Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  “Where do you think he went?” Rhodes asked.

  “I’d go to Houston if I wanted to stay in the state,” Buddy said. “A man could change his name down there and never be found. They got over two million people living down there. Easy to hide. Climate’s bad, though. Traffic’s even worse than the climate.”

  “I don’t think Louie’s in Houston,” Rhodes said. “I think he’s still right around here somewhere. The Foshees are big on family, and he’ll be worried about Earl. He’ll want to know who killed Neil.”

  “He won’t know what happened to Earl. He won’t even know we caught him.”

  “We’ll make it easy for him to find out. It’ll be in the paper and on the Internet.”

  “You think Louie can read or use the Internet?”

  “He might be smarter than we think,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Rhodes was on his way to the Dairy Queen to get some lunch when Hack called.

  “Andy Shelby’s got somethin’ for you,” Hack said.

  “What does he have?” Rhodes asked.

  “Wouldn’t tell me. I’m just the old flunky, not some hotshot investigator. Nobody ever tells me anything.”

  “It’s probably not important.”

  “He said it was. Said he couldn’t talk about it on the air.”

  Rhodes wondered what Andy could’ve found out. “Have him meet me at the Dairy Queen.”

  “You gettin’ yourself a Blizzard? ’Cause a Blizzard’s got a lot of calories in it if a man’s watching his weight.”

  “I’m not watching my weight.”

  “Maybe you oughta be, then.”

  “I get plenty of exercise.”

  “Like what?”

  “Climbing trees to avoid being trampled by hogs,” Rhodes said.

  “When was that?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” Rhodes said, and signed off.

  * * *

  It was a little after the lunch hour, and the Dairy Queen wasn’t crowded. When Rhodes entered, he saw Andy Shelby sitting in a booth to the left of the door. Unlike a lot of people who wore hats, Andy was old-fashioned and took his off when he was indoors. It sat on the seat beside him.

  Rhodes went to the counter, placed his order, paid, and took the little slip with his number on it over to the booth. He slid in across from Andy, who was eating a strip of fried chicken.

  “You beat me here,” Rhodes said.

  Andy put down the chicken strip and wiped his mouth and fingers with a skimpy napkin. Rhodes could remember a time when napkins in the DQ and other fast-food places had been substantial enough to do some good, but those days were long gone.

  “I was close by,” Andy said. “Did Hack tell you I found something?”

  “He did,” Rhodes said. “He didn’t tell me what it was, though. I think you hurt his feelings.”

  “It wasn’t something I wanted to put on the air. I’m not sure I even want to say it in here.”

  Rhodes looked around. Nobody was nearby. “I think we’re safe enough.”

  “Let’s wait till your food comes. What’d you order?”

  “A burger,” Rhodes said, feeling a little guilty. He blamed Hack for that. “And a Dr Pepper.”

  “Which burger?”

  “The one with the deep-fried jalapeño strips and pepper jack cheese.”

  “It have that jalapeño ranch dressing on it, too?”

  “That and some lettuce,” Rhodes said.

  “A well-balanced meal,” Andy said, as the woman behind the counter called Rhodes’s number.

  Rhodes got his food and returned to the booth. When he’d unwrapped his burger and rammed his straw down through the plastic top on the Dr Pepper, he said, “Now you can tell me what you found out.”

  “I talked to a man named Turner. Brad Turner. You know him?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Rhodes bit into his burger. It might not be as well balanced as Andy had said, but it was satisfying.

  “He lives a couple of blocks from the Moore place,” Andy said. “In that little shotgun house on the corner. Painted green.”

  “I know the house,” Rhodes said.

  “Crotchety old guy, not friendly in the least. Didn’t want to talk to me. I could tell he knew something, so I kept after him, but you need to see him. I think he knows more than he’s telling.”

  “He did tell you something, though.”

  “I think he did it just to get rid of me,” Andy said. “After arguing with me for a good while and trying to make me leave, he told me he saw somebody around the Moore place last night.”

  “Did he say who it was?”

  Andy looked around, then leaned across the table and whispered, “He thinks it was Mayor Clement.”

