by Bill Crider
“You been gone awhile,” Hack said.
“Trouble at the Billy Bacon place,” Rhodes said.
“Trouble is right, but nobody told me about it. Nobody ever tells me anything.” Hack paused and shook his head. “That’s all right, though. I’m just the dispatcher. I’m like the furniture. Don’t matter if I know what’s going on or not.”
“I tell you everything,” Rhodes said. “Eventually.”
He didn’t add that eventually was how Hack and Lawton told him things. Hack was no doubt well aware of that. Rhodes had the sign from the post and other things that he’d taken from Billy Bacon’s ranch. He took them into the evidence locker and filled out the forms. He came out and sat at his computer.
“No, sir, you don’t tell me everything,” Hack said, picking up as if there had been no interruption. “You still haven’t told me what happened out there at Billy Bacon’s place. That’s all right, though. You don’t have to tell me. I got ways of findin’ out what’s goin’ on. I got my sources.”
Rhodes ignored him, put on his reading glasses, and started working on the report.
“See, you don’t give a rip about me and whether I’m in the loop or not. Me and Lawton do all the work around here, but we don’t get any respect. It’s a shame, is what it is.”
Rhodes turned in his chair. “You get a lot of respect, and you already know what happened. So I don’t really need to tell you, do I?”
“You don’t even care who my sources are.”
“I’m just guessing here, but I’d say that Deputy Grady finished up at the crime scene and came by here a little while ago. Did she have anything for you to tell me?”
“Not a thing except she didn’t find any clues.”
Rhodes hadn’t expected her to. It had been his experience that clues didn’t turn up as often in Blacklin County as they did on TV.
“Then she went to check on Oscar Campbell,” Hack said.
Oscar was a regular caller to the department. “Naked people coming through his windows again?”
“Third time this year. They like this warm weather.”
“How many this time?”
“He said three, same as usual.”
“What did he want Ruth to do about it?”
“Chase ’em out of the house. You know that.”
Oscar Campbell was in most respects a normal guy, friendly to his neighbors, able to function quite well in what passed for society in Clearview. He just had one little quirk. He didn’t see dead people; he saw naked people, and they were coming through his windows. He’d call the sheriff’s department about the problem now and then, and once the deputy who responded to the call had checked the house and assured him that the naked people were gone, he’d be just fine until the next time.
“I’m sure Deputy Grady will do a good job of clearing out the house,” Rhodes said. “Now I need to finish this report.”
“Ruth has herself a new idea for those naked people,” Hack said. “Just been waitin’ for Oscar to call.”
Rhodes did a bit of the report, waiting for Hack to continue and knowing he wouldn’t. Rhodes kept on working until he was about half through before he gave in.
“What new idea?” he asked.
“Made it up herself,” Hack said. “More or less. She told me Seepy helped out.”
If Seepy Benton was in on the new idea, Rhodes wasn’t sure he wanted to hear about it.
“Is it legal?”
“Bound to be. I figger it’ll work, too. Seepy’s a professional.”
“A professional what?”
“Ghost hunter. You know that.”
Rhodes took off his glasses, closed his eyes, and squeezed the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger. “What do imaginary naked people have to do with ghosts?”
“Not a thing,” Hack said.
Rhodes put his glasses back on and leaned back in his chair. “Hack, just tell the story.”
“You’re mighty impatient lately.”
“I have a murder investigation to work on. That makes me impatient. Tell the story.”
“All right, if you’re gonna be that way about it. See, Seepy got the idea from an ad he saw for some ghost repellent. He thought it might be something he could offer his customers.”
“He’s not working the ghost-hunting job right now,” Rhodes said.
“Nope, but he’s always thinking. You know how he is. That mind of his is workin’ all the time.”
Rhodes knew. “Does ghost repellent work?”
“Don’t matter if it does or not, according to Seepy. As long as somebody believes in it, that’s as good as if it works.”
