by Bill Crider
Rhodes motioned for Buddy to go around back. Buddy was up and running, but he was too late. Rhodes heard glass shatter, and he knew that Rapper would be on his way out.
Rhodes stood up and fired his shotgun upward through the door. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone, just let them know that he was about to come through. Now that they’d had a second to think about it, maybe they’d hold their fire. They wouldn’t want to kill an officer of the law.
Or maybe they would, though Rhodes didn’t really think so.
He heard motorcycles thunder to life, and then he heard Buddy yell, “Freeze!”
Nobody froze. Nobody ever did. Buddy fired his shotgun.
When he did, Rhodes jumped through the door of the mobile home, turning in midair and sliding in on his back. He fired the shotgun left and right, straight up at the ceiling, before his head hit the wall. The pellets ripped through the cheap ceiling tile and tore through the metal roof.
Rhodes jumped up, waving away the acrid smoke with one hand, but he didn’t see a single soul. They’d all gone out through the sliding glass door on the back, though they hadn’t bothered to slide it.
Rhodes stepped through the door and down into the field. There were Packers running in all directions. They were all armed, but none of them was taking the time to shoot. One of them looked like an explosion in a hair factory, and Rhodes recognized him from the cemetery. He recognized Dude, too, and Ferrell. He was sure he could make a case against them when the time came.
Rapper and Nellie had almost reached the trees along the creek on their motorcycles. Mud was spraying up from beneath their rear tires.
Buddy was standing rigidly by Nard King’s pickup, holding his shotgun about a foot away from King’s left ear. King had his hands clasped in back of his neck. He looked like a man who’d just lost his last dollar and been told his dog had died.
Rhodes ran over to the pickup and opened the door. The keys were in the ignition, ready to help someone make a quick getaway. Rhodes put the shotgun in the seat, got in himself, and started the pickup.
“I’ll be back,” he told Buddy. “Don’t let King get away.”
Buddy made some kind of answer, but Rhodes didn’t hear it. He was already swerving down the hill, the pickup’s tires sliding first one way and then the other over the slick, muddy ground.
“Don’t let me get stuck,” Rhodes said aloud, turning on the windshield wipers and bouncing around in the truck cab like a BB in a bucket. He fought the steering wheel as it spun under his hands.
He was fifty yards behind the motorcycles when they disappeared into the trees. He figured that Rapper and Nellie would go in different directions, and the one he wanted was Rapper. Which way would he go, right or left?
Rhodes drove into the trees. Their limbs slapped at the windshield and obscured his vision. Then one of them grabbed the left wiper and ripped it off the truck. Rhodes wondered if Nard had insurance, not that he really cared.
He made a left turn along the creek bank, heading away from the deep hole where the Packers had tried to hide their Dodge Ram. Somehow the left turn seemed easier to Rhodes, and he hoped it had seemed the same to Rapper. Either Rapper or Nellie had made the turn, Rhodes knew, because he could see the ruts cut by the motorcycle wheels.
The going along the side of the creek wasn’t easy, but it was easier for Rhodes than for whoever was on the motorcycle. Rhodes crushed bushes under the pickup’s tires and bulled his way right over small trees. Once he nearly slid into the creek, but he managed to jerk the wheel in the right direction and save himself.
After what seemed like forever but was probably more like thirty seconds, Rhodes spotted a motorcycle lying on its side right at the edge of the creek bank, its back wheel hanging over the lip of the bank and still spinning. There was a long skid mark leading up to the motorcycle, but there was no sign of its rider.
Rhodes stopped the truck and got out. The woods were no place for a shotgun, so he drew his pistol and walked over to the motorcycle. Its rider had made clear tracks in the mud and leaves leading away from it into the trees.
Rhodes followed the tracks cautiously. Nellie wouldn’t be a problem, but Rapper was another story. Rapper would figure out some way to trick Rhodes if he could. And he could. Rhodes was just hoping it wouldn’t happen again.
