by Bill Crider
“And when she disappeared, you thought she might have come down here.”
“I thought she might’ve been meeting him down here.”
“Did she announce that she was leaving, or did she just sneak out in the middle of the night?”
Clayton fished out another Marlboro and lit it. “It wasn’t exactly like that,” he said.
“How was it, then?”
“We went to this party on New Year’s Eve,” Clayton said. “I had a little too much to drink. I admit that. I usually don’t drink much at all, and when I do, I have a tendency to say too much. I get a little aggressive and say things I shouldn’t say.”
“What did you say that time?”
“She started it. She said something about me drinking too much and paying too much attention to some of the other woman at the party. So I said a few things about her and that Washburn. We got pretty loud about it. She slapped me and walked out. That was the last time I ever saw her.” He looked down at the ashtray as if trying to make something of the pattern in the ashes.
“I guess some of the people at the party saw what happened,” Rhodes said. “I’ll need the names of the people who were there.”
“Sure,” Clayton said. “I understand. I can give you the names of the hosts.” He wrote the names and address on the same paper with the name of his wife’s dentist.
“Can you think of any reason Washburn might have for killing your wife?” Rhodes said.
“I’ve been thinking about it all the way down here,” Clayton said. “I can just come up with one thing. I think that after the party, Sula drove down here in her own car and probably called Washburn. Then he came up from Houston and they got together at my place. I don’t even want to think about what they might have done there.” He shook his head. “But after that, I like to think she came to her senses. And that’s when he killed her.”
“For coming to her senses?” Rhodes didn’t quite follow the logic.
“It wasn’t that. Maybe she told him she’d made a mistake, that she wanted to come back to me. He probably couldn’t take that. So he killed her.”
Rhodes had heard worse motives, but then he had heard much better ones. He would reserve judgment until he had talked to Washburn, and maybe longer.
“You said something about her coming down here in her car,” Rhodes said. “There was no car out there when we checked the place.”
“That means they stole the car, too,” Clayton said. “It must’ve been there.”
Rhodes asked Clayton to provide him with a list of the property that was missing, including the car, which turned out to be a red 1986 Ford Escort.
“That’s all I can think of,” Clayton said when he finished writing the list. “There’s probably more, but I can’t remember it right now.”
“You’ll need a complete listing for the insurance company, too,” Rhodes told him. “I’m not going to ask you not to leave the county, but you’ll have to keep yourself available through the Dallas police. I might need to talk to you again.”
“I will,” Clayton said. “Look. Are you sure that’s my wife you found in the house?”
“I don’t know who else it could be,” Rhodes said. “We’ll know for sure when we get the dental records and make a comparison. But I wouldn’t hold out too much hope if I were you.”
Clayton wiped a hand across his face and looked down at the floor.
“I’m sorry,” Rhodes said. “I wish I could tell you differently, but it’s just not likely that the body is anyone else.”
“I understand,” Clayton said. “I guess I was just hoping . . .”
Rhodes didn’t know what else to say. There was no need to give the man false assurances. Who else could the body be?
Clayton shook his head. “This seems so senseless. Burglars, or that Washburn fella. How could it happen?”
“There’s never a reason that makes sense to somebody on the outside,” Rhodes said.
Clayton shook his head again. “I’ll be where you can reach me. And I’ll get in touch about the funeral arrangements if it turns out that Sula really is the one they . . . have.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “I’ll help out with that if I can.”
“Thanks, Sheriff,” Clayton said. He put out his hand, and Rhodes shook it. “I appreciate that.”
Then he went outside into the cold.
Chapter 6
“Well,” Rhodes said to Hack. “What did you think?”
“About what?” Hack said. “I was busy with this here radio.”
“I didn’t notice any calls coming in.”
“Maybe that’s because there weren’t any . . . Well, the fella seems all right to me. A little upset about his wife, but not too upset, if you know what I mean.”
Rhodes knew what he meant. He had seen Lawrence Olivier’s movie version of Hamlet one night on the PBS channel, and he remembered the line about protesting too much.
“You reckon there’s any chance that ain’t his wife?” Hack said.
“If you were a betting man—” Rhodes began.
“Which I ain’t,” Hack said.
“—it would be a good idea to get your money down on Sula Clayton being the one we found wrapped up in the tape,” Rhodes finished.
“That’s too bad,” Hack said. “Course it’d be too bad if it was anybody at all killed like that, not just that fella’s wife. You think it happened like he said it did?”
“Who knows?” Rhodes said. “It might have. It might not. I’ll find out.” He hoped he sounded confident, although he didn’t feel especially cocky about his chances.
The telephone rang.
Hack grabbed it. “Sheriff’s office.”
He listened for quite a while.
“Yes’m,” he said. Then he said it again. “Yes’m. Sheriff’ll be right out.”
He hung up. “That was Miz McGee,” he said. “She said to tell you she saw that moving van again. It went down the road right in front of her house. I told her—”
“I heard you,” Rhodes said. “I’m on my way.”
“You want some backup?” Hack said. “You know, you’ve gotten yourself in some fixes before by goin’ out without any.”
