by Bill Crider
The two men were standing on the cracked gray sidewalk in front of Hod’s store, shaded by a heavy wooden awning. Rhodes looked through the screen doors of the store with their faded Rainbow Bread stencils. He could see some of the old men on the red loafer’s bench by the soft drink cooler lean forward and perk up their ears. One of them spit a stream of snuff into a Styrofoam cup he held in his left hand. Any minute now, they would get up the nerve to walk outside and join in the conversation. Rhodes didn’t want to make a campaign speech, so he changed the subject.
“Tell you what, Hod,” he said. “Let’s us go take a look at where the break-in was.”
The appearance of positive action calmed Barrett slightly, and he led the sheriff around to the back of the store. The grass in the alleyway was mowed short; even that around the building was trimmed. Barrett often boasted to his friends that he bought his wife the best lawn mower available.
On the ground by the red brick wall of the store lay an old evaporative cooler that had been set up on a wooden stand. The remains of the stand were scattered around. Whoever had broken into the store had simply knocked, or kicked, the stand from under the cooler, which had then fallen to the ground, pulled by its own weight. That had left a rectangular hole in the wall about three feet up, easy enough to crawl through even if you were just a kid.
“Last time they broke out my restroom window and then kicked the door to the storeroom open,” Barrett said, disgusted.
“Maybe somebody just finds this place too easy to break into,” Rhodes suggested mildly.
“Now just a damn minute, Sheriff,” Barrett protested, bringing his hands out of his pockets for the first time and waving them in the air like catchers’ mitts. “You got no call . . .”
Whatever he had been about to say, was interrupted by the sound of a car humming up the gravel road that ran beside the store. They turned to look just as the driver threw on his brakes and brought the automobile to a sliding, fishtailing stop. White dust settled over them, pushed by the car’s momentum and a slight westerly breeze. Then Bill Tomkins catapulted himself out of the driver’s seat, yelling, “Sheriff Rhodes, Sheriff Rhodes, you gotta come quick! Elmer Clinton’s done killed his wife!”
Two minutes later Rhodes pulled up in Elmer Clinton’s yard, scattering about thirty bantam hens and one scrawny rooster in all directions. The white frame house looked peaceful enough, shaded by a couple of big chinaberry trees, but the front door was standing open behind the screen. Rhodes got out of his car and started up on the porch. He had his right foot on the second of the two cement steps when Bill Tomkins and a load of the loafers from Barrett’s store drove up.
“Don’t anyone get out of that car,” Rhodes yelled as he stepped up on the porch. “I’ll put every damn one of you in jail.”
Bill Tomkins turned off his engine, but nobody in the car moved. Rhodes opened the screen and went on in the house.
It was cool and dim inside, but not so dim that Rhodes had any trouble spotting Jeanne Clinton. She was lying in the small living room about seven or eight feet from the front door. The room looked as if a storm had blown through it. A platform rocker, its cushions printed with early American designs, was overturned, and a heavy glass lamp had been shattered against the wall. An end table lay on its side, and magazines were scattered around the room. A Redbook and a Cosmopolitan lay by the end table. Beside Jeanne Clinton’s body there was a copy of TV Guide with J. R. Ewing smiling evilly from its cover. The throw rugs that had covered the hardwood floor were wadded together as if someone had skidded on them.
Rhodes walked over to the body, touching nothing. There was some blood, but not much. Jeanne Clinton’s face had been pretty, but now it was bruised and cut. Her slim neck was twisted at an odd angle; Rhodes was no doctor, but he thought it was probably broken. Though there had obviously been quite a struggle, there seemed to be no other marks on the body. Jeanne had been wearing shorts and a halter, showing off her spectacular figure, and her smooth arms and legs were unmarked except for some slight discolorations on the upper left arm, where someone might have squeezed it tightly.
Rhodes looked around the rest of the house but saw nothing else that was disturbed—no open drawers or signs of robbery. He went back outside to deal with the crowd of curiosity seekers.
Bill Tomkins and his friends had gotten up enough nerve to get out of the car, but they hadn’t moved away from it. They were leaning against its side, and Bill was telling them about finding the body.
