Murder in Four Parts

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes told him.

  “I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Benton said.

  He made it in twelve. Rhodes met him at the door and took him to the computer room, where he explained what he wanted him to do.

  “Is it legal for me to do that?” Benton asked.

  “You don’t have to worry. I have a warrant.”

  “That works for me.” Benton sat in the swivel chair in front of the computer. “First, let’s see if everything is in working order.”

  Rhodes watched as Benton typed a URL into the space at the top of the home page: www.docbenton.com. A Web page opened up. In the upper left corner was a picture of some desert scene. Rhodes was surprised it wasn’t a photo of Seepy himself.

  “Pretty cool, isn’t it?” Benton said, leaning back in the chair to admire his handiwork. “Want me to show you the pages on Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity?”

  “It would be a real thrill,” Rhodes said. “Right now, though, I’m looking for something that might help me find Lloyd Berry’s killer.”

  “Oh. So what would that be?”

  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t have asked for your help.”

  “You don’t have any idea?”

  “Nope. That’s what you’re here for.”

  “I’m great with ideas, all right. Did you check his bookmarks?”

  “First thing.”

  “How about his history?”

  Rhodes just looked at him.

  “People never remember to clear their history,” Benton said.

  He leaned forward and palmed the mouse. When he clicked on the word HISTORY in the browser’s toolbar, a little box opened. Benton clicked on the line at the bottom that said SHOW IN SIDEBAR, and a long rectangle appeared at the left of the screen. Rhodes saw folders labeled YESTERDAY, TWO DAYS AGO, THREE DAYS AGO, and so on.

  “We can look in those folders and see what Web sites Mr. Berry visited,” Benton said. “Maybe that’s where we’ll find a clue.”

  He clicked on the folder labeled TWO DAYS AGO, and a line of domain names dropped down. Except that it wasn’t different domain names. All of them were the same: youcachein.com.

  “Is that a clue?” Benton said.

  “I think so,” Rhodes said. “See what it is.”

  It was, as Rhodes had guessed, a site devoted to geocaching, which was interesting, all right.

  “We can find caches in our area,” Benton said. “Want to have a look?”

  “Go ahead,” Rhodes said.

  Benton typed the Clearview zip code into a box and clicked on GO. A list of sites appeared, all identified by latitude and longitude.

  “Sure are a lot of them,” Benton said.

  “How many?” Rhodes asked.

  “Fifty or sixty, at least.”

  Rhodes thought that was interesting and asked if there were any more pages.

  “No. That’s all.”

  “Okay. How can we find out whose page that is?” Rhodes said. “Who owns it, or whatever the word would be.”

  “Whosis.”

  “Whose,” Rhodes said. “Not whosis.”

  Benton laughed. “Whosis is the name of the site where you search for the owner of a domain name.”

  He brought up the Whosis page, then typed the URL of the geocaching page in the box provided there. Another click and they had the answer.

  “It’s a corporation,” Rhodes said. “I don’t guess you can find out the real owners.”

  “That would be beyond even my considerable abilities. You might be able to trace it, but it won’t be easy. Unless they want to be found.”

  Rhodes didn’t think they’d want to.

  “How does this help?” Benton asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Rhodes told him. “Let’s just say it’s a piece of a puzzle I’m working on. I’ll have to think about it and see where it fits.”

  “Do you need any help thinking?”

  “Probably, but I’ll just have to blunder through this on my own for the time being.”

  “Then my work here is done?”

  “Not quite. What’s this I hear about you having a run-in with a chicken yesterday?”

  “I thought that’s what you were calling about this morning,” Benton said. “Little did I know you needed my help with a computer.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to spend the rest of the day having Benton point out his techie failings.

  “About that chicken,” he said.

  “It was part of a bunch. What’s the word for a bunch of chickens? Flock? Or is that sheep?”

  “Does it matter?”

  “No. I was just wondering. You wouldn’t think people would lump sheep and chickens together like that, though, so maybe there are different words.”

  “We don’t need to know that right now,” Rhodes said. “Just tell me about the chicken.”

  Benton rubbed his chin like David Letterman before a flashback.

