by Bill Crider
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Table of Contents
About the Author
Copyright Page
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This book is dedicated to the memory of Judy Crider.
She was always the one.
Chapter 1
Sheriff Dan Rhodes was standing at the back of the Pak-a-Sak looking at the Dr Peppers in the big cooler when the man with the gun came inside. Rhodes hadn’t had a Dr Pepper in years, and he’d missed the taste a lot. He was thinking that maybe it was time to give up his boycott of the company that had begun when they’d fixed it so he couldn’t order Dr Pepper with real sugar over the Internet. The boycott didn’t appear to have hurt their business one bit, after all, and nobody even knew about it except Rhodes and his wife. A Dr Pepper sure would taste good.
Besides that, Rhodes had read an article about a 104-year-old woman in Fort Worth who attributed her longevity to drinking three Dr Peppers a day. She’d told the reporter that her doctors told her that drinking Dr Pepper in that quantity would kill her, but the doctors kept dying and she kept right on living. That sounded good to Rhodes, but it looked as if he wasn’t going to get a Dr Pepper today.
“Gimme all your cash,” the man with the gun said to the clerk. His voice was muffled because he had his black sweatshirt pulled up over the lower half of his face. He wore a black knitted cap pulled down low on his forehead.
The man hadn’t noticed Rhodes. He was short and jittery, full of nervous energy, hopping from foot to foot and waving his pistol in front of Chris Ferris, the clerk on duty.
Rhodes wasn’t in any mood to deal with an armed robber. He supposed he’d have to, however, since he was the sheriff.
“Are you nuts?” Ferris asked the robber. Ferris had been robbed before, several times, and he was more calm than a first-timer would’ve been. “You can’t rob me. The county sheriff is right here in the store.”
“Yeah, right,” the robber said, “and so is Taylor Swift. Gimme the money.”
“How about lottery tickets instead?” Ferris asked. “Maybe some jerky.”
“First the sheriff and now jerky? You think this is a joke? Just shut up and gimme the money before I start shooting.”
“He wasn’t joking about the sheriff,” Rhodes said from the back of the store as he started to walk toward the front. “I’m right here.”
The robber turned around. The gun he held in his right hand was a snub-nosed revolver like something from an old black-and-white gangster movie, the kind they didn’t make anymore.
“You don’t look like a sheriff,” the robber said.
“Sheriffs don’t wear uniforms,” Ferris said. “That’s him, all right.”
“I didn’t see no sheriff’s car outside.”
“My wife sent me for a loaf of bread,” Rhodes said. He pulled a loaf of bread off the shelf as he passed. “I’m not on duty. That old pickup out there’s mine.”
“You just stop right there,” the robber said, half turning so that he could see both Rhodes and Ferris. He had the gun pointed at Rhodes, more or less, but he was still moving it around.
“You can’t shoot both of us,” Ferris said.
The robber looked at him. “I can shoot you one at a time, dumbass. Now get the money.”
Rhodes continued to walk forward.
The robber turned his head toward him. “I’ll shoot you first, Sheriff, if you really are the sheriff. I told you to stop.”
Rhodes was only about eight feet from the robber now, so he stopped.
“My wife’s going to be disappointed if I don’t bring this bread home,” he said.
The robber ignored Rhodes and said to Ferris, “Get that money. Now!”
“I think you should go for the jerky,” Rhodes said. “More nutrition. Less jail time.”
The robber turned toward him again, and Rhodes tossed the bread underhanded at the robber’s head, spinning it like a football.
“Catch!” he yelled.
Rhodes knew he was taking a chance. If the robber pulled the trigger, there was no telling where the bullet would go, but Rhodes thought the odds were in his favor. He was likely to get shot anyway if the robber’s nervousness got any worse.
The robber didn’t catch the bread. He didn’t even try. He jerked his head to the side, and the loaf hit him in the chest. Rhodes jumped forward. Taking two giant steps, he clamped one hand on the robber’s wrist and the other on the cylinder of the gun as he forced the robber’s hand down. The robber grunted and tried to pull his hand loose, but Rhodes held tight, making sure he had a good grip on the cylinder so the revolver wouldn’t fire.
The robber squirmed and kicked. Rhodes held on and dragged him toward the counter. The robber dug in his heels, but Rhodes was considerably bigger. The robber didn’t stand a chance.
“Call the sheriff’s office,” Rhodes told Ferris, who was watching the action as if he were at a movie.
“Oh,” Ferris said. “Sure.”
He picked up a cell phone from behind the counter and made the call while the robber continued to struggle with Rhodes. The struggles caused the sweatshirt to slip down, revealing the robber’s face, which was red with the effort he was making to escape Rhodes’s grip.
“Dang, is that you, Rayford?” Ferris said, putting down the phone after completing his call.
“Shut up!” the robber yelled.
Rhodes wrenched the gun from his hand, and the robber broke away. He started toward the door, but Rhodes put out a foot and tripped him. The robber fell and skidded a foot or two toward the door. When he started to get up, Rhodes said, “Just lie there for a while. I have the pistol now, and I’d hate to have to shoot you.”
