That Old Scoundrel Death

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes knew, having so recently had his adventure along that road and by that bridge.

  “North or south of the bridge?” he asked.

  “South,” Reese said. “You planning on going fishing?”

  “You could say that,” Rhodes told him.

  * * *

  Rhodes couldn’t think of any reason the Hunleys would burn the school, so he decided to go looking for Kenny and Noble before talking to them. When he came to the wooden bridge, he noticed that a track had been worn down the bank to the water, which was barely a trickle now. Fishermen must have gone down there a good many times, but there wouldn’t be any fishing going on now. He pulled the Charger about halfway into the drainage ditch to get it as far off the road as he could, then got out and made his way down the path. Reese hadn’t said how far from the bridge the fishing cabin was. Rhodes hoped it wasn’t too far.

  As he walked along the creek bank, Rhodes saw a couple of turtles sunning themselves on a big rotten tree branch that had fallen into the creek bed. He was glad to see them. He liked most turtles and terrapins and thought of them as being lucky for him. He wasn’t superstitious, or so he told himself. It was just that he associated turtles and terrapins with good things that had happened. Not the alligator snapping turtle, though. There was no luck with that kind of reptile. The snapper he had run across had been guarding a small marijuana field, and that incident had been more scary than anything. Alligator snappers seemed to Rhodes to be some kind of throwback to a prehistoric era. They were like little dinosaurs, although the one he’d encountered hadn’t been little except by comparison to those ancient ancestors.

  The creek bank made for hard walking, and it was easy to see that nobody had been along there in a while. If Kenny and Noble were at the fishing cabin, they’d found another way to get there, which figured. Rhodes hadn’t seen any trace of Kenny’s old truck.

  Rhodes had walked about half a mile before he turned a bend in the creek and saw a falling-down cabin in a field. Kenny’s pickup was parked beside it, covered with white, powdery dust from the county road. The cabin was on the other side of the creek, but that wasn’t a problem. While Rhodes wasn’t as agile as he’d once been, even he could jump over the dribble of water that remained of Sand Creek.

  He jumped across it and walked up the creek bank, stopping at the top to look over the cabin. It sat up on wooden blocks and was in terrible condition. It sat at the bottom of a little hill and appeared to have only a couple of rooms and a porch. The porch had collapsed, and the roof had fallen down at a slant. The only way to get into the cabin through the front door would be to go behind the fallen roof. Rhodes doubted the cabin had a back door.

  Rhodes had taken two guns from Kenny lately, and he’d taken one from Noble. But that didn’t mean they weren’t armed, so Rhodes got his Kel-Tec from the ankle holster just in case Kenny and Noble had acquired more weaponry and didn’t want visitors.

  The area around the cabin was open, not a tree in sight except at the top of the hill and off to the sides a hundred yards or so. Rhodes thought he might as well announce his presence.

  “Hello, the cabin,” he called. “Kenny Lambert. Noble Truelove. This is Sheriff Rhodes. If you’re in there, show yourselves.”

  For a full minute there was just quiet from the cabin. Rhodes was patient, though, and finally Kenny poked his head from around the fallen roof.

  “What do you want, Sheriff?” he asked. “Can’t you leave me and Noble alone?”

  “I guess not,” Rhodes said. “I could if you’d quit lying to me, but that doesn’t seem too likely to happen.”

  “Everybody lies to the law now and then,” Kenny said. “That’s just the way it is.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right,” Rhodes said, “but I’m going to try to get the truth out of you this time.”

  Rhodes half expected Kenny to come out with a gun and start shooting, but he didn’t. He said, “I guess you won’t leave if I ask you to.”

  “Nope,” Rhodes said. “You and Noble come on out and stand in front of the cabin. I want to see your hands.”

  “Damn,” Kenny said. “You don’t trust anybody, do you.”

  “Not very many,” Rhodes said. “Get Noble and come on out, hands where I can see them.”

  Kenny ducked back behind the roof, and Rhodes heard him talking to Noble, though he couldn’t make out the words. Noble’s voice was raised, and Rhodes figured that whatever he was saying, it wasn’t complimentary of Rhodes.

