Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  “I didn’t realize that people called the sheriff about things like this,” Ivy said, reading over one of the reports on a dog digging in a woman’s flower bed.

  “You’d be surprised at some of the calls we public servants get,” Rhodes said, turning the pages and looking for Maurice Kennedy’s name. “How’s the sandwich?”

  “Great,” Ivy said, taking another bite.

  Rhodes took a bite of his own sandwich. It wasn’t bad.

  It took them a while to find what they were looking for. The sandwiches were long gone, and to Rhodes’s regret he had eaten three of them. He’d intended to share them equally with Ivy, but she had insisted that she wanted only one.

  The report with the information he wanted was from sixty-one years previously, right at the end of the boom days. Mrs. Stuart had remembered the story quite accurately, which was no surprise to Rhodes, though she had not given him all the details, not having been an actual participant in the events.

  She had not described the fight at the dance, for example. According to the witnesses Reb Trotter had questioned, Maurice Kennedy and Louis Horn had gotten into an argument about who was going to take Peggy Rainey home. There had been some shouting and pushing inside the hall, and then the argument had moved outside and turned ugly. Horn and Kennedy had started slugging one another, but no one seemed quite sure who had gotten in the first lick, either that or no one wanted to say.

  Some of the other men had managed to break up the fight, and Kennedy and Horn had gone to their cars and left, Horn alone and Kennedy with a friend. It had been thundering and lightning throughout the fight, and the witnesses said that as the men were driving away the rain started coming down in sheets. Everyone either got into his own car and left or ran back inside the hall, and no one saw whether Horn and Kennedy went their separate ways or whether one car followed the other.

  The only thing that was certain was that Horn never went home that night, and the next day Horn’s Model A was found parked down by the river that ran through the county about five miles north of Clearview. The car appeared to have gotten stuck, and there were some signs that another car had been there, but the heavy rain had wiped out any really useful clues, like tire tracks.

  The rain had begun far to the west and swept all across the state, causing the river to flood. It was running out of its banks, and it was running more swiftly than it normally did, though it didn’t seem to Trotter to have been too wide or too swift for a sober man who was a good swimmer to drown in. No one at the dance had seen Horn drinking, and he’d seemed plenty sober during his fight with Kennedy. And Horn was well known to be a good swimmer.

  Despite the latter fact, most people seemed to think that Horn had gotten stuck, wandered off in the wrong direction, and fallen in the river, where he’d probably drowned.

  If that was the case, however, his body should have turned up somewhere down the river, or at least Sheriff Trotter thought so.

  It never did.

  It could have caught up on a log that drifted to shore and been hidden along the bank, or it could have been dragged under by roots and vines and never come up, but that didn’t seem likely. Sheriff Trotter had gotten a search party together and looked along both banks for miles without success. He’d had the river dragged, with the same lack of result.

  And of course he’d questioned a lot of people, because he had reason to suspect that there might be more to Horn’s death than a simple drowning.

  There had been the fight for one thing, along with Kennedy’s reputation as a hell raiser. Kennedy had already been in serious trouble because of another fight over a woman; in that one he had gouged out a man’s eye. Rhodes had seen that report in a volume from two years earlier.

  Trotter had not been able to prove a thing against Kennedy in the Horn case, however. No one had seen Kennedy after the dance, but he said that he had gone straight to his house after taking his friend home. There was no proof that his car had been near the river. It had been washed clean, but Kennedy said he always liked to clean his car after a big rain. Kennedy was bruised up, but he attributed that to his earlier fight at the dance. The friend he had left the dance with backed him up a hundred percent on every point.

  There were two other things that Mrs. Stuart had not mentioned, probably because she had not known about them.

  One was that one of the witnesses interviewed by Sheriff Trotter was a man named Andrew West.

  The other was that the friend who had left the dance with Kennedy was a man named Lloyd Bobbit. It appeared that there was indeed a connection between the two men, in spite of what Miss Bobbit had said.

