by Bill Crider
“Wanna bet?”
“Not a chance,” Rhodes said.
He went to the gate, which was fastened with a chain with a couple of links hooked on a nail driven into a fence post. Rhodes unhooked one link and let the chain drop. The gate swung open. Rhodes didn’t see any cattle in the pasture. He didn’t think Welch had any.
“Don’t bother to close the gate,” Rhodes told Buddy.
He got in his car and drove through the opening. There was no road in the pasture, just ruts worn from the passage of other vehicles over the years. Weeds grew between the ruts, which Rhodes followed up a little rise. He passed by the oak trees and saw the lake in the little depression. The water covered about an acre, though the lake had been larger in years when there was a lot of rain. Lily pads and cattails were thick and green around the edges of the water, and Rhodes was sure that some big bass lurked in the shadows of the lily pads.
The old house stood at the edge of some woods about a quarter of a mile from the lake. Rhodes stopped the car and got out. Buddy stopped practically at the bumper of Rhodes’s car.
“We need the heavy artillery?” Buddy asked.
“Shotguns should be enough,” Rhodes said.
He barely had room to get to the trunk to get out the weapon and shells. Buddy got the gun from the trunk of his own car, and both of them thumbed shells into the magazines after checking the safeties.
“If Louie’s in the house,” Rhodes said, “I’ll try to talk sense into him. Don’t do any shooting unless you absolutely have to.”
“You know me,” Buddy said.
Rhodes did know Buddy, and that was the problem. What he knew was that Buddy loved to pull his big revolver at any opportunity, and while he’d never shot anybody, there was always the chance the he’d get carried away, especially with the shotgun right there in his hands.
Another problem was that Buddy had a powerful streak of hardheaded Puritanism. He didn’t like drugs, and he didn’t like drug dealers. Rhodes didn’t like them, either, but he didn’t have the same strong dislike that Buddy did. Rhodes just wanted to put them in jail. Buddy wouldn’t mind exterminating them.
“Kevlar?” Buddy asked.
Rhodes thought about the last time he’d walked up to a house where Louie was. There had been a lot of shooting.
“Kevlar might not be a bad idea,” he said. The vests were heavy and hot, and Rhodes didn’t even know if Louie had a gun, but he didn’t see any need to take chances.
They got the vests and put them on, securing the straps.
“Let’s go,” Rhodes said when he had his vest adjusted. “Easy does it. We don’t want to spook him.”
“You think he hasn’t heard us by now?”
“He might have. We’re still a good way off, though, and the weeds are high enough to screen us a little bit. We’ll stick to the ruts and just walk right up to the house.”
“Okay,” Buddy said. “You think these vests will really stop a bullet?”
“They’re guaranteed,” Rhodes said, though he had no idea if that was true. “The odds are in our favor.”
Buddy nodded, and they started up the hill, each man with his shotgun barrel against his shoulder. When they were within fifty yards of the house, Rhodes stopped and put up a hand. Buddy stopped beside him.
“Not much of a place to hide,” Buddy whispered, and Rhodes had to agree. The house looked as if it hadn’t been painted since sometime in the Hoover administration. All the windowpanes were missing, and so were the screens, if there’d ever been any. The roof was caved in over about half the house, and the porch had fallen away.
“If he’s here, he couldn’t be very comfortable,” Rhodes said. He raised his voice. “Louie! Louie Foshee! You in there? This is Sheriff Rhodes.”
Rhodes stopped talking and listened. He thought he heard a couple of squirrels arguing back in the trees, but that was all.
“Not there?” Buddy said.
“Not answering if he is,” Rhodes said. “Louie! Come on out. We don’t want to have to come get you. You might get hurt.”
“You might get hurt yourself,” Louie called out from inside the house.
“Guess he’s in there, all right,” Buddy said. “Or maybe the house is haunted.”
“Let’s not get that started,” Rhodes said. “Louie! You know what’s going to happen if you don’t come on out. Don’t make this any harder than it has to be.”
Silence. Rhodes and Buddy waited it out. Behind them down at the lake a fish flopped in the water, making quite a splash.
“Big bass,” Buddy said. “Wish I had a rod and reel.”
