by Bill Crider
They might have used some of their product, Rhodes thought, and they probably had, but drinking whiskey wouldn’t be nearly as detectable at a glance as if they’d been hitting the crystal.
“How does it work?” Ruth asked. “The still, I mean.”
“You mix corn chops and sugar in water and let it rot for a while. That gives you the sour mash that you run through the still. You can add some ingredients if you want to—apples, oak chips, potatoes, whatever. I hear that some people used to add Dr Pepper.”
“You might like that,” Ruth said.
“I prefer my Dr Pepper straight. Anyway, after that, you cure it out in charred oak barrels if you’re going for the best brew you can make. Otherwise, you just start selling it. I figure the Crawfords were going for the good stuff.”
“It doesn’t look as if they’ve fired the thing up recently,” Ruth said.
“Probably not since the creek’s been low,” Rhodes replied. “Unless they got the water from somewhere else.”
Ruth looked at the still for a couple of seconds. “People brew beer at home, and that’s legal. Why not whiskey?”
“Taxes,” Rhodes said. “It’s always been about taxes. And then there’s the other little problem.”
“What problem?”
“Home brew can kill you, or at least make you pretty sick, if there’s a problem with it. Sometimes the first and last parts of a batch will be toxic.”
“Didn’t the federal agents break these things up with axes back in the old days?”
“Revenuers,” Rhodes said. “That’s what they were called. They did use axes sometimes.”
“Maybe we’d better get us a couple.”
“We’ll leave it for the time being. The state boys will want to see it. Nobody’s going to use it now, and it’ll be evidence against Larry Crawford.”
“Better not leave it too long. With the price of copper these days, it’s probably worth more than the whiskey. Somebody’s likely to come carry it off.”
She had a point. Lately, there had been a whole series of thefts involving copper: coils stolen from air conditioners, wiring stripped out of vacant houses, water pipes from construction sites. Most of the thefts were related to drugs, primarily meth. People needed quick cash, and copper was a way to get it. No doubt most of the Crawfords’ customers knew approximately where the still was located.
“Have you taken pictures?”
“Yes. I did that when I found it.”
“Good,” Rhodes said. “We’ll be sure to padlock the gate when we leave. That’ll have to do.”
Ruth nodded. “What about Larry Crawford? Are you going to arrest him?”
“I am if I can find him,” Rhodes said. “He’s disappeared.”
He told Ruth about his visit to Obert and to Jamey Hamilton’s house.
“So he doesn’t even know his brother’s dead,” Ruth said.
“That’s right. I wanted to let him know, but I couldn’t locate him.”
For some reason, Rhodes thought of Thunder Road again. In the movie, the law didn’t get the moonshiners because the devil got them first, or so the song said. Somebody had already gotten Terry—the devil, or vigilantes, or someone. Rhodes didn’t much blame Larry for hiding.
“He’s got to be around the county somewhere,” Ruth said.
“We’ll see,” Rhodes replied. “It’s getting late. We’d better get back to town. You need to write up your report.”
They started out of the woods. As soon as they got to the edge of the trees, Rhodes heard the sound of an engine.
Ruth heard it, too, and they both stopped.
“Maybe you should have padlocked that gate sooner,” Ruth said.
If he’d done that, as Ruth well knew, they’d both have needed a key to the padlock that Chief Parker had given Rhodes, and Rhodes had only one. Parker had kept the other.
“We’ll just have to tell whoever it is to leave,” Rhodes said. He started up the hill.
He’d gone about thirty yards when he saw a black pickup crest the hill and start down toward him. For a second or two, Rhodes didn’t think anything of it. He assumed the driver would see him, the truck would stop, and he’d find out what was going on.
It didn’t work out like that. The truck’s engine roared, and its big tires churned up the dust and weeds, throwing them in the air behind it. It picked up speed. Grasshoppers flew up in front of it like popping corn, and the driver aimed the bumper right at Rhodes.
