Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  Wade Clement couldn’t be ruled out, either. He might have lied about the meeting with Foshee. Instead of hearing gunshots, Wade might have been the one who fired them. He’d said he didn’t go inside the house, but that wasn’t necessarily true. Bringing in the Glock didn’t mean anything. It might be registered to him, but he could’ve used another gun.

  Of all the people he’d talked to, Roger Allen seemed the least likely to have killed Neil. He was still upset about his cousin, but Neil hadn’t been involved directly in that death. Roger just wanted to sell the county a Tahoe or two, and Rhodes hoped Mikey Burns would let the deal go through.

  After an hour or so of tossing, turning, and wondering, Rhodes finally went to sleep. It was a restless sleep, because for the rest of the night he dreamed about skeletons.

  * * *

  The next morning Rhodes filled Ivy in on the night’s events. She’d been asleep when Rhodes came in, and even Yancey’s yips hadn’t waked her.

  “The skeleton story was better than anything you’ve told me for quite awhile,” she said. “I like ghost stories, and this is a real one.”

  “Except that there was no ghost,” Rhodes said.

  “I think it was a ghost,” she told him. They were sitting at the kitchen table with a breakfast of reduced-calorie orange juice, turkey bacon, and Egg Beaters. “It was trying to find a resting place for those bones, and now after all these years they’re going to have a proper place.”

  “I wouldn’t call the state crime lab a proper place,” Rhodes said.

  He crunched a piece of turkey bacon between his teeth. It was okay. Not good, but okay. Yancy yipped softly under the table, and Rhodes slipped him a bit of the bacon. The cats slept by the refrigerator, as still and quiet as if they were just stuffed toys. They didn’t care for turkey bacon.

  “The lab will return the bones to you, and you can see to it that they’re buried properly,” Ivy said. “You’ll put a name with them, too.”

  “You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

  “I am. I know you. You don’t quit until you find what you’re looking for.”

  Rhodes washed some bacon down with orange juice. “Sometimes it takes a while.”

  “The ghost has waited a long time,” Ivy said. “It can wait a little longer.”

  “I didn’t see any ghost,” Rhodes said, “so there wasn’t a ghost.”

  “‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…’”

  “Everybody’s quoting literature to me,” Rhodes said. He’d already mentioned Harris’s quotation from Wordsworth to Ivy.

  “Sometimes literature is where the answers are.”

  “I liked Harry’s quote better.”

  “I think mine’s closer to the truth.”

  “If I’m remembering the play correctly,” Rhodes said, “Hamlet would’ve been better off if he hadn’t paid any attention to that so-called ghost.”

  Ivy smiled. “Things didn’t work out very well, I have to admit.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to push the argument any further. He just returned Ivy’s smile and finished his breakfast.

  * * *

  The Blacklin County hospital had grown considerably in the last few years with the addition of two new buildings. Rhodes wasn’t sure about the reason for the growth, but he had some theories. One was that the population of the county was aging and needed more medical care. Young people didn’t stay around the rural counties in Texas anymore after they graduated from high school. They went to college, or if they didn’t go to college, they went to the cities, which was where the jobs were.

  Long ago, there had been jobs in Blacklin County, too, but many of those jobs no longer existed. Even longer ago than that, there had been cotton farms all over the county, and every little town had a cotton gin. A lot of families had made their living by farming. Not anymore. Farming was too uncertain, and it no longer paid. Rhodes hadn’t seen a cotton crop since he was a boy. The gins were gone, with nothing left of them but a few stray bricks.

  So the youngsters left, the population got older, and more medical care was a necessity. Clyde Ballinger’s funeral home wasn’t likely to be lacking in business for years, either. Rhodes didn’t even want to think what might happen to the county in fifty years. There might not be anybody left.

  This early in the day the hospital parking lot had plenty of empty spaces. Rhodes parked and went inside, stopping at the reception desk to ask where to find Earl Foshee. He got the room number and went down a hallway to the room. He hadn’t posted a guard on the room because he didn’t have enough deputies to put one there and because he didn’t think he needed one. Earl wasn’t going to slip away, and if he did, Rhodes would just bring him back, not that they’d had much luck in locating Louie so far.

