Too Late to Die dr-1

by Bill Crider

  Out of the corner of his eye, Rhodes saw Larry Bell start for Mrs. Barrett, so he went for Clinton and Barrett. The two men had also lost their footing and were rolling around in the chairs already knocked over by Barrett’s wife. Women were screaming and trying to get out of the way. Men were yelling and cursing; a couple of them tried to reach into the whirling mass that Barrett and Clinton, had become. One of them got a huge fist in his eye and fell aside. The other backed off and stepped aside for Rhodes.

  The two men rolled forward. The minister sat up and watched them dazedly. Rhodes tried to grab Clinton’s jacket, but his hand slipped. The men rolled up against the pile of dirt from the grave and somehow struggled to their feet. Clinton slammed Barrett into the Astroturf.

  Barrett fell against the carpet. Struggling to stand again, he pulled a section of it off the dirt it covered. When Clinton plowed into him, both men smacked into the wet earth. They pummeled each other, the dirt, and the air.

  Rhodes knew of only one thing to do, so he did it. He was wearing his.38 in a discreet holster at the back of his belt where it was covered by the coat to his suit. He pulled it out and fired it three times. It put an end to the fight, and it shocked everyone into a complete and utter silence. No one there had ever heard a pistol fired at a funeral before. Most of them would talk about this occasion for the rest of their lives.

  Rhodes looked at Barrett and Clinton. They were covered with mud and grass stains, red-faced and sweaty. He looked over at Mrs. Barrett. Larry Bell was holding her hand as she sat at the edge of the grave, one leg dangling over, her carefully pinned hair all disarranged around her face. The minister was up and going over to her.

  Rhodes considered Barrett carefully, arranging the puzzle pieces in his mind, trying to make them fit. “I guess you’re under arrest, Hod,” he said.

  Barrett was panting and breathing through his mouth.

  “You’d take the word of a crazy woman?” he asked. “You know she’s not right in the head. You can’t arrest me!”

  “I guess I have to, Hod. Everyone here heard her accuse you. It wouldn’t look right if I just let you go. We can just say I’m taking you in for questioning. Then we can talk to your wife after she’s calmed down some. If she wants to change her story, that’s fine. We’ll see what evidence she’s got against you. “ ‘

  “You’d damned sure better take him in, Sheriff,” Elmer Clinton said. “You don’t, and he’s a dead man.” Clinton was as winded as Barrett, but he sounded convincing. His eyes were narrowed and his voice was shaky with anger as well as fatigue.

  “The Whore of Babylon!” Mrs. Barrett shouted.

  Elmer Clinton’s shoulders tightened, and his hands formed claws. “Take that bitch, too.” he said.

  “Watch your language, Elmer,” Rhodes told him. “Have a little dignity at your wife’s funeral.” He turned toward Mrs. Barrett. “Come on, Hod,” he said.

  Larry Bell was patting Mrs. Barrett on the shoulder as Rhodes walked up. “Now, now, Mrs. Barrett,” he was saying. “Jeanne wasn’t no whore. I went to high school with that girl, known her ever since. She might of been wild at one time, but not no more.”

  The puzzle pieces shuffled themselves in Rhodes’s mind once more. He didn’t like the new arrangement any more than he’d liked the old one. “Can you get her home, Larry?” he asked.

  Bell helped her to her feet, his hand under her elbow. “Sure,” he said. “Be glad to.”

  “Thanks, Rhodes said. He led Barrett over to the county car and opened the back door. Barrett sighed and got in. Rhodes got in the front, started the car, and drove away. He looked in the rearview mirror. The mourners were beginning to head for their cars, the ones that weren’t still waving their hands and talking. The minister was making no effort to call them back. For all practical purposes, the funeral of Jeanne Clinton was over.

  Barrett had little to say on the way back to Clearview. It was only when they arrived at the jail that he began to talk. “You really going to arrest me?” he asked.

  “Sure enough,” Rhodes said. “But not for murder. Right now the charge will be more like ‘disturbing the peace.’ You were guilty of that, don’t you think.”

  “Me and a few others,” Barrett said.

