by Bill Crider
The office was much nicer than his space at the jail. The desk was newer, and its top was bare of paperwork. There were no annoying dispatchers and jailers trying to drive him crazy. Somehow, however, Rhodes never felt really at home there.
He sat in the desk chair, which was more comfortable than the one at the jail, tilted back, and put his feet up on the desk, something he never did in the jail. It was feet that had started him thinking about, or rethinking, the whole case.
It was obvious that Will Smalls’s feet weren’t seriously injured. They might be bruised, and his ankles might even be strained, but not sprained or broken. He was trying for sympathy from Rhodes at first and then from his wife. He’d had better luck with his wife, but not by much.
It had occurred to Rhodes that Will wasn’t the only one who could fake an ankle injury. Take that injury away, and everything changed. The puzzle pieces all started to fall into place. Not all of them, but enough, considering what Rhodes had decided earlier in his little trip down the creek with Buddy. The picture was just about complete. It still had a couple of pieces missing right in the middle, but he hoped to find those later.
Could he prove that what he was thinking was the truth? Maybe not. He might need a little bit more evidence, but he thought he had an idea where that could be found. He’d have to get it, and that might not be easy. He’d need a search warrant, but while he still wasn’t sure about everything, he had enough evidence to convince the county judge to issue one.
Rhodes swung his feet to the floor, picked up the receiver of the old black telephone on the desk, and called the judge, hoping that he hadn’t left for the day. He hadn’t, and when Rhodes explained what he wanted, the judge said to give his administrative assistant the information, and he’d have the warrant ready by the time Rhodes could get to the office.
“I’m in the building,” Rhodes said.
“Then give us fifteen minutes,” the judge said, and transferred Rhodes back to his administrative assistant, whose name was Becky Carr.
Rhodes gave her the information, hung up, and thought things over one more time. The missing pieces bothered him. A couple of things just weren’t right, but he decided not to worry about them. Maybe one of his earlier suspicions had been correct. If so, that would solve the problem. For the moment he was going to go with what he was almost sure was right and work out the rest of it later.
He went down the hall to the county judge’s office. The building was almost deserted now, and in a few minutes everyone would be gone. Rhodes had called just in time.
Becky Carr stood up at her desk when Rhodes walked in and handed him the warrant.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Good luck finding what you’re looking for,” she said.
“It’s not about luck,” Rhodes told her. “It’s about good police work.”
It wasn’t entirely good police work this time, though. Some of what Rhodes was relying on was guesswork. The guesswork was based on good police work, however, so Rhodes thought he was on safe ground to say so.
“Right,” Becky said. “I know that. You and Sage Barton know the drill. He kills a lot more people than you do, though.”
“I plan to keep it that way,” Rhodes said.
“Probably a good idea,” she said.
Rhodes thanked her again and went back to his office, where he called Hack.
“Is Buddy still there?” Rhodes asked when Hack came on the line.
“Nope. He’s back out on patrol.”
“I’m about to leave for Gene Gunnison’s place,” Rhodes said. “Call Buddy and tell him to meet me there.”
“You gonna tell me what for?”
“I’ll put you in the loop when we get back,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah, right. But that’s okay. If you don’t, Buddy will.”
“It’s always good to have a backup source,” Rhodes said.
“’Specially with you bein’ the primary one,” Hack said, “and not very forthcomin’.”
“Just get Buddy on the way out to Gunnison’s.”
“I will if you’ll hang up.”
Rhodes hung up and got on the way himself.
* * *
Rhodes parked the Tahoe at the end of the road leading up to Gunnison’s house and waited for Buddy to arrive. He showed up about five minutes later and parked beside Rhodes, who put down the window and motioned for him to get out of the car.
Buddy got out of the county car and came over to the Tahoe. “What’s going on, Sheriff?”
“I think Gene Gunnison killed Riley Farmer and Melvin Hunt,” Rhodes said. “You and I are going to confront him about it. If he denies everything, I have a search warrant, so we can search his property. We should find the evidence we need to arrest him.”