A brush guard was mounted in front of the bumper. It was a cast-iron monstrosity supposedly designed to shove brush aside and protect the front of the truck.
Rhodes thought it would also do a fine job of protecting the truck from any unwary sheriff who happened to be in the way. It would shove him aside like a pesky mesquite.
Unlike the pesky mesquite, which would bounce right back, Rhodes would probably suffer several breaks, bumps, and bruises; and he wouldn’t be bouncing back quickly, if he bounced at all.
Rhodes waved his arms to get the driver’s attention. The truck didn’t change course. Apparently, Rhodes already had the driver’s attention, and that was too bad for Rhodes.
The setting sun glared off the truck’s windshield, so Rhodes couldn’t see the driver. The front license plate was missing. Lots of people who lived outside of town kept old trucks around to use on their property, and since they never took them anywhere else, they didn’t bother to register them. The truck was old all right—maybe twenty years old, maybe more than that. The only identifier Rhodes could see on this one was the ram’s head sitting on the front of the hood, so the truck was a Dodge.
Rhodes didn’t like to carry a sidearm. He thought that if he carried one, he’d be tempted to use it. Nevertheless, he was armed. He’d tried several kinds of holsters over the years, and he’d never been satisfied with any of them. He was currently using an ankle holster, and by the time he bent down, pulled up his pants, and pulled out the pistol, he’d either be bumped aside or flattened.
Ruth was behind him, and she had a pistol in a belt holster. Rhodes decided to get out of her way and let her stop the truck. As for him, he was going to run.
Rhodes didn’t like to run even in the best of conditions. He especially didn’t like to run through weeds and mesquite bushes when it was hot. And he liked it considerably less under these conditions, when a big black truck was chasing him.
As soon as he broke to the left, the truck swerved to follow. He ran ten or twelve yards. The mesquite thorns tore at him when he got too close to the bushes. They ripped his shirt and scraped his hands.
He stopped and turned around. The truck changed directions, too.
Rhodes glanced at Ruth Grady. She had a two-handed grip on her pistol and was ready to fire, but Rhodes kept getting in her way.
It wasn’t his fault. The driver was doing an admirable job of keeping Rhodes between her and the truck.
Rhodes did what he should have done to begin with. He turned and headed back to the trees.
Ruth snapped off a couple of shots when Rhodes passed her. He assumed she was shooting for the tires, but he didn’t hear them burst.
The truck was almost on her then, and she turned and followed Rhodes. He was going all out, but Ruth passed him handily.
He didn’t turn around to see where the truck was. He didn’t have to. He could tell by the sound of the engine that it was almost on top of him. He imagined he could feel the heat coming off the radiator.
The trees were right in front of him.
Rhodes jumped for them.
Chapter 7
RHODES FLEW BETWEEN AN ELM AND A PECAN TREE, HIT THE ground, rolled, and banged his head into the trunk of another elm. His nose hurt, and he smelled dirt and tasted grit.
The largest trees are plenty big enough to stop the truck, he thought as he lay there. At least he hoped they were. Maybe the driver would have sense enough to stop.
He didn’t. The crash splintered some of the thinner tree trunks, and
Rhodes heard them crack. He sat up to look for Ruth and saw that the truck was backing up to make another try at breaking through to him.
His head throbbed as he pulled up his pants leg and reached for the .38 in the ankle holster. He ripped the Velcro flap up and jerked the pistol free. He didn’t try to hit the truck’s tires, which he couldn’t see anyway. He fired at the windshield.
The first bullet whanged off the brush guard, but the second punched through the windshield, starring the glass.
The truck engine stopped roaring for a second. When it started again, the truck was rushing up the hill in reverse. Rhodes knew he couldn’t catch up with it, so he put his pistol back into the holster, smoothed down the flap, and looked around for Ruth.
She sat with her back against a tree trunk, holding her left wrist.
“I think I sprained it,” she said. “Who were those guys?”
