by Bill Crider
“He thought a personal visit would be better.”
“Then why didn’t he come by himself?”
“The Web site’s not for him or the precinct, just the sheriff’s department. He thought I’d be a better representative than he would.”
This time, Muller didn’t ask a question. She just looked at Rhodes in a way that let him know the department would have been better off sending someone considerably spiffier.
“What can I tell him?” Rhodes said.
“You can tell him that it takes time to create a professional Web site. You can tell him that I’m working on it. You can tell him that he should come by himself if he wants answers to his questions.”
She stopped. Rhodes waited. She kept quiet.
“Fine,” he said after a couple of seconds. “But what about a date when it might be ready? Can I give him a date?”
“He wouldn’t know what a date was if it bit him in the butt,” Muller said. “Are you through now?”
Rhodes supposed that he was. He thanked her for her time and drove to the jail.
Chapter 8
WHEN RHODES PARKED IN FRONT OF THE JAIL, THE FIRST THING he saw was the black Infiniti. He wondered what Randy Lawless would be doing there, and he supposed there was only one way to find out. He got out of the big Ford and went inside.
“Good evening, Sheriff,” Lawless said when Rhodes came through the door. “You’re looking sharp tonight.”
Rhodes wasn’t fond of sarcasm. “So are you,” he said, but in Lawless’s case, it was true.
Lawless sat in one of the visitors’ chairs, looking cool, calm, and relaxed. He wore a dark blue suit with a clean white shirt and a striped tie that probably cost more than Rhodes’s whole outfit. For that matter, he probably spent more on aftershave every year than Rhodes spent on clothing.
“Mr. Lawless is here to talk to you about his client,” Hack said, grinning.
“What client would that be?” Rhodes asked.
Hack probably hoped that Lawless wouldn’t say. That way Rhodes would be forced to draw the information out of Hack, a process that could take a long time.
Lawless wasn’t in on the joke, however, and said, “Larry Crawford.”
Hack’s grin was replaced by a look of disappointment.
Rhodes crossed the room to his desk and sat down. “That’s interesting,” he said. “Why does Larry need a lawyer? Has he been engaging in any criminal activity? Maybe he’d like to come in and make a full confession.”
“No criminal activity,” Lawless said. “And not a confession. That’s not why I’m here.”
Hack jumped in before Lawless could go any further. “He’s here about the lawsuit Larry’s going to file.”
Rhodes was feeling lost, which he knew was exactly what Hack wanted. He said, “Lawsuit?”
“That’s right,” Lawless said. “He’s going to file more than one, I think, and we’d like to cooperate with you and Chief Parker in the investigations you’ll be doing on the explosion that destroyed Larry’s home.”
Rhodes understood exactly what Lawless was saying. More than that, he understood exactly what Lawless meant, which was that he’d want Rhodes and Parker to hand over the results of their investigations to him to use in his lawsuits, whatever those were. But there was more to it than that.
“You can get a police report,” Rhodes said. “Just like anybody else.”
“Of course,” Lawless said, smiling, and Rhodes knew he wasn’t going to say any more.
Rhodes looked at Hack, but the old dispatcher didn’t have anything to add this time. They both knew that Lawless hoped Rhodes would do all his work for him, or most of it. Then the lawyer could pay a few dollars for the police report, get his investigations done for next to nothing, and charge his client big bucks.
The only catch that Rhodes could see was that Crawford, as far as Rhodes knew, didn’t have big bucks. While natural-gas wells were being drilled all over the county, no gas had been found in the vicinity of Crawford’s property. And while the sales of the Crawfords’ homemade hooch might have been brisk, they almost certainly hadn’t made Crawford rich.
“Who’s paying you?” Rhodes asked. “I know Crawford can’t afford your rates.”
“I’m taking his case on a contingency basis,” Lawless said.
The conversation was getting as bad as one with Hack and Lawton. Rhodes still wasn’t clear about just what the lawsuit was all about. He said, “What case?”
Hack jumped in again. “Wrongful death.”
