Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  “Trouble?” Rhodes said. “Maybe not. We’ll see. Let’s talk about what happened last night.”

  Wade looked at his uncle. Clement said, “He knows about it.”

  “I sure do,” Rhodes said to Wade. “You were about to visit a known drug dealer when he was shot and killed. You claim you called it in, but your cell phone number is blocked, so we can’t be sure it was you. That’s for starters. You want to tell me what you were doing there in the first place?”

  Wade stiffened. “I didn’t know he was killed, not then. I didn’t find that out until a little while ago.”

  “Let’s say that’s true. We can come back to it if we need to. Just start with what you were doing there.”

  Wade relaxed a little. “Research. I’m going to do a paper on drug dealing in small towns. I have a professor who’s interested in the problem, and I thought it would be good if I could get some firsthand information about it. Uncle Cliff said it would be okay.”

  Clement looked as if he’d like to get up and clap a hand over his nephew’s mouth, but he sat where he was.

  “He told you that, huh?” Rhodes asked.

  “Yeah. He said you guys weren’t doing much about the drugs here in town and maybe I could help out.”

  Clement cleared his throat. “I don’t believe I put it exactly like that.”

  Wade shrugged. “Something like that, anyway. I’ve heard all about how small-town police forces are understaffed and underfunded. You need all the help you can get.”

  Rhodes nodded. “That’s what I always say, but we don’t need any help from people who might get themselves killed. You know you could’ve been the one who was shot last night, don’t you?”

  “Me?” Wade said. “Why would anybody want to shoot me?”

  “People don’t always need a reason,” Rhodes said.

  He’d been asking himself the same question about Neil Foshee. Why would anyone want to shoot him? So far the only person he could think of who might have a reason was Ace Gable.

  “I don’t think anybody would shoot me,” Wade said, but he didn’t sound so sure of himself now.

  “You still haven’t told me why you were there,” Rhodes said. “Specifically, not generally. You don’t drive to a place where a drug dealer’s being killed just to help out the poor underfunded sheriff’s department.”

  “I … was meeting somebody,” Wade said.

  “Who would that be?”

  “I didn’t exactly know.”

  Rhodes looked at Clement, who just rolled his eyes. By this point the mayor must have been feeling a bit of remorse for some of the things he’d said to his nephew.

  “Maybe you’d better explain,” Rhodes told Wade.

  “Okay, I’ll try. I asked around town about drugs. I told everybody I talked to the truth, that I was working on a paper for my college class. I didn’t ask any names or anything, and I told everybody I wouldn’t mention them in the paper. It took me a while, but I finally talked to a guy who told me about the haunted house and how that’s where some drug deals got made. So I thought I’d go by and see.”

  “You were just going to walk in on a drug deal?”

  “Not exactly. This guy I talked to said he’d fix it up so I could meet somebody there, maybe talk to him. Maybe even make a buy from him.”

  Rhodes couldn’t believe that anybody could be so naïve as Wade Clements. Even a college kid should know that a stranger in town didn’t go around asking questions about drugs and set up a meeting. That was just crazy, like something from a movie. For that matter, it never turned out well in the movies, either.

  “Who were you going to meet?” Rhodes asked.

  “No names,” Wade said. “Just some guy.”

  Rhodes didn’t roll his eyes the way the mayor had, but he wanted to. “You were going to walk into a possible drug deal with some guy whose name you didn’t know in the middle of the night?”

  “It sounds kind of crazy when you put it that way.”

  “That’s because it is crazy. Do you own a handgun?”

  “Well, sure. Doesn’t everybody? I have a CHL, too.”

  “Did you have the gun with you?”

  Wade frowned. “What do you mean? Are you saying I might’ve shot that guy? I didn’t even go in the house.”

  “Maybe not, but we’ll need your handgun to run some ballistics tests. Do you have it with you?”

  “No. It’s at Uncle Cliff’s house.”

  “I’ll see to it that he brings it to the jail,” Clement said. “It’ll be the one registered to him. I guarantee it.”

