Cursed to Death

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes stood there in the street in the cold, feeling it creep into his coat and past his shirt. But he thought that Dr. Martin was probably colder, down in the bottom of that well in the water, his feet encased in cement.

  He could be wrong, though. It was just a thought, based on Martin’s ability to bring out the worst in people and Little Barnes’s known habits. That, and the fact that the well was there, the cement was there, and Dr. Martin had been there. It was possible.

  Rhodes looked up and saw Little Barnes come out of the drugstore door. He was holding a white paper sack in one hand and wearing what looked like exactly the same pair of Big Mac overalls and the same red and black flannel shirt that he had worn the other day. The sleeves of the shirt were still rolled up. Evidently the cold didn’t bother Little all that much.

  Barnes didn’t see Rhodes until he stepped down off the curb. He didn’t look pleased to see the sheriff standing by his pickup, but then he didn’t often look pleased at anything.

  “Hello, Little,” Rhodes said. “Just looking over your truck.”

  “Find what you were lookin’ for?” Barnes asked.

  “Don’t know,” Rhodes said. “I wanted to talk to you again about Dr. Martin.”

  Barnes set the white bag down carefully on the hood of the pickup. “What about him?”

  Rhodes gestured to the pickup bed. “I see you’ve been mixing cement. You had some out there at your place the day I was talking to you, the day after Martin—”

  Barnes’s fist hit Rhodes in the chest like a concrete block. He wouldn’t have thought such a big man could move so fast. Rhodes went backward for three steps, then sat down in the street. Hard. The headlights from a car hit him, and the car swerved to get by. Rhodes scrambled to his knees and got out of the way.

  When he looked up, he saw that Little Barnes had the pickup door open and was reaching in behind the seat. As Rhodes got to his feet, Little came out with a .22 automatic rifle in his hands.

  “Put that thing back, Little,” Rhodes said. “Somebody might get hurt.” A .22 was not very powerful, and Barnes probably carried it to shoot at turtles in his stock tank. But a slug in the right spot—say the eye or the nose—could kill you as quick as a slug from a .44.

  Barnes ignored Rhodes’s voice. He hopped up on the sidewalk, pointed the gun at Rhodes, and pulled the trigger.

  Rhodes felt the tug of the fabric at the right shoulder of his coat at almost the same time he heard the shot. Then he smelled the powder.

  Barnes was off and running down the street, carrying the rifle.

  Rhodes looked over his shoulder. The slug had no doubt gone right through the window of the furniture store across the street, but there didn’t seem to be anyone shopping there. Rhodes hoped the slug was now resting safely in a sofa cushion. He got to the sidewalk and started off after Barnes.

  Billy Lee put his head out the door of the drug store as Rhodes passed.

  “Call the jail,” Rhodes told him. “Have them send a deputy.” As he ran he was working the snap of the holster. He hated to take the pistol out on the streets, but he was afraid he might need it. He knew that he wouldn’t fire, however, unless he had an absolutely clear shot.

  Ahead of him Little Barnes ran along the sidewalk, past a jewelry store, a gift shop, and an appliance store. A woman and a small boy were coming out the door of the latter, and Barnes bowled them over. The boy was crying when Rhodes passed, but he seemed all right. The mother was hugging him. Rhodes didn’t stop to check on them.

  Barnes kept on going, past the funeral home, the variety store, and another furniture store. In the next block there was a Western Auto store and a car repair garage. Rhodes was likely to be able to get in a clear shot, and he took the pistol out of the holster. He knew that he wasn’t likely to hit Barnes, even as big as he was, but maybe he could slow him down just by firing.

  They had been running for only two blocks, but Rhodes was getting winded. He thought about the exercise bike and wondered if he should have spent more time on it. Maybe next week, if he got out of this one, he would get started. His only consolation was that Little Barnes seemed to be slowing as well.

  Barnes passed the garage and almost got run over by a red Yugo driven by Miss Landers, the librarian. She had gotten it in Dallas; it was the only Yugo in town. Rhodes had been about to risk a shot, but he was afraid of hitting Miss Landers. Or worse, her Yugo. She had to take special care of it, since no one in the county would work on it.