“Ah,” Rhodes said.
Now he knew what was going on. As Lawless might put it, he “should have known” sooner. He wondered, however, if Lawless knew what had happened to Terry Crawford. It didn’t seem likely, since Hack wasn’t the type to give out information freely, if at all, and even Hack didn’t know about the still. However, you never could tell what someone like Lawless might have been able to find out somehow or other.
“Crawford will be suing the manufacturer of the propane unit,” Lawless said. “If that’s what caused the explosion today, that is. And possibly the installers. Maybe the propane distributors, too, and the people who built the house, as well.”
It made sense to Rhodes, or it would have if he’d been a lawyer. Why leave anybody out? Manufacturers of propane tanks were supposed to make certain that their tanks and pipes were safe and didn’t leak. The people who installed the systems were to be sure of the same things. The distributor, or whoever provided the propane, was responsible for the odorant that gave the ordinarily odorless gas a distinctive smell so leaks could be detected before there was an accident, like an explosion.
“Are you representing Crawford in anything else?” Rhodes asked.
Lawless shifted in his chair. He looked a little less relaxed. “For instance?”
Hack perked up.
“I was just curious,” Rhodes said. “No charges have been filed or anything like that. When did Larry come to you about this lawsuit of his?”
Lawless didn’t answer for a couple of seconds. “That might be confidential.”
“I said that no charges have been filed. It’s just that I went looking for your client this afternoon and couldn’t find him.”
“What did you want with him?”
“I wanted to tell him that his brother was dead.”
“Oh,” Lawless said, relaxing again. “He already knows that.”
Rhodes looked at Hack, who shook his head.
“So what you’re implying,” Rhodes said, looking back at Lawless, “is that Larry believes his brother was killed in an explosion at their mobile home and that the explosion was caused by a faulty propane tank.”
“Not exactly,” Lawless said. “But that’s close enough for now. You have any problems with that?”
Hack grinned broadly. Rhodes knew how much it pleased him to have key information that another person didn’t.
“Why don’t you tell him, Hack,” Rhodes said.
“Well now, I don’t think it’s my place,” Hack said.
“Tell me what?” Lawless said.
Rhodes crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair. “About Terry Crawford.”
“What about Terry?”
“He’s dead,” Hack said, playing his favorite game. Rhodes was almost ashamed for helping him, but not ashamed enough to stop.
Lawless nodded. “We’ve established that.”
“Nope,” Hack said. “You’re overlookin’ one little thing.”
“What?”
“The body.”
“Oh, of course. Larry told me that the body hadn’t been found yet. He’s sure it will be once the fire department does a full investigation. Terry was in the mobile home when Larry left.”
“He ain’t there now,” Hack said.
That got Lawless’s attention. “He’s not?”
“Nope. He’s here in town.”
“In town?” Lawless was clearly puzzled. “I thought you said he was dead. Are you tell
ing me he’s alive?”
Rhodes smiled. He didn’t like it when Hack played this game with him, but he enjoyed seeing Lawless squirm a little. He knew it was wrong, but he couldn’t help himself.
“Yes and no,” Hack said. “Yes, he’s in town, and no, he’s not alive.”
Lawless had never gotten flustered in court, or if he had, Rhodes hadn’t heard about it. He was, however, getting a little flustered now.
“So the fire department’s already found the body?”
“Nope,” Hack said.
As Rhodes knew all too well, Hack could have gone on like that for hours. It was too bad that Lawton wasn’t there to enjoy it and help out.
“Dammmit,” Lawless said, moving to the edge of the chair and leaning forward. “Can’t you ever just say what you mean?”
Rhodes thought that was a fine comment for a lawyer to make, and he flashed back yet again to his high school English class, remembering what his teacher had said about irony.
“I always say what I mean,” Hack said. “That’s what I’ve been doing’.”
Rhodes decided that he’d better interrupt before things got any worse.
“What Hack’s telling you in his own roundabout way,” Rhodes said, “is that Terry’s dead all right, but he didn’t die in the explosion of the mobile home.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I found his body. You might still have a wrongful death suit, though.”
