Of All Sad Words

by Bill Crider

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  ALSO BY BILL CRIDER

  Copyright Page

  To all the gang at Dooley’s Pub

  Chapter 1

  WHEN HE WAS IN HIGH SCHOOL, SHERIFF DAN RHODES HAD BEEN compelled to memorize poetry. Unfortunately, very little of it had stuck with him over the years since. He had a vague recollection of a mountaineer whose fist was a knotty hammer, and he recalled that lives of great men all remind us of something or other, but that was about it. In fact, the only rhyming lines he remembered were a couple that went “of all sad words of tongue or pen / The saddest are these: ‘It might have been!’”

  Rhodes, having had those words stuck in his head for a large part of his life, might even have believed them at one time. Now, however, he was convinced that they were baloney. The saddest words of all were “It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  Not that the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy hadn’t been a good idea in some ways. It created a lot of interest, it had informed people about the sheriff’s department and county government, and it had generated some nice publicity for the department.

  But things had gotten out of hand.

  “You’ve created a bunch of vigilantes is what you’ve done,” Jack Parry told Rhodes.

  Parry was the county judge. He had a fringe of white hair around his head and a round pink face that was always shaved close. If he’d had a beard, a red suit, and some granny glasses, he’d have looked like Santa Claus. Sometimes he was almost as cheerful as old Santa, but this wasn’t one of those times.

  He didn’t dress like Santa, either. He wore a navy blue suit, a white shirt, and a blue-and-red-striped tie. He had on some kind of fancy shaving lotion that Rhodes, being an Aqua Velva man, couldn’t identify.

  “I think you’re wrong,” Rhodes told him. “We don’t have any vigilantes.”

  “I’m the county judge. I’m never wrong. Well, hardly ever. I made the mistake of speaking to that academy of yours. I should have stayed home and watched the Astros game.”

  “They lost,” Rhodes said.

  “That was three weeks ago. How can you remember?”

  “They lose a lot.”

  Parry shook his head. “I know it. I don’t even know why I watch them. But even if they’d lost by ten runs, it would have been better than standing in front of those wild-eyed radicals you brought together.”

  Rhodes and Parry were sitting in Parry’s chambers, located in a big corner room of the county courthouse. Rhodes also had an office in the courthouse, but his was sparsely furnished and seldom used. If the cleaning staff hadn’t visited it regularly, it would have had cobwebs hanging from the light fixture.

  Parry, however, had an oak desk with a leather top, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with what Rhodes assumed were law books and commentaries, comfortable leather chairs for his visitors, and even a little refrigerator. Rhodes had never seen what was kept in the refrigerator. He sometimes wondered if there might be a Dr Pepper or two.

  “You think Randy Lawless is a wild-eyed radical?” Rhodes said.

  Lawless was a lawyer, probably the most prosperous one in Blacklin County. He looked more like a Republican legislator, which he had been for a couple of terms, than any wild-eyed radical Rhodes could imagine, which is why he’d offered Lawless as an example.

  “Not him,” Parry said. He paused and leaned back in his chair. “He’s too busy making money on his court cases to cause any trouble for the county, unless maybe it’s for you when he defends somebody you’ve arrested. Come to think of it, though, he does drive an Infiniti. That’s pretty radical for around here.”

  Rhodes could think of at least one case in the not too distant past in which Lawless had defended a client against a murder charge, but that was his job. Rhodes didn’t hold it against him.

  “What about Max Schwartz?” Rhodes said.

  “You’re getting warmer.”

  Schwartz was one of two newcomers to the county who’d attended the academy. He’d arrived in Clearview about ten months earlier, behind the wheel of a red Chrysler convertible, with his blond wife at his side and a big dog, a black Lab, in the backseat.

  Schwartz claimed that he’d left his law practice in Kentucky because of burnout and that he’d started driving, until he’d found a small town that appealed to him and had a business opportunity that he couldn’t pass up. Why he thought Clearview needed a music store was anybody’s guess, but he’d rented a building in the downtown area, such as it was, and opened up to as much fanfare as the chamber of commerce could provide. If you wanted to buy a guitar or a clarinet, Schwartz was your man. He’d already joined the Lions Club, and his wife worked with the town’s newly created amateur theatrical group, the Clearview Players.

  “His convertible’s red,” Rhodes said. “He could be a Communist.”

  “Now you’re just messing with me,” Parry said. “Anyway, there aren’t any more Communists since the Berlin Wall got knocked down. You know who I’m talking about.”

  Rhodes knew all right. Parry’s wild-eyed radical was the other newcomer, Dr. C. P. Benton. Benton was chairman of the math department at the community college branch that had opened in temporary quarters in downtown Clearview several years ago. The enrollment had grown so much that there was now an actual campus on one of the highways outside of town. Many of the instructors had homes in or around Clearview now, instead of commuting into town for their classes, and Benton was one of them.

  Though he was a member of the community, he didn’t look like anybody else in town. What hair he had was often in wild disarray, he’d been seen carrying a guitar case, and he referred to his rented house as the “Casa de Math.” He didn’t mow his lawn much, either. He even had a beard—neatly trimmed, but still a beard. Clearly, he wasn’t a man to be trusted.

