Death on the Move

by Bill Crider

  They took the prisoners in through the back door. Hamilton had agreed to allow Rhodes to question them after he got his own paperwork done, so Rhodes sat in the office while the couple was processed.

  Their names were Joe and Anna Stephens, or at least that was what they had on their drivers’ licenses. Rhodes wasn’t too sure how accurate that might be. He thought it might be just another reflection of the group’s affection for the J.S. Initials. He wondered why it was that little things like that were so hard for people to change.

  His hunch had been that somehow Burl and Lonnie were tied in with the Holcombs and maybe, by extension, with the burglars. In fact, he was now convinced that all six people were somehow connected in a scheme that involved theft, burglary, and probably a little dope deal on the side.

  There was coffee in the office. Both Cross and Buchanan offered Rhodes cigarettes, but since he neither drank coffee nor smoked there was nothing for him to do but sit and wait. After almost an hour, Hamilton came in.

  “You can talk to them now,” the chief said. “We ran their names through the computer for both TCIC and NCIC, but they were clean. I hope you can get more out of ‘em than we did.”

  Rhodes knew that TCIC and NCIC were the Texas and national computer networks. Though he didn’t have a computer, Hack kept him up with the technology. He wasn’t surprised that the names weren’t in the networks. Considering the number of names this bunch had, he would have been shocked if they had been in there.

  “I think I might be able to get them to say something,” Rhodes said. “I have more to threaten them with.”

  The cell that held Joe Stephens was clean and warm. There were fresh blankets on the bunk, and the mattress looked firm. Rhodes was impressed. Joe was not. He was lying on the bunk, his wiry body relaxed, as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He wasn’t fooling Rhodes, however.

  “Your wife’s the driver, isn’t she?” he said to begin the conversation. “She’s the one who hit my car down there in Blacklin County.”

  Joe put his hands behind his head and gazed up at the ceiling. “I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about.”

  “Sure you do,” Rhodes said. “You may as well get it off your chest now. I can identify the truck. There’ll be plenty of people who can identify the stolen goods. Melvin will be glad to talk to me if I let him off the burglary charges. You shouldn’t have tried to sell the stuff so close to the scene.”

  Joe continued to stare upward. “I bought all that stuff,” he said.

  “And I’m sure you have a receipt,” Rhodes said. “I’m not sure how that’s going to help you with the murder charge, though.”

  Joe stiffened slightly, but he still didn’t look at Rhodes. “Murder charge?”

  Rhodes leaned against the cell door. The bars weren’t comfortable, but he wanted to appear as relaxed as the prisoner, if he could.

  “That woman you killed during the burglary. That makes it capital murder, Joe. The death penalty.”

  Joe rolled over, put his legs over the side of the bunk, and sat up. He looked at Rhodes for the first time. “Nobody killed anybody.”

  “Wrapped her in duct tape, too,” Rhodes said. “We’ve got your fingerprints on the tape.”

  That was a lie, of course, since as far as Rhodes knew the results of the tests hadn’t been sent back from the lab yet. There hadn’t been any prints found in any of the houses, for that matter, but Rhodes thought the lie was worth a try.

  When Joe didn’t say anything, Rhodes said. “That tape’s sticky stuff, Joe. You should have known you’d leave prints all over it.”

  “We wear gloves,” Joe said, his voice squeaking more than usual, as if he might be a little bit scared. “We always wear gloves.”

  “Somebody had to take off his gloves to tape the body,” Rhodes said. “It’s hard to peel that tape off the roll if you’ve got gloves on.”

  Joe looked around the cell, but he didn’t see anything to help him, just the institutional-gray walls and the cell door. And Rhodes.

  Joe shook his head. “All right. Let’s say that those things we’re selling came from some houses down in your county. It’s possible that I might know something about that. But we didn’t kill anybody. We might be thieves, but we’re not killers.”

