by Bill Crider
“A loose connection,” Patel said. “Nothing more. Easy to fix.” He stuck the screwdriver in the tool belt and put the cover back on the air conditioner. “Did you see Sunny when you came in?”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “She offered me a bagel.”
“I hope you accepted.”
“No,” Rhodes said. “I’ve already eaten. I didn’t come to bum a free meal anyway. I came to talk to you.”
“Then I am honored. What did you want to talk about?”
“Burt Collins,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 23
Patel and Rhodes went down to the office where they’d talked before. Patel removed the tool belt and put it on the floor by his desk while Rhodes looked at the framed pictures of Gujarat and thought about how far away he was from the colorful world. It seemed a shame to have to bring up the subject of murder in these surroundings, but that was what Rhodes had come to discuss.
After they’d taken seats, Patel asked if Rhodes was sure he didn’t want a bagel.
“They get stale,” Patel said. “We like to get fresh ones every day.”
Rhodes had a hard time imagining people in Clearview eating bagels, except for Seepy Benton. He wondered where Patel even found fresh bagels in Clearview.
“Thanks,” Rhodes said, “but I’d better skip it. I’m trying not to gain any weight.”
“We have low-fat cream cheese.”
Rhodes grinned. “I appreciate the offer, but I’m not here to eat.”
“I know,” Patel said. “It is just that when the sheriff comes to call and says he needs to talk, I get nervous.”
“No need to be nervous,” Rhodes said.
“Burt Collins makes me nervous, or he did. Now, talking about him does the same thing. I thought we covered that subject the last time you were here.”
“We did, but now we need to cover a little more of it.”
Patel shifted in his chair and looked uncomfortable, and while he didn’t object, it was clear that Burt Collins wasn’t his favorite topic.
“This won’t take long,” Rhodes said. “You told me yesterday you didn’t wish Burt any harm, even though you hadn’t forgotten what he’d done to your building.”
“That is true,” Patel said. “The words he wrote were impossible for me to forget, but they are no longer there. So I have put them out of my mind.”
“No need to think about them now, either. This is about Burt, not what he wrote. Did he call here on Friday night?”
“Why would he call here?”
“I think I know why, but first I have to be sure that he called.”
“I was not answering calls on Friday night, and I never check to see who called. We do not keep a record of that. We keep a record of outgoing calls, however.”
“Those aren’t the ones I’m interested in,” Rhodes said. “I wouldn’t need the records if you’d recognized Burt’s voice.”
“It is possible that I might have,” Patel said, “had I been taking the calls. I do not wish to speak ill of the dead, but he was a gruff, abrupt man, and speaking to him was never pleasant. Not under the circumstances in which I encountered him.”
“Who was taking calls Friday night?”
“I believe Sunny was on the desk.”
“Then she’s the one I need to talk to. Would it be all right if she came in here?”
Patel frowned. “Is that really necessary?”
Rhodes didn’t even have to think about it. “No, not really, but she might tell me something I want to know. You might say that it’s not necessary, but important.”
Patel nodded. “If it is important to you, I will call Sunny.”
Like the sheriff’s department and the Beauty Shack, the hotel also had old-fashioned landline phones. Patel picked up the receiver and punched a button. When his wife answered, he asked her to get Jack to take over at the desk and come to the office. Rhodes and Patel passed an uncomfortable five minutes while they waited. Rhodes wished he’d accepted the bagel.
Sunny came in with a smile, and Patel told her that Rhodes had a question for her about a call she might have gotten on Friday night.
“I don’t know if you can answer,” Rhodes said, “but I thought I’d give it a try.”
“I will help you if I can,” Sunny said.
“Do you get many calls?” Rhodes asked.
“Not many,” Sunny said. “Maybe two or three in the evenings. I think we had at least that many on Friday. That was easy to answer. Was that your question?”
“Not the main one. You remember Burt Collins?”
Sunny looked at her husband, who gave a slight nod.
