Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes didn’t doubt it. Ace was big enough to snap Foshee like a stick if he wanted to. Rhodes didn’t have a list of suspects, but if he’d had one, Ace would have moved to the top of it.

  “Ace … Mr. Gable … wouldn’t have broken Neil in two, though,” Vicki said. “He’s not like that. He wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  Rhodes thought about the way Ace had looked at him when he’d mentioned talking to Vicki about someone she used to know. At that moment, Ace had looked like a man who’d hurt somebody.

  “Does Ace know you used to date Foshee?”

  Vicki nodded. “I told him about it. I didn’t tell him about the roadside park, though. That’s too embarrassing.”

  It was a bit embarrassing to Rhodes as well, so he changed the subject. “When you were dating Foshee, did he ever get into any arguments or fights with anybody?”

  “No, never. I told you, everybody seemed to like him. I wish I could help you find out who killed him, but I can’t think of anybody who’d want to do that.”

  “That’s okay,” Rhodes said. “I had to check. You like Ace, don’t you.”

  “He’s real nice.”

  “Have you been dating him?”

  “Not yet.” Vicki smiled. “He’s going to buy me dinner tomorrow night, though.”

  “I hope he takes you somewhere nice,” Rhodes said. “I have to ask you one more thing. Where were you last night?”

  “Home. I watched a movie on TV. One of those pirate things with Johnny Depp.”

  Rhodes thought the last good pirate movie had starred Geena Davis.

  “How was it?”

  “It was okay. It was number three or four. The first one was the best.”

  “The sequels are never as good,” he said, but he thought it was too bad that Geena Davis had never made a sequel to hers. “Let’s go back inside.”

  When they went back into the store, Ace was running Strother’s credit card. A new battery sat on the counter beside the cash register.

  “Old one’s dead as a doornail,” Strother said, taking the credit card that Ace handed him and putting it in his billfold. “This new one’s got a five-year guarantee on it, though. Ought to last at least that long.”

  “Good luck,” Rhodes said. He’d never had a car battery that lasted that long.

  “I’ll go out and help you put it in the car,” Ace said. “That is, if Vicki and the sheriff are finished talking.”

  “We are,” Rhodes said. “I’ll watch you install the battery. Might learn something.”

  He thanked Vicki for her help and followed Strother and Ace outside. Ace had brought a wire brush and some kind of cleaner for the connections on the battery cable. He set the battery on the little platform where it belonged, and when he’d removed the corrosion from the connections, he hooked the battery up.

  “Give it a try,” he told Strother.

  Strother got in the car and started it. He leaned out the window and said, “Works great.”

  “You have any trouble, you come on back,” Ace told him, and slammed down the hood.

  Strother drove out of the parking lot and onto the highway, leaving Ace and Rhodes on the walk.

  “You find out what you wanted to know from Vicki?” Ace asked.

  “She couldn’t help me,” Rhodes said. It was time to tell Ace what he’d been asking about. “I had some questions about Neil Foshee.”

  Ace’s jaw muscles tensed. “That drug-dealing son of a bitch better not come back here to my store again.”

  “He won’t,” Rhodes said. “Somebody killed him last night.”

  Ace gave him a nasty grin. “Too bad.”

  Rhodes didn’t say anything, and after a few seconds Ace said, “Wait a minute. You don’t think I did it, do you?”

  “The thought did cross my mind,” Rhodes told him.

  “Well, it can uncross it. I didn’t like him, but I didn’t kill him.”

  “Where were you last night?”

  Ace took off his cap, slapped it against his thigh, and put it back on. He didn’t offer to give Rhodes one, and this didn’t seem like the time to ask.

  “I don’t know where I was,” Ace said. “Where I always am, I guess. It was Tuesday, so I closed the doors at six. Took me a while to get things taken care of, but I finished around six thirty. Then I went home. Watched a little TV. The Astros game.”

  “They win?”

  “They never win,” Ace said.

  “Nobody watched with you?”

  “I’m a single man, Sheriff. Nobody to vouch for me besides my cat.”

  Rhodes would’ve figured Ace for a dog man, which proved once more that he should never make assumptions.

