Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  “Me neither. Bubba, maybe, but not Bubber. You ever know a bunch of people as crazy as the ones in that movie?”

  “Never did,” Rhodes said.

  Allen nodded agreement. “Me neither. Not around here.

  So you can tell your boys not to worry. We won’t string ’em up for neglect.”

  “I’m sure that will make them feel a lot better,” Rhodes said. “I’d hate to think I’d get as beat up as Marion Brando did while I was trying to protect them.”

  “That’s another thing you don’t have to worry about,” Allen assured him.

  “Good,” Rhodes said, but for some reason he still didn’t feel a whole lot better.

  Chapter 4

  Rhodes left Allen’s office and went out past Mrs. Wilkie, who was still doing a good job of looking coolly professional. Maybe she really was. Rhodes didn’t intend to linger and investigate.

  When he got back to the jail, he didn’t have time to tell Lawton and Hack not to worry. The place was in an uproar.

  Them were five people in the office, making it somewhat crowded, and most of them were yelling. Hack was there, of course, and Lawton. The other three were deputy Ruth Grady and two men, one of whom was holding a double-barreled shotgun.

  No one turned to look at Rhodes when he entered, so he slammed the door as hard as he could.

  There was a sudden silence, and Ruth Grady said, “Here’s the sheriff now.”

  Everyone else started talking then, and Rhodes held up his hands. “Just be quiet for a minute,” he said. “Let’s get this sorted out.”

  Hack wanted to say something, but Rhodes shook his head at him and said, “I guess these are Deputy Grady’s prisoners. Let her tell it.”

  Hack clamped his mouth shut and glared at Lawton, who had started to laugh. Lawton was glad that if he wasn’t going to get to tell things, at least Hack, who had tried to jump in before him, wouldn’t be the one to get to tell them either.

  “Who are these two men?” Rhodes asked. “And why does one of them have a shotgun?”

  “The man with the gun is Will Foy,” Ruth said. She was short, stout, and even-tempered. Her own sidearm was in its holster. “He’s got the gun because he was making a citizen’s arrest of Bert Eoff, the other gentleman there.”

  Foy stared at Rhodes defiantly, as if daring him to do anything about the gun. He was about sixty years old, a short man, not much taller than Ruth Grady. He had watery blue eyes, and it appeared that he had a dip of snuff, or “smokeless tobacco” as the ad men called it these days, in his pursed mouth.

  Eoff looked to be about the same age as Foy, but he was taller, nearly six feet, and he did not look defiant. In fact, he looked about as guilty as anyone who had ever come into the jail. His head was lowered, his eyes were downcast, and he was shuffling his feet nervously.

  “What was the arrest for?” Rhodes asked.

  “I coulda shot him,” Foy said. “I shoulda done it. I—”

  “Not you,” Rhodes said. “I was talking to the deputy.”

  “Oh,” Foy said.

  “Go ahead, Ruth,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, I got a call from Hack that there was a disturbance over on Oak Street. Some of the neighbors called it in. When I got there, Mr. Foy was marching Mr. Eoff down the middle of the street, with that shotgun sticking in the middle of his back.”

  Eoff did not raise his head. He mumbled something that Rhodes couldn’t quite hear.

  “You’ll have to speak up, Mr. Eoff,” Rhodes said.

  Eoff tilted his head up slightly. “Yes. I was trespassing. I’m guilty, Sheriff. Lock me up.”

  “That ain’t all,” Foy said. “Tell ’em why you were trespassin’.”

  “I was cutting down a tree.”

  “A tree?” Rhodes said.

  “On your own property?”

  “No.” Eoff’s voice was sad. “It was in Mr. Foy’s yard.”

  “That’s probably murder,” Foy said. “He killed the tree.

  That’s murder, ain’t it?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “Criminal mischief, maybe. Why were you cutting down the tree, Mr. Eoff?”

  “It was in the way.”

  “In the way of what?”

  “Of his damn satellite dish,” Foy said, and this time Rhodes let him go on. “Sheriff, that tree was a giant oak, older than I am. My daddy planted that tree when he was just a young man. Why, I bet that tree’s eighty years old, and this bastard…” He looked at Ruth. “Pardon me, ma’am. Anyway, he cut it down, or as good as. One little push, and it’s gone. I heard this noise, and I didn’t know what it was at first. Then I said to myself, ‘That’s a chain saw, that’s what that is, and it sounds like it’s right in my yard.’ Well, it was a chain saw, all right, and by the time I got out there, Eoff and his McCullouch were almost done with the job.”

