by Bill Crider
Which, the way things had been going, was about as likely as something turning up in the morning, he thought.
“It’s getting late,” Ruth pointed out.
Rhodes didn’t need anyone to tell him that. His eyes were burning, a sure sign that he needed some sleep. Or that the dust was bothering him more than he thought.
“Leave the lantern,” he said, handing her the flashlight. “I might need it.”
Ruth took the flashlight and said, “I have some crime-scene tape. I can put it across the doorway if you want me to.”
“Good idea,” Rhodes said, though he was sure the tape wouldn’t keep anyone out, any more that it would keep him in.
Ruth attached the tape to both sides of the doorframe, told Rhodes good night, and left. Rhodes watched the doorway as the flashlight beam gradually faded away as his deputy descended the stairs.
Rhodes spent the next few minutes holding the lantern and going over the floor near the window, but he didn’t find anything that Ruth had missed. He hadn’t really thought he would. Maybe he was turning into a pessimist.
He set the lantern back on the paint can and walked back over to the broken window to look outside. On a clear day from the top of Obert’s Hill you could look out over the countryside and see for long distances. You couldn’t see as far at night, of course, not even with the moon, but Rhodes could see over the tops of the trees behind Billy Quentin’s house and down at the Appleby place. He could see the white gravel of the country road that ran in front of their houses until it disappeared in the heavier trees farther on. He could see the still shapes of cattle in one of the pastures, and he could even see the dog pen behind Billy Quentin’s house. He couldn’t see Grover, but he saw the dark outline of a wooden doghouse, and he figured Grover was asleep inside, maybe dreaming of chasing rabbits through the pasture or barking at squirrels in the trees.
He imagined two people standing in front of the window at just about dusk. There wouldn’t be much light for them to see by, but they could see one another’s faces, look in one another’s eyes. He wondered what they’d seen there.
Rhodes walked away from the window and sat on a paint can near the doorway, thinking about all that had happened and trying to make some sense of it. He had the beginnings of an idea, but that was all. He needed more than that, not only because he wanted to find the killer but because he was going to be bombarded by the press the next day. He wouldn’t be surprised if even some of the tabloid reporters turned up. Terry Don Coslin was just the kind of character they loved to write about.
Rhodes had never had to deal with much media pressure. There had been a reporter for K-Vue, Red Rogers, who’d been a bit of a problem, but Rogers wasn’t around any longer, as Lawton had pointed out the other day. Rhodes had never been pestered much by the local paper. The Clearview Herald had never won any prizes for investigative reporting.
But this was going to be a very different kind of situation. Rhodes hoped he could deal with it.
Rhodes listened to the sounds that the building made. He’d become more aware of them now that he was expecting them, and the stillness of the big, empty room made it all the easier to hear them. The wind, which had been hardly noticeable earlier, was blowing out of the north now, and it was coming in through the broken window, making a noise of its own. Rhodes figured the weather would be cold by the next morning.
He forced himself to stop thinking about the weather and to concentrate on the murders. As he sat there and considered the different aspects of the case, one thing seemed clear to him: someone was lying. Maybe several someones.
That was to be expected, of course. People always lied to the law. He wasn’t entirely sure why, except in the case of the guilty. They had a pretty good reason. But why did other people lie?
In this case there were probably any number of reasons. To protect a friend, maybe, or to gain some kind of advantage over someone else. If Rhodes could figure out the reasons, maybe he could figure out who the liar was. Or the liars.
Because he was sure there was lying going on. Someone had struggled with Henrietta, and it was almost certain that not all the women had been where they claimed to have been at the time Henrietta died. One of them had been in that room with her.
Or maybe Chatterton had. He’d told Rhodes that he was checking to see if all the guests had what they needed, but Rhodes didn’t recall that anyone had backed up that story. It would have been easy enough for Chatterton, or anyone else for that matter, to have gone out the back door of the dorm and run back around to the front, mingle with the crowd, and later swear they’d been there all along.
