A Mammoth Murder

by Bill Crider

  “That’s why they pay him the big bucks,” Rhodes said.

  17

  THE STEAKS WERE EXCELLENT, OR AT LEAST RHODES’S WAS. HE carefully trimmed off the excess fat, but the meat was marbled with plenty more.

  All the time they were eating, the noise from the private room rose in volume. It had been hardly noticeable at first because of the other noise in the restaurant, but it finally became something of a distraction. Sam Blevins went into the room several times to quiet things down, and the other diners occasionally gave it a curious glance when there was a particularly loud burst of laughter or yelling. The two waitresses who were working the tables for the Bigfoot hunters came out looking harried.

  “The handsome crime-busting sheriff is going to have a word with those people shortly,” Ivy told Claudia and Jan.

  “About the noise?” Jan asked.

  “No. He’s going to tell them that this town isn’t big enough for them and him.”

  Jan’s eyes lit up. “Is there going to be trouble?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “And it’s not quite as dramatic as Ivy makes it out to be. I’m just going to tell them that they need to leave because there’s no Bigfoot in the woods, that they’d be trespassing if they went to look for the Bigfoot that’s not there, and that they’re going to cause themselves more trouble than they need to if they don’t leave town.”

  “Just like in the movies,” Claudia said. “High Noon. Or maybe Shane.”

  “Or Dirty Harry,” Jan said. “‘Do you feel lucky, punk?’”

  It was possibly the worst Clint Eastwood impression that Rhodes had ever heard, but then Claudia said, “Come on, punk. Make my day,” and that was even worse.

  “It’s not anything like that,” Rhodes said. “Mainly because there won’t be any shooting and there won’t be any fighting.”

  “Speaking of no shooting,” Jan said, “I don’t ever see you with a gun or in uniform.”

  “The sheriff is the only member of the department who doesn’t have to wear the uniform when he’s on duty,” Rhodes said, “and I’m on duty twenty-four hours a day. I do carry a sidearm, though. You just can’t see it.”

  “Is it under your shirt?”

  “It’s in an ankle holster,” Rhodes said.

  He’d just started wearing the ankle holster a week or so earlier, and he wasn’t fond of it. It did, however, keep his .38 out of sight, and it was secure. He’d read about people in other departments who’d had trouble with various sidearms and holsters, including a couple of cops in Houston, one of whom had accidentally released the safety slide of his automatic when he slid into the seat of his car. The pistol fired a bullet into his foot. Rhodes didn’t like automatics in the first place, and he also didn’t like having his weapon out for all to see, so he’d decided to give the ankle holster a try. The disadvantages were that it put the gun out of easy reach and it was uncomfortable. Rhodes told himself that he’d get used to it sooner or later.

  “If you have to use the pistol, I hope you can grab it before someone shoots you,” Ivy said.

  “No one’s going to shoot me, and I’m not going to have to use the pistol.”

  Rhodes finished his steak and stood up.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me,” he said, “I’ll go have a talk with those Bigfoot fellas.”

  “Be careful,” Ivy said.

  Claudia and Jan didn’t say anything. Rhodes thought that they were rather hoping he wouldn’t be careful. They might be hoping for some untoward action to spice up their article.

  Rhodes was determined not to give it to them. He’d go in, make his statement, and leave. Simple as that.

  Except that it didn’t quite work out the way he’d planned.

  Sam Blevins met him as he reached the big double door that went into the private room.

  “They’re a little bit rowdy in there, Sheriff,” Sam said. His voice had a nervous edge. “I just want you to know that I don’t serve any beer or liquor here. If they have it, they didn’t get it from me.”

  It was illegal to sell hard liquor in Blacklin County, but restaurants could serve beer if they had a license. Blevins liked to think he ran a family establishment, and he had never applied for a license, as far as Rhodes knew.

  “Are you trying to tell me something?” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah.” Blevins avoided Rhodes’s eyes. “I think some of those fellas are drinking liquor, but every time I go in, they hide it. One of the waitresses said she saw a flask or two. Are you gonna make any arrests?”