  Somehow, Rhodes was not surprised.

  “I guess there isn’t much doubt it’s the same man.” Ivy said. She was leaning back in the chair looking at the ceiling.

  “Not much,” Rhodes said. “Lloyd Bobbit isn’t exactly a common name, and the Stuarts told me the two of them were friends in those days.”

  Ivy had a faraway look in her eyes. “It’s kind of a shame when you think about it,” she said.

  “It’s worse than a shame,” Rhodes said.

  “I don’t mean Louis Horn,” Ivy said. “It’s more than that.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “Thinking about those old men, living out there in Sunny Dale. Nothing to do but watch television and play checkers. Their lives are just about played out. But sixty years ago they were energetic and spirited, going to dances, arguing about young girls, having fights…”

  It was too close for comfort to what Rhodes had been thinking that morning.

  “How about some dessert?” he said, closing the volume of records and standing up.

  “You brought dessert, too?”

  “I didn’t bring anything, but I can get us something. What would you like?”

  “What choice do I have?”

  “Not much,” Rhodes admitted. He tried to think what might be in the machine. “Probably just some kind of cookies.”

  “Surprise me,” Ivy said.

  Rhodes went out and came back with a package of chocolate cookies with cream filling.

  “There’s something else we need to talk about,” he said as he tore open the package.

  “Yes,” Ivy said. “Getting married.”

  Rhodes ripped the cellophane more than he had intended and the cookies tumbled out onto the desk. He started picking them up.

  “I didn’t mean that,” he said. He gave her a cookie and sat down. Then he told her about the lawsuit.

  She didn’t take the news as well as Rhodes had thought she would, and she didn’t see anything funny about the million dollars.

  “This isn’t going to interfere with the wedding, is it?” she said.

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that a lot of things are happening at the same time.”

  “I wouldn’t want anything to interfere with the wedding.” Ivy had a steely look in her eye. Rhodes wondered if she suspected that anything was wrong. Not that there was.

  “Nothing’s going to interfere,” he said. “I just wanted you to know about the lawsuit. There’s going to be a lot of talk.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “No. But that won’t stop people from talking.” Rhodes looked at his watch. It was after eleven o’clock. They’d spent longer looking over the records than he’d thought. “We’d better be getting on home,” he said.

  “That’s something we need to talk about,” Ivy said. “Where home is going to be.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to get into that now, but he thought he might as well. “Wherever you want it to be,” he said.

  He wondered how it would be, living in her house, which must have contained a lot of memories of her late husband, just as his house contained memories of his wife. The memories were something they would both have to deal with.

  Ivy smiled. “I was going to say the same thing. I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it, as long as we’re together.”
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br />   “No,” Rhodes said, smiling. “It doesn’t matter a bit.”

  After he and Ivy left the courthouse, Rhodes thought it would be a good idea for him to go by the jail, check in with Hack, and see what was going on. Friday night was usually pretty lively.

  A truck had jackknifed out on the highway, someone had stolen a street sign near downtown, a woman had locked her keys in the car in the Wal-Mart parking lot, and a drunk had been picked up wandering around a residential neighborhood, but that was all. Nothing unusual, and nothing calling for a personal visit from the sheriff.

  Rhodes took Ivy home and they watched part of the late movie, something called Singing Guns, with Vaughn Monroe.

  “I thought he was a bandleader,” Ivy said. “‘Racing with the Moon.’”

  “That’s him,” Rhodes said. “He doesn’t look too bad as a cowboy, though.”

  Ivy didn’t agree. She thought he was too beefy.

  “What have you got against beefy?” Rhodes said, thinking about those three sandwiches.

  “Nothing,” Ivy said. “I just think cowboys ought to be slimmer, like Roy Rogers.”

  “Oh,” Rhodes said, vowing to get back to the stationary bike as soon as he got a chance.