  The hospital smelled like every other hospital Rhodes had been in. He didn’t know what it was, but it always reminded him of sickness and death, or injuries, like the one Earl had suffered, or worse. Rhodes had spent enough time in hospital beds not to want to do any more time in one.

  Rhodes went into Earl’s room and found Earl sitting up in bed and eating breakfast. He had bacon, eggs, and orange juice, all of which reminded Rhodes of his own breakfast, except that he supposed the bacon was pork, the eggs were real, and the orange juice was full of sugar. Earl didn’t look any the less healthy for it.

  Earl was just about finished eating when Rhodes came in, and Rhodes told him go to ahead.

  Earl nodded and kept on eating. Rhodes pushed a blood pressure monitor out of the way and sat in the visitor’s chair. He wondered why chairs in hospitals were so uncomfortable. He didn’t think they were cheap. Maybe hospitals didn’t want visitors to linger.

  After a few minutes Earl wiped his mouth with his napkin, tossed it onto his plate, and leaned back against the elevated mattress. Rhodes got up and pulled the folding table away from the bed.

  “Good breakfast?” he asked.

  “Pretty decent for a hospital,” Earl said.

  “How’s the head?”

  Earl touched his head, which had a bandage stuck where the hog had kicked him. His hair was shaved all around the bandage. It made his mullet look even worse, which Rhodes wouldn’t have thought was possible.

  “Hurts a little,” Earl said. “They told me I got a bad concussion. Need to stay here a day or so. Might hurt myself if I move around too much. The doctor said it was maybe a grade three concussion, whatever that means. I can’t remember how I got it, and he says that’s not a good sign.”

  “Hogs ran over you,” Rhodes said, sitting back down.

  “Yeah, that’s what the doctor said. I got bruises all over me, so I can sure believe it. I don’t remember any of it, though, not after I got out of the pickup and went in the woods. The doctor says that happens sometimes.”

  “What do you remember?”

  “I remember you chasing me. You were after me and Louie, but we got away.”

  Rhodes looked around the room with its institutional green walls. The window looked out on the parking lot and street.

  “I wouldn’t call this getting away,” he said. “When you’re discharged, you’ll have to go to jail.”

  “I didn’t mean to run. Louie made me.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Earl looked out the window as if there might be something interesting outside, but there wasn’t.

  “Earl?” Rhodes said.

  “I saw a squirrel out in the parking lot this morning,” Earl said, still looking out the window. “Lots of squirrels around these days. Didn’t use to be squirrels in town, but they’re all over the place now.”

  “We weren’t talking about squirrels. Why did Louie make you run?”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “You might as well. Sooner or later you’re going to have to.”

  Earl turned his eyes back to Rhodes. “I don’t know anything for sure anyway.”

  “That’s okay. You don’t have to be sure. Just tell
me about Louie.”

  Earl looked back out the window and didn’t say anything for a few seconds. Rhodes waited.

  “The thing is,” Earl said, “Louie was with Neil the other night. At that house.”

  “I knew somebody was,” Rhodes said. “Neil had to get there some way or other, and there was no transportation around.”

  Earl stared at the ceiling. “A man ought not to speak against his brother.”

  “Family’s important,” Rhodes said. “I know that.”

  “That’s what Louie says.”

  Rhodes didn’t know where the conversation was going, but it seemed promising. He wanted to keep Earl talking.

  “Neil was your family,” Rhodes said, “but it’s the law’s job to find out who killed him. Not yours or Louie’s. Louie should know that.”

  “Louie don’t care about that. That was all just talk. Anyway, that’s kinda what worries me.”

  “You don’t have to worry. I’ll find the one who killed Neil. You need to tell me where Louie might be so I can find him before he gets in real trouble.”

  “I think he’s in real trouble already,” Earl said.

  “Running away was bad,” Rhodes said, “but he’s already in worse trouble than that.”

