Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes didn’t like to go into these things on the radio. “I’m only going over there to ask a few questions,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Hack said.”That’s what you thought about that Rapper that time.”

  Rhodes made a face. Rapper and his buddy Jase had made him look bad, all right. “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Hack said. “You gonna call and check in anytime soon?”

  “Between thirty minutes and an hour,” Rhodes told him.

  “I’m countin’ on it,” Hack said.

  Rhodes hoped that Phil Swan didn’t have a scanner. He hadn’t seen one when he’d looked the house over, but he’d been in only the one room. It was possible that the scanner was in the bedroom with the TV set. If it was, there wouldn’t be anyone at home when he got there.

  He drove up to the house and parked. The pickup was there, so that probably meant no scanner, or at least not one that was turned on. Or maybe there was a scanner, it was turned on, Swan and Higgins knew he was coming, and they just didn’t care because they were completely innocent of anything wrong. Life certainly got complicated at times.

  Rhodes knocked at the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked again, harder.

  Still no answer.

  He couldn’t force his way in, but he tried the door knob just in case the door was not locked.

  It was. He turned the knob as hard as he could, but the door wouldn’t budge.

  If the truck was there, Rhodes thought, someone must be in the house. He pounded on the door facing with the heel of his hand, so hard that he thought the neighbors might hear. But no one in the nearby houses put a head out a window, and there was no sound from inside the one he was interested in.

  Then he heard something, something that sounded like the door of a pickup being opened as quietly as possible. There was no covering up the sound of the door latch releasing, however.

  Rhodes stepped off the porch and started around to the side of the house. He saw Betsy Higgins getting into the pickup. Phil Swan was walking around to the driver’s side.

  “Just a minute,” Rhodes said. “I’d like to talk to you two.”

  Betsy Higgins slammed the door on her side. Swan turned to face Rhodes. “We got nothing to say to you,” he said.

  “Maybe not,” Rhodes said, “but I have to ask a couple of questions.”

  “You just back off,” Swan said, “and you won’t get hurt. I’m going to get in this truck and drive away, and we won’t be bothering you again.”

  “Maybe you can drive off later,” Rhodes said. “After I’ve asked you the questions.” Swan looked even bigger than he remembered. Rhodes’s pipsqueak neck tingled in anticipation of Swan’s fingers encircling it.

  Suddenly Swan seemed to give in. “All right, ask. But don’t take too long.”

  Rhodes would have liked to ask why Swan was in such a hurry, but he decided to start with what he’d come for. “I’d like to know where you were last night, early. About six or six-thirty.”

  Swan looked over his shoulder to where Betsy Higgins sat in the pickup. Her head barely showed through the back window beside the sign that said BULLRIDER ON BOARD. Then Swan looked back at Rhodes, but his eyes were shifty. “I was right here,” he said.

  “Right out here in the yard?”

  “Don’t start tryin’ to trip me up, Sheriff,” Swan said, his bass voice rumbling. “‘You know what I mean.”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I don’t.”

  “I mean I was right here at the house. Probably watching the news on TV. Or maybe Wheel of Fortune. That comes on right after the news, don’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. He didn’t. He never watched game shows, just old movies.

  “Well, it does. I watch it ever’ night.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe him. “I’ll just ask Miz Higgins the same thing,” he said, stepping toward the pickup.

  Swan stepped in front of him. “You can take my word for it,” he said.

  “I wish I could,” Rhodes said. “But I have to double check.” He took another step.

  Swan reached out a hand the size of a Virginia ham and put it against Rhodes’s chest. “No, you don’t.”

  Rhodes tried to step around him, but Swan was quick as well as big. He pushed at Rhodes again, this time shoving him back a good five feet.

  “I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Rhodes said. He also wished he’d asked Hack for some backup. It was funny how a simple little thing like asking questions could get some people so riled up. “You know I have to talk to Miz Higgins,” he said.

  “You’ve done all the talkin’ you’re goin’ to do,” Swan said. He lowered his head and charged at Rhodes.

