by Bill Crider
Rapper followed Rhodes into the ditch. Nellie was right behind him. That was a mistake, as Rapper discovered when Rhodes slammed on the brakes.
The county car slid along on the weeds for a few feet after Rhodes applied the brakes, but Rapper slid faster, and his bike struck the car’s rear bumper. The bike went over on its side, with Rapper under it.
Nellie had been going more slowly and was able to come to a stop. Rhodes jumped out of the car while Rapper was crawling out from under his bike. He didn’t try to right it. He yowled with what must have been pain and hobbled over to Nellie. Nellie dragged him onto the back of his bike and took off.
Rhodes stood and watched them go. He could add himself to the number of people Rapper blamed for his brother’s death, though Rhodes had been pretty sure already that he was on the list.
He left the bike where it was and went back to the jail.
* * *
“Did you see the six o’clock news?” Hack asked when Rhodes walked in.
“Shoot, I missed it,” Rhodes said.
“How about the ten o’clock?”
Rhodes had lost track of time. He looked at the big round clock on the wall. It was nearly eleven.
“Missed that, too,” he said. “I’ve been busy. How are the Eccleses?”
“Fine as frog hair,” Hack said. “I sure wish you could’ve seen the news, though. Lawton and I looked pretty good for a couple of old men. Ain’t that right, Lawton?”
“Sure is,” Lawton said. “You had Ivy record the news, I guess.”
“I forgot to tell her,” Rhodes said.
Hack and Lawton both looked disappointed.
“What you been up to that’s so important you missed the news?” Hack asked.
Rhodes felt guilty, so he didn’t make them badger him for the report. He told it straight.
“You think Rapper’s hurt bad?” Hack asked when Rhodes was finished.
“Not bad enough. That reminds me. Call Autry’s wrecker service and have him go out there and pick up Rapper’s motorcycle. If Duke’s out on patrol, have him see what he can turn up from his informants about Rapper, and if he doesn’t get anything, put Buddy on it tomorrow.”
Hack picked up the phone to call the wrecker service, and Rhodes sat at his desk to look over the report about Garver that Ruth had left him. It made for interesting reading. Especially as it seemed that Ed Garver had been dead for thirty-five years.
* * *
The emergency room at the Clearview hospital wasn’t crowded, but Rhodes didn’t find Garver and Winston there. They’d been treated and released, so Rhodes drove to Garver’s house.
Garver wasn’t home. Rhodes didn’t find that suspicious in itself. He might have gone after his pickup. Winston might have gone after his, too. They’d have gotten Fowler to take them, Rhodes thought, but he didn’t waste any time going by Fowler’s house to check. He drove back to the Carroll place to see if anyone was there.
Cal Autry was loading up Rapper’s motorcycle when Rhodes went past, and Rhodes gave him a beep from the car horn. Autry didn’t acknowledge it. He was busy, so Rhodes didn’t hold it against him.
Rhodes got to the Carroll place. Fowler and the others were there, but they were just about to leave. Rhodes parked the cruiser astraddle the road so they couldn’t get past it and got out.
“What the hell, Sheriff,” Fowler said, getting out of his pickup.
“I need to talk to Garver,” Rhodes told him.
“Well, I’m not him. You want to move so I can get by?”
Garver and Winston got out of their own pickups and stood listening. Rhodes thought it would be just as well for Winston and Fowler to leave. He might find out more from Garver if he talked to him alone.
“You and Winston can go,” Rhodes said. “Garver, you need to stay here.”
He got in the car and pulled it off the narrow road. Fowler and Winston drove by him. Rhodes sat in the car until he saw their taillights on the road back to Clearview. Then he got out and walked over to where Garver waited for him.
“What’s the problem, Sheriff?” the plumber asked.
“I just found out that you’re dead,” Rhodes said. “I’m not used to dealing with zombies.”
Garver didn’t laugh. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not dead. I’m standing right here in front of you.”
The moon gilded Garver’s pickup and threw its shadow on the ground. The air was cooler than it had been, and Rhodes wished he’d brought his jacket.
