shooting at the hogs. Something else had been going on. He’d have to remember that tomorrow.
“Nothin’ like that movie could happen here,” Lawton said.
“I wouldn’t count on it,” Hack said.
Rhodes let them argue about it while he finished his report. When he was done, he told Hack he was going home.
“You think the deputies’ll find the killer tonight?” Hack asked.
“You never can tell.”
“No way,” Lawton said. “He’s in Houston by now. That’s where the car came from, remember?”
Rhodes remembered.
“How’d he get to Houston?” Hack asked. “No car. Can’t walk that far. Nobody picks up hitchhikers anymore.”
“He wouldn’t hang around here,” Lawton said. “He knows the sheriff’d catch him.”
Rhodes had heard enough. He told Hack he was going home.
“You can call me there if there’s an emergency,” he said.
“I always do,” Hack said.
“Don’t I know it,” Rhodes said.
* * *
When he went through the front door of the house, Rhodes was greeted by Yancey, the Pomeranian, who bounced around like a ball of fluff and yipped as excitedly as if he hadn’t seen Rhodes in months.
Rhodes walked on back to the kitchen with Yancey yipping at his heels. Rhodes’s wife, Ivy, sat at the kitchen table reading a book, something by a writer named Harlan Coben. Rhodes had never heard of him.