by Bill Crider
Burns’s most recent great idea was to have the county buy an M-16, the kind of gun that could fire nearly a thousand rounds a minute and take out a tank, that is, if any terrorists in tanks happened to invade Blacklin County, a possibility that Rhodes considered more remote than Burns did. The purchase had fallen through, and Burns hadn’t been happy about it.
The county barn where Burns kept his office was a big metal building with long covered sheds in back where the road equipment for Burns’s precinct was kept. The office was in the building in front, and it was presided over by Mrs. Wilkie, a woman who’d once had it in mind that she and Rhodes would make a good team. She’d given up on that idea, and she was now pursuing Mikey Burns.
She patted her orange hair and gave Rhodes a cool look when he entered. Rhodes thought about warning her against workplace romance, but he just smiled and asked if Mikey was available.
“Mr. Burns is in,” she said. “You may go in.”
“Thanks,” Rhodes said, and he went through the connecting door to Burns’s office.
Burns’s name was Michael, of course, but everyone called him Mikey. Rhodes had a feeling that Mrs. Wilkie did, too, when no one was around.
Burns stood up at his desk. He wore, as usual, a bright aloha shirt, this one something in green and yellow with coconuts and palm trees on it.
“Hack tells me you have an answer to the hog problem,” Rhodes said.
“I do,” Burns said. “Have a seat.”
Rhodes sat in one of the two chairs in the office, and Burns settled down behind his desk.
“All right,” Rhodes said. “Tell me. What’s the answer.”
“Robin Hood,” Burns said.
Chapter 5
Rhodes knew who Robin Hood was. He had no connection to either Errol Flynn or Sherwood Forest.
“Robin Hood?” Rhodes said. “You mean Dr. Qualls?”
Dr. William Qualls was a retired college professor who’d moved to Blacklin County to escape the big-city life, and some of the humidity, that he’d had to put up with in Houston. Qualls bought himself a house in the country, where he’d found himself living near a huge chicken farm that as far as Qualls was concerned had polluted the county’s air with its stink for far too long. As a way of protesting what he saw as a lack of concern on the part of county officials, Qualls had begun sticking notes to telephone poles with arrows. He’d even shot an arrow into one of the tires on Burns’s prized red Pontiac Solstice.
“Not Qualls,” Burns said.
The commissioner’s mouth twisted as he spoke the name. The professor had paid his fine after being caught, but he hadn’t served ten years in the state pen, which was what Burns had planned for him.
“Who, then?” Rhodes said.
“Bow hunters.”
“Bow hunters?”
“That’s what I said. Lots of people like to hunt those hogs, but they’re not organized, and hunting at night is dangerous. So is hunting with rifles. What we’d do is get the bow hunters organized, send them out in the daytime with a deputy leading them. Or if not a deputy, maybe a graduate of the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy.”
Rhodes thought about some of the graduates. Seepy Benton came to mind.
“That might not be such a good idea,” Rhodes said.
“Bow hunting? It’s a lot safer than hunting with a rifle. The arrows don’t carry too far, so nobody’s likely to get hurt. How many hogs has that animal control officer of yours trapped this month? Five? Ten?”
Boyd wasn’t Rhodes’s animal control officer. He worked for the county, but Rhodes knew it wouldn’t do him any good to try to correct Burns, who hadn’t even given Rhodes a chance to tell him it was the academy grads and not the bow hunting that wasn’t such a good idea.
“He averages about twenty a month,” Rhodes said. “He has a lot of other things to do.”
“I know,” Burns said. “That’s why we need the bow hunters. A good team of them could hunt down no telling how many hogs in a month. Even if they didn’t kill a lot of them, people would at least see that we were trying to do something about the hogs.” He paused and looked at Rhodes. “And it’s a lot better than bringing in people in helicopters.”
“It hasn’t come to that yet,” Rhodes said. “Have you talked to your constituents about this?”
Burns sat forward in his chair. “What does that mean?”
“It means that Mrs. Chandler’s in your precinct. She doesn’t like people who hunt hogs. She’d like someone who organized hunts even less.”
“I see what you mean,” Burns said. He leaned back. “She has a lot of money, too. She might try to get someone to run against me.”
“She might even run against you herself,” Rhodes said.
“Hah. She wouldn’t stand a chance.”
“Maybe not, but if someone saw a chance to step in and make it a three-person race…”
“I still think bow hunting’s a good idea.”
“Maybe so,” Rhodes said, “but not for my department. We enforce the law. We don’t lead hunting parties.”
“If the deputies were off duty…”
“No,” Rhodes said. “Not even then.”
“I knew you wouldn’t go for it,” Burns said. He flicked the front of his shirt with his fingers as if getting rid of a pesky speck of dirt. “You’re never receptive to new ideas.”
Rhodes knew Burns was thinking about the M-16. He hoped the commissioner didn’t want to start that discussion again, though the M-16 would indeed be effective against the hogs as long as you didn’t mind all the collateral damage that was certain to ensue.
“You talk to the other commissioners,” Rhodes said. “If they want to get some hunting parties together, that’s up to them, and to you. Just don’t ask my department for help.”
