Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 20 - Compound Murder

by Bill Crider

  “You knew I was lying about being in the lounge when Wellington was killed,” Harris said, “and I wouldn’t blame you if you thought I’d had something to do with it. That’s not true, however. I’m completely innocent in that matter.”

  “If you’re innocent,” Rhodes said, “then what are we talking about here?”

  Harris looked miserable, but he still didn’t give the specific example Rhodes was looking for.

  “I’m not proud of what I did,” Harris said, without saying what it was. “I know it was wrong, but I can’t change that now. All I can do is admit it.”

  He looked at Rhodes as if asking for something. Rhodes didn’t know what it was. Understanding or forgiveness maybe.

  “I don’t know anybody who’s never done something he wished he could do over,” Rhodes said. “We don’t get do-overs, though, so we just have to muddle through. I’ve heard plenty of stories people didn’t want to tell me, but they eventually realized they had to. You might as well tell me yours.”

  “I’m embarrassed about it,” Harris said, “and I’m ashamed of myself.”

  “If it’s about ProfessoRater, you don’t have anything to worry about. Not from me, anyway. That’s college business, not mine. I don’t care about it at all, not unless it caused you and Wellington to get into an argument that left him lying out by the trash bin.”

  Harris sat up a little straighter. “How did you know about the ProfessoRater?”

  “Just doing my job,” Rhodes said. “I try to find out all I can about the people involved in a case I’m working on.”

  Harris squirmed a little in his chair. “I … don’t want to talk about that. That’s between me and the dean. It’s over and done with. Everything’s settled, and it has absolutely nothing to do with you or with Wellington.”

  “He knew about it,” Rhodes said.

  “Knew what? I said I’m not going to talk about that. The dean and I have reached an agreement. It’s a dead issue.”

  Rhodes was frustrated, and it showed. “If that’s not what we’re here for, you’d better get to the point.”

  “All right. I’m sorry for going all the way around Robin Hood’s barn to get to the point. This isn’t easy for me.” Harris paused and took a deep breath. “I was a little late day before yesterday, and I was hurrying across the parking lot to get to the lounge and have some coffee before class. I happened to glance over at the Dumpster, and I saw Wellington lying there. I went over to see if I could help, thinking maybe that he’d fainted or something like that, but when I got to him, it was obvious he was dead. I saw the blood and I panicked.” Harris paused and rubbed a hand across his forehead. “I ran back to my car and sat behind the wheel. I was hyperventilating. After I got myself under control, I went home.” Another weak grin. “Not like Sage Barton would have done. I didn’t get back in time for my class, not that anybody noticed. I’d hardly gotten back on campus before Dean King called me to see you. I’m sure you could tell how nervous I was. Hardly the kind of behavior that Sage Barton would approve of.”

  “Let’s forget Sage Barton,” Rhodes said. “He has less to do with this than your ranking on ProfessoRater. Why didn’t you tell me all this to start with?”

  “I know I should have,” Harris said. “It’s just led to even more trouble for me.”

  “More trouble? How?”

  “Someone thinks I saw more than I did, someone menacing. I got a call here in the office that afternoon. It was frightening, and it had an effect on me. I was scared. I admit it. I should’ve told you about it when you came by my house, but I didn’t.”

  “Who called?” Rhodes asked.

  Harris looked surprised that Rhodes would ask. “He didn’t give a name.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said I’d better keep quiet. If I didn’t, I’d get the same thing that Wellington did.”

  “Keep quiet about what?”

  “That’s what I don’t know. I didn’t see anything or anybody. Well, that’s not entirely true. I saw a car leaving the parking lot as I came in, but I hardly glanced at it. I certainly don’t know who was driving or even what kind of car it was.”

  Someone was giving Harris’s powers of observation far too much credit. Rhodes had dealt with countless people over the years, and their lack of attention to what went on around them no longer surprised him. He’d heard three or four people who witnessed the same event describe what had happened, and most of the time they might as well have been in different towns for all that their accounts agreed. It was no wonder that lawyers dreaded eyewitness testimony. It was the most unreliable evidence in the world.