  Chapter 8

  The next morning Rhodes went by the jail to see if anyone had reported finding Maurice Kennedy. No one had. He told Hack to find out if Bobbit had had a lawyer, and if so to call and ask about a will.

  Then he drove out the Obert Road to talk to Andy West, whose father had been interviewed by Sheriff Reb Trotter sixty-one years before.

  The Obert Road led, naturally enough, to the town of Obert, which hardly existed anymore. There had once been a college there, and most of the buildings still remained, sitting high atop Obert’s Hill and overlooking the valley below. The last classes there had been taught around the time of the end of the oil boom. Some hotshot regional publisher and rare-book dealer from Houston had bought the buildings and grounds from whoever had owned them last and was beginning to restore them. He had the idea of making some kind of museum and library out of them.

  Rhodes could not see the college buildings from Andy West’s filling station. What was left of the town of Obert was around a sweeping curve and up the hill.

  Filling station didn’t really describe West’s place of business. It was one of those establishments that tried to capitalize on fake and grating rusticity that the owner laid on by the truckload. Starting about a mile down the road there were signs proclaiming that travelers were approaching THE KOUNTRY STOAR where there were BARGINS GALORE! Not to mention such items as ICE CREEM, ICE KOLD DRINKS, GARDIN SUPPLYS, and FRESH VEJTIBLES.

  Rhodes decided not to hold West entirely responsible for the signs, however. The paint was old and peeling, and they might very well have been put there by West’s father.

  The store itself was a rambling and ramshackle affair covered with peeling white paint. Rusted screens leaned out of windows, and the roof needed new shingles. There was a parking area covered with pea gravel and a covered walkway had been built out over the drive so that no one would have to stand in the rain to get gas from the three pumps that stood in front of the store. The pumps were fairly new, certainly the newest things there. Rhodes didn’t know whether that was because West wanted the store to look authentically old and rustic or whether because about the only business he did was selling gas.

  Rhodes parked the car and got out. There were no other cars there, which wasn’t much of a surprise. The Obert Road was not exactly a main highway.

  He crunched across the gravel to the front door. There were two rusted metal lawn chairs sitting beside the entrance, but there was no one in them. It was too cold to be sitting outside.

  There was a cowbell tied to the doorknob with a leather thong. It jangled when Rhodes pushed open the door, and it jangled again when the door swung shut behind him.

  The inside of the store was dimly lit with a few fluorescent bulbs hanging high up near the ceiling. There wasn’t much to see. The wooden shelves were sparsely lined with dusty canned goods, cereal cartons, and jelly jars. Rhodes didn’t see any sign of “gardin supplys.”

  He didn’t see any sign of the proprietor, either, so he kept on walking to the back of the store, where there was a white refrigerated meat cooler with a glass front. There were only a few cuts of meat visible inside, some rump roasts and T-bones, along with a large piece of cheddar cheese. Apparently West’s business was not prospering.

  There was a man bent over behind the cooler, putting one-gallon plastic milk containers inside. When he finished, he stood up and looked at Rhodes.

  “Can I help you, Sheriff?” he said, noting the badge and pistol on Rhodes’s belt.

  He was short and burly, with wide shoulders and a solid midsection that caused a bulge in the middle of the full-length white apron he was wearing. His short black hair was cut in a bristly buzz, and he had thick black eyebrows that grew straight across his forehead with no gap.

  “I’d like to talk to you for a minute,” Rhodes said. “if you’re Andy West, that is.”

  “That’s me.” West dried his hands on his apron. “What about?”

  “About your father. Is he in Sunny Dale?”

  “That’s right. He had a stroke a while back. Still partially paralyzed. He hasn’t done anything wrong, has he?”

  “I don’t think so,” Rhodes said. “But there was a man killed there yesterday.”

  “I heard about that,” West said. “Mr. Bobbit.”

  “When did you hear that?”

  “Brenda called me. Brenda Bobbit. His daughter.”