  “I was on my way home,” he said. “Right before I got to my driveway there was a bunch of chickens. Or maybe a flock of them. They got excited when they saw my car and flew up into the air. One of them hit my windshield pretty hard. The windshield didn’t break, but the chicken didn’t survive.”

  “And you think the chickens belonged to the Eccles cousins?”

  “I drove up and asked them. They said no, but that’s because they think I want to put in some kind of claim against them for damages to my car. They did admit that they had some chickens get loose from their pen, though. I think that’s where the one the alligator ate must have come from.”

  Rhodes thought that was a good guess. It didn’t explain the alligator, however. He thanked Benton for the computer assistance and told him he’d check on the chickens and see what he could learn.

  “I’m glad I could help out,” Benton said. “Is there anything else you need from me?”

  “Not unless you can think of something on that computer that might be another clue.”

  Benton surfed around on the computer for a minute or so but found nothing of interest. He went back to the Doc Benton page.

  “You’re sure you don’t want me to explain the Special Theory of Relativity?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Benton looked at his wristwatch, a cheap digital model with a black plastic band.

  “It’s almost time for my calculus class. I’d better go on back to the college. Feel free to call me anytime you need some more help or want to hear about relativity.”

  “I’ll do that,” Rhodes told him.

  Benton left, and Rhodes looked around the house a bit more. He didn’t find what he was looking for, so he went into the garage. Unlike a lot of people Rhodes knew, Berry had nothing stored inside it except his car. Sitting on the dashboard of the car was what Rhodes was looking for, a GPS receiver. Since the car wasn’t locked, Rhodes opened the door, removed the GPS, and took it with him as evidence.

  Evidence of what, he wasn’t sure.

  13

  RHODES’S NEXT STOP WAS ON THE COUNTY ROAD THAT WENT BY Seepy Benton’s house. Rhodes looked out the car window at Cecil Marsh’s place when he went by, but he didn’t see any more alligators creeping around. He hadn’t expected to.

  Rhodes drove on up the road to the hill where the double-wide owned by the Crawford brothers had been parked until an explosion tore it apart. Sure enough, there was a brand-new trailer there, sparkling white with a green roof. The silver mailbox by the open gate had ECCLES painted on it in black letters.

  Rhodes drove the county car through the opening and up the hill. A big red Mack tractor rig with a sleeper cab sat near the double-wide. ECCLES TRUCKING was written on the doors with silver paint outlined in black. Two Chevy Silverados, one red and one black, were parked a little closer to the trailer. Both had extended cabs. Rhodes had seen the red one in the parking lot in front of Rollin’ Sevens the day before.

  The area around the double-wide had been cleaned up since the explosion. No trace of the Crawfords’ trailer
remained, or if there was one, Rhodes couldn’t see it. He wondered if any of the scrap had been sold to Darrel Sizemore.

  In a dog pen near the pickups, a large animal stood at the chain-link fence and stared at Rhodes. It looked like a cross between a leopard dog and a wolf, with maybe something else thrown in, and it didn’t look friendly. Leopard dogs were descended from mastiffs, and Rhodes had known a few with bad attitudes, often instilled by their owners.

  Before Rhodes was even out of his car, the dog started barking, and when Rhodes’s foot hit the ground, the dog began to throw itself against the fence. Rhodes had a feeling this was one animal he wouldn’t be developing a good rapport with, even though he had a feeling it wasn’t as mean as it tried to appear. Not that he wanted to find out.

  Hugh Eccles came through the door of the trailer and started toward the car.

  “What’re you doing to my dog, Sheriff?” he said.

  “I’m not doing a thing,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think he likes me.”

  “He doesn’t like most people. Just me and Lance. What’re you doing here, anyway? This is private property, so you better have a warrant.”

  Rhodes didn’t have a warrant, not that he needed one.

  “I’m just here on a friendly visit,” he said, looking around.

  The dog was still barking, but instead of throwing itself against the fence, it was standing on its hind legs. Rhodes wished the fence were a little bit taller.

  “Where’s Lance?” he said.