“You might be here,” Rhodes said, “but Edward Alvin Garver’s not. That Ed Garver’s dead, but that’s who you’re supposed to be. Since you’re not, the question is, who are you?”
Garver, or whoever he was, looked off back down the road to town. He probably wished he was on it.
“I’m Edward Alvin Garver. I have my ID here if you want to see it.”
“I don’t doubt you have some ID,” Rhodes said. “It might even look real. It might even be real, but it won’t prove to me that you’re Garver. Now come on and tell me who you are. I’m getting cold standing out here, and I’d be just as happy to question you at the jail. Maybe happier.”
“You can put me in jail if you want to. I’m Ed Garver, and that’s all there is to it.”
Rhodes couldn’t really think of a good reason to put Garver in jail. It was possible he was telling the truth. Maybe Ruth had made some kind of mistake, as unlikely as that seemed to Rhodes. Or there could be two Ed Garvers with the same birth date. That didn’t explain how Ruth had overlooked one of them, and Rhodes didn’t believe she had. Still, his suspicion that the Ed Garver standing in front of him was really someone else, someone who’d stolen the real Garver’s identity, wasn’t enough grounds for an arrest.
“I don’t really have any reason to arrest you yet,” Rhodes said. “Are you sure you want to go to the jail?”
“Maybe not. Let me ask you something. If I’m not under arrest, I don’t have to answer any questions, do I?”
“No. You don’t have to.”
“I don’t have to talk to you if I don’t want to, do I?”
“That’s right,” Rhodes said.
“Well,” Garver said, “I don’t want to. My head hurts, and I’m going home now.”
He turned and got into his pickup. When he started it, Rhodes stepped aside. The headlights brightened the road. Then Garver drove past, and all Rhodes could do was let him leave.
Rhodes thought about following him, but he didn’t think Garver planned to run. He might be wrong, but he’d play it that way and see what happened. Whatever Garver did, things didn’t look good for him.
Rhodes smiled. He was still thinking of the man as Garver, but that wasn’t his name. Rhodes wondered what his name really was.
He had a feeling he’d find out soon enough.
Chapter 17
Rhodes knew he should resist, but he couldn’t help himself. The next morning he turned on the little radio/CD player combo that sat on the kitchen counter and tuned in Milton Munday. A commercial was playing. Naturally.
“What is that?” Ivy asked when she came into the kitchen.
Rhodes often wondered how she managed to look so good even before she put her makeup on.
“It’s a commercial for Big Jolly’s hamburgers,” he said.
“You know that’s not what I meant. Are you listening to Milton Munday?”
Rhodes admitted that he was. “I thought I’d see what he’s saying about me today.”
“It’s not always about you,” Ivy said.
“Maybe not, but I’ll bet you a dollar that it is this time.”
“It’s a bet.”
They stood by the counter and waited through another commercial, this one for Walker’s Feed and Seed. Then Munday was on the air.
“Yes, folks,” he said in his rich, mellow voice, “it’s true. This town, our fair city, is being terrorized by violent bikers. I’ve already told you about last night’s vicious attack on some
of your friends and fellow citizens, and now I’d like to ask you a question. What do you think our sheriff will do about it? The phone lines are open. Call in and let us hear from you.”
“You win,” Ivy said. “Too bad I don’t have a dollar.”
“I’ll stay right here until you get one out of your purse,” Rhodes said.
He was only half-listening to Munday now, but the broadcaster’s voice sounded a bit odd to him. It was almost as if Munday were scared of the bikers.
“I don’t think I have a dollar in my purse, either,” Ivy said. “I’ll make a deal with you.”
Rhodes was suspicious of Ivy’s deals. Somehow he never came out the winner.
“What kind of deal?” he said.
“I’ll fix you sausage and eggs for breakfast.”
Sausage and eggs? Rhodes hadn’t even known there was any sausage in the house.
“That sounds fair,” he said.
“Good. I haven’t cooked breakfast in a while,” Ivy said. “It’ll be a treat for both of us.”
