Too Late to Die

by Bill Crider

  “Now lay it on the floor,” Johnny said.

  Rhodes laid the pistol down, then straightened. “If you’re really innocent, Johnny, this is going to look mighty bad for you,” he said.

  “I know that. Ever since you came in, I’ve been trying to think what to do. Every idea I’ve had has been worse than the one before it, though, and like I said—if you don’t believe me, a jury sure wouldn’t. So I guess I’ll just have to disappear.”

  “It can’t be done, Johnny. This is 1986, not 1934. Bonnie and Clyde could do it, for a while, but they couldn’t do it forever. I don’t think you’ll last as long as they did.”

  “We’ll see. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get lost these days if you know what you’re doing. How many thousands of people do you think are living right on the streets of a city like Houston, pushing their belongings around with them in shopping carts? You think anybody ever stops one of them to check an ID? Hell no. Nobody cares. So don’t worry about me.”

  “You wouldn’t like living like that,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe not, but it’d beat the hell out of living in one of those prison farms like we send people to. I wouldn’t look good in a white uniform, and I wouldn’t feel good crawling around weeding a field on my hands and knees. Besides, I never said I was going to Houston. I just said that’s one way to disappear.” He stepped closer to Rhodes.

  “Now, Sheriff, I hate to hurt you, but if you’ll just turn around . . .”

  Rhodes didn’t turn. Instead, he made a lunge for Johnny, who had apparently been waiting for just such a move. Anyway, he wasn’t surprised. He clubbed downward at Rhodes’s head with the barrel of his pistol.

  Rhodes flung up his arm and managed to take the force of the blow with that instead of his head, but the pistol connected nevertheless. Rhodes felt the side of his head hit the floor, and then Johnny was kicking him. Hard.

  Rhodes groaned as the kicks thudded into his ribs and tried to twist away. He wasn’t able to escape, however. He was too weak, and Johnny was too quick. He could hear Johnny’s breath coming in short gasps that sounded almost like laughter. Maybe it was laughter. Johnny liked violence.

  Finally Rhodes lay still. The pain from his rib cage weakened him. He raised his head. Johnny kicked him again.

  The next thing he felt was Johnny’s hand in his front pants pocket. He must have blacked out momentarily, because he had no idea how he had gotten turned over on his back.

  Johnny’s hand was gone, then, and Rhodes heard shoe heels on the linoleum floor. He opened his eyes slightly. At the door, Johnny was putting on his shirt. Rhodes closed his eyes.

  The door slammed. Rhodes rolled over, pain shooting up and down his rib cage. He knew that several of his ribs must be cracked. He hoped that the damage was no more severe than that. He’d be in big trouble if one of them had punctured a lung.

  He heard a car start outside. The county car. Johnny would have a beefed-up engine, and he’d be able to tune in the radio. He’d taken the keys from Rhodes’s pocket. The thought didn’t make Rhodes feel any better.

  He tried to sit up, pushing with his arms. It wasn’t easy but he made it. He edged over to the recliner and pulled himself erect, looking hurriedly around the room. His pistol wasn’t there. Well, he hadn’t really thought it would be.

  He heard the county car pulling out of Johnny’s drive, and forced himself to stand still. It wouldn’t do to go to the door too soon and get shot with his own pistol. When he heard the car ease down the street, he moved. Slowly. Holding one arm wrapped around his ribs, he made his way to the door.

  Johnny’s pickup was parked farther down the drive. It wasn’t exactly the vehicle that anyone would choose for a chase, but Rhodes didn’t have much choice. He hobbled down the drive.

  One of the things that both criminals and lawmen know is how to hot-wire an automobile. Rhodes took out his pocket knife and had the pickup started in under five minutes. It was an old green Chevy six cylinder, with a top speed of maybe eighty when it was new. Rhodes didn’t have much hope of doing any good, but he backed it down the drive. At least there was more than half a tank of gas.