  “Is all that true, Mr. Eoff?”

  Eoff was studying the floor again. He nodded. “It’s true. I was trespassing, and I cut down the tree. Lock me up, Sheriff.”

  Rhodes had never seen a prisoner who was so repentant. “You mean you really did what he just said? You cut down the tree to get better TV reception?”

  “That’s the damndest thing of all,” Foy broke in. “Do you know what he said to me when I caught him?” Foy looked around questioningly.

  No one knew, but by now they were all interested in finding out.

  “He said, ‘Now I can get The Nashville Network,’ that’s what he said.”

  “Is that right, Mr. Eoff?” Rhodes asked.

  “That’s right, Sheriff. I’m addicted to TV, is what it is. You know, like that ballplayer who was addicted to sex? He was on ‘Oprah’ one day. Or maybe it was ‘Geraldo.’ Anyhow, I’m not that interested in sex, but I’m addicted to watching TV. I have to be able to get everything, and I couldn’t get TNN. Well, I could, but it wasn’t a very good picture. And that tree was in the way. So I just decided to cut it down.”

  “Without asking Mr. Foy?”

  Eoff shot a sidelong glance at his neighbor. “He would’ve just said no. So I didn’t ask him. I’m guilty, Sheriff.”

  “Trespasser!” Mr. Foy yelled. “I shoulda shot you! My daddy—”

  “That’s enough of that,” Rhodes said.

  Foy hushed again.

  “Lawton, we’d better lock Mr. Eoff up until he can post bond. I’ll talk to Mr. Foy about the charges.”

  “Do you have satellite TV?” Mr. Eoff asked Lawton. Lawton laughed. “We don’t have no TV at all.”

  “What?” Eoff wailed. “No TV at all?” He looked wildly over his shoulder. “Wait a minute! I can’t stand this! I’m a TV addict, I told you! I’ve got to have it!”

  “Not here, you don’t,” Hack said.

  Eoff had stopped dead in his tracks. Now he refused to move. “I’m not going anywhere that doesn’t have TV!” “

  Yes, you are,” Rhodes said.

  “Then he’s going too,” Eoff said, pointing at Foy. “I’m filing charges against him. Assault with a deadly weapon. That’s as bad as trespassing!”

  Foy made a run for him. “You can’t charge me with nothin’! I’m a member of the NRA!”

  Ruth Grady grabbed Foy’s arm and spun him around. “Hold it, buster,” she said.

  “I can’t stay here!” Eoff wailed. “I’ve got to have a TV. I thought jailhouses were supposed to have TV for the prisoners. If I don’t have TV, I’ll sue.”

  “Get in line,” Hack said.

  “I knew I shoulda shot him,” Foy said. Ruth Grady was still holding his arm.

  “You won’t be here long,” Rhodes told Eoff. “Just long enough for the judge to set bail. You won’t miss your TV much at all.”

  “That’s right,” Foy said. “Send the criminals right back out on the streets! All the jails in this state might’s well have revolvin’ doors, the way the crooks and killers get turned back out.”

  “That’s enough of that, Mr. Foy,” Rhodes said. “You can go on home now. I�
�ll just hold onto this shotgun as evidence. You can have it back after the case comes up in court.”

  “A man’s got a right to his guns,” Foy said.

  “I bet you got plenty more of ’em at home,” Lawton said, no longer able to keep out of it.

  “That’s probably true,” Rhodes agreed. “Take him on home, Ruth. We’ll book Mr. Eoff and then he can go to his cell.”

  Ruth kept her hold on Foy’s arm and tugged him toward the door while Lawton took Eoff over to the table where the fingerprint kit and camera were.

  Things were almost back to normal when the phone rang. Hack answered. Rhodes could hear someone on the other end of the line talking very loudly. More trouble.

  “Calm down,” Hack said. “I can’t understand you.” He listened for a minute longer. “All right. All right. The sheriff’s here. You can talk to him.”

  Rhodes went over to his own desk and picked up the extension. “Hello,” he said.