  “He claims he moved here because of a broken heart,” Rhodes said.

  Parry nodded. “He’s mooning after some woman down in a little town called Hughes, around Houston. Sally something or other. They taught at the community college down there.”

  “You know more about him than I do,” Rhodes said, but he knew a few other things. So did Parry, and Rhodes figured he’d get around to mentioning them.

  Sure enough, Parry said, “He’s been coming to the commissioner’s court meetings.”

  The commissioner’s court had nothing to do with the dispensing of justice, even though it was presided over by the county judge. It was the county’s governing body, and each of the county’s precincts elected a commissioner to sit on it. Among other things, it set the tax rates and saw to the building and maintenance of county roads and bridges, as well as all other county facilities, including the jail. The court’s meetings were open to the public, but Parry wasn’t happy when too many questions got asked. He and the commissioners were used to having things pretty much their own way.

 
“Dr. Benton’s just interested in being a part of the community,” Rhodes said. “That’s why he wanted to be in the academy.”

  “He’s nosy,” Parry said, dismissing all other motives. “And he’s a complainer. Won’t mow his lawn, but he’s worried about the ditches.”

  Benton lived on a county road a couple of miles from the college. Rhodes knew he’d complained a couple of times about the maintenance of the ditches along the road, requesting that they be mowed more regularly.

  “You won’t have to worry about his lawn, and he won’t have to worry about the ditches if it doesn’t rain soon,” Rhodes said. “The lawn and the weeds will all be dead.”

  “He’s starting to ask about appraisal caps,” Parry said. “He’s a troublemaker.”

  Anybody who both complained about road maintenance and asked about appraisal caps was a troublemaker in Parry’s book, even if citizens were more or less expected to do those things.

  “Mikey Burns agrees with me,” Parry added.

  Burns, whose name was Michael, was the commissioner in Benton’s district. According to county legend, Burns had been labeled “Mikey” by his older brother because he’d eat anything, like some kid in an old TV commercial. His brother claimed Mikey would eat worms and dirt and said that he’d once eaten part of an old bicycle tire. Rhodes was willing to believe the first two, but he wasn’t so sure about the tire.

  “I called down to Hughes,” Parry continued. “Talked to some cop down there.” He looked out the window, thinking. “Weems. That’s the cop’s name. He says Benton got involved in a couple of murders down there.”

  Rhodes had heard about that, too. Benton had told the academy class about it one evening.

  “If by ‘involved’ you mean he chased down a killer, you’re right.”

  Parry snorted. He’s pretty good at it, Rhodes thought.

  “He was just in the right place at the right time. That Sally woman did most of the solving, and she nearly got herself killed. Benton was more of a hindrance than anything else. Damned vigilantes, both of them.”

  Rhodes shrugged. None of what Parry had to say bothered him. Of course, Parry hadn’t even gotten around to the outside agitators yet.

  “I think Benton’s all right,” Rhodes said. “A little weird, maybe, but he’s not going to destroy the county government. He might even be a radical, but he’s not wild-eyed.”

  Parry leaned forward, resting his elbows on the leather desktop, and looked at Rhodes.

  “You just wait,” Parry said. “When he starts trying to do your job for you, you’ll change your tune. I know he’s been complaining to you, too.”

  Down the road from Benton’s house, around a curve and back off in some woods, there was a mobile home that Benton suspected of being a meth lab. He’d called the sheriff’s department a couple of times and asked that someone investigate.

  Rhodes thought Benton could be right. The two men who lived in the mobile home were twin brothers, Larry and Terry Crawford. They both had records, though they’d never been known to traffic in drugs. And while meth dealers were usually consumers of their own product, the Crawfords didn’t show any of the usual signs of deterioration that users did.

  Ruth Grady, one of the deputies, got the assignment of checking out the Crawfords’ activities, but she hadn’t been able to do much so far. To get to the mobile home, she would have had to go through a gate that was chained shut. Without any evidence other than Benton’s complaints, there was no way she could have gotten a search warrant, so she’d stopped at the gate.

  “Dr. Benton doesn’t want to do my job for me,” Rhodes told Parry. “He might want a thing or two investigated, and that’s why the academy was good for him. We explain to people the way the county government works, we give them a short course in how the law’s enforced, and we take them on a tour of the jail. We don’t teach them to be vigilantes.”

  “You didn’t mention the ride-along,” Parry said.

  People who signed up for the academy were allowed to ride with one of the deputies for a shift or two if they requested it. Benton had asked for a ride with Ruth Grady. Rhodes thought maybe Benton liked her.

  “The ride-along’s part of learning about enforcement,” Rhodes said.

  “Then there’s the crime-scene investigation. You forget about that?”

  “Enforcement,” Rhodes said. “Everybody loves crime-scene investigation.”

  “Just like on TV,” Parry said, and they both had a laugh. Blacklin County wasn’t quite in the same league with the TV cops on the various CSI shows.

  “What about the shooting range?” Parry said.

  For years, the county officers had driven elsewhere to qualify on the shooting range, and some of the academy members had been invited to see what it was like.

