The Wild Hog Murders

by Bill Crider

  “There they go,” Garver said. “Old Joe’s got a scent already. Look at him run.”

  “Sarah’s right behind him,” Winston said. “We better see if we can keep up.”

  Rhodes remembered the stampede and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. So far he hadn’t heard any shooting, so maybe it wouldn’t.

  “Let’s see if we can catch up,” he said.

  “Won’t be a problem for me,” Rapinski said, and he took off at a run that Rhodes wouldn’t have thought possible in those fancy boots.

  Rhodes followed as fast as he could.

  Chapter 10

  Trying to run through the woods at night, no matter how bright the moon, wasn’t as easy as it looked in movies, Rhodes thought. He’d often wondered how those horses managed not to slam into a tree every eight or ten paces. If he’d been riding, the horse would’ve had a concussion before it had gone a block into the woods.

  Rhodes couldn’t see Rapinski or the others, but he could hear them. He couldn’t hear the dogs, however. They were running as quietly as he’d been told.

  Then he did hear them, baying loudly in the distance. He picked up the pace a little, dodging tree limbs attached to the trees and jumping over fallen ones. He hadn’t gone far before he saw lights, and then he came out of the trees into a little clearing.

  The dogs had a hog backed up against a deadfall. The men stood well back. Rapinski wasn’t there, and Rhodes figured he’d gotten lost along the way.

  The men were silent as they moved around, playing their flashlights on the hog, trying to get a shot at him as the dogs danced around him. They weren’t baying now. They growled and snarled, lips pulled back, teeth bared as they held the hog at bay.

  The hog grunted and lunged at them, ripping upward with his three-inch tusks, tusks that could take the stomach out of a man, much less a dog. The armor was a good idea.

  Rhodes didn’t know how much this hog weighed, but he figured it to be close to two hundred pounds, maybe a little more. Its neck and shoulders were overlaid with fat and muscle that could stop a bullet from a small-caliber gun, but the pistols and rifle the hunters carried would be enough to stop it if they could get in a shot.

  Rhodes understood the necessity for keeping down the hog population. He knew that the hogs were destructive and caused thousands of dollars of damage to farms and crops at a time when nobody could afford the losses. There was never a time when people could afford losses like that.

  He knew that the hogs could never be trapped or killed out of existence, and he suspected that when the end of the world finally came, whether it was by fire or ice, the cockroaches and the hogs would be left behind to fight it out for supremacy.

  Yet when he saw the desperation and fear in the little black eyes of the hog, Rhodes couldn’t help but feel a bit of the same kind of sympathy that the Chandlers must have felt for the animals. Even if the hunters killed ten or twenty a night, they couldn’t make a dent in the population, so why bother?

  Rhodes even knew the answer to that: Every little bit helps. Hunting and trapping combined would at least do something toward keeping the number of hogs smaller, if not eliminating them. It didn’t make him feel a lot better about what he was seeing.

  “I’m gonna see if I can go around and come in from behind him,” Garver said. “Don’t shoot me.”

  He moved away with his flashlight. Rhodes lost sight of him and turned back to see what Fowler and Winston would do. They said nothing but kept their lights trained on the hog.

  The hog and dogs were getting tired, but that didn’t reduce the level of their savagery. The dogs backed up a bit, however, and that gave Winston a clear shot with his rifle.

  The crack of sound didn’t frighten the dogs. It didn’t scare the hog, either. The animal dropped, kicked out with one of its back trotters, and lay still.

  It was quiet in the clearing after the rifle shot. A bit of smoke drifted through the moonlight, and Rhodes smelled gunpowder. The dogs walked over to the hog and sniffed it, then backed off. They were no longer interested now that it was dead.

  “Got ’im,” Winston said.

  He handed his rifle to Fowler and leashed the dogs.

  “We goin’ after another one?” Winston asked.

  “Night’s young,” Fowler said. “Where’s Garver?”

  Winston looked around. “S’posed to be comin’ in from behind.”

