Murder in the Air

by Bill Crider

  “If you think I killed Gillis, you’re looking in the wrong place. I hardly knew the man.”

  “I found a bow and some arrows in his house.”

  “What does that have to do with me, or with anything?”

  “I wondered if you might be missing something like that.”

  It was an idea that had occurred to Rhodes on the short drive from Garrett’s store. Gillis might have seen the bow and arrows on a visit to Qualls’s house and found a way to get them as evidence. He could have been planning to take them with him to his interview with Rhodes and let him know who Robin Hood was. Qualls had discovered they were missing and killed Gillis. He hadn’t gotten them, though, possibly because he had to leave for his own interview and had thought he could go back for them. Rhodes had showed up, however, and spoiled his opportunity.

  “I’m not missing anything,” Qualls said. “I’m certainly not missing your implication that I’m somehow involved in the murder of Hal Gillis, with which I had nothing to do. I didn’t even know he was dead until you told me. I still don’t know that he’s dead, for that matter. You might be trying to trick me.”

  “I’m not trying to trick you,” Rhodes said. “I’m just an ignorant hayseed looking for answers to some simple questions.”

  Qualls sighed. “I’ve already apologized. I’m not going to do it again, and I’m not going to confess to murder. You can give up on that idea.”

  “If you went over to Gillis’s pasture today, someone will have seen you. I’ll find out about it sooner or later.”

  “You’ll find out about it only if I’ve been there, which I haven’t. Look, Sheriff, this kind of talk is getting you nowhere. I’m sorry to hear Hal Gillis is dead, but I hardly knew the man.”

  “ ‘No man is an island.’ ”

  “You must read more than you let on,” Qualls said.

  “I stayed awake in English class when I was in school.”

  “Fine. But you didn’t let me finish. I was going to say that I hardly knew the man, but that I’d be glad to do whatever I could to help you find the killer. Unfortunately, there’s no way I can help you. I was in the house this morning until I drove to the jail to talk to you. I drove straight there, and I came straight back here when I left. I’ve been here ever since. That’s the truth.”

  “You don’t have any witnesses to confirm that, though,” Rhodes said. “That’s the truth, too.”

  “Yes,” Qualls said, “I suppose it is. Are you going to arrest me?”

  “Are you guilty of anything?”

  “Many things, I suppose, but not of killing Hal Gillis.”

  “How about Robin Hood?”

  “I didn’t kill him, either.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant. I’m not confessing to anything, and if I’m not under arrest, isn’t it time for you to go?”

  Rhodes stood up. He looked around the office again. Qualls certainly had a lot of books. Rhodes wondered if Qualls had read all of them. He hoped he’d see an archery book, but there wasn’t one. Or if there was, it was kept somewhere out of sight. He turned to Qualls, whose hands were folded carefully and half hidden in his lap.

  “You never let me see your hands,” Rhodes said. “Anything to hide?”

  “Nothing at all,” Qualls said. “I’m sure you can find your way out.”

  “And back again.”

  “Just do what you have to do. I’ll leave that to you.”

  “ ‘Just leave the world to darkness and to me,’ ” Rhodes said, turning to leave.

  He heard Qualls sigh behind his back.

  22

  Ruth had already filled Hack and Lawton in on the Gillis Murder By the time Rhodes got back to the jail, saving Rhodes the trouble of sparring with them.

  Hack wanted to know who Rhodes thought had done it.

  “If I knew that, I’d be a better lawman than Sage Barton,” Rhodes said.

  “I thought you already were,” Hack said.

  “If I am, it’s not helping me much. Or Hal Gillis, for that matter.”

  “Hal’s been around this county for more years than I can remember,” Lawton said. “People sure are going to miss him.”

  “You don’t even have an idea who did it?” Hack asked.

  “I have too many ideas,” Rhodes said. “I need to talk to Seepy Benton. Give him a call at the college and see if he’s still there.”

  “It’s not even five o’clock,” Hack said. “He’s bound to be there.”