  The red of Miss Landers’s taillights reflected off Barnes’s Big Macs as she passed safely by. Barnes went on across the street, and Rhodes realized that not only was it getting darker but that Barnes was getting beyond the best of the streetlights. In town the Christmas lights and store lights had made vision easier. Now Barnes was passing an abandoned building that had housed, in Rhodes’s memory, a cleaning firm, a garage, and a garment factory. There were lights only on the corners now, and Barnes was becoming a black blur.

  Rhodes tried to speed up, and he found that he could go only a little faster; he didn’t gain much. In a few seconds Barnes would be at the Presbyterian church. Rhodes hoped that the Reverend Funk had already gone home.

  When Barnes reached the church, he stopped. Rhodes thought he could see his shoulders heave as Barnes tried to get a deep breath. Barnes was standing in front of the church’s manger scene, which had been used each year for a generation or two. It featured life-sized figures of the three wise men, two shepherds, Joseph, Mary, and assorted animals. Rhodes had never looked inside the wooden manger, but he supposed that there was a life-sized baby Jesus in it. The figures were all heavy, made of chalky material like that of thousands of cats, dogs, and parrots sold at roadside stands throughout the South. Through the years the figures had been treated with loving care, repainted when the old paint wore thin, and generally become a traditional part of Clearview’s Christmas scene. When parents bundled their children in the car to drive around the town and look at decorations, no trip that failed to pass by the Presbyterian church for a look at the manger scene was considered complete. Other churches had tried to compete, without much success, by using living figures. Rhodes was glad there were no living figures here.

  Barnes had caught his breath and was looking back over his shoulder. He saw Rhodes pounding along after him, ran between two wise men, and ducked behind the crude wooden shelter that housed the manger. Rhodes could see him quite well, thanks to the spotlights that were used to make the scene visible to passersby.

  Then Rhodes heard the crack of the .22. The light shining toward Barnes shattered in a crackle of glass and went dark.

  There was another crack. This time Rhodes didn’t feel the tug of the bullet, so he knew that it had passed him completely by. He hoped that it had passed everything safely by. He seemed to remember from somewhere in his reading that a .22 slug could travel for more than a mile, though it wouldn’t have much power at the end of its trip.

  Rhodes dropped to his stomach, his blood pounding in his ears, his breath rasping in his throat. He took in several gulps of the cold air, breathing deeply to try to relax. Then he tried to focus his eyes on the manger scene.

  He saw what looked like a darker shadow within the shadows, and he thought it might be Little Barnes, kneeling for another shot.

  Rhodes steadied his pistol with both hands and fired.

  There was a thudding sound, and one of the wise men’s heads fell off. It was the black wise man who was hit.

  Balthazar?

  Rhodes couldn’t remember, though he’d seen Ben Hur five or six times. The only name that came to mind was Messala, the only good role that Stephen Boyd had ever had. And Messala hadn’t been one of the wise men.

  There was an answering crack from the .22, and the slug dug up dirt ten feet in front of Rhodes and twenty feet to the left. Barnes couldn’t see him very well, either.

  Another slug followed, whining off the sidewalk. That one was much closer, and Rhodes had seen the spark w
hen the lead hit the walk.

  “Who’s shooting at us?”

  Rhodes didn’t jump at the voice at his back, but that was only because he was lying flat on his belly and couldn’t jump. He’d been so wrapped up in his chase and in Little’s firing that he hadn’t heard Ruth Grady come up. In fact, he’d completely forgotten that he’d asked Billy Lee to make the call to the jail.

  “Little Barnes,” he said after recovering a bit.

  Ruth was lying beside him now, not too close. “Why?”

  “I’m not sure,” Rhodes said. “I stopped to ask him a few more questions about Dr. Martin, and he took off.”

  “Didn’t sound like he had a very powerful gun,” Ruth said.

  “He doesn’t. A twenty-two rifle. He could still hurt somebody, though.”