Rhodes was beginning to catch on. Seepy had solved a similar problem once before. “So Seepy made some kind of repellent?”
“Nudist repellent,” Hack said. “Got him a big spray bottle at Walmart’s and printed up a label. Ruth showed it to me. Looks real professional, like it’s the real thing. She’s gonna spray some of the stuff around all the windows at Oscar’s house and leave the bottle with him. She figgers that’ll solve the problem.”
“What’s in the bottle? Water?”
“Water that Seepy fixed up with some colorin’ and odor. Smells pretty good.”
Rhodes thought it might work. It would depend on Oscar. He turned his chair back to the computer and said, “I need to get this report done.”
“You do that,” Hack said. “Don’t mind me. It’s not like I’m doin’ anything important. I’m just takin’ up space around here.”
When Rhodes was finished with the report, he called Ivy and asked if she wanted to go out to dinner. She said yes, and he told her that he’d pick her up when he was done with interviewing someone.
“Who?” Ivy asked.
“Billy Bacon and his wife. I’ll tell you about it later. Where do you want to eat?”
Ivy preferred healthy food at home, and Rhodes had even been persuaded to try turkey bologna. It wasn’t his favorite thing. The good news was that when they ate out, Ivy was happy to eat things that she didn’t often serve at home.
“We haven’t been to the Jolly Tamale for a while,” she said. “Does that sound good?”
It sounded great, but Rhodes tried not to be let his enthusiasm show too much, even though visions of chiles rellenos danced in his head.
“It’ll do,” he said.
After he’d hung up, he asked Hack if he wanted some Mexican food.
“You gonna bring it to me?”
“Sure.”
“It’ll still be hot when you get here with it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Guess that’d be nice, but I don’t want it. Lawton’s gonna bring me a cheeseburger. I like a good cheeseburger ’bout as well as anything.”
“Don’t say I didn’t offer.”
“Be better if you’d keep me in the loop.”
“I’ll try to remember that,” Rhodes said. “Call Mika and have her come in tomorrow. She can check the cell phone to see if she can find anything useful.”
Mika Blackfield did the forensics work for the department. She’d come to Clearview with her husband, who was a pharmacist at Walmart. When she’d applied for a job with the sheriff’s department and told Rhodes that she had a degree in criminal justice, he pushed the commissioners to hire her. They’d complained about the salary and allowed her to work only part-time, but she’d been very good at the job. Rhodes was happy with the hire, and so was everybody else.
“I’ll call her,” Hack said. “Anything else you want me to tell her?”
“She knows what to do,” Rhodes said. “When Ruth comes in, tell her to go back to Billy Bacon’s place and see if she can turn up any clues in the daylight.”
“I bet she’ll keep me in the loop about it if she does,” Hack said.
Rhodes decided to leave without getting into that argument again.
* * *
The Bacons lived in an old home built during Clearview’s boom days, a time when a seeming
ly endless supply of oil had been pumped up from beneath the ground and the town’s population had doubled and tripled and quadrupled within months. That had been almost a century ago, and the people back then had thought the oil would last forever. It hadn’t, of course, and in only a few years Clearview was a small town again. A few people had made a great deal of money, however, and several of them had built their homes on the edge of town along the same street. The homes had outlasted the oil.
All the homes were large and showy, and most of them had been bought and sold several times over the years. One of them now belonged to Billy Bacon. It was just down the street from the home of Clearview’s mayor, Clifford Clement, and Rhodes hoped he wouldn’t have to deal with Clement in this investigation. The mayor had been mixed up in a couple of other recent problems, and he didn’t much care for Rhodes. Rhodes had to put up with him, however, since the city of Clearview contracted with the sheriff’s department for its police services.
Rhodes parked in the driveway of Billy’s house behind Billy’s pickup. He got out of the Tahoe and admired the grass of the lawn, which was as green as the grass in a picture of Ireland, before he went to the door and rang the bell.
Billy came to the door. Seeing Rhodes, he said, “I didn’t expect you so soon.”
