by Bill Crider
“Let me see it,” Rhodes said.
The man held a revolver up, then put it on the ground.
“Earl’s hit pretty bad,” the man said. “I’ll get his gun, too.”
“Careful how you do it,” Rhodes told him.
The man moved to the tree where Earl was slumped and held up a pistol, which he then laid on the ground.
“That’s all we got,” he said.
“It better be,” Rhodes said. “Are you Neil?”
“How’d you know that?”
“Lucky guess. Lie facedown. Tell Earl to do the same.”
“He’s hurt pretty bad.”
Rhodes didn’t believe it. “Just tell him. I’d hate to have to hurt him any worse.”
Neil said something to Earl and lay down. Earl rolled over on his side, then over on his stomach.
“Hands behind your backs,” Rhodes said, and Earl and Neil complied.
Rhodes and Andy walked forward with their shotguns aimed at the prisoners.
“You have enough cuffs?” Rhodes asked.
“Always carry four,” Andy said.
“Good. Neil and Earl, my deputy’s going to cuff you. Hold still.”
The two men held still. Rhodes saw that Earl’s right arm had taken a pretty good hit, but the bleeding had about stopped.
“I hope you two turned off your cooker before you left the house,” Rhodes said.
“Didn’t have time,” Neil said as Andy cuffed him.
“You think it’ll blow?” Andy asked as he cuffed Earl, who was moaning as if he’d been gutted.
“Could,” Rhodes said.
“You want me to go in and turn it off?”
“Good idea. You sure you want to risk it?”
“It’s my job,” Andy said.
Rhodes thought the risk was small enough, so he said, “Bring out those rifles when you come back.”
“No problem,” Andy said.
“I hope not,” Rhodes said. “Let’s stand these two lunkheads up and get them moving.”
They helped Earl and Neil to their feet. Earl was still taking on, but Rhodes ignored him and gave him a little push to get him started.
When they got around to the front of the house, they saw that the third man had managed to squirm a few feet in the direction of the pickups, but his legs were bloody, and he hadn’t tried to stand.
“You think he can walk to the cars?” Andy asked.
“We’ll find out,” Rhodes said.
“Don’t leave without me,” Andy said, and he headed for the house to turn off the propane stove.
“We don’t mind waiting,” Rhodes said. “Do we, fellas?”
Earl and Neil didn’t say anything, so Rhodes asked them the third man’s name.
“That’s Louie,” Neil said.
“All of you Foshees?”
Neil nodded. “How’d you find us? It was that bitch Vicki, wasn’t it? I knew I should’ve shot her.”
“Good thing you didn’t,” Rhodes said. “You’re in enough trouble without that.”
Neil just looked at him. Earl had stopped whining and stood staring at the ground. Louie wasn’t talking, either. Rhodes nudged him with the toe of his shoe.
“Hop up, Louie. Time to go.”
“Get bent,” Louie said.
Andy came out of the house. He had the AR-15s with him. “All taken care of, Sheriff. What about the dogs?”
Rhodes had forgotten about the dogs. They were still under the house. All the shooting had discouraged them.
“You planning to adopt them?” Andy asked when Rhodes told him where they were.
“Ivy would kill me,” Rhodes said, “but we’ll find a place for them. Get old Louie there up on his feet.”
“I can’t get up,” Louie said. “I’m wounded.”
“You can manage,” Rhodes said, and he grabbed hold of the cuffs with a jerk that encouraged Louie to discover that he could indeed get up.
“Read them their rights, Andy,” Rhodes said.
Andy proceeded to rattle off the Miranda warning, supposedly reading from a little laminated card he pulled from his shirt pocket, though Rhodes knew he’d memorized it.
“Nothing at all in there about not having to walk,” Rhodes said after he’d asked them if they understood their rights. “So here we go.”
They started off, but Rhodes stopped them. “Hold on. I forgot something.”
