That Old Scoundrel Death

by Bill Crider

  “If that’s all we can do, I’ll do it,” Andy said.

  “I might be able to persuade the commissioners to buy us a magnifying glass,” Rhodes said.

  Andy laughed. “I didn’t mean to sound whiny. I’m a little frustrated.”

  “So am I,” Rhodes said, “but we’ll find out who killed Bruce Wayne even without any high-tech equipment.”

  “You don’t think he was really named Bruce Wayne, do you?”

  “No, but we’ll find his real name, too.”

  “You sound pretty sure.”

  “You have to believe,” Rhodes said.

  “You think that helps?” Andy asked.

  “Sure,” Rhodes said. “Don’t you?”

  Andy shrugged. “If you say it does, I believe it. Where do we start with this, then?”

  “You start by going on patrol,” Rhodes said. “I’ll start by going back to Clearview and seeing if Hack’s dug anything up on Bruce Wayne. Or Cal Stinson, as he called himself yesterday.”

  “And if that doesn’t work?”

  “Do I detect disbelief?” Rhodes asked. “That’s why you fail.”

  Rhodes had seen The Empire Strikes Back on TV. He preferred older and less well-made movies, like the Italian-made Hercules movies from the fifties. He did, however, make the occasional exception.

  “Sorry,” Andy said. “I’ll try to be more positive.”

  “Do. Or do not,” Rhodes said. “There is no try.”

  Andy laughed. “I get it. You don’t look much like Yoda, though.”

  “More like Harrison Ford?”

  Andy laughed again. “Well, I wouldn’t say that, either.”

  Rhodes didn’t ask him what he would say. It was time to get back to Clearview and get busy finding out about Cal Stinson.

  Chapter 6

  Rhodes remembered the number of the county road and the address he’d seen on Kenny Lambert’s driver’s license, so he thought it might be a good idea to pay Kenny a visit and talk to him about his whereabouts on the previous night. His route took him past Thurston’s Methodist church, a few houses, and on out of town as the road turned from blacktop to gravel to dirt. The pastures and fields he passed were uniformly brown, and the few cattle he saw looked hungry and thirsty, although he knew that was just his imagination. Cows looked like cows.

  The Lambert house was set back about fifty yards from the road. It was surrounded by elm and hackberry trees, and a little woods stretched out behind it. A barbed-wire fence ran across the front of the property, but there was an opening for vehicles to pass through. Rhodes drove up to the house on a rutted dirt lane and parked the Tahoe on the dead grass of the yard.

  The house itself was old and rickety, set up on wooden blocks. It looked as if the Big Bad Wolf could blow it down with only a little bit of huffing and puffing. Puffing alone might have done it if the wolf didn’t feel like huffing.

  A detached garage sat off to the back on one side of the house. It was, if anything, in worse shape than the house. About half the roof was missing. A rusty old Chevrolet sat inside, and about half the roof appeared to have fallen in on the car. Neither the house nor the garage had seen a paintbrush in decades.

  A room air conditioner hung out of a window on the side of the house. It was as rusty as the car and vibrating slightly. Rhodes saw water drip from one corner of it.

  Rhodes hadn’t asked Hack if Kenny had reclaimed his pickup from the impound lot, but it was nowhere in sight. Maybe Kenny had picked up some other transportation, like a Camry formerly owned by Cal Stinson.

  The place looked deserted, but somebody was there or the air conditioner wouldn’t be running. Nobody would waste electricity on an empty house.

  Rhodes parked and stepped out of the Tahoe. As soon as he did a dog rushed out from under the house. It didn’t bark, which Rhodes took to be a bad sign. A barking dog was issuing a warning. One that didn’t make a sound was planning an attack. Rhodes should’ve been expecting the dog. A lot of people who lived in the country had a dog for protection, for companionship, or both, and this wasn’t the first encounter of this kind that Rhodes had experienced. Rhodes got back into the Tahoe and shut the door.

  The dog was spotted like a leopard dog, but there was something else in the mix, maybe two or three something elses, Doberman or Rottweiler, maybe, and the dog’s disposition was decidedly unpleasant. It threw itself against the Tahoe’s door, jumping up high enough to slap its head into the window and bare its teeth at Rhodes. The incisors were sharp and looked like thick ivory needles.

