Murder in Four Parts

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes sat up. “That’s enough of that,” he said, shaking the stick at Bruce. “You just sit right where you are.”

  Bruce snarled and tensed his muscles to pounce.

  Rhodes shook the stick at him. “If you jump me again, I’m going to have to hurt you. You stay. Stay right there.”

  Bruce stayed, but he growled low in his throat.

  “That stick might scare Bruce,” Hugh said, coming at Rhodes, “but it doesn’t bother me.”

  Rhodes threw the stick at Hugh, who was distracted just long enough for Rhodes to pull up his pants leg and draw the pistol.

  “Now hold on, Sheriff,” Lance said, seeing the gun in Rhodes’s hand. He rose from the ground. “You don’t need to go shooting anybody.”

  “Put your hands on top of your head,” Rhodes told him. “You, too, Hugh.”

  “You wouldn’t shoot us, Sheriff,” Lance said. “We didn’t do anything.”

  Rhodes had to laugh. “You don’t really think a judge would believe you instead of me, do you?”

  “I guess not,” Lance said, putting his hands atop his head.

  Rhodes patted his shirt pocket. His reading glasses were intact. The Eccles cousins would be in big trouble if they broke his glasses.

  “That stick hit me in the face,” Hugh said. “You could’ve put my eye out.” He rubbed his cheek. “I think I’m bleeding.”

  “I’ll get you some medical attention at the jail,” Rhodes said.

  Bruce growled.

  “We don’t have a cell for dogs at the jail,” Rhodes said. “Lance, you put him in your truck. The cab, not the bed. Make sure the window’s down an inch or two so he can have some air.”

  Lance had trouble getting Bruce to obey, but after a little cajoling and a bit of a struggle, he shut him in the cab of the black Silverado.

  “Now you two put your hands behind you,” Rhodes told the cousins. “I’ll get some cuffs.”

  “You really gonna take us in?”

  “I really am.”

  Rhodes got a couple of disposable plastic handcuffs from the county car and cuffed Lance, then Hugh. He ushered them into the vehicle.

  “Who’s gonna take care of Bruce?” Hugh said. “You can’t just leave him there.”

  “Don’t worry,” Rhodes told him. “The county has an animal control officer now.”

  “You’re not gonna give Bruce the gas pipe, are you?”

  “Not a chance,” Rhodes said. “You and Lance, now, that’s a different story.”

  Hugh didn’t say another word all the way to the jail.

  Rhodes got Lance and Hugh booked and printed with a minimum of interference from Hack and Lawton. He put the GPS from Lloyd’s house in the evidence room and was about to leave again when Jennifer Loam arrived.

  “Anything new on the Lloyd Berry murder?” she said.

  “There’s a dog shut in a truck out on the place where the Eccles cousins live,” Rhodes said. “Hack, you’d better call Alton and let him know about it. He needs to put it back in its pen and be sure it has food and water. The Eccles cousins might not be home until tomorrow.”

  “Wait a minute,” Jennifer said. “What’s this about the Eccles cousins?”

  “Dog story’s usually better’n some aggravated assault story,” Hack said. “People like readin’ about dogs.”

  “Aggravated assault?” Jennifer said. “What happened?”

  “Dog’s a better story,” Lawton said. “Then there’s the alligators.”

  “Alligators? What alligators?”

  Rhodes let himself quietly out the door. The way things were going, it would be late afternoon before Jennifer got a story of any kind out of Hack and Lawton.

  Since it was a little past noon, Rhodes thought he’d stop and have something to eat. He didn’t want barbecue again, but he thought it might be a good idea to drop in at Max’s Place. He might see Wilks there and have a chance to talk to him again.

  He was driving over the overpass when Hack called on the radio.

  “You need to get over to Happy Franklin’s place,” Hack said.

  “I was going to eat,” Rhodes told him.

  “Yeah, but somebody tried to kill Happy. He says it was Billy Joe Byron.”

  “I’m on my way,” Rhodes said.