  At that minute Barnes fired two more shots. Rhodes could have sworn that he heard one of them pass by his ear, but he was probably imagining it.

  “We need to get up a barricade around the area,” Ruth said. “Keep the citizens out of harm’s way.”

  “Good idea,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think he has many shots left, though. We might be able to get him when he runs out.”

  “How many?”

  “How many left?” Rhodes tried to remember. “He’s fired seven or eight times. I think.”

  “But we don’t know how many the magazine holds or whether it was full to begin with,” Ruth said.

  “Or whether it was loaded with shorts, longs, or long rifles,” Rhodes said. “So he might have two or six or even none.”

  He looked around. Most of the houses nearby had on lights, and he hoped that whoever was in them had enough sense to stay in them. The shots had no doubt been heard; he hoped that no one got too curious.

  “So what do you think?” Ruth asked.

  “About the barricade? I still think it’s a good idea; I just don’t know how soon we could get one up, or whether we’d be in time. I don’t know what we’d do about the people in these houses.”

  A car was coming down the street. Rhodes hoped that he and Ruth were far enough to the side so that its lights wouldn’t sweep over them. He also hoped that Little Barnes wouldn’t take a notion to shoot at whoever was in the car just for spite.

  The lights passed them by, and there was no shot. The driver of the car went blissfully on his or her way, unaware of what was going on just a few feet off to the side of the street.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Rhodes said. “Now that there’re two of us, let’s try to surround him. If that doesn’t work, you get in touch with Hack, get him to call Buddy, and start on the barricade.”

  “Surround him?”

  “Wrong phrase. I thought you might try to draw him off, get him to fire a round or two, while I sneak up behind him.” Rhodes thought about what Randolph Scott might do. “I’ll try to get the drop on him.”

  “I guess we could try.” Ruth sounded doubtful.

  Rhodes began to inch himself backward. “When I get far enough away, I’ll call you. He’s behind the stable. Shoot that way.”

  “All right,” Ruth said.

  When Rhodes had gotten past Ruth’s feet, he rolled over and over into the darkness. Then he got to his knees and crawled. Finally he arrived at some kind of bush that he couldn’t identify in the dark. “OK,” he said.

  Ruth got off two shots from her Police Special in rapid succession. One of the rounds thunked into the stable. The other shot off the hand of one of the shepherds, the hand holding the shepherd’s crook. Rhodes shook his head as he ran. The Reverend Funk wasn’t going to be easy to pacify. Rhodes might have to remind him about who had helped him shovel off the parking lot when Mr. Clawson’s cows got loose and wandered onto it.

  Ruth fired again and shot the frankincense out of the hands of one of the wise men, or maybe it was the myrrh. At least that wise man still had his head.

  Barnes didn’t fire back. Rhodes took that to mean that he was either out of cartridges or very low.

  Rhodes was making a wide circle around the church building, a very old red brick structure that looked more like a very large Tudor house than a church. He passed around behind it and out of sight of the manger scene.

  The other side of the church was fairly well lit, since a street light was on the corner and there were no bushes or trees to obstruct its beam. This part of the block was the church parking lot. Rhodes got up on his toes and ran as quietly as he could on the asphalt.

  He was exposed when he came around the next corner at the front of the church, but no one was there. Barnes was still hiding behind the stable, in the darkness of the shadow cast by the church on the one side and the stable on the other. Rhodes knew he would have to be careful making the next turn.

  Ruth Grady had no way of knowing where he was, but she must have suspected that he was still circling the building. He heard her fire two more shots. One of them was followed by the sound of glass breaking.

  Rhodes thought about the stained-glass windows in the church building. He supposed that they were very old and probably valuable. Maybe only a small corner of one was smashed.

  With his pistol ready, he edged his way to the corner of the building. He risked a look around it and saw what he thought was Barnes, a hulking shadow within the shadows behind the stable.

  He couldn’t tell which way Barnes was looking or what he was doing. It was possible that he had been carrying some more .22 rounds in one of the pockets of his overalls and that he was reloading, but it didn’t seem very likely. More probably he was just crouched there trying to decide what to do, whether to give himself up or make a run for it, whether to fire a few more shots and make things worse for himself or call it quits before someone got seriously hurt.