The robber turned his head to look. Rhodes made sure he could see the gun.
“Put your hands on your head,” Rhodes told him. “Lie still.”
The robber did as he was told.
“That’s Rayford Loomis,” Ferris said. “We went to Clearview Middle School together. Had history and English class together, too, and maybe PE.”
“Is that right?” Rhodes asked. “Is your name Rayford?”
The robber didn’t say anything.
“It’s him, all right,” Ferris said. “I haven’t seen him in a few years, but that’s him. I never thought he’d rob a store where I was working.”
“I didn’t know you worked here,” Loomis said. He paused. “Wouldn’t have made any difference if I’d known, I guess.”
Rhodes knelt down on one knee beside Loomis. “Rayford Loomis, I’m putting you under arrest for attempted armed robbery. That’s for starters. I might think of some other charges later, like illegal possession of a firearm, but right now I’m going to tell you what your rights are. Is that clear?”
“I got it,” Loomis said.
Rhodes quoted the standard Miranda rights. “Do you understand what I told you?”
“I’m not stupid,” Loomis said.
That was debatable, considering the circumstances, but Rhodes didn’t feel like arguing the point.
<
br /> “All right,” Rhodes said. “You can stand up. Slowly.”
“I can’t stand up with my hands behind my head,” Loomis said.
Rhodes stood and moved away from him. “All right. You can give yourself a little help. Just be careful.”
Loomis used his arms to push the upper half of his body off the floor, got to his hands and knees, and then stood up.
“Hands back on your head,” Rhodes said.
Loomis complied, and Rhodes heard the distant sound of a siren.
“Here comes your backup,” Ferris said. “I need to find me another job. I’m tired of getting robbed.”
“It’s been a while since the last time,” Rhodes said.
“Not long enough,” Ferris said. He looked at Loomis. “I can’t believe you’d stick me up, Rayford. Where’ve you been since middle school, anyway?”
“Daddy moved us to Dallas so he could look for work,” Loomis said. “I didn’t much like it up there. Dropped out of school, got a job, got laid off, ran out of money.” He shrugged. “I thought I’d try Houston, see if there was any work there, but I needed some cash. Passed by here and thought there might be some in the cash drawer.”
Rhodes had a feeling it wasn’t the first time that Loomis had needed a little money and used the gun to get it.
A county car squealed to a stop in the parking lot, and a uniformed deputy got out as the noise of the siren trailed off. He came into the store with his big .357 Magnum drawn.
“Hey, Buddy,” Ferris said.
“Hey, yourself. What we got here, Sheriff?”
Buddy was thin but wiry. He thought of himself as a tough guy, like his idol, Dirty Harry, which was why he carried a revolver nearly as big as he was.
“Got a disarmed robber,” Rhodes said. “You can cuff him.”
Buddy holstered the .357 and cuffed Loomis, pulling down one arm at a time.
“Get an evidence bag,” Rhodes said, showing Buddy the gun he’d taken from Loomis. “I need to secure this.”
When Buddy went out to get the bag, Ferris said, “I sure am glad you were here, Sheriff. Rayford might’ve shot me if you hadn’t stopped him.”
“I wouldn’t have done any such of a thing,” Loomis said. “I never shot anybody in my life. Never even thought about it.”
“Looked like you were thinking about it to me,” Ferris said.
Buddy came back with the evidence bag, and Rhodes put Loomis’s revolver in it and sealed it.
“Take him in and book him,” Rhodes told Buddy. “I’ll follow you and put the gun in the evidence room.”
“Let’s go,” Buddy said, taking Loomis by the arm and leading him out of the store.
“I don’t really think he’d have shot me,” Ferris said as he watched Buddy assist Loomis in getting into the backseat of the county car. “I shouldn’t have said that. He just needed some money and a break. I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.”
“You can be a character witness for him at his trial,” Rhodes said.
Ferris shook his head. “Nope. He pulled the gun. Nobody made him do it.”
“That’s right. It was all his idea.”
“How come you don’t have a gun?” Ferris asked. “Aren’t officers supposed to carry one even when they’re not on duty?”
“Not the sheriff,” Rhodes said, not that he wasn’t armed. He had a pistol, a little Kel-Tec PF-9, in an ankle holster. He liked the concealment that the ankle holster provided, but the pistol wasn’t easy to get to in an emergency. Luckily, he hadn’t needed it. The bread had worked just as well.
Rhodes looked around. “Where’s my loaf of bread?”
Ferris pointed. “Over there on the floor. You want to get a fresh one?”
Rhodes walked over and picked up the bread with his free hand. “I wasn’t really here for bread.” He tossed the loaf to Ferris, who caught it easily. “I was here for a Dr Pepper.”
“Have one on the house,” Ferris said.
“No, thanks,” Rhodes said. “I’m not thirsty anymore.”
