by Bill Crider
“He didn’t tell me a damn thing,” Garver said. “Can’t speak for Winston.”
Winston looked at Arvid. “Didn’t tell me anything, either. What’s the deal?”
“The men on those motorcycles don’t know you,” Rhodes said, “You don’t know them, either, but you can bet they don’t like you. They have it in for whoever killed that man last night.”
“Wasn’t us that killed him, dammit,” Winston said.
“I don’t think that matters,” Rhodes told him.
“We’re the ones with the guns,” Garver said.
“I’d be surprised if they didn’t have guns, too,” Rhodes said. “I’d just as soon not get into a shooting war. We don’t need anybody else to get killed.”
“Especially not me,” Winston said, looking over his shoulder.
The motorcycles turned off the road and came through the open gate.
“Hell,” Fowler said, “let’s quit all this talking and get ourselves in the trees. They won’t follow us in there.”
Rhodes thought Fowler was being overly optimistic, but the motorcycles were nearly on them now. They either had to stand their ground or move into the woods.
Winston didn’t waste any more time. He let the dogs pull him on into the trees at a brisk jog, and the others followed him. So did Rhodes.
Arvid seemed to know where he was going, and Rhodes thought he could make out a faint trail in the jiggling beam of Fowler’s flashlight. Maybe they’d avoid trouble after all.
Rhodes stopped to listen. He could hear the throbbing sound of motorcycles idling. Rapper and Nellie must have decided not to try crashing through the trees. They probably didn’t want to damage their machines. Rhodes ran to catch up with the hunters.
The dogs barked and lunged against the leashes.
“They got a scent,” Winston said.
“Let ’em go,” Fowler said, and Winston unhooked the leashes. The dogs ran on ahead.
Motorcycles roared.
“They’re coming in the trees,” someone yelled. Rhodes wasn’t sure who it was.
“Let’s make ’em sorry they tangled with us,” Fowler said from nearby. “Take cover and give ’em hell!”
“No shooting,” Rhodes said.
“To hell with that,” Fowler said. “It’s self-defense, Sheriff.”
“Nobody’s tried to hurt you yet,” Rhodes said.
“Preemptive strike.” Fowler’s flashlight went dark. “Can’t take any chances.”
Rhodes saw the other two flashlights blink off. He wished he had a plan to stop what was about to happen, but he couldn’t think of anything that might even come close to working.
At least the motorcycles had slowed down to a near crawl. Rapper and Nellie were having a hard time getting through the trees. Rhodes hoped they’d just turn around and leave, though he didn’t think that was likely. Rapper wouldn’t give up that easily.
The thrumming of the engines stopped.
“There are men with guns here!” Rhodes yelled. “Go on home, Rapper. I’ll find out who killed Hoss.”
Nobody answered.
“You know I will,” Rhodes said, hoping that Rapper was listening. “I can do it legally, and I’ll put whoever did it in jail for a long time.”
The dogs barked. They were either on the trail or had a hog cornered. Rhodes couldn’t tell. He thought he heard someone moving around in the brush, but if he did, he didn’t know who it was. It could have been anybody.
He felt a chill, and he thought again of that old movie where the trees had grasping arms. Only this time he didn’t think it was the trees that would be grasping. Rapper and Nellie were more likely to be the culprits.
Rhodes wasn’t much of a woodsman. He had trouble moving quietly in the trees, and he thought Rapper would have the same problem. It was hard to say about Nellie. He was sneakier than he appeared to be. Rhodes looked around. He was behind a big tree, or maybe he was in front of it, depending on which direction someone might be coming from. He bent down and got the .32 from the ankle holster.
As he was straightening, he heard the sound of a blow and a muffled cry. Branches rattled, and something fell to the ground. It didn’t take much imagination to think it must have been a body, but Rhodes didn’t know whose. Not Fowler’s. Fowler wasn’t far away, in a clump of brush that hadn’t moved.
The moon was bright, but while some light made its way through the thick limbs overhead, Rhodes couldn’t make out much other than shades of light and darkness among the shadows. He stood still and listened.