  “I don’t mean cooking meth,” Earl said.

  “What do you mean, then?”

  Earl sighed. “I mean I think Louie’s the one that killed Neil.”

  Chapter 15

  Rhodes sat quietly for a while and let Earl’s comment sink in.

  “You hear what I said, Sheriff?” Earl asked.

  “I heard you,” Rhodes said. “I was thinking it over. Why would Louie do a thing like that? Kill his cousin, I mean.”

  “He thought Neil was gonna sell us out.”

  An orderly came in to pick up Earl’s breakfast tray at that point. He was another person who looked about fifteen years old to Rhodes. Maybe there was something in the water they drank. Or maybe it was vitamins.

  “How was breakfast?” the orderly asked.

  “It was pretty good,” Earl said. “I like sausage better than bacon, though.”

  “I’ll see what I can do for you tomorrow,” the orderly said.

  “I like the patties,” Earl said, “not the links.”

  “I think they have those,” the orderly said, and he carried the tray out of the room.

  The last sausage Rhodes had eaten had been turkey sausage. Maybe being in the hospital wasn’t as bad as he remembered it.

  The door closed and Rhodes said, “Who was Neil supposed to be selling you out to?”

  “There was this kid going around town asking questions. Neil was gonna talk to him.”

  “I know about him,” Rhodes said. “Wade Clement. He’s harmless.”

  “Yeah, Louie said that’s what he wants people to think. Said he was working on some college paper. Louie thinks he was some undercover DEA agent.”

  Louie might just be paranoid enough to believe that, but it still didn’t make any sense to Rhodes. The Foshees were out of jail only because they’d posted bond. Rhodes thought it was a cinch that they’d be convicted on any number of fairly serious charges when they went to trial. Or maybe they’d take a plea bargain. They’d get jail time whichever way things went, so the Foshees were already in so much trouble that Neil couldn’t sell them out. He didn’t have anything to sell.

  Rhodes explained that to Earl, but Earl said, “What it was, was Louie thought Neil would try to make some kind of deal with the DEA. Testify against me and him for a lighter sentence or maybe immunity. My guess is they got into an argument about it, and Louie shot Neil.”

  “Had Louie talked to Neil about it?”

  “Sure, but Neil just laughed at him. Said there wasn’t any DEA agent around here, that this was just some college kid he was going to talk to. Louie got mad about it. One reason Louie was suspicious was that the one who set it up was Colby Lane. Louie knows that Colby’s one of your snitches.”

  Rhodes looked at Earl in disbelief. Colby Lane was a shade-tree mechanic who’d been employed by the Chevy dealership until he became too unreliable because of his drinking. He’d been in jail a few times, usually for alcohol-related offenses, but other than that Rhodes hardly knew him.

  “What gave Louie that idea?” he asked.

  “Louie says anybody’s been in jail and out as much as Lane must have something going on with the sheriff, so it figures he’s your snitch.”

  “Who would he snitch on?” Rhodes asked.

  Earl looked blank. He didn’t have an answer for that one.

  Rhodes stood up. “Louie’s wrong about Lane, and he’s wrong about Wade Clement. Lane has a drinking problem, and Wade Clement’s just a college kid. Are you sure Louie killed Neil?”

  “I didn’t say I was sure, but I think that’s what happened. Louie was pretty upset when he got back to the house last night. He wouldn’t talk about what happened or anything except to tell me that Neil was dead. When your deputy drove up today, Louie told me not to say anything, just follow along with him, so that’s what I done.”

  It was just crazy enough for Rhodes to believe it was the truth, and Louie had known Neil was dead. He’d been at the Moore house, no question about that. Now it was more urgent than ever to find Louie.

  “Do I really have to go back to jail, Sheriff?” Earl asked. “I paid my bond.”

  “You paid it, and then you ran,” Rhodes said, “so you really do have to go back to jail. We’ll try to make you comfortable.”

  “I bet you will,” Earl said.

