Murder in the Air

by Bill Crider

  “I hope you have good insurance.”

  “Right now I don’t care. Shouldn’t you go check on Crockett?”

  “I might as well,” Rhodes said.

  “What if he’s faking?”

  “I still have my pistol,” Rhodes said.

  Crockett wasn’t faking. He wasn’t dead, either, just unconscious. Rhodes pulled him all the way out of the pickup and laid him on the ground.

  “Do you have a cell phone?” Rhodes asked Jennifer.

  “It’s in my purse. My purse is in my car. My car . . . is probably at the bottom of a tank.”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said.

  He looked around inside the pickup and found a roll of duct tape. He turned Crockett over on his stomach and taped his hands behind his back.

  “Should you be moving him around like that?” Jennifer asked.

  “I don’t think he’s hurt badly,” Rhodes said.

  “What if you’re wrong?”

  “We’ll worry about that later.” Rhodes handed her the pistol. “If he wakes up and tries to escape, shoot him. In the knee would be best.”

  Jennifer held the pistol as if she’d never seen one before. Maybe she hadn’t.

  “I don’t know how to use this,” she said.

  “Just threaten him. That should do it. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  Rhodes left her standing there and walked around the headquarters building to the county car. He got Hack on the radio and told him to send a deputy and an ambulance to the Hamilton place.

  “You okay?” Hack asked.

  “Sure,” Rhodes said.

  “Somebody’s not, though.”

  “Right.”

  “You gonna tell me who?”

  Rhodes smiled. “Later,” he said.

  Ruth Grady arrived just before the ambulance. The first thing she did after seeing Rhodes was to hand him a bottle of water from her county car. Rhodes thanked her and washed out his mouth. He spit the water out but didn’t look at it. He didn’t want to know what it looked like.

  Crockett was conscious and sitting up, but he wouldn’t say anything. Rhodes told Ruth to check the nearby stock tanks to see if anyone had driven a car into one of them.

  “That wouldn’t be easy to do,” she said.

  “No. He might have been lying, so look around and see if you can find the car.”

  Jennifer described it for her, and Ruth left.

  The EMTs loaded Crockett into the ambulance and took him away.

  “What about the chickens?” Jennifer asked.

  “They’re free-range chickens now,” Rhodes said.

  “Aren’t there coyotes in the county?”

  “Sure are,” Rhodes said, “but the chickens will just have to take their chances. With freedom comes great responsibility.”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly the right wording.”

  “Me neither, but it’ll have to do. Unless you want to round them up.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I don’t blame you a bit,” Rhodes said.

  Rhodes drove home and removed his shoes and pants in the backyard. Ivy came out to see what he was doing. Yancey yapped along after her.

  “Good grief,” she said, keeping her distance. “You smell awful. And look at all those feathers. What happened? Was there an explosion in a pillow factory?”

  “I had a run-in with some chickens,” Rhodes told her. “I’m going to hose myself down before I come inside.”

  Ivy nodded. “Good idea. You know, the county’s going to get tired of paying to have the cars cleaned up after you use them.”

  “It’s not so bad this time,” Rhodes said.

  Yancey stopped barking and stared at Rhodes. Speedo had kept his distance so far, but now he came over, too. He was careful not to get too close.

  “Even the dogs don’t like me,” Rhodes said.

  Ivy laughed. “I’ll get the soap.”

  “Bring some mouthwash, too,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Ruth found Jennifer’s car in a mesquite thicket the next day. The cell phone was just fine, and so was everything else in the purse and car.

  Crockett hadn’t talked, but things weren’t looking good for him. As executor of Hamilton’s estate, Randy Lawless ordered an audit of the chicken farm’s books. He told Rhodes that it was obvious from even a cursory check that Crockett had been cutting corners and cooking the books, pocketing the money he saved.

  “Lester talked to me about things last week,” Lawless said. “He was suspicious that something was going on. All the talk had finally convinced him. As it turned out, there was more going on than either of us thought.”