  “He’s not here,” Hugh said.

  Rhodes didn’t believe him. Both pickups were there, and so was the Mack.

  “What do you want with Lance?” Hugh said.

  “I wanted to talk to both of you,” Rhodes said. “I heard you had some trouble with your chickens.”

  “Yeah,” Hugh said. “A coyote got in the pen and killed some of ’em. That’s not any of your business, though.”

  “It might be,” Rhodes said.

  “It wasn’t one of our chickens that flew into that goofball’s windshield,” Hugh said. “And even if it was, he couldn’t prove it.”

  Rhodes didn’t have to ask which goofball Hugh meant.

  “The goofball doesn’t care,” he said. “He was helping me out. I wanted to know if there were any chickens on the loose around here.”

  “You can see we got some.” Hugh pointed to a pen that was located some distance from the double-wide. “Not as many as we had last night, though. Some got eaten, and some might’ve got loose. I didn’t count.”

  The chickens in the pen didn’t seem too bothered by the barking of the dog. Rhodes, however, was.

  “Can you quiet down that dog?” he said.

  Hugh didn’t do anything for a couple of seconds. Then he walked over to the pen and rattled the gate.

  “Hush up, Bruce,” he yelled.

  The dog stopped barking, but he didn’t stand down. He leaned on the fence, watching Rhodes.

  Bruce? Rhodes thought.

  “Me and Lance had an uncle named Bruce,” Hugh said, as if he knew what Rhodes might be thinking. “He was meaner than that dog. Got killed in a bar fight in Comanche County a few years ago.”

  “Your family likes to fight, I guess.”

  “Not so much. We don’t like being pushed around, though. You tricked me and Lance yesterday, but today I got Bruce on my side. You might want to leave before I open that gate.”

  Bruce panted as if pleased at the prospect of biting a chunk from Rhodes’s anatomy.

  “Just a couple of questions before I go,” Rhodes said. He looked down the hill to the creek. “You ever been bothered by alligators around here?”

  Hugh’s eyes narrowed. “Who said anything about alligators?”

  “Nobody. I was just wondering because we caught one yesterday morning. It had eaten a chicken.” He gestured toward the pen with his thumb. “Maybe one of your chickens.”

  “We had a coyote here, like I told you. Not an alligator. That all you wanted to know?”

  “I was hoping you’d let me have a look around. There’s a little stock tank on this property, I think.”

  “I don’t give a damn what you think. What I think is, it’s time for you to go.”

  “Not until I have a look at the tank. You want to show it to me?”

  Hugh thought it over. Finally he shrugged. “Why not? I don’t see what you think you’re gonna find.”

  “Probably nothing.”

  “We’ll go in my pickup,” Hugh said. “I don’t like the idea of ridin’ in a law car.”

  Rhodes didn’t like the idea of being trapped in the cab of a pickup with Hugh any more than Hugh wanted to ride with him.

  “You go in the pickup,” he said. “I’ll follow you in the car.”

  “If that’s the way you want it.”

  Hugh got into the red Silverado and drove off across the property. Bruce started barking again, but Rhodes didn’t pay him any mind.

  Rhodes had been on the property more than once, but he’d never looked at the tank. He followed Hugh down a rutted track, and after about a quarter of a mile they came to a tank dam overgrown with weeds. Some were dead, and some were fresh and green.

  Hugh stopped and got out of the truck. Rhodes parked behind him.

  “There it is,” Hugh said. “Not much to look at, though. Water’s pretty shallow.”

  Rhodes couldn’t see the water from where he was, so he climbed up on the dam and looked around at the banks. He saw at least two slick places among the weeds where something long and heavy might have made it a habit to emerge from the water.

  “You ever go to Florida on any of your hauling runs?” Rhodes said.

  “Can’t hear you,” Hugh said, but instead of moving closer to the dam, he got into his pickup and turned on the radio.

  It was tuned to a rap station out of Dallas, and the bass thumped so loud that the truck seemed to vibrate with the sound. Rhodes wondered what kind of speakers Hugh had. They must have been in the extended portion of the cab in back of the front seat.

