The Wild Hog Murders

by Bill Crider

  “Not me,” Rhodes said.

  “I’ll bet the commissioners don’t listen, either, or the mayor. Munday does love to criticize the power structure.”

  “You think I’m part of the power structure?”

  “Well, sure. You’re the sheriff. We all know you’ve single-handedly brought law and order to this small frontier village.”

  “I didn’t think you read Westerns,” Rhodes said.

  “Now and then I do. Some of those old writers I like wrote Westerns and mysteries, too, but I like those Sage Barton books better.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to talk about Sage Barton, a character created by two women who’d come to Blacklin County to attend a writers’ workshop in the small town of Obert. There’d been some trouble at the workshop, and a man had been killed. Rhodes had solved the crime, and the two women had written a novel about a tough, good-looking Texas sheriff they’d called Sage Barton. The book had sold and so had the sequel, and people liked to tease Rhodes by saying that the Barton character was based on him.

  Barton’s life, however, was considerably more colorful than Rhodes’s. Barton had weapons that would make Mikey Burns’s dream of an M-16 seem like a paltry thing. He romanced FBI agents in pursuit of terrorist masterminds. He didn’t chase criminals in a car, either. Instead, he used the county helicopter, which he piloted himself. Barton made Navy SEALs look like sissies by comparison. He could probably strangle a feral hog with his bare hands.

  “I don’t read those books,” Rhodes said, though it wasn’t strictly the truth. He’d scanned them, and Ivy had read both of them and reported to Rhodes on their contents.

  “You should give ’em a try,” Ballinger said. “You might pick up some pointers.”

  Rhodes said he didn’t think so.

  “Well, I do. That Sage Barton has a lot on the ball. You take things too easy.”

  Rhodes didn’t mind the criticism, mainly because he knew Ballinger was joshing him.

  “I’m not cut out for the kind of adventures Sage Barton has,” Rhodes said.

  “I wouldn’t say that. Lose a couple pounds, work out a little, you might be just like him.”

  Rhodes stood up. “I don’t have time to work out. Too busy catching crooks.”

  “Well, good luck with that,” Ballinger said.

  * * *

  Rhodes was almost at the Chandler place when Hack came on the radio.

  “Mikey Burns is mighty upset with you,” Hack said.

  “You might not want to broadcast that,” Rhodes told him. Quite a few people in town had police band scanners and nothing better to do than listen in.

  That didn’t bother Hack. “Oh, I expect half the town knows about it already. Seems there were a couple of things you forgot to tell him this morning.”

  Rhodes hadn’t mentioned the damage to the car, but he had a feeling Burns still didn’t know about that.

  “He’s heard about the Milton Munday show,” he said.

  “He sure has, and he’s not happy. I told him you were hot on the trail of the killer, so you couldn’t see him. That’s the truth, ain’t it?”

  “Absolutely,” Rhodes said.

  “You better see him tomorrow, then. You might want to have a talk with Munday, too.”

  “Or I might not,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  The Chandlers’ house sat in the middle of what would have been a green yard in the summer, but the fall weather had already turned most of the grass to brown. Rhodes turned the county car at the open gate and drove through.

  Both sides of the short road leading up to the house were fenced with hog wire, so the gate was usually open. The wire glinted in the sun.

  Rhodes parked in front of the house and got out. He could smell the hog pens, but they didn’t smell nearly as bad as the chicken farm that was located on the opposite side of the county. Or as bad as the farm once had. Qualls had cleaned things up as well as was possible, and Rhodes thought most people were okay with that.

  Janice Chandler came around the house from the back. She wore an old-fashioned sunbonnet and a pair of overalls over a red and blue plaid shirt. White cotton work gloves covered her hands.

  “Hello, Sheriff,” she said. “I thought you might be dropping by.”

  “Now why would you think that?” Rhodes asked.

  “I heard Milton Munday’s show this morning.”

  Rhodes thought she was grinning, but he couldn’t tell for sure because the bonnet shadowed her face.

  “Why would that make you think I’d be coming by?” he asked.