“You mean it wasn’t Melvin’s wife that killed him?”
“Why would you think that?”
“It’s always the wife,” Buddy said. “On those TV shows, anyway. You ever watch those?”
Rhodes thought, not for the first time, that the world might be better off without TV.
“Ivy watches them,” Rhodes said. “I don’t. Anyway, it wasn’t the wife this time. At least that’s not the way the evidence points.”
Buddy didn’t argue the point. “Okay.” He patted the grip of his big revolver. “I’ve heard Gunnison’s a rough customer.”
“We shouldn’t have to shoot him,” Rhodes said, “but we’ll be ready, just in case.”
“We?” Buddy asked with a skeptical look.
Rhodes turned sideways as well as he could and drew up his knee far enough to reach the ankle holster. He removed the Kel-Tec pistol and showed it to Buddy.
“We,” Rhodes said.
“All right,” Buddy said. “You want me to follow you up there?”
“Good idea,” Rhodes said.
He put the pistol on the seat and waited for Buddy to get in his car. Then he started the Tahoe, put it in gear, and headed up the road.
Chapter 24
Gunnison was sitting in his usual spot on the porch with his foot up on the bucket when Rhodes and Buddy drove up. Rhodes got out of the Tahoe and stuck his pistol in his belt while he was concealed by the door. Buddy got out of his county car and walked to the front of it. Rhodes stood in front of the Tahoe. It wouldn’t be a good idea for the two of them to be standing close together.
“You must have heard us coming,” Rhodes said.
“Yeah,” Gunnison said. “That’s what I like about having a long road up to the house. You might remember that I told you before I’m not very social. Now I got two visitors. I don’t much like it.”
“We’re not here for a visit,” Rhodes said.
“I can’t think of any other reason why you’d be here. If you’re not visiting, what do you want?”
“I want to talk to you about marijuana. To start with.”
Gunnison brushed a gnat away from his face. “We talked about that already. I told you I don’t know anything about it, so why don’t you and Peewee there go on back to town and leave me alone?”
Rhodes noticed that Buddy stiffened, but the deputy was a professional, and his fingers didn’t drift toward the Magnum on his hip.
“Well,” Rhodes said, “I don’t think you told the truth about the marijuana. I think you’re growing it in four different places in the county and maybe more. You have a boat and access to the creek. It would be easy for you to establish some crops in out-of-the-way places along the bank.”
Gunnison shrugged. “So could anybody else.”
“It wasn’t anybody else who was nosing around Melvin Hunt’s house the other day. I chased you through the woods, remember?”
“Wasn’t me.”
“It was you, all right. You were there to kill Joyce Hunt.”
Gunnison’s left cheek twitched, but that was his only reaction. “Why would I do that?”
“For the same reason you killed Melvin. He knew about your marijuana. I think that one day he must have
walked along the creek to Billy Bacon’s place to do some stealing or to look things over, and he caught you in the field. Maybe he asked you for a little money to keep from talking about it. You thought it over after he left, then followed him up to the barn and shot him and left him there in Bacon’s barn. After you got to thinking about it later, you wondered if Melvin had come that way on purpose, if maybe he’d been that way before when you weren’t around, and you wondered how much he’d told his wife and Riley Farmer, since Farmer was his best friend. So you decided to get rid of them, too. You got Riley, but I showed up at Melvin’s house before you could get to Joyce. You took off, and the dogs and I followed you.”
“I said it wasn’t me.”
Rhodes ignored that. “Joyce told me that her dogs liked you because you brought them treats. You had some with you at the house, and you tossed them on the ground to distract the dogs when you were running. I thought it was funny that they ran over and ate something on the ground. Now I know it was those treats.”
“You got any remains of the treats to prove it?”
“No, but I know that’s what it was.”
“There’s a little problem with all your guessing, Sheriff,” Gunnison said with what he might have thought was an affable smile. He took his cane and touched his ankle boot. “I can’t do any running.”
