by Bill Crider
He turned to leave, but his exit was spoiled somewhat because he had to take the hat off again to get through the door.
“Nice fella,” Ballinger said when the bounty hunter was gone. He looked at the body in the casket. “You think this Baty is really a bank robber?”
“Rapinski doesn’t have any reason to lie,” Rhodes said.
“He’d lie just for the fun of it,” Ballinger said. “I could tell that by looking at him.”
“Not this time. It’s too easy to check.”
“You and Hack are going to check, then.”
“We’d be fools not to,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Rhodes had a simple weight-control plan. He hardly ever ate lunch. It seemed like he was too busy to stop for even a hamburger at a drive-through. Today, though, he couldn’t resist taking the time. He drove out on the highway where all the action in Clearview was now. The downtown area had become little more than a collection of empty buildings and vacant lots, with a few exceptions, like the expansive law offices of Randy Lawless, whose names were the subject of a good bit of not-so-innocent hilarity in the county.
If the downtown looked like a bombed-out hamlet, however, the area on the highway east of town was booming. There were two new motels, part of a phenomenon that Rhodes didn’t quite understand. Every little town in Texas was sprouting motels like mushrooms after a spring rain, and Clearview was no exception. Two more had sprung up on the highway to the north.
The Super Walmart’s parking lot had cars in nearly all the parking spaces. The big supermarket down the road swarmed with customers. Nobody who drove by on the highway would ever give a thought to what had happened to the nearly deserted downtown. Only people who’d lived in Clearview for a good while even missed it, Rhodes was sure.
Another place doing plenty of business was the local McDonald’s, but Rhodes wasn’t interested in a McBurger. Across the highway was a Big Jolly’s convenience store. Jolly was Jeff Jolly, and he wasn’t big at all. He was short and rotund, but his last name described his disposition well.
It was no wonder he was jolly. He’d started out as a clerk in an early version of the convenience store fifty years earlier. Now he owned six or seven stores of his own, every one of them a gold mine, or so Rhodes had heard.
One reason for their popularity was the hamburgers served at every location. No hot dogs, no deli sandwiches, no wraps. Just burgers, and nothing fancy. You could get cheese added, but that was it. No bacon, no peppers, no sissy sauces. No ketchup or mayo. Mustard only.
Best of all, as far as Rhodes was concerned, was the fact that after the burger was cooked, both sides of the bun were slapped down on the grill and warmed in the grease that remained. Rhodes had feared that when the Bluebonnet Grocery closed, he’d never have a burger wrapped in greasy paper again, and for a while that had been true. Now, Big Jolly had stepped in to save the day.
Rhodes parked in the shade on the side of the store away from the gas pumps and went inside for his burger.
Larry Torrance was the cook, and when Rhodes ordered, Torrance said, “No cheese today, Sheriff?”
“No cheese,” Rhodes said. That was how he convinced himself that he was eating healthy. “No tomato, either.”
“Tomatoes are good for you,” Larry said. He always said that.
“They have evil side effects,” Rhodes said, and Larry nodded. It was what Rhodes always said in reply. Larry had never asked what the evil side effects were, which was just as well. Rhodes couldn’t have told him.
Torrance put the meat on the grill and pressed it down with a spatula. Rhodes looked around the store while he listened to the sizzle. He didn’t see anybody he knew, so he watched a youngster at the soft drink machine fill what appeared to be a gallon container with cola.
“Ready, Sheriff,” Torrance said after a while. “Just pay up front.”
Rhodes took the bag containing his burger, paid, and left. He didn’t want to eat at one of the two small tables in the store, so he drove to the courthouse, where he had an office he seldom used. He bought a Dr Pepper from the machine that no longer dispensed drinks in a glass bottle and went to his office to enjoy the burger.
He soothed the sharp tang of the onion, mustard, and pickles with swallows of Dr Pepper and thought about what he knew and didn’t know about Gary Baty’s demise.