Moisture slid off tree leaves like rain and plopped on Rhodes’s head. Mud and fallen leaves stuck to his shoes, which got heavier with every step he took. It became more difficult to follow the tracks because whoever had made them was being careful to step on the hardest ground, on rocks, on piles of leaves. Finally Rhodes lost the trail entirely.
More than once Rhodes had found himself in similar situations, following someone in the woods. He remembered a time when he’d been looking so carefully behind every tree that the man he’d been after had jumped on him from above. Rapper didn’t look like a tree climber, but Rhodes couldn’t take the chance that he wasn’t. He scanned the lower branches as he went along but saw no one.
He kept walking until he saw off to his right the thick trunk of an old tree that had been blown over in some storm, taking a couple of smaller trees down with it. Its tangled roots stood at least five feet high. They were embedded with dark mud and dirt, and a green vine was growing near the top.
Rhodes thought the trunk and roots would provide a perfect hiding place. Rapper could be lying beside the trunk or crouched behind the roots, and Rhodes approached warily. He was almost to the huge mass of roots when he saw footprints just in front of him. Someone had been in a hurry and slipped in the mud. The footprints pointed to the left, away from the tree. Looking in that direction, Rhodes saw a dense tangle of vines and brush, another good hiding place.
He turned and started toward it, careful not to make a sound, though if Rapper was hiding there he could surely see Rhodes coming.
When Rhodes was about halfway there, he heard something behind him. It wasn’t much of a noise, the faintest scuff of a shoe on wet leaves, but it was enough to make Rhodes realize that Rapper had fooled him one more time.
Rhodes turned as quickly as he could, knowing all along that he was going to be too late.
Rapper had given up on being quiet and was charging Rhodes like a rogue rhino, covering the ground between them much more rapidly than Rhodes would have thought possible for a man with a serious limp.
The biker ran awkwardly and heavily, but he was fast. What made his speed even more remarkable was that he was holding a large tree limb over his head with both hands, a limb that could crush Rhodes’s skull like a cheap light bulb.
Rhodes backpedaled clumsily and brought up his pistol, hoping to get off a warning shot and distract Rapper, but his feet slipped out from under him and the pistol went off.
As he fell, Rhodes saw the side of Rapper’s head explode in a pink haze of blood.
36
RHODES HIT THE GROUND, SICK AND HOLLOW INSIDE. HE had never killed anyone before, never wanted to, never intended to. Not even Rapper, who, Rhodes suddenly noticed, was proving remarkably active for a dead man.
He was holding his right hand tight to the side of his head and bellowing like a wounded walrus, blood running between his fingers. He took his hand away, and Rhodes saw the ragged remains of Rapper’s right ear. It looked as if the entire top half of it had been shot away, and blood flowed freely from what was left.
Rhodes had always heard that wounds to the scalp and ear bleed more profusely than those to other parts of the body. He believed it.
Rapper put his hand back against his head and glared at Rhodes where he lay on the muddy ground. The look in his eyes was pure malevolence. Rhodes tightened his finger on the trigger of his pistol, but Rapper wasn’t going to take any more chances with him. He ran off, heading back toward where his motorcycle lay on the creek bank.
Rhodes was too shaken to try to stop him. He lay where he was for a full minute before getting to his feet. He brushed wet leaves from his pants and shirt, but he didn’t bothe
r trying to get rid of the mud that stuck wetly to him. He knew that brushing it would just smear it.
He walked back through the woods. Rapper’s motorcycle was gone. Rhodes hadn’t even heard it start. He figured Rapper would join Nellie and the two of them would be long gone. Unless Rapper bled to death first. Rhodes didn’t think there was much danger of that, no matter how serious the wound had seemed. It was only an ear, after all.
Rhodes slogged over to Nard King’s pickup, and when he finally got it turned around, he drove it back up the hill to where Buddy and Nard were waiting.
Ruth met Rhodes, Buddy, and Nard at Nard’s house. She was driving a white Ford pickup with a county emblem painted in blue on the doors and pulling a cattle trailer. There were four emus in the trailer.
