by Bill Crider
Of course, none of Hamilton’s employees would admit that they knew where their boss was. They’d probably been told that if they did, they’d no longer be his employees, so Rhodes hadn’t been alarmed that he hadn’t been able to get in touch with Hamilton.
Now, however, it appeared that maybe everyone had been telling the truth. They really hadn’t known where Hamilton was because he’d been dead all the time.
Ruth Grady didn’t think so.
“I don’t believe he’s been in the water more than a few hours,” she told Rhodes.
They stood on the edge of the pit, looking down at the body below. They could see only the legs and bathing trunks since the rest of the body was still hidden by the jutting rock.
“Look at his legs,” Ruth went on. “Do you see any marks on them?”
The wind had picked up a little, and it pushed the water toward the side of the pit. The chubby white legs bumped the rocks. As far as Rhodes could tell from where he stood, the legs were unmarked.
“They don’t look touched to me,” Rhodes said.
“Fish and turtles would have been at him if he’d been dead for long,” Ruth said.
“Why didn’t he sink?”
“Body fat. Maybe he doesn’t have much water in his lungs. Or maybe he didn’t drown. Maybe he jumped in, hit his head on the rock, and died of a concussion before he could inhale any water.”
She had a point. It wasn’t a certainty that Hamilton had drowned, no matter what it looked like. One of the biggest mistakes you could make was to come to a conclusion before you had the facts.
“Or maybe water moccasins bit him,” Rhodes said.
“Always a possibility,” Ruth said. “Did you hear about the guy who jumped into a whole nest of them a few years ago?”
“Not more than a hundred times. Gillis had the same thought.”
“Hey, it could happen.”
“Sure it could,” Rhodes said.
They’d worked the scene carefully. Ruth had examined the car and the field, and Rhodes had gone over the clothes and the bank of the pit. He’d found nothing in the clothing other than the billfold Gillis had mentioned, some change, a folding knife, and some lint in the pants. The shirt pocket held a ballpoint. The billfold contained nothing other than a driver’s license, a couple of credit cards, and two hundred dollars in cash, all twenties.
Of course there was a cell phone. Rhodes had checked it and found no calls in or out. Hamilton must have carried the phone only for emergencies. Rhodes couldn’t blame him for not wanting to be bothered by calls all the time.
“Find anything in the car?” he asked Ruth.
“That’s one clean car,” Ruth said. “Nothing in it at all. So we’re clueless.”
Rhodes grinned. “We usually are. In this case, that just makes it look more and more like an accidental death.”
“Time to call in the EMTs, then?”
“And the justice of the peace. You make the calls. I’ll stay here with Hamilton, or whoever that is down there.”
Ruth went back to her car, and Rhodes sat on a rock near the pile of clothes. He wasn’t about to try to get the body out of the water and up the rocky bank, not even with Ruth’s help. That was a job for someone who knew what he was doing, and Rhodes wasn’t that person.
He looked down at the body. As he watched, something rose from the depths of the rock pit. At first it was just a dark shadow, but then Rhodes saw that it was the snapping turtle that Gillis had told him about or one equally large. Maybe it wasn’t quite as big as a washtub, but it was big enough, at least the size of a garbage can lid.
It stopped a little below the surface and stretched out its long neck, which looked as thick as a python. Its beak looked strong enough to slice through bone. The dark shell was covered with slimy algae.
The turtle looked at Rhodes with its hard, beady eyes, giving him a little chill, though the sun was warm. Then it sank back down into the water. It had just disappeared from sight when Ruth came back.
“I made the calls,” she said. “They should be here pretty soon.”
Rhodes told her about the turtle.
“When they grab hold,” she said, “they don’t let go till it thunders.”
“This one wouldn’t have to let go,” Rhodes said. “It would just bite a chunk out of you and move on.”
“I’ve heard they aren’t aggressive,” Ruth said. “If you fell in, you’d probably scare him worse than he scared you.”