Rhodes thought it might already be too late. Billy would have had time to tell Nadine the situation and make sure she said what he wanted her to say.
“Better to get it over with,” Rhodes said.
Billy stepped back from the door, holding it open. “Come on in, then. We’ll go in the den.”
The den was down a hallway and through a door to the left. It was obviously Billy’s room. Pictures of him in his high school glory days hung on the wall, along with a framed jersey. A football covered with signatures sat on a little table. A couch and recliner were both covered with soft-looking brown leather, and the desk on one side of the room even had a leather top.
“Have a seat,” Billy said. “I’ll go get Nadine. She’s in the kitchen. Don’t be too hard on her, okay? She’s not feeling well.”
Billy left the room, but Rhodes didn’t sit. He walked over to the football and picked it up. He recognized a few of the signatures as belonging to Billy’s teammates from back in the times when Bacon was shakin’. Billy must miss those days when he was the best-known and best-loved person in Clearview.
Rhodes set the ball back down as Nadine and Billy came into the room. Nadine no longer looked like the cheerleader Rhodes remembered. She was still short, still compact, but she looked old, much older than Billy, though her hair wasn’t thinning and graying like his. It was still blond and short, but Rhodes was sure the color wasn’t natural. She looked tired, and her gait was more of a shuffle than a walk.
“Hello, Sheriff,” she said. “Billy says you want to talk to me.”
“Just a few questions if you don’t mind,” Rhodes said.
“I don’t mind. Let’s sit down. I can’t stand up very long.”
She and Billy sat on the couch. Billy had to help her. Rhodes took the chair. The leather was as soft as it looked.
“Go ahead, Sheriff,” Nadine said, leaning forward so as not to sink into the depths of the couch. “Ask your questions.”
“A couple of things to start with,” Rhodes said. “Billy, you didn’t tell me that you and Melvin had a little falling-out. It was about a loan, I believe.”
Billy sighed. “I have to turn down a lot of loans. That was one of them. It was just business.”
“Melvin didn’t see it that way. He needed the money, and you were neighbors. You said he didn’t have any collateral.”
“I can’t help how Melvin felt. The only collateral he had was that property of his. Do you know how long it’s been since any of that property sold? I’ll tell you how long. Years. Land isn’t worth anything if you can’t sell it. I couldn’t see my way clear to making the loan.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “What about the brand on your gate, the B-Bar-B. Did Melvin make that for you?”
“Yes. Made the gate, too, for that matter, but that was before the loan thing came up. I paid him good money to do it. Too bad he lost his rig. Maybe he could’ve made some more money.”
“Maybe. Now I have a question for you, Mrs. Bacon.”
“Call me Nadine.”
“Sure,” Rhodes said. “Billy tells me he was home with you last night.”
Nadine nodded. “That’s right. He was right here all the time.”
It was what Rhodes had expected her to say. “He says he bought you a gun.”
“Yes,” Nadine said. “It’s for home protection. You hear so much about home invasions on the news.”
Following the party line, Rhodes thought, wondering just how much coaching Billy had given her.
“Guns can be dangerous if you don’t know how to use them,” he said. “I hope you’ve had some training.”
“Billy taught me how to use it. I haven’t had any classes or anything because I don’t have a concealed-carry license. We just take the pistol out for target practice sometimes. Or we did. We haven’t been out much since I got sick.”
“I’d heard you’d been sick,” Rhodes said. He looked at Billy, who was keeping quiet. “Have the doctors been able to help?”
“Ha,” Nadine said.
Rhodes looked at Billy again.
“They’ve tried,” Billy said. “They’ve done all kinds of tests, tried all kinds of medications. Nothing works.”
“Just go ahead and tell him all of it,” Nadine said. “If everybody in town doesn’t know already, they’ll find out. Tell him.”
Billy looked down at the floor.