  “From what he said, it sounded like somebody killed a hog hunter,” Janice said. “I figured I’d be the first person you’d want to see. I’ll tell you right now, though, that I didn’t do it.”

  Munday didn’t know as much as he liked people to think he did, since the dead man hadn’t been one of the hog hunters. Or maybe he had been. It hadn’t occurred to Rhodes that he might be because he had on a blue shirt, as had the driver of the car, but there were lots of blue shirts in the world.

  The dead man had worn slacks and casual shoes, however. No self-respecting hog hunter would be dressed like that.

  “What about Andy?” Rhodes asked.

  “He didn’t kill him, either.”

  “I’d like to have him tell me that. Is he around?”

  “He’s working in back. We have a sick goat.”

  “Have you called the vet?”

  Janice waved the question aside. “Andy’s taking care of him.”

  Rhodes didn’t want to go around back and pay a visit to the sick goat, but he’d do it if he had to.

  “You want to call him,” he asked, “or do you want me to go back there?”

  “Andy or the goat?”

  Rhodes had to grin at the joke. He’d had an English teacher who’d made the same kind of comments, but that had been a long time ago.

  “Andy,” he said. “I don’t need to talk to the goat.”

  “I’ll call Andy, then,” Janice said, and she did.

  She had a powerful set of lungs, and Rhodes wondered if she’d developed them through years of calling hogs. Rhodes resisted the urge to cover his ears.

  A minute or so after being called, Andy came around the house. Like his mother, he wore overalls and a plaid shirt. Rhodes figured they shopped together, probably at Walmart, but Andy wasn’t wearing gloves, and he wore a battered and stained straw hat instead of a bonnet.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Andy said. “What brings you out here?”

  “You don’t listen to Milton Munday?”

  “Oh,” Andy said. “That.”

  Rhodes noticed that Andy had a red mark on one cheek, the kind of mark that might have been made by a tree branch whipping across it.

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “That. I wondered if you two might have heard any shooting at the Leverett place yesterday afternoon.”

  Andy looked at the ground. Janice said, “We sure did. It spooked some of the animals, so we had to come out and quiet them down.”

  “You didn’t go over to the Leverett place to see what it was all about?”

  “Hah. We know what it was all about. Hog hunters. We don’t hold with that.”

  “I know,” Rhodes said. “You didn’t try to put a stop to it, I guess.”

  “Those people have guns,” Janice said. “We wouldn’t stand a chance. Would we, Andy.”

  “No, ma’am,” Andy said. “Not a chance.”

  “They’d shoot us down like dogs,” Janice said. “Or hogs.”

  “If you had guns yourselves, you’d stand a chance,” Rhodes said.

  “We don’t shoot people, Sheriff,” Janice said.

  “A little rock salt wouldn’t hurt them.”

  “They might shoot back at somebody using rock salt, and they have something a lot more dangerous.”

  That was true, but Rhodes thought she was the type to take the risk. He couldn’t read her face, however, because of the bonnet, and Andy kept staring
at the ground.

  “So you didn’t even bother to go out and see what the shooting was all about,” Rhodes said.

  “I told you,” Janice said. “They had guns. We hunkered down in the house and minded our own business, like we always do.”

  “That’s the smart thing, all right,” Rhodes said.

  “You betcha.”

  Hogs squealed in back of the house.

  “Andy,” Janice said, “you better go check on Peabody.” She looked at Rhodes. “Peabody’s the goat.”

  Andy turned without a word and headed back around the house.

  “You have anything else, Sheriff?” Janice asked.

  “Not right now,” Rhodes told her.

  “Then I’d better get back to work.”

  “You do that,” Rhodes said, and she left him there.

  Rhodes stood thinking things over for a minute, then got in the county car and left.

  * * *

  Rhodes was on the way to see Mikey Burns when Hack called.

  “You need to come by the jail. We got a situation here.”

  “What kind of situation?” Rhodes asked.

  “Just a situation. You comin’?”

  “I’m on the way,” Rhodes said.