  “Hardly anybody actually fired a sidearm,” Rhodes said.

  “Lawless did. Schwartz did.”

  Parry has spies everywhere, Rhodes thought.

  “Lawyers with guns,” Parry said, shaking his head. “Not a good combination.”

  An old song lyric popped into Rhodes’s head: “Send lawyers, guns and money.”

  “They didn’t shoot anybody,” he said. “They were pretty good on the range, though.”

  “Probably have concealed-carry permits,” Parry said. “Next time there’s a stickup, they’ll do your job for you.”

  Rhodes hadn’t heard anybody say stickup in a long time.

  “You’ll see,” Parry went on. “This isn’t going to turn out well.”

  Rhodes thought he was wrong, but he didn’t want to argue anymore. He’d been called in, he’d appeared, and Parry had had his say. Rhodes had answered as best he could, and now he was ready to leave, unless Parry had a joke for him. The judge was fond of jokes when he was in a better mood.

  If he had a joke this time, he didn’t have time to tell it. The telephone on his desk rang. It was an old-fashioned black one, the kind you hardly ever saw. Rhodes wondered why Parry didn’t have a newer model. Maybe he thought he was saving money for the county.

  “I told Louise not to interrupt us,” Parry said, but he picked up the phone and answered it. He listened for a second and handed the phone to Rhodes. “It’s for you.”

  Rhodes took the phone and said hello.

  “Sheriff?”

  It was Hack Jensen, the dispatcher.

  “It’s me, Hack. Go ahead.”

  “You better get out to County Road Four eighty-six where it crosses the creek,” Hack said. “There’s been an accident.”

  “What happened?”

  “Trailer house blew up,” Hack said.

  C. P. Benton lived on County Road 486. The mobile home he’d complained about was near the creek.

  “The Crawford brothers,” Rhodes said.

  “Yep.”

  Rhodes told Hack he’d get started, then handed the phone back to Parry.

  “Trouble?” Parry said, hanging up the phone.

  Rhodes told him.

  “See what I mean?” Parry said. “Vigilantes. That’s what that academy was good for.”

  At least he never got around to the outside agitators, Rhodes thought.

  Chapter 2

  WHEN RHODES ARRIVED AT THE OPEN GATE ACROSS THE ROAD leading to the Crawfords’ mobile home, he stopped to look at the chain that had held it. Sure enough, the chain hung loose on the gatepost. It had been cut. The fire department had bolt cutters on all three trucks.

  Rhodes got back in the county car, a big white Ford Crown Victoria, and drove up the winding dirt road through some scrappy elm and pecan trees to where the double-wide sat on top of a little hill.

  Or where it had been sitting. There wasn’t much left of it now. Pieces of it lay strewn everywhere. Insulation littered the ground amid piles of burned and twisted metal. Rhodes saw part of a smoldering sofa, with a commode sitting on top of it. A TV set lay not far away. The roof was upside down on top of an old Ford that had been parked twenty yards away.

 
; Two fire trucks, an ambulance, and several cars were parked along the road. At least I beat the newspaper, Rhodes thought, but when he looked in his rearview mirror, he saw Jennifer Loam’s little car chugging up the hill behind him. He hadn’t beaten her by much.

  Rhodes parked and got out of the county car. People stood around, looking at the damage and talking things over while several firemen pumped water from the tank truck onto the smoking remains of the mobile home and onto the dead, dry grass of the field nearby.

  Luckily, most of the area around the house had been nothing but hard-packed dirt, so the fire hadn’t spread and burned over the entire hill.

  Rhodes took a deep breath of air. He smelled smoke and dampness and wet dirt, but nothing with the powerful tang of cat urine, which would have been a sure sign that a meth lab had exploded while someone was mixing up the drug.

  Not so long ago, methamphetamine had been almost unknown in Blacklin County, but it had spread through the rural areas of East Texas like a plague.

  It was a plague, Rhodes supposed, and it had become a serious problem in Blacklin County, just like it was in so many others. Anybody could cook it up with ingredients they’d bought at Wal-Mart, using a recipe they’d looked up on the Internet. As often as not, they got careless and blew up an old house or a mobile home.

  Sometimes they survived. Sometimes they didn’t.

  “What happened, Sheriff?” Jennifer Loam said, walking up beside him.

  Loam was a reporter for the Clearview Herald. She held her little digital recorder, and Rhodes knew it was turned on. She was short, blond, and tough, a good reporter, probably better than Clearview deserved. Rhodes liked her, but he wished she wouldn’t turn up every time something happened.

  “I’d say there was an explosion,” he told her.

  She looked around. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”

  “That’s why I’m a successful lawman.”

  One of the cars parked nearby was a gray Saturn. There were more Saturns in Clearview than there were Infinitis, but not many. Rhodes saw C. P. Benton talking to Ruth Grady.

  Benton looked, as he did every time Rhodes saw him, a little disheveled. He wore an old black hat, and his gray pants were baggy. His paisley shirt, which looked like it had been new about the time the Beatles broke up, wasn’t tucked in, but it didn’t quite manage to conceal the bulge of his stomach.