  A man came out on the porch. He was whippet thin and looked to be somewhere between forty-five and fifty. He had long, unkempt hair, and he held a silver chain with a fabric choke collar dangling from the end.

  “Come ’ere, Betsy,” the man said.

  Betsy either didn’t hear him or didn’t intend to come there. She jumped against the Tahoe again. Rhodes wouldn’t be surprised if she dented the door.

  “Betsy!” the man said.

  Betsy ignored him. He stepped down from the porch and walked toward the Tahoe. Betsy didn’t even look at him. Instead, she leaped up and bared her teeth at Rhodes again.

  When she dropped to the ground, the man dropped beside her and slipped the choke collar on as Rhodes watched through the window. The man stood up and pulled the collar tight.

  “She’s not a bad dog,” he said. “Just don’t care for strangers coming for an unannounced visit.” He looked at the Blacklin County Sheriff’s Department logo on the Tahoe door. “She can’t read, so she don’t know you’re the law. I’ll get her chained up, and you can get out.”

  He walked to the porch, and Rhodes saw that there was an iron ring attached to one of the porch’s support posts. The man hooked the chain to the ring and turned back around.

  “You’ll be okay now,” he said. “Betsy will behave herself.”

  Rhodes wasn’t convinced, but it wouldn’t do for the county sheriff to show fear. He got out of the Tahoe and went to the porch. Betsy waited until he was nearly there before leaping toward him, but the chain caught her short before she reached him. Rhodes was surprised she hadn’t pulled the support from underneath the porch roof and brought the whole house down. She stood straining against the chain and baring her teeth.

  “Well,” the man said, “she usually behaves herself after I get the chain on ’er. She must not like you even a little bit.”

  “I got that impression,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe she just doesn’t like lawmen.”

  “That might take some training,” Rhodes said.

  The man looked at Betsy. “She ain’t had no training of any kind a’tall. She’s a good guard dog, and that’s what I got her for.” The man walked over and sat on the edge of the porch on the opposite side of the steps from where Betsy was chained. “Why’re you here, anyhow? I ain’t done nothing wrong. Just staying in my house and minding my own business.”

  “I’m looking for Kenny Lambert,” Rhodes said. “Any relation?”

  “I’m Curtis Lambert, Kenny’s old man. What’s he done now?”

  “He was arrested yesterday. He tell you about that?”

  “You mean that fella that ran him off the road?”

  “That’s not exactly the whole story,” Rhodes said.

  Curtis shifted his position on the porch and didn’t say anything. Rhodes listened to the air conditioner chugging away on the side of the house. After a few seconds, Curtis dug a package of cigarettes out of the pocket of his faded green shirt. He shook out a cigarette and lit it with a paper match from a folding book that he kept stuck between the cellophane and the pack itself. After he’d taken a puff, he said, “Maybe Kenny didn’t tell me the truth. Sometimes he’s like that. You want a smoke?”

  “No, thanks,” Rhodes said.

  “I didn’t figure you would, just being polite.” Curtis stuck the cigarette pack back in his pocket. “You gonna stand out there in the yard, or you want to sit down?”

  R
hodes moved over to the side of the porch well away from Betsy and sat down. The porch slanted a bit toward the yard, and Rhodes braced his feet on the ground so he wouldn’t slide off.

  Curtis blew a smoke ring and said, “Tell me the whole story about Kenny. I’d like to hear your side of it.”

  Rhodes told him. When he was finished, Curtis said, “Well, that sounds like Kenny, all right. He was prob’ly tweaking. He can handle meth better than most people, but it does tend to make him a little feisty and mouthy when he uses it. He don’t do it often.”

  “He ever do anything worse than get mouthy?” Rhodes asked.

  “You mean like gutting somebody out like a deer?”’Course not. Kenny’s not like that even when he’s not high.”

  “Where is Kenny, anyway? I’d like to talk to him.”

  Curtis took a last drag on his cigarette and crushed it out on the porch before tossing the butt into the yard. Betsy strained to get at it, but the chain was too short.