“I’ll try to stay out of trouble,” Rhodes said as he started through the door. Then he turned back. “One thing. While I’m gone, have Ruth call that Officer Ferguson and see if Clayton happens to have a .38 registered to him.”
“It’s her day off,” Hack said.
“Then you call,” Rhodes said.
“Talkin’ to those big-city cops ain’t in my job description,” Hack said.
“A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do,” Rhodes said as he went out.
The wind rocked Rhodes’s car as he drove toward the lake. He hoped he could get there in time to catch up with the van. If he were lucky, he might even catch them in the act. He wanted to stop by Mrs. McGee’s first, to ask her which way the van was headed, and he was curious to know how she had spotted it. Surely she hadn’t been sitting out on her porch on a day like this one.
He turned down her drive in a swirl of leaves. The trees had been nearly bare before, and every leaf that had remained was now stripped off and blowing around the ground and into the air.
Mrs. McGee was not on her porch. Rhodes got out, the wind slamming his door for him, and climbed the steps to knock on the door.
She opened it and let him in quickly. “I declare,” she said. “It’s not a fit day to be out.”
Rhodes agreed with her, though he was almost as comfortable in the biting wind as in the oppressive heat of her house. If anything, she had turned up the Dearborn heater even higher than the day before.
“I’m glad you got here so soon,” Mrs. McGee said. She was still wrapped up in several sweaters, a scarf, and her knit cap. “I don’t want those thieves to get away.”
“They may already have gotten away,” Rhodes said. “Which way were they traveling?”
“Let’s see. I was st
anding at that window.” Mrs. McGee indicated a window near the door. “I think my left would be the north and my right would be the south, so that means they were going toward the south. I think that would be right.”
“Yes,” Rhodes said. “That would be right. You’re sure it was the same van?”
The old woman looked at him. “Of course I am. You think I can’t tell one moving van from another one?”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Rhodes said apologetically.
“That’s all right,” she said. “You just get after him.”
Rhodes assured her that he would.
He went to his car, got in, and headed south after he left the drive. He didn’t know much about the area, but he thought there were several houses in that direction that hadn’t yet been broken into. He should have checked the patrol schedule before he left the jail to see if any of the deputies was out in the area, but it was right in the middle of the day and he doubted that anyone would be around. They really hadn’t thought the burglaries were occurring in broad daylight.
Rhodes followed the narrow, winding gravel road, looking through the trees at the sparsely scattered houses as he drove. The road gradually moved away from the lakefront, and as the property became less desirable the houses were even more scattered.
Passing one house, he thought he caught a glimpse of green through the black tree branches. He knew it wasn’t leaves, so he braked the car to a stop and backed up. He wasn’t certain, but it appeared to him that there was indeed such a patch of color behind the corner of the house.
This house had the look of one long abandoned. The mailbox had fallen from the top of its post and was lying in a stand of tall dead weeds. Its lip hung open, and the whole box looked rusted. Rhodes couldn’t see the name on the side because of the weeds. The house itself, what he could make of it, was in bad need of a fresh coat of paint. The roof could have used a few shingles here and there, and one of the windows looked broken. Rhodes wondered just how long it had been since the owner checked on it.
He turned down the drive and when he came to the end pulled the car up crossways to block it. There was a little room on either side, but the trees there should be enough to stop anyone from trying to get by. He got out and drew his 38. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use it, but you could never tell. Some burglars could get pretty feisty when threatened with the law.
He walked toward the front door of the house, listening for any noise from inside. He didn’t hear a thing. He’d made too much noise of his own while driving up, and whoever was in there would have already had plenty of time to get quiet, hide, or prepare to escape.
The front door was not ajar, but there was a rusty screen door hanging from the bottom hinge and drooping across the doorway. Rhodes wasn’t going to attempt an entrance by the front door, however. He walked down to the corner of the house and slipped around it suddenly, his pistol at the ready.
There was no one in sight, and no sign of the truck. If it was really behind the house, the vehicle was now completely hidden from sight. Maybe he had only imagined the patch of green.
Well, even if he had, he still had to check it out, though why anyone would want to burglarize this particular house he had no idea. There was certainly nothing to recommend it.
Or, he thought, maybe that was exactly what did recommend it—the very fact that it looked so long uninhabited. If the thieves had noticed the increased patrols, they would have been doubly careful about choosing their targets.
Rhodes had worked his way to the back corner of the house. He stepped around, his gun leveled. Then, something clubbed him in the wrist. The pistol went flying. Rhodes’s first thought was that he should have listened to Hack and brought some backup. He was forever getting himself into difficult situations, and there was no excuse for it. If any of his deputies had done the same thing, he would have spoken to them pretty harshly, but he always thought he could handle things.
He looked to his left and saw someone moving behind a dark window. Whoever it was had been waiting for him and had probably struck him with something like a baseball bat. He was lucky they had hit his wrist and not his head.
The pain in his wrist made itself felt just about then, or maybe everything was happening at the same time and he was just picking up the events separately. He doubled over and was almost sick to his stomach as he wondered vaguely if his wrist was broken.