  “I didn’t shoot anybody,” Wade said. “I didn’t even take the gun out of the car.”

  “Then you don’t have anything to worry about,” Rhodes said.

  He didn’t know that they would even have to perform any tests, since he didn’t know yet what kind of gun had killed Foshee. The truth was that a little worrying would be a good thing in Wade’s case.

  “I’ll see to it that you get the gun back,” Rhodes said. “Eventually. In the meantime, you need to forget about writing a paper on drug deals. Don’t ask any more questions, don’t try to get involved with police work. Read a book. Watch TV. Play video games on your phone. But don’t mess around with the drug stuff. All right?”

  Wade looked at his uncle. Clement nodded. “Do what he says. You’re in enough trouble already. Besides, the sheriff has too many civilians meddling in his business.”

  That was just like Clement. He couldn’t resist getting in a little dig to remind Rhodes that he knew about Seepy Benton. Rhodes thought Benton was a different case, however. He was meddlesome, true, but he’d proved useful in the past, not that Rhodes was going to tell him that.

  Rhodes stood up. “If I’m not at the jail when you bring the gun by, give it to one of the deputies. I’ll let you know when you can pick it up.”

  “So I’m not under arrest?” Wade asked.

  “Not yet,” Rhodes told him.

  * * *

  Rhodes left the mayor’s office, got a sprightly good-bye wave from Alice King, and went outside into the hot late-afternoon sunshine. He turned for a look at the old city hall building. It wasn’t what it used to be, but at least it was still standing, unlike so many of the buildings that had once made up Clearview’s downtown area. The town’s original city jail was on the second floor of the building, and the windows still had the bars on them. Rhodes hadn’t been on the second floor in years, so he didn’t know what purpose the cells might be serving now, if they served any at all. Storerooms seemed most likely.

  Rhodes got into the county car and turned on the air conditioner. He rolled down the windows to let some of the heat escape and called Hack to tell him to run a search to see if Wade Clement had a record and to find out if there was anything that required his attention.

  “Nope,” Hack said when Rhodes asked. “Just the usual. Somebody called in a copper theft. Len Goolsby complained about a pickup circling the block. Said the driver was prob’ly checkin’ out his wife, who was out in the front yard waterin’ the flower bed.”

  “Did you send somebody to take a look?”

  “At Len’s wife?”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I sent Andy to check on both things. He’s handling the other thing, too.”

  “What other thing?”

  “Bea Ferrell and her husband got into a fight. Well, not a fight. Just lots of yellin’ and throwin’ the dishes. It was a Facebook thing.”

  Facebook things were cropping up with way too much regularity lately. Rhodes was afraid somebody was going to be seriously hurt before long.

  “Bea says her husband was lookin’ up his old girlfriends from high school and friendin’ ’em,” Hack continued. “He claims it was them lookin’ him up and that it’d be impolite not to friend ’em. Somewhere along in there the yellin’ started. Neighbors called it in.”

  “Everything end peacefully?”

  “Guess so. Andy’s still ther
e at the Ferrells’ place.”

  “Good. Here’s something we need, the gun registrations for Ace Gable, Clifford and Wade Clement, and Vicki Patton. Have Mika look for those.”

  “You’re pilin’ it on her.”

  “She can handle it. Anything else I need to know?”

  “Yep, one other thing. You need to go by and see Mikey Burns out at the precinct building.”

  “Why?”

  “Says he has something to tell you about Neil Foshee.”

  “He say what it was?”

  “Nobody ever tells me anything,” Hack said. “I don’t know if I’ve mentioned that, but I’ve been meanin’ to.”

  Rhodes pretended to think it over. “I don’t think you’ve mentioned it.”

  “You know dadgum well I have, not that it’s done any good.”

  “I’ll bring it up at the next meeting,” Rhodes said.

  “What meeting? When is it?”