  “Here I am,” Garver said, coming along out of the darkness. “I couldn’t get back there, but it looks like you got it. Let the dogs loose, and we’ll get another one.”

  “Any of you seen Rapinski?” Rhodes asked.

  “Nope,” Garver said. “We got enough to do, keepin’ up with dogs and hogs. Let’s run ’em.”

  “Did the Eccles boys run with you last night?” Rhodes asked, hoping to catch them off guard.

  “They come now and then. Don’t remember about last night,” Winston said, and he released the dogs.

  The dogs sniffed the air and ran off around the deadfall.

  Without another word to Rhodes, the men followed them.

  * * *

  Rhodes had seen enough. He wasn’t going to get anything more out of the hunters, and he didn’t want to watch another kill, even one as clean as what he’d just witnessed.

  When Rhodes turned to leave, he realized that he didn’t quite know where he was or how he’d gotten there. He’d assumed the hunters would lead him out of the woods, but they were off chasing hogs, and he was alone. In the daylight, that wouldn’t have been a problem, but at night everything looked different and strange.

  He tried to remember something he’d heard about how to tell the direction in the woods. He should have paid more attention in Cub Scouts. Moss on the north side of trees? Maybe that worked in some parts of the world, but Rhodes wasn’t sure moss even grew on trees in Texas. Besides, it might have been the south side of trees it was supposed to grow on. Or east. Or west. Moss wasn’t going to be any help.

  Rhodes looked around. He thought he recognized a tree or two, so he started back. He hadn’t gone far before he knew he hadn’t recognized anything at all. He should have noted the moon’s position in the sky when he started, but it probably wouldn’t have helped him.

  He stood quietly and looked around, admitting to himself that he was lost, as lost as the people or animals in that animated movie he’d thought of last night. Any minute now, the wind would start blowing, the limbs of the trees would turn into arms, and he’d be grabbed.

  He heard the dogs bay. They’d found another hog, and Rhodes knew he could follow the sound and find the hunters again. He thought that was the wisest course, so he turned back. He came to the deadfall and skirted around it. He wasn’t quite sure of the direction of the baying, but he wouldn’t be far off if he kept going. He must not have been taking exactly the same path that the hunters had taken, however, because there was something there in front of him that he was pretty sure they hadn’t seen. If they had, they’d have stopped hunting hogs and gone to look for Rhodes.

  It was Hoss Rapinski. He lay sprawled out on the ground. His hat was about ten feet away. There wasn’t any doubt that he was dead.

  * * *

  Rhodes was on his way to find the hunters when he ran into the Chandlers. Both of them carried shotguns.

  “Well, well,” Rhodes said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Andy asked.

  “Nothing,” Rhodes said. “Just an exclamation of wonder.”

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t let him bother you, Andy,” Janice said. “We have a perfect right to be here.”

  “That depends on why you’re here,” Rhodes said. “You have any guns besides the ones I can see there?”

  “Why?” Janice asked.

  “For one thing, it wouldn’t be a good idea if you were out here to cause trouble.”

  “Trouble?” Andy asked. “Us?”

  “Shooting at hunters with rock salt is one thing,” Rhodes said. “Killing
a man is something else.”

  “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about,” Janice said.

  “Me, neither,” Andy said. “We’re here to hunt squirrels.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe a word of it. People who ran a shelter for animals didn’t hunt anything, much less harmless little squirrels.

  “There’s a dead man over there,” Rhodes said. He pointed. “About fifty yards from where we’re standing.”

  “A dead man?” Andy didn’t sound surprised.

  “Who?” Janice asked.

  “Eugene Rapinski,” Rhodes said. “Better known as Hoss.”

  “The bounty hunter?” Andy asked. “I’ve seen him on TV.”

  Something in the man’s tone seemed false to Rhodes, as if Andy was hiding something.

  “Not in person?” Rhodes asked.

  “Why would I see a bounty hunter?” Andy asked. “I doubt he’s interested in saving animals.”

  “We’d better leave now,” Janice said. “If there’s really a dead man here, we’ll just be in the way.”