“I remember him,” Sunny said. “I would rather that I didn’t, but I do.”
“Then here’s my question,” Rhodes said. “Did he call here Friday afternoon or evening?”
Again Patel gave Sunny a slight nod. She said, “I could not be certain that he did.”
“But you think so?”
“One of the callers sounded like him, but if I were asked to swear in court, that would not be possible.”
“It won’t go to court,” Rhodes said. “This is just for my ears only.”
“Then I would say that yes, he called.”
“I underestimated the number of questions I have,” Rhodes said. “Here’s one more. I believe some of the artists in town for the conference are staying here. Did he call one of them?”
“I would just be relying on my memory,” Sunny said.
“I’m sure you have a good memory,” Rhodes told her.
Sunny smiled. “Thank you. He did ask for one of our guests by name.”
“You remember the name, too, I’ll bet.”
“Yes,” Sunny said.
This was turning out to be like a conversation with Hack and Lawton, and Rhodes thought that Sunny was enjoying the game as much as they did. It was time to bring it to an end, however.
“Marilyn Bradley,” Rhodes said.
“Yes,” Sunny said. “That is the one.”
Marilyn Bradley had made a mistake. Rhodes hadn’t spotted it at first, but he’d caught it later on. It wasn’t enough of a mistake to convict her of Burt Collins’s murder, but it had given Rhodes a place to start, and he’d worked backward to find a motive. He’d found that, too, or so he thought, but he needed the phone call to confirm it.
Rhodes stood up and thanked the Patels for their help.
“Is Marilyn Bradley still here?” he asked.
“She has not checked out,” Sunny said. She looked at a clock sitting on the desk. “It is an hour until checkout time.”
“I’d better talk to her, then,” Rhodes said. “What room is she in?”
“I believe three-fifteen,” Sunny said.
“Is there going to be trouble?” Manish asked. “I would not like for there to be trouble. I would not like for my guests to be disturbed.”
“I’ll try not to disturb them,” Rhodes said.
“This is about Burt Collins, obviously. Did she kill him?”
“I think she might have,” Rhodes said.
Manish sighed. “Very well. Do you wish me to go with you to the room?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. I do need to make a call first, though. If she tries to check out before I get back, don’t let her leave.”
“She can check out on the TV,” Manish said. “We would not see her. I would not like to confront her, in any case. What would I say?”
“You don’t have to confront her,” Rhodes said. “Just watch the back door. If she leaves, let me know. I’ll be right back.”
Rhodes left the office and went out to the county car. He had a good view of the entrance to the hotel, and if Marilyn came out that way, he’d see her.
He got on the radio, called Hack, and asked which deputy was closest to the hotel.
“Buddy’s on the way back from Obert. Had a little fracas over there between a couple of neighbors, but it’s all settled now.”
Rhodes didn’t bother
to ask what kind of fracas. It would take forty minutes to draw the story out of Hack.
“You want him to stop at the hotel?” Hack asked.
“I do,” Rhodes said.
“I’ll tell him,” Hack said.
Rhodes racked the mic and waited. Nobody left the hotel, and in a couple of minutes Buddy came into the parking lot and parked beside Rhodes.
“Hack said you needed me,” Buddy said when he got out of the car. “What’s the beef?”
The phrase sounded like something out of the previous century, and Rhodes wondered, as he occasionally did, where Buddy picked up his cop slang.
“First, tell me what happened in Obert,” Rhodes said. He could get the story from Buddy in a lot less time than he’d ever worm it out of Hack.
“It was a backyard chicken thing,” Buddy said.
Rhodes nodded. They’d had some of those before, not to mention the big stink with the chicken farms at Mount Enterprise. There was still an occasional complaint about the smell out that way, but for the most part the new owner had taken care of things.