  Rhodes wasn’t too surprised. He tried to sidestep the charge, with the idea of swinging his fists and hitting Swan in the kidneys as he passed, but it didn’t work.

  Swan was too quick. He saw or sensed Rhodes’s movement and turned to counter it, opening his arms wide as if to grab Rhodes and squeeze him.

  Rhodes tried to bring his clasped fists up and hit Swan’s arms, while at the same time backing away from him.

  That didn’t work either. Rhodes caught his heel on a tuft of grass or dirt and fell down, landing hard on his coccyx.

  Swan reached for him, and Rhodes swung his fists, scooting along the ground on his butt while pushing with his heels. So far it was the most undignified fight he’d ever been in. He’d managed to hit Swan’s arms, but that hadn’t even slowed the big man down.

  Rhodes felt the side of the house at his back and knew he was stopped. He gathered his feet and launched himself at Swan’s legs.

  It was like hitting a couple of tree stumps, but at least Swan was surprised. He staggered backward, and Rhodes tightened his grip around his knees, trying to press the legs together.

  Swan windmilled his arms, beginning to lose his balance. Rhodes held on, and Swan crashed to the ground like a bulldogged steer. He was arching his back and digging his heels into the dirt, trying to break Rhodes’s hold and throw him off.

  It was all Rhodes could do to keep his grip. He would have liked to maneuver upward, perhaps getting a hold around Swan’s arms, but it was impossible. Rhodes’s hands were getting scraped against the ground, and he could feel the skin peeling off their backs.

  Swan was filling the air with profanity and an imaginative array of vulgar colloquialisms, all the while twisting and turning like a dervish. Suddenly he stopped. He tried to sit up, and when that didn’t succeed he began banging on Rhodes’s head with fists as hard as the rubber mallets body men used to beat the dents out of car fenders.

  Through the ringing in his ears Rhodes heard the pickup start. Betsy Higgins wasn’t going to wait around for her boyfriend any longer. No wonder Swan was getting desperate. Rhodes figured that if he could just hold on a little longer she would be gone. Then maybe Swan would listen to reason.

  But he couldn’t hold on. With one last mighty effort Swan heaved, hit, and kicked at the same time. Rhodes lost his grip and went rolling across the grass.

  When he looked up, Swan was getting to his feet and the pickup was rolling.

  It was rolling right at Rhodes.

  Betsy Higgins seemed to have decided that Rhodes should be punished for beating on her boyfriend, and apparently she was going to punish him by running him down with the truck.

  Rhodes saw the tires chewing dirt, and he threw himself to one side, breaking his fall with his hands. He felt his palms burn, and he knew that he had now scraped all the skin off both sides of his hands.

  But at least Betsy Higgins had missed him.

  She was not discouraged, however. Rhodes heard the gears grind as she shifted into reverse, and then the tailgate of the pickup was speeding toward him.

  Since he hadn’t gotten up, he at least didn’t have to fall again. Instead he rolled as fast as he could to the side.

  Betsy, unable to see him in the mirror, roared past him and clipped Ph
il Swan with the fender as he desperately tried to avoid her. Rhodes heard him groan as he fell to the side.

  Betsy Higgins didn’t see him fall. She was concentrating on Rhodes, and she shifted into low, gunning the engine and popping the clutch before getting the gears completely engaged. The pickup leaped forward and died. Betsy ground the starter, and Rhodes could smell gasoline fumes. She had flooded the engine.

  Rhodes got to his feet, trying not to groan, and headed for the driver’s door. He had almost made it when Phil Swan appeared from around the back of the truck, hanging on to the side. Seeing Rhodes, he let go of his support and launched himself at the sheriff.

  Swan was not nearly as quick as he had been, but Rhodes was in no condition to attempt tricky evasive measures. Swan rammed into him and they both stumbled backward, striking the ground with Swan on top. The impact forced most of the breath out of Rhodes’s lungs, and he gasped for air.

  Swan took advantage of the situation to begin pounding on Rhodes’s face and chest, but Rhodes was able to get a pretty good swing at Swan’s hip, right on the spot where he had been hit by the truck. Swan yelled and rolled off Rhodes.