He knew Baty was dead, but he didn’t know who killed him. Had it been hog hunters, the man who’d been in the car with him, or someone else that Rhodes didn’t know about?
Baty was a bank robber. That wasn’t a real surprise to Rhodes. The economy had been bad for four or five years, and there had been a surge in bank robberies all across the country. What made Baty different was that he had partners and men who’d bought plans from him. Had Baty been with one of those men? If he had, what were they doing in Blacklin County?
If they were planning a job, Rhodes thought, there were only a few possible targets, the two banks in Clearview, the one in Thurston, and the one in Obert. Somehow Rhodes didn’t think robbing a bank came into the picture. Otherwise, why kill Baty before the job was done?
Rapinski seemed to believe that the man in the car with Baty had been one of his partners, however, and Rapinski was planning to see if he could catch him. Or that’s what he claimed. Rhodes wondered what Rapinski wasn’t telling him. He knew he wasn’t getting the whole story. Ballinger was right. People like Rapinski never told the truth if they could avoid doing it.
Rhodes finished his hamburger and drank the last of the Dr Pepper. He wadded up the paper bag and tossed it in the trash can. The empty Dr Pepper bottle followed, the plastic making a hollow sound and reminding Rhodes once again how much he missed the glass bottles. There had been a couple of napkins in the bag with the burger, and Rhodes wiped his hands with them before tossing them, too. Then he picked up the phone and called Hack.
Hack answered and said, “Ruth’s here,” when Rhodes asked. “When you called me from Ballinger’s, I got her to come back and do a search on this Baty fella. He got caught on camera robbin’ a bank, and the cops caught up with him. He’s suspected in a bunch of other cases, but nothin’s been proved on those. Believed to’ve planned a bunch of robberies that he didn’t do himself.”
“What about the fingerprints?”
Rhodes had wanted Ruth to check on those just in case Rapinski hadn’t told the truth about the dead man’s identity.
“They’re a match,” Hack said. “Baty’s our victim, all right enough.”
“What about Rapinski?”
“He’s who he says he is. I’ve seen him on TV a couple of times myself. That license of his is real.”
“All right. Have Ruth call the police and the FBI office in Little Rock and let them know their fugitive bank robber is in Blacklin County and won’t be giving them any more trouble.”
“Might get complicated if the FBI’s involved.”
“I doubt it. They’ll be glad to mark him off their list.”
“Okay. Anything else?”
“Did Ruth find out anything about the hog hunters?”
“Yeah,” Hack said. “She wants to talk to you about that.”
“Have her check the motels, see if Baty stayed in any of them.”
“She’s already done that. He didn’t. You comin’ in?”
“I’m on the way,” Rhodes said.
* * *
“They wouldn’t talk to me,” Ruth said when Rhodes got to the jail.
Rhodes wondered if she’d been taking lessons from Hack and Lawton. “Who wouldn’t talk to you?”
“The Eccles cousins,” Ruth said. “I know they’re the ones who were out hunting hogs last night. I talked to a lot of people, and they all said the same.”
Rhodes had dealt with the Eccles cousins before. They lived outside of town on the road to Obert, and they looked more like brothers than cousins. They were gypsy truckers, doing long-haul jobs for whoever would hire them. In between jobs, their hobby seemed to be
getting into trouble.
“I’ll go talk to them,” Rhodes said.
“They won’t tell you anything,” Ruth said.
“How do you know?”
“Because they said they wouldn’t. Let’s see, how did they put it. ‘You can tell the sheriff that we won’t talk to him, either. We don’t have to talk to you or him if we don’t want to, and we don’t want to.’”
“They know something,” Rhodes said.
“Maybe so,” Ruth said, “but if they do, they’re not telling.”
“They’ll tell me.”
“We’ll see,” Ruth said.
Chapter 8
On the way to visit the Eccles boys, Rhodes stopped at the house owned by Seepy Benton, a professor at the local branch of a community college as well as a graduate of the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy. Benton liked to think of himself as an unofficial deputy and ace crime solver, neither of which was true. In this case, however, Rhodes thought that Benton might actually be able to help out.