  Rhodes was almost certain that Joe was telling the truth. What had occurred to him earlier was that if Mrs. Clayton had been dead for three weeks, it would have been very unlikely for her to have been killed by the burglars. If they had been operating in the area for that long, someone would have reported them long before Mrs. McGee. The houses weren’t used often in the winter, but someone would surely have paid a visit and noticed all his belongings missing within a three-week span.

  Still, Rhodes thought that Joe might know something. He seemed nervous now, and he had laced the fingers of his hands together in his lap. Rhodes might not have all the latest scientific equipment available to him, but he liked to think that he knew how to read people. That was his strong point, and that was his focus in every investigation. Talk to people, try to read them, try to separate the lies from the truths.

  “It won’t work, Joe,” Rhodes said. “We can place you in the house, we can place the victim in the house. You’re good for it.”

  Joe tried to appear sincere. He looked right into Rhodes’s eyes. “If I tell you something, will you go a little easy on us?”

  “If you didn’t kill her, then we can forget the murder charge,” Rhodes said. “The other things, well, they’ll have to stand.”

  Joe thought about it for a minute. “You got a cigarette?” he said.

  Rhodes told him that he didn’t smoke.

  “Damn,” Joe said.

  “We can get you one from one of the officers after you say your say,” Rhodes told him.

  “We found the body,” Joe said. “She was dead when we got there. It was pretty weird, finding her all wrapped up like that in the middle of the floor.”

  “She wasn’t in the floor,” Rhodes said. “She was in the closet.”

  “Yeah,” Joe said. “Well, that’s where we put her. We didn’t feel like it was the right thing to do, you know? Walking all around her while we stripped the house. Somebody might’ve stepped on her. So we put her in the closet. Didn’t figure it’d hurt anything. Like I say, we might be thieves, but we’re sure not killers.”

  Rhodes believed him. “One other thing,” he said. “Why did you crimp the ends of those icemaker outlets instead of just letting them run?”

  Joe looked hurt. “Hey, I told you—we’re thieves man. We’re not vandals.”

  Rhodes called Buchanan to see if he could get Joe a smoke.

  After he got started, Joe was hard to shut up. He wanted to tell it all. Burl and Lonnie, it turned out, were his cousins. “They’re just puttin’ us up for a while in some old house they’ve got. Well, it may not even be their house, but there’s no one in it right now, so we’re usin’ it. There’s a shed out back beyond the barn where we can keep the truck. To tell the truth, it’s not much of a place, but we didn’t intend to stay long. Hell, we’ve only been here about a week.”

  The Holcombs were just friends. “We met ‘em in California,” Joe said. He was smoking his second or third cigarette. Buchanan had given him half a pack, along with a cup of coffee. “See, we’ve been doin’ this for quite a while now, workin’ our way across the country. We sell the stuff we steal and eat the canned goods we find. It’s a pretty good living.”

  Rhodes didn’t ask about the other burglaries. That would have to come later, and would probably clear up a lot of cases for a lot of local law enforcement agencies when the word got out.

  “Have the Holcombs been pulling that funeral home scam all along the way?” Rhodes asked.

  “Yeah. Hell, nobody even noticed it till now, as far as I know. It was a real good deal. We could sell that jewelry for a lot less than you could buy it for at a wholesaler’s even, and nobody likes to ask where you got it if they’re buyin�
�� it at a flea market. They probably know it’s stolen.”

  He was probably right. Rhodes knew that most people found it hard to resist a bargain, even if they knew it wasn’t strictly on the up and up.

  “Did you notice anything else about that dead woman?” he asked.

  “Nothin’ to notice. There she was, wrapped up like one of those mummies in a museum. Didn’t even know it was a woman till now.”

  “What about her clothes?”

  “Mummies don’t wear clothes.” Joe flicked his ashes on the floor. “Least this one didn’t.”

  “Were there any clothes in the house?”

  “I don’t remember one house from another, tell the truth. If there were clothes, we took ‘em, though. We always do.”

  Rhodes supposed that he would have to go through all the items in the van, though he didn’t think it would help. Hamilton had impounded everything, so it would be available.