Rhodes wasn’t sure that was possible. He didn’t like to think about it, and he didn’t like to think about Hamilton’s body being in there with that monster. He hoped the EMTs would hurry up.
The EMTs got there in about fifteen minutes, followed closely by the JP, who had to wait with Ruth and Rhodes until the EMTs got the body out of the rock pit. When that was done, they could all see that it was Lester Hamilton, all right. The JP declared him dead, and the EMTs put him in the ambulance and hauled him away.
“Autopsy?” Ruth asked when she and Rhodes were alone again.
“Routine in this case.”
They’d had a look at the body. There was no sign that Hamilton had hit his head, but that still didn’t rule out a heart attack.
“You saw his hand and wrist, right?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes nodded. Hamilton’s right hand and wrist had been red and abraded, especially the wrist.
“If he was noodling, a catfish could have left marks like that,” Ruth said. “A big one. It could have held him under long enough to drown him. Three minutes, five tops with a man like Hamilton. He wasn’t in great shape. He never should have been in the water in the first place, especially not without someone to watch out for him.”
Rhodes nodded, wondering who might have watched out for Les Hamilton. Who liked him enough to go noodling with him? Rhodes couldn’t think of anyone.
“You think you might dive down there and look for a giant catfish?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes thought about the turtle. “Not a chance,” he said.
“You don’t seem satisfied about this,” Ruth said. “Do you know something you aren’t telling me?”
Rhodes shook his head. “Just a feeling.”
“As in ‘Trust your feelings, Luke’?”
“Not that kind of feeling.”
“We’ve looked all around. There’s no sign that anybody else has been here. No other car drove over the grass today, and it’s a cinch Hamilton died this morning.”
“Hal Gillis was here,” Rhodes said.
“I don’t want to sound prejudiced against old people,” Ruth said, “but I just don’t think he could have drowned a man like Hamilton.”
Rhodes didn’t think so, either, but that didn’t change that feeling he had. He hoped it would go away by the time he got back to town, but he knew he couldn’t count on that.
When Rhodes was called in to investigate a death, it usually fell to him to notify the next of kin. It was a job he didn’t like, but he did it. Sometimes, if he could, he put it off a bit, and this time it was easy enough to do, mainly because as far as Rhodes knew, Lester Hamilton didn’t have any kin living in Blacklin County.
Rhodes would have to let the people who worked for Hamilton know, however, and after that he’d find out if there was anyone else who should be told. Maybe there were some relatives living elsewhere. The chicken houses and the estate would be their problem, and maybe a lawyer’s.
Before he went to Mount Industry to let Hamilton’s employees know about their boss’s death, Rhodes wanted to stop at the jail so he could find out what other excitement was going on around the county. The excitement would include, of course, the hog at Mrs. Stubbs’s house.
Hack and Lawton were ready for him when he got to the jail, eager to hear all about Lester Hamilton’s demise but just as eager to tell Rhodes about the hog, in their own good time, and in their own way. Rhodes wasn’t even going to ask about it.
Hack was lean and had a thin, unfashionable mustache, almost
completely gray, as was the thick hair combed across the top of his head. He was well past retirement age, but as far as Rhodes could determine, the dispatcher had no plans to quit his job. In fact, he’d once told Rhodes that when he died, the county could just stuff him and leave him at his desk.
“Just like Roy Rogers did with Trigger,” he’d said.
“Trigger’s not at a desk,” Rhodes had told him.
“Same difference. Get Jody Tinkle to do the work. He’s good at it.”
Tinkle was the local taxidermist. Rhodes was pretty sure he’d never worked on a human before.
Hack didn’t care. “Don’t matter. He’s worked on enough animals to know what he’s doin’.”
“The county commissioners might not like the idea of a stuffed dispatcher.”
“You can convince ’em.”
Rhodes had given up the argument at that point. He figured Hack would change his mind eventually.
Lawton, the jailer, was as round as Hack was lean and probably just as old, though he didn’t look it. He liked to play the comedian to Hack’s straight man, which often angered Hack, who would have preferred to play both parts himself.