  “Cats can keep a secret,” he said.

  “You got that right,” Ace said, “not that I have any secrets. I was right there at home, and Leroy would tell you that if he could.”

  “Leroy being the cat.”

  “Who’d you think I was talking about?”

  “Never mind. You’re taking Vicki out for dinner tomorrow night?”

  “She told you, huh? Well, I am. That doesn’t mean I killed a guy.”

  “You didn’t like him, though.”

  “Hell,” Ace said, “nobody did.”

  * * *

  Rhodes was just pulling out of the parking lot when he got a call from Hack.

  “Buddy says to tell you he’s got ’em cornered.”

  “Got who cornered?” Rhodes asked.

  “Louie and Earl. That’s who you had him lookin’ for, remember?”

  “He wasn’t supposed to corner them,” Rhodes said. “We just wanted to talk to them.”

  “Buddy knows that. They ain’t really cornered. They just won’t come out of their house or let him in it. Seems like they don’t want to talk to him.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Out at Milsby. You know where Miz Wilkie lives, I guess.”

  Rhodes knew. Mrs. Wilkie had set her cap for him at one time, but she’d eventually given up on him. She was now working for Mikey Burns, one of the county commissioners, as his admistrative assistant. He was the one who had her interest now.

  “I know where she lives,” Rhodes said.

  “Figgered you did. Down the road from her place there’s the Collins place. Nobody’s lived there for a year or two, and the Foshees have moved in. Don’t know if they own it, but they’re there. So is Buddy, but he’s just parked out front. He tried to talk to them, but he didn’t get anywhere. I told him to wait till you got there before he tries again.”

  “Be sure he waits. You never know what those Foshees might do. I’ll go right now.”

  “I’ll tell him, but I can’t promise he won’t do anything. I ain’t his boss.”

  “Just tell him,” Rhodes said.

  “You sure are gettin’ snippy these days,” Hack said. “I ever mention that?”

  “Not in the last ten minutes,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Buddy was standing outside his county car, leaning against the passenger side, when Rhodes came to a stop behind him.

  “Sure hot today,” Buddy said when Rhodes got out and joined him.

  “Be summer soon,” Rhodes said. “Then it’ll be hot. This is just warm.”

  “I guess,” Buddy said. He indicated the house with his thumb. “Louie and Earl are holed up in there. I went to the door, but they said they wouldn’t talk to me unless I had a warrant. I told ’em I just wanted to talk, but they turned up the radio real loud and made out like they couldn’t hear me.”

  Rhodes heard some sounds coming from the house. They weren’t what he’d have called music, but he was a few years behind the curve when it came to what was popular.

  “Who is that?” he asked.

  “Pharrell Williams?” Buddy said. “John Legend? I don’t know. Justin Timberlake?”

  Buddy liked to pretend that he wasn’t quite as far behind as Rhodes was, but he was close.

  “We could ask,” Rhodes said.
>
  “Good idea. Maybe they’ll talk to us when they see you.”

  The yard was surrounded by a chain-link fence. It must have been a strong one, because the yard hadn’t been rooted up by the feral hogs that roamed the countryside in Blacklin County, and all over Texas for that matter. Rhodes pushed the gate open. It didn’t squeal like the gate at the Moore house. He and Buddy walked up a narrow concrete walk to the house. The yard had been mowed within the last week or two, and the previous night’s rain had greened it up some. The house could’ve used some paint, but it didn’t look too bad, considering that it had been vacant for a while. The driveway on the side of the yard led around to the back of the house, where the Foshees’ vehicles would be parked.

  “You better knock,” Buddy said. “They don’t like me much.”

  They didn’t like Rhodes, either, as he knew from past experience, but he knocked on the edge of the screen door anyway. It banged against the door frame, and in a little while the inner door opened. Louie Foshee looked out through the screen.

  Louie was a big man, about thirty. Not as big as Ace Gable, but big enough. Unlike Ace, however, he didn’t look like a body builder. Or at least not like a body builder who went to the gym. He looked like a man who’d built his body with extra helpings of meat and potatoes with cobbler and ice cream for dessert. He wasn’t soft, though. His belly looked hard as a bowling ball under his untucked blue shirt. He had a wide face like a frog’s, and his eyes bugged out a bit, too.

