Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  Well, just between us, we should’ve had a new jail in this county years ago. Probably a lot of years ago. It’s just too bad that it’s going to take something like this to make the commissioners get off their butts and take some action.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly. “You mean you think we’ll be getting a new jail?”

  “Damn right. We need one. I’m surprised the Jail Standards Commission didn’t close us down a long time back.

  “We’ll get a new jail, all right, but not now, not right away. Hell, no. The commissioners will fight this suit tooth and nail, plead poverty, deny everything, do whatever they can to stall it, but it’s inevitable. We’ll get a jail, if for no other reason than that the court will probably order it.”

  Rhodes drained the Dr Pepper bottle and set it on the desk. He couldn’t believe it. A new jail. It didn’t seem possible.

  “Probably more deputies, too,” Parry said. “Modern conveniences. You know the kind of thing. Television cameras for surveillance, air-conditioned cells.”

  “Computers,” Rhodes said.

  “Right. Computers. All the latest gadgets.”

  “But not without a fight.”

  “Not without a hell of a fight, and not without a lot of kicking and screaming from the taxpayers.” Parry smiled. “Most of the screaming will be directed at you, by the way. The commissioner will have to find someone to blame for the sorry condition the jail is in right now.”

  Rhodes ate the last cracker and the paper crackled as he crumpled it and tossed it in the trash can.

  “I was afraid of that,” he said.

  Chapter 3

  Rhodes walked back over to the jail to see if anything that needed the sheriff’s personal attention had come up.

  Nothing had, but Lawton and Hack were a little more cheerful than they had been when Rhodes had left.

  “We’ve been thinkin’ about that supervised exercise program,” Hack said. “We think it’s a good idea.”

  “You do?” Rhodes said.

  “That’s right,” Lawton said. “Me and Hack will be the ones to supervise it. We’ll get the county to buy us one of those Jane Fonda workout tapes, and we’ll watch it while the prisoners do their exercises.”

  “I thought you told me once that you didn’t like her,” Rhodes said. “Called her ‘Hanoi Jane,’ as I remember.”

  “Don’t have anything to do with the way she does exercises,” Lawton said.

  “I don’t think the county would go for it,” Rhodes said. “Besides, we don’t have a videotape player. We don’t even have a TV set.”

  Hack nodded. “And that’s just one more thing that’s cruel and unusual about the punishment around here. Whoever heard of a jail without a TV? They got ’em at all the prison farms, even got satellite dishes. It’s a wonder we ain’t had a riot. I’m surprised that Little Barnes didn’t bring somethin’ like that up in his lawsuit.”

  “Well, don’t remind him,” Rhodes said. “He’ll probably add it in.”

  He waited to see if they had any more to say. When they didn’t, he asked if there had been any calls.

  “That Miz Stuart called from Sunny Dale,” Hack said. In the excitement over the lawsuit, Rhodes had forgotten all about Mr. Bobbit’s teeth.

  “What did she want?”

  “Nothin’ much. Said to tell you that she had herself a suspect, but she couldn’t be dead certain. Wants to wait till supper to make sure. That make any sense to you?”

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. He told them about the missing teeth. “Either of you know Maurice Kennedy or Lloyd Bobbit?”

  “You ought to remember that Bobbit fella,” Hack said. “‘Course it’s been a couple of years back, and maybe your memory ain’t what it used to be.”

  Rhodes thought about the little man standing on the porch at the nursing home. He would have bet money that he'd never seen him before.

  “I expect Lawton remembers, don’t you Lawton?” Hack said.

  “Sure do,” Lawton said. “It was even in the big city papers.”

  The mention of the big city papers brought the incident back to Rhodes. He had never met Bobbit, but he had dealt with the daughter, the one who was giving Mr. Patterson trouble about the missing teeth.

  Rhodes could sympathize with Patterson. Miss Bobbit had given him a bit of trouble, too.

  “He went off to get his TV fixed,” Hack said. “Disappeared off the face of the earth.”

  “For a day or two, anyhow,” Lawton said. “That daughter of his tried to make it into a kidnap case, tried to get us to bring in the FBI.”