  “Sheriff? This is Earlene over at Sunny Dale and you better get over here right away, we’ve got some real trouble, Mr. Patterson said to call, you come right—”

  “Just a minute, Earlene,” Rhodes said. He looked at Hack, who shrugged. Evidently he hadn’t been able to calm Earlene down.

  Rhodes counted to ten, slowly. Then he spoke into the phone. “Earlene? What seems to be the trouble?”

  Earlene had gotten a grip on herself during the wait. “We have a problem here at Sunny Dale,” she said. “Mr. Patterson wanted me to call you.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “There’s been a death.”

  “A death?” Rhodes didn’t see anything unusual in that.

  There were a number of people at Sunny Dale who seemed to be just passing the time until they died, He had seen a lot of them.

  “It’s Mr. Bobbit,” Earlene said, as if that explained everything.

  “Mr. Bobbit is dead?” Rhodes had to admit that Mr. Bobbit’s death would be unusual. The old man had seemed a little vague about things, but he had been very much alive that morning.

  “That’s right,” Earlene said. “He’s dead. Can you come right on out here? Mr. Patterson’s pretty upset.”

  “Did he have a heart attack?”

  “Mr. Patterson? No, but he’s about to if you don’t get out here.”

  “I meant Mr. Bobbit,” Rhodes said.

  “No, he didn’t have any heart attack,” Earlene said. “Somebody’s gone and killed him.”

  It didn’t take long for Rhodes to get to Sunny Dale. He hadn’t been able to get much more out of Earlene, but it seemed fairly certain that there was no mistake, that Mr. Bobbit had really been killed and had not died from natural causes. She assured Rhodes that a doctor had already been called.

  Rhodes could tell when he entered the nursing home that something had happened. It was in the air, a kind of hushed tension that you could almost feel.

  Earlene was at the desk. “It’s right down the hall there,” she said, pointing. She didn’t tell him what “it” was, but he had a pretty good idea.

  As he walked down the hall past the Stuarts’ room, someone hissed at him. He looked in the door and saw the old couple sitting at their little table. They weren’t playing cards, however. They were both looking at him.

  He stepped in, and Mrs. Stuart said, “We heard about it, Sheriff. You think whoever killed him is the one that got his teeth?”

  “I don’t know anything yet,” Rhodes said. “I haven’t talked to anyone except Earlene, and I didn’t find out much from her.”

  “I bet it was the teeth,” Mr. Stuart said. “That’s a pretty low thing, Sheriff, killing a man for his teeth.”

  “You’re right about that, if that’s what it was,” Rhodes said. “I think you better let me investigate that bit of business from now on, Miz Stuart. It might turn out to be dangerous.”

  He didn’t really think there was any connection between the missing teeth and the death. It seemed too farfetched. But you could never be sure.

  The old woman agreed to let Rhodes handle things, and he went on down the hail to Bobbit’s room. Mr. Patterson was standing just inside the door, and there was another man beside the bed.

  The other man was Dr. Pearsall, who saw most of the nursing home patients. He was fifty years old, and his thick shock of completely white hair gave him the kind of distinguished appearance that people automatically trusted. Rhodes had heard that he was a good doctor.

  “Thank goodness you’ve come, Sheriff,” Mr. Patterson said. “This is awful, just awful.”

  Rhodes stepped past Patterson, who didn’t offer to shake hands this time, and into the room. There was a body lying on the bed, but it was partially obscured by Dr. Pearsall.

  “What happened?” Rhodes asked.

  “Someone killed Mr. Bobbit,” Mr. Patterson said, just as Dr. Pearsall stepped away from the bed.

  As soon as Rhodes got a good look at the body, he saw why Mr. Patterson was so upset. There wasn’t any doubt that murder had been done in the Sunny Dale Nursing Home.

  Rhodes could see only Mr. Bobbit’s head, but it was in a white plastic grocery bag that had been tied around his neck. In trying to breathe, Mr. Bobbit had sucked the bag in around his features, and it looked like a grotesque white mask.

  “He’s tied under the spread, too,” Dr. Pearsall said in a deep voice perfectly in keeping with his appearance. “He couldn’t get his hands free to take the bag off, and he couldn’t get off the bed.”

  He pulled the bedspread back, and Rhodes could see that Mr. Bobbit was tied to the twin bed by two sheets, one that went around his chest and one that went across his legs at the ankles.