Would anyone have seen Chatterton leaving Henrietta’s room? Rhodes wondered.
Maybe not, he thought. The room was at the end of the hallway, only a step or two away from the door to the outside. Out one door, out another, and into the darkness. And then there was that displaced window screen. Getting out without being seen would have been easy for Chatterton.
And it would have been easy for any number of others, too. Rhodes was going to start the next morning by trying to break down everyone’s alibi. He’d start with Chatterton, and then move on to the others.
He also wanted to talk to Belinda Marshall, since Terry Don had been on the cover of her book. He wondered whether they were involved, and if so, how much. If there was something going on between them, and there probably was if Rhodes wanted to believe Henrietta’s version of what Terry Don was like, then Serena might have yet another reason to become upset with Terry Don.
But that meant Rhodes would have to prove that Serena was up on the third floor with Terry Don, and in the room with Henrietta.
Rhodes sighed. It was time for him to go home and get some sleep. Maybe he’d get lucky and figure out the answer in his dreams.
Right, he thought. And while I’m at it, maybe I’ll dream of all the numbers in next week’s Texas Lotto game.
He picked up the lantern and started to stand. As he did, the light reflected off something near the window. Rhodes couldn’t tell what it was, but he could see that it was in a crack between two boards, which no doubt explained why Ruth Grady had missed it. She’d have had to shine the light on it just right to know it was there.
As soon as Rhodes stood up with the lantern, the sparkle from the floor winked out as if it had never been. But he’d marked the place pretty well with his eye, so he started across the floor to where he thought it was, the old boards creaking under his feet.
This floor of the building no longer looked like a college chapel. The pews had long since been removed, and the floor had never been refinished or even touched up. The building had shifted on its foundation over the years, and there were wide spaces between some of the planks, while some of them were jammed so tightly together that there wasn’t room between them for anything, not even a hair.
When Rhodes got to the spot where he’d seen the momentary glint, no matter how he shined the light, he couldn’t seem to make it reflect off anything at all. He knelt down and tried to make the light shine along the cracks, but the shadows were all wrong, and it didn’t work.
He was about to try going back to the paint can and having another look from there when the floor creaked behind him. Before he could turn to look and see what had caused the noise, something whished through the air and hit him in the back of the head and then he couldn’t see anything at all.
Rhodes came to with a mouthful of dust. He spit it out and tried to swallow. The back of his head hurt, and he needed to sneeze. Maybe he was allergic to dust after all. Or maybe it made a difference if you were lying in it.
Either the lantern was gone or someone had turned it off. It was very dark. But there was a bit of light coming in through the windows, and if someone had been hoping that Rhodes would stumble over a paint can and break his neck, well, there wasn’t much chance of that. He could see well enough to avoid any obstacles.
He sat up and put his hand to the back of his head. There was the beginnin
g of a knot back there, and his hand felt dampness, which meant that the skin had been broken. He didn’t think he was going to bleed to death, however. He was just going to have a very tender noggin for a while.
He wondered why anyone would hit him. Had there been something there, after all, something that both he and Ruth had missed and that someone had come back to retrieve?
He thought about that sparkle in the crack of the floor. He’d better have another try at locating whatever it was that he’d seen.
He stood up. A dull pain throbbed through his head, but it wasn’t any worse than getting hit by a rubber hammer. He stood still for a few seconds and the throbbing went away. The dull pain, however, did not.
The lantern was lying not far from a paint can. The can hadn’t been there earlier, and Rhodes figured it was what had hit him in the head. Rhodes bent down to pick up the lantern. When he bent over, the throbbing came back.
The lantern rattled loosely. Something inside was broken, and the plastic lens was cracked. Rhodes set it down on the paint can and looked around the room as best he could in the dim light.
Nothing was there that hadn’t been there before, and as far as Rhodes could tell without better lighting, nothing was missing, either. Of course he couldn’t see whatever it was that had glittered in the crack of the floor. It might still be there, or it might not.