Buddy rested his rump against the side of Rhodes’s county car. “This wasn’t the usual complaint about a loud rooster early in the morning. Some fella named Roger Belvin claimed that his neighbor’s dog was sneaking into his backyard chicken run at night and killing his hens. Neighbor’s name was Claude Washburn, and he said it wasn’t his dog doing it but a coyote. Said he heard coyotes howling every night, and besides, his dog’s in a fenced yard. Belvin said the dog jumped the fence, and they got into it. Washburn’s wife called it in, and I got there before there was any damage done.”
“Did you manage to settle it?”
“Sure,” Buddy said. “I told ’em to show me the tracks if there were any, which there were, right there in the chicken run. They were coyote tracks.”
“Hard to tell the difference between a dog’s track and a coyote’s track,” Rhodes said.
“Takes an expert,” Buddy said. “I’m one of ’em.” He grinned. “Not really. It’s easy to tell if you know what you’re looking for. It’s all in the shape of the paw. We went and looked in Washburn’s yard and found some tracks his dog made, and I showed Washburn and Belvin the difference between them and the coyote tracks. Problem solved. Except now Washburn’s got to watch out for coyotes at night. Now, what’s the beef here?”
“I’m going to see a suspect, maybe make an arrest,” Rhodes said. “You can back me up.”
Buddy hitched up his utility belt. “I’m ready for that. Who’s the perp?”
“A woman named Marilyn Bradley. I think she might’ve killed Burt Collins.”
Buddy fingered the butt of his service weapon. “Will we be doing this the easy way or the hard way?”
“You never know,” Rhodes said, “but let’s hope for the easy way. She doesn’t know I suspect her.”
“Okay,” Buddy said, pushing himself away from the car. “Let’s do it.”
They went into the hotel. Sunny and Manish were both at the desk, and Rhodes stopped to ask if anything had happened with Marilyn while he was outside.
“She has not checked out on the TV,” Manish said, “and she has not left the hotel.”
“Good,” Rhodes said. “Room three-fifteen, right?”
“That is correct. I checked to be sure. Do you want a key?”
Rhodes didn’t think he’d need a key, but as he’d told Buddy, you never know.
“Might be a good idea,” he said, and Patel handed him a thin piece of plastic. Rhodes slipped it into his shirt pocket and joined Buddy, who was waiting at the elevator. Rhodes didn’t want to take any chances on Marilyn getting past them, so he told Buddy to take the stairs to the third floor.
“You can use the exercise,” Rhodes said, though it plainly wasn’t true. Buddy was stick thin. “I’ll take the elevator.”
Buddy didn’t argue. He just asked what the suspect looked like.
“You can’t miss her,” Rhodes said. “She has orange hair.”
“Orange?”
“Very.”
Buddy grinned, nodded, and went through the doorway that led to the stairs. Rhodes punched the elevator button. He expected the doors to open, but they didn’t. He glanced up at the lights above the door. The elevator was in use on the second floor, but it wasn’t long before he heard it start to descend. The doors opened, and Rhodes saw a man, a woman, three children all under the age of ten, and several suitcases. He stood aside and held the door while they got organized and got out of the elevator. The children gave the badge holder on his belt some curious looks, but the adults didn’t notice. When they cleared the door, Rhodes got in and punched the button for three. He figured Buddy was nearly at the top of the stairs.
When the elevator passed the second floor, Rhodes heard a metallic clanging, and he put a hand out to touch the side of the elevator to make sure it wasn’t about to fall apart.
It wasn’t, and in a couple of seconds the doors opened onto the third floor. Rhodes looked around for Buddy, but the hallway was empty.
Room three-fifteen was just past the door to the stairway. The door to the room was closed, and Rhodes had a bad feeling about that. He bent down and got his pistol from the ankle holster, then walked to the room and knocked.
He got no answer to his knock, so he used the key, standing to the side as he pushed the door open. The room was empty. He did a quick check of the bathroom to be sure. Nobody there. He noticed that the curtain was drawn back on the big window that looked out into the parking lot. He could look right out and see the two county cars, which is what Marilyn Bradley must have done. She’d seen Rhodes and Buddy jawing away and decided it was time to get out of town.