  Rhodes pulled up in front of the jail, got out of the car, and let Barrett out. “If you’re innocent, you won’t be in but overnight,” Rhodes said “In fact, if you call a lawyer you can get out sooner. Be damned hard to find a lawyer in Clearview on Sunday afternoon, though.”

  “I won’t be needing a lawyer. And it won’t hurt me to spend the night here,” Barrett said. “The way Elmer’s feeling, I might be better off here than at home.”

  “Now you’re showing some sense,” Rhodes said. They went inside.

  After the formalities were taken care of, Lawton led Hod Barrett up to his cell.

  “Think him and Billy Joe’ll get along up there?” Hack asked.

  “I expect so,” Rhodes said. “Seen Johnny today?”

  “This is his day off,” Hack said. “He comes in sometimes, but not today. He hasn’t had much to say lately, to tell the truth. Why?”

  “Nothing much,” Rhodes said. “A few things have been bothering me, that’s all. I think I need to have a long talk with Mr. Sherman.

  “If I see him, I’ll tell him you’re looking for him,” Hack said.

  “You do that,” Rhodes said. “Meantime, I think I’ll go look for him myself.”

  Johnny Sherman wasn’t at home, however, and Rhodes went to his own house on the off chance that Kathy and Johnny had patched things up. Kathy was there, alone.

  “How was the funeral?” she asked when Rhodes entered. She was eating popcorn-the real thing, made at home, not some flavored stuff like the kind Rhodes had gotten in a big can at Christmas from one of his cousins.

  Rhodes took off his suit coat and hung it on a chair back. Then he scooped up a handful of the popcorn. “You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.” he said.

  “Try me,” she said severely. “Or no more popcorn.”

  Rhodes grabbed another handful and proceeded to give a slightly exaggerated but generally accurate account of the events at Jeanne Clinton’s funeral.

  “I know I shouldn’t laugh,” Kathy said, laughing. “I know it’s not really funny. And that poor Mrs. Barrett. Do you suppose that she has any real idea about her husband and whether he’s guilty?”

  Rhodes scraped the bottom of the popcorn bowl, getting a few of the unpopped kernels along with the good ones. “I thought she might, at first,” he said. “Then I got another idea that I want to check out. I’ll talk to her again tomorrow and see if she’s just batty or if she has some information that I can really use.”

  “Not to change the subject,” Kathy said, “but I’ve put out some steaks to thaw for supper, and there’s plenty for three. You could cook them on the grill, and we could ask Ivy Daniels to join us. I’ll bet she’d like to hear that story about the funeral.”

  Rhodes was hesitant. “I don’t know about that,” he said. “She’s too much of a lady to laugh about a funeral.”

  “I laughed,” Kathy pointed out.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” Rhodes said. “I just meant that, well, maybe we ought not to rush things with Ivy. I don’t want to seem too pushy, and. . uh. .” He couldn’t think of how to end his sentence.

  “You do like her, don’t you?” his daughter asked.

  “Well, of course, but. . I’m not really sure how she feels about me. After all, we’ve only seen each other a couple of times.”

  “I’ll tell you what,” Kathy said. “You get out of that monkey suit and find that apron you wear when you cook outside. I’ll do the calling. I won’t make her feel obligated. I can be very tactful when I try. If she turns me down, I can always call Mrs. Wilkie. I’ll bet she could get herself over here in a New York minute.”

  “You wouldn’t dare,” Rhodes said.

  “Don’t be too sure. Anyway, I’ll bet Ivy wil
l not only come over, she’ll also laugh at the story about the funeral.”

  “If she doesn’t laugh, will you do the dishes?”

  “I always do the dishes.”

  “And a good thing, too,” Rhodes said.

  He was right. It was a good thing, because Ivy not only came, she laughed. But that was all right with Rhodes. He liked a woman with a sense of humor.

  Chapter 14

  Rhodes didn’t even go by the jail the next morning. Sunday night was the quietest night of the week. It was almost impossible to get liquor or beer on a Sunday, so there were very few accidents or fights. Even the few burglars in the area seemed willing to take the day off. Too, he wanted to talk with Mrs. Barrett before questioning her husband. He doubted that a night in jail would do anything to soften Hod up, and if there was a chance that Mrs. Barrett could provide him with any solid information he wanted to get it.

