Booked for a Hanging

by Bill Crider

  To distract himself, he went to the phone and called the jail to ask Hack if Ruth had come back in.

  “You bet she has, and she has Mr. Adkins with her. He’s hoppin’ mad. You better get on back down here.”

  “What’s the trouble?” Rhodes said.

  “He says those are his cows, all right, and he wants ’em back right now. He’s threatenin’ to go out there and steal ’em back if we don’t get ’em for him.”

  “I’ll be right there,” Rhodes said. He had been planning to stay at home a little longer, but to tell the truth he didn’t mind at all that he had to return to the jail.

  That way, he wouldn’t feel guilty about not riding the bicycle.

  Chapter 8

  When Rhodes got back to the jail, Ruth Grady had succeeded in calming Adkins down somewhat, but his tight mouth was still fixed in a frown.

  “I don’t know what kind of a country it is,” he said, “where a man can rustle your cows right out of your own pasture, and then when you find ’em, you can’t do a thing about it.”

  “Are you really sure they’re yours?” Rhodes said. “There’s no mistake?”

  “What do you think I am, some kinda damn idiot?” Adkins said. “I know my own cows when I see ’em.”

  “They knew him, too,” Ruth said. “They came right to the fence when he called them.”

  Rhodes didn’t know that people trained cows to come when called, and he admitted it.

  “Well, I trained ’em,” Adkins said. “I named ’em, too, ever’ one of ’em. Millie, she’s the one with the missin’ horn. Lynette’s her calf.”

  “And Sally was there too. She’s the one with the bad hoof,” Ruth said. “He’s not kidding, Sheriff.”

  “So what’re you gonna do?” Adkins said. “Now that you know they’re mine.”

  Rhodes had to admit that he didn’t quite know what to do. He told Adkins that he would drive back out to Obert and have a talk with Appleby, who of course had not showed up at the jail even though Rhodes had left the message that he wanted to talk to him.

  Rhodes hadn’t expected him to come, really, even if Twyla Faye and the twins had mentioned Rhodes’ visit. They may have forgotten it, or they have simply been in the habit of keeping their mouths shut. And there was always the possibility that someone like Appleby wouldn’t visit the sheriff just because the sheriff wanted him to. Rhodes thought that possibility was the strongest of all.

  “What do you think he’s gonna do with my cows?” Adkins said. “He sure as hell won’t just give ’em back to me. Next auction day, they’ll be sold, sure as I’m standin’ here. You gotta do somethin’ about this.”

  Rhodes didn’t know what Appleby intended to do with the cows, but it seemed likely he would eventually sell them at auction as Adkins said.

  “I’ll do my best to get them back for you,” Rhodes said. “It might take a while.” He didn’t have any good ideas about how to do what he was half promising. He didn’t have any more right to take the cows than Adkins did.

  “It better not take too long, whatever you do,” Adkins said. “I’ll go after ’em myself if it does.”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Ruth said. “The sheriff and I have seen the cattle on Appleby’s property, and we can identify them.” She looked over at the dispatcher. “And Mr. Jensen’s heard you threaten to go after them. If you take them from Appleby, he can file charges on you and we’d all be the witnesses.”

  Adkins shook his head. “It’s a hell of a note that something like this can happen to a man in the United States of America,” he said. Then he brightened. “What if you asked him and he can’t prove those cows and calves belong to him? What would happen then?”

  “Then we’ll have a little better chance of getting them back for you, based on your identification of them,” Rhodes said. “But not much better. It’s your word against his.”

  “A hell of a note,” Adkins said.

  Rhodes had to agree with him.

  When Rhodes passed by the college, he noticed that the cars of both Marty Wallace and Mitch Rolingson were still parked by Graham’s house. He had checked with Ruth and found out that she had spoken to neither of the two in person; she had left messages on their answering machines and asked them to call the sheriff’s office. They had both called Hack within twenty minutes, and he had broken the news to them about Graham’s death.