If he’d been a real woodsman, he could have heard footsteps on the leaves. Or the snapping of a twig. As it was, he didn’t really hear anything other than the frantic barking of the dogs. He wondered how long the dogs could hold a big hog in position before the hog got tired of being barked at and decided to attack. The Kevlar vests might not be enough to save the dogs if the hog got rough.
The barking became more shrill. One of the dogs howled.
“Dammit to hell!” Winston said.
He broke cover about twenty yards from where Rhodes stood and ran in the direction of the dogs. A dark figure stepped out behind him and swung what looked like a tree limb, though it might have been a baseball bat. It caught Winston in the back of the head. He dropped his rifle and dived forward, arms outstretched. When he landed, he skidded along the ground on his face. By the time he stopped skidding, the dark figure was gone.
The dogs howled louder, but they didn’t sound hurt. They sounded like they were on the run. Maybe the tables had turned and the hog was now chasing them. Or hogs. Rhodes hoped there was only one.
The sound of the chase was drowned out by the noise of the motorcycles starting up. Rapper and Nellie gunned the engines and made the exhausts rumble like an earthquake.
Fowler’s .357 blasted. Rhodes saw the muzzle flash twice from the brush, and then the motorcycles were on their way out of the woods.
“Hold off, Arvid,” Rhodes said. “You want to spend the next fifty years in prison?”
“I want to get those bastards,” Fowler said. “I think they killed Winston and Garver.”
“I don’t think so, but we need to check on them. Put the pistol away.”
Rhodes came around the tree and headed for Fowler’s hiding place without waiting for an answer. He hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps before the dogs broke out of the trees and flashed by him like a couple of low-flying jet planes.
The hog wasn’t far behind them. It thundered out of the brush, snorting and kicking up dirt as it ran, looking to Rhodes as big as a bear, though it probably wasn’t as big as the one the hunters had killed the previous night.
Rhodes dived behind a tree just as Fowler started blasting away. The big pistol rattled the leaves with its roar.
Rhodes couldn’t tell if the hog had been hit, but the shooting was enough to turn its attention to Fowler instead of the dogs. It skidded to a stop and stood shaking its head from side to side.
Long ago Rhodes had been in a similar situation, and the hog had plowed into him, putting him in the hospital for longer than he liked to think about. The .32 would be useless against the hog, but Rhodes knew he’d use it if he had to. Maybe he’d get in a lucky shot.
He didn’t have to worry about it, however, because the hog charged the bushes where Fowler was hidden.
Fowler panicked. Instead of shooting, he ran out of the cover and dodged through the trees. Maybe he was out of bullets. Rhodes hadn’t counted.
The hog wasn’t far behind Fowler, and it proved to be as nimble as the man when it came to dodging the trees.
Rhodes chased after the hog, not that he had a plan. He just thought he ought to try to help Fowler, even if he didn’t know how he was going to do it.
He should have stayed where he was. The hog heard him trampling along behind it and spun around, planting its trotters and lowering its head. Its tusks glinted in the moonlight, and to Rhodes they seemed to be about twelve inches long.
> Rhodes didn’t stand there to admire them, however. Wishing he’d worn his Kevlar vest like the dogs had, he turned and ran. He was getting chased by feral hogs way too often lately. It was good exercise but not the kind he enjoyed.
Not far ahead of him was a pecan tree with a limb that was just a bit higher than his head. When he got to it, he grabbed hold of the limb and swung his legs up. The hog ran right under him.
If Rhodes had been Sage Barton, he’d have pulled himself up, thrown a leg over the limb, and sat there laughing at the hog.
Unfortunately, Rhodes wasn’t Sage Barton, and there was little chance he could perform the necessary acrobatics. Hanging on to the limb with his right hand, he made a quick turn.
So did the hog, who seemed to be puzzled by Rhodes’s sudden disappearance. Rhodes grabbed the limb with his left hand again and reached out with his feet to the trunk of the tree.