  As he pulled into the Barrett drive, he once more marveled at the way things were kept. Such neatness, while undoubtedly commendable from most standpoints, was foreign to him. He got out of the car and knocked at the door.

  There was no answer. Rhodes waited about thirty seconds and knocked again. Still no answer. It was possible that Mrs. Barrett had taken some sort of medication after arriving at home. She had certainly been in a state that would seem to have called for something like that.

  Rhodes knocked for a third time, much more loudly than before, at the same time calling Mrs. Barrett’s name. When he still received no response, he opened the screen and tried the door knob. It didn’t move. The door was locked.

  Rhodes thought he might as well try the back door before disturbing the neighbors. He walked around the side of the house on the neatly trimmed lawn, hoping that he wasn’t displacing any of the carefully manicured blades of grass beneath his feet.

  The back yard was as meticulously cared for as the front. Rhodes walked to a small screened-in porch and opened the door. Then he stepped inside. There was a wooden door leading from the porch to the kitchen. The top half of the door had a window in it, but Rhodes didn’t try to peek past its curtains. He knocked loudly and called.

  No one answered, and Rhodes tried the knob. Locked. He peeked in the crack between the curtains. He could see very little, but what he could see was more than enough. He stepped back, took off his left shoe, and smashed out the window, after which he reached in and unlocked the door.

  Mrs. Barrett lay in the middle of her kitchen. There was a.30-.30 rifle on the floor beside her. Most of her head was gone. There was blood and other material on the ceiling and on the walls. Even a little on the stove, and of course on the floor.

  Rhodes looked around. No note was evident. He stepped carefully around the body and looked quickly through the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could spot.

  There was a wall phone in the bedroom. Rhodes picked it up and began making his calls.

  Once again it was afternoon when Rhodes got back to the jail. He felt that it was his job to tell Hod Barrett about his wife. In a way it was Rhodes’s fault that she was dead.

  Rhodes spoke briefly to Hack, filling him in. Then he went up to Barrett’s cell. Billy Joe was nearby, making not a sound. Barrett was making enough noise for both of them.

  “Goddammit, Sheriff,” he said. “How long you think you can keep me locked up like this? I may be just a dumb country storekeeper, but I know that I got as many rights as the next fella. I guess it’s time I called me a lawyer and saw about suing the whole lot of you!”

  Rhodes didn’t answer. He opened Barrett’s cell, not locking the door behind him, and went to sit on the bunk.

  “You tellin’ me I can go, leavin’ the door open like that?” Barrett wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

  “You can go, Hod,” Rhodes said, “but first you got to listen to what I have to say. You aren’t going to like it, any more than I’m going to like saying it. Your wife’s dead.”

  “Dead? What you mean, ‘dead’? She was fine yesterday.”

  “She was in her kitchen, shot dead with a.30-.30. The rifle was right there on the floor by her. You have a rifle like that, Hod?” Rhodes asked.

  Barrett couldn’t quite take it in. He sat beside Rhodes on the bunk. “Yeah, yeah, I got a gun like that. Winchester. Haven’t fired it in years. Keep it behind the bedroom door. In case of break-ins at the house. A man’s got a right to protect his house.”

  “Of course he does,” Rhodes said. “I’d be willing to bet money that rifle’s the same one used on Bill Tomkins, though. It won’t take too long to find out.”

  Barrett’s mind wasn’t working in sequence. “Dead? My wife is dead? Shot in our own house?”

  “That’s right, Hod. I know how you must be feeling, and I know what you must think of me and my department. She’s dead.”

  Barrett shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “This is some kind of cheap trick to get me to say something. Well, it won’t work, because I got nothin’ to say. I sure didn’t kill Bill Tomkins, but even you can’t be dumb enough to think I could kill my wife while I was locked up in your jail.”

  Rhodes shook his head. “No tricks,” he said. “I wish it was a trick. She’s really dead, Hod.”

  Barrett wrapped his huge hands around the edge of the mattress of the bunk and squeezed. “If she’s dead, who killed her? Answer me that one.”

  “I think it was meant to look like she killed herself, Hod.”

  “With my gun? She didn’t have no more idea how to use that gun than a chicken. She couldn’t even have got the safety off,” Barrett said with disgust.