  “Didn’t tell ’em too much about it, though,” Hack said. “Just that he was dead. They didn’t seem too tore up about it, let me tell you.”

  That fit with their reactions when Rhodes had talked to them. They seemed a lot more interested in searching the office than in hearing about Graham’s death. Rhodes wondered again just how much a book like Tamerlane might be worth.

  The fact that the two of them had responded so quickly after Ruth’s message might make it seem that they had been out late and called as soon as they had returned home, but Rhodes knew that wasn’t necessarily so. They might have answering machines from which they could retrieve their messages simply by calling the machine and punching in a code on the phone they were using. Computers weren’t the only electronic marvels these days.

  In other words, they could have been in Obert just as easily as they could have been in Houston. There was no way of knowing for sure. Not yet, anyway. Later, if he had to, he could check their long distance records.

  Ruth had developed plenty of prints from the third floor, but even if some of them belonged to Wallace and Rolingson, they could say that they had been there any number of times prior to the night of Graham’s death. It was almost a certainty that their prints weren’t on file anyhow, so there wouldn’t be any matching up unless Rhodes could obtain some prints to match them with. It was almost as frustrating to think about as the stolen cattle were.

  Rhodes slowed down and looked over the campus. It would be easy to conceal a car behind the gymnasium or the dormitory if you didn’t want anyone to know you were there. Even behind the main building. Wallace and Rolingson would have been there often enough to have known that.

  He looked back at the road just in time to catch a movement out of the corner of his eye. He glanced in the direction of Miz Coates’ house and thought he saw a curtain move slightly. He wasn’t surprised. Miz Coates was obviously a woman who liked to keep up with everything that was going on in her general neighborhood. She had the only house on the opposite side of the road from the campus, and Rhodes suspected that she knew quite a bit more about the goings on around there than she had told him. He would have to talk to her again soon.

  But first he had to go to see the Applebys.

  This time there was a pickup parked in the Applebys’ yard when Rhodes got there. It was a bright red Chevrolet Silverado with an extended cab, and it looked as if it had just been washed and waxed. The silver hubcaps gleamed, and the shine on the paint looked six inches deep. The pickup must have cost much more than the house and barn were worth, and it had been driven into the yard very slowly and carefully so as not to get mud anywhere on it except for the tires.

  There was no one in sight when Rhodes pulled the county car up in the gateway, but by the time he had gotten out a man had appeared on the porch.

  He was almost as big as Claude and Clyde, but not quite. His hair was much darker and longer than theirs, and there were streaks of gray in it. It curled out from beneath a sun-faded California Angels baseball cap and hung down his neck in the back. He was also wearing old jeans that were stuck into the tops of black, mud-caked boots. Rhodes thought the halo on the big A on the front of the cap was probably as close as Appleby would ever come to having one.

  Appleby had a thick beard, streaked with gray like his hair, and he was chewing tobacco. It was hard to see his eyes, which were shaded by the bill of the cap, but Rhodes could see his arms where they came out the short sleeves of his plaid shirt. They were almost as big as Rolingson’s. His hands looked as hard as if they had been sculpted from stone.

&nb
sp; “You lookin’ for me, Sheriff?” the man said.

  “I am if you’re Cy Appleby,” Rhodes said, standing by his car. He still didn’t relish the idea of walking across the muddy yard where the scrawny chickens continued to cluck around and peck for food, their heads bobbing up and down. Now and then one of them would stand still, head tilted up, and swallow.

  “I’m Appleby,” the man said. “What’s it to you?”

  “I want to ask you a few questions about your cattle,” Rhodes said.

  Appleby’s lips curled into a hairy sneer. “Yeah, my kids told me you’d come snoopin’ around here this mornin’. Too bad that you Laws can’t never let a man live down his past mistakes. Let him serve a little time, and you’re always on his case, one way or the other.”

  “I’m not on your case,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that we’ve had a report on some stolen cattle that happen to look a lot like some of the ones in your pasture.”

  “That’s a funny thing about cows,” Appleby said, leaning his wide shoulders against the porch wall and sticking his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans. “They all look pretty much alike.”