“Is it spicy sausage?” Rhodes asked, hoping the answer would be yes.
“It’s spicy, all right. I made it myself.”
Uh-oh. “You made it yourself?”
“It’s a special recipe.”
Rhodes didn’t think Ivy had the equipment to make sausage, no matter how special the recipe was.
“What kind of recipe?” he asked.
“It’s vegetarian sausage. It’s good. You’ll like it.”
Rhodes looked over at Sam, lying by the refrigerator. The cat opened its eyes as if it felt Rhodes’s gaze. It yawned.
“How do you know it’s good?” Rhodes asked.
“I just know. You go out and visit Speedo.” Ivy switched off the radio. “I’m tired of listening to that.”
Rhodes was tired of it, too. He hadn’t paid any attention to the man who called in to say he didn’t think Rhodes could handle the bikers, much less solve the murders that Munday said “held the town in the grip of terror, wondering who would be the next to die.” Well, not much attention. He wondered if Munday had mentioned the Eccleses. If he hadn’t, they’d be sadly disappointed. The biker gang, all two of them, would be a better topic for discussion, Rhodes figured.
He headed for the back door while Ivy got out the frying pan. Yancey heard him and came bounding out from wherever he’d been hiding and zipped out into the yard as soon as the door was opened wide enough for him to squeeze through.
It was cold but not frosty cold. Speedo came out of his Styrofoam igloo, shook off some of the straw bedding that clung to him, and charged Yancey. As usual the dogs seemed invigorated by the cool weather. Rhodes stood on the steps and watched them take turns chasing each other around the yard.
Brown leaves from the pecan trees lay all around on the grass, but Rhodes didn’t plan to rake them. They’d make good fertilizer when they rotted, and until then they’d protect the lawn from the cold. Or so Rhodes told himself.
After a while, Rhodes whistled up Yancey, and the two of them went back inside. Speedo went back into his igloo for a nap.
Rhodes smelled the sausage. He had to admit it smelled good, though not a whole lot like real sausage. He got out a plate and utensils, then poured a glass of water while Ivy scrambled the eggs. When she served them up with the sausage, he put some picante sauce on them and dug in.
“Not bad,” he said after he’d tried the sausage.
“I knew you’d like it,” Ivy said, laying a couple of pieces of toast on his plate.
“You didn’t fix any for yourself,” Rhodes said.
“I need to get dressed. You go ahead and eat.”
Rhodes didn’t need any further encouragement. He started to ask Ivy to turn the radio on before she went out of the kitchen, but he decided not to. Why subject himself to the aggravation?
Yancey lay under the chair where Rhodes sat and eyed Sam. Sam slept curled into a black ball and didn’t move. Rhodes could hardly tell he was breathing.
After he’d finished eating, Rhodes rinsed off the plate and put it into the dishwasher along with his glass, knife, and fork.
“That’s my housework for the day,” he told Yancey, but by then, like Sam, the dog was asleep.
* * *
When Rhodes entered the jail, Hack and Lawton were ready for him.
“You hear Milton Munday’s show today?” Hack asked.
“About two minutes of it,” Rhodes said. “He’s worried about motorcycle gangs. Did he mention our customers?”
“Lance and Hugh? Not a word. I guess he forgot ’em.”
“He’s really worried about those bikers. You’d think they came here to get him, almost.”
Rhodes wondered why Munday would be worried. Surely he didn’t know Rapper and Nellie. Or maybe he did. It occurred to Rhodes that he didn’t know much about Munday. When it came right down to it, he didn’t know anything about Munday.
“Lance and Hugh were a little upset when I told ’em Munday didn’t mention them,” Lawton said.
“Isn’t he still on the air?” Rhodes asked.
“Yeah,” Hack said, “but he’s all about the bikers today. You’d think the Hell’s Angels were in town. I told you it’d be like this.”
“You did,” Rhodes said. “I give you all the credit. Did Duke turn up anything on Rapper?”
“Nope. Buddy’s on it today, though.”
Before Rhodes could respond to that, Ruth Grady came in, and Rhodes asked her about the report on Garver.