While they waited, Rhodes went to the Chrysler and looked inside. He saw a woman’s purse sitting on the front seat. He checked the car door and found it unlocked. He opened the door and got out the purse. It had a strap, so he hung it off his shoulder.
Rhodes and Andy marched the prisoners down the lane to the county cars. It was a bit awkward because Andy had the two AR-15s in addition to his shotgun, and Rhodes had Vicki’s purse.
The prisoners might have considered making a run for it, given the circumstances, but Rhodes assured them that the purse wouldn’t hinder his shooting.
“First one to run gets a slug. Next gets buckshot. Sure would hurt in the backside.”
The prisoners grumbled a little, but nobody tried to make a break, and Rhodes and Andy didn’t have to prod them more than a couple of times. It didn’t take long to reach the county cars.
Rhodes put the AR-15s in the trunk of his car, along with Vicki’s purse and his vest. He and Andy got the prisoners safely in the backseats, Earl and Louie with Andy, Neil with Rhodes. After the shotguns were stowed, Rhodes told Andy to take his two men by the hospital to get them checked out.
“Will do,” Andy said, and while he backed down the lane, Rhodes called Hack and told him to send the fire department’s hazmat team.
“You know we ain’t got one of those,” Hack said. “I’ll send the fire department men that’s trained for it. You want to tell me what’s goin’ on?”
“Nope,” Rhodes said. “Send Alton Boyd, too. We have three dogs that need taking care of.”
“You want to tell me just exactly where you are?”
Rhodes gave him specific directions and said, “Get Cal Autry and tell him there are three shot-up vehicles here that need to be impounded.”
“Shot-up? You gonna tell me about that?”
“Maybe,” Rhodes said. “Later. You know what to do?”
“You know I do. You comin’ here now?”
“With one prisoner,” Rhodes said. “Andy’s taking the other two to the hospital.”
“Hospital? What happened?”
“Later,” Rhodes said, forking the mic and hoping that Hack didn’t explode from curiosity. It felt good to be one up on him for a change.
Come to think of it, Rhodes still hadn’t told him about the naked woman. He was two up.
“What’re you so happy about?” Neil said from the backseat.
Rhodes looked at him through the grille.
“Nothing you’d understand,” he said.
* * *
After getting Neil booked and printed, Rhodes asked Hack if he’d had Ruth drive Vicki back to Railville.
“Yeah,” Hack said. “Who’s this Vicki, anyway?”
“The naked woman,” Rhodes said.
“You had Ruth take a naked woman home?”
“She wasn’t naked anymore, I hope. Ivy was supposed to help her get some clothes.”
“What was she naked for?”
Rhodes gave in and told Hack and Lawton all about what had happened. He didn’t do it in a straightforward way, however. He used their own technique and made them draw it out of him little by little while he was writing up his report.
“Low T,” Lawton said when Rhodes was finished. “He wouldn’t treat us this way if he didn’t have the low T.”
“Gotta be it,” Hack said. “Otherwise, he’d have asked us what’d been goin’ on here while he was out shootin’ up the countryside.”
Here we go, Rhodes thought.
“Maybe you’d better tell me,” he said.
“Ruth checked the head for fin
gerprints,” Hack said. “Guess what.”
“No prints,” Rhodes said.
“Right, mostly. She got some smudges to come out, but nothing you could call a real print.”
Too bad they couldn’t use smudges to get a conviction, Rhodes thought. They still might be able to prove the bust was the murder weapon, however. It was possible that some traces of blood could be found on it at the state lab. Rhodes would send it off if it came to that.
“What about the phone records?” he asked.
“She found the judge and got the subpoena. She’ll bring the records by later, she said.”
“Good,” Rhodes said, thinking that it had been too easy to get the information. That meant there was something more.
“Is that all?” he asked.
“Got a phone call,” Hack said.
“We get calls all the time,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah, but this one wasn’t from just any old body.”
“What old body was it from?”
“Better not let him catch you callin’ him old,” Lawton said.