  Rhodes was no cattleman, and he agreed with Appleby. Adkins wouldn’t have agreed, however. To anyone who knew cattle, they were as different and as individual as people, as Adkins’ penchant for naming them proved.

  “Still,” Rhodes said, “it would be nice if you could prove ownership of your herd.”

  “Damn right, it would,” Appleby said. “And I can. Least I can prove I own the ones you’re worried about.” He reached into his shirt pocket and brought out a folded paper.

  “How do you know which ones I’m worried about?” Rhodes said.

  “Hell, it’s gotta be the new ones,” Appleby said. “Anybody’d know that. The ones that kinda stay apart from the others till they get used to ’em.”

  “And I guess that paper’s the auction receipt for them,” Rhodes said.

  “Damn right it is. I bought ’em a couple of weeks ago down at Colby.” Appleby spat a brown stream of tobacco juice across the porch. It splatted on the mud.

  Colby was the largest town in one of the adjoining counties, and there was a weekly auction held there. Rhodes didn’t doubt that Appleby had a receipt. The trouble was that it was virtually worthless in one sense. Cattle auction receipts were notorious for their vagueness. “One whiteface heifer” would be a typical description. “Ring-eyed calf” would be another. Such descriptions could fit any one of dozens of animals.

  “You wanta see it or not?” Appleby said.

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “I’ll look at it.”

  “Come right on over here and get it, then,” Appleby said. “Or are you afraid you’ll get your shiny little kicks all muddied up?”

  Rhodes looked down at his shoes, which weren’t shiny at all. He didn’t especially want to walk across the yard, that was true, but he would have done it if Appleby hadn’t challenged him. Now he didn’t intend to.

  “Bring it to me,” he said.

  Appleby stepped away from the wall. “You gonna make me?” he said.

  Rhodes sighed inwardly. He had met more men like Appleby than he liked to think about. They all thought they were tougher and smarter than anyone else, particularly if anyone else happened to represent the law. The fact that such men had been arrested numerous times, had even served time in prison as Appleby had, never seemed to have any effect on their confidence in their innate shrewdness. For them, every encounter was a challenge; every meeting was a confrontation. They never seemed to learn. Or care.

  “I don’t have to make you,” Rhodes said. “I’m the sheriff.”

  Appleby thought about that for a minute. He spat again, and then he stepped off the porch, his boots sinking into the soft mud of the yard. He kicked at a chicken that was in his path, and it jumped out of the way, squawking and flapping. Appleby didn’t even seem to notice. He walked slowly over to where Rhodes was standing. He stuck out the paper, and Rhodes took it, opened it, and smoothed the creases.

  The receipt was just as vague as Rhodes had expected it would be. It might have been legitimate, probably was, but that didn’t mean that Appleby couldn’t have bought the same number of cattle that he had stolen. There was just no way to be certain. One thing was for sure, however. Appleby’s receipt would look a lot better to a judge than anything Adkins could present.

  Rhodes returned the receipt.

  Appleby took it and stuck it back in his shirt pocket. “You satisfied?”

  “For now,” Rhodes said.

  “Don’t give me that ‘for now’ shit, Sheriff,” Appleby said. “Those are my cows, and you can’t prove no different. I don’t know who told you they weren’t mine, but I can guess.” He looked up the hill toward the college. “I don’t think he’ll be tellin’ anything else about anybody around there, though.”

  “You mean Simon Graham?” Rhodes said.

  Appleby spat, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Yeah, Graham, that sissy up on the hill. I guess somebody finally taught him to mind his own damn business. ’Bout damn time, too.”

  “It wasn’t Graham,” Rhodes said. He thought about standing on the third floor of the main building, looking out the window. Graham would have been able to see most of what went on in Appleby’s pasture if he had wanted to.

  “That meddlin’ Coates bitch is the one, then,” Appleby said. “It might be that somebody has to teach her a thing or two one of these days.”

  Rhodes shook his head. “Saying things like that isn’t very smart, Appleby.”