  Rhodes eased around the corner of the building, the rough brick pulling at the fabric of his coat. He was going to have to step out from the wall because it was lined with small, low bushes with sticky leaves. Several of them pushed their way through his pants and pricked his legs.

  Rhodes realized that he was sweating in spite of the cold. He held his pistol in his left hand and wiped his right on his pants leg. Then he changed hands and wiped his left. He didn’t blame himself for being just a little bit nervous. He hadn’t had to shoot anyone in a long time.

  He didn’t think he’d have to shoot Barnes, either, now that he had the drop on him.

  Just like Randolph Scott.

  All he had to do was get close enough to Barnes to make it clear that Little had no chance, then announce his presence. That would be that.

  Or so Rhodes had hoped.

  He stepped out onto the narrow sidewalk that ran alongside the bushes and made his way closer to the dark bulk of Barnes, his feet not making a sound on the walk.

  When he was about fifteen feet away, he guessed he was close enough. “All right, Barnes,” he said, leveling his pistol. “Drop the rifle. I’ve got you covered.”

  Before he even had time to wonder how many times he’d heard Audie Murphy say those lines, the church building fell on him.

  Chapter 17

  It wasn’t the church building, but it might as well have been. It was Little Barnes, as Rhodes realized when he came to while Barnes was dragging him over the threshold of the church door. Barnes could probably have carried him, but he needed one hand to hold the .22 and Rhodes’s pistol.

  There were no lights on in the church building, and Rhodes could see only the dim shapes of the rows of pews, the altar rail, and the pulpit when Barnes let go of him. Rhodes was lying on the narrow strip of carpet between the two banks of pews, and Barnes was standing over him.

  Rhodes thought of saying something like, “You’ll never get away with this,” but he thought better of it.

  Barnes was walking toward the altar when Rhodes sat up and rubbed his head. He didn’t know what Barnes had hit him with, but it had been hard. There was a knot on the left side of Rhodes’s head, and when he touched it a streak of pain went through his skull as if someone had driven a
knife in it.

  He must have groaned, because Barnes walked back to him. “You and me need to get out of here,” Barnes said.

  Rhodes wondered if Ruth Grady had any idea of what had happened or it she was still waiting for him to do something. He didn’t say anything to Barnes. His head hurt too bad.

  “Or we could stay for a while,” Barnes said. “Don’t matter much to me. You decide.”

  Rhodes still didn’t say anything.

  Barnes casually pointed the pistol at Rhodes. “I said, ‘You decide.’ ”

  Rhodes decided.

  He threw himself at Barnes’s legs. The fact that he was sitting down made it hard to get any momentum, but he had enough to throw Barnes off balance. By grabbing at one of Barnes’s ankles, he managed to topple him.

  As Barnes fell the pistol went off. Rhodes heard the tinkling of glass as the bullet passed through one of the chandeliers. He wondered if a gun had ever been fired in a church before, but he didn’t have much time to think about it.

  Barnes was cursing and trying to sit up, and Rhodes was trying to get on top of him and prevent it. Rhodes was also trying to get his hands on his pistol; he seemed to lose it too often.

  There was very little room to struggle in the aisle of the church. Rhodes could feel Barnes’s breath on his face as the big man twitched under him, and then he could feel himself being slowly twisted to the side against the edge of the pews. He knew that Barnes could crush the breath out of him with very little effort.

  Then his hands grasped the pistol in Barnes’s fingers. He got both hands on it and pulled as hard as he could. It fired again, the sound nearly deafening him. This time the slug thunked into the wall at the other end of the pew row.

  Maybe I’ll get a single action next time, Rhodes thought.

  The pistol came free in his hands. His head was hurting, and Barnes was mashing him against the pews. He couldn’t remember how many times the pistol had been fired. He couldn’t remember where Barnes’s rifle was, or even when he’d seen it last. He was blacking out.

  Then there was another shot.