  Rhodes used the last of his agility in getting up and kicking Swan in the same place where he had hit him. Swan yelled again.

  Rhodes knew that he wasn’t being very sporting, and he didn’t really care, not even if Swan’s hip was fractured.

  Then he heard the pickup start. He turned to face it, looking for a way to jump, but it wasn’t necessary. This time Betsy Higgins had no intention of running over him. She backed up and started the other way, out of the yard and down the road.

  Rhodes looked at Swan, who didn’t seem eager to go anywhere, then limped over to his own car. He called Hack and told him to alert the deputies to be on the lookout for the pickup.

  After he described it, Hack asked, “What’s the license number?”

  Rhodes didn’t say anything for a second. “I don’t know,” he finally said.

  It was Hack’s turn to be quiet for a while. “I’ll get it right on the air,” he said then.

  “Good,” Rhodes said. “And tell Lawton I’m bringing in a prisoner.”

  “Oh,” Hack said. “Then not everybody got away.”

  “Not quite,” Rhodes said.

  There wasn’t much fight left in Phil Swan, and when they got to the jail, Rhodes had to help him out of the car and into the building. After they booked him, Lawton helped him upstairs while Hack called Dr. White.

  “Tell the truth,” Hack said, hanging up the phone, “you look a lot worse than your prisoner.”

  Rhodes looked at his hands, front and back. “I guess I could use some Mercurochrome,” he said.

  “We got a spray for stuff like that now,” Hack said, rummaging around in his desk drawer. “Specially for big places like that.” He came up with an aerosol can and tossed it to Rhodes.

  Rhodes caught it, removed the cap, and sprayed it on his hands. It was cool and didn’t burn.

  “Shoulda washed them first,” Hack said.

  Rhodes tossed him the can, which Hack returned to the drawer.

  “Gonna have to wash your clothes,” Hack said.

  “I do that anyway,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah. Notice anything different?”

  Rhodes, whose mind had been otherwise occupied, looked around the office for the first time. “Ho Ho Ho,” he said.

  Under the gun rack was a short but shapely Christmas tree, hung with blue ornaments and strung with blue lights. The lights were not plugged in.

  “Miz Daniel brought it by at lunch time,” Hack said.”Said she might have some presents to put under it later.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rhodes said.

  “What I thought,” Hack said. “You ain’t bought her a thing, have you?”

  “I’ve been busy,” Rhodes said.

  “If I was you, I’d get un-busy long enough to buy that woman a present,” Hack said. “I swear, sometimes I don’t think you deserve her.”

  “Sometimes I feel the same way,” Rhodes said.

  Just then Dr. White came in and saved him from having to say more.

  Rhodes took White up to the prisoner and then came back down. “Anybody called in about Betsy Higgins?” he asked.

  “Nope,” Hack said. “Not a peep.”

  Rhodes thought about going out to look himself, but she could have been well out of the county by now, or on any one of a hundred back roads. Then he thought about lunch, which he’d missed again. He wondered why it was that he could miss so many lunches and still not lose any weight. If he couldn’t lose, he might as well eat.

  “I’m going out for a bite,” he told Hack. “I’ll be back to question Swan in a little while.”

  “You think he might have to go to the hospital?” Hack asked.

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he just has a bad bruise, but if the doctor says send him, do it. I can talk to him there.”

  “You gonna look for a present while you’re out?”

  “I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 9

  Rhodes didn’t look for a present. Instead he went by the 7-Eleven and bought a loaf of whole wheat bread, a package of bologna, some sliced cheese (each slice individually wrapped), and a six-pack of Dr Pepper in nonreturnable bottles. Then he went home.

  On his way to his house he called Hack on the radio and asked him to have Ruth Grady interview the Martins’ neighbors and try to find out who their friends were. Although he had a suspect in jail, he didn’t want to neglect other possibilities.