“And I hope you’re going to tell me why.”
“Because Terry Crawford was murdered,” Rhodes said.
Lawless hadn’t stayed around for long after Rhodes’s revelation. Although Rhodes had tried to get him to talk about when Crawford had engaged him and what time he’d left Lawless’s office, the lawyer was vague and unhelpful.
Rhodes had also asked where Crawford was staying, but Lawless claimed not to know that, either.
“Did he mention his cousin?” Rhodes asked. “Jamey Hamilton?”
“He may have,” Lawless said. “I don’t remember.”
Rhodes didn’t quite believe that. “The next time you see your client, you tell him I want to talk to him.”
“I don’t know when that might be,” Lawless said. “We don’t have a meeting set up.”
“You could give him a call.”
“I don’t have his cell number.”
Rhodes didn’t believe that, either, but he let Lawless leave without pushing him too far. When the lawyer was gone, Hack started in on Rhodes.
“What were you asking all those questions for?” he said. “And why’re you all scuffed up like you are? You been playin’ in a sandpile? Where’s Ruth? Is she all right?”
Rhodes would have answered him, but just then Lawton came in from the cell block.
“What we need,” Lawton said, “is a new jail, one of them modern ones where you can watch all the inmates on TV and don’t have to go check on ’em all the time.” He looked at Rhodes. “You been in a fight?”
“He won’t tell me,” Hack said. “He’s keepin’ it all to himself.”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Rhodes said. “Just as soon as I get all that whiskey out of the county car.”
“Whiskey?” Hack said.
“What whiskey?” Lawton asked.
Rhodes just smiled.
Chapter 9
LAWTON HELPED RHODES PUT THE ’SHINE IN THE EVIDENCE room. Hack had to stay at his desk and answer the calls. Rhodes could tell that it was killing them not to ask any more questions, but they managed to keep quiet, because Rhodes had threatened not to tell them a thing if they didn’t.
When the evidence was secured and labeled, Rhodes sat down at his desk and went through the whole thing for them.
“So the Crawford boys were runnin’ ’shine,” Hack said. “I bet they had plenty of customers who’ll be gettin’ mighty nervous about now.”
“We won’t be arresting anybody on the Crawfords’ say-so,” Rhodes told him. “So nobody has anything to be nervous about—yet. Buying the booze isn’t the problem unless you’re caught in the act. Making it’s the problem. But not ours.”
“You gonna call in the TABC?”
The TABC was the Texas Alcoholic Beverages Commission, the agency assigned to deal with bootlegging, among other things, which included prostitution, gambling, weapons, and narcotics. They’d have been involved in the meth lab if the Crawfords had been running one.
“I’ll call them tomorrow,” Rhodes said.
“You didn’t mention any whiskey to Lawless.”
“Son of a gun. I must have forgotten.”
“Yeah,” Hack said. “I noticed your memory’s gettin’ bad lately. Won’t the TABC be ticked that you brought in the ’shine?”
“Can’t help it if they are,” Rhodes said. “It’s evidence, and somebody might have taken it off.”
“Somebody’s nervous all right,” Lawton said. “Prob‘ly lookin’ for that booze. Else they wouldn’t be tryin’ to run you and Ruth down.”
“We need to find out who owns that truck,” Rhodes said to Hack. “When Buddy comes in tomorrow, you tell him to talk to the Dodge dealers in all the counties around here and see if any of them remember that brush guard. Anyway, if that truck’s as old as it looked to me, that’s not a dealer-installed item.”
“Most likely somebody installed that himself,” Hack said. “On an old truck like that, it’s prob’ly a custom job.”
“Maybe got a welder to do it,” Lawton added.
“Have Buddy check around with welders, too, then.”