  “Where did the sheets come from?” Rhodes asked. “The closet, probably,” Mr. Patterson said. “We always leave a spare set in the room.”

  “What happened, at a guess,” Dr. Pearsall said, “is that someone came in and found him asleep, tied him to the bed, and popped on the bag. It wouldn’t have taken long, and while Mr. Bobbit was generally in good health, he wasn’t particularly strong.”

  Rhodes thought of the old man as he had been that morning, his thin neck sticking out of the shirt collar.

  “He wouldn’t have been able to put up much of a struggle,” Dr. Pearsall went on. He nodded toward the bag. “And he wouldn’t have been able to call out.”

  Rhodes had heard a sample of Mr. Bobbit’s lung power. “Why not?” he said.

  “Every time he sucked in a breath, he sucked in the bag,” Pearsall said.

  Patterson shuddered. “This is just awful. Whatever can I tell Miss Bobbit?”

  Rhodes looked at him. “The truth,” he said.

  “But this is murder!” Patterson said. He looked at Rhodes. “You’ve got to find out who did it.”

  Rhodes sighed. “That’s what they pay me for.”

  Chapter 5

  Rhodes was wondering how he was going to earn his salary this time when Earlene came into the room, a frightened look on her face.

  “Mr. Patterson,” she said, “can I see you for a minute?” She was trying not to look at Mr. Bobbit.

  “What’s the matter?” Patterson snapped. He was clearly not in a mood to be trifled with by the hired help. Mr. Bobbit’s death had upset him more than he would have liked to admit. It wasn’t that death was so unusual in Sunny Dale, Rhodes thought; it was the way this particular death had occurred.

  Earlene didn’t seem eager to talk in front of Rhodes and the doctor, but since Patterson insisted, she blurted out her news. “Mr. Kennedy’s missing!”

  “Ohmigod,” Patterson said, looking around for a chair. There was one not far from Mr. Bobbit’s bed. It had a straight metal back and a red vinyl seat. Mr. Patterson sat down in it and put his head in his hands.

  “That wouldn’t be Maurice Kennedy, would it?” Rhodes said.

  Earlene turned to him. “Yes, it would. How’d you know?”

  “Just a guess. How long has he been gone?”

  “I don’t know,” Earle
ne confessed. “It was time for him to take his afternoon medication, and one of the nurses took it to his room. He wasn’t there.”

  “Did you check the other rooms?” Dr. Pearsall asked.

  “Why of course we did. But he’s not in any of them. He’s just gone.”

  Pearsall looked at Rhodes. “You think there’s any connection?”

  Rhodes shook his head. “Probably not.” He didn’t want to start any idle speculation.

  He walked over to Mr. Patterson. “I’ll get out a bulletin on Mr. Kennedy. He won’t be far.”

  Mr. Patterson didn’t even look up. He was probably worrying about the black eye all this was going to give his nursing home, Rhodes thought.

  “You’d better call Clyde Ballinger,” Rhodes told Pearsall. “Have him take care of the body.” Ballinger was the local funeral director.

  “I’ve already called him,” Earlene said.

  On his way out, Rhodes stopped in the Stuarts’ room. “We’ve just heard,” Mrs. Stuart said.

  “Heard what?” Rhodes asked.

  “About Maurice Kennedy,” Mr. Stuart said. “What’d you think?”

  Rhodes couldn’t believe how efficient the grapevine was. There wasn’t even anyone in the room who could have told them. “You have any idea where he’s gone?” he asked.

  “Not a’tall,” Mr. Stuart said. “You think he killed Bobbit?”

  “I don’t know anything yet. I’m surprised someone hasn’t told you, though.”

  “We know just about ever’thing that goes on in this place, and you better believe it,” Mr. Stuart said.”

  “‘Cept who took those teeth and who killed Mr. Bobbit.”

  “And I was workin’ on the teeth,” Mrs. Stuart said. “I think Maurice Kennedy took ’em, myself.”

  “You don’t know that, though,” Mr. Stuart pointed out. “I’m not payin’ any three thousand dollars out till you can prove it.”

  “We didn’t have anything for lunch that needed teeth,” Mrs. Stuart said. “Just that brown mushy stuff.”

  “That was chipped beef,” her husband said.

  “Whatever it was, you didn’t need any teeth for it,” she said. “But it was a little stringy.”