It was the middle of the afternoon, but Benton was home. He often finished with his teaching and office hours and came home to grade papers in privacy before going back to teach his evening class.
“What can I do for you, Sheriff?” Benton asked when he answered Rhodes’s knock on his door. “Have you come up against some heinous crime that needs my special skills?”
Rhodes didn’t ask what those skills were. “Nothing like that. I just stopped by to see how Bruce is doing.”
Bruce was a dog that had formerly lived with the Eccles cousins and served as a guard dog. In that capacity he’d once eagerly sought to take a big chunk out of Rhodes’s anatomy.
Bruce was part leopard dog, and he had a bad attitude that Rhodes blamed on his owners. Leopard dogs were descended from mastiffs, and they could be dangerous, as Rhodes had discovered.
Bruce also looked to have a bit of wolf in his ancestry, which didn’t help matters. Rhodes had taken him away from the cousins and given him to Benton to care for while the cousins were in jail for a short time. Benton hadn’t wanted a dog, but he and Bruce had become pals, and Bruce’s disposition had improved accordingly. Because the Eccles boys were often gone and had trouble finding someone to take care of Bruce, they’d allowed the dog to stay with Benton.
“Bruce is fine,” Benton said. He stepped out of the door. “Let’s go around back so you can say hello.”
Benton led the way to his backyard, where Rhodes saw the Golden Rectangle that Benton had laid out with gray paving stones. Benton had tried to explain to Rhodes what the thing was all about, but when he’d mentioned the Fibonacci sequence and started expounding on the math involved, Rhodes had stopped him. There were some things Rhodes felt that he didn’t need to know.
Bruce saw Rhodes and wagged his tail. Then he trotted over to sniff Rhodes and assure himself that he knew him. He licked Rhodes’s hand, and Rhodes rubbed his head.
“You’ve done well with him,” Rhodes said.
“It’s just a matter of treating him humanely and with dignity,” Benton said. “We should take care of our animals as well as we take care of ourselves. There’s even a passage in Deuteronomy that says we should feed our animals before we eat our own food.” He looked at Rhodes. “You have dogs. Do you eat first, or do they?”
“It depends,” Rhodes said.
“I know you do the right thing,” Benton said. “Which is good. According to the Talmud, a person is measured by how he treats other living creatures.”
Rhodes had never met a rabbi, but Benton bore a strong resemblance to what Rhodes thought one would look like, except that he didn’t wear a yarmulke. He usually wore a battered old black fedora, though he wasn’t wearing it now.
Benton looked at Rhodes again. “I get the feeling that you didn’t come here to discuss the Talmud, though.”
“Not really,” Rhodes said. “I’m sure it’s a fascinating topic, but I did have something else in mind. In fact, it has to do with the treatment of animals.”
Bruce lost interest in the discussion. He trotted away to examine something he’d seen crawling in the grass. Whatever it was, Rhodes hoped Bruce would treat it humanely.
“What kind of animals?” Benton asked.
“Wild hogs.”
“People don’t like wild hogs.”
“The Chandlers do.”
“They’re fine folks,” Benton said. “I’ve given them a little advice about caring for animals from time to time. I wasn’t talking about them. I should have said that most people don’t like wild hogs. They hunt them and kill them.”
“That’s right, and two of the people who do that are Bruce’s former owners.”
“Lance and Hugh. They like Bruce. They stop to check on him now and then, to make sure I’m doing the right thing by him. They seem happy to let me take care of him.”
“Good,” Rhodes said. “I’m glad you’re their friend. I think you might be able to help me when I pay them a little visit.”
“I knew it,” Benton said. “You’ve uncovered an atrocious crime, and you need my detecting skills.”
“Not exactly,” Rhodes said. “Do you ever listen to Milton Munday?”
“That goober?” Benton asked, giving Rhodes the impression that he was a good judge of character. “You must be kidding.”
“I’m not kidding,” Rhodes said. “Munday was going on this morning about a man who was killed last night. I think Lance and Hugh might know something about it.”