“Anybody can put one of those things on,” Rhodes said. “You might have had a bad ankle once and kept the boot. You put it on in case I showed up, which I did. It was a good alibi and I even believed your story. I tend to be a little gullible sometimes. Then I saw your tracks down by the creek at those marijuana patches.”
That wasn’t the whole truth. What Rhodes had seen was cow tracks, or something that looked like cow tracks. It took him a while, but he remembered that Gunnison’s family had been bootleggers back in the old days, and using wooden hoofs strapped to their shoes was an old bootlegger’s trick. Rhodes was pretty sure that’s what Gunnison had done. Probably had the family heirlooms to use for the purpose.
Gunnison seemed sure that Rhodes couldn’t prove it. He touched his boot again. “Any tracks you found aren’t mine.”
“I think they are. Here’s the thing. Nobody with a badly sprained ankle can get a jon boat out of the back of his pickup and store it away somewhere, and yours has been moved. Took me and Buddy both to load one in my pickup this morning.”
Gunnison shrugged again. “I’m a strong guy.” He looked at Buddy. “I can see why Peewee would need some help.”
“My name’s Buddy,” Buddy said, his voice flat.
“Good to know,” Gunnison said.
“You storing that boat away got me to thinking,” Rhodes said, ignoring the byplay. “Melvin’s dogs were sure interested in it the other day. I think I know why.”
“And I guess you’re gonna tell me.”
“I am. It’s because after you brought Riley Farmer out here and killed him, you took him off in the boat to dispose of him. You hadn’t cleaned his blood out of it when I showed up. You might’ve tried to get the blood out while you were still at the creek, but you couldn’t have gotten it all. When I have it checked, we’re sure to find some traces.”
“You’re not going to look at my boat.”
“Yes, I am,” Rhodes said, tapping his shirt pocket. “I have a search warrant right here. Buddy and I are going to take a look around.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Gunnison said.
“You don’t want to argue with the sheriff,” Buddy said.
“Well, maybe you’re right, Peewee,” Gunnison said. “I make it a point never to argue with the law. Let me get up, and I’ll show you around.”
Gunnison appeared to have given up his antagonism. That should have been a warning, but instead Rhodes relaxed a fraction as the big man leaned forward to move the bucket from under his foot. When it was out of the way, he lowered his foot carefully to the porch.
What happened next was almost too fast for Rhodes to follow. Gunnison whipped off the ankle boot and came up with a pistol that he’d had hidden in it.
Buddy and Rhodes both went for their guns, but Gunnison fired twice before they could get them.
Gunnison’s first shot ripped through Buddy’s hat, which flew off onto the hood of the county car. The bullet went straight on and punctured the windshield.
Buddy and Rhodes dived to the side, and the second shot ripped into the hood of the car.
Rhodes lay on the ground, but he had his pistol out and managed to get off a wild shot that hit the galvanized bucket and made it ring like a tin bell. Buddy fired, too, and his shot blew out the window on the right side of the front door.
Gunnsion left the porch fast, going through the front door and slamming it shut. Buddy and Rhodes jumped up and went after him.
“Watch the door,” Rhodes said. “Don’t go inside. I’ll check the back.”
When Rhodes got to the back of the house, he saw Gunnison running toward the creek. Rhodes called for Buddy and went after Gunnison, who had a pretty good head start. Rhodes wondered if Gunnison had put the boat in the creek earlier and would try to get away on the water.
Gunnison had such a good lead that he was able to stop, step behind a tree, and fire off a couple of shots at Rhodes. Or maybe he was shooting at Buddy, who wasn’t far behind. In any case, he missed, so it didn’t matter.
Rhodes and Buddy didn’t stop running. Rhodes knew there was no use to return fire. A man running down a slight hill had about as much chance of hitting his target as he did of flying to the moon, so there was no point wasting ammunition.
Gunnison took off again. When he got to the creek, Rhodes was only about fifty yards behind, and Buddy was right at his shoulder.