  Rhodes walked down from the dam and toward the truck, wondering why Hugh had felt the urge to turn on the radio and why it was so loud.

  It didn’t take him too long to figure it out, however. He was covering up another noise.

  Rhodes saw the black Silverado headed in their direction. He couldn’t hear Bruce barking, but the dog stood behind the cab, his head poked up over the top. He looked thrilled to be riding in the truck. Or it could have been that he was thrilled that he was out of the pen and would have a chance to take a bite out of Rhodes.

  Hugh turned off the radio and got out of the pickup.

  “Looks like we got company,” he said.

  Rhodes didn’t bother to remind Hugh that he’d said his cousin wasn’t around. Instead he wondered what was bothering the two truckers. It couldn’t be only the fact that it looked as if an alligator, or maybe two, had been living in their stock tank.

  Lance stopped his pickup near Hugh’s and slid out of the seat. Bruce leaped out of the bed and stood snarling by Lance’s side. The hair along the ridge of his back was standing up, and Rhodes knew he wasn’t snarling at Lance.

  “You sure do like to push folks around, Sheriff,” Lance said. “First at the Rollin’ Sevens and now right here on our own property.”

  Rhodes was at a loss to explain what was going on. The Crawford brothers had operated a whiskey still in the woods near the creek. If the Eccles boys had decided to reopen the business, that might be the reason for their hostility today, but it didn’t account for what had happened at the Rollin’ Sevens.

  Maybe the Eccles boys just didn’t like him.

  “You don’t have to worry about the alligators,” he said. “As far as I know, it’s not against the law to have one, so you’re not under arrest.”

  Lance and Hugh looked at each other. It was Lance who spoke. “Who said we had an alligator?”

  “Nobody, but the signs are there. I think it was an alligat
or that got into your chicken pen, not a coyote. Bruce would’ve raised Cain if a coyote had come into the yard, but he might not’ve been so worried about an alligator. Maybe it was so low to the ground that he didn’t even see it.”

  Bruce heard his name and snarled louder. Lance didn’t have a leash on him, and Rhodes thought it might not be too much longer before Bruce decided to have a sheriff for lunch. He hoped not. He didn’t want to have to hurt the dog.

  “We don’t know anything about any alligator,” Hugh said.

  “When’s the last time you made a run down to Florida?” Rhodes said, repeating the question that Hugh said he couldn’t hear. “Maybe you had a stowaway on the trip back home.”

  “That’s pretty funny,” Lance said. “You must think we’re idiots.”

  That wasn’t what Rhodes thought, but he did think the cousins were close to making fools of themselves.

  “I think you like animals,” Rhodes said. “Dogs, chickens. Alligators.”

  Lance moved his hand. Rhodes wasn’t sure if Lance had done it deliberately to signal the dog or if Bruce had just decided to make his move at that particular moment. The result was the same in either case. The big dog sprang forward, baring his teeth at Rhodes.

  Hugh lunged. Rhodes couldn’t tell if he was lunging for him or for the dog, but it didn’t make any difference to what Rhodes was going to do. Hugh was close enough to reach, so Rhodes grabbed his shirt at the shoulder, pulling him right into Bruce’s path.

  Bruce collided with Hugh, and they both hit the ground and rolled right into Rhodes’s legs, toppling him as well.

  Bruce snapped and growled, trying to bite someone, anyone. Rhodes shoved Hugh aside, but by then Lance was there, aiming a kick at Rhodes’s head with his steel-toed work shoe.

  Rhodes caught the shoe in his hands and twisted. Lance fell and landed on Bruce, who bit his arm and ripped the sleeve of his shirt.

  Rhodes shoved away from the pile and stood up, reaching for the pistol he wore in an ankle holster. Bruce didn’t give him a chance to pull the weapon. He threw himself into Rhodes’s chest and knocked him back against the tank dam.

  Bruce fell to one side, but he was on his feet before Rhodes could get to the pistol, slavering and barking. Rhodes scrabbled around with his hand, and his fingers clenched around a stick. He hit Bruce sharply on the end of the nose with it, and Bruce jerked back.