“You don’t need to hang your head,” Nadine said. “It happens to all kinds of people. It happened to Rush Limbaugh and Cindy McCain. It even happened to Elvis. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Billy looked up, but he still didn’t speak.
Nadine looked at Rhodes. “He can’t handle it. People stealing his stuff, a dead man in his barn, and me. It’s all gotten to be too much for him.”
Rhodes thought he knew what she was talking about, but he wanted to make sure. “What about you?”
“I’m a prescription drug addict, Sheriff. Hooked, lined, and sinkered. It’s all legal, so you don’t have to arrest me.”
Billy finally spoke up. “It’s not her fault, Sheriff, okay? It’s the damn doctors. They got her hooked, and now they can’t get her off.”
“Benzos,” Nadine said. “That’s what they call them on the street.”
Rhodes knew the word. It meant Valium, Halcion, Librium, things like that. He didn’t think Nadine had ever been on the street to hear the term. She must have heard it on TV. Maybe on some cop show.
“She’d had some problems,” Billy said. “We went to a lot of doctors, all over the state. The best. They couldn’t find anything really wrong with her, and it was making us both crazy. They said it was all imaginary.”
“It’s not,” Nadine said. “It’s Morgellons. It’s real. Joni Mitchell has it, and now she’s had an aneurysm, too, poor thing. I was tired all the time, and I had things growing out of my skin. It was driving me crazy.”
“You can’t believe the stress,” Billy said. “It got to her. The doctors prescribed Valium for all the anxiety she was having over the testing and uncertainty. She got dependent. The doses they gave her were too large.”
“It could happen to anybody,” Nadine said. “Look at Elvis.”
“The thing is, you can’t just go cold turkey,” Billy said. “If you want to get off the benzos, you have to taper off, okay? It can take forever.”
“The worst part is, the drugs didn’t work,” Nadine said. “They didn’t find what was wrong with me, and the benzos didn’t help my anxiety except for a little while. Plus I still have the symptoms. Now I’m worse off than ever.”
“You didn’t come to hear this,” Billy told Rhodes. “You came about the gun.”
They’d stray
ed a bit from the topic of the gun, true, but Rhodes always listened to what people told him. You never knew when something helpful would come out.
“That’s all right,” Rhodes said. “I’ll keep it confidential.”
“Even if you do, it won’t do any good,” Nadine said. “People gossip about me already. I know they talk about me down at that Beauty Shack where I get my hair done.”
The Beauty Shack was where a lot of women, including Rhodes’s wife, had their hair done. Men, too. It was a hotbed of information exchange, which was what Ivy preferred to call gossip.
“Nobody will hear anything from me,” Rhodes said.
Nadine looked skeptical. “If you say so. Anyway, you’re wrong if you think Billy had something to do with killing Melvin Hunt. He was with me. You could look at the gun if you want to. Go get it, Billy.”
Billy looked questioningly at Rhodes, who nodded.
Billy stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
When he left the room, Nadine said, “Like I said, it’s been hard on him, having me like this, Sheriff. He’s always been so healthy, and I used to be, too. We’ve both had a hard time dealing with my illness, especially with me being hooked on the benzos. They’re terrible things. I’m better now, a little, and I have something to help me, but it’s still hard.”
“I know,” Rhodes said.
“You think you do, but you don’t, not unless it’s happened to you or to somebody you care about. Billy’s a good man, and he’s taken care of me. He didn’t kill Melvin Hunt. I know he didn’t.”
Rhodes didn’t know what to say to that, but he was spared from coming up with an answer when Billy limped back into the room holding a revolver with the cylinder swung out. His thumb and forefinger encircled the cylinder.
“It hasn’t been fired in a while,” Billy said, handing the revolver to Rhodes. “See for yourself.”
Rhodes took the revolver, checked to be sure the cylinder was unloaded, and sniffed the barrel. He smelled gun oil and solvent. All that told him was that Billy could have cleaned the gun after using it a day earlier.
“I’d like to take it with me,” Rhodes said. “Just in case.”