by Bill Crider
“I know who found the body,” Hack said. “I’m the one who took the call. She didn’t tell me anything about some character named Bruce Wayne.”
Lawton walked in from the cellblock at that point and said, “Bruce Wayne’s the Batman.”
“I know that,” Hack said. “Don’t you think I know who the Batman is?”
“Bet you don’t know what Robin’s name was,” Lawton said.
“Burt Ward.”
“Nope, that was just the guy who played him on TV.”
“Robin was Bruce Wayne’s ward, right?” Hack said.
“Yeah.”
“So you’re telling me that the ward was played by a Ward?”
“I guess I am.”
“So I was right,” Hack said.
“Nope. Bruce Wayne’s ward was Dick Grayson.”
“So the ward wasn’t really Ward?”
Rhodes had sat in on a few surreal conversations between Hack and Lawton, but this one was reaching new heights. Before long they’d be asking who was on first base.
“Yeah,” Lawton said. “Ward was really the ward, but only on TV. In real life—”
“There ain’t no Batman in real life,” Hack said.
Lawton frowned. “What I meant was—”
Luckily for all concerned, Lawton was interrupted at that point in the conversation when Jennifer Loam walked in. She was short, blond, and about as smart as anyone in the county. Seepy Benton would put himself at the top of the list, but Rhodes thought that even Seepy would have to put Jennifer at number two.
“I hope I’m not breaking up anything important,” she said.
“It was an intellectual discussion,” Rhodes said.
“What was it about?”
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. He didn’t want to get Hack and Lawton started again. “I was just about to tell these two about the dead man down in Thurston.”
“Then I’ll sit down and listen if you don’t mind,” Jennifer said. “That’s what I came here to find out about.”
“He wasn’t really gonna tell us,” Hack said. “He was messing with me.”
Jennifer sat in the chair near Rhodes’s desk. “I can’t imagine the sheriff doing a thing like that. You must be mistaken.”
“Hah,” Hack said.
“Do you want to hear about it or not?” Rhodes asked.
“Go ahead,” Hack said.
Rhodes went through the story, and when he was finished, Jennifer said, “So the dead man gave you two different names, and you think neither one was correct?”
“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “He’ll be fingerprinted before the autopsy, and we’ll run the prints through the usual databases. Maybe that will help us.”
“Not if he ain’t in the database,” Hack said. “I’m guessin’ he won’t be.”
Hack was probably right, but they had to try everything.
“And you think he was in Thurston to look at the old school building?”
“That’s what he said, anyway,” Rhodes told her. “His story was that his grandmother went to school there and he wanted to look the old place over.”
“There’s a lot of controversy about the demolition of that building,” Jennifer said. “I’ve written about it several times.”
Rhodes knew she had, and he’d even glanced at her articles, but he didn’t remember much about them.
“I saw the building,” he said. “It’s a mess. The repairs would cost more money than the town has available.”
“Some people think the money could be raised if people made the effort.”
“Who thinks that?”
“The Hunleys, to start with,” Jennifer said. “I’m sure you know the Hunleys.”
“Not well,” Rhodes said, “but everybody knows about the Hunleys.”
The Hunleys were a military family, going back a long way, to the Civil War at least, or so Rhodes had heard. Asa Hunley had been a soldier in WWII and had won a number of medals. Asa’s son, Con, had won his medals in Vietnam, and Con’s son, Pete, had distinguished himself in the first Gulf War. Pete didn’t have any children. Asa and Con had both attended school in Thurston, but after that the school had consolidated with Clearview, which is where Pete had graduated.
“They’re about as famous as anybody who graduated from Thurston High School,” Hack said. “The three of ’em earned enough medals to sink a ship.”
“Maybe their name recognition would be good enough to get a finance campaign going,” Rhodes said, “but they’d still need a lot of help. People with money.”
“The Falkners live down that way,” Lawton said. “Leslie and Faye. They got money.”