  “We didn’t, though,” Rhodes said.

  “No, but the way she carried on, you prob’ly wanted to,” Hack said. “Wanted us to keep it out of the papers, too.”

  “We couldn’t do that, though,” Lawton said. “It was big news when they found him.”

  “If those Houston cops hadn’t been on the ball, she would’ve never seen the old guy again,” Hack said, giving Rhodes a significant look. “They figured out who he was with a computer, you know.”

  “I know,” Rhodes said. Hack never lost a chance to remind him of the value of state-of-the-art law enforcement techniques that were lacking in Blacklin County.

  “Just put his license number in there, and knew who he was about a minute after that,” Hack said. “Maybe ten seconds.”

  “I remember,” Rhodes said.

  Somehow, Mr. Bobbit, who had started out from his house in a green 1975 Chevy Bel-Air four-door, had wound up in Houston, a good three-and-a-half hours away, driving in the wrong direction on a one-way street in the middle of downtown. He had left his house more than a day earlier to take a portable thirteen-inch color TV into a Clearview shop for repair, and that was the last anyone heard of him until the police stopped him. The TV set was still in the backseat of the car.

  The newspaper stories had referred to Bobbit as “a little mixed up about directions,” and no one ever did find out exactly how he got to Houston, whether by working his way over to the interstate or by winding around the back roads. It was a small miracle that he had survived the trip, much less the time he had spent driving on the city streets.

  According to what Bobbit said later, he had stopped and bought gas once, somewhere, but he had apparently not asked for directions to Clearview. Instead, he had asked how to get to Roy’s TV. The attendant at the convenience store, or wherever it was the gas was bought, had no idea what the old man was talking about, so Bobbit had gotten back into his car and started driving. He had not eaten, and he had not had anything to drink except for an RC Cola that he bought at the convenience store. The empty RC can was lying on the front floor of the Chevy.

  “Those Houston police treated me real nice,” Mr. Bobbit told the newspapers. “Called my daughter up long distance and she come and got me.”

  It was not long after that episode that Mr. Bobbit had taken up residence in the Sunny Dale Nursing Home, where he had lived happily ever after, Rhodes assumed, until his teeth were stolen.

  According to Hack, Maurice Kennedy had an even more colorful past.

  “He was a real hellion in his day. Little before my time, but I used to hear stories about him when I was growin’ up. There was even a story that he killed a fella one time.”

  “I heard about that, too,” Lawton said. “Nobody ever proved it, though. Fella’d do a murder, though, he’d be one that’d steal teeth, I guess.”

  “The murder was a long time back,” Hack said. “Sixty years, or thereabout. I don’t recollect much of the story. Way I remember it, they never found a body.”

  “Probably doesn’t have anything to do with the teeth,” Rhodes said. “I’ve got to go out to the precinct three barn if there’s nothing else happening.”

  “Nothin that we know of,’ Hack said.

  “I’ve got to go clean up the cells,” Lawton said. “I don’t want to be neglectin’ anybody.” He went out the door at the back of the office.

  �
��You know Miz Wilkie works out there at the precinct barn now, don’t you?” Hack said.

  Rhodes admitted that he hadn’t known.

  “Well, she does. Got her a job answerin’ the phone and bein’ a secretary.” Hack grinned. “Prob’ly had to do something to take her mind off you.”

  Mrs. Wilkie was a widow who had set her cap for Rhodes when his wife had died. She still hadn’t quite given up hope, though the whole county knew that Rhodes was going to marry Ivy Daniel.

  “I’ll come back by before I go home,” Rhodes told Hack. “If Miz Wilkie doesn’t try to keep me. Let me know if anything comes up.”

  “I’ll do that,” Hack said.

  The precinct barn was a huge steel building that was painted a strange shade of light greenish-blue. Rhodes thought the county had probably gotten the paint on sale. The building sat behind a cyclone fence on about a half acre of crushed gravel that shone white in the afternoon sun.