“You wouldn’t try to stop us?”
“Not if all your hunters have licenses.”
“Hogs aren’t game animals.”
“You need a license to hunt them all the same,” Rhodes said. “You can check with the game warden if you don’t believe me.”
Burns didn’t respond to that, not directly. He said, “Maybe it’s not such a good idea after all. I won’t take up any more of your time.”
Rhodes stood up. Burns apparently hadn’t heard about the murder yet, and Rhodes didn’t intend to tell him. Burns would find out soon enough, and then he’d berate Rhodes for not having brought in any suspects.
“If I come up with any good ideas about getting rid of the hogs,” Rhodes said, “I’ll let you know.”
“You did all right with the chicken farm,” Burns said.
“That wasn’t me. That was Qualls.”
Through a series of events, including murder, Qualls had found himself the owner of the very farm he’d protested against. He’d taken all the right steps to clean things up, and the air in Blacklin County was the better for it. Not perfect, but better.
“You never like to take credit, do you, Sheriff,” Burns said.
Rhodes hadn’t thought about it, so he shook his head.
“I know we don’t always get along,” Burns said, “but sometimes you do good work. Now get out of here and do some of it.”
Rhodes didn’t know exactly how to respond, so he just said, “I’ll try,” and left.
* * *
Rhodes’s next stop was the jail, where he put the shell casing in the evidence locker.
“You gonna buy you a bow and arrow?” Hack said after Rhodes logged the evidence. “Get you a green outfit with a feather in the cap?”
“I do look a little like Errol Flynn,” Rhodes said.
Hack laughed. “’Bout as much as I do.”
He might have carried on with the conversation, but Jennifer Loam came in. She was a reporter for the Clearview Herald. Rhodes had often thought she’d move on to some bigger and better newspaper. She had the ability and talent, but now that big-city newspapers were laying off reporters and their daily editions were shrinking to the size of th
e Herald, Jennifer wasn’t going anywhere.
“Good morning, Mr. Jensen,” she said to Hack. “Good morning, Sheriff.”
Rhodes and Hack said, “Good morning,” and waited. Rhodes knew what was coming.
“I’d like to get a statement about the murder last night,” Jennifer said.
Rhodes knew she checked the reports every morning. He said, “You already know as much as I do.”
Loam was blond and had innocent blue eyes. She looked young and harmless, but she was professional and tenacious. She didn’t let Rhodes get away with that.
“You were there,” she said. “I wasn’t. Maybe you have a few more details you’d like to add to the story before I write it down. Or maybe you’d like to reassure people that there’s not a murderer running loose in the county ready to cut their throats while they sleep.”
Rhodes looked at her, and she grinned.
“That’s what the competition is saying,” she told him.
“Milton Munday,” Rhodes said. He didn’t listen to the show. It got his blood pressure up. “It figures.”
“What else is he sayin’?” Hack asked.
“Aside from the fact that the sheriff is incompetent, that nobody is safe, and that we should all lock our doors at night?” Jennifer asked.
“Yeah,” Hack said. “Aside from that.”
“Not much.”
Munday thrived on fear, other people’s fear, and it worked for him. Rhodes didn’t think he’d be a resident of the county for long. Radio, unlike newspapers, wasn’t dying, and Munday seemed destined for bigger markets.
“You think he believes any of that?” Hack asked.
Jennifer shrugged. “Who knows? I can give you a little fairness and balance, though, Sheriff. Just give me something to work with.”
“We’re doing all we can,” Rhodes said, “but that’s not much. We don’t have any suspects, and we don’t have anybody in custody.”
“That’s not exactly comforting.”
“Best I can do. The killer could be anywhere by now. Houston. Canada. Mexico.”
“So you think he’s an illegal immigrant?”
“Munday again?”
“He didn’t make any accusations, just mentioned the possibility.”
“Look,” Rhodes said, “here’s what happened.”
Jennifer got out her little recorder. She also took notes, and Rhodes went over the whole story with her, step by step. When he’d finished, he said, “There are just too many possibilities for me to settle on any one of them. We have a lot of work to do, but we’ll catch the killer if he’s still around here. We always get our man.”
“You really want me to print that?”
“Maybe not the last part,” Rhodes said.
Jennifer looked over her notes. “So the killer could be someone who was with the victim in the car, one of the hog hunters, or someone else who was roaming around in the woods.”
“Maybe he shot himself,” Hack said.
Rhodes looked at him.
“It could happen,” Hack said.
“I’ll check with Dr. White later and find out,” Rhodes said, but he didn’t believe it for a minute. He turned back to Loam. “Don’t put that in your story.”
“I won’t, but Hack’s right, you know.”
Hack grinned so wide that Rhodes thought he might split his face open.
Loam asked a few more questions and left. Ruth Grady came in almost at once.
“Find anything?” Rhodes asked.
“Plenty of fingerprints,” Ruth said. “Enough to keep the IAFIS computers busy for a month or two.”
Rhodes had been afraid of that. IAFIS was the FBI’s Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System, and it was generally pretty fast, but not with single prints and not with as many as they’d be sending.
“Anything that looks like a solid lead?” he asked.