Rhodes figured that as long as Bill was telling the story, he might as well tell it officially. “Come on up here on the porch, Bill,” Rhodes called.
Tomkins, a storklike man with weathered skin and a prominent Adam’s apple, reluctantly separated himself from his cronies and shuffled over to the house. He and Rhodes settled themselves on the edge of the porch.
“How’d you come to find her, Bill?” Rhodes asked.
Tomkins gestured toward the dirt road that ran in front of the house. “I live just up the road,” he said. His voice had a slight wheeze in it, because Bill smoked a lot. “Nearly every day I have to go get something or other at Hod’s store, like biscuits or milk maybe, and when I passed by here today I saw that the front door was open. So I just thought I’d stop by, you know, like a neighbor, and say hello to Elmer. That’s when I found her.” His voice trailed off.
“Bill,” Rhodes said quietly, “Elmer’s car’s gone. You can see the ruts right over there by that chinaberry tree where he parks it.” The sheriff pointed over to their left where there were a couple of ruts and a patch of oil in the dirt between them. Two chickens were scratching in the ruts, and shriveled yellow berries with their stems still clinging to them lay in the oil. “You make it a habit to stop by and say hello to old Elmer when he’s not at home, do you?”
The day was already warm, though it was still early, but Tomkins was sweating more than seemed natural. “No, Sheriff,” he wheezed. “Course not, but, uh . . . I, well . . .”
Rhodes let him dangle for a second. Then he spoke. “You trying to tell me that Elmer might have had a reason to kill his wife? He’s not here, but you said he did it, remember? Did you say that because you think he might’ve wanted to?”
Tomkins’s head wobbled on his thin neck as he gave a negative shake. Then he appeared to change his mind. “Hell, I’ll tell you. You’d find out quick enough anyways. Elmer works at the cable plant in Clearview, the twelve to eight shift. He usually don’t get home till around nine-thirty or ten, eats breakfast at some cafe—supper to him I guess—’fore he comes home. Sometimes I stop by and talk to Jeanne on my way to the store. Just talk, that’s all. She was a nice, friendly girl. But I ain’t never been here ‘cept in the broad daylight. Not like some other folks.”
“What other folks you got in mind, Bill?” Rhodes asked.
“I wasn’t thinkin’ of anyone in particular.” Tomkins looked out at the men standing by his car. They hadn’t moved, and they were watching the two men on the porch like a hawk watches a rabbit.
“You might as well tell me, Bill. This is a murder case we have here, and I know you wouldn’t want to stand in the way of justice being done. Besides, like you say, I’ll find out soon enough anyhow.”
“I don’t like to talk about my neighbors,” Tomkins said, though not as reluctantly as he might have if he really meant it. “But there’s Hod Barrett for one.”
Rhodes thought about that for a while. Then he sent Tomkins and his friends on their way. As sheriff of Blacklin County, he had to perform the on-scene investigation.
Rhodes got his evidence kit and his old Polaroid camera out of the trunk of the county car. County funds did not suffice to make him a well-equipped investigator, but he knew what to do with what he had: photographs of the body, fingernail scrapings, fingerprints, if any, all the little details. He wouldn’t vacuum the room or the body like they would in some big-city police department, but he would be careful.
Rhodes didn’t mind taking
the time, but he wasn’t convinced that anything he found would be of help. He was a man who believed in his instincts. He liked to talk to people, listen to their stories, size them up. If they had anything to hide, he could usually find it out. But physical evidence didn’t hurt anything when it was available.
He found nothing significant. Oddly, there was not even anything under Jeanne’s fingernails, as if she hadn’t fought back, hadn’t even scratched her assailant.
Rhodes thought about that for a while, too. Then he went into the kitchen to the telephone and called the justice of the peace and an ambulance.
After Jeanne Clinton was pronounced dead at the scene, her body was taken away in the ambulance. It would go to Dallas for the autopsy, and Rhodes knew that it would be several days before he got the results. Rhodes was in no particular hurry. It seemed pretty certain that Jeanne hadn’t been raped, since the clothes were still on the body, and it appeared equally sure that she had died of a broken neck. Finding out who did it was all that mattered now, and to find that out he would have to find out who would have a reason to want her dead, either that or who would be mad enough to kill her in a quick and violent fit of temper and rage. Or maybe there was more to it than that. Not exactly the kind of case Rhodes needed in a reelection year.