“So do I,” Rhodes said. “Louie! Come on out.”
Louie came to the door. “You caught that damn Earl, didn’t you. He told you I was here, didn’t he.”
“I’m just a good guesser,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah, right. You wouldn’t have guessed this place in a million years. That damn Earl, letting himself get caught and then ratting me out. I’m gonna tear him a new one.”
“You won’t be sharing a cell. Anyway, Earl’s in the hospital right now. He had a run-in with some hogs.”
It was quiet for a while, and then Louie said, “Hogs got him? That’s how you caught him?”
“The hogs helped,” Rhodes said.
Louie gave a little laugh. “You got anything to eat with you?”
“Nope,” Rhodes said, “but I’ll see to it that you get a good meal at the jail.”
“I got a Snickers in the car,” Buddy said. “He can have that if he wants it. Got a bottle of water, too.”
Rhodes grinned. “Buddy says he has a Snickers bar if you want it.”
“You won’t shoot me?” Louie said.
“Just put your hands on your head and come out. We’ll give you a Snickers and a bottle of water.”
“Okay, but don’t shoot,” Louie said.
He clasped his hands on his head. He was about to jump to the ground when Rhodes said, “You have a gun, Louie?”
“No. No gun.”
“Come ahead, then. Don’t fall.”
Louie jumped down. He stumbled but didn’t fall.
“Walk on down here,” Rhodes said. “Take it slow.”
Louie took it slow. When he was ten yards from them, Rhodes and Buddy stood aside and let him walk between them on the weedy median between the ruts.
“Stop right there,” Rhodes said. “Put your hands behind you.”
Louie did as he was told. He was dirty and bedraggled. His mullet was plastered to his head with sweat. Maybe some things were worse than having a thin spot in your hair.
Rhodes said, “Cuff him, Buddy.”
Buddy handed Rhodes his shotgun. “He smells kinda bad.”
“I ain’t had time for a bath,” Louie said. “People been chasing me, and that place I was in don’t have running water, in case you were wondering.”
Buddy cuffed him without comment.
“I’m going to give you your Miranda warning,” Rhodes said.
“What for? You’re just picking me up for running off. I don’t mind admitting it. You caught me. I didn’t commit any new crime. I won’t try to run again.”
“Can’t be sure of that,” Rhodes said. He laid out the Miranda rights and asked Louie if he understood them.
“Sure. I’ve heard ’em before. I still don’t see why you needed to tell me.”
“I don’t like to take chances,” Rhodes said. “Now spread your legs a little bit.”
As he said that the thing that had been itching at the back of Rhodes’s brain surfaced. He’d been pretty sure it would come to him.
“Buddy’s going to pat you down now,” he said.
Louie grimaced. “I told you I don’t have a gun.”
“We want to make sure you don’t have one that you forgot about.”
Buddy started the pat-down, and Louie said, “Don’t touch me if you don’t love me.”
Buddy didn’t smile. “It’s a good thing for you
the sheriff doesn’t believe in police brutality.”
Louie looked up at the sky. “That Snickers is likely gonna be melted in this heat. I bet it’s a hundred and twenty in that car.”
“You don’t have to eat it,” Buddy said, continuing the pat-down.
“Just meant it might be messy and all. Get chocolate all over me.”
“Like I said, you don’t have to eat it.”
“I’ll eat it,” Louie said.
Buddy straightened up and said, “He’s clean.” Buddy sniffed. “I mean, he’s not clean, but he doesn’t have a weapon on him.”
“I thought you might have your .38 with you,” Rhodes said to Louie.
“I don’t have a .38. I don’t like ’em. I like an automatic, like a Glock.”
Rhodes had a feeling Louie would say something like that. Louie and Earl liked to think of themselves as tough guys, and these days the tough guys used Glocks. The idea that Louie killed Neil with a .38 was what hadn’t rung true to Rhodes, although it had taken him a while to realize it. Of course, Louie could have been attempting to mislead him, but Rhodes didn’t think that was the case. Louie couldn’t think that fast.
“Automatics can jam on you,” Buddy said, patting the butt of his .44 Magnum. “A revolver’s a lot more reliable.”