  “There’s some good news, however,” Harris said.

  Rhodes didn’t see what that could be, but he said, “Tell me.”

  “I preserved part of the conversation,” Harris said. “When I finally realized what the man was saying, I recorded the rest on the answering machine.”

  Rhodes was amazed. He wouldn’t have thought that Harris would’ve had the presence of mind to do it. It might not help, but at least it was something.

  “It’s not all good news,” Harris said. “The man was obviously disguising his voice.”

  Rhodes was disappointed, but maybe he could get some kind of clue from the man’s phrasing.

  “Let’s hear it,” he said.

  “Let me see if I can find it,” Harris said.

  He punched a couple of buttons on the phone, and Rhodes heard a man’s voice. It sounded as if the man had something stuffed in his mouth, so the voice was effectively disguised, all right.

  There was just one problem. Not for Rhodes, but for the caller. Duffy could disguise his voice, but he couldn’t disguise his sniffles.

  Duffy had been right about one thing. You never knew who might be recording your calls.

  Chapter 21

  Rhodes left the campus and went to the jail. He had things to do. While it was nice to have Duffy’s voice on Harris’s phone message, it didn’t prove anything. Rhodes wasn’t sure they could prove it was Duffy’s voice, even with the sniffles, and since no amount of prodding had gotten anything further out of Harris, Rhodes was stuck again. If all else failed, he could confront Duffy and Terrell with the phone message, but they’d just laugh.

  Rhodes wasn’t sure about Terrell’s involvement. He remembered now that Duffy had told him, several times, that Terrell never left the compound, never even went outside the fence. Duffy, however, had never said that he didn’t leave the compound. Rhodes had gotten that impression, as Duffy had no doubt intended, but in thinking back over everything that had been said that day, Rhodes was sure Duffy hadn’t actually said it. Some people had a way of shading a thing like that to avoid being caught in a lie later on.

  There was something Rhodes needed to do, something that might give him a clue as to why Duffy had fought with Wellington, if indeed he had. Duffy had been pretty worked up about the plagiarism problem, but Rhodes didn’t think that could have been what set him off. He’d helped Ike with his math, not his papers. It didn’t seem likely that he’d have been so involved in the matter that he’d have wanted to hurt Wellington because of it.

  At any rate, Rhodes had plans for what to do with the rest of the morning. Hack and Lawton, however, weren’t going to let him carry them out immediately. They had other things in mind.

  “Big emergency at the Pizza Hut,” Hack said as Rhodes came through the door. “Some fella out there just called it in. Ruth’s on the way, but you might wanna run out there and help her out.”

  “Get Buddy or Duke to go,” Rhodes said. “I have work to do here.”

  He used his no-nonsense tone, but Hack ignored it, as he often did. “I called Buddy. He’s on the way, but he’s out close to Milsby. It’ll take him ten minutes or so to get there. You could do it in less.”

  “Not much less,” Rhodes said, “and I’m busy.”

  Hack turned to Lawton. “The sheriff’s always busy. Too busy for little things like a rio
t at the Pizza Hut.”

  “Riot?” Rhodes said.

  The Pizza Hut wasn’t far from the college, and Rhodes hadn’t noticed anything happening there when he’d left the campus. It was a little early for a riot, anyway. The place couldn’t have been open more than ten or fifteen minutes.

  “Sort of a riot,” Lawton said. “Lots of screamin’, anyway. I could hear it comin’ over the phone when Hack took the call.”

  “That doesn’t make a riot,” Rhodes said.

  “Fightin’, too,” Hack said. “Hair pullin’. Bitin’. I’m not a hundred percent sure Ruth can handle it.”

  Rhodes was curious in spite of himself. “How many people are involved?”

  “Not many,” Lawton said.

  “That’s not very exact. Give me a number.”

  Lawton looked at Hack. Hack said, “Two.”

  “Two,” Rhodes said. “That’s not a riot. That’s an argument. Ruth can handle it.”

  “Might get bigger. It’s inside. Innocent bystanders might get hurt.”