  “Smart’s ass. All I ask is to be let alone to take care of my cows, try to earn a honest livin’. But that’s too much for some people. Always stickin’ in their noses where they don’t belong. They ought not to do that. They might get their noses cut right off.”

  “I take it you didn’t think too much of Simon Graham, then.”

  Appleby spat and shifted his cud. “Fruitcake,” he said.

  “Your boys are working for him.”

  “I give him credit for that. Wouldn’t nobody else around here hire ’em. But he was a snooper.”

  “Did you kill him?”

  Appleby snorted, nearly losing his plug. “Hell, Sheriff, I didn’t know you were a comedian. Me? Kill somebody? You oughta know better than to ask me a thing like that. First you accuse me of stealin’ cows, and then you ask me if I killed a fella. You must think I’m some kind of desperado.” He pronounced the last word with a long A.

  “I don’t think anything, yet,” Rhodes said. He got into his car. then leaned out the window. “Thanks for your cooperation,” he said. He backed up and started up the hill.

  He looked into the rearview mirror before he went around the first curve. Appleby was still standing right where Rhodes had left him, watching.

  When Rhodes got back to the jail, the place was surrounded. Most of the cars, vans, and station wagons parked there had the call letters of various television stations painted on their sides. The one parked in Rhodes’ own space was from the local radio station. Red Rogers. There were camera crews on the grass in front of the building, black cables slithering all around. The door of the building was open as reporters pressed forward, all trying to get inside at once.

  It seemed as if the news of Graham’s death had gotten around.

  Rhodes parked across the street and got out of the car. He had been afraid of this, and now there was nothing for it but to go on over there and face up to them. It wasn’t something he was looking forward to. He knew there were probably some sheriffs, somewhere, who actually enjoyed standing in front of a mini-cam and talking about their latest cases, but he certainly wasn’t one of them.

  The fact that he had never done it before didn’t make thinking about it any easier. All the crimes in Blacklin County up to this point had been the kind that were of restricted interest. The death of Simon Graham was different, however. Graham was a man with a state-wide reputation, a man the Sunday supplements commiss
ioned articles about. His death was news. For now, anyway.

  It wouldn’t be news for long, Rhodes was sure. The furor would die down in a day or so. Graham hadn’t been well-enough known to rate much more than one day of coverage. Maybe two if the news about Tamerlane leaked out. He wasn’t going to be the one to leak it, however.

  Since Rhodes didn’t really look much like anyone’s idea of a sheriff, not being in any kind of uniform, he didn’t have too much trouble pushing his way through the mob and getting into his office. The trouble was that the place was so crowded that he couldn’t get to his desk.

  He had about decided to sneak back out to his car and go home to see what was on that afternoon’s Million Dollar Movie when Red Rogers caught sight of him.

  “There he is!” Rogers yelled. “There’s the Sheriff!”

  There was confusion then, as cameras swiveled, reporters jumped, and everyone yelled and talked at once.

  “Where?”

  “Over there!”

  “Which one?”

  “Get outta the way!”

  “Watch where you’re going with that damn thing!”

  Red Rogers, crouching low and slinging a wicked flurry of elbows, scooted through the tangle of cables, cameras, and reporters and got to Rhodes first. He shoved a microphone into Rhodes’ face and said in his radio voice, “Sheriff Rhodes, please tell our tri-county listeners what you know about the Simon Graham case. Is it true that he was found hanging in the old Obert College main building late last night?”

  By the time Rogers had finished asking the question, most of the cameras in the room were focused on Rhodes. Microphones bristled all around him. He looked beyond them at Hack and Lawton, who were sitting at the dispatcher’s desk, watching with what looked like a measure of displeasure that they were not the ones being interviewed. They weren’t going to be any help. Other reporters stuck their microphones at him, reaching over outthrust hands.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Rhodes said. He couldn’t think of anything to add, but that didn’t matter. Red Rogers could think of plenty, and for now the other reporters seemed content to let him ask the questions.