  The talking died down, and Kenny stuck his head out again. “We’re coming out now, Sheriff. Hands in front. I told Noble you had a pistol, so don’t shoot us.”

  “You don’t have to worry about that,” Rhodes said.

  “Okay. Here we come.”

  Kenny was about halfway out from behind the door when a board over his head exploded.

  Chapter 20

  As soon as the board flew apart, Rhodes heard the sound of a rifle shot.

  Kenny ducked back behind the door, and Rhodes ran for the cover of the porch roof. Although a rifle bullet might punch right through the boards, an inadequate cover was better than no cover at all. Grasshoppers jumped up from the weeds, thumped into him, and bounced away. He paid them no attention at all.

  Rhodes didn’t think he could run fast anymore, but he caught up with Kenny and Noble. He found himself pushing Kenny into the house as a bullet slammed into the dirt just under the porch roof.

  Kenny, Noble, and Rhodes tumbled into the house and lay on the floor. Rhodes said, “Stay away from the windows.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that twice,” Noble said. He looked at the pistol that Rhodes held. “You can’t do much with that against a rifle.”

  Rhodes almost laughed to think that Noble would be giving him that advice after what had happened the previous day between him and Kenny and the Whiteside brothers.

  “Pistol is better than nothing,” Kenny said, but that wasn’t true. The shots had come from the trees, and Rhodes didn’t know of anyone who could shoot that far with a pistol and hit anywhere near a target, even if there was a target to shoot at.

  “Why would anybody be shooting at you?” Rhodes asked.

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Kenny said. “We never did anything to anybody, but everybody’s always picking on us. Well, maybe we bothered the Whitesides a little. Ben and Glen still in the jail?”

  “They bonded out just like you did,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, there you are then,” Noble said. “They don’t much like us after yesterday. Now they want to kill us.”

  Rhodes thought that was doubtful, but before he could comment on it, a couple of bullets punched holes in the wall, sending splinters flying.

  “Damn,” Kenny said, putting his hands over his head, as if he thought hands could ward off bullets. “What’re we gonna do?”

  “Keep our heads down,” Rhodes said. “The shooter will get tired and leave after a while.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe that, and neither did Noble and Kenny.

  “He can starve us out if he wants to,” Noble said. “We bought some water and jerky, but it’s still in the truck.”

  Two more bullets popped through the wall above them, and Kenny yelled. Rhodes glanced around and saw that a splinter was sticking out of Kenny’s right hand.

  “You’re all right,” Rhodes said. “It’s just a splinter.”

  “Get it out,” Kenny wailed. “Get it out.”

  “You’re such a wimp,” Noble said.

  He reached over and pulled out the splinter. Kenny yelled as if he’d been stabbed.

  Rhodes ignored him and looked around. There was another room in the house behind the one they were in. That was all.

  “What’s in the other room?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” Kenny said, his voice weak with suffering. “This place was cleaned out long ago.”

  “What about a door?”

  “No door.”

  “Window?”

&n
bsp; “Yeah,” Noble said. “There’s a window.”

  “Might be a good idea to get out of here, then,” Rhodes said, as a couple more bullets punctured the wall. “We can get under the house. He can’t get us there.”

  “Okay with me,” Kenny said, and started creeping toward the door to the other room. Rhodes and Noble followed.

  The old flooring was rotted in several places, and Rhodes had to avoid a couple of small holes. It might have been easier to break a bigger hole in the floor than to go out the window, but Kenny was already over the sill and dropping down to the ground. Noble was right behind him.

  Rhodes had a little more trouble than they did, but that was only natural because they were younger and more limber than he was. When he landed on the ground, they were already out of sight.

  They weren’t under the house, either. It was dark there, but enough light came in for Rhodes to have seen two men if they’d been there. He crept as fast as he could to the side of the house and looked out just in time to see Noble getting into the pickup on the passenger side. Kenny must have already been inside, having entered the same way, out of sight of the shooter.