  Chapter 7

  The situation was a man a bit over six feet tall, though he looked taller because the white Hoss Cartwright hat he wore added a full foot to his height. Unlike Hoss’s hat, this one had a rattlesnake-skin band. He wore a black shirt, black jeans, a black denim jacket, and black ostrich-skin boots. He looked somehow familiar, but Rhodes couldn’t figure out why. He knew he’d never seen the man before. He would have remembered the hat if nothing else.

  “Name’s Rapinski,” the man said. His voice rumbled out of his broad chest. “Hoss Rapinski.”

  Rhodes resisted the urge to hum the theme from Bonanza. He looked at Hack, who rolled his eyes.

  “Glad to meet you, Mr. Rapinski,” Rhodes said.

  Rapinski extended his hand. “Call me Hoss.”

  Rhodes shook hands with Rapinski. “I have a feeling that’s not your real name.”

  “Eugene don’t have quite the same ring.”

  Rhodes had to agree with him. “What can I do for you?”

  “You know who I am?” Rapinski asked.

  “You look familiar,” Rhodes said.

  Rapinski grinned. “You prob’ly seen me on TV.”

  “You have a TV show?”

  “Nope, but I been on the news.”

  Rhodes looked at Hack again.

  “He’s a bounty hunter,” Hack said.

  “Fugitive recovery agent,” Rapinski said. His already big chest swelled a little.

  “Same thing,” Hack said.

  “Depends on how you look at it, I guess,” Rapinski said. “I’ve caught a few high-profile fugitives in your state.”

  Rhodes didn’t remember seeing Rapinski on the news, but he nodded anyway.

  “ID?” Rhodes asked.

  Rapinski got his wallet from his back pocket and showed Rhodes his license.

  “You know what the law says about bounty hunters, I guess,” Rhodes said.

  Rapinski put away his wallet and pulled back the denim jacket to reveal a Glock in a shoulder holster.

  “I’m licensed to carry in this state,” he said. “All legal and everything.”

  “And…” Rhodes said.

  “And I don’t plan to make any arrests here. I know better than that. I’m not a peace officer. That’s why I’m here talking to you. I might have to call you in if I locate my principal.”

  “Who might that be?”

  “It might be the Zodiac Killer,” Rapinski said. He chuckled at his little joke.

  Rhodes didn’t chuckle. “Let me rephrase that. Who are you looking for?”

  “Name’s Gary Baty. Jumped bond a month or so ago in Arkansas. I traced him to Houston, and I think he might be around here now.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Confidential sources.”

  Rhodes let that pass. “What was he accused of?”

  “Bank robbery. He was wearing an ankle monitor, but he took it off and then took off himself.”

  Rhodes thought it over. He thought he might know the man. It seemed unlikely, but it was a possibility.

  “Where did it happen?” Rhodes asked.

  “The bail jump? Up in Arkansas. The bank robbery was in Little Rock. That’s where Baty lived. Would’ve been smarter to go somewhere else besides the state next door. Like South America.”

  “Probably so,” Rhodes said. “Let’s you and me take a ride.”

  “Where to?”

  “Funeral home.”

  “I’ll follow you,” Rapinski said. “I don’t like riding in cop cars. No offense.”

  “None taken,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Rhodes parked in back of the former mansion, and Rapinski parked beside him. It was no surprise to Rhodes that the bounty hunter drove a black Hummer.

  “What you got to show me?” Rapinski asked, stepping out of the Hummer. Anyone smaller would have had to climb down with a ladder. Rapinski had no problem at all.

  “Just a client,” Rhodes said. “Not mine. The funeral home’s.”

  They went inside. Rhodes led Rapinski to Ballinger’s office, the one where he met the public. The funeral director sat at a desk the size of a library table. Its smooth glass top was uncluttered. It held only a small notebook and a desk calendar.

  Rapinski had to take off his hat to get through the door, revealing a head shaved as clean as an egg.

  “Hoss Rapinski, this is Clyde Ballinger,” Rhodes said.

  Ballinger stood up and came around the desk. The two men shook hands, and Ballinger said, “I’ve seen you on the news.”

  Rapinski looked at Rhodes and grinned.

  “Rapinski might know the man who was brought in last night,” Rhodes said.

  “You really think so?” Ballinger asked.