  “Uh-oh,” Rhodes said.

  Andy leaned back. “That’s putting it mildly.”

  Rhodes put down his burger. He wasn’t feeling hungry anymore. “What else did Turner say?”

  “Nothing. He said he’d told me all he knew, but I don’t believe him.”

  Rhodes took a sip of his Dr Pepper, then said, “Why not?”

  Andy shrugged. “I can’t really say. Kind of a hunch, I guess. A feeling. You know?”

  Rhodes knew. After you’d been in law enforcement for a while, you developed a kind of instinct, a little something in the back of your head that sent out a signal when somebody was lying. Maybe there was more to it than that. Body language, tone of voice, a look in the eyes, something that didn’t register consciously but that sent out a warning to you.

  “There’s one other thing,” Andy said. “It doesn’t have to do with the Moore house, though.”

  “Tell me anyway,” Rhodes said.

  “He wears a tinfoil hat,” Andy said.

  “A tinfoil hat?”

  “Sort of. You go and talk to him. You’ll see.”

  Rhodes decided he was hungry after all. He took another bite of his burger. If someone in a tinfoil hat was claiming he saw the mayor, there wasn’t a lot to worry about.

  “At least he didn’t claim it was aliens he saw,” Rhodes said after he’d chewed and swallowed.

  “This time,” Andy said.

  “This time?”

  “You never know what people might come up with, and I think there’s more to it. You need to talk to him.”

  “As soon as I finish this burger,” Rhodes said, and he took another bite.

  * * *

  The narrow green house was in bad need of a new coat of paint, and the yard wasn’t kept much better than the one at the Moore place, which hadn’t been touched by a mower in many long years.

  Rhodes stopped the county car in front of the house and got out. He saw a man sitting on the little front porch in an old recliner that leaned to one side. There was a wooden kitchen chair beside the recliner that also leaned a little. The man didn’t get up.

  Rhodes got out of the car. There was no sidewalk, but a smooth path had been worn through the grass to the porch. Rhodes stopped at the step and looked at the man in the recliner. He appeared to be about seventy. He wore a pair of faded overalls and some raggedy canvas shoes with the soles about to peel off at the front. The gaps made the shoes look like they had little mouths.

  The man’s face was deeply creased, and he hadn’t shaved in a while. The unshaved look was apparently popular among youngsters, if Rhodes was to judge by what he saw on TV. On an older man, it just seemed careless. To Rhodes, it seemed careless on younger ones, too, but he’d never been in the loop when it came to fashions.

  A blue Texas Rangers baseball cap with a red T on the front sat on the man’s head. The cap wasn’t made of tinfoil, but some kind of foil stuck out around the bottom edges, indicating that the cap was lined with it.

  “Brad Turner?” Rhodes said.

  “That’s me,” the man said. He made no effort to get out of his chair. “Who’re you?”

  “Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”

  “That deputy sent you, I bet. I told him a
ll I know. I don’t have anything else to say.”

  The rickety wooden chair beside the recliner looked as if it might fall over on its own, but Rhodes was willing to give it a try if Turner would let him.

  “I’m just here to clarify what you told the deputy,” Rhodes said. “Mind if I sit down in that empty chair? It’s a hot day, and I could use some shade.”

  Turner didn’t appear to like the idea, but he said, “Okay, come ahead.”

  Rhodes stepped up on the porch. The old boards creaked, and Rhodes thought that maybe he shouldn’t have had that burger for lunch. He eased himself down on the chair. It squealed but didn’t collapse, and Rhodes relaxed.

  When Rhodes was settled, Turner said, “You talk to your deputy?”

  “I did. He said you saw somebody around the Moore house last night.”

  “We’ll get around to that in a minute,” Turner said. He touched the baseball cap. “The deputy tell you about my cap?”

  Rhodes didn’t see any need to lie about it. “He mentioned it.”

  “I could tell he was eyein’ it. He prob’ly thinks I’m crazy. Worried about the gover’ment spies and such.”

  “He didn’t say anything about that.”

