Too Late to Die

by Bill Crider

  Still thinking, Rhodes started to talk. “Friends, Ralph Claymore may think that he can do a better job than I can, but I sure don’t.” He said it positively but with a smile, and got a polite laugh in reply. “For one thing, the sheriff in this county doesn’t have as much control over the building of a jail as you might think, or Mr. Claymore would have you believe. All that’s up to your commissioners, and I think you’ll find that they’ll be reasonable about it.” They had to be, he thought, considering what that judge had said.

  “For my part,” he went on, “I’ve always done my best to see that anybody who gets arrested in Blacklin County gets the fairest treatment possible. I don’t think that any of you people here tonight have to worry about what might happen to any member of your family who got arrested on some minor charge, or even a major charge for that matter, because . . .”

  Rhodes came to a stop then because he suddenly realized what was happening. He realized it even before he saw the little James Cagney look-alike getting up from where he’d been sitting inconspicuously in the back of the audience. Claymore had set him up.

  Which meant that Claymore was both smarter and sneakier than Rhodes had given him credit for. Those two men had gotten out of jail only slightly earlier that day, and already Claymore had found them and gotten their stories.

  It might not have happened that way, though, Rhodes realized. It was possible that the men, or maybe only the one now getting up, had gone to Claymore. Maybe instead of filing a suit against the county, which they were almost certain to lose, they had decided to work with Claymore for a small payment out of his campaign funds. Either way, Rhodes knew that he was in for it.

  The man had by now gotten to his feet and pushed to the front of the sparse crowd. “Sheriff, I’d like to ask you a little question,” he said.

  Mrs. Wilkie hurried over to cut him off, and for once Rhodes almost found himself liking her. But it was too late. Her frantic “No questions, no questions. This is not a debate . . .” was interrupted by the short man’s voice cutting through like a table saw.

  “I’d just like to ask the sheriff one thing,” he said. “I’d like to know if it’s a custom in all counties where the prisoners are treated well for the deputies to beat up on them for no reason.” He pointed to his face, which even Rhodes had to admit looked pretty battered. Maybe even more battered than it had that morning. Good lord, Rhodes thought, could it be possible that Claymore had actually staged the whole thing? Could Johnny Sherman have been framed?

  “That’s right,” the man went on, to the crowd now, “my buddy and I got whipped up on for no reason at all this morning, while we were just . . .”

  “Wait a minute now,” Rhodes said, his voice louder than he usually allowed it to get, which caused the makeshift mike to whistle and squeal once again. “Just hold on,” he said in a normal tone. “You were arrested by a county officer in the course of his normal patrol. You were fighting with another man, and you refused . . .”

  “That’s bull, and you know it. You laws are all alike, and you stick together when it comes to something like this, but we’ll see. I’m going to sue you and that deputy of yours, and the whole county. Then people will know what things’re really like in that jail of yours.”

  Then, before anyone realized what he was doing, the man turned and stalked the length of the cafeteria and out the door.

  Rhodes made a few more remarks intended to assure his listeners that things weren’t what they seemed, but there was so much buzzing of talk that he doubted they’d heard a word.

  Out of the corner of his eye he could see Claymore sitting in his chair, his legs crossed to show off his Tony Lama boots, a slight smile lingering on the corners of his mouth.

  There was another fiddle player after that, but hardly anyone paid any attention. “I take it that this is hardly the high spot of your political career,” Jack Parry whispered to Rhodes when he returned to his seat.

  “You might say that,” Rhodes said. “I guess it could be worse, though.”

  “Yeah,” Parry said. “They might have caught you performing an unnatural act with the Baptist minister’s wife in the choir loft.”

  Rhodes grinned. “Or with the minister himself,” he said. “Even you’ll have to admit that between him and his wife there’s not much to choose.”

  “Too right,” Parry said. “Well, I’m getting out of here before you get surrounded and questioned. Someone might think to ask me why the county judge is so friendly with a low-down skunk like you.”

  Rhodes saw that several of the people from the crowd were making their way toward him. He turned to answer them as best he could. At least, he thought, everything else was pretty much under control.