“They might not be exactly civilized,” Benton said, “and they don’t always treat animals the way they should, but they’re not murderers.”
“I don’t think so, either, but I’m pretty sure they were hunting hogs last night around where the murder happened. They might have seen something that could help me find the killer.”
“So you need me to use my incredible powers of persuasion to get them to talk,” Benton said. “I can do that.”
“Good,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go see them.”
“Just let me get my hat,” Benton said.
* * *
The Eccles cousins lived on up the county road from Benton, off on a little hill. Their double-wide trailer sat on top of the hill, and their two big Chevy Silverados, one red, one black, sat out in front. Not far away was the big Mack tractor rig that the cousins used for hauling. It was painted red and had a sleeper cab in back. The words ECCLES TRUCKING were written on the doors in italic script with silver paint outlined in black.
“Very classy logo,” Benton said, when he and Rhodes got out of the county car. “I wonder if they came up with the design all by themselves.”
“They probably told Herman Johnson to do whatever he wanted to,” Rhodes said. Johnson was a local sign painter with an artistic bent.
“I could do better,” Benton said.
The door of the double-wide opened, and Lance and Hugh came outside. They were tall and wide, and they both wore Houston Astros baseball caps over their red hair, which was long enough to stick out all around the bottoms of the caps. They had broad, freckled faces and smiling eyes, but their mouths weren’t smiling, and they didn’t look happy to see their visitors.
“I told your deputy to tell you we didn’t have nothin’ to say to you,” Hugh said. Rhodes knew it was Hugh because of the gap between his front teeth. Lance’s teeth didn’t have a gap. “You can just turn on around and go back to town.”
“That’s no way to talk to an officer of the law,” Benton said.
“Hey, Seepy,” Hugh said. “What you doin’ with the sheriff?”
“Helping out,” Benton said. “He tells me you’ve been hunting hogs.”
“That’s right,” Lance said. “Nothin’ wrong with that, is there?”
“Not legally speaking,” Benton said. “Morally, it’s a different story.”
“Morally?” Lance asked, as if he’d never heard the word before.
“The Lord’s tender mercies are over all his works,” Benton said, “and that
includes hogs.”
“You might think I don’t know,” Hugh said, “but that’s from the Bible.”
Benton looked surprised. “That’s right. Psalm 145.”
“Here’s something else from the Bible,” Lance said. “An eye for an eye. I don’t know what book it’s from, but I know what it means.”
“Well?” Benton asked.
“It means those damn hogs are tearin’ up the country, ruinin’ the crops, ruinin’ the land. So we got a right to take retribution on ’em.”
Benton looked quite happy. Rhodes could tell he was about to launch into a lengthy lesson from the Talmud to prove Lance wrong, so he thought he’d better put a stop to it. Lance and Hugh weren’t the kind to be persuaded by rabbinical reasoning, or at least Rhodes didn’t think they were.
“We didn’t come here to talk about killing hogs,” he said. “This is about something else entirely.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Hugh said. “We’re not talking. Right, Lance?”
“That’s right,” Lance said.
The two men turned and went back into the trailer. The door on a double-wide isn’t made for slamming, but they did a pretty good job of it, nevertheless.
“I wasn’t much help, was I,” Benton said.
“I think it was the psalm that did it,” Rhodes said.
“Too much?”
“Yes. It’s just as well you didn’t get around to quoting Deuteronomy.”
“Sometimes I get carried away.”
It didn’t take long for that to happen, either, Rhodes thought. He said, “It’s okay. Maybe they’ll give you another chance to use those incredible powers of persuasion of yours. I’ll see if they’ll come back out.”
He left Benton standing by the county car and mounted the little concrete steps in front of the trailer door. There was no doorbell, so he rapped on the door with his knuckles. No reply came from inside, but Rhodes thought he heard something. He strained his ears and caught the faint strains of George Jones singing “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” The Eccles boys had good taste. Rhodes knocked again, louder this time.