  There were plenty of roads into and out of Clearview; three of them led eventually to major highways. The third, the one closest to Johnny Sherman’s house, took longer to get to a major thoroughfare and wound through some pretty wild country on the way. Rhodes figured that Johnny would choose that one. It offered plenty of opportunities to turn off onto little-traveled county roads, and there wasn’t much likelihood that there would be any highway patrol cars cruising in that area. Rhodes headed in that direction, praying that he was right.

  The little Chevy chugged right along. Johnny obviously kept it tuned up, but he had a pretty good head start and Rhodes wasn’t sure that he could catch up even if he had picked the right road. He was quite surprised when he spotted the county car only a half mile ahead.

  Rhodes pushed down on the accelerator, causing the pickup to give a forward jerk, but without attaining any great increase in his forward speed. He groaned as his back hit the seat cushion.

  Johnny must have seen him about then. The cruiser’s blue and red bar lights flashed on, and Rhodes could hear the siren screaming. The cruiser began to pull steadily ahead. But not before Rhodes was able to get a glimpse of someone else inside.

  It suddenly dawned on him why he was able to catch up so quickly. Johnny had made a stop. A little insurance. Rhodes cursed himself for not having thought of it. After all, his own house was so close by. All Johnny would have had to do was to ask Kathy to go for a ride, to have a little talk.

  Rhodes shoved the Chevy’s accelerator right down to the worn rubber floor mat. He didn’t know what else to do. He might not have much of a chance, but he was going to make a race of it, at least for a while. He had to get Kathy back, had to get her before Johnny killed her, too.

  Chapter 16

  The road on which Rhodes and Sherman were traveling was what is called a “farm-to-market” road. That meant that while it was straight for short distances, it was never straight for very long. Such roads often followed old farm routes and wound through the country without much regard to the principle of the straight line. In a way this was an advantage for Rhodes, in that Johnny couldn’t use his speed as he could have done on a highway, and the pickup, with its short turning radius, was fairly maneuverable. On the other hand, the pickup was not loaded. The rear end was very light and tended to drift on the curves. It would be easy to lose control.

  The pickup had side vent windows which Rhodes would have liked to open to direct some air on his sweating body, but he didn’t want to lower the wind resistance any more than he had to. He decided to sweat. He wondered if Johnny had on the air conditioner in the county car and figured that he probably did. It wouldn’t cut down the power too much, certainly not enough to allow Rhodes to catch him. Rhodes was in fact already losing ground, but he was trying to stay in the chase.

  The irony of the situation struck Rhodes, and he almost laughed. He had been in car chases before, but he had always been driving the powerful county cruiser. He tried to imagine a movie in which a policeman was being pursued by an old pickup truck, but he couldn’t do it. He knew that in real life the situation was ridiculous. He would need a miracle to catch Johnny Sherman.

  The miracle came sooner than he expected. He lost sight of the county car for a few seconds as it went around a curve. When he saw it again, the bar lights were off and the brake lights were on. Johnny was slowing down. Rhodes looked at the road ahead and saw why.

  About a mile away, just over the crest of a hill on the Clearview side, sat a DPS car. The trooper was positioned so that he could be out of sight of anyone approaching the hill while he tracked them with his radar gun. Johnny Sherman had no desire to go speeding by a highway patrolman with his bar lights on and his siren going. In fact, he probably had no desire to pass him at all.

  A highway patrol car on that road, on a Monday morning, wa
s an occurrence so rare as to be invisible on a scale of probability. It might not happen again for a year or more, but Rhodes was certainly glad that it was happening now.

  In front of him, Johnny Sherman’s car took a sharp left turn onto an unpaved county road. The recent rain had helped a little, but the Plymouth still raised a rooster tail of white dust from the crushed gravel of the road’s surface.

  Rhodes turned after him, choking a little as the dust sifted in the windows of the pickup. He was very pleased with the turn of events. He had traveled these roads all his life. There wasn’t a turn that Johnny Sherman could make that Rhodes couldn’t anticipate. It was like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. And if the other road had been filled with curves, this one was positively snakey. There was no way that either vehicle was going to get much above fifty miles an hour. Even better, in less than two miles the gravel surface gave way to just plain dirt and clay and sand. If the road had been traveled enough since the rain, and if the ground had gotten wet enough, there would be treacherous ruts and maybe even very slick surfaces, both of which would put the Plymouth at a distinct disadvantage. The pickup was made for rough conditions and would be much easier to handle.