  “Stick around for a while,” Rhodes said. “I have a few questions to ask you.”

  Janice sighed, but she didn’t try to leave. Neither did Andy. Rhodes got to work.

  After that, there was a lot of confusion. When he finally had time to look for them, Rhodes couldn’t find the hunters. They seemed to have given up on the hogs and left the woods. The hog they’d killed was also gone, so they’d managed to haul it away. There were no tire tracks, so Rhodes thought they must have rigged a sling and carried it on a pole.

  Thanks to directions from the Chandlers, the JP and EMTs managed to get to the body. The JP declared that Rapinski was dead. Rhodes could see that the bounty hunter had been shot in the chest, pretty much the way Baty had been. If he’d been a betting man, Rhodes would have wagered that the same gun had killed them both.

  After the EMTs had left with the body, Rhodes sent the Chandlers home. They’d answered his questions, but they had refused to let him look at their shotguns. Janice said they’d have been glad to let him, however, if he had a warrant.

  “Do you have a warrant, Sheriff?” she’d asked, as nice as could be.

  She knew he didn’t, and Rhodes didn’t push it. Andy insisted that they were just out hunting for squirrels and that he’d never seen Rapinski before except on television, but Rhodes didn’t believe him on either count. They were stubborn in their insistence, so he sent them home.

  Rhodes had gone over the scene and found only one thing of interest. Feathers. They weren’t the feathers of some bird that hung out in the woods, Rhodes was sure of that. He thought they were down feathers that had formerly stuffed a hunting vest or jacket, one that could have been wrapped around a pistol to silence it.

  So now Rhodes had another body on his hands, this one of a semicelebrity, and he didn’t have much of a clue as to who had killed him or why.

  Rhodes didn’t want to think about what Milton Munday would say on his radio show in the morning.

  For that matter, he didn’t much want to hear what Ivy would have to say when he got home, either.

  So he went to the jail to write up his report.

  * * *

  “Gonna be a lot of publicity on this one,” Hack said after Rhodes told him the story. “You know what Rapinski said about TV? Well, he’s gonna be on TV, all right. Just not the way he expected.”

  “Milton Munday’s bad enough,” Rhodes said. “I don’t need TV.”

  “Gonna get it, though,” Lawton said. “You’re lucky. This is the kind of case Sage Barton would love.”

  “I’m not Sage Barton,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe not, but you’re the closest thing we have in Blacklin County,” Hack said. “Old Sage, he’d call in an air strike on those woods and kill all the hogs and flush out the killer at the same time.”

  “Might wipe out all the trees, too,” Lawton said, “but you got to break a few eggs if you want an omelet.”

  “I never did like omelets,” Hack said. “Scrambled eggs are okay, though.”

  “It’s just a way of talkin’,” Lawton said. “I coulda said scrambled eggs just as easy, but I thought an omelet was classier.”

  “You wouldn’t know classy if it bit you on the butt,” Hack said.

  Lawton didn’t even bother to reply.

  “Classy or not,” Hack said after a few seconds, “you’d have some sausage to go with ’em if those hogs were all killed in the air strike. How about it, Sage?” He grinned. “I mean, Sheriff.”

  “No air strikes,” Rhodes said.

  “Dang,” Lawton said. “I sure do like fresh-cooked sausage.”

  “An air strike would mess up the crime scene.”

  “Those hogs’ve messed it up already, I bet,” Hack said, “and the only clue you got is those feathers you mentioned, right?”

  “That’s all,” Rhodes said.

  “On CSI they’d have those analyzed for you in about fifteen minutes,” Lawton said. “Tell you what kind of duck they came from, where he spent the winter, and what he had for breakfast.”

  “Tell you the brand of vest, too,” Hack said. “Or jacket or whatever they came from. Tell you where it was bought, what size it was, and what kind of aftershave the guy who wore it was wearin’.”

  “Maybe I could send the feathers to them,” Rhodes said, “instead of the state crime lab.”