  “I just want to talk to them for a minute. I’m not working for the Alcoholic Beverages Commission tonight.”

  Blevins relaxed a little. “I just wanted you to know that if they have it, they didn’t get it here. If they brought it with them, I can’t be responsible.”

  Rhodes said that he understood and went into the room. The Bigfoot hunters were laughing and talking and shouting to one another up and down the long tables that seated six on a side. Rhodes saw glasses of iced tea, water, and sodas, but he didn’t see any flasks, and he didn’t see anyone spiking the soft drinks. The nearly empty plates in front of the men were smeared red with ketchup, barbecue sauce, and steak sauce.

  Rhodes’s entrance didn’t disturb anyone for a while. The talking and laughing went right on as it had before he’d come in. Then Bud Turley, who was sitting not too far from the door, noticed him and stopped talking to the man next to him.

  The man turned to look at whatever had caught Bud’s attention, and Rhodes saw that he was Jeff, and sitting next to him was Charlie, who also turned toward Rhodes when Jeff jabbed him with an elbow.

  They were still dressed as they’d been earlier that day, even including the caps. For that matter, practically everyone in the room except Rhodes had on a cap. Rhodes could remember when men removed their head coverings when going into a building, and they certainly would never have worn a cap or hat inside a restaurant. Now, hardly anyone took off his cap, no matter where he was. Rhodes didn’t know for sure, but he suspected that some men must wear their caps to church. Maybe they even slept in them.

  Charlie nudged the man next to him, and in a short time everyone had been nudged, poked, or kicked under the table. The room became very quiet, and Rhodes could hear the piped-in music clearly for the first time that night. It was some current country song, he supposed, since he didn’t recognize either the tune or the singer. He’d stopped being interested in country music when it got taken over by the hat acts, and he hadn’t gone back to it.

  Bud Turley was the first one to speak. He said, “Hey, Sheriff. Glad you could join us this evening.”

  He didn’t look glad to Rhodes. He looked as if a skunk had just come into the room and filled the air with his spray. Turley stood up, looking a little unsteady on his feet, and waved an arm in Rhodes’s direction.

  “Boys,” he said, “I want you all to meet Dan Rhodes, high sheriff of Blacklin County. I expect he’s come to welcome you to Clearview and then to tell you to get your sorry butts out of town.”

  People started talking in low voices. Rhodes couldn’t make out what they were saying. He had a feeling that it was about him and that it wasn’t complimentary, but maybe he was being paranoid.

  Bud sat down, and most of the men in the room looked at Rhodes as if they wouldn’t mind if he disappeared or if his head exploded, with a slight preference for the latter. So he hadn’t been paranoid, after all.

  “I’d like to welcome you all to Clearview,” he said.

  Jeff and Charlie looked at each other and laughed. After a slight pause, the others joined in, except for Bud, who didn’t seem amused.

  “But I’m not here to tell you to get your sorry butts out of town,” Rhodes continued.

  The laughter died down. Rhodes thought he had them a little off balance.

  “What I do have to tell you is that you’ll have to stay out of Big Woods. Besides the fact that it’s the scene of an ongoing investigation into a murder, it’s owned
by a man here in town. His name is Gerald Bolton. He’s told me that he doesn’t welcome trespassers, and he’ll be obliged to press charges if I catch any of you out there.”

  Bud Turley muttered something under his breath.

  Rhodes pointed in Bud’s direction. “Bud is likely to say that he’s been hunting arrowheads on that land since he was a kid, and that’s a fact. Mr. Bolton didn’t mind that. But he doesn’t want a lot of people trampling over his property, and I don’t want anybody messing with my crime scene.”

  Rhodes was exaggerating Gerald Bolton’s wishes a little bit, but he didn’t think anybody in the room was going to check up on him.

  “So the deal is this,” Rhodes said. “You’re welcome to stay here in Clearview, have your meetings, enjoy the hospitality of our fine business and eating establishments like the Round-Up here, and generally have yourselves a good time. You can even look for Bigfoot in our parks or any public land. But you’re not welcome to go messing around in Big Woods.”