  When Johnny Sherman hit the clay surface, Rhodes was less than a half mile behind. He could see the rear end of the county car slewing around, so he knew that the road was slick and tricky. He slowed his own speed a bit. Better to be careful than to make a mistake.

  Neither man was driving much over forty now, and Rhodes had to keep a firm grip on the steering wheel to hold the car in the ruts. The bar ditches off to the side of the road had very little water in them, but the weeds were bent in the direction of its flow. Apparently it had rained quite hard in the vicinity, and the water had run off fast.

  The road twisted and turned past terraced fields and pasture, with neither man able to gain much ground on the other. Twice Johnny turned off onto side roads, and Rhodes realized that Johnny knew the country pretty well himself. And then he realized where Johnny was headed.

  There was one portion of the county that most residents referred to as Big Woods. Blacklin County was not a major population center, had no industry to speak of, and was unknown to tourists. A minor oil boom had livened things up around Clearview for a time, but it was very quiet now. There were parts of the county that remained much as they had been a hundred years before, or longer. Big Woods was one of those areas.

  Big Woods covered only about six square miles, but it was a place that could be very dangerous. People avoided it, even the people who owned the land the woods covered. The trees grew thick and tall, and the underbrush was almost impenetrable. Three years earlier a child had wandered off from a family reunion being held on a nearby farm and had gotten into the trees. Rhodes had headed the search party. They had searched officially for nearly a week, and unofficially for days afterward. No one had ever seen the child again.

  There were deer in Big Woods, but there were rumors of other things less pleasant. Hogs that wandered off farms sometimes found their way there and raised litters that returned to their wild state, and no one doubted that there were wolves there. Nearby cattlemen lost large numbers of calves every year to them.

  Johnny Sherman had been a member of the search party three years before, and Rhodes thought he must have remembered the woods. A hundred yards inside, it was dark even at midday. Let a man get settled in the brush, and someone could walk within inches of him and never know that he was there. If Johnny got in there with two pistols, it was going to be very tricky getting him out.

  They hit another stretch of graveled road. Rhodes could see the trees in the distance. Johnny Sherman put his pedal to the floor and the county car jumped ahead. Rhodes did the same, but with less than spectacular results. The pickup rocked and bounced along, sending jolts of pain zinging from one side of Rhodes’s chest to the other, but he could make up little ground on the car he was chasing.

  The weeds in the fence rows grew high here, and Rhodes lost sight of Johnny every time there was the slightest curve in the road. He knew that Johnny would get to the trees before he could be stopped.

  Rounding a last turn, Rhodes saw the Plymouth stopped dead in the middle of the road. He threw on his brakes and managed to avoid hitting it by inches. Johnny was already out of the car and across the barbed-wire fence, prodding Kathy along in front of him with the pistol barrel.

  Rhodes got out of the pickup and moved as fast as he could to the car. Just as he’d expected, the radio was smashed. There was no way to call for help, and there was no need to look for weapons. Johnny would have taken care of that, too. Then Johnny called out. “Just stay right there, Sheriff. As soon as I get to the woods, I’ll let Kathy go. Don’t try to come after me before I get there. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe him, but he said nothing. He went back to the pickup and jerked the seat forward. There was a Zebco 33 spincast reel attached to a cheap rod under there, along with a few tools: pliers, a screwdriver, a wooden-handled hammer with only part of the handle. There was also a walking cane. Rhodes took the cane and headed for the fence. Johnny was more than halfway to the trees by then.

  Rhodes bent painfully and separated the second and third strands of the fence wire, holding down the lower one with the cane. He got his body through the opening, but his pants leg hung on a barb. He pulled to free it, lost his balance, and fell. The pain that shot into his head almost shorted his circuits; he barely heard the ripping of his pants leg. He did hear his own involuntary yell.

  With the aid of the cane he stood up, feeling like a very old man. Johnny had heard the yell and turned to face him. He was taking aim with the pistol, but not at Kathy. He was aiming at Rhodes. Kathy was on the ground beside him. Whether she’d slipped or been hit, Rhodes didn’t know.