Gunnison splashed into the creek. Rhodes had no idea how deep it was that near the bank, but it couldn’t have been more than a few feet. The bottom was muddy, and it would be slow going. Gunnison didn’t seem to think so. He’d said he was strong, and he didn’t let a little thing like mud and water slow him down much.
Rhodes noticed that Buddy had stopped. He looked over his shoulder and saw that Buddy had his .357 in a two-handed grip and was ready to pull the trigger.
“Stop!” Buddy called. “Stop or I’ll shoot!”
Gunnison stopped, but not to surrender. He raised his pistol to shoot first.
Before Buddy could react, Gunnison went under the water as if jerked by a wire. He yelled and thrashed in the water, then disappeared from sight. The water roiled where he’d gone down, and Gunnison’s head popped up. He might have been about to yell for help, or to scream, but he didn’t get a chance to do anything before his head went under the water again.
“What’s going on?” Buddy asked, walking up to Rhodes.
Rhodes handed Buddy his pistol.
“Must be the alligator,” he said, and ran to the creek.
“Don’t go in there,” Buddy said.
Gunnison’s upper body came out of the water. He gasped for breath and barely had time to take in any air before he went back down.
Rhodes plunged into the creek. His feet immediately sank several inches down into the mud. The warm, muddy water was up to his knees. He wasn’t as strong as Gunnison, but he pulled his feet out of the mud and took another step. The creek deepened quickly. The water now came to his waist. That was when he felt the gator’s tail hit him in the shins.
If his feet hadn’t been anchored in the mud, he would have fallen. As it was, he swayed and nearly went down. He kept his balance and took one more step before going under the water and grabbing at the gator’s tail. He got hold of it somehow, but he doubted that the gator noticed. The tail whipped back and forth, with Rhodes holding on and pulling himself along.
Rhodes didn’t know where the gator had grabbed Gunnison, but probably by the leg. It wasn’t going to let go any more than the snapping turtle would have. Even if Rhodes could help him, Gunnison was going to be torn up. Rhodes was up to the gator’s back now, and he got his arms around a front
leg.
The gator made an attempt to roll, but with Rhodes hanging on to him and Gunnison fighting him, the attempt failed. Rhodes inched forward and found himself near the gator’s head. The animal’s skin wasn’t nearly as rough as Rhodes had thought it would be, but it was knobby and tough and not a pleasure to be in contact with.
Twisting itself mightily, the gator tried hard to throw Rhodes off its back. They broke the surface of the creek, and Rhodes was able to catch a breath. He thought he heard Buddy yell, “Ride ’em, cowboy!” but that was probably just his imagination.
Rhodes remembered having read or heard or thought that a gator’s eyes were sensitive to pain, whereas the rest of it pretty much wasn’t. Rhodes had no idea if this was true, never having had an occasion to try it out, but it seemed like his best bet, so he started to feel around for something that might be an eye. He moved a hand to the general vicinity of where an eye should be and found one, or what he thought was one. He didn’t hesitate. He jabbed it as hard as he could with his stiffened thumb.
The gator went wild. Its former thrashing was nothing compared to what it did now. Rhodes had to cling with his legs and free hand to hold on. His lungs were burning, and he need air badly, but he didn’t let go. Since the first jab seemed to have worked well, he gave the eye another one.
The gator rose out of the water like a bucking horse. Rhodes was tossed off the animal’s back and dropped to the side, gasping for breath as his feet sought the mud of the creek bottom. He saw Gunnison float to the top, and he heard Buddy splashing toward him.
“Watch out for the gator,” Rhodes said.
“He’s swimming the other way, fast as he can,” Buddy said. “I don’t know what you did to him, but you put the fear into him.”
Rhodes didn’t care about the gator as long as it was moving in the other direction.
“Help me get Gunnison out of here,” he said, noticing for the first time that there was blood in the water all around them.
Rhodes grabbed Gunnison’s belt, and Buddy grabbed an arm. They pulled him to the creek bank and out onto the bank. Gunnison’s left thigh was badly mangled, and he was unconscious. Rhodes didn’t know how much blood he must have lost.