Elmer Clinton still hadn’t arrived home. Rhodes left Joe Tufts, the JP, there to give Clinton the news. Tufts and Clinton had gone to high school together. Rhodes started back to Clearview by way of one of the county roads. It was still early in the day, and the sheriff wanted to do some thinking before he talked to Hod Barrett again.
Rhodes had just crossed the plank bridge over Sand Creek when he spotted something lying in the bar ditch in a patch of tall Johnson grass. He pulled the car as far off the narrow road as he could and got out to take a look at what at first glance appeared to be a pile of discarded clothing. When he slammed the car door, the pile jumped up and started running.
It was Billy Joe Byron. On an ordinary day, Billy Joe would never have run from the sheriff, and Rhodes wouldn’t have chased him, but this wasn’t an ordinary day.
“Dammit, Billy Joe,” Rhodes yelled. “Slow down. If I get a cut on me from this Johnson grass, I’m going to kick your butt.”
Billy Joe paid no attention to Rhodes’s threat. If Rhodes’s quarry hadn’t hung his pants leg trying to climb over a barbed-wire fence by the ditch, the sheriff might never have caught him. When Rhodes put his hand on Billy Joe’s shoulder, Billy Joe fell backwards into the weeds and grassburrs, tearing his pants leg from the knee to the cuff. He lay in the grass going “Uhh-uhh-uhh-uhh.” There was dried blood on the front of his clothes.
Billy Joe Byron was a well-known character in Blacklin County. He wandered up and down all the roads and highways picking up aluminum cans to sell for twenty cents a pound, or whatever the current rate was. Before that, he’d picked up returnable bottles. He’d been making a living like that ever since Rhodes could remember. He had no other means of support. Most folks in Blacklin County figured that Billy Joe wasn’t quite right in the head.
They were probably correct. A couple of years earlier, Rhodes had run him in a few times on Peeping Tom charges, but other than that he’d never been in any trouble. He couldn’t read or write, seldom talked, and seemed generally harmless. He stayed out of people’s ways. Now here he was with dried blood on his clothes.
Rhodes sat down beside him on a spot relatively free of grassburrs. Billy Joe tried to burrow in the ground like an armadillo digging a hole, still going “Uhh-uhh-uhh-uhh.” He’d never seemed afraid of Rhodes before, not even when he’d been arrested.
“Come on, Billy Joe,” Rhodes said. “You know me. Sheriff Rhodes. You’re not scared of me, are you?”
Billy Joe turned his head from the ground and looked up at the sheriff with little black eyes under bushy black brows. Something like recognition appeared in his glance. “N-nnot s-s-scared of y-you,” he managed to get out. His face was as smooth and unlined as a child’s except for a few wrinkles around the eyes. There was dirt in the wrinkles.
“Good,” Rhodes said. “How’d you like to take a little ride in the county car?” When he’d been arrested before, Billy Joe had always liked to ride in the car and had always wanted to turn on the lights and the siren. But not this time. He threw a look at the car, jumped up, and started running again.
Rhodes was caught off guard, but he got up and ran with grim determination. He’d be damned if he was going to let Billy Joe escape from him. He’d never lost a prisoner.
This time Billy Joe didn’t try to cross the fence, proving that he could learn from experience. He ran straight down the ditch, thrashing through Johnson grass that was sometimes over six feet tall. When he slowed to get his bearings, Rhodes caught up with him and threw his arms around his waist. Billy Joe writhed and turned as Rhodes struggled back to the car with him, but Rhodes held on. It was a little like trying to hold on to the Tasmanian Devil from the old Bugs Bunny cartoons, Rhodes thought, but he managed to do it. When they got back to the car, Rhodes held Billy Joe by the waistband of his pants, opened the back door, and shoved him in.
When Rhodes got in the driver’s seat, Billy Joe was still squirming around in the back like a worm on a griddle. “Billy Joe,” Rhodes said patiently, “this car is county property, and if you damage it you’re going to be in big trouble. Now hold still.” Billy Joe quieted down some, and Rhodes started the car.