  “What you want, Sheriff?” he asked. He had to yell to be heard over the music. “I already told your deputy that we wouldn’t talk to him without a warrant.”

  Rhodes cupped his ear with his hand. “I can’t hear you!”

  Louie repeated what he’d said about the warrant.

  “I still can’t hear you,” Rhodes said

  Louie gave him a disgusted look and turned to the room behind him. “Turn down the damn music!” he yelled.

  It took a few seconds, but then the music was muted. Rhodes would’ve preferred not to hear it at all, but it wasn’t loud enough to interfere with conversation now.

  “We need to talk,” he said.

  Louie gave him another look. “I been trying to tell you that I ain’t talking to you without a warrant. You got one?”

  “We don’t need a warrant to talk,” Rhodes said. “You’re out on bond right now, and I can call the judge and get the bond revoked if I have to. Then I’ll take you to the jail where we can talk without any noise bothering me.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  He had a point. It would take a lot more to get the bond revoked than Rhodes telling the judge that Louie wouldn’t talk to him. He’d need much stronger grounds than that, but he didn’t think that Louie was as sure about it as he tried to sound.

  “You never know what a judge might do,” Rhodes said, “but I can give it a try. Is it worth the hassle to you if he goes along with me?”

  Louie thought it over. “Maybe not. You can’t come in, though.”

  Rhodes wondered what Louie was hiding. Meth? A gun? Both? Neither?

  “That’s okay,” Rhodes said. “You can come out here. Tell Earl to come, too.”

  Louie looked puzzled. Rhodes didn’t think it would take much to puzzle Louie. “How you know he’s here?”

  Rhodes cupped his hand behind his ear again. “Who turned down the music?”

  “Oh. Yeah.” Louie turned back to the room again. “Earl! Come on. We’re gonna talk to the sheriff.”

  “Don’t want to,” Earl yelled from somewhere in the house.

  “Don’t matter what you want. You come on.”

  Louie waited at the door until Earl came along. Earl was a couple of years younger than Louie, and almost as big. He was in a bit better shape, too, but he had the same wide face. Both of them had their dark hair cut in mullets straight out of the seventies. Rhodes wondered who their role models were. Rod Stewart? At least Rod Stewart could sing better than whoever had been on the radio.

  “What’s this about?” Louie asked, coming out the door. “Me and Earl been behaving ourselves just like we’re supposed to. If it’s about this house, we’re renting it all legal. Terry Collins owns it. Inherited it from his uncle. Lives over in Railville. You can ask him.”

  “Yeah,” Earl said. “You can ask him.”

  “This isn’t about the house,” Rhodes said. “You two look fully recovered since the last time we met.”

  The last time had been at the meth lab, where Louie and Earl had sustained a bit of damage from buckshot fired by Rhodes and Andy Shelby.

  “Next time you might be the one gets hurt,” Louie said. “What’re you here for?”

  “It’s about your cousin Neil. He’s been living here with you, hasn’t he?”

  “Yeah, but we haven’t seen him lately,” Louie said. “You seen him lately, Earl?”

  Earl gave his head a vigorous shake. “Not me. No, sir. Haven’t seen him lately. Old Neil. Wonder what he’s up to?”

  Earl and Louie were a lot of things, but they weren’t good liars. Rhodes had known a few good liars in his time, and some bad ones, too. Earl and Louie were among the worst. They’d seen Neil lately, and they knew what he was up to. Or what he wasn’t up to.

  “Neil got us in trouble, making meth and like that,” Louie said. “We let him live here ’cause he needs a place, but we don’t hang with him anymore outside the house. Ain’t that right, Earl.”

  “Right as rain,” Earl said, nodding so fast that he looked like a bobblehead doll. “We don’t associate with him outside the house. He’s a troublemaker.”

  “Not anymore,” Buddy said. “He’s dead.”

  Louie and Earl opened their mouths and looked at each other with wide eyes. Rhodes had never seen two worse attempts at appearing surprised.