  Rhodes was interested. Why would Miss Bobbit be calling Andy West? He asked West, and the answer was a surprise.

  “We’ve been going out a little,” West said. “We met one time when I was with my daddy there at the nursing home, and we got to talking. We both had our parents in there, and one thing kind of led to another.”

  “Your father knew another man in Sunny Dale,” Rhodes said. “Maurice Kennedy.”

  “I think I’ve met Mr. Kennedy,” West said. “He’s pretty spry for a man his age.”

  “He must be,” Rhodes said. “He seems to have disappeared.”

  West had heard about that, too. “Brenda thinks he killed her daddy,” he said. “Stole his teeth, and then killed him. He was a rough old cob, back in his younger days.”

  “Did your father ever talk about those days?”

  “Ever’ now and then. He said Mr. Kennedy killed a man.”

  “Nobody ever proved that,” Rhodes said. “Did your father say how he knew?”

  “Nope. He told it for the truth, though. They got in a fight at a dance, and Kennedy killed him.”

  “Were you there yesterday, at Sunny Dale?”

  “I went by to see my daddy for a while. Didn’t stay long. Didn’t hear about Mr. Bobbit, though.”

  Rhodes talked to West for a while longer, then left. The man didn’t have much to say, but that didn’t bother Rhodes. His way of solving crimes was based on a very unscientific method that had nothing to do with computers. He talked to people, formed opinions, trusted his judgments, and tried to figure out who was lying to him. Sooner or later it usually worked out; he just had to keep talking, whether the people he talked to had anything to say or not. He had a lot more people to talk to about Mr. Bobbit, a lot more questions to ask.

  His next stop was Sunny Dale. He wanted to get addresses for Lyle Everett and Dave Foley, but he also wanted to talk to the elder Mr. West and to the Stuarts.

  From the latter two he learned that Maurice Kennedy was not the most popular resident of Sunny Dale.

  “Didn’t belong here, if you ask me,” Mr. Stuart said. “He never did want to talk to you or have anything to do with anybody. I think he just lived here because it was easy for him and he could cause trouble for the rest of us.”

  Mr. Patterson confirmed Mr. Stuart’s suspicions. “He didn’t really belong here,” he said. “He sol
d his home and moved in here because he got tired of keeping house for himself. And because he was lonely, I think. Most of the people his age were either in bad health or in a home, so he didn’t have any friends. Not that he had many friends here, either.”

  Rhodes asked about the friends.

  “He talked to Mr. Bobbit some, I think. But mostly people avoided him. He was always complaining about one thing or another. Either the food was too bland, or it was too hot in his room, or there was dust under his bed, or someone had thrown away his newspaper before he finished reading it.”

  “He was a troublemaker, then?” They were in Patterson’s office, and Rhodes was sitting in the chair without a cushion. It wasn’t any more comfortable than it had been the day before.

  “Not a troublemaker, exactly. Dealing with old people, you have to expect a few complaints. They like for things to go their way, and you can’t really blame them.”

  “But he complained more than the others?”

  “Yes. But it really wasn’t so bad. I can’t understand why he would run off. He wasn’t that unhappy here.”

  “What if he killed Mr. Bobbit?”

  “That would explain it, I guess,” Mr. Patterson said. “What about Mr. West?” Rhodes asked. “Was he one of Kennedy’s friends?”

  Mr. Patterson steepled his fingers and looked pious. “Mr. West doesn’t really have many friends, poor man. He had a stroke, you know.”

  Rhodes wondered what difference that made.

  “Conversation with him isn’t always pleasant,” Patterson explained. “It’s not what he says,” he added. “His mind is still very sharp. But, well, his speech is a little slurred and he looks a little…well, like….” Patterson let the words trail off, unable to say just how Mr. West looked.

  “Like he had a stroke?” Rhodes said.

  “That’s it. That’s it exactly. Like he had a stroke. Probably some of our guests here don’t like to be reminded so acutely that it could happen to them, too.”