  “I said it was meant to look like she did it, not that I thought she did. Anybody who’d think Mrs. Barrett would mess up her kitchen just to kill herself didn’t know your wife very well,” Rhodes said. “I only met her at home the two times, but I knew her well enough to know that much.”

  “We had our troubles,” Barrett said, his voice cracking slightly, “but I never thought about her bein’ dead. Good lord, Sheriff, how many more folks are goin’ to get killed around here before you put a stop to it?”

  “No more, if I can help it,” Rhodes told him. “Could you identify that rifle of yours, Hod?”

  Barrett gathered himself, pulling himself erect on the cot. “How do you mean? You mean officially? No way. I bought it off a fella at a flea market five or six years ago, the way I bet half the guns in this county get bought. There wasn’t any recordin’ of serial numbers that I can recall. There’s probably guns like it all over Thurston.”

  “That’s what I thought, and that’s probably what the killer thought, too, if he switched his gun for yours like I think he might have done. But I meant unofficially. I expect you marked your gun some way. Most folks do that.”

  “Yeah, I did that,” Hod said. “It’s got a butt plate on it, and my initials are carved under the butt plate. Just take out the screws and check it. Ought to be an ‘H.B.’ under there if it’s mine.”

  “I’ll check it,” Rhodes said.

  “Who did it, Sheriff? You know who did it?”

  “I thought I had a pretty good idea yesterday,”‘ Rhodes said. “At first I thought your wife might know something she hadn’t told, but then I had another thought. Your wife doesn’t fit into the pattern too well, but I guess she could be made to fit.”

  “Why are you sittin’ here talkin’ to me then?” Barrett asked. “Why ain’t you out arrestin’ the sonuvabitch that did it?”

  “There’s a big problem there,” Rhodes said. “I can make all the facts fit, but there’s one thing I don’t have. The important thing. I don’t have one bit of evidence.” He smacked his fist down on the thin mattress of the bunk. A faint cloud of dust motes rose in the air.

  Barrett stood up to his full height, balled his fists, and worked his arms in the air. “Evidence my ass. You get me the man who did it and then we’ll worry about evidence.”

  “That door’s open right now, Hod,” Rhodes
said quietly, “but if you keep talking like that, I’ll close it mighty damn quick. You know better than to say things like that.”

  “It’s my wife that’s been killed, Sheriff,” Barrett said.

  “It’s too late to cry about that,” Rhodes said. “You should have worried more about her when she was alive. Maybe none of this would have happened if you had.”

  Barrett looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Forget it. It’s hard to say anybody is really at fault in something like this. It’s my fault as much as yours, or as much as anyone’s, I guess. I’d just like for you to calm down and stop thinking about going out there and righting wrongs. That’s my job, and I’m the one to do it.”

  Barrett stepped back to the bunk and sat again. “Can I see her?” he asked.

  “You can see her if you want to, but I think you’d be better off not doing it,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think it would be a good idea. I think maybe you ought to go on home. Hack can drive you back.”

  Barrett continued to sit on the bunk, staring at the floor. Rhodes got up and went out the cell door. “I’m leaving the door open, Hod,” he said. “You can leave when you get ready to.” He walked out and down the corridor, taking a last look back over his shoulder. Hod Barrett still sat, his shoulders moving slightly as if he were crying. In the next cell, Billy Joe Byron sat watching him, his eyes round.

  Rhodes paused and looked at Billy Joe. If Billy Joe could get over his fear and start talking, things would probably work out, but that seemed unlikely. Rhodes was going to have to go with what he had, which was suspicion, hunch, and guesswork. Everything fit, but there wasn’t enough to make a case with. He’d just have to see how far he could get by just talking, and maybe with lying a little.

  He went on down the stairs. He hoped he was wrong, but he didn’t see how he could be. There was no other answer that fit with the facts. Maybe some scientific crimefighter somewhere could have done better, could have come up with the answer quicker, but Rhodes didn’t see how. The autopsy of Jeanne Clinton had told them nothing except how she’d been killed, which they’d known already. He had to find a rifle that fired the bullets that killed Bill Tomkins before he could pin that one on anybody, and now that he’d found it someone else was dead.