Chapter 2
Rhodes hadn’t had any time off in months, but as there hadn’t been any major criminal activity going on in the county that day, he’d decided he could afford to take a break beginning at noon. He’d enjoyed not having to deal with the criminal element in Blacklin County for a couple of hours and had hoped to spend the entire afternoon without thinking about crime and criminals. It was just his luck that he’d be in the Pak-a-Sak when somebody showed up to rob it. Except that it wasn’t luck. It was his own fault. He’d let the thought of a Dr Pepper tempt him. Anyway, it had turned out to be good luck in a way. He’d prevented the robbery, and the robbery had helped him resist the urge to buy the Dr Pepper.
Rhodes was in no hurry to get to the jail, so he drove around for a while in his rattletrap pickup. Nobody recognized him. He didn’t get out in the truck often enough for anybody to identify it with him, so he was happily anonymous as he checked out Clearview’s downtown area, or what was left of it. Many of the buildings that had been there when he was growing up were gone now. Some had fallen down, and others had been demolished. Of the ones that were left, a few were being restored and there were a couple of new ones, including a senior center that stood next to an antiques store owned by Lonnie Wallace, who also owned the Beauty Shack down the street. And of course there was Randy Lawless’s office complex, the Lawj Mahal, as Rhodes thought of it. It occupied most of a half-block area that had once held six or seven businesses.
Everything was quiet. Only four or five cars were parked on the streets, with a couple in the parking lot of the Lawj Mahal. Rhodes didn’t see a single pedestrian. The downtown would never be what it once was, no matter how many buildings were restored or how many new ones were built. All the action was out on the highway around the Walmart, and if Clearview was growing at all, that’s where the growth was and would be.
Rhodes decided he’d given Buddy long enough to book Rayford Loomis, so he went on to the jail. He was a block away when Buddy passed in the county car, going in the opposite direction, light bar flashing, siren wailing. Rhodes wondered what that was about. It could be anything. People fighting at an RV park, a mother who’d called about a son who’d taken money from her purse, somebody stealing a propane tank, harassing phone calls from a blocked number, a stolen cell phone, or a lost one, or a dozen other things. A hundred. Even in a small county on a slow day there was always something going on.
Rhodes parked his pickup outside the jail and went inside. As soon as he walked in the door, Hack Jensen, the dispatcher, started talking, just like he always did.
“Hail the conquering hero,” Hack said.
That was something Hack had never said before.
Rhodes looked around the room. “Where’s the hero?”
“You know where,” Hack said. “He’s standing in your shoes. Caught a robber, took away his gun, and whipped him with a loaf of bread.”
“I didn’t whip anybody,” Rhodes said.
“That ain’t the way I heer’d it,” Hack said. He’d taken to listening to old radio shows on the computer, which is where Rhodes thought he’d picked up the line. “The way I heer’d it—”
“Where do you get all your information?” Rhodes asked.
Hack looked sly. “I got my sources.”
That was the truth. Even Buddy didn’t know about the bread.
“The prisoner talked, didn’t he,” Rhodes said.
Hack grinned and touched a finger to his pencil-thin mustache. “Yep. Sure did. Seemed like he was kinda embarrassed by the whole thing. You want to know what else?”
Rhodes did have a bit of curiosity about what else, but he knew that Hack wasn’t going to tell him, not right away. Hack and Lawton, the jailer, always had plenty of information that they wanted to share with Rhodes, but they made him drag it out of them. It was their way of entertaining themselves. Either that, or they were on a mission to drive Rhodes crazy. So far they hadn’t succeeded in doing tha
t, but there were times when Rhodes thought they’d driven him close to the edge.
“I need to enter something into evidence,” Rhodes said. “Then you can tell me.”
“If you want to wait, that’s just fine with me,” Hack said.
Rhodes took care of the paperwork on the revolver and put it in the evidence room, finishing up as Lawton came in from the cellblock.
“I got our new customer all settled down and tucked in,” Lawton said. He noticed Rhodes. “Well, well, look who’s back from his so-called day off.”
Lawton was Hack’s opposite in appearance, being clean-shaven and rounder, but he was the dispatcher’s full partner in trying to annoy Rhodes.
“Caught yourself a gunslinging crook without even havin’ to pull your own pistol,” Lawton said. “Ain’t just anybody who could do that.”
“He don’t know the rest of the story,” Hack said.
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Nope.”
“You want me to tell him?”
Rhodes tried not to smile. If there was anything that could start a fight between Hack and Lawton, it was Lawton trying to tell one of Hack’s stories before Hack had had the chance to draw it out for a while.
“I was the one started tellin’ it,” Hack said. “I’ll be the one to finish it.”
“I was just askin’,” Lawton said.
“You oughta know better than to have to ask.”
“Well, it’s as much my story as it is yours anyway. I was right here when—”
“You better watch out,” Hack said.
Lawton bristled. “You can’t tell me what to do.”
“Yes, I can. I got seniority.”
Hack was right about that. Rhodes knew that the dispatcher had been hired at least a year before Lawton. Both men were past what some people considered retirement age, but they’d never shown any desire to leave their jobs, maybe because they enjoyed aggravating Rhodes whenever they could.
“I’ll tell you what,” Rhodes said. “I’ll flip a coin and we can decide that way who gets to give me the bad news.”