  “Wouldn’t be much difference, would it?” Hack asked.

  “Just that the time would be about a month before you got a report sayin’ they were duck feathers,” Lawton said.

  “That’s all it would tell us, too,” Rhodes said. “I think CSI is a science fiction show.”

  “Too bad, because ever’body will expect you to come up with something on those murders,” Hack said. “The commissioners won’t be happy, and Milton Munday’s gonna go for your throat.”

  Rhodes didn’t need Hack to tell him that.

  “I’m going home,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll listen to Milton Munday tomorrow.”

  “You never listen to him,” Hack said.

  “Right, and I’m not going to start now.”

  “Might be a good time to.”

  “There’s never a good time for that,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  The first thing Ivy said when Rhodes got home and explained things was “I told you so.”

  Yancey yipped and jumped around Rhodes’s ankles as if to emphasize her comment.

  “Told me what?” Rhodes said.

  “That you were crazy. You might have gotten killed out there tonight.”

  “Not me,” Rhodes said. “I’m not ugly enough to be mistaken for a hog.”

  “That’s probably what that bounty hunter thought, too.”

  “I have a feeling that wasn’t an accident.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Ivy said. “You’re crazy.”

  “You’re probably right,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 11

  The first call Rhodes got the next morning was from Mikey Burns, who, unlike Rhodes, had listened to Milton Munday’s radio show. Burns wanted to see Rhodes at the precinct barn as soon as he could get there.

  Rhodes wanted to talk to Arvid Fowler and to get the autopsy report on Rapinski, but he went by to see Burns first. Mrs. Wilkie didn’t bother to respond to Rhodes’s “Good morning.” She just waved him on into Burns’s office.

  Today Burns wore a bright red aloha shirt with small white flowers on it. The flowers looked like magnolia blossoms to Rhodes, but he wasn’t sure that there were magnolia trees in Hawaii. He decided that it didn’t really matter.

  “What’s going on in this county?” Burns asked, without even offering Rhodes a seat.

  Rhodes sat down anyway.

  “Lots of things are going on,” he said when he was comfortable, or as comfortable as he was going to get. “Did you have anything particular in mind?”

  “You know what I’m talking about. The Murder
Epidemic.”

  Rhodes could hear the capital letters at the beginnings of the words.

  “Milton Munday?” he asked.

  “That’s what he’s calling it,” Burns said. “The Murder Epidemic. The county’s getting a bad name, Rhodes.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody,” Rhodes said. “So I’m not responsible.”

  “That’s not what Munday says. You’re the law here, and it’s up to you to prevent murders.”

  Burns probably didn’t know how ridiculous he sounded. It was next to impossible to prevent a murder. First, you had to know who was going to be killed, and that was the easy part. It wouldn’t do any good to explain that to Burns, so Rhodes didn’t even try.

  “What does Munday know about the law?” Rhodes asked instead.

  “He knows that all citizens deserve freedom from fear, that’s what he knows.”

  “What’s he afraid of?”

  “What anybody in the county would be afraid of. Getting murdered.”

  “Nobody from this county’s been murdered. Both victims were from somewhere else. I don’t think the murders are connected to this county.”

  Burns didn’t believe it. “You can’t be sure of that.”

  “Maybe not sure, but close enough.”

  “You mean you know what’s going on?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that. I have some ideas. That’s about all.”

  “What kind of ideas?”

  “I can’t talk about them,” Rhodes said. “They’re confidential.”

  Burns smiled. It wasn’t pleasant. “Which means you don’t really have any.”

  “It means they’re confidential.” Rhodes stood up. “I need to get out and check on a few things. I’ll let you know when there’s been any progress.”

  “There had better be some progress, and soon. You might not be lucky enough to run unopposed in the next election.”

  Rhodes wondered if Burns had his eyes on the sheriff’s job. If he did, more power to him. Rhodes wasn’t considering retirement, but if someone else got elected, Rhodes would step down gracefully. The next election was a long way off, however, and a lot could happen in that time.