  When the meeting finally broke up and Rhodes got back by the jail, they told him that Billy Joe Byron had escaped.

  Chapter 5

  Rhodes was not a man who lost his temper often. Most of the time he was, at least outwardly, in complete control of his emotions. This, however, was not one of those times.

  “Goddammit,” he exploded. “Billy Joe Byron hasn’t got any more sense than a tame turkey! How in the hell could he escape? I just wish that someone would please explain that to me.”

  Hack Jensen was sitting by his radio looking sheepish, while old Lawton was taking the worst of Rhodes’s anger. Lawton’s smooth, unlined face was very red, and it looked as if he might cry at any minute. As the jailer, he was the one responsible for what had happened.

  “I don’t understand it, Sheriff,” Lawton said. “Maybe I’m gettin’ too old for the job. I could have swore that everything was all right, but the door to his cell is wide open, like it wasn’t ever locked. I fed Billy Joe about six-thirty, took his food right in like I always do for someone harmless like that, and I thought for sure I’d locked that door when I came out. Maybe I did, because he was still there when I picked up his tray at seven o’clock. That must be when I left the door open.”

  Rhodes suddenly felt sorry for the old man. They all thought that Billy Joe was a harmless prisoner. But what if he hadn’t been? Or what if he wasn’t? That blood test still hadn’t come back.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” Rhodes asked. He didn’t add that he would very much have appreciated being called away from the Milsby candidates’ forum and cake auction. He hadn’t mentioned what went on there.

  “We would’ve put out a call, Sheriff,” Hack said, “but we just found out Billy Joe was gone.”

  “Just found out?” Rhodes was puzzled.

  “Yeah, he hasn’t been gone long,” Lawton said. “I checked the cells right before Johnny came in. Then when Johnny went out I checked again. He was gone then.”

  “Well, that’s something. Is Johnny looking for him? He can’t have gotten too far.

  “Johnny said something about looking for him, but he figured that he couldn’t look too long. Said he had to make his run.”

  “OK. I’ll look for a while, too, but I’m going home and get some sleep if I don’t find him pretty quick. I have a feeling that tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”

  “They all are, lately,” Hack said, and Lawton nodded in agreement.

  It was nearly twelve o’clock when Rhodes drove up to Billy Joe Byron’s shack. It was located on a dirt road about a mile out of town, not far from the former site of one of Clearview’s sanitary landfills. Or dump grounds, to those less inclined to euphemism.

  The shack had only one room and a narrow porch, and its roof sagged in the middle as if something huge had walked across it. The walls were scrap planks held together by rusty nails and covered with tar paper and shingles that Billy Joe had picked up at building sites after the houses were completed but before clean-up had begun. All around the house were scattered the remains of other people’s trash that Billy Joe had scavenged in the years that the dump ground had been in operation—various mismatched leather shoes, their toes and soles curving upward, cracked and wrinkled from years of rain and sun, a headless plastic ho
rse that had once been joined to a frame with springs, any number of aluminum lawn chairs, bent at crazy angles and missing all but a few tatters of their plastic webbing, glass bottles of all kinds, television picture tubes and empty radio cabinets, an exercise bicycle with no wheels.

  “There’s no place like home,” Rhodes said aloud, to no one in particular. “Billy Joe,” he called, “you in there?”

  There was no answer, and Rhodes mounted the porch by means of a concrete block which served as a step.

  There was a moon which gave quite a bit of light to the area around the house and lit up Billy Joe’s trash collection with an eerie silver light, but the light didn’t penetrate the interior of the house. It had been put together without the benefit of windows, and the low-hanging porch roof effectively cut off all illumination from the outside, in spite of the fact that there was no door.

  “You’d have thought someone would have thrown away a door,” Rhodes muttered. “Billy Joe! Come out if you’re in there.”

  Again there was no response. Rhodes stepped through the empty doorway without hesitation, and the house fell in on him.

  Or that’s what it felt like, a sudden overwhelming crashing down on his head that sent him stunned and reeling through the dark. Something hit him again and he collapsed on the floor, struggled to rise, and then fell face down. He heard footsteps hollow on the porch, then the sound of a car engine.