  “I’ll let you know,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Before going to see Burns, Rhodes drove by the Moore place. It wasn’t too much out of the way, mainly because nothing in Clearview was too much out of the way. In the daylight, the old house didn’t look frightening in the least. It just looked run-down and dreary. It wasn’t going to last for many more years before it just gave up and sagged down to the ground, too old and tired to stand up any longer.

  In spite of its harmless appearance, however, something about the house bothered Rhodes. He couldn’t figure out why. Maybe it was the air of decay. He remembered reading “The Fall of the House of Usher” long ago in high school, and if there had been a deep, dark lake nearby for the Moore house to crumble into, it would’ve been a perfect fit with the story. The Usher place had been home to some odd doings, and so had this one.

  Maybe Rhodes was bothered because Neil Foshee had been killed inside the house, but Rhodes had been in any number of places where people had died. The feeling he had now wasn’t the same. It was a prickly feeling on the back of his neck, almost as if someone were watching him from inside the house.

  Seepy Benton might have said there was a ghost involved, but Rhodes didn’t think that was it. He didn’t put much stock in ghosts. He thought there was someone in there. He drove around to the back of the house but didn’t see a car anywhere. He parked and got out of his own car. He ducked under the crime-scene tape and walked through the backyard. As hot as the day had been, the grass hadn’t dried in the shade of the trees.

  Rhodes went on into the house and stood in the kitchen. It was quiet except for the occasional creak of an old board, and a musty smell hung in the air. Some of the fast-food wrappers still lay on the floor. The light coming in through the windows showed that the spiderwebs he’d seen the night before were dusty brown. There hadn’t been any new ones for a while. It was as if the spiders had decided one day to go and find somewhere else to live.

  Rhodes went into the next room, the one where Foshee had been killed. He saw nothing that aroused his suspicions, but the prickly feeling didn’t go away. Then he heard something, a skittering and a chittering in the walls. Rats. Or mice, more likely. That must have been what had bothered him, the thought of the mice running around in the house. He had nothing against mice, or even rats, not really. His last encounter with rats had been in an old cotton warehouse that he’d been searching with Buddy. Buddy had told him some story about a man long ago who’d been chased by rats. He’d hidden in a tower, but the rats had found him. They’d whetted their teeth on the stones, Buddy said.

  The noise in the walls stopped. Rhodes heard paper rustle in the kitchen and went back in there. A rat crouched in the middle of the floor, looking at him. Not a mouse. A rat. A big gray rat with black eyes and a skinless tail. It wasn’t quite as big as a cat, but it was the size of a kitten. It didn’t appear to be afraid of Rhodes at all.

  Rhodes took a step toward the animal. It sat up on its haunches, sniffed the air, and ran straight at him.

  Rhodes hadn’t been expecting that. He’d thought the rat might run toward the back door or out another exit, but the rat had different ideas. Rhodes did a quick-step and hopped out of the way as the rat ran into the other room and disappeared.

  Rhodes wondered if the rat had been watching him all along. Maybe that accounted for the prickly feeling. The feeling hadn’t gone away with the rat’s departure, but it seemed to be a little less.

  A rat like that could have a bad effect on anybody. It was awfully big.

  Rhodes decided it was time for him to leave. He was almost to the back door when his phone rang. He’d never played basketball, but he had a pretty good vertical leap when startled. He dug out his phone and answered. The caller was Hack.

  “You weren’t answerin’ the radio,” Hack said.

  “I’m not in the car,” Rhodes told him.

  “Not in the car? You goin’ over to see Mikey Burns, or ain’t you?”

  “I stopped by the Moore house first,” Rhodes said. “To have a look around.”

  “Well, Mikey says he’s gonna leave early today, and he’s gettin’ antsy.”

  “I’ll go right now,” Rhodes said.

  He stuck the phone back in his pocket and walked through the yard to the car. He still couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. He looked around, but he didn’t see any pale faces peering at him from behind broken or dusty windowpanes. He didn’t see the rat, either, so he got in the car and left.

  Chapter 12

  A couple of the other county commissioners had recently built new stone buildings to house their offices. On the inside they had large modern offices and meeting rooms with comfortable chairs.