“That’s right,” Hack said. “He wouldn’t like it.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Rhodes said, “since I don’t know who we’re talking about.”
“The mayor,” Hack said. “Mr. Clifford Clement, that’s who.”
Rhodes wondered what had taken Clement so long.
Chapter 16
Clifford Clement had been the mayor of Clearview for several years. The city didn’t have any term limits in its charter. While there had been a few rumblings among the citizens who wanted to change that, nothing had been done, and Clement kept on winning elections.
The mayor didn’t much care for Rhodes, and Rhodes didn’t blame him. When a man’s been a suspect in a murder investigation, it’s not surprising that he might not be too fond of the investigator, even if he knows the investigator is just doing his job. It only made things worse if the investigator uncovered some unsavory facts about the suspect’s private life in the process of looking under various rocks. Even knowing that Rhodes would never tell anyone about those facts, Clement was bound to be a little resentful.
It being Saturday, the mayor wasn’t in his office. The mayorship of Clearview wasn’t a full-time job anyway, and Clement had a business to run, not that he ran it on Saturdays. He was an investment counselor, and he liked to say his job was to make money for other people. Rhodes didn’t know if he actually did make money for other people, but he must have known something about investing because he made plenty for himself if his house was any indication. It was in a part of the town that was more or less untouched by time, where the houses of the wealthy from another era were now owned and cared for by people who had the money to afford them. Clement had the money.
The house sat on about three lots, and the lawn was perfect. So were the flower beds, which looked like a magazine illustration. Rhodes thought about his own shaggy lawn and weedy beds. He was glad it was October. He wouldn’t have to mow but a couple more times that year, and the weeds would die during the winter.
Walking up to the front door of the house, Rhodes felt a little like Dorothy must have felt on the Yellow Brick Road, as if he were headed to the Emerald City. It had been years since Rhodes had seen the movie with Judy Garland, but he remembered the scene well. Clement wasn’t that much different from the great and powerful Oz, though Rhodes could never say that to Clement.
It wasn’t Clement who came to the door when Rhodes rang the bell. It was Clement’s wife, Fran, a short woman with very black short hair, who’d had occasion to flirt with Rhodes in the past. She wasn’t in a flirty mood today, however, which meant that her husband was at home.
“Hello, Sheriff,” Fran said. She wore a blue blouse and dark pants that hadn’t come from Walmart and probably not from any shop in the county. “You look like someone who’s had a bad day.”
“Sometimes busting crime is dirty work,” Rhodes said.
“I can see that. Well, come on in.”
Rhodes could tell she’d rather he stay outside. He’d tried to wash off most of the dirt at the jail, but his clothes still showed the signs of the dirt and dust he’d picked up at the meth house.
“Clifford’s in his office, waiting for you,” Fran said. “I’m sure he’ll be glad to see you.”
Rhodes had his doubts about that, but the mayor had made it clear when Rhodes called him from the jail that he wanted to see Rhodes immediately if not sooner. He was one of Rhodes’s bosses, since the city of Clearview, not having a police department, contracted with the county for its law enforcement, and Rhodes didn’t have much choice other than to show up and see what Clement wanted, even though he thought he already knew the answer.
Rhodes followed Fran down the hallway and into the den. The last time Rhodes had been there, Fran had been drinking a little. Not this time. She was all business. Maybe she didn’t indulge in either drinking or flirting when her husband was at home. That was just fine with Rhodes.
“Clifford’s right in here,” Fran said, leading Rhodes into a room just off the den. “I’ll leave you two to have your little talk.”
Fran went out and closed the door behind her. Rhodes glanced around the office. It was bigger and nicer than the one downtown that Clement got from the city. The desk was big and black, with a slick glass top, the two chairs for visitors were covered with smooth leather, and the carpet looked brand-new.
Clement got up from the ergonomic chair behind the desk, came around it, and shook Rhodes’s hand.
“Have a seat, Sheriff,” he said, “and tell me when you’re going to find out who killed Burt Collins.”