  “College teachers don’t keep regular hours,” Ruth said, repeating Benton’s earlier words to Rhodes. “He might be at home.”

  “Since when do you know so much about college teachers?”

  Ruth smiled and said nothing.

  “Okay,” Hack said. “I’ll call him. I don’t much like talking to him, though. I never can figure out half of what he’s telling me.”

  “I know the feeling,” Rhodes said, but Hack wasn’t listening. He was already making the call.

  “No answer,” Hack said after a while. “You want me to try his home phone?”

  “He probably doesn’t have one, but he has a cell number,” Rhodes said. “Like everybody else. Call the switchboard at the college. They’ll give it to you.”

  Hack got the number and called it. Benton answered, and Hack said, “The sheriff needs to talk to you. You at home?” He listened. “Good. He’ll be there in a little while.”

  Hack hung up the phone and swiveled his chair so that he faced Rhodes. “He says he’ll be out in his yard.”

  “You need backup?” Ruth asked.

  “You just want an excuse to go see him,” Hack said. “I think you’re soft on him.”

  “What if I am? He’s smart and sweet, and he knows how to treat a woman.”

  Lawton fanned his face with his hand. “Wooooeee. Too much information.”

  Rhodes escaped and left them to it.

  Seepy Benton lived not far from the college in a little house that he’d freshened up considerably since he’d gotten interested in Deputy Grady. At least on the outside. Rhodes had never seen the interior.

  Rhodes parked in front and walked around to the backyard, where he found Benton hard at work laying paving blocks. Bruce, Benton’s canine companion, thanks to Rhodes, sat near the fence, watching.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Benton said, looking up from his work. “Say hey to the sheriff, Bruce.”

  Bruce barked. He was some kind of leopard dog, and he looked as if he might also be part wolf. Rhodes had run across him during the course of an investigation, but instead of adopting him as he’d done with his other dogs, he’d managed to talk Benton into taking him. Benton and Bruce were made for each other.

  Benton knelt on both knees in the wet grass. Rhodes saw that he was wearing some kind of knee pads.

  “Hack says you wanted to talk to me,” Benton said.

  “I do,” Rhodes said. “What on earth are you doing out here? It’s a little cold to be working outside.”

  “Does that mean you think college teachers are softies?”

  “Not you. I know how tough you are. What’re you doing?”

  “I’m building a golden rectangle.”

  Rhodes looked at the paving stones. They looked grayish white, not golden.

  “A golden rectangle is one where the ratio of length to width is exactly one hundred sixty-one plus,” Benton said. “The ratio can be approximated by using successive numbers from the Fibonacci sequence.”

  Rhodes held up his hand and repeated Hack’s words to Ruth. “That’s way too much information.”

  “But there’s more.”

  “I don’t need to hear it. I came to talk about archery.”

  Benton smiled. “The secret is not to aim . . .”

  “. . . but to aim. I know.”

  “Then I have no more to teach you, Grasshopper.”

  “You might. I need some information.”

  Benton stood up. The knee pads he
wore were muddy, and the mud had dead grass stuck in it.

  “I’m all about information,” he said. “I’m a teacher, and that’s my job. Imparting information, I mean. We can go inside if you’re too cold out here.”

  Rhodes had put on an old denim jacket that he kept in the Charger in case of emergency. “I’m fine out here. I wouldn’t want Bruce to think we were deserting him.”

  Bruce barked when he heard his name. It was a nonthreatening bark, very much unlike the one Rhodes had heard from him on their first encounter. Living with Benton was good for Bruce, and Bruce was also good for Benton, or so Rhodes had convinced himself.

  “Fine by me,” Benton said. He got a wistful look. “I like it out here, and when I get the golden rectangle finished, it’s going to be great to come and sit outside late in the afternoon and watch the sunset. It’ll be even nicer if I have someone to watch it with me.”

  Rhodes thought that over. “I don’t think you’re inviting me.”