  “He was thinkin’ it, I bet. Hell, I know better’n to think this cap could keep the gover’ment’s eyes off me. The gover’ment’s spying on ever’body they can, sure, but they do it with cell phones and computers. I don’t have either one of those things, so they can peep on ’em all they want to for all I care. You wanna know why I have this foil in my hat?”

  Rhodes didn’t know what the right answer to that would be, so he went with “Only if you want to tell me.”

  “Don’t mind tellin’ you. Be easier to show you, though.” Turner got out of his chair and went out into his overgrown yard. The soles of his shoes flopped as he walked. “Come on over here.”

  Rhodes got up carefully and joined Turner in the yard. Turner pointed over the roof of his house in the direction of the cemetery. “See that?”

  Rhodes saw some fluffy clouds, but he was pretty sure that wasn’t what Turner meant.

  “Cell phone tower,” Turner said, and Rhodes saw it then, or the tip of it. It was quite a distance away. “RF waves.”

  Rhodes must have looked puzzled, because Turner added, “Radio frequency waves. I decided I’d rather stuff some foil in my cap than get the brain cancer. Be better if I could cover my whole head, but that’s not gonna happen. Too damn hot. So the cap’ll have to do. Let’s go back up on the porch.”

  When they were seated again, Turner pulled a grimy handkerchief from a pocket of his overalls, took off his cap, and wiped his balding head.

  “Damn foil is scratchy and makes me sweat,” he said. “Better’n the brain cancer, though.”

  “Bound to be,” Rhodes said.

  Turner put the handkerchief away and put the cap back on his head, and Rhodes noticed a worn wedding band on his finger.

  “I got some more foil in the house,” Turner said. “You want some?”

  “No, thanks,” Rhodes said. “I’m not going to be here long.”

  “Your choice. It wasn’t always like this around here. Back when I moved in, there weren’t such things as cell phone towers. A man was a lot safer in those days.”

  “What about your wife?” Rhodes asked. “Is she worried about the cell phone tower, too?”

  “Betty Jane,” Turner said. “That’s my wife. Or was. She left me a long time ago. Run off with some fella to live in Arkansas.”

  “I’m sorry,” Rhodes said.

  “No need to be. I’ve got over it. You want to hear about the Moore house?”

  “I’d like that.”

  “Lots of funny things go on there at night. I don’t have a TV, so I sit out here on the porch a lot.”

  Rhodes wasn’t surprised that Turner didn’t have a TV set. No telling what kind of radiation one of those things gave off.

  “Can’t sleep too well, either,” Turner said, “what with all the radio frequency waves around here, so I’m out on this porch late sometimes. See all kinds of things. Like down at that Moore house.”

  “What kinds of things?” Rhodes asked.

  “Lights, mostly. Cars driving around. That kind of thing.”

  “See any people?” Rhodes asked, glad that Turner was so talkative. All it took was a little encouragement.

  “Not so I could recognize ’em, but I seen a few.”

  “What about last night?”

  “Saw some cars,” Turner said. “Heard some noises, might have been gunshots. Didn’t think anything of it. I hear things from other people’s TVs all the time. Thought that’s what it was till the county car showed up with their lights goin’.”

  “That was me,” Rhodes said. “And one of the deputies.”

  “Couldn’t see who it was. Didn’t think much about it, really, till that deputy showed up this mornin’ and said somebody’d been killed. I thought back about some of the cars that drove by here when he said that, and I remembered that one of ’em belonged to the mayor.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “Pretty dang sure. It was a big Alexis, one of those SUVs. You know anybody else around here who drives an Alexis like that?”

  Clifford Clement owned a black Lexus SUV that he was careful to keep polished to a high shine. Rhodes could think of a couple of other people who owned a Lexus, but not an SUV.

  “Mayor Clement’s not the only one,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe not, but I think his is the one I saw. Don’t know what he’d be doin’ out around here at night.”

  “You just saw the car, not who was in it?”

  “That’s right, but it was the mayor’s car. He thinks he’s a big dog, drivin’ that Alexis. Movin’ fast, too.”