  “What do you think we’ll be lookin’ at for all this?” Joe asked.

  Rhodes looked at him. “How many states did you go through?”

  “I hadn’t thought about that,” Joe said. “Probably most of ‘em won’t even bother with us, though, will they?”

  “Probably not,” Rhodes said. “Not if you come clean on everything you did and help them clear the cases.”

  “Oh, I’ll do that, all right,” Joe said. “And Sheriff?”

  “What?” Rhodes said.

  “I really didn’t want to get caught, but now that I am, I’m sorry I hit you with those rocks.”

  Rhodes rubbed a bruise that was forming just below his right elbow. “That’s all right, Joe. I understand.”

  “I knew you would.” Joe tossed his cigarette butt to the floor and stepped on it. “What kinda food you think they got in this place? Anna likes to eat, you know?”

  “I guessed,” Rhodes said. He called Buchanan to let him out.

  It was late when he got back to Clearview, but Rhodes knew that Hack would be at the jail. Hack was always at the jail, even slept there. He had no family and practically gave his time to the county just to have a place to stay and something to do.

  “Anything exciting happen?” Rhodes asked when he walked into the office.

  Hack was sitting in his usual spot at the radio table. He didn’t like to go to bed until around midnight. He said that he was too old to need much sleep.

  “You first,” hack said. “You look like you had a little excitement.”

  “We got the burglars,” Rhodes said. He told the story as briefly as he could, leaving out most of the chasing and fighting.

  “But they didn’t kill that Clayton woman?” Hack said when Rhodes was finished.

  “They say they didn’t. I believe them. The timing’s all wrong.”

  “At least you’ve cleared up the burglaries and the stealing at the funeral home. Clyde oughta be happy.”

  “We still don’t have the jewelry back, though. It might be a while before Hamilton releases it.”

  “Long as you got it, ever’body’ll be happy,” Hack said.

  “Maybe. Now, how about here?”

  “Nothin’ much. Ruth had to arrest Miz Reed Taggart. That’s about all.”

  “All!” Rhodes said, falling into the trap. “Mrs. Taggart is the mayor’s wife!”

  “I know that,” Hack said, hurt. “I keep up with the local politics.”

  “Why was she arrested?” Rhodes said.

  “Shopliftin’.”

  “But the Taggarts have as much money as anybody in town,” Rhodes said. “Maybe more.” Taggart was a third-generation oil man, and the fact that oil was now worth only a fraction of what it had been a few years back didn’t matter, not when you’d had oil in the family for that long.

  “It wasn’t because she didn’t have the money,” Hack said. “It was because she was ashamed.”

  Rhodes leaned back wearily in his chair. It had been a long day, and it looked as if it would be even longer. But eventually Hack would explain himself.

  “Was she ashamed before or after she got caught?” Rhodes said.

  “Both, I guess. But she was doin’ it because she was ashamed.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I told you that. Shopliftin’.”

  “Exactly what was she ashamed to shoplift?”

  “It wasn’t that she was ashamed to shoplift it, though I guess she was. She was ashamed to buy it.”

  “What?” Rhodes said. There was an edge to his voice.

  “You don’t have to get all huffy about it,” Hack said.

  “Tell me,” Rhodes said, his tones clipped. “Now.”

  “Condoms,” Hack said.

  Rhodes wasn’t sure he’d heard right. “Condoms?”

  “That’s what I said, ain’t it?”

  “Tell the whole thing,” Rhodes said. “From the top.”

  “The pharmacist at the drugstore caught her at it. She was puttin ‘em in her purse. Sheiks. You know about Sheiks?”

  “I know. Get on with it.”

  “She wouldn’t admit it, so Mr. Lee let her leave the store and called us. I sent Ruth, and she caught up with her and asked to see her purse. Poor woman broke down and confessed.”

  “Confessed what?”

  “Confessed that she stole ‘em.”

  “Hack, I swear . . .”