Rhodes didn’t think a pickup that distinctive could be hidden easily, not with a bullet hole through the windshield, but all the driver would have to do would be to remove the brush guard and go to a city like Houston and get the windshield replaced. So the best bet would be to find someone who remembered it and might know who owned it. Which reminded Rhodes to tell Hack to send a deputy to the courthouse first thing in the morning and find out what kind of vehicles were registered in Jamey Hamilton’s name.
The truck might not have been registered at all, but there was a chance the license plate had been removed. Rhodes wanted to be sure.
“I’ll send Buddy,” Hack said.
“You’d better have him check on stolen vehicles, too,” Rhodes said.
“You got any ideas who killed Terry?” Hack said after he wrote himself a note or two.
“Not yet.”
“What about Ruth? She gonna be all right?”
Hack hadn’t been fond of Ruth when she’d first come to work in the department. He hadn’t liked the idea of a woman deputy around the jail. Ruth had won him over quickly, however, and now they were friends..
“She’ll be fine. It’s just a sprained wrist.”
“Could be broke,” Lawton said. “Hard to tell sometimes.”
“She’ll get it taken care of. They’ll take X-rays if there’s any question. She’ll be in tomorrow. You tell her to fingerprint those whiskey jars. We might get lucky.”
“I’ll tell her,” Hack said. “What about you? You okay?”
“Nothing wrong with me that a bath and something to eat won’t take care of.”
“You better get on home, then. You got a big day comin’ up tomorrow.”
“I don’t think I’ll have time for anything tomorrow,” Rhodes said. “I have a murder investigation going on.”
“Be good publicity for the book,” Lawton said.
“I don’t think Terry would look at it that way.”
“Prob’ly not,” Hack said.
As Rhodes drove home, he thought about the big day Hack had mentioned. A few years earlier, Jan and Claudia, a couple of women from out of town, had attended a writers’ workshop that had been held on the old college campus out at Obert. They’d intended to write a true-crime book or something of the sort, and they’d come back to the county to do some research while Rhodes was working on another case.
It turned out that the material they
collected was better suited to a novel, or maybe they were better suited to writing fiction than fact. At any rate, they’d written a novel about, as they put it, “a handsome crime-busting sherrif,” and it had been accepted and published. Jan and Claudia would be at the Clearview Wal-Mart the next day for their first book signing, and they’d asked Rhodes to be there, too.
Claudia and Jan were also the two “outside agitators” that Rhodes had thought of when he was talking to Judge Parry. When they’d heard about the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy, they’d applied, even though they didn’t live in the county. Rhodes had lobbied to get them in, even though there were some residents who then had to be left off the list to accommodate them.
Parry hadn’t been happy about that, but Rhodes had persuaded him it was a good idea. He’d argued that if the book was a success, the two women might write others and get the county some favorable national press.
All that had been before Rhodes had read the book. Actually, he still hadn’t read it, but he’d read the manuscript. The book was called Blood Fever, and sure enough, there was a handsome crime-busting sheriff.
But the character was nothing like Rhodes. His name was nothing so ordinary as Dan. It was Sage Barton. Sage was a bachelor who got up at five o’clock in the morning for a breakfast of Cheerios and fruit. He then spent some quality time with his cat, a black neutered tom named Satan, before he went out and jogged four miles through the quiet streets of the small town where he lived.
After that, and over the course of three hundred or so pages, Sage caught a bank robber after a running gun battle, discovered that a serial killer was at work in the county, had a steamy romance with a beautiful FBI profiler named Jennifer, uncovered the serial killer’s grisly secret, was captured, then rescued by the beautiful profiler, who was then nabbed by the killer, who fled with her to his underground lair, where, after a car chase that had covered several chapters, Sage Barton cornered the killer for a final battle that involved fists, knives, feet, teeth, and, unless Rhodes was misremembering, a pair of nunchucks.
According to Jan and Claudia, the sheriff was based on Rhodes and the book on their experiences in Blacklin County. Rhodes had a little trouble seeing the similarities. He did, he had to admit, have a cat, but that was about it. And he’d acquired the cat only recently. Jan and Claudia had never seen it and hadn’t even known about it when they were writing the book.