  Noble closed the door. Rhodes heard the pickup start, and Kenny reversed as fast as he could go. Rhodes heard bullets hitting metal, but Kenny kept on going and before long was over the little hill and gone, trailing a cloud of white dust and sand.

  Rhodes relaxed and lay on the cool dirt under the house. The shooter wasn’t after him, and for all he knew, Rhodes was in the pickup. It wouldn’t take long for the shooter to leave. All Rhodes had to do was wait. He hoped.

  As it turned out, he was right. Hardly any time at all went by before Rhodes heard a vehicle start in the woods nearby, and then he heard it drive away. He crawled out from under the house and found he was still holding his pistol. He didn’t put it away. He was going to have a look in the woods and see if he could find anything, and he didn’t want to be unarmed if he met someone with a gun.

  When he got to the trees, it didn’t take long to find where the shooter had been set up. He hadn’t taken the time to pick up his brass. Maybe he’d been in a hurry because he wanted to catch up with Kenny and Noble. If he did, they were on their own. Rhodes couldn’t help them now, not that he’d been much help earlier.

  He had no way to secure the crime scene, so he picked up one of the empty shell casings as carefully as he could and looked it over. It was for a thirty-thirty rifle, probably somebody’s deer rifle. He put the empty shell in his pocket, then looked around some more and found where the truck had been parked, just on the other side of the trees. The ground was too hard to take tire prints, so the dead weeds crushed into the dust were the only evidence that anyone had parked there.

  Rhodes didn’t find anything else, so he started the walk back to his county car.

  * * *

  When he got to the car, Rhodes radioed Hack and told him to send someone to do a crime scene investigation. He gave the location as best he could, and Hack said he’d send Ruth to do the job.

  “You gonna tell me what happened?” Hack asked.

  “No,” Rhodes said. “Over and out.”

  He hooked the mic and drove to Clearview. His first stop was at the jail to drop off the cartridge shell, and it wasn’t easy to get away from Hack’s questions without just walking out on him, so Rhodes walked out. He knew Hack’s feelings were hurt, but he’d get over it.

  His next stop was to get a new cell phone, and after that he went to the Dairy Queen, not for a Blizzard but for lunch. He thought about having a Jalitos Ranch burger, but it turned out to be Bean Day. Bean Day had pretty much died out at Texas Dairy Queens, or so Rhodes had heard, but not in Clearview. One day a week DQ had a big pot of pinto beans cooking, and all the beans and cornbread you could eat were available for one price. As many times as Rhodes had been in the DQ, he’d never tried this treat. He was sorely tempted but went for the Deluxe Cheeseburger Lunch instead. It came with a small sundae, and Rhodes figured that if he didn’t eat all the french fries, it would be okay to eat the sundae. Hot fudge was his preference. Julia wasn’t working that shift, and nobody asked Rhodes if he wanted “the usual.”

  On Bean Day, or just about any day, the Dairy Queen had a table or two taken by a group of the town’s old-timers who liked to hang out there and tell their stories, often the same ones they’d been telling for years. A couple of the men at one such table waved at Rhodes, and he waved back but didn’t join them. He needed to sit alone and think. And to eat his burger. Nobody would think he was rude. They all knew the sheriff wasn’t stuck up. They’d understand his reasons for sitting alone.

  The cheeseburger was satisfying, and he ate all the fries, after all. And the sundae, too. He’d had a lot of exercise and thought he deserved it.

  As he ate, he considered the events of the day so far. He didn’t believe for a minute that the Whitesides were shooting at Kenny and Noble, who were just trying to throw Rhodes off the track. Rhodes also wondered if the shooter was a poor shot or if he was sending a warning of some kind.

  Catching up to Kenny and Noble again was going to be a tough job, as they’d surely go to ground in a place where no one would look for them. The cabin was too obvious. Rhodes thought about the people who knew he was going to the cabin. Charlie Reese was one, and Mrs. Truelove was the other. Rhodes hadn’t mentioned Kenny and Noble to Charlie, so that left Mrs. Truelove. Rhodes would have to go back to Thurston to see her again, and he wanted to talk to the Hunleys. He probably should have done it while he was still there, but he needed a new phone.