  “You’d be welcome to come, but I was thinking more of someone else in your department.”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said. A blast of wind from the north ruffled his hair. “Maybe we’d better go inside after all. I don’t want to catch a cold.”

  “Good idea,” Benton said. “Walk this way.”

  He turned and did a passable imitation of a Groucho Marx amble as he started toward the house.

  “ ‘If I could walk that way,’ ” Rhodes said, “ ‘I wouldn’t need the talcum powder.’ ”

  “Not bad,” Benton said, “but you need a cigar and a painted-on mustache if you want to do it right.”

  “No, thanks,” Rhodes said.

  Benton laughed and stopped at the screen door. “I’m not a very good housekeeper. You might think it’s a little messy.”

  “I don’t mind,” Rhodes said, wondering how bad it could be and a little afraid to find out.

  Benton opened the screen and then the wooden door behind it. He went in first and was removing his knee pads when Rhodes entered.

  The back porch was covered with boxes, some of them open with papers spilling out. Rhodes also saw a lawn mower, an edger, several trash bags whose contents Rhodes couldn’t distinguish (which was probably just as well), cartons of bottled water stacked four high, an open toolbox, and a jumbled pile of dull green quilts, the kind used to pad furniture in shipping. Benton tossed the knee pads onto the quilts.

  “We can talk in the kitchen,” he said.

  The door from the back porch opened into the kitchen, and Benton led Rhodes in. After seeing the porch, Rhodes had been afraid the kitchen sink would be heaped with dishes, but it wasn’t. It was empty, and the stove and table were clean.

  “I could use something to drink,” Benton said. “What about you?”

  “No, thanks,” Rhodes said, thinking that he’d had a Dr Pepper already that day.

  “I have Dr Pepper, Diet Pepsi, and absinthe.”

  Rhodes looked at him.

  “I’m joking about the absinthe. Not about the Dr Pepper and Diet Pepsi, though.”

  “I’ll take a Dr Pepper, then,” Rhodes said. “If it’s not diet.”

  “It’s not.”

  Benton got two cans out of the refrigerator. “You want a glass?”

  Rhodes didn’t want to push his luck. “No. I’ll just drink from the can.”

  “Me, too, then,” Benton said. He looked under a cabinet and found a couple of napkins that he wrapped around the cans. “Let’s sit at the table.”

  They sat, and Benton handed Rhodes the Dr Pepper, keeping a Diet Pepsi for himself. They opened the cans and took a sip.

  “So,” Benton said. “What kind of information are you looking for?”

  “It’s about your friend Qualls.”

  “We’re not really friends. Just interested in some of the same things.”

  “You know what I mean. You’re as close to a friend as he has here in Clearview.”

  Benton drank some Diet Pepsi. “That might be true. I hadn’t thought of it. I don’t know him very well, though. We don’t exchange confidences.”

  “What I want to know is whether you’ve talked to him about his past, his interests. His hobbies.”

  “Hobbies? I’m not sure he has any if you don’t count writing letters to the Herald and trying to get rid of the chicken farms.”

  “How about getting rid of Hamilton?”

  “I don’t think he’d do that, not the way you’re thinking.”

  “Somebody got rid of Hal Gillis today,” Rhodes said.

  “Hal Gillis? Who’s he?”

  Rhodes explained who Hal Gillis was, or had been, and told Benton some of his theories about the murder. He and Benton sipped from their cans.

  “I can see you’re going to need my help on this one,” Benton said. “I’m an experienced crime solver, you know.”

  “So you keep telling me, but I don’t need you to solve anything. Just tell me about Qualls.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “I want to know about his archery skills.”

  “I’m not sure he has any. Do you think he’s the one going around shooting up the town? Not to mention Hamilton’s place yesterday afternoon.”

  “I think so.”

  “Why would he do that? Shoot up Hamilton’s place, that is. If the protest was partially his idea, and I’m not saying it was, why would he shoot the arrows?”

  Rhodes had thought about that, and he had a ready answer. “To add to the confusion and get more publicity.”