Thinking of Buddy, Rhodes remembered the metallic noise. He left the room and went to the stairs. He pushed the metal door open, but he didn’t see Buddy at first. He looked down and saw the deputy lying on the landing at the foot of the first short flight of stairs.
Rhodes stuck his pistol in his back pocket before he went down and knelt by Buddy, who looked up at him and said, “She hit me with the door.”
That must have been the noise Rhodes had heard.
“It was an accident,” Buddy said. He had a kind of a horizontal dent just about in the middle of his forehead where the edge of the door had hit him. “Wrong place, wrong time.”
Same result as if it had been deliberate, Rhodes thought.
“You stay put,” he said. “I’ll get an ambulance here.”
“I’m okay,” Buddy said. “Just bunged up some. Help me get up.”
“Stay right there. That’s an order. You might be hurt worse than you know.”
Buddy didn’t argue about it. Rhodes grabbed a pair of his handcuffs, jammed them in a front pocket, and ran on down the stairs. When he came out into the hall by the elevator, he looked toward the lobby. Manish Patel pointed to the back door, and Rhodes went outside. He saw a black Toyota Prius pulling out of a parking space. The driver had orange hair.
Rhodes had three choices. He could let the car go, he could throw himself in front of it and hope Marilyn would stop, or he could shoot.
His life wasn’t in any danger, so he didn’t like the idea of shooting.
He didn’t care for the idea of throwing himself in front of the car, either. He didn’t think Marilyn would stop.
So he let her go.
Chapter 24
Rhodes ran back through the hotel to the county car. As he passed the desk, he called out to the Patels.
“Call 911. My deputy’s on the stairs, third floor.”
Rhodes rushed out the front door and jumped into the county car. Marilyn was just pulling out onto the highway. Instead of heading back into town, she turned toward Obert. Rhodes was glad of that because it meant he wouldn’t be chasing her through the after-church traffic.
He started the car and rolled out of the lot after Marilyn. He gave Hack a call on the radio to give him his location and to let him know he was chasing a suspect
.
“Ruth’s been in Milsby,” Hack said. “She’s on the way back. Want me to send her?”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “I’ll try to make the stop, but I might need some backup.”
He didn’t give Hack a chance to ask anything more. He had other things to do. Marilyn was a quarter of a mile ahead of him, driving a little over the speed limit. Rhodes didn’t think he’d have any trouble overtaking her. The Prius was great for gas mileage, but it couldn’t match the Dodge for speed and power.
Marilyn passed one of the old oil fields from which the forest of derricks had long since disappeared but where some of the wells were still producing even after a hundred years. Not much, but a little, and a little oil was better than none.
Rhodes caught up with her just past the oil field. He turned on his flashers, but Marilyn didn’t stop. Instead, she increased her speed.
Rhodes knew she’d seen him, so he turned on the siren to give her another chance to stop. She paid no attention. He hadn’t really expected her to.
Since they were on a long, straight stretch of road with no cars headed in their direction, Rhodes pulled into the left lane and mashed down the accelerator. In a couple of seconds he was right alongside Marilyn. He looked over at her and motioned for her to pull over on the shoulder. She ignored him and drove faster.
Rhodes let her pull ahead of him. When he’d dropped back behind her, he considered his options. He knew Marilyn couldn’t outrun him, but he couldn’t just chase her until she ran out of gas. Considering the difference in the gas mileage of a Prius and a big-engine Dodge, Rhodes was a lot more likely to run out of gas than Marilyn was. And even though the towns ahead of them were small, she was still likely to be a danger to herself and others if she kept going.
Rhodes decided that his best bet was a PIT stop, which was how he referred to the Pursuit Intervention Technique. The highway was clear, the road was level, and there was plenty of room on both sides.
It should be simple enough to perform the maneuver, but it might not work, considering the fact that the Prius was a front-wheel-drive vehicle. A really good driver could regain control of the car and start back in the opposite direction. Rhodes hoped Marilyn wasn’t a really good driver.