Rhodes knew that was true, although nobody was really sure how the family had gotten rich. One somewhat plausible rumor had it that some obscure relative had started a successful fast-food chain in California and sold out for a fortune. When he died, he left all his money to the Thurston branch of the family because he had no other relatives.
“The Falkners won’t be helping the Hunleys,” Jennifer said. “They want the school torn down and a new community center in its place. Various other families are lined up on one side or the other, but those two are the leaders.”
Rhodes had a few more questions to ask about the school controversy, but the phone rang and Hack listened to some excited caller for a minute before hanging up and turning to Rhodes.
“Somebody says shots’re being fired out on the way to Milsby, County Road 164. Take a left off the main road about half a mile. You better get out there, and I’ll send Ruth for backup.”
“I’m on my way,” Rhodes said.
* * *
Rhodes was out of the jail, into the Tahoe, and on the road quickly, but Jennifer Loam was almost as quick. Rhodes saw her little car in his rearview mirror, and he supposed that she was actually quicker than he was but was just being polite by not zipping out ahead of him. He’d thought about telling her not to come, but he knew that wouldn’t have worked. She’d have started in lecturing him about the freedom of the press and taking valuable time. So he’d kept his mouth shut, knowing that she’d be right there with her phone camera, getting all the shots she could. He might have considered telling her to be careful, but that would have been just more wasted breath, and it would’ve insulted her besides. Rhodes might not have learned much over his lifetime, but he did know that many times it paid for him to keep his mouth shut.
Milsby had once been a town but there was hardly any sign of it left, only the ruins of an old school building and a few deserted houses. People still lived all around along the country roads, but there was no town and hadn’t been for years. County Road 164 was white gravel and dirt, and when Rhodes turned onto it the Tahoe’s wheels threw up a cloud of dust. He hadn’t driven more than a hundred yards when he heard a couple of gunshots.
He drove on for about half a mile, and when he crested a small hill he saw immediately what the situation was. An old unpainted house sat back among some trees, and parked about thirty yards in front of it was a rusted out Chevy pickup that looked familiar to Rhodes. Two men crouched down beside the pickup, using it for cover. Rhodes thought he knew where Noble Truelove and Kenny Lambert had gone.
Rhodes pulled onto the rutted path leading to the house and drove forward just far enough to block the exit. He unlocked the shotgun from the rack beside him. It was loaded with alternating shotgun shells and rifled slugs, which had considerably more range than the shotgun shells. Rhodes could hit a target at a hundred yards with one of the slugs.
He got out of the Tahoe, went around to the rear, opened the tailgate and got out his bulletproof vest. By the time he got the vest on, Jennifer Loam was parked behind him.
Rhodes didn’t say a word to her. Telling her to stay in her car wouldn’t make a bit of difference. She’d do what she wanted to do. Rhodes shut the tailgate and jogged up the road as a couple of bullets from the house slammed into the Chevy pickup.
Noble and Kenny saw him coming, but they di
dn’t wave in greeting. They just sat there with their backs to the pickup as if they were innocent bystanders who’d just happened onto the scene. Rhodes reached the pickup and dropped down beside them.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Kenny said. “You come to save us?”
“Maybe,” Rhodes said. “What would I be saving you from?”
“The bad guys,” Kenny said. “Ain’t that right, Noble.”
“Sure is,” Noble said. He was shorter than Kenny but wider, with close-set eyes. “We were just driving along, looking at the country the way a fella likes to do now and then, and those guys opened up on us.”
“How do you know they’re guys?”
“Just guessing,” Noble said.
“Anyway, we naturally had to defend ourselves as best we could,” Kenny said. “You can see that.”
Kenny held a .25 automatic that looked even cheaper and less impressive than his imitation Glock. As far as Rhodes could tell, Kenny’s trigger finger was no longer swollen.
Noble had what looked like Kenny’s pistol’s twin. Two Saturday Night Specials if Rhodes had ever seen them, practically useless for the current situation. Not that either Noble or Kenny seemed bothered by that.