  “I don’t have a clue,” Rapinski said. “The sheriff’s the one brought me here.”

  “Well,” Ballinger said, “let’s take a look.”

  He led the men to the room where the dead man lay in an open bottom-of-the-line coffin. Rapinski held his hat in front of him with both hands.

  “Here he is,” Ballinger said.

  “You do nice work,” Rapinski said after giving the body a quick glance.

  “Thanks,” Ballinger said, “but I don’t do that anymore. I have two very capable assistants, both licensed embalmers.”

  “Well, he looks real natural,” Rapinski said, paying what many people believed to be the highest compliment a funeral director could receive. “That’s him, all right. Gary Baty.”

  “He shouldn’t have jumped bail,” Rhodes said. “It didn’t pay off.”

  “Not for me, either,” Rapinski said, “but at least he’s off the streets. What happened to him?”

  Rhodes gave him the short version.

  “Know who did him in?” Rapinski asked.

  “No,” Rhodes told him, “but I’ll find out.”

  “You sound like you believe that.”

  “The Mounties don’t have anything on our sheriff,” Ballinger said. “He always gets his man.”

  “So do I,” Rapinski said, “and now I got this one. Might not get paid for him, but it’s worth a try. He figured to come to a bad end.”

  “Because he robbed a bank?” Rhodes asked.

  “A bank? That was just the one he got caught for. The story is that he was behind more than just the one robbery. Not that he was actually in on them but that he planned them. He was a heck of a planner. The jobs he did, he wasn’t armed. The others involved guns. Nobody but Gary knows the whole story, though. Knew the whole story since Gary’s dead now.”

  “Somebody knew,” Rhodes said.

  Rapinski nodded. “Sure. The guy who carried out the plans. You think he’s the one that killed Gary?”

  “I wouldn’t kn
ow about that,” Rhodes said, but he thought about the missing billfold and cell phone, assuming that either one had existed. Maybe Baty’s body hadn’t been robbed. The killer could have taken the billfold because he thought it might have something in it that would have told who Baty was. He couldn’t have known that Rapinski would show up and identify the body the very next day. He’d taken the cell phone, if there was one, because Baty had called him on it. Speculation, sure, but it made sense.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Sheriff,” Rapinski said. “You’re thinking there might be a bank robber on the loose in your town and you can cash in if you catch him.”

  Rhodes hadn’t been thinking that at all, but he played along.

  “Cash in? How?”

  “Publicity. Local TV news, maybe wire service stories. Now, if it was me that caught him, it’d go network, no question.”

  “Maybe so, but you’re a bounty hunter.”

  Rapinski shook his head. “Fugitive recovery agent.”

  “Whatever. Anyway, you said it yourself back at the jail. You’re not a peace officer. You can’t arrest anybody.”

  “A citizen can make an arrest if he runs into a wanted criminal.”

  “Not a good idea,” Ballinger said. “I saw something about that on The Andy Griffith Show.”

  Rapinski looked at him. Ballinger grinned. Rapinski turned back to Rhodes.

  “I won’t get in your way, Sheriff, but I might stick around a while.”

  Rhodes didn’t like it, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, short of telling Rapinski that the town wasn’t big enough for the both of them or that he’d better take the next stage, or Hummer, out of town.

  “If whoever killed Baty was the other robber, he doesn’t want anybody to know he’s here. If he hears you’re looking for him, he might kill you, too.”

  Rapinski laughed. It was a good laugh, big and booming, and entirely out of place in a funeral home. Ballinger gave him a scornful look.

  “Sorry about that,” Rapinski said to Ballinger. “Couldn’t help myself. Your sheriff’s a real comedian.”

  “A regular Larry the Cable Guy,” Ballinger said.

  “Right,” Rhodes said, though he thought of himself more in the smooth Bill Cosby mold.

  “Here’s something you better think about, Sheriff,” Rapinski told him. “If the guy wants to kill whoever’s after him, he’d probably think you were more dangerous than I am. You being the kind who always gets his man and all.” Rapinski put on his hat and settled it on his head just so. “I’ll be seeing you around.”