by Bill Crider
“What did Brent say about that idea?” Rhodes asked.
“It’s something we’ll be talking more about.”
It was something Rhodes would be talking to Brent about, too.
“It might not be a good idea to go into anything like that on the air before you’ve cleared it with the judge,” Rhodes said. “And then there’s the overtime pay.”
Burns brushed that off. “We’ll work that problem out. Munday thinks the story will make good radio. It might influence people to think about it in the right way.”
Or the wrong way, depending on your point of view, Rhodes thought. He told Burns he’d listen to the show and hung up.
“Sounds like you and Mikey don’t agree on everything,” Hack said.
“We never do,” Rhodes told him. “Every now and then he tells me something helpful.”
“That’s good,” Lawton said. “The commissioners ought to support their local sheriff.”
“I didn’t say he supported me. Just that he was helpful. I don’t think he intends to be. It just works out that way now and then.”
“You oughta go along with him on that hog thing,” Hack said. “Get rid of one more hog a day, and you’d do some good even if you never can get all of ’em.”
“You think I want Buddy out there guiding hunters?”
“Well, maybe not. He has better things to do.”
“We all do,” Rhodes said.
“Maybe if you’d bought that M-16 when Burns wanted you to, you could go out and hunt ’em yourself,” Lawton said. “That’s what Sage Barton would do. Wipe out a whole herd in about five seconds.”
Rhodes didn’t want to talk about Sage Barton.
“I’m going home now. It’s past my bedtime.”
“You gonna leave the computer on?” Hack asked.
“I’ve heard that’s okay,” Rhodes said.
“Some say it ain’t.”
Rhodes turned off the computer and made his escape.
* * *
“I’m glad to see you aren’t muddy or bloody for a change,” Ivy said when Rhodes got home.
“I’ve turned over a new leaf,” Rhodes said. “No more mud and blood.”
Yancey yipped his approval of the new leaf. Rhodes reached down to pat him, but Yancey took off at a run.
“Where’s he going?” Rhodes asked.
“The kitchen,” Ivy said. “He’s found out that sometimes Sam’s so asleep that he can sneak up on him.”
Rhodes thought that might be interesting. “What happens when he sneaks up on him?”
“Sam wakes up.”
“And then?”
“And then Yancey runs away. He thinks it’s a game.”
Rhodes heard a sharp yip from the kitchen, and Yancey came streaking back. He skidded on the floor as he turned the corner, and then he fled into another room to hide.
“How long has that been going on?” Rhodes asked.
“Most of the afternoon. They both seem to enjoy it.”
“It takes so little to make them happy,” Rhodes said.
“Right. They remind me of someone I know.”
“You know what would make me happy?”
“I can think of a thing or two that might work.”
“Why don’t we find out, then,” Rhodes said.
“Follow me,” Ivy said, and Rhodes did.
Chapter 24
Milton Munday was really laying it on.
“Do you really think the town of Clearview is in danger of being overrun by wild hogs?” he asked.
Mikey Burns really did. “I think it’s entirely possible. They’re moving closer to town all the time, and they’re getting bolder, causing more and more damage. The next thing you know, they’ll be rooting up flower beds along the streets at night.”
“And who knows what might come after that,” Munday said, making Rhodes think of some old black-and-white horror movie of the kind they used to show on late-night TV, a town terrorized by giant feral hogs with tusks two feet long and hooves shod with iron. Rhodes hoped nobody else thought like that. Things were bad enough already.
“They’ve caused two deaths that we know about,” Munday said. “A man named Baty died first, and then a famous bounty hunter named Hoss Rapinski.”
Fugitive recovery agent, Rhodes thought, and the hogs didn’t kill either one of them, not that Munday would let a little thing like the facts bother him.
Neither would Burns. “That’s absolutely right, Milton, and who knows what they’ll do when they get to town. Our citizens would be endangered. If we only had some plan in place to stop them, it would be different.”