  “What you want to talk to Kenny about?” Curtis asked.

  “About the man he ran off the road.”

  “He pressed any charges?”

  “Not yet,” Rhodes said, but he didn’t add anything about the man’s current situation. “There are enough charges against Kenny without him. Is Kenny here?”

  “Nope. He went off with some friend of his, Noble Truelove. Ain’t that a name for you?”

  Rhodes was familiar with the name. If Noble Truelove’s parents had hoped his name would give him high ideals, they’d been wrong. Noble had been in and out of the county jail a number of times, never on anything to keep him there very long, but things that showed what kind of person he was, things like petty theft, assault, and DUI.

  “A good name, all right,” Rhodes said. “I don’t see a car. How did Noble Truelove get here?”

  “I didn’t say he was here. Kenny went off in his truck to get him.”

  So Kenny had gotten the truck from the impound lot. “When will Kenny be back?”

  Curtis laughed. “How the hell would I know? Kenny’s a grown man. He comes and goes as he pleases.”

  “You happen to know where he was last night?”

  “He was here for a while. Then him and Noble went off somewhere or other in that old pickup of Kenny’s. They don’t tell me their plans, and I don’t ask. None of my business.”

  Rhodes thought about that. It was probably true. Curtis didn’t seem to care much about his son or what he did. The thought of Noble and Kenny together and at loose ends made Rhodes wonder if they’d driven by the school and seen Stinson’s car. They could’ve parked in back, gone inside by way of the fire escape, and killed him. It was something to think about. Rhodes wasn’t sure about Kenny, but he thought Noble was up to the job, and Kenny would be the kind to go along.

  “When Kenny comes back,” Rhodes said, “have him give me a call.”

  “I’ll do that, Sheriff,” Curtis said. “I surely will.”

  Rhodes knew he didn’t mean a word of it, but there was no use to start an argument about it. He slid off the porch and said, “I appreciate you talking to me, Mr. Lambert. Tell Betsy I was pleased to meet her.”

  “You can tell her yourself,” Curtis said.

  The dog was lying down now, but she still had her eyes on Rhodes.

  “I don’t want to upset her,” Rhodes said. “I’ll just be on my way. Don’t forget to have Kenny give me a call.”

  “I’ll remember,” Curtis said, but Rhodes knew he’d never get a call. That was all right, though. He’d pay Kenny another visit soon. For now he’d go on back to the jail and see what else was going on in the county.

  * * *

  When he got back to the jail, Rhodes wasn’t entirely surprised to see Seepy Benton making himself at home in the chair beside Rhodes’s desk.

  “Don’t bother to get up,” Rhodes said to Seepy, who’d started to stand.

  “He might need to get up,” Hack said. “He’s been sittin’ in that chair for an hour. I told him you might not be back for a while, but he said he didn’t care.”

  Seepy lowered himself back into the chair and shifted around a bit. When he’d settled himself, he said, “Hack and I have been discussing some famous private investigator cases. The ones from books and movies. I haven’t had any famous cases yet.”

  Rhodes sat at his desk. “Only a matter of time. You’ll be like Philip Marlowe.”

  “Seepy don’t look like Bogart,” Hack said.

  That was true. Seepy looked more like Elisha Cook, Jr., but older and with less hair.

  “I’m thinking of buying a trench coat,” Seepy said. “Maybe a new fedora.”

  Seepy’s current fedora rested on Rhodes’s desk. It was old and well worn, with a couple of unidentifiable grayish stains on the sides.

  “That might be a good idea,” Rhodes said. “You want to look professional if you’re planning to get any clients.”

  “I already have one,” Seepy said. “A good one.”

  Rhodes had a feeling he knew who the client was.

  “That’s why I came by,” Seepy said. “To thank you for recommending me to the mayor. I’m not teaching summer school, and I can devote all my time to his case, not that it’s going to take me that long.”

  Rhodes thought about telling Seepy that he didn’t exactly recommend him, but he thought he might as well not disillusion him.

  “Of course it looks tricky,” Seepy said, “but I have a big brain—”

  “—and you’re not afraid to use it,” Rhodes said. “I know.”

  “I may have told you that before.”