Rhodes didn’t have any idea. “Whoever it was, they didn’t much like us.”
“Your nose is bleeding,” Ruth told him.
Rhodes wished that he, like C. P. Benton, carried a handkerchief. Since he didn’t, he wiped off his upper lip with the back of his hand. He felt dirt and grit on his face, and his nose was tender.
“Can you stand up?” he asked Ruth.
“It’s my wrist that hurts,” she said, getting to her feet. “And my pride, a little. I hated to run.”
Rhodes remembered his high school English class again and something about discretion being the better part of valor. Shakespeare, he thought, but not something he’d had to memorize. If he remembered it anyway, maybe he’d been a better student than he’d thought. His teacher would have been proud of him. If he was right, that is.
“I hate running, too,” he said, brushing off some of the dirt, dead leaves, and sticks that clung to his pants and shirt. “But sometimes it’s the best thing to do unless you want to get flattened by a truck.”
“I’d like to know who was driving and where he came from.”
Rhodes told her about the license plate.
“Attempted murder,” Ruth said. She brushed at her clothing with one hand. “Premeditated.”
“He might not have come here to kill us,” Rhodes said. “He could have been after the copper.”
“Or maybe he came for something else. We need to look around a little better.”
“What about your wrist?”
“I’ll be all right. Come on.”
Instead of leaving the woods, she started back through the trees, heading in the direction of the still. Rhodes wondered what she had in mind, and then it occurred to him that maybe the Crawford brothers hadn’t sold all their ’shine. Maybe some of it was hidden nearby.
That was Ruth’s idea, too. When they got to the still, she said, “I should have looked around here more carefully.”
“Finding the still was good enough. There wasn’t any reason to think there’d be anything else around.”
“Now there is,” Ruth said.
Rhodes knew her wrist must be hurting, but she didn’t mention it. She moved the mash barrels, using her good hand, and looked beneath them.
Rhodes checked the ground around the still. He found a place where the dirt was loose rather than packed and hard. He scraped at it with his foot. It didn’t take him long to uncover a board. He had a shovel in the county car, but he didn’t want to walk back up the hill and get it, so he kept on scraping with his foot until he’d uncovered the edges of several boards. A couple of crosspieces held them together.
Bending over, Rhodes took hold of the boards, then lifted them up. In the hole that he uncovered were five one-gallon jugs of what had to be moonshine.
“That’s what he was after,” Ruth said, standing beside Rhodes and looking down at the clear liquid in the bottles. “Maybe the copper, too.”
Rhodes wasn’t entirely convinced. He thought the driver might have been after him and Ruth. I’ll find out, he told himself.
“This Jamey Hamilton you mentioned,” Ruth said, “does he drive a truck?”
“I don’t know. We’ll have to check. Why? Do you think Crawford came back for the liquor?”
Ruth shrugged, then winced. “He could have. That wasn’t his truck, though.”
“You’d better go on back to town,” Rhodes said. “Stop by the ER and have somebody take a look at that wrist. You can write your report later, when you’re feeling better.”
“I’m fine. What are we going to do with this whiskey?”
“It’s evidence, so we’ll confiscate it. I’ll take it to the jail and put it in the evidence room. You go on by the hospital and then go home.”
“All right,” Ruth said.
After Ruth left, Rhodes walked around over the area where the black truck had driven to see if he could find a clue. He didn’t really think the license plate would have fallen off, though it would have cheered him up if it had. He just hoped he’d find something that would help him identify the truck.
He didn’t. He just got hotter and sweatier.
After awhile, he gave up and went to the county car. He drove down to the edge of the woods and loaded the whiskey in the trunk, doing his best not to smear any fingerprints that might be on the jars.
When he left the property, he chained the gate and put the padlock on the chain. If the driver of the black truck was after the whiskey or the still, he’d have to cut the fence to get back onto the place. That wouldn’t be a difficult job, and for that matter, he could just drive right through the gate with that brush guard on the front of the truck. Well, Rhodes thought, at least the gate, or even the fence, would slow him down some. Somehow, it wasn’t a very satisfying thought. The fire department had bolt cutters for chains, and the driver of the pickup could have them, too.