  “No need for swearin’. I’ll tell you. Seems she can’t take those birth control pills anymore, and her husband thinks it’s the woman’s job to take care of things like that. But she was embarrassed to stand in the checkout line at the drugstore with a bunch of condoms in her hand. So she stole ‘em.”

  “Ruth didn’t really arrest her, did she.” It wasn’t a question.

  “Well, no. But she could’ve. Mr. Lee didn’t want to press any charges when he heard the story, and Miz Taggart paid him.”

  “I expect she was more embarrassed by all the goings-on than she would have been if she’d just bought them in the first place,” Rhodes said. What he was thinking was that he would have liked to have been there when Ruth Grady was telling all this to Hack. Hack would have been red as Joe Stephens’s hair. “Anything else you need to tell me?”

  “Ivy called, said to tell you to come by.”

  “I think I’ll do that,” Rhodes said. “That’s the best offer I’ve had all day.”

  Chapter 19

  The next morning Rhodes confronted Melvin Holcomb with the fact of Stephens’s arrest. Melvin seemed surprised, but when Rhodes provided the details of their travels from California, Holcomb suddenly became willing to talk. He had pretty much the same story to tell as the one Rhodes had already heard from Stephens, though Holcomb was much more reticent about what had happened on their journey than Stephens had been. In fact, he refused to admit having taken anything from any funeral home other than the one in Clearview. He did admit that he had helped with the burglaries at the lake, and confirmed that they had found a body wrapped in duct tape in the middle of the floor and that they had put the body in the closet in the kitchen.

  Rhodes also talked to Burl and Lonnie, who were saddened to hear of the capture of their cousin, though not surprised. They both denied having taken part in either the burglaries or the thefts at the funeral home, but they admitted that they had indeed provided shelter for their cousin and his friends.

  “After all,” Burl said, “he’s kin, even if he is a criminal.”

  Both Burl and Lonnie appeared to believe possessing a little stash of dope was hardly a crime at all, certainly not in the league with burglary.

  “We don’t even sell it to anybody in the county,” Burl said. “There ain’t enough of a dope trade here to keep us in business. We generally take it up to Dallas if we want to sell it.”

  Ruth Grady questioned Mrs. Holcomb in her cell and got a story very similar to the one told by her husband. The thing that interested Rhodes was that neither one of them could explain their fascination with the initials J.S. In fact, neither one of them had noti
ced that their false names all began that way.

  “It could be something they picked up from Stephens,” Ruth said, and Rhodes thought that was as good an explanation as any.

  “You realize this leaves us with fewer murder suspects than we had yesterday,” Ruth said.

  She and Rhodes were in the office with Hack, who was listening but who had no suggestions as to who might be guilty of murder. “I think you oughta be glad you solved two big crimes without worryin’ too much about the third one,” he said.

  “The third one is the worst,” Rhodes said. “It’s the one we should really be worried about.”

  “Why? Whoever done it ain’t killed nobody else.”

  “That we know of,” Rhodes said. “Mrs. McGee’s taken a few potshots around, and someone’s taken a few at her.”

  “You don’t think she did it, do you?” Ruth said. “She seems like such a nice old lady.”

  “Those are the kind you have to watch out for,” Hack said.

  “And then there are Clayton and Washburn,” Rhodes said. “I think we ought to get Clayton back down here and talk to all three of them. There’s something wrong in someone’s story, and I have a feeling I should know it. Ruth, call that Officer Ferguson and have her locate Clayton for us. Tell her to get him down here this afternoon. If he doesn’t want to come, see if she can bring him for us.”

  Ruth went to the phone.

  Rhodes sat at his desk and began looking through the notes he’d made on his various conversations with the suspects. He had a feeling that everything he needed to know was in there, if he could just make sense out of it.

  After about an hour, he began to think that he had. It still didn’t give him the whole story, but he was sure he had most of it.

  Ruth Grady had already left on patrol, but she had gotten in touch with Dallas. Officer Ferguson was going to deliver Clayton to the Blacklin County jail, either alone or accompanied, by five-thirty that afternoon. Rhodes decided to make arrangements to have the other suspects there as well