Rhodes went over to the window. The cold wind blew in his face, and he felt a little better. Not much, but a little. He looked out and saw the tops of the trees tossing in the wind, but aside from the movement there was nothing different from what he’d seen earlier.
He wondered again why he’d been hit.
Maybe someone just doesn’t like me, he thought. Or maybe someone didn’t want me to find whatever was in that crack.
Well, he wasn’t going to find it now, not without a light. It was time to go home, take some aspirin for the throbbing, and get some rest. He could come back in the morning with Ruth and find the sparkling thingamajig.
He went over to the door and slipped under the crime-scene tape, which, just as he’d thought, had proved to be no barrier at all.
He was about halfway down the first flight of stairs, feeling his way along in the dark, when an explosion somewhere below him shook the walls of the building and made the floor jump under his feet.
Rhodes pitched forward into the darkness. He stuck out his hands, but there was nothing to brace them against, so he fell forward and tumbled ankles over elbows the rest of the way down the stairs.
19
RHODES WAS DOWN BUT NOT OUT. HE LAY AT THE BOTTOM OF the stairway on the second floor and tried to move. His head hurt even more than it had before, but it wasn’t throbbing this time. It just hurt with a steady ache. His back hurt, and his right shoulder hurt. His knees didn’t feel too good, either. Aside from that, however, he was just dandy.
Dust and dirt from the high ceiling drifted down on his face, but he didn’t feel much like brushing it off. Besides, he was going to need all his energy just to get up, which he thought might be a good idea, especially since he could smell smoke.
The trouble with his good idea, however, was that his legs didn’t seem to want to cooperate. So he just lay on the floor and tried to decide what had happened to cause the smoke and the downstairs detonation, which were two things he didn’t much like, having only recently been blown halfway across the county by an accidental explosion in an amateur meth lab.
The smoke was rolling up the stairs from the first floor, and Rhodes figured that the blowup had occurred in the kitchen, where there was probably a gas stove. If the kitchen was all electric, then maybe he was wrong, but right now he was betting on a big gas stove.
He wondered why he was worrying about a gas stove, one that most likely wasn’t even there anymore, when he couldn’t even stand up. He was sure that if he didn’t stand up, he was going to be in real trouble. But he didn’t seem to be as worried as he should have been.
He wondered if anyone had called the Obert Volunteer Fire Department, not that it would do much good if anyone had. The fire truck was around forty years old, and Rhodes wasn’t sure the volunteers could even get it started. He didn’t even know if there were any fire hydrants in Obert. If there were they probably weren’t anywhere near the college.
He tried again to get up, and this time he was able to force himself into a sitting position with his back against the wall. The smoke was getting thicker, and Rhodes started hacking and coughing. He knew that wasn’t a good sign, since smoke inhalation was the main cause of death in fires.
Maybe that wasn’t so bad, though. If you were already dead from inhaling smoke, you wouldn’t feel it when you burned up.
He thought about himself as a mound of charred flesh in the middle of a pile of rubble, which didn’t bother him any more than anything else, and coughed some more. Tears ran down his cheeks from his stinging eyes.
He slid slowly down the wall until he was almost lying down. Only his aching head and shoulders, one of which still hurt, remained braced against the wall. His eyes and lungs were full of smoke, and he didn’t think he was going to be able to move again.
Too bad, he thought. On the other hand, it would give the reporters a nice sidebar for their stories: Handsome, Talented Cover Boy Dies in Fall. That would be the headline. Then, in a little box that nobody would pay much attention to, something about Sheriff Dies in Mysterious Fire.
Not that there was anything mysterious about it. Turn on the gas, pitch a match in the room, and boom!
Rhodes heard something that sounded like footsteps pounding up the stairs below him. He couldn’t imagine who it was. He didn’t much care, either, but opened his eyes to have a look. The smoke was so thick that he couldn’t really see anything, and his eyes hurt, so he closed them again.