  Rhodes wasn’t convinced. “What makes you so sure it was the mayor’s car since it’s not the only one in the county?”

  “Don’t really know. Somethin’ about it, though. It was his, all right.”

  Pretty flimsy, but maybe Turner had some other information. “See any other cars?”

  “There was a pickup that roared outa the backyard,” Turner said. “This was all after the shots was fired, if it was shots I heard.”

  “What kind of pickup?” Rhodes asked.

  “Can’t say. I didn’t get much of a look at it.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Nope.” When he said it, his eyes shifted. He hadn’t been looking at Rhodes. The whole time he’d talked, he’d been looking straight ahead. Now his eyes slid off to the right. “You gonna arrest the mayor?”

  “Not just yet,” Rhodes said. “I have to have more to go on than what you saw.”

  “The big dogs always get off,” Turner said. “Never spend a minute in the calaboose. Somebody like that, somebody people like, no matter what he does, he gets off scot-free. A nobody like me, he’d be in prison for the rest of his life.”

  “We don’t even know that it was the mayor you saw.” Rhodes stood up. “I’ll check it out and see what he has to say.”

  “You should,” Turner said. “That Moore place is haunted. You know that?”

  “So I’ve been told,” Rhodes said.

  “You believe in ghosts?”

  Rhodes didn’t want Turner to stop talking, so he said, “I keep an open mind.”

  Turner took off his cap and wiped his head again. “I think they come back to haunt us. Don’t do no good to run from ’em. They can find you wherever you are. You take that Moore fella. You prob’ly don’t remember him, but he was one mean dude. Shot stray dogs with a pellet gun.”

  “I heard about that,” Rhodes said.

  “His own dog ate on him after he died.”

  Rhodes didn’t bother to correct Turner. He didn’t think it would do any good.

  “Man like that,” Turner said, “man that would shoot a dog, he’d do about anything. Don’t guess he was any great loss.”

  “I doubt that he’d agree,”
Rhodes said.

  “You might could ask his ghost about that. I think he’s the one making the lights shine down there. Been doin’ it for all these years. Mean fellas, they can’t rest easy, even if their dyin’ was their own fault.”

  “A heart attack’s not necessarily anybody’s fault,” Rhodes said.

  “Brought it on himself by meanness,” Turner said. He stood up. “I got to go in now. Time for my nap.”

  Rhodes stood up, too, and thanked Turner for his help.

  “You arrest that mayor,” Turner said. “If there was any shootin’, he was in on it. You can count on that.”

  “We’ll see,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 10

  Rhodes drove back to the jail. He had a lot of questions about Brad Turner, not to mention the mayor and Ace Gable, but Rhodes knew where to get the answers, or some of them. He didn’t need computers to keep up with people in Clearview. He had Hack, who in spite of his complaints that nobody ever told him anything managed to keep up with most of what was going on in town, even though he seldom left his desk. He didn’t even have to quiz Rhodes about the murder. He’d already caught up on almost everything.

  And then there was Lawton. Whatever Hack didn’t know about Clearview, Lawton probably did. All Rhodes had to do was ask. It might take a while to get the answers from them, but eventually the answers would come.

  “You gonna enter the bull ridin’ at the rodeo this year?” Hack asked when Rhodes walked through the door.

  “You been visiting a Web site on county time?” Rhodes asked, sitting at his desk.

  “It’s part of the job,” Hack said. “If people’d just keep me in the loop, I wouldn’t have to look. Almost didn’t get to find out anything today, since that Web site’s been down most of the time. It’s back up now, though. You looked just like Sage Barton when you tangled with that bull.”

  “Let’s don’t start that Sage Barton stuff,” Rhodes said. “Is there anything I need to know about?”

  “Heard from the hospital. Earl Foshee’s still unconscious. He’ll be okay, but it might take him a while to come around.”

  Rhodes hoped Earl would be all right. He might be a drug dealer, but he didn’t deserve to spend his life in a coma. Nobody deserved that. Besides, Rhodes wanted to question him about what had happened at the Moore house.