“No mistakes,” she said. “Edward Alvin Garver is our man. Or isn’t our man.”
Rhodes hadn’t mentioned any of this to Hack or Lawton, and they were immediately curious.
“What’s all that about?” Hack asked.
Ruth explained it.
“Well, he’s a good plumber, whoever he is,” Hack said. “I know that for sure and certain. He fixed Miz McGee’s sink faucet when it went bad on her, and he didn’t overcharge her for it, either.”
Rhodes didn’t think that information was relevant. He and Ruth sat down and went over the report again.
The real Edwin Alvin Garver had been born in Arkansas thirty-five years previously. He’d died not long afterward, never having left the hospital, and was buried just outside Fayetteville.
“What do you think?” Rhodes asked.
“That our plumber friend, no pun intended, got hold of this Ed Garver’s birth certificate,” Ruth said. “After he had that, he got the rest of the identification he needed and ditched his own identity. He started his life over again.”
“Too easy to get a birth certificate in Arkansas,” Hack said. “They oughta toughen up.”
“It doesn’t take much doing to get a birth certificate in Texas, either,” Rhodes said. “All you need is a valid driver’s license and a valid credit card. Those can be arranged without a birth certificate if you know the right people.”
“Or the wrong ones,” Lawton said.
“Right or wrong, why would a man do something like that?” Hack asked.
“Lots of reasons,” Ruth said. “Too many to count.”
“Garver claimed he came here from Galveston to get away from all the damage Hurricane Ike did,” Rhodes said. “I wonder if that’s true.”
“It makes a good story,” Ruth said, “but my guess is he’s from Arkansas.”
“So was Baty,” Rhodes said. “That’s where some of the bank robberies were.”
“You think we ought to talk to Garver?” Ruth asked.
“If he’ll talk.” Rhodes told her about his previous conversation with Garver. “He might not even be in town anymore.”
“You can arrest him now,” Ruth said. “Identity theft’s a crime, and we have enough right here to justify holding him.”
“Let’s go see if we can find him, then,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Garver had bought a nice little house when he moved to Clearview, and now Rhodes wondered where his money had come from, plu
mbing or bank robbery.
The house was in one of the newer additions to the town, out on the north side, not too far from the high school. The grass was brown, but so was everyone’s in Clearview at that time of year. It had been trimmed and edged around the walk and driveway. Did killers take good care of their lawns? Rhodes had never thought about it before. Garver’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway, but it might be in the garage, which was closed.
Rhodes parked at the curb. Ruth parked behind him, and they both got out.
“Probably at work,” Rhodes said.
“If he hasn’t skipped the county,” Ruth said.
They went up the walk, and Rhodes rang the bell. Nobody answered, not that Rhodes had expected anyone.
“You go ahead and do your patrol,” he told Ruth. “I’ll go by Allison’s Plumbing Company and see if Garver’s there.”
Ruth left, and Rhodes stood looking at the house for a while, thinking about Garver. Maybe this was all some kind of mix-up, and Garver would be in the clear. Rhodes hoped that was all there was to it and that today Garver would be willing to talk.
He doubted that would be the case, however.
* * *
Allison’s Plumbing Company had been around ever since Rhodes was a boy. Trey Allison’s father, George Allison Jr., had owned it then, and still had an interest in it, though he was now too old to do much work and seldom showed up even to look things over. George Allison III, whom everybody called Trey, was fully in charge.
Trey was little, short, and wiry, the better to crawl around in tunnels under houses or to move around in attics, Rhodes thought. He had curly gray hair that he covered with a black-and-white-striped engineer’s cap, as if he were about to board a train and take off for a rail trip to the West.
“Hey, Sheriff,” he said when Rhodes walked into the shop. “Am I under arrest?”
Allison sat on a wooden stool behind a high wooden counter covered with all kinds of couplings and fittings and short lengths of pipe. Behind Allison was a wall of shelves with more of the same kinds of things. Rhodes supposed everything there was useful for something, but he didn’t have any idea what that something might be.