  “It might work that way. Speaking of that, I wonder if the paper’s come yet.” Benton pushed back his chair and stood up. “I’ll go see.”

  Rhodes didn’t try to stop him. He was interested in seeing what the paper had to say about the demonstration at the chicken farm, and he wanted to read the new article about the farm that Jennifer Loam had promised in the previous day’s edition.

  Benton came right back, holding the paper. He unwrapped it and looked at the front page.

  “Very nice,” he said. “Except that I’m not in any of the pictures. Neither are you.”

  He handed the paper to Rhodes. There on the front page were two photos of the demonstration. As Rhodes had figured, the one of him and Buddy hadn’t been printed, but there was one of Maddie and one of the group. Both pictures were from an angle that used the signs to hide the fact that the women weren’t wearing much more than feathers.

  Rhodes scanned the article but didn’t see anything that he hadn’t expected. Jennifer Loam was a good reporter. She got the quotations right, and she didn’t twist the facts.

  Only one thing was missing. The scheduled article about the chicken farm was nowhere to be seen. Rhodes opened the paper and checked the inside pages. Nothing.

  “What are you looking for?” Benton asked.

  Rhodes told him.

  “Maybe she didn’t have time to write it,” Benton said, “what with doing the article on the protestors and all. You have to admit they’re a lot more interesting. A lot more photogenic, too.”

  Rhodes was willing to concede that point, and Benton could have been right. Still, it seemed odd that the paper had promised an article that didn’t appear. It was even odder that there was no mention of it, no hint that it might appear in a future edition of the Herald.

  Rhodes laid the paper aside and finished drinking the Dr Pepper. Benton took the can, along with his own. He threw the napkins in the trash and put the cans in a box under the sink.

  “For recycling,” he said. “I believe in recycling everything I can. No pun intended.”

  Rhodes doubted that.

  “Did you know that aluminum has been recycled since the early twentieth century?” Benton continued. “It’s a lot cheaper to recycle than to produce new aluminum, so over thirty percent of the aluminum we use is recycled.”

  “Too much information again,” Rhodes said.

  Benton laughed and sat at the table. “I tend to lecture too much. It’s a
habit that’s hard to break after you’ve taught as long as I have.”

  “I thought the Socratic method was supposed to be a better approach.”

  “And I thought you didn’t want to teach.”

  “I know a little about it,” Rhodes said. “That’s all.”

  “Well,” Benton said, “if you ever tried to teach math, you might find out that the Socratic method doesn’t always work with college students who can’t do fractions.”

  “I won’t ever try,” Rhodes promised. “Let’s talk about William Qualls instead.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. He’s never mentioned archery to me, and I think you’re on the wrong track if you have the idea he killed Hal Gillis or anybody else. Do you have any kind of evidence?”

  “Just one thing,” Rhodes said.

  “You haven’t told me what it is.”

  Rhodes had debated with himself whether he wanted to tell Benton or not, but he couldn’t see that it would hurt anything to reveal one little fact.

  “It’s his hand,” Rhodes said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s more like his finger, the index finger on his left hand. He has a red welt on it, more like a callus.”

  “What does that have to do with being a killer?”

  “It’s not about the killing,” Rhodes said. “It’s about bow shooting. I know some bow hunters, and they all use shooting gloves. If they didn’t, the feathers in the arrow would cause a callus like that.”

  “Ah,” Benton said. “Ha.”

  “Now that I think of it,” Rhodes said, “you might be the one to talk to him about that callus. Since you want to help and since you’re a graduate of the academy and all.”

  “Are you serious?” Benton had a huge grin. “You really want me to help with the case?”

  “Yes. I’d get a search warrant for Qualls’s house, but the judge won’t give me one based on such flimsy evidence.”

  “I thought you were friendly with the judge.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s going against his conscience and the law for me, and neither should you. I don’t want you to compromise your friendship, either. Just talk to Qualls casually, hint around, don’t make him suspicious. When we both talked to him, he wouldn’t open up. If you did it alone, he might tell you something that would help me.”