  He finished his meal and let Hack know where he was going.

  “You ain’t gonna tell me what happened this mornin’?”

  “Maybe later,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Mrs. Truelove’s neat little house hadn’t changed a bit. Rhodes knocked on the door, and when she came to see who was there, she said, “I hope you’re not here to tell me that Noble’s hurt or anything.”

  “I’m not,” Rhodes said. “I saw him at the cabin, and he was just fine.”

  “That’s a relief,” Mrs. Truelove said. “How can I help you, then?”

  “I wanted to ask if anybody else had been by to question you about where Noble might be.”

  “No, sir, nobody’s been by here since you left. I don’t get a lot of visitors. People blame me for Noble, you see, and they don’t drop by.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rhodes said. “You’re sure nobody was here?”

  “Not a single solitary soul except me.”

  Rhodes thanked her for her time and left, trying to figure who could have told someone about the cabin. It occurred to him that the person who could was probably Curtis Lambert, who wouldn’t have minded one bit lying to Rhodes about not knowing where his son might have been. Rhodes drove to the Lambert house to find out.

  What he found when he got there was Betsy lying in the yard with a deep gash in her head. She was breathing but barely conscious. Rhodes left her there and went inside the house. Curtis Lambert was in almost the same condition as Betsy. He sat on the floor of the front room, bruised and beaten. He tried to get up when Rhodes came in, but he couldn’t manage it without Rhodes’s help.

  “Who did this?” Rhodes asked when he’d gotten Curtis into a chair.

  “Don’t know,” Curtis said. “He was wearing a ski mask. Tried to make me tell him where Kenny was. I said I didn’t know, but he beat it out of me. I lied to you, Sheriff, and I appreciate you not beating me.”

  “Not the way I work,” Rhodes said. “What kind of vehicle was he in?”

  “Don’t know that, either. Didn’t get a look outside before he hit me. I held out a little while. Guess I shouldn’t have. You think Kenny’s all right?”

  “He was the last time I saw him. Someone found the cabin and took a few shots at us, but nobody was hurt. Kenny and Noble got away. I doubt anybody’s going to find them this time.”

  “Probably not,” Curtis said. “W
hat about Betsy? You see her?”

  “She’s outside, not in good shape. I’ll take her to the vet in Clearview. She’ll be all right.”

  “I need to go, too.”

  “You need a doctor, not a vet. I’ll drop you at the hospital. Can you walk to the car?”

  “I can walk.” Curtis stood up. He was shaky, but he walked to the door ahead of Rhodes, getting sturdier with every step. “Let’s go. I want to get Betsy fixed up.”

  It took both Rhodes and Curtis to lift Betsy into the backseat of the county car. Curtis wasn’t much help, but Rhodes wasn’t going to tell him not to try. When Betsy was inside, Curtis got in and held her head in his lap.

  “She’ll make it,” he said, more to himself than Rhodes, but Rhodes answered anyway.

  “No doubt about it. Dr. Childs will fix her right up.”

  * * *

  The parking lot at Dr. Childs’s clinic was alive with the sounds of dogs barking and cats yowling inside the building. Rhodes and Curtis took Betsy in, and the receptionist said she’d get Dr. Childs to look at the dog immediately. When she left to get him, Rhodes repeated his offer to take Curtis to the hospital.

  “I’m fine now,” he said. “I don’t need any hospital, and I’m not leaving Betsy. You can go on, Sheriff. I’ll find me a ride home, or I might stay in town all night so I can see Betsy in the morning. I sure appreciate your help. If there’s ever anything I can do for you—”

  “You can tell me where Noble and Kenny are hiding this time,” Rhodes said.

  “This time I don’t know,” Curtis said, “and that’s the truth.”

  Rhodes wondered if it was. “Even a guess would help.”

  “Kenny’s mother lives in Obert. We’ve been divorced for a long time, but I know he goes to see her now and then. That’s my best guess.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Karla Vincent, now. She shed my name as quick as she could.”