“Folks,” Munday said, “our guest today is County Commissioner Mikey Burns, and he has a plan to stop the devastation that’s tearing our county apart. What’s the plan, sir?”
Rhodes couldn’t take it anymore. He turned off the radio.
“It was just getting interesting,” Ivy said. “I’d like to hear the plan.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Rhodes said. “It’s a bad plan.”
“You know what it is?”
“I know, and it’s bad.”
“If you say so.”
Rhodes told her the plan.
“You were right,” Ivy said. “It’s a bad plan.”
“That’s what I told Burns, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“He’ll be sorry,” Ivy said.
“Is that sarcasm?”
“Not a bit. I’m just agreeing with you.”
Rhodes wasn’t convinced, but he let it ride. It was time for him to get to the jail.
“What about those two dead men?” Ivy asked. “Have you figured out who killed them?”
“I’m still working on it,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Ruth Grady wasn’t there when Rhodes arrived at the jail, but Hack and Lawton were already in midmorning form.
“You hear Milton Munday today?” Hack asked when Rhodes came in.
“He never listens to that show,” Lawton said, “not even when the commissioner’s on.”
“He told the commish he’d listen,” Hack said. “On the phone last night.”
“I listened to some of it,” Rhodes told them.
“How much?”
“Enough.”
“You hear the part where Milton Munday said that law enforcement in this county left a lot to be desired?”
“I must have missed that. Burns stood up for me, though, right?”
Hack and Lawton got a good guffaw from that.
“He kind of mealymouthed around,” Hack said after he’d stopped laughing. “He must think you have a few fans around the county.”
“Besides me and Hack, that is,” Lawton said. “Seems to us like you got a pretty good record.”
“I knew I could count on you,” Rhodes said.
“You want us to call in and tell Munday you’ve cracked the case?” Hack asked.
“Not today,” Rhodes said. He turned to the computer. “Maybe tomorrow.”
* * *
Ruth Grady came in a bit later while Rhodes was doing some paperwork. He asked if she’d gotten a report back on the blood in Baty’s car.
“I got it late yesterday,” she said. “Baty didn’t kill anybody. It was animal blood. He might be a deer hunter, or maybe the owner of the car is.”
“So it was deer blood?”
“They didn’t say that. They’re still working on that. They’ll let us know.”
“Okay. I want you to keep an eye out for Rapper and Nellie today. I don’t know if they’ve done all the damage they intend to do.”
“I’ll watch for them, but they don’t show up a lot during the daytime, do they?”
“With those two,” Rhodes said, “you never know.”
* * *
“Did you hear the show?” Mikey Burns asked.
Rhodes had started to tell Hack to lie to Burns and say the sheriff was out on an investigation, but he’d changed his mind and taken the call.
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“Some of it,” Rhodes said.
“I thought it went pretty well. We got quite a few calls of support for the bow-hunting idea.”
That wasn’t good news, but Rhodes wasn’t too worried about it. Once the other commissioners and the county judge found out that it would cost them quite a bit of money, they’d veto the idea. Besides, “quite a few” might mean two. Or even one.
“Munday had a great idea, didn’t he?” Burns asked.
“I must have missed that part.”
“He’s going out to interview the Chandlers tomorrow. He’s going to get them to talk about their animal shelter and see if they can justify saving any feral hogs.”
“That does sound interesting,” Rhodes said, thinking that Munday was just trying to stir up trouble. “What does he think he can accomplish?”
“He wants to start a dialogue with the community about my idea, and he thinks the Chandlers’ would be the best place to get it going.” Then Burns got to the important part. “I’ll be there, too.”
Rhodes could tell that Burns had gotten the radio bug. He liked being on the air and having people all over the county listening to him.
“Remote broadcasts don’t always work out,” Rhodes said.
“Munday’s a pro, and the station’s got a good engineer to set it all up. I’m not worried about it. There’s one other thing.”