  14

  HAPPY FRANKLIN HAD BEEN BORN IN CLEARVIEW BUT HAD moved away as soon as he graduated from high school. He’d pretty much stayed away, visiting only occasionally, but he’d moved back several months ago to take care of his mother, who had developed symptoms of dementia. He’d been retired for a while, from what Rhodes didn’t know, and he occupied himself with a hobby that had made him well known to a lot of people in Clearview.

  Every Tuesday and Friday, the regular days for trash pickup, Happy cruised the streets and alleys of town in his little green Ford Fiesta hatchback as he looked for items that he considered useful or collectible. Rhodes had seen the Fiesta loaded with lamps, bookcases, framed pictures, plants, computer monitors, and just about anything else that someone might leave out on the curb for pickup. Rhodes had no idea what Happy did with the things he found. For all Rhodes knew, Happy was selling them on eBay.

  Billy Joe Byron had been around Clearview ever since Rhodes could remember. He lived alone in a little house near the city dump, or, to be politically correct, the city’s sanitary landfill. He occasionally retrieved things from people’s trash, and while Rhodes couldn’t imagine that he wanted to kill Happy Franklin for intruding on his territory, he might have been resentful at a newcomer’s assumption that he could help himself to the pickings that Billy Joe had considered rightfully his for many years.

  The old Franklin house was just outside the city limits on the south side of town, on the state highway that led to a big coal-burning power plant. Once the Franklin family had farmed the land and had a few cattle, but now everything was overgrown with mesquite trees. Rhodes had heard all his life that spring hadn’t really arrived until the mesquites had put out their bright green leaves. If that was true, it was fully spring.

  The house looked as if it would surely fall down in the next strong wind. It needed paint, and a new roof wouldn’t have hurt, either. Rhodes saw that a couple of bricks were missing from the top of the chimney.

  Franklin’s Fiesta was parked in front of an old tin barn out back. The barn was so old that rust seemed to be the only thing holding it together. When Rhodes pulled off the highway, Franklin came out of the barn and waved to him. Rhodes drove on back and parked.

  “Glad to see you, Sheriff,” Franklin said, using a greeting that Rhodes didn’t hear often.

  Rhodes got out of the car and asked about Franklin’s mother.

  “She’s doing as well as can be expected,” Franklin said. “Sometimes her mind is clear as can be, like today. She’s inside, watching some soap opera.”

  Franklin was short and skinny. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, a pair of old jeans, and a paisley shirt that Rhodes thought might have been rescued from someone’s discards.

  “I didn’t call you about my mother, though,” Franklin said. “I called you because I’m in fear for my life.”

  “Hack mentioned something about Billy Joe Byron trying to kill you.”

  “It was terrible. Here, I’ll show you.”

  Franklin turned into the barn. Rhodes didn’t know how Franklin was going to show an attempt on his life unless he had video in the barn, but he followed the little man into the rusty building.

  Light came in through several windows and through spaces where tin was missing on the sides. Rhodes saw piles of what he assumed was junk hidden under blue plastic tarps, but some things were out in the open: little tables, short shelves, a couple of tricycles, metal holders for floral wreaths, a lot of plastic kids’ toys, and a TV set. A few black plastic bags appeared to hold nothing other than trash, but Rhodes knew that one man’s trash could be another man’s treasure. He asked Franklin about the bags.

  “Flowers. Sometimes Lloyd throws them
away with his trash. I can use them.”

  Rhodes didn’t ask what he used them for.

  Franklin led Rhodes to one of the windows in the rear of the building. A table sat under the window, and an old radio with a wooden case was on it. Some of the insides of the radio lay on the table beside it, dusty tubes and wires that were older than Rhodes.

  Looking out the window, all Rhodes saw were mesquite trees thick as the hairs on a dog’s back, but it wasn’t the scenery that Franklin wanted to show him.

  “Right here it is,” Franklin said, putting a finger next to a hole in the tin. He had to reach up well above his head. “That’s where the bullet came through.”

  It looked like a bullet hole to Rhodes, sure enough. The edges flared inward and were shiny, indicating that the hole was recent.