It was about eighteen inches too far away. Rhodes moved hand over hand until he could reach the trunk. He risked a look at the hog, which was looking at him but not moving.
On his next try, Rhodes’s foot touched the trunk. He thought he could step up it and hook his leg over the limb. It might have worked if his hands hadn’t slipped.
Rhodes fell and landed flat on his back. His breath went out of him with a whoosh. He struggled to suck in some air. Even if someone had offered him a million dollars to get up, he wouldn’t have been able to move.
The hog grunted and huffed somewhere nearby. Rhodes figured it would rip him to shreds with those twelve-inch tusks.
It didn’t happen, though, because the dogs came back. They announced their presence with barking, and the hog broke for the brush. The dogs went after him.
Rhodes lay where he was, waiting until he could breathe freely again. It took a couple of minutes. Then he stood up, glad that he was able to do it and not worried about how he’d feel the next day.
He took a couple of steps. Nothing seemed to be broken, and he didn’t even hurt that much. He would later, he knew, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He went to look for Winston and Garver.
Garver lay where he’d fallen, near a clump of what Rhodes was certain was poison ivy. It made him itch just to look at it, and he was careful to avoid touching it. He felt Garver’s neck. The pulse was strong and even, so Garver would probably be all right. Rhodes left him there and looked around for Winston, who was sitting up, leaning against the trunk of a tree.
Rhodes went over to him and located the flashlight that Winston had dropped. Rhodes turned the light on and asked Winston how he felt.
“How do you think I feel?” Winston asked in return. “Like the back of my head’s been bashed in.” He put his fingers behind him and touched his hair. “I’m bleeding back there.”
Rhodes held up a couple of fingers and asked Winston how many there were.
“Two. I feel like I’m a little out of it, but I can tell that much.”
“You might not have a concussion,” Rhodes said, “but then again you might. I’ll call the EMTs and get them out here. Garver’s going to need them, too. More than you.”
Winston didn’t argue.
Rhodes hated cell phones, so he didn’t carry one often. He’d brought one along this time, just in case, and he used it to make the call. After that was done, he asked Winston if he’d seen Fowler.
“Nope. What happened to him?”
“The hog chased him.”
Winston started to laugh, then stopped and put his hand to his head. “He might still be running, then.”
“He might be,” Rhodes said. “Unless somebody caught him.”
Chapter 16
Nobody had caught Fowler, and he came back before the EMTs arrived. By that time Garver was sitting up and talking. He seemed fine, except for the big knot on the back of his head, but Rhodes insisted that he and Winston sit where they were until they got some medical attention. Fowler went off to see if he could bring back the dogs.
The EMTs came, and they ragged on Rhodes a while for having called them out three nights in a row.
“We’re gonna charge extra for going into the woods from now on,” one of them said. His name was Charlie, and he’d been on all three calls.
“The county would be glad to pay it,” Rhodes told him, and Charlie laughed at the ridiculousness of that idea.
After Winston and Garver were taken away to be checked at the hospital, Fowler came back with the dogs. They’d lost the hog or gotten tired of chasing him. Rhodes didn’t know which and didn’t care. He and Fowler took them to Fowler’s pickup and transferred the carriers to it.
“I’ll take ’em home, but what about Winston and Garver’s vehicles?” Fowler asked.
“I can call the wrecker,” Rhodes said, “or Winston and Garver can pick them up tomorrow.”
“You think they’ll be all right out here tonight?”
“I can’t vouch for that,” Rhodes said.
“I guess we’ll just have to take the chance. These dogs are all I can handle.” Fowler looked at Rhodes. “I think I’ve about had my fill of hog hunting for a while.”
“I expect Garver and Winston feel the same way.”
“Probably do. I’m sorry I messed up tonight. I was scared. You’re not gonna arrest me, are you?”
“I thought about it. You might have killed somebody. Didn’t you even think about that?”
“I wasn’t shooting to hit ’em,” Fowler said. “Just to scare ’em.”