In the confined space, Rhodes could smell Billy Joe, who had what could only be described as a distinctive odor. It was very likely, Rhodes thought, that Billy Joe had not had a bath since the last time he’d been in jail, two years before. Certainly, his clothes had never been washed. Rhodes detected a faint odor of beer along with the general ripeness that filled the car.
“When you’re settled down a little, have a smoke,” Rhodes said, pulling the car onto the road and turning on the air conditioner. He watched in the mirror as from somewhere in his filthy khaki shirt Billy Joe produced a soft pack of Merit Menthol 100s and a Bic lighter. Without offering a smoke to Rhodes, who didn’t smoke anyway, Billy Joe lit up.
The Blacklin County jail might not have been a disgrace, exactly, but it wasn’t the first place that anyone would want to point out to a visitor, either. It had been built in the early part of the century, when prisoners weren’t too well thought of, and it had gotten considerably less comfortable over the years. It looked like a fortress from the dark ages, except that its exterior was brown sandstone, and instead of a moat it was surrounded by a stubby wrought-iron fence. The fence wouldn’t keep anybody in or out, but no one on the outside wanted in, and those on the inside were kept in place by other barriers, like the heavily barred windows of the cells. The cells weren’t air-conditioned, and they weren’t very well heated in the winter. The walls were cracked, and the metal bed frames had rust spots on them. The plumbing was unreliable. A federal judge had recently given the county commissioners two years to do something about the conditions, something like building a new jail.
None of that mattered a bit to Billy Joe Byron. He’d been to jail before, and it compared favorably to the little shotgun shack covered with tar paper and composition shingles where he lived. This time, though, he didn’t appear too eager to go inside. But Rhodes got him in.
Old Hack Jensen was over by the radio. The county was always strapped for money and couldn’t afford a real dispatcher, but ever since Hack had retired from his job at the local Gulf station he’d helped out for far below the minimum wage.
“Who you got there, Sheriff?” Hack asked as Rhodes and Billy Joe came through the door. Then he did an exaggerated double take. “I’ll be damned if it ain’t old Billy Joe Byron, one of my favorite customers. What you been up to this time, Billy Joe?”
Billy Joe appeared glad to see Hack, so Rhodes let him go, and he walked over to the old man quite calmly. (“Looks like maybe you and Billy Joe had yourselves a little tussle, Sheriff,” Hack said, glancing at Rhodes’s so
iled uniform and the blood on Billy Joe’s shirt. “Is that your blood or Billy Joe’s there?”
“I’ve sort of been wondering about that blood myself,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think it’s mine or his. See if you can rustle up an old shirt for Billy Joe to wear while he’s with us. We may have to send that one to Houston for some lab tests. Where’s Lawton?”
Lawton was the jailer, almost as old as Jensen. He’d been working for the county for over forty years, but they couldn’t retire him. He was the only certified jailer they had.
“He’s upstairs in the block,” Hack said, referring to the second floor of the jail where the cells were located. “Johnny brought in a couple of guys last night, says they got in a fight out to the Paragon Club. He had to break it up, and they gave him a pretty bad time. I don’t know who looks worse, him or them.
“And that reminds me,” Hack went on. “Miz Kinchloe called a while ago, mighty upset. Her husband just kicked out the windshield of that little S-10 pickup they bought last week. What really bothered her is that she was in the pickup when he did the kicking.”
“They’re at it again, huh?” said Rhodes.
“You ain’t lying,” Hack said. “I guess it’s just about time, though. She hasn’t taken a shot at him for three or four weeks now.”
“I took the gun away from her after the last time,” Rhodes said. “It’s locked up in the property closet.”
“Damn good thing, too. Want me to send someone over there?”
“Not right now. I may drive by later. If they didn’t have each other to fight with, they’d start in on the neighbors.”
While Rhodes was speaking, Lawton walked into the room through the stairwell doorway. He and Hack, when they stood together, looked a little like Abbott and Costello would have looked if they’d still been alive, Rhodes thought. Hack was tall, with slicked down hair and a thin moustache that still had a little brown in it. Lawton was short and stout, not really fat, but with a large, round stomach that started just under his chest. He was nearly seventy, but he still had an almost unlined, innocent face.