  Someone in here all the time, he thought. Car parked behind the house. He tried again to get up, but the effort was too much; he passed out.

  When Rhodes woke up, his head hurt considerably. He reached to feel it, and his fingers immediately encountered a pulpy knot that felt like a baseball but that he knew probably wasn’t that large. It was still very dark, so he knew that he hadn’t been out long. He got unsteadily to his feet and walked carefully back out on the porch. Billy Joe Byron was standing by the county car.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Rhodes said.

  When he got Billy Joe back to the jail, Hack had gone home and Lawton was asleep in the little back room provided for him. It was just as well. He could hear the radio if any calls came in, but other noises didn’t seem to register on him. Rhodes was able to get Billy Joe back to the cell without trouble.

  All the way to the jail, Billy Joe had refused to speak. Rhodes had tried to get him to talk on any topic, but all Billy Joe did was shake his head and make gabbling noises. Rhodes was sure that it hadn’t been Billy Joe inside the house, but if Billy Joe knew just who it had been, he wasn’t about to tell. Rhodes had an aching head to convince him that whoever it was didn’t intend to be gentle. He decided to go home and get a few hours sleep.

  The next morning, Rhodes was back at the jail by the time Johnny Sherman got in at seven. “Any problems last night?” he asked.

  Johnny shrugged. “Not a thing out of the ordinary that I could see. I paid pretty close attention in Thurston, you can bet on that.”

  “Any activity at all around Barrett’s store?”

  “Not that I noticed.”

  “Did you happen to notice whether Elmer Clinton’s car was home? I didn’t think he’d be at work,”‘ Rhodes said.

  “I noticed. It was there around two.”

  Which meant that Elmer could have been out at Billy Joe’s shack around twelve, Rhodes thought. “How about Barrett’s car?” he asked.

  “To tell the truth, I never noticed,” Johnny said. “He has a garage on his house, I think, and keeps the doors down. No way to tell for sure. Why?”

  “No reason, really. Just wondering.” Rhodes wasn’t ready yet to take anyone fully into his confidence. “You go on home and get some rest. I may have something for you later.”

  Johnny nodded and left just as Hack was coming in.

  “Think we’ll get the results of that blood test on Billy Joe’s shirt today, Hack?”

  The old man nodded. “Sure do. I told them lab boys to put on a real rush job, because this was a mighty important case for us. I’ll bet we get the results this morning.”

  ‘‘Good. I’m afraid I already know what’s going to show up, but I still want confirmation. I’m not sure what it’s going to prove, though.”

  The truth was that Rhodes was convinced that Billy Joe was innocent of murder. His simple mind just didn’t seem capable of the kind of violence that had been in evidence in Elmer Clinton’s living room. That took a kind of derangement different from whatever went on in Billy Joe’s head, but Rhodes wasn’t sure just what kind of mind it took.

  Too, Rhodes was still puzzled by the behavior of Ralph Claymore at the forum the night before. It was true that Claymore had scored heavily against him with the men in the audience, but he could have done even more damage, it seemed to Rhodes, if he had brought up Jeanne Clinton’s death. It was always a bother to Rhodes when things didn’t happen the way they should, and he was determined to find out what was going on. He was also determined to establish a link between Claymore and the former prisoner to see if he’d been set up.

  The man’s name was Terry Wayne, Rhodes learned by checking the arrest record. “Hack,” he said, “get Buddy on the radio and tell him to check up on this Terry Wayne.” He gave Hack Wayne’s address. “Get him to talk to the neighbors and see what he can turn up. I especially want to know if Wayne knew Ralph Claymore, or if Claymore ever visited his house.”

  “Can do, Sheriff,” Hack said.

  Lawton came in from upstairs in the cell block. “See you got old Billy Joe back, Sheriff,” he said sheepishly. “I’m sure sorry about leaving that cell door unlocked.”

  “This time, it’s OK,” Rhodes said. “Billy Joe’s so harmless that no damage was done. But I hope it doesn’t happen again.”