Ruth shook her head. “Not a thing. Oh, there was a lot of stuff in the car, and I’ve got it bagged and tagged, but most of it was trash. The rest looked like it belonged to the owner and not whoever was driving the car. We can go over it and see if any of it’s any use, but I don’t think it will be.”
Rhodes hadn’t expected anything different.
“One more thing,” Ruth said.
“A good thing?”
“I don’t know. There were some blood spots in the carpet in the trunk. I sent them off for analysis. Eventually we’ll get a report.”
“It might help us,” Rhodes said.
“Or it might not,” Ruth said. “I know. But there’s some good news, too.”
“What’s that?”
“Since you said the guy stole some gas, I printed the gas cap and the filler cover. Got some good prints. And I printed the victim. If those prints match…”
“We’ll know he’s the one who stole the gas,” Rhodes said. “Now all you have to do is figure out which of the other zillion prints belong to the other passenger.”
“Or if any of them do.”
“Yeah,” Rhodes said. “There’s that. Even if they do, what does that prove? Not that he’s the killer.”
“So what’s next?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes was way ahead of her on that one, at least. He already had a list.
“You get the driver’s prints into the system. I’ll talk to the Chandlers and see what they can tell me about last night, and then I’ll check on the autopsy. And why don’t you see if you can find out who some of the hog hunters are. We need to find out who was in those woods last night.”
“All right,” Ruth said. “That should be easy enough. To find out who some of the hunters are, I mean. I’ll bet nobody’s going to admit being in those woods, though, not if they’ve listened to Milton Munday.”
“You hear his program today?” Hack asked.
“I listened while I worked,” Ruth said. “It’s always a pleasure.”
“I’ll bet,” Rhodes said.
Chapter 6
Blacklin County had no medical examiner, so Rhodes considered himself lucky to have someone like Dr. White, who knew what he was doing, kept good records, and wrote comprehensive reports. He was even certified by the American Board of Pathology, though that wasn’t required, either.
Blacklin County didn’t have a morgue for Dr. White to work in, but Clyde Ballinger, who owned the largest funeral home for miles around, let White perform autopsies there. He even had a room set aside for it and didn’t charge the county a penny. He said he liked being a good citizen.
Ballinger lived alone in a little house in back of the funeral home. The house had once been the servants’ quarters for the large mansion that now served another purpose entirely.
When Rhodes went in, Ballinger was sitting at his desk reading a paperback. The funeral director was a short, compact man with black hair and a suit to match. It was a nice suit, and Ballinger had probably bought it in Houston or Dallas. There was no longer a store in Clearview that sold suits.
Maybe that was the reason that Ballinger was one of only two or three men in town who still wore suits to work, Rhodes thought. Even some of the bankers and lawyers didn’t wear suits anymore.
The suit might have been unusual for Clearview but not for a funeral director, and there was nothing at all unusual about Ballinger’s having a book in his hand. He read a lot. What struck Rhodes as odd was that the book Ballinger held appeared to be brand-new.
“What’s up with that?” Rhodes asked, indicating the book.
Ballinger held it up for Rhodes to see. The title was Baby Moll, and the cover looked like one that would have been right at home on the books Ballinger used to find in the local garage sales.
“It’s what they call the retro look,” Ballinger said. “It’s a retro book, too.”
“You’re a poet and don’t know it,” Rhodes said.
Ballinger grinned. “Sure I know it. Anyway, lots of the old stuff’s being reprinted now. Good thing, too, since I can’t find much in garage sales anymore.
People are buying all the old books and trying to sell ’em on eBay, and they bring more than the new ones do. It’s a shame if you ask me. Takes all the fun out of it.”
“You’re still reading, though,” Rhodes said.
Ballinger put the book down on his desk. “Why would I quit? Finding the books might not be any fun now, but reading them still is.”
Rhodes nodded. “Murder in books is always more fun than the real thing.”
“Like the guy you sent here yesterday,” Ballinger said. “He was murdered, right?”
“Right.”
Ballinger opened a drawer on the side of his desk and brought out Dr. White’s report. He handed it to Rhodes and picked up his book.
Rhodes read through the report. He didn’t see anything he didn’t expect to find. The victim had been in good general health and had died of two gunshot wounds, one of them to his heart. The bullets had been recovered from the body and had been fired from a .38. The bullets were now in a locker in the autopsy room.
The victim’s only identifying mark noted was a large mole on his right shoulder. There were no personal effects except some car keys that had no doubt belonged to the person the car was stolen from. According to the report on the car, it had been stolen a couple of months earlier. The owner had left the keys in it while buying a lottery ticket at a convenience store. The victim must have liked to steal things at convenience stores.
“Any help there?” Ballinger asked when he saw that Rhodes was finished with his reading.
“Not a bit,” Rhodes said.
“Milton Munday says you’ll never catch the killer,” Ballinger told him. “He doesn’t like you much.”
“He doesn’t even know me,” Rhodes said.
“You’ve met him, though, haven’t you?”
“Only once, and we didn’t talk long.”
“He’s sure livened up the radio in this little county,” Ballinger said. “Nearly everybody in town listens to him.”