“Sheriff!” someone yelled. “Come on, Sheriff! We got to get you out of here!”
Rhodes opened his eyes. Standing over him was someone who looked like a stagecoach robber from an old black-and-white western, with a bandana pulled up over the lower half of his face. Rhodes had no idea what a stagecoach robber would be doing on the second floor of the old main building, but he knew what his duty was.
“You’re under arrest,” Rhodes said.
The robber reached down and grabbed Rhodes under the armpits and tried to pull him to his feet. Rhodes wasn’t much help. He didn’t feel like moving.
“You gotta help me, Sheriff,” the stagecoach robber said. “Try to stand up.”
“You’re under arrest,” Rhodes said again, or thought he said. He wondered if he was really saying anything at all. Then he knew he must have been because the smoke made his throat hurt. Maybe the robber wasn’t listening.
“Come on, Sheriff. Get your feet under you.”
Rhodes knew that would be a good thing to do, but he didn’t have the energy to try it. The robber jerked on his shoulders, which hurt the sore one.
“Help me out here,” he said. “If you don’t, we’re gonna burn up like marshmallows in a campfire.”
Rhodes wasn’t fond of that idea. Marshmallows were cracked and runny when they burned. He struggled with his legs and finally got a little leverage. He began pushing himself up, and with the robber’s help he finally got himself to his feet. His legs were shaky, but he was standing. More or less.
The robber threw Rhodes’s arm over his shoulders and said, “Let’s get outta here.”
The robber started down the stairs to the first floor, with Rhodes hobbling along at his side. When they were about halfway down, Rhodes’s right knee gave out, and he would have fallen forward and down if the robber hadn’t steadied him.
“Hang on, Sheriff,” the robber said. “Don’t try to get ahead of me.”
“Wasn’t trying,” Rhodes said, though he didn’t think the robber heard him.
They arrived on the first floor after what seemed a very long time, and Rhodes could see the front door. He buzzard-hopped toward it, still hanging on to the
robber, who was half dragging him along.
They burst through the door and out onto the porch. Rhodes would have stopped there, but the robber kept right on dragging him, and Rhodes didn’t have any choice but to keep going. When they were about thirty yards from the building, the robber collapsed to the grass, and Rhodes went down beside him. Both of them lay there, breathing heavily.
There was a siren in the distance. The volunteers had gotten the old fire truck started after all, Rhodes thought.
The siren seemed to fade in and out, so Rhodes stopped listening to it. He concentrated on breathing instead. Taking a breath was a little like having a splintery stick stuck down his throat, but the air was so sweet and cool that he kept right on drinking it in. It made him cough, too, but he didn’t mind. The air tasted too good.
The robber, who was lying on his back and taking deep, racking breaths, didn’t seem to be having a much easier time of it. He was coughing some, too, and he hadn’t taken off the handkerchief. He sucked it into his mouth every time he took a breath.
Rhodes rolled up on his side, reached over, and pulled off the robber’s mask.
“Hey, Claude,” Rhodes said.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Claude said. “I guess you owe me one.”
“We’ll have to see about that,” Rhodes said.
20
“YOU SHOULD BE IN THE HOSPITAL,” IVY SAID. “I GUESS YOU know that.”
Rhodes looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. He looked pretty bad, all right. Not as bad as a marshmallow from the campfire, but still not exactly the picture of health. There was no use in denying it. But a good hot bath would get most of the soot off him.
It wouldn’t do much for the knot on his head, however. Or the bruises on his arms, legs, shoulders, and probably other locations, considering the way he felt.
“You probably have a concussion,” Ivy said. “Or worse.”
She might be right about that, Rhodes thought. But what was a little concussion? Professional football players went right back into the game after sustaining a concussion. Most of the time they didn’t even call it a concussion. They called it a “stinger” or something like that. And that’s all he had. A little stinger.