“Everybody’s got his own opinion,” Louie said. “Me, I like an automatic. That is, I would if I was gonna use a gun at all, which I’m not. I don’t use guns. Don’t even own one.”
If he didn’t, it was because Rhodes and Andy had confiscated all of them at the meth bust a while back. Rhodes handed Buddy his shotgun.
“Let’s go on down and get in the cars and turn on the air,” Rhodes said. “It’s too hot to stand out here in the sun and debate handguns.”
Not only was it hot, but Rhodes was afraid the top of his head would blister if they stood there too long. A matted mullet did have its advantages, even one that looked as bad as Louie’s did, and so did a hat.
“You go first, Louie,” Rhodes said.
Louie led the way, and when they got to the cars, he stopped and turned to face Rhodes and Buddy. “I can’t eat that Snickers with my hands behind me.”
“You’ll have to do without it, then,” Buddy said. “I’m not gonna feed it to you.”
“We’ll give it to him out here,” Rhodes said. “I’ll feed him.”
“You sure?” Buddy asked.
Rhodes nodded.
“Let’s get shed of these vests and shotguns first,” Buddy said.
Rhodes thought that was a good idea. His shirt was soaked underneath the heavy Kevlar. Rhodes told Louie to stay where he was. Louie nodded, and Rhodes and Buddy took off their vests and put them and the shotguns in the car trunks. Buddy got the Snickers out of his car and handed it to Rhodes. It was mushy inside its wrapper.
“You were right, Louie,” Rhodes said. “This is a mess.”
He unwrapped the candy bar, trying to keep from getting chocolate all over his fingers. He left enough of the wrapper on the bar to hold it with and offered it to Louie, who managed to eat it in three or four bites. While Louie was chewing the last bite, Rhodes handed the chocolate-smeared wrapper to Buddy.
“Put it in your litter bag,” he said.
Buddy started to protest, but instead he took the wrapper between his thumb and forefinger and put it in his car.
“How ’bout that water?” Louie asked.
Buddy came out of the car with a bottle of water that he pitched to Rhodes, who caught it and unscrewed the cap. He held to bottle to Louie’s mouth, which was covered with chocolate, and let him drink. Louie drank the whole bottle, and Rhodes tossed the empty to Buddy.
“Litter bag,” he said.
Buddy didn’t respond. He just turned to the car and put the bottle somewhere. Rhodes wasn’t even sure Buddy had a litter bag.
“Why’d you say that about the .38?” Louie asked.
“Just wondering,” Rhodes said.
“Funny thing to be wondering about.”
Maybe Louie wasn’t as dense as Rhodes had thought. Maybe he could put two and two together and come up with the right answer occasionally. Even a blind hog turns up an acorn now and then.
“Let’s put you in the car,” Rhodes said.
He opened the back door of the county car, and Buddy came over to assist Louie’s entrance, making sure that Louie didn’t hit his head on the roof of the car.
“I’ll take him on into town,” Rhodes said. “You can go ahead and finish your patrol. Might as well look around Thurston while you’re down here and see how things are going along.”
“Sure thing,” Buddy said. “Might stop at that little café in Hod’s old store and get me a burger for lunch. I’ve heard they’re mighty good.”
“You be sure to let me know,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 17
On the ride back to Clearview, Rhodes thought about the night Neil had died. Louie said he didn’t have a .38, and Rhodes believed him. However, Louie had been at the Moore house when Neil had died, or that was Earl’s story. Earl even believed, or suspected, that Louie had killed Neil, which meant that Louie hadn’t told him what happened, or if he’d told him, Earl didn’t think it was the truth. Or he’d lied for his own purposes. That seemed unlikely. Rhodes didn’t think Earl was that creative.
Having given Louie his Miranda warning, Rhodes could talk to him about the murder, and as long as Louie was willing to talk and didn’t ask for a lawyer, everything would be fine. If he asked for one, Rhodes would just have to keep quiet. In fact, if he kept quiet to begin with, Louie might start talking.