  Beside the barn was another steel building of the same color. This one was really just a gigantic shed to house the precinct’s pickups, road graders, backhoe machines, and dump trucks, all of which were painted an ugly school-bus yellow. Rhodes didn’t count the openings in the shed, but there must have been at least ten. Most of the vehicles were missing, out hard at work on the county roads, he supposed.

  He parked in front of the barn. The commissioner’s office was in the front, separated from the rest of the building by a thin wall. In the back, there would be more vehicles under repair, damaged road signs being straightened and repainted, plans being laid for future road repairs. Rhodes could hear the clanging sound of metal being hammered. The office would be relatively quiet by comparison.

  Rhodes entered the front door, hoping that Mrs. Wilkie wouldn’t be there.

  She was, however, though Rhodes, who had not seen her for a while, almost didn’t recognize her. Her hair, which had been an improbable orange color the last time he saw her, had been allowed to return to its natural shade, a very light brown shot through with a great deal of gray. She was wearing very little makeup, and she was dressed in a businesslike suit of dark blue.

  “Good afternoon, Sheriff,” she said formally when he walked in. “Can I help you?” She was sitting at the reception desk near the door, looking efficient and capable.

  Rhodes was slightly taken aback, but he said, “Good afternoon, Miz Wilkie. I came to talk to James Allen, if he’s here.”

  “I’ll see,” she said. She picked up a beige telephone and punched three numbers. “Mr. Allen, the sheriff is here to see you.” She listened for a moment, then hung up. “You can go right in.”

  Behind Mrs. Wilkie there was a partition with three doors in it. On one of the doors was a sign that said JAMES ALLEN, COUNTY COMMISSIONER, PRECINCT 3. That was the door Rhodes opened.

  Allen got up from behind his desk and came around to shake Rhodes’s hand. He was a big man, but he had very little fat on him. Rhodes envied him that, but he liked Allen anyway. They were the same age, and they had gone to high school together. Whenever he ran into a serious problem, one that the commissioners were going to have to deal with, Rhodes usually talked it over with Allen.

  “Good to see you, Sheriff,” Allen said, pumping Rhodes’s arm. “How do you like my new secretary?”

  “I almost didn’t know her.”

  Allen laughed. He released Rhodes’s hand and went to sit down. Rhodes sat in a straight-backed wooden chair facing the desk. He was glad to notice that this chair had a cushion in it, unlike the one in Patterson’s office.

  “She needed something to do,” Allen said. “And Mary Sue had quit on me. Decided to spend her time raising her newest baby. Miz Wilkie was looking for a job, and she had the qualifications. My wife likes her, too. She thinks an older woman can be trusted.”

  Rhodes looked skeptical.

  “You can tell Miz Wilkie’s all business around here,” Allen said. “I guess, you already know this, but if she’s romantically interested in anybody, you’re still the one.”

  “I’m getting married on the twenty-seventh,” Rhodes said. “To Ivy Daniel.”

  “I heard. Congratulations. But that doesn’t change anything. Miz Wilkie’s just trying a new tactic.”

  “A new tactic?”

  “You’re dating a career woman, aren’t you? Someone who has a job, doesn’t dye her hair, dresses professionally? Well, meet the new Miz Wilkie.”

  Rhodes didn’t know what to say. As the silence stretched, he could hear the banging and pounding from the back of the barn.

  Allen broke the spell. “Some of us got it, some of us don’t. You’ve got it. Miz Wilkie can’t resist you, any more than Ivy can.”

  Rhodes knew he was being kidded, but he didn’t mind. Mrs. Wilkie might have changed her image for any number of reasons, but Rhodes didn’t think he was one of them.

  “Did you get a visit from a lawyer today?” he said, changing the subject.

  “Matter of fact, I did,” Allen said. “Looks like the county is about to get taken to court.”

  “You think you’ll fight the suit, then?”

  Allen laughed. “Hell, yes, we’ll fight it. You don’t think we’re just going to admit to anything in that lawsuit, do you? Even if it is all true.”

  “Some of it’s not true,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “I know that,” Allen said. “You and those old boys at the jail never neglected anybody in your whole lives. Those prisoners eat better than half the county as long as Miz Stutts is feeding them, and they don’t really suffer all that much from lack of exercise, either. I wonder if Little Barnes is going to claim that he was on a regular work-out schedule before he got himself arrested?”