  “It might help if you’d tell me where Louie is. I can get you a cell with a window so you can watch the squirrels.”

  “You ain’t funny, Sheriff.”

  People told Rhodes that all the time. He didn’t let it bother him.

  “If Louie killed Neil, you could be considered an accomplice. Tell me where he is, and I’ll be sure that’s on the record.”

  “I don’t know where he is.”

  “You must have some idea. Just give me your best guess. You don’t want Louie sneaking back into town and coming after you, do you? If he finds out you’ve been talking to me, he might decide he needs to handle you the way he handled Neil. After all, you really did sell him out.”

  Earl’s mouth dropped open. He plainly hadn’t thought about it that way.

  “Somebody else might get hurt, too,” Rhodes said. “Nurses, doctors, other patients. You don’t want that on your record.”

  “He might be at the lake,” Earl said after a few seconds.

  “Which one?” Rhodes asked. There were three big lakes in the county, and all of them had cabins and houses around them.

  “Merritt’s Lake,” Earl said.

  That wasn’t one of the three big ones. It was a small lake, what northeners would call a pond, on private land that had once belonged to the Merritt family. It had gone through a number of owners since then, but the old name had stuck. Rhodes had been fishing there a time or two back in the days when he still had time to fish. It had been a while, but he remembered that there was an old tumbledown house on the property not too far from the lake. It wouldn’t do to live in, but someone could hide out there for a while. There were houses like it all over the county on properties that had once been farmland but were now used for grazing cattle or not used at all. The Foshees would know where all those houses were, having used more than one of them to cook up a little meth in.

  “I’ll take a look,” Rhodes said.

  Earl sat up straight in the bed. “I was supposed to meet him there. If you find him, don’t tell him you talked to me.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Rhodes said. “I won’t say a word.”

  * * *

  Mika Blackfield was already at the jail when Rhodes got there, and she’d apparently been there a while. She and Hack were talking about something when Rhodes walked in. Rhodes said good morning, and Hack told him that the sheriff from Bates County had called.

 
; “What about?” Rhodes asked.

  “’Bout Neil Foshee. You wanted him to notify the next of kin, but there ain’t none in his county. Last one died early this year. Speakin’ of kin, here’s somethin’ else. Mika looked into the Moore house owners, and all Moore’s kin are dead now. Won’t be any more tax payments on that place. You might could buy it cheap if you wanted it.”

  “I don’t want to buy a house,” Rhodes said. “Especially that one.”

  “Don’t blame you,” Hack said. “It’s got ghosts. I read it on the Internet, so it must be true. Ain’t that right, Mika?”

  Mika was short and slim with very black hair and eyes and a warm smile. Hack had begun trying to enlist her into his efforts to drive Rhodes crazy ever since her first day on the job. So far she hadn’t gone along with him, at least not completely.

  “We Japanese believe that all people have a spirit or soul,” Mika said. “It’s called the reikon. If someone dies violently or if proper rites aren’t performed, or if the spirit is somehow driven by a strong emotion, like revenge, the reikon can become a yurei. That’s a spirit that can come into our world.”

  This wasn’t exactly what Rhodes had hoped to hear.

  “The yurei stays here in our world,” Mika continued, “until certain things have been taken care of, until the conflict that brought it here is resolved. So that might be what people call ghosts.” She paused. “I’ve never seen one, however.”

  “I don’t think you ever will,” Rhodes said, “and things on the Internet aren’t always true, either, even if Hack believes them.”

  “Jennifer Loam’s site is usually very accurate,” Mika said.

  “It sure is,” Hack said, “and she mentions ghosts. Seepy Benton says they were there, too.”

  Rhodes sighed. He was sighing way too much lately. “Mika, did you find any evidence of ghosts in the things we collected from the crime scene?”

  “No. I didn’t find much else, either. The fast-food bags are so greasy that the prints are all smeared. I got one or two good ones and a lot of partials, but that’s all. I haven’t checked for matches on AFIS yet.”

  “See if they match any of the Foshees. We have those prints on file. What about that material from the closet?”