He looked up when he heard the doors of a truck slam. It was the big green truck, all right. The engine turned over and caught. Then the truck was angling its front bumper in his direction.
He didn’t have time to pick up the pistol. He started back the way he had come, moving considerably faster now.
The truck rumbled closer, right behind him.
He turned at the corner of the house and headed for his car. There was a shotgun in the car, if he could get there in time. He didn’t think he could make it, though, and swore that if he got out of this one he would put in some serious time on the Huffy Sunstreak. He held his injured arm across his stomach as he ran.
The truck plowed over a dead tree limb, and Rhodes heard the crack of it snapping in two. He didn’t look back. The truck sounded as if it must be right behind him with the driver intent on running him down.
Rhodes made it to the car, but it was too late to get the shotgun. It was too late to do anything except find a place to hide. Unfortunately, there was no such place.
He dived for the car and landed across the hood, suppressing a groan as his wrist banged into the metal. He scrabbled for a hold with his good hand and tried to turn around. He knew he was safe now. He was sure the driver couldn’t possibly get past the car.
He was wrong—or he was right. It all depended on how you looked at it.
There wasn’t room for the driver to get by the car, that much was obvious even to the driver, but it didn’t seem to bother him any. He kept coming. When Rhodes saw what was about to happen, he groaned again, not from pain but from anticipation.
There was not room for the truck between the car and the trees, so the driver was going to make room in the only way he could—by moving the car. The hard way.
There was nothing at all that Rhodes could do. He didn’t even have time to get a good grip on the windshield wipers.
The truck hit the front end of the county car with considerable force, throwing it aside and sending Rhodes flying through the air. He remembered thinking that the county commissioners were really going to be upset with him, and then he hit a tree.
Rhodes wasn’t out long, but by the time he came to, the truck was long gone. He knew that he had muffed a chance to arrest the burglars, and he felt both foolish and guilty. His wrist hurt, his head hurt, and he didn’t know where the .38 was.
He sat up and tried to assess the damage to his body. He couldn’t even think about the damage to the car yet.
Luckily, he seemed relatively intact. There was going to be a knot on his head, his pants were torn, and there was a bad scratch across the back of his left hand. Add the right wrist to that inventory and you had the lot. It could have been worse.
It was time to find out if he could stand . . . . He could, so he walked over to the car.
The front fender was mashed into the tire, and he was going to have to pull it away. Otherwise, he would have to radio for help, and he really didn’t want to do that. The bumper was mangled, the headlight broken, and the hood was sprung. He hoped the engine would start. There didn’t seem to be any leakage from the radiator, so maybe the damage wasn’t too extensive.
Before attempting anything to the car, he had to find his pistol. He walked slowly to the back of the house. The .38 was lying about where he had thought it would be, and it didn’t look as if it had been run over by the truck. At least there was that to be thankful for.
He picked up the pistol and holstered it, thinking that he might as well have a look inside the house while he was back there. He was sure the back door would be open.
It was,
and he went inside.
He must have caught the burglars right at the beginning of their work. Most of the furnishings seemed to be in place, not that they really merited stealing.
The kitchen looked as if it had been furnished with garage-sale items. There was a Formica-topped table, surrounded by four tubular metal chairs with red vinyl seats and bottoms. The vinyl was torn in several spots and gray stuffing peeked out. He guessed that the refrigerator was about a 1947 Crosley.
Rhodes looked in a couple of the other rooms, and the furniture there wasn’t much better. This place must have been a real disappointment to the thieves. Rhodes secured the back door and went outside.
His wrist hurt, and he was beginning to feel some aches and pains throughout other parts of his body from the fall. He still hoped to be able to pull the fender away from the tire, however.
He got a good grip on the fender with his left hand and one that was not quite so sturdy with his right. He could feel the gritty dirt and grease that had accumulated underneath the car and was sorry that he didn’t have anything to clean up with afterward. A lot of cops carried rubber gloves and antiseptics in their cars now, thanks to the almost universal fear of AIDS, but Rhodes hadn’t yet begun to do so.
He gave a quick, hard pull, and the fender came away from the tire with a groan and a pop. He was pretty sure that if the car had been as sturdy as the ones he remembered from his childhood, he would never have been able to do the job. His grandfather had driven a 1941 Chevy with fenders that looked like they had been made from cast iron.
He pulled again and the fender moved a little more into line. It still looked terrible, and the bumper stuck out at a weird angle, but he thought he could drive back to town.
He wiped his hands on his pants, then regretted it. He was the one who would have to pay for cleaning and mending them, and he had left a long grease mark down one leg. He sighed. The only good thing that had resulted from the whole experience was that the exercise had made him forget just how cold it was.
He got in the car and started back to town, turning on the radio and hoping that it would either distract him or help him think. He picked up a country station playing a song by Randy Travis, one of the new country stars that gave Rhodes hope for the music. Travis actually sounded like a country singer and not someone trying out for a lounge job in Las Vegas. Along with Dwight Yoakum, George Straight, and a few others, Travis was making country worth listening to again. It was about time, in Rhodes’s opinion. He had been listening to too many violins for too many years.