  “Do you think that’s why he was killed?” Qualls asked.

  Qualls was at the jail to confess formally to his crimes. Seepy Benton was with him for some reason, and so, of course, was Lawless, as Qualls’s attorney.

  “Could be,” Rhodes said. “Crockett must have figured out something was going on. He decided to make sure he didn’t get found out.”

  “So Crockett’s crookedness explains why the litter was never changed and the incinerators weren’t being used properly,” Qualls said. “I’ll see that things are handled better when I take over.”

  “Things will be better before then,” Lawless said. “I’ll see to that. I’ll have the state come in and make recommendations whether they want to or not, and we’ll do everything right. Everything will be better than standard.”

  “What about the employees?” Rhodes asked.

  “They’re fired,” Lawless said. “We’re starting over. Nobody’s going to admit to anything, but Crockett had to have help in covering up what he was doing. Maybe the stories about the abuse aren’t true, but I’m not taking any chances.”

  Rhodes didn’t think they’d ever get any evidence about the abuse, not unless Gillis had taken photographs. So far he hadn’t found a camera at Gillis’s house. One might turn up, but Rhodes doubted it would happen. Crockett might have taken it, or there might never have been one.

  So far there was no evidence that Crockett had killed either Gillis or Hamilton, but Rhodes was convinced of Crockett’s guilt. He’d find someone who’d seen Crockett’s boat, or they’d find traces of the riverbank on the bottom of the boat.

  Even more likely, they’d find out where Crockett had bought the bow and arrows he’d planted in Gillis’s house to throw suspicion on him as Robin Hood. They’d already faxed Crockett’s mug shot to sporting goods stores around the state, and Ruth was going to search the chicken farm’s computers to see if Crockett had placed an online order. Crockett had been planning to frame Gillis for a while, though maybe not to murder him.

  Crockett would eventually confess when confronted with the facts. Rhodes had no doubt of it. He believed that Crockett had known in advance that Hamilton would be noodling in Murdock’s rock pit and had positioned the boat days earlier. The cell phone’s SIM card might even give some information about phone calls to Crockett that would help Rhodes figure out the timing. When the case came to trial, Rhodes would have plenty of evidence. He hoped.

  “I guess I’ve proved what an asset I am to the department,” Seepy Benton said. “You’d never have cracked this case without me. I’ve ensured your reelection.”

  “Right,” Rhodes said, not mentioning that he was running unopposed.

  “You don’t sound convinced,” Benton said.

  “No wonder,” Ruth Grady said. She’d come into the jail just in time to hear Benton’s remark. “You didn’t exactly distinguish yourself.”

  “That’s not fair,” Benton said. “Dr. Qualls has admitted that our little fracas was his doing. You can’t keep blaming me for that.”

  Rhodes had a feeling things weren’t going smoothly with Benton’s love life, but it was none of Rhodes’s business.

  On the other side of the room, Hack was laughing silently. Rhodes tried not to look in that direction.

  “It’s kind of sad when you think
about it,” Lawless said.

  “What is?” Benton asked.

  “All this time when people were saying bad things about Lester Hamilton, he wasn’t really the one responsible for the conditions at his place. Crockett was the cause of all the trouble, not Lester. Lester was going to get to the root of the problem, and Crockett killed him before he could do anything.”

  “Hamilton has to take some of the blame,” Qualls said. “He was the owner, and that made him responsible. He should have been the one who oversaw the employees to make sure they were doing the right thing.”

  “He was doing that,” Lawless said. “He would have taken steps within the week.”

  “If he’d been around,” Rhodes said. “Crockett saw to it that he wasn’t.”

  “That’s just speculation at this point,” Lawless said.

  “Spoken like a lawyer,” Ruth said.

  “We do know one thing for sure,” Benton said.

  “What?” Ruth asked.

  Rhodes put up a hand for silence, but he wasn’t in time.

  “No Les,” Benton said, “no more.”