He went back behind his desk, and Rhodes sat down, thinking that it was just as well that Clement had come right to the point. He figured he’d do the same.
“I don’t know,” he said. “There are a lot of other things going on right now.”
Clement didn’t ask for an example. He said, “Do any of those things involve murder?”
“No, but—”
“Do any of those things involve a video of a riot at an art show?”
“No, but—”
“And have any of those things pretty much destroyed the town’s reputation with all the people at that art thing?”
“No, but—”
“I’m supposed to be at the art thing tonight,” Clement said. “The closing party or whatever it is. I’m supposed to make some kind of short speech about how happy we are to have the artists in our little town. I’m supposed to tell them I hope they’ll be back next year, when the whole shebang will be even bigger and better. How many of them do you think will come back if they start thinking about some unsolved murder that went on right under their noses and got started because somebody defaced their paintings?”
Rhodes didn’t bother to try to answer.
“Well?” Clement said.
“You didn’t seem interested in listening to me,” Rhodes said. “I thought I’d wait for you to run down.”
Clement’s face twitched. “You don’t have to take that tone with me.”
“You didn’t have to take that tone with me, either,” Rhodes said. “Do you want to listen to me now or keep on asking me questions?”
Clement stared at him. The stare didn’t bother Rhodes. He waited it out.
“All right,” Clement said after a while. “Go ahead. You talk. I’ll listen.”
“Okay. As I was trying to tell you, there are a lot of other things going on. We have a small department, and we can’t drop everything to investigate one thing, even if it is a murder.”
“If you’re looking for more money,” Clement said, “you’d be better off talking to the county commissioners. The city makes its deal with them.”
“I’m not looking for money,” Rhodes told him. “I’m trying to explain something. Last night we had an armed robbery. Today we shut down a meth lab. Yesterday it was donkeys gone wild. Maybe tomorrow we’ll find out who killed Burt Collins. Right now, we’
re doing what we can.”
“Do you have any leads?”
“A few,” Rhodes said, thinking of the bronze bust. “So far they haven’t taken us anywhere.”
The mention of the bust triggered a thought, something that Rhodes hadn’t considered before. He’d have to try to remember it later.
“So, then,” Clement said, “tonight can I say something like, ‘The sheriff tells me he has some solid leads in the case’?”
“Sure. Tell them that if you think it’ll make them feel better. You can tell them to keep looking at Jennifer Loam’s Web site for updates, too. Maybe they’ll see the meth lab story. They’ll see what a fine department we have.”
“Are you sure it’ll be there?”
Rhodes thought about Andy Shelby’s relationship with Jennifer Loam. He was surprised that Jennifer hadn’t come to the jail while he was telling Hack and Lawton about the meth bust. She must have been working on something else, but by now she’d have talked to Andy and visited the jail to see Rhodes’s report.
“The story will be on the Web site before long, if it’s not already,” Rhodes said. “I’m about a hundred percent certain of that.”
“Well, that might help,” Clement said. He stood up. “I’m sorry if I seemed a little overwrought. It’s just that I hate to see the town getting a bad reputation. You can understand.”
Rhodes stood, too. “I can, and I’ll be doing all I can to find the killer.”
“All right, then. Thanks for coming by.”
“My pleasure,” Rhodes said, trying not to sound sarcastic. He thought he did a good job of it, but he didn’t really care.
* * *
As Rhodes was starting the county car, Hack came on the radio.
“You got a lot of fans today,” Hack said. “Somebody else wants to see you.”
“Who?” Rhodes asked.
“Mr. Mikey Burns, your favorite county commissioner. He’s at the county barn, provin’ to the citizens that he even works on a Saturday.”
Rhodes didn’t think any citizens would be impressed, because they wouldn’t know. Hardly anybody ever dropped by the county barn even during the week, and Burns would be the only one there on Saturday. Even Mrs. Wilkie, his secretary, wouldn’t be there.
“Are you sure he wants to see me today?”