  Bud Turley muttered again, and this time Rhodes didn’t let it go. He knew he should have, but something in him just wouldn’t allow it.

  “You have something to say, Bud?”

  Bud got up again, not a bit steadier than he’d been the first time he did it. He stepped over to stand near Rhodes, who got a whiff of liquor.

  “Maybe you’d better not say anything, after all,” Rhodes told him.

  Rhodes left him and went to the table. He picked up the glass that Turley had been drinking from. It was about half full of what looked like a soft drink. Rhodes sniffed it. It might have started out as a soft drink, but something definitely had been added to it.

  Rhodes put the glass back on the table as Jeff and Charlie poked each other and snickered like a pair of high school Harrys. They reminded Rhodes of an aging Beavis and Butthead. In fact, if Beavis and Butthead were still around, they’d probably be hunting for Bigfoot on weekends. It was for sure they wouldn’t be having dates.

  “Bud,” Rhodes said, “it might be time for you to go home.”

  Bud gave him a defiant stare. “Not going anywhere. You let that professor stay out there on Bolton’s land. No reason we can’t go there.”

  “Dr. Vance isn’t in the woods,” Rhodes said. “You can visit him at his dig if you want to, but that’s all.”

  Jeff spoke up. “How about us? Me and Charlie, I mean. All right if we visit that professor?”

  “No, it’s not all right,” Rhodes said. “We can’t have too many people trampling around the dig. It would mess everything up.”

  He wasn’t sure just what would be messed up, since people had been trampling up and down that creek for a lot longer than anybody could remember, but Bud Turley seemed to have some ideas on the subject.

  Bud got a panicked look on his face at the mention of the dig. He said, “The Sheriff is right. That dig’s important. Don’t want anybody out there causing problems.”

  Rhodes hadn’t expected Bud to agree with him, but it made sense that he would. There was no Bigfoot in the woods, and nobody was likely to find a trace of one, but the mammoth was real, and the person who’d found it was Bud Turley. He wouldn’t want anybody to mess up his claim to fame.

  “Bud,” Rhodes said, “I’ve been visiting with two women who say they’re going to write a magazine article about that mammoth. They’ll be wanting to interview you and take a picture or two to put in the magazine.”

  “See?” Bud said to Jeff and Charlie. “You can’t go making trouble. This’s too important for that.”

  “Who’s more important?” Jeff said, standing up. “You? That mammoth?” He paused and looked around the room. “Or Bigfoot?”

  The men at the tables stared at Bud and started muttering to each other. Rhodes couldn’t make out all the words, but it was clear that some of them thought Bud was a glory hog who’d gladly sacrifice their chance to find Bigfoot just to get his picture in some magazine.

  Bud struggled to say something to refute them, but the words didn’t come out, and nobody was listening to him anyway. So instead of saying what he wanted to say, he pushed Rhodes aside and shoved Jeff hard in the chest with both hands.

  Jeff fell backward, overturning his chair and kicking the bottom of the table as he flipped over. Plates, glasses, and silverware rose in the air and clattered back down onto the wooden table. One plate missed the table and shattered on the floor. Men pushed out of the way as water, tea, and spiked soft drinks flowed across the tabletops and dripped into their chairs and onto the floor.

  Charlie didn’t even look at his fallen friend to see if he was hurt. He jumped for Bud, but Bud was too quick for him. He grabbed hold of Charlie’s neck with both hands. Charlie’s eyes bugged out, and his face reddened. He didn’t try to break Bud’s grip, however. He clapped his hands around Bud’s neck and started to choke him in return.

  The two men tumbled to the floor, locked together, their faces contorted as they struggled to breathe.

  Rhodes moved a chair out of the way to get to them, but as he bent to separate them, someone yelled, “Let them fight it out!”

  Rhodes looked up to see who’d yelled, and a cold, wet napkin slapped him in the face, covering his eyes. As he tried to peel it off, two or three men jumped him, and he went down.

  This was just what Claudia and Jan had wanted, Rhodes thought as he fell. He hoped they’d brought their camera.