  “I doubt it,” Rhodes said.

  “Of course he’s not. It’s just a way he has of getting back at us for catching him. But he does have a point.”

  “I talked to Jack Parry. He thinks the county will get a new jail sooner or later.”

  “He’s right. That old place you’re in, it must be—what? Eighty years old?”

  “About that,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah. The Jail Standards people have been letting us slip by, but there’s no air conditioning, and the roof leaks, and the plumbing backs up, and—”

  “If it’s so bad, why hasn’t the county done anything before now?”

  Allen sighed. “I know you’ve told us a lot of things that were wrong, and we didn’t do much about them. Just slapped on a bandage, so to speak, and hoped we could get by for a few more years. It’s not your fault.”

  “But I’ll have to take the rap.” Rhodes could feel his face getting hot. He liked Allen, and they went back a long way, but the longer Allen remained in office, the more like a politician he became. Rhodes didn’t like being made the scapegoat.

  “Now don’t go getting your dandruff in an uproar,” Allen said. “You won’t have to take the blame.” He sat forward in his chair and leaned on the desk. “Not all of it, anyway.”

  It was too bad, but Rhodes didn’t entirely trust his old friend when he began getting chummy. “How much of it?” he said.

  “Maybe a little bit. Not much. The county hasn’t had the money to do anything till now, and we’ve got a lot of fiscal conservatives on the commissioners’ court.”

  Right, Rhodes thought. All of them.

  “Where’s the money going to come from?” he asked.

  “The power plant,” Allen told him. “The one they’re building down below Braceville. That’s going to bring in the tax money, boy, let me tell you.”

  He was beaming, the way Rhodes suspected that any politician would beam when talking about bringing in bundles of tax money that the local taxpayers wouldn’t feel coming out of their pockets.

  “That big lake that goes with it,” Allen went on, “that’ll help, too. The new jail won’t be the end of the changes we’ll see around here.”

  The county needed a new jail, all right, but the thought of all the changes made Rhodes uncomfortable
. Now he knew what Parry meant about more deputies and all the rest. The county was going to be different, and it might be that the difference wouldn’t necessarily improve things.

  “I don’t think we ever got it clear about how much I’m going to be blamed,” he said.

  “All right, all right,” Allen said. “You have to admit that you didn’t exercise the prisoners.”

  “Where would I do that?” Rhodes said.

  “Good point. I guess you couldn’t very well do it in the middle of the street. How about that leaky roof?”

  “We might check the weather records. I don’t think it even rained while Little Barnes was in jail, at least not enough to make the roof leak.”

  “Damn! I didn’t even think of that. Who do we check with?”

  “They keep records at the newspaper office,” Rhodes said.

  “I don’t know if I want to get close to the newspaper office right now,” Allen said. “What with the lawsuit and all.”

  Rhodes didn’t blame him. “I can ask Ivy to check,” he said.

  Allen smiled. “You know, you’re pretty smart for a Texas sheriff. I guess you won’t get much of the blame after all.”

  “Good,” Rhodes said. But he still wasn’t satisfied. “It’s not just me I’m worried about, though. I don’t want Hack and Lawton to take any of the blame, either.”

  “Don’t worry. The more I think about this, the more I think it might not even go to court. I bet that fancy lawyer didn’t think about checking the weather records. No telling where else he got careless. You can tell Hack and Lawton to put their minds at ease.”

  “I’ll do that,” Rhodes said. He got up to go.

  “What’s the movie?” Allen said. “The one where Marion Brando plays a Texas sheriff?”

  “The Chase,” Rhodes said. He knew almost as much about movies as he did about being sheriff, especially old, bad movies.

  “That’s the one,” Allen said. “There’s a fella in it they call Bubber.”

  “Robert Redford,” Rhodes said.

  “Robert Redford. I’ll be damned.” Allen thought for a second. “You ever know anybody called Bubber?”

  “Never,” Rhodes said.