It seemed to Rhodes that there was always one other thing. He asked what it was.
“We thought it would be a good idea if you were there, too.”
Rhodes wondered why they thought that would be a good idea. He could think of only one reason. It would give Munday and Burns a chance to put him on the spot about both the hog hunting and the murders.
“What’s in it for me?” he asked.
Burns seemed surprised that Rhodes would ask. “Why, ah, you’d … get some good publicity. Sure enough. That’s it. People would hear their sheriff tell them what a good job he’s doing, how he’s protecting the county and seeing that they’re safe in their homes. Dialogue. You know the kind of thing.”
Rhodes knew, all right. He knew that Burns and Munday didn’t plan to give him a chance to brag on himself. He’d be lucky to get a word in.
“I’ll do it,” Rhodes said.
“You will?” Burns asked. “I mean, that’s great. I’ll tell Milton. He’ll be tickled.”
“I’m sure he will,” Rhodes said.
* * *
The rest of the day went about as days usually did. There were a couple of minor traffic incidents, a dispute over a welding machine that escalated into a fistfight, a domestic dispute in which a woman brandished a knife at her husband, a little problem with public intoxication.
The only thing involving animals was a call from a woman named Janie Miles, who said there was a fuzzy black dog in her front yard, and it wouldn’t leave.
“She says it’s not her dog,” Hack told Rhodes. “She says she wants to get rid of it, but she doesn’t want it hurt.”
“Tell her the animal control officer’s on the way,” Rhodes said.
Hack talked into the phone, then turned to Rhodes again.
“She wants to know if the animal control officer has a gun.”
“Tell her he’s not going to shoot the dog. Nobody is. Boyd’s just going to pick it up and take it to the pound.”
Hack told her.
“She wants to know what happens to dogs at the pound.”
“The people there take care of them and try to find them a home.”
“What if nobody wants them?”
“Maybe that won’t happen,” Rhodes said.
Hack talked some more.
“She wants you to come over there,” Hack said.
“It’s Alton Boyd’s job.”
“She heard Milton Munday’s show today, and she thinks everybody in the county wants to kill all the animals that are roaming around loose.”
Rhodes could see how she might have gotten that idea.
“Tell her I’ll come,” he said. “Then call Alton and tell him to meet me there. I’m not adopting any more dogs, though.”
“I’ll tell her,” Hack said.
* * *
The dog was fuzzy and black, all right. That was as close as Rhodes could come to identifying its breed. It could have used a bath.
“Someone threw it out on me,” Janie said. She was about sixty, with gray hair and a wide, pleasant face. “I don’t know why people do things like that.”
Rhodes didn’t know, either. He and Alton Boyd looked the dog over. Boyd took his unlighted cigar from his mouth and said, “I don’t think he’s going to hurt anybody.”
“Why not?” Janie said.
“’Cause he’s just about blind. He’s probably lost and afraid.”
“Oh, the poor thing.”
The dog wagged its tail.
“He’s hungry, too, I’ll bet,” Boyd said. “He looks fairly good, but he ought to see a vet.”
“Will the pound get a vet to look at him?”
“Eventually,” Rhodes said.
He felt sorry for the dog, but he was sure Ivy would kill him if he took it home.
“My husband always liked dogs,” Janie said. Rhodes could tell she was having a change of heart already. “We had one right up until he died last year. My husband, I mean. He’s the one who died last year, not the dog. The dog died a year or so before that. I’ve been kind of lonesome ever since. Since my husband died, I mean.”
“This is a good dog,” Boyd said. “He just needs somebody to take care of him. He’d need some looking after, but he’d be good company for somebody.”
Janie looked at the dog. “You think I could take care of him?”
“Sure you could. He’d be a lot better off with somebody who’d do that than he would in the pound.”
“What if he didn’t like me?”
Boyd reached down and rubbed the dog’s head. The dog’s tail wagged furiously.