  “Look,” Rhodes said, “I have a lot on my mind today, and I’m not going to the Pizza Hut. Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “Couple of women,” Lawton said.

  “One of ’em got the other one’s to-go order,” Hack said, “or that’s what it sounded like. The kid who called it in wasn’t too clear on that. Anyway, the one who got the order must’ve decided she liked it better’n what she’d ordered for herself. She ran for the door, and the other woman tripped her.”

  “Pizza on the floor,” Lawton said. “Messy.”

  “That’s when the fight started,” Lawton said. “It got messier. The kid said they were rollin’ on the pizza.”

  “That sauce makes a bad stain,” Hack said. “Hard as the dickens to get out.”

  “Yeah,” Lawton said. “One time—”

  “Never mind,” Rhodes said. “Ruth can handle two women fighting over a pizza. She doesn’t need me to help her. By now it’s all over and they’re more worried about getting pizza stains out of their clothes than what they were fighting about. If they aren’t, Ruth will settle them down, and when Buddy gets there, he can give them cleaning advice. I can’t be running off every time there’s some little something to handle.”

  “Gettin’ touchy again,” Hack said. “I heard that happens when people get older.”

  “Yeah,” Lawton said. “Never happened to me and you, though. Wonder why that is?”

  “We’re just on an even keel all the time,” Hack said. “Some people are like that. There’s a word for it. Big word. I can’t always remember it. Pragmatic or somehin’ or other like that.”

  “Phlegmatic,” Lawton said. “I can even spell it. Don’t remember where I heard about it. Back when I was in school as a kid, maybe. We learned a lot more back then than the kids do now. You ask one of them what phlegmatic means, why, they wouldn’t have any idea that it was even a word, much less that it meant people like you and me. Cool as cucumbers, that’s us.”

  Hack nodded. “Phlegmatic. Ain’t you glad we’re like that, Sheriff? Be nice if you were more phlegmatic yourself.”

  Rhodes had tuned them out by that time. He was on his way to the evidence room to get Wellington’s cell phone and make another check on it. He should’ve let Seepy Benton do it to begin with. Seepy would never have overlooked something so obvious.

  He signed out the phone and brought it back to his desk. Hack and Lawton had lost interest in tormenting him, so he sat down and looked it over without interference. While he didn’t have a smart phone himself, he knew how they worked.

  First he had to turn it on, and when he did that, he saw that the battery level was very low. He didn’t have a charger for it, so he’d have to be sure he got things done before he ran out of power.

  He looked for the PHOTOS icon and found it easily, but the photos themselves were disappointing. Rhodes had hoped there was some kind of overlooked evidence, but all he found was pictures of the black and white cat that was now named Jerry and happily residing in Rhodes’s kitchen.

  Rhodes had thought that possibly Wellington’s obsession with Ike and his comment to Francie Solomon that he was going to get him might have meant that Wellington had taken some kind of action. Janet Sandstrom had said he was the sort of person who’d harass students who missed class by calling them and even showing up at their homes. He couldn’t have shown up at Ike’s home, but he could have staked it out.

  Rhodes had been looking for photos of Ike breaking into the Beauty Shack. Wellington could have taken them and gotten back to the college before Ike arrived. He could have been smoking his morning cigarette by the trash bin when Ike got there, accosted Ike, and gotten his head smacked against the sharp end of the Dumpster for his trouble. There was nothing like that, and photos of a cat weren’t going to give Ike much of a motive.

  Rhodes put the phone down and thought about it. Hack took advantage of the opportunity to ask Rhodes what he was doing.

  “Looking for pictures on this phone,” Rhodes said. “I didn’t find any worth talking about.”

  “Why’d you care about the pictures?” Hack asked.

  “Evidence.”

  “Did you check the videos?”

  “I was planning to do that next,” Rhodes said, which was true. He should have done it two days ago.

  “Always check the videos,” Hack said. “Ever’body in town’s got a video on that Jennifer Loam’s Web site. There was one today of those kid goats of Vernell Lindsey’s. You know about ’em?”