  “Several times,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, that doesn’t make it any less true. You know what the mayor wants me to do, don’t you?”

  “He wants you to find out who’s running Digging that Blacklin County Dirt. It doesn’t seem like a very hard job for a computer whiz like you. You just trace the internet address of the blog to its owner.”

  “That would be easy, all right,” Seepy said. “If they were using their internet address. I took a look. They’re going through a VPN.”

  Rhodes decided he wouldn’t ask what a VPN was. He said, “By ‘they’ you mean Patrick Henry and Thomas Paine.”

  “Not their real names,” Seepy said, “but you must have guessed that.”

  “I have a big brain,” Rhodes said, “and I’m not afraid to use it.”

  Seepy laughed. “Good. Now let’s talk about VPNs and what they do.”

  Rhodes took a wild guess. “They hide your internet address.”

  “I’ll be danged,” Hack said. “I’d’ve bet you didn’t know that.”

  “I have a big brain,” Rhodes said, not showing his own surprise, “and—”

  “Never mind that stuff,” Hack said. “It’s gettin’ old already.”

  “It’s not quite that simple,” Seepy said, “but by going through a VPN, somebody in Texas can appear to be working on the internet in Turkey or Turkmenistan or anywhere else in the world. Very hard to trace.”

  “You can do it, though,” Rhodes said. “Mayor Clement is counting on you.”

  Seepy picked up his fedora. “I might be able to do it if Tom and Patrick are using a cheap VPN. If they’re paying for a more expensive one, it’s going to be tough.”

  “I heard about those private eyes who like to drag out a case to get more money,” Hack said. “Philip Marlowe would never do that.”

  “I wouldn’t, either,” Seepy said. He settled his hat on his head, covering up the bald part. “I have a code of ethics. All us private eyes have a code of ethics. My code is my own, and I never talk about it. If you talk about it too much, you lose it.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure that made any sense, but he wasn’t going to argue the point.

  “Besides,” Seepy said, “I’m giving the mayor my bargain rate. All us private eyes have a bargain rate for certain clients.”

  “I’ll remember that if I ever need a peeper,” Hack said.

&nb
sp; “Shamus is better,” Seepy said. “Peeper is derogatory.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” Hack said. “I don’t want to hurt your feelings.”

  Seepy stood up. “I have to get to work, but I did want to come by and thank you for the recommendation. I’ll break the case as soon as I can, and the mayor will be happy with both of us.”

  “He won’t be happy with Tom and Patrick,” Rhodes said. “You’ll be invading their privacy.”

  “That’s if he can find ’em,” Hack said.

  “I can find them,” Seepy said.

  “I’ve heard of private eyes who’d hold that over them for blackmail,” Hack said.

  “It’s blackmail only if I ask them for money or something else,” Seepy said. “My code won’t let me do that.”

  “You ever been tested yet?” Hack asked.

  Seepy shook his head. “This is my first big case, but my code is solid.”

  “Hack’s just messing with you,” Rhodes said. “Don’t let him bother you.”

  “I wouldn’t mess with anybody,” Hack said, a blatant lie, as Rhodes knew all too well.

  “I’m not easy to bother,” Seepy said. “See you later.”

  He went out of the jail, and Rhodes turned to his desk.

  “Well?” Hack said.

  “Well, what?” Rhodes asked.

  “You gonna tell me or not?”

  “Tell you what?”

  “You know what.”

  Rhodes did know, but it was his turn to mess with somebody now. It wasn’t an opportunity that came around often.

  “No,” he said. “I don’t know what. You’d better tell me.”

  Hack shot him an accusing look. “You do too know.”

  “Nope,” Rhodes said. “Don’t know. You’ll have to tell me what you want to know.”

  Hack grumbled under his breath, but he finally said, “Who the heck was the dead man in Thurston?”

  Rhodes grinned. “Bruce Wayne,” he said.

  Chapter 7

  Hack’s face got a bit red when he heard Rhodes’s answer. “No call for you to be a smart aleck with me.”

  “I’m not being a smart aleck,” Rhodes told him. “That’s the name he gave Wanda Wilkins. She’s the one who found the body.”