  Lawton shook his head. “You don’t have to worry about that, Sheriff. I can promise that it won’t. I’ll be extra careful from now on.”

  “Fine. Now let’s get to work.”

  “Work” consisted of routine complaints: a report that a man on the Milsby cut-off had seen a pickup with a canvas cover stopped by the road with a hand dangling from beneath the cover, a reported assault at the State Park, a robbery at the County Line Tavern. “Man says the driver of the pickup got out, walked around to the back, and stuck the hand under the canvas before he drove off,” Lawton told Rhodes. “Probably just a couple of kids playing a joke. I gave the highway boys a description of the pickup, just in case.”

  The other problems were being routinely investigated by the deputies, so by mid-morning Rhodes was able to get on the Toad to Thurston. He planned to have a little talk with Mrs. Hod Barrett, among others.

  “Yes, Sheriff,” Mrs. Barrett said. “Hod was home all last night. I don’t know where you think he might be going.” She handed Rhodes a glass of iced tea with a few mint leaves stuck in it for flavor, then sat in a wicker rocker like the one she had already invited Rhodes to make himself at home in.

  Rhodes had already thought of a story for that one. “I just thought that with these robberies around here he might be wanting to keep an eye on his store. I sort of got the idea that Hod didn’t think we county boys were doing a very good job.”

  Mrs. Barrett took a sip of her own tea and said nothing. To Rhodes she seemed a fairly good-looking woman for her age, which he guessed at about fifty. A little dumpy maybe, and certainly her hair was almost totally gray, but no real reason there for Hod to be slipping over to the Clinton house. Of course, looks weren’t everything, and some people at Hod’s age just had to have a fling or two. Or at least give it a try. Rhodes decided to be more direct.

  Some folks also say that he and Jeanne Clinton had a liking for one another. That might give Hod a reason to be out looking around, maybe for whoever did it.

  Mrs. Barrett looked at Rhodes with faded blue eyes. “Small-town gossip, Sheriff. That’s all that is. You should know better than to trust anything like that.”

  “You’re sure there’s nothing to it, then?”

  “Ask Hod, if you don’t believe
me.”

  “Oh, I believe you,” Rhodes lied, taking a deep swallow of his drink. “That tea was mighty refreshing, Mrs. Barrett. I thank you. “

  “You’re welcome,” Mrs. Barrett said.

  Hod Barrett was irate. “Sheriff, you come in here, interrupt my business, cause me to lose money, and then pull some outrageous lie like that out of the air, why it’s enough to make a man downright mad. If you weren’t an officer of the law, I’d throw you right out that door!”

  “It’s no lie, Hod. Your car’s been seen over there,” Rhodes said. It hadn’t, but as long as he was being accused of lying he might as well try a little. The two men were in the little back storeroom of Barrett’s store, standing behind a three-high stack of boxes of Northern toilet tissue, the only place in the store where there was any privacy.

  “No way! No way!” Barrett’s hair seemed to bristle even more than usual. “I never drove . . .” He stopped himself, shoved his fists into his pockets, and turned away.

  “You never drove,” Rhodes said softly, “but you walked. People in town know, Hod. I think your wife knows, too.”

  Barrett leaned tensely forward and whipped his fists out of his pockets, waving them futilely in the dim light of the storeroom. Rhodes wondered just how much damage those fists could do to a woman if Barrett were angry enough to attack her.

  “I didn’t tell her, Hod,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think anyone told her. Women just know things like that.”

  Barrett sat down abruptly on a case of canned pineapple chunks. “You don’t know what it’s like, Sheriff,” he said in a strangely subdued voice. He hung his head and looked at the grimy, cracked concrete floor, worn smooth and black with the years of boxes being piled and moved and slid across it. Somewhere above, a fly buzzed as it looked for a way out.

  “I haven’t slept with my wife for three years,” Barrett said. “I’m not sure what the problem is; she’s not the kind of woman you can talk to about things. I sort of tried, at first. I even tried to get her to go to that new woman’s doctor over in Clearview. It didn’t do any good.”