  “Here’s the other one,” Franklin said. He showed Rhodes another hole not far from the first but a bit higher. “I was working here by the window. Those bullets came spanging through there and nearly scared me to death.”

  Somebody had put a couple of shots through the tin, all right, probably that very day.

  “You think Billy Joe Byron tried to shoot you?” Rhodes said.

  “That’s right. He’s been upset with me because I get some of the good stuff, but he lives out by the landfill. He gets everything people take out there all to himself. I never bother about going out and pawing through it, so I don’t know what his problem is.”

  “Did you talk to him about it?”

  “Talk to him? You know how he is, Sheriff. How could I talk to him?”

  Rhodes knew how he was. A conversation with Billy Joe was possible, but it wasn’t easy.

  “Did you see him fire any shots at you?” he asked.

  Franklin looked out the window. “No. You can’t see anything out there, but it must have been him. Who else would it be?”

  Rhodes suppressed a sigh. Everybody knew who killed Lloyd Berry, but nobody had any evidence. Now Happy Franklin knew that Billy Joe Byron had taken a shot at him, but he hadn’t seen him and couldn’t prove a thing.

  “Let me show you where the bullets hit,” Franklin said.

  Across from the window stood something tall, covered by one of the blue tarps. Franklin showed him two holes in the tarp.

  “What’s under there?” Rhodes said.

  “Bookcases,” Franklin told him.

  Rhodes wasn’t sure a bookcase would stop a bullet, but when he pulled the tarp back, he saw that the shelves were lined with books. Not the kind that Weeks sold. These were all Reader’s Digest Condensed Books, and they’d stopped the bullets. Rhodes didn’t dig the bullets out, however. He reached above his head and took the books out to the county car, where he tagged and bagged them. Then he went back inside.

  “I’ll take a look out back and see what I can find,” he told Franklin. “You don’t have to worry about getting shot at again while I’m here.”

  “What about after you leave?”

  “It might be a good idea if you didn’t stand too close to the windows. Better yet, stay inside the house and watch TV with your mother.”

  “You’re supposed to protect the public,” Franklin said. He looked anything but happy. “It’s your job.”

  Rhodes wondered how many people in the county thought it was the sheriff’s job to be sure that they were safe from harm at all hours of the day and night. Most of them, for all he knew.

  “If I decide there’s a legitimate threat,” he said, “I’ll see what I can do about some protection for you. I don’t have enough deputies to give you a round-the-clock guard.”

  “Hummpf. Seems to me that’s what you ought to do.”

  “Let me have a look around first and see if there’s anything out there that would give me an idea of who shot at you.”

  Franklin nodded. “I’ll stay here and work on the radio. I don’t guess anybody would try to kill me with you around.”

  Rhodes wasn’t nearly as certain about that as Franklin was, but it was interesting that the shots had come through the tin so high above Franklin’s head. It was also interesting that they’d come in through the tin at all. Why not through the window, where Franklin would have been framed like a perfect target? It was more like someone was trying to scare Franklin, or warn him, rather than kill him.

  Outside among the mesquites, Rhodes tried to avoid the thorns while he looked for some evidence that the shooter had been there. Whoever it was would have needed a clear shot at the window, so Rhodes looked for an opening through the mesquite branches.

  He found one and followed it for about fifty yards until he came across a place where the grass and weeds were mashed flat. Someone had stood there for a while, concealed among the mesquites.

  Rhodes didn’t find any other clues. No brass, no cigarette butts, no pieces of clothing caught on a mesquite thorn. He did see where someone had walked through the bushes, and he followed the path down to a dirt road that ran parallel to the railroad tracks. He could see where a car or pickup had pulled off and parked beside the road. No houses were in sight, so no one would have noticed the car unless someone had happened to drive by. Finding that someone would be next to impossible, even if the someone existed.

  One thing was for sure, however. Billy Joe Byron hadn’t fired the shots. He didn’t have a car. He couldn’t even drive. So he wasn’t the one who’d taken a couple of shots at Happy Franklin.