Buddy backed his car away from the ruts and turned toward the entrance to the pasture. Rhodes did the same and followed Buddy. When they came to the gate, Buddy drove through and pulled his car off the road, halfway into the bar ditch, so that Rhodes could go on by. Rhodes did so and looked in his rearview mirror to see Buddy get out of his car and go to close the gate. The cold air from the car’s A/C unit chilled Rhodes’s damp shirt, but it felt good after the hot sun.
After he’d wound along for about a mile, Louie broke the silence in the car.
“How long you think you can keep me in jail?” he asked.
“I doubt you’ll see the outside again before your trial,” Rhodes told him. “Even if we put an ankle bracelet on you, you’d be a threat to run.”
“Damn,” Louie said. He was quiet from then until they got to Thurston. “We gonna stop for a hamburger like that deputy of yours said he might do?”
“That would be too much trouble,” Rhodes said, “and the county might not want to pay for your hamburger. You’ve been a lot of trouble to us.”
“Yeah,” Louie said. “I guess I have. Still like a burger, though.”
Rhodes wouldn’t have minded giving the burgers a try himself, but not with a prisoner that he’d have to feed one to unless he took the cuffs off. He wasn’t going to do that. Louie would just have to suffer.
“You should have thought about eating before you ran off,” Rhodes said. “Anyway, you had a Snickers. You should be able to make it until we get to Clearview.”
“It ain’t right to keep me there,” Louie said. “In the jail, I mean. A man has things he’s gotta do.”
“You should’ve thought of that before you ran off, I guess.”
“I had stuff to do. You wouldn’t let me.”
“You’re talking about Neil, right?”
Louie didn’t answer. Rhodes didn’t prod him, and it was quiet in the car except for the hum of the air-conditioning, which by this time had pretty much dried Rhodes’s shirt.
Another mile or so down the road, Louie said, “He’s gonna get away with it, ain’t he.”
“Who are you talking about?” Rhodes asked.
“The one who killed Neil. He’s gonna get away with it.”
“You’re not showing much faith in your local law enforcement agency,” Rhodes said. “We caught you and Earl, didn’t we?”
“Hogs is what caught Earl, you said.”
“I said they ran over him. We’d have caught up with him, hogs or not, just like we caught up with you.”
Louie snorted. “Earl ratted me out is how you got me.”
“Just good police work,” Rhodes said. “You were there when Neil was killed, weren’t you? You didn’t do anything about it then.”
“That goddamn Earl. He told you that, didn’t he. He told you I was there.”
Rhodes didn’t bother to deny it. Now that Louie was talking, it seemed like a good idea to let him keep right on doing it.
“Earl don’t know a thing,” Louie said. “He don’t know what it was like. He thinks I ran off and left Neil there, but that’s not the way it was. Earl don’t know squat. He just likes to shoot off his mouth. Only reason he wasn’t with us is because he’s afraid to go there. Funny things happen in that place. It didn’t bother Neil, but it bothered me and Earl. I didn’t like to go there much more than Earl did, but I’m not yellow. I went, but it didn’t do Neil any good. He’s dead anyway.”
“Earl didn’t tell me anything about what happened at the house,” Rhodes said, “and he didn’t mention being afraid. What kind of things was he afraid of?”
“I don’t like talking about it,” Louie said. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
Rhodes thought about what Mika had said. He thought about the rat and all the other things that had happened over the last couple of days. If Louie and Earl had experienced things like that, he couldn’t blame them for being a little bit spooked.
“I’ve been in the house,” Rhodes said. “I felt like somebody was watching me. I saw some big rats in there, too.”
“Rats don’t bother me none,” Louie said. “I’ve lived around rats all my life. It was the other things. What you said about somebody watching you? I felt like that, too, ever’ time I was there.”
“Were you there often?”
“I ain’t saying I was, and if I was there, it wasn’t to do anything wrong. Sometimes a fella just likes to get out of the house and have him a hamburger in a private place without anybody to bother him.”
Sometimes a fella wanted to run a drug deal, too, and Rhodes was sure that was what had been going on in the house for a while. He didn’t expect Louie to admit it, however, at least not immediately. He found it interesting that Louie had also had the feeling of being watched, but it didn’t prove that there were any ghosts lurking about. Anybody might feel that way in a creepy old house with a bad reputation. It was only natural.