Ruth stuck her head out of the truck window and said, “Hack told me you’d found a home for these birds and sent me out here. Is this the place?”
“This is it,” Rhodes said. “I think the birds will recognize it.”
“I never saw those birds before in my life,” Nard said. “They didn’t come from here.”
“Give it up, Nard,” Rhodes said. “You know they belong to you. And if you had enough money to pay Rapper for that drug class, you can afford to feed these emus.”
“Drug class? I don’t know what you’re talking about. We were just having a friendly poker game.”
“Gambling’s illegal, too,” Buddy said.
“We were playing for matchsticks.”
Rhodes laughed. He had to hand it to Nard, who had more nerve that Rhodes would’ve thought.
“We did find a few matchsticks when we searched that trailer,” he said.
He and Buddy had cuffed King and put him in the pickup bed while they searched the mobile home. Unfortunately, their earlier arrival had interrupted Rapper and the Packers before any drug making had begun. Rapper and Nellie must have been organizing their materials. If the whole bunch of them hadn’t panicked and run, he and Buddy might have been able to brazen their way through things. But the Packers had been too worried about what Rhodes might do to them because of their nocturnal activities to hang around.
“Sure there were matchsticks,” Nard said. “That’s because of the poker. There was nothing else in there except for what they call in the papers your ‘common household items.’ ”
That was true.
“And of course no one was going to use those common household items to make an illegal drug,” Rhodes said.
“I can’t be responsible for what some of those old boys might’ve been doing in another room,” Nard said. “I was playing cards.”
“You stick to that,” Rhodes said. “In fact, I might even believe you.”
Nard’s mouth dropped open. “You might?”
“Under certain conditions,” Rhodes said.
Nard tried to look shrewd, failed, and said, “What conditions?”
“That these emus get the best care you can give them from here on in. That you don’t ever let them out again.”
“But they’re a losing proposition!” Nard said. “Not that they’re mine or that I ever let them out.”
“I’ll be checking by here pretty often,” Rhodes said. “Or one of the deputies will. They’ll want to be sure everything’s all right.”
“How can I ever make any money on those damn things?” Nard whined.
“That’s your problem. Of course, if you don’t want to do it, I can arrange to solve all your problems for you. I can get you free room, board, and a nice orange polyester jumpsuit to wear.”
Nard stood there for a second or two and then said, “I’ll take care of them, then. What about my truck?”
“Deputy Reynolds will take you back to get it, now that we’ve got your promise.”
“That’s not what I mean!”
“What, then?”
“You just about ruined it! Who’s gonna pay for that?”
“Call your insurance company,” Rhodes said. “Ruth, back that trailer up to the emu pens, and let’s get them unloaded.”
“You look like you been wrestlin’ hogs,” Hack said when Rhodes came through the jail door.
“Mud wrestlin’,” Lawton said. “That’s pretty eighties if you ask me.”
Rhodes didn’t feel like discussing his appearance, so he ignored them.
“What about the emus?” Hack asked.
“You don’t have to worry about them,” Rhodes told him. “Nard King’s decided that he wants to take care of them.”
“I thought he was the one that turned ‘em out,” Lawton said.
“He is. But he’s had a change of heart.”
“It’s a real comfort when that happens,” Hack said. “Just goes to show you that people can turn their lives around in the right direction if you just give ‘em a chance. I don’t guess Rapper and Nellie did the same.”
“No,” Rhodes said. “They got away. But Rapper has something to remember us by.”
He told them about shooting Rapper’s ear off, with a couple of embellishments.
“That’s some real marksmanship,” Lawton said when Rhodes had finished the story. “I’d say you were cuttin’ it mighty close, though. It’s a wonder you didn’t kill him.”
“We skilled pistoleers can do all kinds of things,” Rhodes said. “I could probably shoot a cigarette out of your mouth if I tried. Want to see?”
“I don’t smoke,” Lawton said. “Thanks anyway. I’ll just take your word for it.”
“Me, too,” Hack said. “With Rapper and Nellie gone, that just leaves the Packers. What’re you gonna do about them?”