  Not only that, as far as Rhodes knew, Billy Joe didn’t have a rifle, so to have fired the shots, he’d have had to get his hands on one somehow. While that wasn’t out of the realm of possibility, it was about as likely as Rhodes sprouting wings and flying back to Franklin’s barn.

  Franklin was still at the table when Rhodes returned, walking because the wings had failed to sprout. Rhodes asked all the usual questions about enemies and arguments. Franklin had none of either. Rhodes asked if any homeowners had objected to Franklin’s removing their trash from their curbs. None ever had. They were all happy to see it gone, and they didn’t care how it got taken away.

  Rhodes knew he was missing something, but Franklin was no help at all. Rhodes finally told him that he was probably perfectly safe in the barn.

  “Just don’t make yourself a target. Whoever shot at you must have been worried about being seen, or he’d have stayed around to finish the job. I doubt that he’ll come back.”

  “That’s not very reassuring,” Franklin said. “What about that guard?”

  “I’ll have a deputy check by often enough to let anybody watching you see that there’s a lot of police activity around. I don’t think you’re likely to have any trouble.”

  Rhodes wasn’t certain if what he’d said was true. How could he be? Somehow, though, he felt that Franklin was out of danger. He’d have felt even better about it if he’d had any idea what was going on, but he didn’t.

  He left Franklin in the barn and got Hack on the radio. He told the dispatcher to tell Buddy to make an hourly pass by the Franklin house, both back and front. Hack said he’d relay the message, and Rhodes drove back to town.

  15

  DARREL SIZEMORE’S SCRAP METAL BUSINESS WAS ON THE southwest side of town, near an old cotton warehouse that stood next to the railroad tracks that went on south behind Happy Franklin’s house. Rhodes didn’t think there was any connection, but it would have been easy enough for Sizemore to drive a few blocks on the city streets to where the dirt road began and follow it out to the Franklin place.

  The cotton warehouse was, like so many old buildings in Clearview, about to fall down. At one time, more than a hundred years ago, Rhodes thought, nearly all the cotton in Texas had been produced within a couple of hundred miles of Clearview. Cotton farming was the way of life of most of the population then, but that was all over now.

  Rhodes couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a field of cotton in Blacklin County. He’d been little more than a kid, though, and while he knew people who claimed they’d seen the warehouses filled with bales of w
hite cotton, Rhodes didn’t remember having seen that at all.

  To hear those who recalled it tell the story, boxcars were pulled off on the short spur by the cotton warehouse while men wheeled bale after bale into the cars.

  The timbers that composed the floors of the warehouse were thick and solid, strong enough to hold up tons of cotton bales. They weren’t likely to rot or crumble anytime soon, Rhodes thought, even if the corrugated tin of the roof and sides rusted away. They still retained some of their silver paint, but it was slowly flaking away and would sooner or later be completely gone.

  Rhodes didn’t know who owned the old buildings, and he wondered what would happen to them. Maybe Darrel Sizemore would buy the tin for scrap. The timbers might still be useful for building. Someone would take them. They’d disappear, and no one would even remember that the warehouse had been there. Not long after that, Rhodes thought, no one would remember that cotton had been farmed in Blacklin County and that in the fall the gins had run day and night to keep up with the harvest. Most people had forgotten it already, or if they remembered, they didn’t care. Rhodes shook his head. He supposed it didn’t matter.

  Sizemore’s office was in a small building by the scale that weighed the vehicles bringing metal to sell. Sizemore was inside, looking through some papers on his crowded desk. He looked up when Rhodes came through the door.

  “Good afternoon, Sheriff,” he said. His big voice echoed off the walls. “Got any scrap to sell me today?”

  “How about some copper?” Rhodes said. “I might be able to get you some aluminum, too.”

  Sizemore’s mouth hardened. “That’s not funny, Sheriff.”

  Sizemore’s one brush with the law had come a few years back when he’d been cited for receiving stolen goods. Copper prices rose, making the metal a hot commodity, and people were stealing it anywhere they could, taking coils from air-conditioning units, ripping down telephone cables, stealing copper pipes from plumbing companies and builders.