Together the two men had a common goal in life: to drive Rhodes crazy. They would never have admitted it, and they might not even have been conscious of it, but the end result was the same.
This time, Rhodes planned to turn their own tactics against them. He’d done it before, with some success.
“What about Les Hamilton?” Hack asked as soon as Rhodes was inside the door.
“You were right,” Rhodes said.
“Right about what?” Lawton asked.
Hack was at the dispatcher’s desk, while Lawton stood across the big room beside the door that led to the cellblock.
“Right about Hamilton,” Rhodes said.
“How was I right?” Hack asked.
“He’s dead, just like you told me,” Rhodes said. He walked over to his desk, sat down, and turned on the new laptop computer the county had bought for him. He liked it much better than an M-16. “I have to fill out my report.”
“Wait a minute,” Hack said. “What about Hamilton? Did he drown? Did a catfish get him?”
“I’m bettin’ on water moccasins myself,” Lawton said. “I heard about a fella dived off into a whole tangle of ’em in Buck’s Creek one time. Fella told me about it, he said—”
“He said he’d seen it with his own eyes,” Hack said. “I heard that same whopper a dozen times, and it ain’t ever been true.”
“You callin’ Bradley Doakes a liar? ’Cause that’s who told it to me, Bradley Doakes, and his granddaddy was a Babtist preacher over in Obert for a lot of years.”
“Havin’ a granddaddy that’s a preacher don’t mean your mouth is a prayer book,” Hack said.
Rhodes smiled at the laptop screen as the computer booted up. It was a lot more fun when Hack and Lawton were going at each other than when they were going at him.
“You wouldn’t say that if Bradley Doakes was in the room,” Lawton said.
“Sure I would,” Hack said, “ ’cause he couldn’t hear a word I said. Bradley Doakes’s been dead five or six years, just like ever’body else that ever passed that story along. Dead or moved off to California without leavin’ a forwardin’ address or a phone number.”
Lawton opened his mouth, but nothing came out. After a couple of seconds, he leaned back against the wall, shoulders slumped.
“Now, then,” Hack said to Rhodes, “what about Hamilton?”
Rhodes pretended to be typing. He’d never had a typing course, so he banged out his reports with two fingers. The good thing about a computer was how forgiving it was of his mistakes.
“He’s dead,” Rhodes said.
“Dadgum it, you said that already. What I mean is, how’d he die?”
Rhodes stopped hitting the computer keys and swiveled in his chair. He’d won the round. Hack had asked a specific question.
“I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Autopsy’s not done yet. Probably be tomorrow before we hear anything. He was in the water, he was dead, that’s it.”
He turned back to the computer. Nobody said anything for a minute or so.
“Ain’t you gonna ask about the hog?” Lawton asked, breaking the silence.
Rhodes swiveled back around. “What hog?”
“The one at Miz Stubbs’s place,” Hack said. “The one I told you about.”
“Oh, that hog,” Rhodes said. “I’d forgotten about it.”
“No, you didn’t.” Hack had caught on. “You never forget anything. You’re just messin’ with us.”
“Maybe a little bit,” Rhodes admitted. “Tell me about the hog.”
He knew as soon as he said it that he shouldn’t have. It was just the opening they’d been waiting for.
“It was a big ’un,” Hack said.
Rhodes was supposed to ask how big, but he didn’t.
“Real big,” Lawton said, after a few seconds went by.
Rhodes gave in. “How big was it?”
“Too big for Alton,” Hack said.
Rhodes was almost afraid to ask what that meant, but he did.
Hack laughed. “All I know for sure is, I wish someone had put it on video. It’d be big on YouTube.”
Rhodes had only a vague idea of what YouTube was, but he knew that whatever Hack was leading up to couldn’t be good news.
“You’d better explain that,” he said, hoping that Hack wouldn’t evade answering this time.
He did, though. “You know Alf Eakin, lives about a quarter mile out of town on the road to Milsby?”
Rhodes nodded.
“Got him a few hogs. Sells a few ever’ year.”