“This is a funny place to be sightseeing,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah,” Noble agreed, “but we saw that old house and thought we’d look it over. Sometimes you can find good stuff in old deserted houses.”
Rhodes had to give Noble credit for an explanation that sounded almost plausible. Almost.
“You’d better give me those pistols,” he said.
“We got permits,” Kenny said. “We got a right to defend ourselves.”
“I’m in charge of the defense now,” Rhodes said. “Hand them over.”
Kenny looked disgusted, but he handed his pistol to Rhodes, who slipped it in his back pocket.
“You, too, Noble,” Rhodes said.
Noble looked at Kenny, who shrugged. Noble handed Rhodes the pistol, and Rhodes stuck it in his belt at the back of his pants.
“When you decided to look in the house,” Rhodes said, “you had no idea anybody was inside?”
“That’s right,” Kenny said. “We just got outta my truck and they started shooting.”
Rhodes saw Ruth Grady’s squad car pull off the road into the drainage ditch. She got out after arming herself. She got her Kevlar vest from the trunk and put it on before running past Jennifer and up the road to join Rhodes and his new best friends.
Nobody had shot at Rhodes, and nobody shot at Ruth. Whoever was in the house didn’t want to get any deeper in trouble than they already were, or so Rhodes thought.
“What’s going on?” Ruth asked.
“These two were just sightseeing,” Rhodes said, “and the people in the house started shooting at them.”
Ruth shook her head. “My, my. People shooting at innocent sightseers. What’s the world coming to?”
“Sad, ain’t it?” Kenny said.
“You bet it is,” Noble said.
Rhodes stood partway up so that only his head showed over the side of the pickup.
“Hello, the house!” he yelled. When he got no response, he said, “This is Sheriff Dan Rhodes. I’m going to come up there and have a little talk with you. My deputy will stay here and make sure nobody does any shooting.”
Still no response, which seemed a bit suspicious. Rhodes stood all the way up, and sure enough he heard a car start in back of the house.
“Stay with these two,” Rhodes told Ruth, “cuff them.”
He ran down to the Tahoe, got in, secured the shotgun, and took off, hoping that he wasn’t too far behind whoever had been doing the shooting from the house.
He reached the house and saw a black pickup bouncing across the field behind it. Rhodes went right after it, the Tahoe rocking from side to side like a carnival ride. Rhodes hung on to the wheel and hoped he didn’t run into a hole in the ground, or at least not a deep one.
The pickup turned left, and Rhodes followed. It appeared to be headed for a little woods, but Rhodes thought it would have to make another turn. The trees were too big and too thick for the pickup to get through them safely.
He was right. At the edge of the woods, the pickup turned left again and headed toward the road. There was no way out of the field except through a barbed-wire fence and across the drainage ditch that ran along the road. The pickup could break through the fence, but Rhodes didn’t think it could jump the ditch, which Rhodes figured was about twenty feet wide. Maybe one chance in a hundred, if that.
The pickup driver didn’t seem to care, or maybe he wasn’t thinking straight. Desperation might have entered into it. People who were desperate to escape the law didn’t always think clearly.
The pickup gained speed, and maybe it could’ve jumped the ditch, after all, if only the wire had parted quickly. Being old and rusty, maybe it should have, but it didn’t. Only one strand did, and the other three held, which resulted in staples popping from old fence posts, some of which cracked and broke with sounds almost like gunshots. The wire finally gave way, but the truck had slowed, and it didn’t clear the ditch.
The front bumper hit the side of the ditch near the road, and the rear of the truck raised up into the air like the hind legs of a bucking bronco. The rear of the truck end hit the near side of the ditch with the rear wheels still spinning, and the air bags went off.