That would make as good a defense as any if Rhodes pressed charges. He wouldn’t waste his time doing that, though. It would probably all come to nothing in the end. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to let Fowler worry about it for a little while longer.
“I’ll think it over,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be in touch tomorrow if I decide to do anything.”
“Yeah,” Fowler said. “All right. I wasn’t trying to shoot anybody, though. Just put a scare in ’em.”
“I hear you,” Rhodes said.
That didn’t mean he believed it, though.
* * *
Rhodes stayed around for a few minutes after Fowler left, just in case Rapper and Nellie decided to come back.
They had to have been the two men on the motorcycles. It could have been someone else, sure, but what were the odds? Rhodes didn’t think coincidence could extend that far, and he didn’t know of any other motorcycles connected with the murders.
The question now was whether Rapper figured he’d had his revenge or if something more was to come. Knowing Rapper as he did, Rhodes would have bet on the something more.
Rhodes thought of another question, too. Had Garver and Winston been singled out? After those two were down, Rapper and Nellie had scooted without even trying to find Fowler and Rhodes.
It was possible that they figured they’d pushed their luck far enough already, but it was also possible that they’d taken care of the ones they’d come after. Rhodes needed to find out what Ruth Grady had learned about Garver when she checked his background.
What he needed more than that, however, was something to tie the two killings together. Even more importantly, he needed to find out what had happened on the night Baty was killed. It wouldn’t hurt to find a motive for Baty’s killing. That might be the clue Rhodes was looking for, the thread that would stitch everything together.
Rhodes was sure that sooner or later he’d catch hold of the thread. He just hoped it was sooner.
The night was cool and quiet. The big harvest moon was high in the sky, and the thin clouds threw dark shadows on the silvery ground. Rhodes heard nothing that sounded like motorcycles, so he got in the county car and headed for home.
He hadn’t gone more than a quarter of a mile down the county road when he did hear something that sounded like motorcycles. He looked in the rearview mirror and saw two headlights. They were coming up on him fast.
Rhodes couldn’t outrun them because the motorcycles were a lot more maneuverable on the curving road. He wondered what Rapper a
nd Nellie had in mind.
He found out all too soon. Both bikes roared up beside him, one behind the other, and started edging him toward the ditch on his left.
The riders wore helmets with the visors pulled down, but there was no doubt that Nellie and Rapper were under the helmets. Their builds were the giveaway: Rapper short and potbellied, Nellie thinner and taller.
Rhodes had two choices. He could try nudging them back, or he could go into the ditch.
If he nudged them back, he might cause them to flip over.
If he went into the ditch, he was the one likely to flip over.
He had air bags and a seat belt. Nellie and Rapper weren’t protected, but they were the ones who’d picked the fight. He was an officer of the law, and they weren’t. It was a tough choice. He’d have to think about it.
They pulled closer to the car, and both men kicked out with their booted right feet and struck the side of the car. Rhodes eased over a little bit more to the left.
He slowed down. So did the riders. He wondered what they’d do if he stopped. What could they do? Run? Stand and fight him?
He decided he’d find out. He put his foot on the brake, and the car slowed.
Rapper and Nellie slowed, too. They kicked the car even harder, and Rhodes knew they were denting it. What with the dent the hog had made in it and the missing windshield wiper blade, he was running up quite a repair bill for the county. Mikey Burns would feel like it was coming out of his own pocket, too, but Rhodes wasn’t worried about him at the moment.
Rhodes had come almost to a stop. The kicking was continuous and so hard it was shaking the car. Stopping wasn’t such a great idea, but something else occurred to Rhodes. He was going slow enough for it to work if he was careful.
He pushed the accelerator to the floor. The car’s tires spun on the dirt. Then they caught, and the car jumped forward. Nellie and Rapper kept pace, but Rhodes fooled them. He didn’t stick to the road. Instead, he turned into the ditch.
He bumped along for a short distance with two tires in the ditch and two on the road. Then when he thought the time was right, he moved all the way down into the ditch. The car slashed through weeds that were as high as the hood. They slapped the car and stained the paint as Rhodes mowed them down.