  Rhodes knew about the kid goats, all right. Vernell had three goats, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy. All three had a penchant for escaping their enclosure, and Shirley had strayed far enough to get herself in trouble. Now she was a mother.

  “Those kids are pretty cute,” Hack said. “Cut all kinda capers.”

  “I’m sure,” Rhodes said.

  “Vernell did the video herself,” Hack said. “With her phone. It’s amazin’ what a phone can do these days. You say you’re gonna check Wellington’s phone for videos?”

  “As soon as people will leave me alone long enough to let me.”

  “Touchy,” Hack said, turning away. “Just plain touchy.”

  Rhodes hoped the battery hadn’t run down while Hack was talking, but the phone had turned itself off to preserve power, so things were okay. Rhodes turned it back on, located the video icon, and discovered that there were four videos on the phone.

  The first one was of nothing at all. Not really nothing, exactly, but it looked as if Wellington had been trying to figure out how to use the video function and hadn’t quite gotten the hang of it. There were a few seconds of a rug, and then the camera swung up to get a ceiling. It steadied a bit, and Rhodes glimpsed chairs and bookshelves. He was looking at the inside of Wellington’s apartment, but by the time he realized it, the video had ended.

  The second video was of Jerry, and Wellington seemed to have figured things out. It was far from professional quality, but at least the camera wasn’t jumping all over the place. Jerry wasn’t doing much of anything other than sitting in the room and looking at the camera. A small rubber ball rolled into the frame, and a voice that Rhodes assumed was Wellington’s said, “Chase the ball, Ginsberg. Chase the ball.” That was all.

  Two things struck Rhodes. One was that this was the first time he’d heard Wellington’s voice. Nobody would ever hear it again unless they watched this video.

  The second was that Ginsberg was a pretty good name for a cat. He’d have to mention it to Ivy.

  Rhodes looked at the third video. He’d been right about Wellington stalking Ike. The video was taken after dark, so it was hard to see anything clearly, but Rhodes knew it could be enhanced at the state lab if necessary. For the moment he could see enough to tell that the video was of a car coming onto the highway from the road leading to the Terrell compound. It was the old Pontiac that Rhodes had seen on his visit.

  That was all there was, however. Just a
car leaving the compound. Not exactly the kind of evidence that was going to get anyone convicted of anything.

  Rhodes had been thinking for a while about how the compound kept going. No matter how self-sufficient Able Terrell wanted to be, and no matter how much he tried to cut himself off from civilization, there had to be money from somewhere. The satellite bill and the electric bill had to be paid.

  Rhodes punched the last video. Jackpot. It had been the Pontiac in the other video, all right, and it had apparently carried Duffy to town and to the church where the air conditioners had been stripped. Wellington had managed to follow him and get video. Duffy had used a light, so he showed up clearly enough for identification. There was another man with him, but it wasn’t Ike, and it wasn’t Able. Now Rhodes knew how the compound dwellers got their income, and he also knew that Duffy had a motive for fighting with Wellington.

  The video ended abruptly. Rhodes wondered if Wellington had been spotted. It could have been like that, and he could have done something really stupid, like letting Duffy or the other man follow him home. If so, they’d done nothing that night, or any night for a while. The church air conditioner in the video was at the Nazarene church, and that one had been stripped several days ago. Somehow Duffy had discovered that Wellington had the video, and he’d done something about it.

  Ike hadn’t been one of the men with Duffy, Rhodes thought, at least not that night. If he had, Wellington would have turned him in. Or maybe Wellington just hadn’t seen him. Wellington might never have done anything with the video at all, but Duffy couldn’t be sure of that, so he confronted him. Maybe.

  It could have happened like that. All Rhodes had to do was prove that it had. That was going to be the hard part.

  Rhodes was almost certain now that Duffy had been in the Post house the previous evening to strip the wire and that the gray car leaving the brush down the block had been the Pontiac.

  “Did you have Ruth look for those tire prints?” he asked Hack.

  “You told me to, didn’t you?”

  “Right.”

  “So I told her. I always do what I’m told, even if I don’t get any credit for it around here.”