  18

  THE NAPKIN SLIPPED AWAY FROM RHODES’S FACE, BUT HE couldn’t see much, just feet and chair legs, mainly because the left side of his face was pressed against the bare wooden floor of the restaurant. He didn’t need to see much, however, to know that there was someone on his back and that a fight was going on around him.

  Rhodes moved his head slightly, rubbing his cheek on the floor as he did, and saw that the lower part of a boot wasn’t too far away. His hands were free, and he managed to twist around and get a grip on the boot with one of them and then to give the boot a quick jerk to the side.

  Someone cried out and fell, and at the same time Rhodes felt the weight begin to lift off his back. He pushed upward to help his burden along and found himself on his knees.

  A chair was in front of him, and behind the chair Bud and Charlie thrashed on the floor, their hands still around each other’s necks. They flipped from side to side, their boots kicking against the floor. Amazingly enough, their caps hadn’t fallen off.

  Jeff was crouched beside the men, his hands on Charlie’s shoulders as he tried to pull him away from Bud. He wasn’t having much luck.

  Rhodes took hold of the chair and shoved himself to his feet. The other Bigfoot hunters had gathered on the other side of the table, and they were leaning over it to shout encouragement to whoever it was they might have been cheering for. Rhodes’s judgment was that about three-quarters of them were rooting for Charlie.

  A couple of them were banging on the tabletop with the handles of their silverware and making serious dents in the wood. Sam Blevins wasn’t going to like that.

  The men who had jumped Rhodes had now mingled with the crowd, and he had no idea which ones were the guilty parties. The man he had tripped was sitting up, rubbing the back of his head and staring around with a dazed expression. Rhodes figured he’d hit the back of his head when he fell.

  Rhodes put a foot on the chair in front of him and shoved it out of his way. It scooted past Jeff and the two men on the floor and banged into another table. Nobody paid it any attention.

  “Move out of the way, Jeff,” Rhodes said.

  Jeff didn’t look up. He shook his head and kept pulling at Charlie, who wasn’t twisting around much now. Bud was hardly moving at all. Each man still had his opponent locked in a chokehold. Their eyes were distended, their tongues protruding, their faces turning black.

  If they were trying to strangle each other, and it seemed certain that they were, they might very well succeed if someone didn’t do something. Jeff was trying, but he wasn’t having any success, and nobody else
seemed interested in helping. Rhodes thought that it wouldn’t be long before people started betting on which man would turn completely purple first.

  Rhodes wasn’t overcome with good feelings for either Bud or Charlie, but he was the sheriff, so he’d have to be the one to separate them.

  He moved over to Jeff and tapped him on the shoulder.

  “Move out of the way,” he said again, but this time he used what they called the command voice in cop school.

  Jeff moved. He let go of Charlie’s shoulders and scooted back across the floor. Rhodes took hold of Bud’s fingers and tried to prize them away from Charlie’s neck. It was like trying to move the bars of one of the cells in the Blacklin County jail.

  “Burn him with a cigarette,” someone up at the table suggested.

  “Kick him in the balls,” someone else suggested.

  “He can’t do that, dumb-ass. Can’t get to ’em.”

  Rhodes didn’t pay any attention to the comments. He flipped off Charlie’s cap, hoping he wasn’t as bald on top as Bud was.

  He wasn’t. At least not quite. He had his black hair arranged in a combover that the cap had held in place.

  Rhodes got hold of a good handful of hair, which is about all there was, and jerked as hard as he could. Even a man being choked to death, even if he was intent on choking someone else to death, could feel his hair being jerked out by the roots. Sometimes he’d even respond.

  Rhodes was gratified, after the second hard pull, to discover that Charlie was responsive. He let go of Bud’s neck and started kicking harder than he had for a while. He might even have yelled if Bud hadn’t been throttling him.

  Bud was so surprised by Charlie’s releasing him, and so intent on sucking in air, that he relaxed his grip on Charlie’s neck, and Rhodes quickly let go of Charlie’s hair and pulled Bud’s fingers apart. Charlie rolled away, gasping, and Rhodes knelt between the two men before they could get to each other again, not that they seemed to feel like it. They both lay on their backs and sucked in air.