  While he sat at his kitchen table moodily chewing on his bologna sandwich, Rhodes considered his health. The bologna was full of additives and fats, the cheese wasn’t even cheese at all but a mixture of ingredients called “pasteurized process cheese food,” and the soft drink was full of sugar. At least the bread was stone ground. That was supposed to hold in the vitamins or something. Maybe he should go in after eating and give the bicycle a try.

  He wondered what his problem was, and decided that it was the fact that he was engaged. Or sort of he still didn’t think that he was really engaged. A man who’s been married once doesn’t get “engaged.” Or at least Rhodes didn’t think so. He was out of his depth. He tried to think of what Cary Grant would do. When Grant had hired Sophia Loren to take care of his children in Houseboat, he had fallen in love with her. Rhodes remembered that much. But had he given her a ring? Had he gotten down on his knees and pleaded for her hand? Details like that had slipped Rhodes’s mind.

  Rhodes got up from the table, scraped the crumbs into his hand, then tossed them in the sink. He took the last swallow of his Dr Pepper and threw the bottle in the trash. Maybe he forgot details because he wanted to forget them. Wasn’t that what psychiatrists said? He didn’t think it was true, but he knew that it was at least a possibility.

  Details. They were always important in any investigation of any crime, and it was funny how often you overlooked them, even the most obvious ones. But it wasn’t as if they were forgotten, or never noticed in the first place. Sometimes the details suddenly jumped into your mind, coming all at once out of whatever dark corner they’d been hiding in, and made everything clear. Maybe things would work out like that in the Martin case, which was still bothering Rhodes. It wasn’t easy to think about murder and a missing man when your mind was on being engaged. Or it could have been the other way around. It wasn’t easy to think about being engaged when your mind was on murder and a missing man.

  Rhodes gave it up. He went out back, fed Speedo, and drove back to the jail.

  On his way to the jail Rhodes drove through the downtown to see if it looked any cheerier in the daylight. It was too warm for Christmas, but people must be getting the spirit somehow.

  The streets were not crowded, but there were a few people walking in and out of the stores, some of them even carrying packages wrapped in green, red and white paper. Seeing them didn’t cheer Rhodes up, and he didn’t stop to look in any of the sto
res himself.

  The jail didn’t look any more cheerful on the outside, and the tree didn’t help the inside much either. A jail was a jail.

  Hack and Lawton were talking when Rhodes walked in. They got suddenly quiet.

  Rhodes looked at them, but they didn’t say anything. They just looked at him.

  Finally Rhodes said, “Did you send Ruth Grady to the Martins’ neighborhood?”

  “Sure did,” Hack said. “Right after she got through at Hubbard’s.”

  “Hubbard’s?”

  “That’s right,” Lawton said. “She had some trouble—”

  “She didn’t have any trouble,” Hack said, seizing control again. He didn’t want Lawton to have any of the story. “It was Hubbard that called us. He had the trouble.”

  Hubbard, Rhodes knew, was Ted Hubbard, who had a department store just off the main street. It had been in his family for over a hundred years and was one of the few really nice stores in town. It didn’t make nearly as much money as it once did, or so Rhodes had heard, but if you wanted to buy nice clothes or shoes, some of the real name brands anyway, it was the only place in Blacklin County to shop. Otherwise you had to drive to one of the cities that were not too far away.

  “What kind of trouble?” Rhodes asked.

  “Nothin” much,” Hack said.

  “Oh,” Rhodes said and waited.

  “Had some trouble with his Santy Claus,” Lawton said.

  “That ain’t right,” Hack said. “He didn’t have no trouble with his Santy Claus.”

  “Yes, he did,” Lawton said. “He—”

  “No, he didn’t,” Hack said. “It was a kid who caused the trouble.”

  “A kid,” Rhodes said, trying to track the direction of the conversation.

  “Yeah,” Hack said. “You remember that Terrell kid?”

  “He’s the one that tried to tie the cans to Miz Coppard’s cat’s tail,” Lawton said helpfully.

  “I remember him,” Rhodes said. He would have been willing to bet that Miz Coppard’s cat was never the same after that. Miz Coppard, either, for that matter. She really liked her cats.