Rhodes recalled a few complaints about the smell of Eakin’s hog pen, but not nearly as many as he’d had about Hamilton’s chickens.
“One of ’em got out,” Lawton said, earning a hard look from Hack, who didn’t like for Lawton to take over the story.
Lawton wasn’t bothered. “Wandered down the road a little piece and paid Miz Stubbs a visit. Got into her flowers, and so Alton went out to see about it.”
“He knows that,” Hack said, taking back control. “I told him. What happened was that Alton didn’t know how big that hog was.”
“ ’Bout the size of a VW,” Lawton said, “and it came right after him.”
Hack didn’t bother to glare. He just picked up the narrative.
“That hog ran flat over him. Miz Stubbs came out with a shotgun and was gonna kill it, but Alton wasn’t hurt, so he stopped her.”
“Hold it,” Rhodes said. “Are you sure Alton’s all right?”
“Sure I’m sure. Might have a hoof mark on him somewhere, but other than that he’s fine.”
“You don’t need to worry about Alton,” Lawton added. “He’s tough as whet leather.”
“Good thing he is, too,” Hack said. “Otherwise, Miz Stubbs would’ve blowed that hog’s brains out. Anyway, Eakin showed up about then. He had a trailer hooked onto his truck, and he and Alton got the hog into it. Miz Stubbs helped.”
“With the shotgun?” Rhodes asked.
“Pitchfork,” Lawton said.
“She has a pitchfork?”
“Don’t ever’body?” Hack asked.
Rhodes finished his report and was on his way out of the jail when Jennifer Loam got there. She was a reporter for the Clearview Herald, and she had a knack for hearing about things Rhodes would rather have kept under wraps for a while.
“What’s this about Lester Hamilton drowning?” she asked as she breezed in.
“Who said he drowned?” Hack asked.
“Don’t start,” Rhodes told him, and Jennifer gave him a quizzical look.
“Hamilton’s dead,” Rhodes said. “The body was found in Murdock’s rock pit by Hal Gillis.”
Jennifer moved to a chair by Rhodes’s desk and pulled a digital recorder from her purse.
“Would you mind repeating that?” she asked a
fter she turned on the recorder.
Rhodes repeated it. Loam could have looked at his report, but he supposed telling it worked just as well.
“Did he drown?” she asked when he was finished.
“That’s the way it looks,” Rhodes said, “but we don’t know for sure. Dr. White will do an autopsy. We’ll know more after that.”
“He had a lot of enemies,” Jennifer said.
She was young, smart, and ambitious. Or maybe she was just young and smart. Rhodes thought she’d have left Clearview by now if she’d wanted a job on a bigger paper. She was good enough to get one, but she might not have thought she was ready.
On the other hand, considering that all the big-city papers in the state were losing circulation and getting rid of staff, maybe not.
“Everybody has enemies,” Rhodes said.
“Not you. Nobody’s even bothered to run against you this year.”
“And a lucky thing, too,” Hack said. “He wouldn’t join the barbershop chorus to get votes.”
Rhodes didn’t like campaigning, but he had to do a certain bit of it anyway. That bit didn’t include singing.
“I’m doing a series of stories on Hamilton’s farm,” Jennifer said, getting back to the subject at hand. “The first one will be in the paper this afternoon. I might know a few things that would help you in your investigation.”
“I’m not doing an investigation,” Rhodes said, wondering if Jennifer had the same kind of hunch he did about Hamilton’s death.
“I didn’t say you were. If you start one, though, you might want to talk to me.”
Rhodes grinned. “I can be pretty sure I won’t have to go far to look for you.”
“That’s right. I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
She was only halfway joking. Rhodes had trouble avoiding her whenever he was working on a case of any importance.
“You’ll let me know the results of the autopsy, won’t you?” she continued.
“You can count on it,” Rhodes lied.
“I’ll bet.” Jennifer stood up. “I’ll be seeing you, and you can count on that.”
Rhodes didn’t have any doubts about it.