Rhodes stopped the Tahoe and watched as the rear wheels spun. Nobody moved in the pickup, so he unlatched the shotgun and got out. As he did, two people jumped from the pickup and started running down the road in the direction away from the house. Rhodes recognized both of them. They were Ben and Glen, the black-sheep sons of the Whiteside family. Their parents were teachers, and they had an older sister who was a dean at a community college on the Gulf Coast. Their older brother was a CPA with a firm in Dallas. Ben and Glen had decided, however, that their talents lay in not conforming to society’s demands about jobs and family, so they’d become modern-day outlaws, a step or two above Kenny and Noble. They were always in trouble, about to get in trouble, or just getting out of trouble.
Rhodes aimed over their heads and fired the shotgun. The first shell was double-ought buck, and Ben and Glen were already too far away for it to bother them even if it hit them, but he wanted to let them know he was back there. He figured they’d stop and wait for him.
They did. They’d tangled with Rhodes so many times that they knew when to give up, which was most of the time. They stood at the side of the road, and when Rhodes was within ten yards of them he said, “Time to take a little ride to town and visit your second home.”
The two men, both in their early twenties, were dusted with fine white powder from the pickup’s air bags. They didn’t look much like brothers. Ben was at least a couple of inches taller than Glen, and Glen was heavyset, whereas Ben was almost scrawny. Both had the same gray eyes and thick black hair, though, with thin-lipped mouths that never smiled. Ben wore a T-shirt that said “Vote for Pedro” on the front. Glen’s black T-shirt had no slogan. The arms of both men were heavily tattooed. Rhodes wondered if they’d had the work done at Mink’s Ink, but he didn’t ask.
“We ain’t got no first home,” Ben said.
That was true. Their parents had given up on them years ago and kicked them out. The two lived wherever they could, in cheap rentals when they had the money and in the woods or abandoned houses when they didn’t.
“You been living out here?” Rhodes asked.
Neither man had an answer for him, but Rhodes didn’t mind. He said, “We’ll be going now. You two can just walk on past me. We’ll stop at your pickup and turn it off, and I’ll have a look at it just to see what I can see.”
Ben and Glen had nothing to say to that, either. They didn’t like talking to the law, and Rhodes understood why. As many times as they’d been in trouble, keeping their mouths shut was their best course of action. So Rhodes cuffed them and they walked silently down the road.
Chapter 8
The pickup engine had died by the time they got to the spot where the truck nearly spanned the ditch, so Rhodes didn’t have to turn it off. He decided to ask the two prisoners a few questions.
“What happened with Kenny and Noble? They told me they were sightseeing and you started shooting at them.”
Glen decided to answer. He said, “Sightseeing? That’s a good one. They came driving up to the house and pulled those little worthless guns on us. Started shooting, so we shot back.”
“You chased them away?”
“Not far,” Ben said. “They got nerve. That’s all they got, though. Those are sorry little guns they have. I bet both of ’em are jammed.”
“Let’s walk on down there and see,” Rhodes said. “You have guns in the pickup?”
“In the cab,” Ben said.
“Good to know,” Rhodes said. “Let’s move along now.”
When they got back to where Ruth was holding Kenny and Noble, Jennifer Loam was gone. Rhodes thought that was just fine, but he worried about what she might post on A Clear View for Clearview. It would be positive, of course, but it might be too positive.
Rhodes decided not to worry about it. He said to Ruth, “You keep an eye on these two while I call Hack.”
“My pleasure,” Ruth said. “You gentlemen have a seat on the ground here. Not too close to Kenny and Noble, though. I don’t want any pushing and shoving or anybody saying ‘he’s touching me.’”
Ben and Glen did as she said, sitting with their backs to the pickup as far from Kenny and Noble as they could get.
“No talking, either,” Ruth said. “I like peace and quiet.”
Nobody said a word.
Rhodes got Hack on the radio and asked him where Buddy was patrolling.
“Out east. You need him?”
“Yeah. Tell him to get out here as soon as he can.”
“You know how he is,” Hack said. “He’ll speed.”
Rhodes grinned. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”