  “We don’t believe you,” Louie said after recovering from his mock shock.

  “It’s true,” Rhodes said. “Sad story. Killed by a wild hog.”

  “Neil wasn’t killed by no hog,” Earl said. “That’s not so.”

  “Sure it is,” Rhodes said. “Out in the woods last night. Wild hog got him down and ran those tusks right through him.”

  Earl was getting red-faced. He clenched his fists. “Did not.”

  “You be quiet, Earl,” Louie said.

  “But he’s lying,” Earl said. “Neil wasn’t killed by no hog.”

  “That’s right,” Rhodes said. If he could get Earl worked up, there was no telling what he might reveal. “I was just joking. He wasn’t killed by a wild hog. He was run over by a bus out on the highway. He was walking and texting. He never saw it coming.”

  Earl had little eyes like Louie’s. He narrowed them to mere slits. “You’re a liar.”

  “Earl,” Louie said. “You hush right now.”

  Earl shook his head wildly. His mullet flew around on the back of his neck. “I ain’t gonna hush. He’s lying about Neil. Neil wasn’t killed by no hog nor run over by no bus. Somebody shot him, and when a man’s got shot, it’s up to his family to take care of it, not some sheriff.” He looked Buddy up and down. “Or some skinny little deputy.”

  “So you did know that Neil was dead,” Rhodes said. “That’s better.”

  “Not the part about the skinny little deputy,” Buddy said. “That’s not better. I don’t like that one bit.”

  “Maybe we need to go inside, sit down, and talk this out,” Rhodes said. “We can start with you two telling me how you knew Neil was shot and go on from there.”

  Earl stared at him.

  “I told you to hush, dumbass,” Louie said. “You never listen.”

  “I ain’t no dumbass,” Earl said. “He was lying about Neil. People ought not to lie about somebody who’s dead.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Louie said, “but now we have to go inside and talk. You go on, Earl.”

  Earl didn’t move, so Louie gave him a little push. Earl opened the screen and went through. Louie went in right be
hind him. As soon as he was inside, he slammed the inner door before Rhodes and Buddy had a chance to move. Rhodes heard a dead bolt snick into place.

  “They can’t do that,” Buddy said, although it was plain that they had.

  Rhodes heard footsteps. It sounded as if Earl and Louie were running through the house.

  “They’re headed out the back,” he said, and Buddy took off.

  Rhodes ran after him, catching up just as he turned the corner of the house. He heard a door slam and reached out for Buddy’s shoulder.

  “Slow down,” Rhodes said. “We don’t want to run into anything we aren’t ready for.”

  “Right,” Buddy said, pulling his service revolver, a big .44 magnum. Rhodes felt a little inadequate as he got the little Kel-Tec from the ankle holster.

  A couple of car doors slammed and an engine started.

  “Let’s get back there,” Rhodes said. “Be careful.”

  When they got to the back of the house, they saw an old green pickup, black smoke coming from the tailpipe. Rhodes didn’t know where Earl and Louie had gotten the pickup. Their cars had been shot up pretty badly in the raid on the meth house, but they’d probably made enough money to buy the old truck. There was no second vehicle, which meant that either Neil didn’t have one or it was missing.

  Rhodes ran to the driveway and stood in the middle of it and pointed the Kel-Tec straight in front of him. He hoped Louie and Earl had enough sense not to run over him or get shot trying, and they did. Instead of trying to get out on the driveway, they turned around and headed out across the backyard. The chain-link fence didn’t slow them down much. The pickup hit a post and smashed it down, along with a swath of the fence, and they struck out across the pasture, bouncing across ruts almost like a pickup in a cartoon and running over small mesquite bushes without regard to puncturing the tires.

  “Want me to shoot out the tires?” Buddy asked.

  The way the pickup was bouncing around, Rhodes thought he’d be lucky to come within twenty yards of it. Or unlucky enough to hit Louie or Earl.

  “Better not,” Rhodes said.

  “They’ll get away.”

  Letting them get away was better than shooting them by accident. They knew a lot more than they were telling, and Rhodes thought Earl would crack for sure in about ten minutes. Louie might take a little longer.