  Johnny didn’t fire the weapon, however. Kathy launched herself at his legs and knocked him off balance. He struck out with the pistol barrel and hit her in the head.

  Rhodes tried to run, but he couldn’t move very fast.

  Johnny looked back at him. “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” he called out. “I never meant to hurt anybody, least of all you or Kathy.” He turned and trotted toward the trees, which soon swallowed him up.

  Rhodes traveled as fast as he could to where Kathy lay. Her face was smeared with mud, but there was little blood. She looked up at her father.

  “Are you all right?” Rhodes asked.

  “I think so,” Kathy said, putting a hand to a knot that was rising on her head. “I can’t believe this. I knew Johnny was acting funny, but he says you think he killed Jeanne Clinton. Then he dragged me out here, and he hit me . . . What’s going on? I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t explain it all now,” Rhodes said. “Can you stand up?”

  Kathy didn’t answer. Instead, she got her feet under her and stood. “My head hurts,” she said.

  Probably a slight concussion, Rhodes thought but didn’t say. “I want you to try to walk back to the road,” he told her. “You remember how to start a car without the keys?” He had showed her once, in case she ever lost her keys.

  “I think so,” she said vaguely.

  “Try to start the pickup,” he said. “Go back to town and see if you can find some help. Talk to Hack. He’ll know what to do.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, and started unsteadily across the field.

  Rhodes watched her go. He could wait for help, or he could go in after Johnny. Either way was a loser. If he waited for help from town, Johnny could hide himself so well that no searchers could ever hope to find him. If Rhodes went in, he might not only lose Johnny, but he might get so lost himself that it would take him days to get out. If he got out. In those woods, it would be hard to tell who was the hunter and who was the game.

  “Damn ribs,” Rhodes said aloud to no one. He started for the trees.

  Thirty yards into the woods might as well have been a hundred miles. There was nothing to see in any direction except trees,
front, sides, and back. It was dim and still and hot; no breeze could penetrate in there. The light was filtered through hundreds of branches, and the trees closed around Rhodes like the waters of the sea.

  Rhodes was not an experienced tracker, but Johnny Sherman was not an experienced fugitive, either. Rhodes could follow the crushed vines and the broken limbs fairly easily at first. But he couldn’t move very rapidly. His ribs hurt, and his leg was scratched from the barbed wire. His pants leg flapped where it had been ripped. The footing was soft and uncertain, the ground covering as likely to give way underfoot as not. Rhodes didn’t want to fall again.

  A few hundred yards into the woods, Rhodes paused to listen. If Johnny was blundering along, Rhodes could hear nothing to indicate the fact. He heard a few birds twitter, and there was a woodpecker hammering somewhere not too far off, but that was all. He kept going, trying to keep in a straight line, laying about him with the cane to break more branches and limbs to mark the path clearly.

  Another reason Rhodes went slowly was the possibility of a trap. If Johnny were to jump him, Rhodes knew he was a goner. He hoped it wouldn’t happen, and he put the thought out of his mind. His shirt was sticking to his back, and sweat was running into his eyes.

  Then Rhodes came to a deadfall. What had once been one of the larger elm trees in the woods had long ago fallen prey to blight, or lightning, or insects. In falling, it had brought down a few smaller trees. Now, brush and vines grew around the decaying trunks and almost obscured the rot beneath. Dead limbs stuck out of the greenness here and there.

  Somewhere a squirrel chattered. There was no other sound. The area around the deadfall seemed unnaturally quiet. If Johnny were going to make a try for him, Rhodes thought, this would be a perfect spot.

  “You in there, Johnny?” Rhodes said. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat as he waited for the answer, but there was none. Not that one had really been expected.

  Rhodes looked the setup over carefully and then took a few steps forward. Johnny could be at either end, or he could be half a mile away. There were no signs to read. Johnny had become much more careful about things, which meant either that he was trying to throw Rhodes off, or that he was trying to trap him. Or that Rhodes had lost him entirely.