It was getting on toward evening, and Rhodes still hadn’t talked to Melanie Muller. He figured it might be a good idea to do that before he went back to the jail, so he drove by her house when he got to town.
Actually, she didn’t live in a house. She lived in what people liked to call “a manufactured home,” which, as far as Rhodes could see, was like a mobile home that you couldn’t run a set of wheels under and drive off the property. It was on the edge of town, on the road to Milsby, a little town that no longer existed in any meaningful sense. Mrs. Wilkie lived out that way, too.
The house had no garage, but a late-model tan Chevrolet sat on a short gravel driveway. Rhodes parked behind the Chevy, got out, and went to the door. To get to it, he had to climb a set of wooden steps that had been bought ready-made and shoved in front of the manufactured home. On either side of the steps were neat flower beds with a couple of rosebushes in each, but no roses were blooming.
His knock was answered by a short blond woman wearing a man’s work shirt and jeans. She had on a pair of half glasses, like the ones Rhodes used for reading, and she took them off and put them in her shirt pocket.
“Yeah?” she said.
“I’m Sheriff Dan Rhodes. I wanted to talk to you about the Web site you’re doing for our department.”
“I was just about to have supper.”
Rhodes wasn’t going to let her off that easily.
“Sorry to interrupt. I won’t keep you long.”
“Well, all right. Come on in. I was just going to have chili from a can anyway.”
That didn’t sound bad to Rhodes, who hadn’t had chili in a good while, from a can or otherwise. Ivy was trying to get him to eat healthy food, which was hard to get used to after years of baloney sandwiches. Healthy food just wasn’t as satisfying somehow. Rhodes cheated now and then, but when he did, he didn’t mention it to Ivy.
“With beans?” he asked.
Muller looked at him quizzically. “No, without. Why?”
“I like it with beans.”
“Real chili fans don’t eat beans, not with chili.”
“I know. It’s a personal failing.”
“That figures. Well, don’t just stand there. Come on inside.”
Muller moved back from the door and Rhodes went into a small living area with a couch, TV set, a low coffee table, and an easy chair. The coffee table was covered with computer magazines. A couple lay on the floor under it, and a couple more were in the easy chair.
Glancing through the doorway on the opposite side of the room, Rhodes saw a dining table and a refrigerator. On his right, another door opened into an office with a couple of computer desks, each holding a computer with a screen saver flickering. On the wall there was a big poster of Alvin and the Chipmunks. Alvin was in the middle, wearing a red baseball cap and a red sweater with a big yellow A on it. Simon and Theodore stood on either side of him. Rhodes didn’t know which was which. One of them was taller and wore glasses, but that was no help.
“Did you come here to talk or just to admire the artwork?” Muller said.
Rhodes turned to her. “I was wondering which one was Simon. I can never keep the chipmunks straight.”
“Simon’s the one with the glasses.”
“Thanks. Maybe I can remember that.”
Muller gave him a skeptical look, as if to say she doubted it. Rhodes thought she might ask him to sit down, but she didn’t.
“Get on with it,” she said.
Rhodes was beginning to see what Burns had meant when he’d said she was “difficult.”
“Mikey Burns wanted me to stop by and see what kind of progress you’re making on the Web site,” he said.
She looked him over, as if seeing him for the first time.
“You couldn’t have cleaned up first?”
Her gaze made Rhodes acutely conscious of the fact that he’d recently been rolling around in leaves and dirt and that he could probably use a good bath. He was beginning to wish he’d skipped the visit.
“I didn’t want to wait,” he said. “Mr. Burns wants a report tomorrow.”
“He couldn’t have called me?”
Rhodes recalled his high school English class again. His teacher was always asking questions that he didn’t have answers for. So he did what he’d done in high school. He made something up.