“They’re probably hiding out with some of their relatives outside the county,” Rhodes said. “They’ll stay out of sight for a few weeks and then come sneaking back when they think I’ve forgotten about them.”
“They don’t know you very well if they think you’ll forget,” Hack said. “Not to change the subject, but Faye Knape’s son is in town. The daughter won’t get in till later on. The son’s already called Jack Parry, and he’s not one bit happy.”
“Who’s he?” Rhodes asked.
“The son, but Jack Parry’s not exactly cheerful, either. You know how much politicians like it when somebody jumps on ‘em, even if the somebody’s not a local voter.”
“I don’t guess anybody mentioned the cats.”
“Jack Parry did. Said he could hear ’em yowlin’ in the background when he was on the phone. They don’t like Miz Knape’s son one bit, is what he said.”
Rhodes said he doubted that Parry had said anything of the kind.
“Maybe not, but he would’ve if he’d thought about it. Lawton and I both think it’s your Christian duty to take care of those cats.”
Rhodes gave them a level look.
“Thanks for sharing that with me,” he said.
37
RHODES WENT HOME TO CHANGE CLOTHES. HE HAD TO HOP around the room on one foot while he was taking his pants off because Yancey was on the attack.
“If I brought those cats home, it would serve you right,” Rhodes told him.
Yancey stopped yipping and sat on his haunches, looking up expectantly.
“Got your attention, huh?” Rhodes said, taking advantage of the opportunity to get his pants off and into the washing machine. “Good. I’m talking cats here, Yancey. Three of them. One of them’s as big as you are.”
Yancey cocked his head and perked his ears.
“Maybe bigger,” Rhodes went on. “And you know how cats are. They sleep in the chairs, they climb on the table, they sneak a snack from the dog’s bowl now and then.”
Yancey gave a low growl, or as low as he could go. It wouldn’t have struck fear into even the most timid of cats.
“You sound like you’re looking forward to meeting them,” Rhodes said. “Serve you right, is what I say. Ivy wants to adopt them, but I’m hoping their current owners won’t want to give them to the likes of an incompetent lawman like me.”
Yancey turned
and walked away, no longer interested in the conversation, and Rhodes got his clothes changed. Before he left, he went out to the mailbox to see if there was any good news. There never was, but he continued to hope that Ed McMahon would somehow make a mistake and declare him a winner in that sweepstakes he advertised. It was a faint hope, since Rhodes never entered, but he’d heard that his chances of winning were about the same whether he entered or not.
He opened the mailbox and pulled out a Wal-Mart circular, a credit card bill, and a catalog from the Sportsman’s Friend. He flipped through the catalog, looking at tents and reproductions of famous firearms. So much for Ed McMahon.
Rhodes took the mail back inside and laid it on the kitchen table. Yancey lay under a chair and watched him.
“Are you sick?” Rhodes asked. “Or just thinking about those cats?”
Yancey didn’t answer, and Rhodes went out back to roughhouse with Speedo for a few minutes. When they were both tired of the game, Rhodes stood up, and all the puzzle pieces seemed to fall into place in Rhodes’s head.
He got in the county car and headed for Melva Keeler’s house.
The sun was trying to break through the clouds and mist, giving the day an oddly gray brightness. The air was practically tropical, and the streets were slick with moisture.
Rhodes parked in front of Melva Keeler’s place and looked over at the Knape house. There was a car parked in the driveway, partially concealed by bushes. Rhodes figured the car belonged to the son.
He knocked on Melva’s door, and she came to greet him in her usual outfit: robe and fuzzy slippers. She was holding a thick coffee mug in one hand.
“Good afternoon, Sheriff,” she said. “I was just having some coffee. Would you like a cup?”
One of Rhodes’s peculiarities was that he didn’t drink coffee, not in the afternoon, not in the evening, not even in the mornings with breakfast. The thought of breakfast reminded Rhodes that he’d missed lunch again. He wondered if Melva had any Vienna sausages. Probably not.
“No, thanks,” he said. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, though. Can I come in?”