“He likes ever’body,” Boyd said. “Come on over here.”
Janie walked over, and when Boyd encouraged her, she leaned over and patted the dog’s head. His tail wagged again.
Janie looked up at Boyd. “I’m going to name him Henry,” she said. “That was my husband’s name. You think he’d mind? My husband, I mean. Not the dog.”
“I think he’d be proud,” Boyd said. “You want me to take him to the vet for you and get him checked out? Dr. Slick could call you when Henry’s ready to come home.”
“That would be just fine,” Janie said.
Boyd went to his truck and got a light rope that he tied around Henry’s neck.
“You follow me, Henry,” Boyd said.
He started toward his truck, giving a little tug on the rope. Henry followed right along.
So did Rhodes.
“You’re really good,” Rhodes said. “I’m glad the county hired you.”
Boyd grinned at the compliment, the cigar right in the middle of his mouth.
“You mean good with people or good with animals?”
“Both,” Rhodes said. “I wish we could find some way to take care of the wild hogs the way you took care of Henry here.”
Hearing his new name, Henry wagged his tail.
“Ain’t gonna happen,” Boyd said. “I don’t like killing animals, either, but there’s a big difference in Henry and in those hogs. Henry’s not hurtin’ anybody or anything. The hogs’re overrunnin’ the county, just like Milton Munday says they are.”
Another Milton Munday fan.
“We can trap some of ’em,” Boyd went on, “and we can hope some of ’em move on, but if they do, they’ll just move on to other counties. We can kill a few, but there’s too many of ’em. I don’t know what we’re gonna do about ’em, but I’m pretty danged sure we can’t hunt ’em all down.”
“Not even with bows?” Rhodes asked.
Boyd helped Henry into a cage in back of the van and closed the cage door. Henry didn’t seem to mind.
“That’s the silliest thing I ever heard of,” Boyd said.
Rhodes was glad he agreed. “How’d you like to be on the radio?”
“You mean like on Milton Munday’s show?”
“Not like Munday’s show. That’s the one you’d be on.”
“That’d be fun,” Boyd said. “I’d like it a lot. How you gonna get me on?”
“The broadcast tomorrow’s going to be a remote from the Chandlers’ animal shelter. You be at the jail at six thirty, and I’ll pick you up.”
“Hot dog,” Boyd said.
Chapter 25
In addition to Boyd, Rhodes invited a couple of other guests to go with him to the Chandlers’ animal shelter. Ruth Grady was at the jail at the appointed time, and she had Ed Garver with her.
“Did he give you any trouble?” Rhodes asked.
It was a cool morning, and Rhodes was wearing a light windbreaker, but there was plenty of sunshine, or there would be when the sun was well up. There was no wind at all. Rhodes and Ruth stood well away from the cars so that Garver, who was still in Ruth’s cruiser, couldn’t hear them talking.
“No trouble at all,” Ruth said. “He’s happy to be on the radio and talk about hog hunting.”
Everybody wanted to be a star.
“Good,” Rhodes said. “I wouldn’t want him to start anything.”
“You don’t have to worry about that. He knows what’s what.”
Alton Boyd drove up in his van.
“What about Alton?” Ruth asked. “Did you tell him anything?”
“No. He’s just going along to tell everybody what a bad idea it is to let a bunch of bow hunters loose in the woods with deputies to guide them.”
“What’s the matter with Mikey Burns, anyway?” Ruth asked. “Doesn’t he know that we have real jobs to do?”
“He’s just trying to score some political points,” Rhodes said. “He knows the bow hunting wouldn’t help, but he thinks it would look good to the voters.”
“I’m surprised he isn’t lobbying for hunters to come in and shoot from helicopters.”
“I’m pretty sure he knows that wouldn’t go over.”
“You are? I think there are people who’d like for it to happen. Milton Munday for one.”
“Maybe we won’t have to worry about him for much longer,” Rhodes said.