  Mikey Burns hadn’t followed their lead as yet. He still had his office in a big metal building with covered bays in the back for road graders and trucks and other county equipment.

  Unlike his headquarters, however, Burns himself was flashy. He drove a bright red Pontiac Solstice convertible, which he’d had since it was new. It was on the way to becoming a collectible at this point, but it suited his personality. It was parked in front of the building, and Rhodes parked next to it. He was careful not to let the door of the county car touch the side of the convertible when he got out.

  Going inside, Rhodes was greeted by Mrs. Wilkie, who had changed a good bit since beginning to work for the county and becoming interested in her boss. Her hair was still an unlikely color, but it wasn’t the unnatural reddish orange it had been. It was styled, or so Rhodes suspected, by Lonnie Wallace or one of his assistants at the Beauty Shack. She’d recently done away with her glasses for contact lenses, and she even had an occasional kind word for Rhodes, who figured she’d finally forgiven him for marrying Ivy. She wasn’t as perky as Alice King, but then nobody was as perky as Alice King.

  “Good afternoon, Sheriff,” Mrs. Wilkie said when he came into the room. “The commissioner is expecting you. You go right on in.”

  Rhodes did as instructed. Burns sat behind his battered old desk, and he waved Rhodes to a seat in one of the office’s folding chairs. The other furniture consisted of a couple of old green filing cabinets and Burns’s desk, atop which were the only fairly new objects in the office, a computer and monitor.

  Burns was given to wearing aloha shirts, but the one he had on today wasn’t as bright as usual. It was covered with guitars against a black background. He also wore a straw planter’s hat. Hack had said he was planning to leave early, and it looked as if he was already on his way.

  “We need to talk, Sheriff,” Burns said.

  “That’s what I’m here for,” Rhodes said. “You know something about Neil Foshee?”

  “Maybe. I’ll get to him in a minute. We need to talk about the drug problem in general first. The hog problem, too.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure what the two problems had to do with each other, but he figured Burns would tell him.

  “Okay,” Rhodes said. “Let’s talk about them. You go first.”

  “That was my
plan.” Burns opened the middle drawer of his desk, pulled out a newspaper, and laid it on the desk. He opened it up and tapped it with his finger. “You know what this is?”

  Rhodes was tempted to say it was a newspaper, but Burns probably wasn’t in the mood for jokes. Rhodes couldn’t see the article that Burns was tapping, so he had no idea what was in it. Either Burns thought Rhodes had better eyesight than he actually did or he expected Rhodes to get up and take a look at the paper.

  Rhodes got up and looked. He saw a drawing of a circular object with four arms sticking out from its sides. The arms were topped with rotors.

  “It’s a drone,” Rhodes said.

  “Exactly,” Burns said. “It could be the answer to our problems.”

  “Which problems?” Rhodes said.

  “The ones I just mentioned,” Burns said. “The druggies and the wild hogs. You get it?”

  Rhodes walked back to the folding chair and sat down. The chair squeaked. Needed some WD-40 or Rhodes needed to lose a little weight. Or both.

  “I think I get it,” Rhodes said, “but I’m not sure. You’d better clarify it for me.”

  “It’s simple,” Burns said. “If we had a couple of drones, we could surveil the whole county without having to leave this building. We’d have a couple of monitors and operators, and those two people could keep up with the whole county. We could spot the meth houses and move right in on them. We’d know who was there and what they were doing. We could find out where the hogs were holed up during the daylight hours and—” He paused. “There’s a little problem with the hogs. What we’d need for them is another drone, an armed one. We’d bomb those suckers. Blow ’em up. Scatter pork parts all over the county if we had to, but we’d get rid of ’em.”

  Offhand Rhodes could come up with only a couple of hundred objections to Burns’s cunning plan, but he thought it would be best to start with the obvious one.

  “Would the military let us have something like that?”

  “Sure they would. The sheriff’s department already has one down in Conroe. Lot of places have ’em that don’t want it known yet.”

  “Armed ones?”