Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  “You’re not going to like hearing this, Sheriff,” Dunstable said.

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “It’s a sizable estate, all right. His daughter gets most of it.” Dunstable smiled a fat smile. “I know what you’re thinking. Motive. I can see it in your eyes. But you’re wrong. Here’s the part you aren’t going to like.”

  Rhodes waited patiently. Sometimes it seemed like the whole world was getting like Hack and Lawton.

  “The thing is,” Dunstable said, “his daughter doesn’t need the money.”

  “Everybody needs money,” Rhodes said. “Even sheriffs and lawyers. Why do you say Miss Bobbit doesn’t?”

  “She already has it.”

  “Then how can he be leaving it to her?” If Hack and Lawton ever needed a third party, they could recruit Dunstable.

  “Well, she doesn’t really have it. But she has power of attorney. She was in control of the estate. Her father’s death just complicates things.”

  That didn’t make things look too good for Maurice Kennedy. Then Rhodes thought of something. “You said his daughter got most of it. Who gets the rest? And how much is the rest?”

  Dunstable looked a little uncomfortable, as if he’d had a mid-morning snack that didn’t agree with him. “There is a small amount going to another party.”

  “I know that,” Rhodes said. “You told me, remember? What I want to know is the name of the other party. And how much he’s getting. Or she.”

  Dunstable shifted in the chair. “It’s not actually a he or a she,” he said.

  “Maybe you’d better explain that,” Rhodes said, wondering if it were possible that Dunstable could be related to either Hack or Lawton. He didn’t think so, but you never knew.

  “It’s a place,” Dunstable said.

  Maybe it was just that lawyers didn’t like to give out information for free. “What place?” Rhodes said.

  “Well, actually, it’s the Sunny Dale Nursing Home.” Rhodes suddenly felt as if he might be getting somewhere.

  “Sunny Dale. And how much is the place getting?”

  “In the neighborhood of a hundred thousand.”

  A little gas money, Rhodes thought. He wondered how much would be considered a lot.

  “That’s an unusual bequest, isn’t it?” he said. “Does the daughter know about it?”

  Dunstable smiled again. He wasn’t uncomfortable with the question. “It was her idea.”

  “She wanted her father to leave that much money to Sunny Dale?”

  “I think she had the idea that they’d take better care of him if they knew how much he appreciated them. Give him sort of special treatment. And she could afford it.”

  “What about that part of a will that talks about ‘being of sound mind’?”

  Dunstable stopped smiling. “Mr. Bobbit was perfectly lucid when I changed the will. His daughter was with him and would certainly vouch for his complete lucidity.”

  Rhodes thought about what Dunstable had told him. Then he stood up. “Well, Tom, I appreciate you telling me all this. I’m sure it’ll be a help to me.”

  Dunstable continued to sit. “Always glad to oblige an officer of the law,” he said.

  Banks in small towns had changed a great deal since Rhodes was a boy. He remembered them as being a lot like the county courthouse was now, cavernous buildings with sixteen-foot marble ceilings, silent fans dangling down and stirring the air in summer. The dignified tellers, often male, stood behind their windows and silently attended to the customers and checked everything on adding machines. In those days, too, no one worried about carrying his personal checkbook around with him. You could pick up a counter check in any store and cash it without even showing a driver’s license.

  Now you couldn’t cash anything that wasn’t personalized, and even at that you were lucky to get out of the store without giving a blood sample and leaving your first-born child as a hostage. He couldn’t remember the last time he had seen a male teller. Banks were staffed mostly by young women, none of whom looked as old to Rhodes as his own daughter. And they were often chatting back and forth and always telling their customers to have a nice day. Things were a lot more cheerful in banks these days. All the tellers had computers at their stations, too. No more adding machines.

  Some things hadn’t changed, however. The bank president still had the nicest office, the deepest carpet, the biggest desk, and the most windows. He still wore a dark suit and behaved with reserve and restraint.

  “And why do you need this information, Sheriff?” he said.

  “It’s part of a murder investigation, Mr. Freer,” Rhodes explained.

  Freer was president of the Clearview Interbank, sixty years old, compact and athletic, with a tanned face that Rhodes was sure came from a lamp rather than the sun. He had survived the takeover of the Clearview State Bank by one of the big holding companies, one of the few bank officers to do so. He had not achieved his present position by being free with information.

  “I’d rather do this informally,” Rhodes went on. “Easier on both of us.” They both knew that bank records were no big secret these days and that Rhodes could get access to them without having to go to much trouble.

  “All right,” Freer said. “I don’t really need to look at the records. I can tell you that Sunny Dale is having a bit of difficulty now.”

  “What kind of difficulty?” Rhodes asked.

  “It’s a little unusual in that it’s a privately operated institution,” Freer said. “Many nursing homes now are operated by large organizations which hire the managers and other employees for the individual homes.”

  “Like banks,” Rhodes said.

  Freer didn’t think the remark was amusing. He didn’t think a lot of things were amusing. “At any rate, Mr. Patterson is the owner of the institution. He inherited some money, I believe, and that allowed him to get started in the business. He had been a nurse, before.”

  Rhodes hadn’t known that, but it seemed logical. Mr. Patterson somehow looked like a nurse. He had that competent, no-nonsense air.

  “About that difficulty,” he said, thinking of Dunstable. Getting information these days was like pulling teeth.

  “He’s had some trouble getting his money from one of the government programs—I don’t know whether it’s Medicare or Medicaid. He’s behind on his note with the bank.”

  “How far behind?”

  “Four months.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “It isn’t good. Not that there is any danger of foreclosure.”

  He didn’t have to say why. Things had not been good in Texas for bankers lately, and Rhodes was sure that one thing the bank didn’t need was a nursing home. Besides, four months probably wasn’t really that far behind for someone who was sure to pay. Or was Patterson that sure to pay? Rhodes asked Freer about it.

  “Oh, there’s no doubt of it. He’ll be getting the money. The government makes errors, or things get tangled in all the red tape, but the money will come through.” He sounded completely confident.

  Rhodes, when he left, wasn’t so sure. What if Patterson was worried about the money? What if, for one thing, he had committed some sort of Medicare fraud? Rhodes had read about places collecting on patients who had been dead for months, collecting on patients who had moved to other establishments. What if Patterson had been guilty of something like that? Would he try to get money by killing one of his own patients?

  It was hard to believe. Patterson didn’t seem the type to Rhodes, who tended to trust his judgments about people. But he had been fooled before. For every Ruth Grady, about whom he had been right, there was Johnny Sherman, about whom he had been wrong.

  Anyway, it was one more thing to check into.

  It was nearly noon when Rhodes left the bank, so he went by his house for lunch. He and Ivy had eaten all the pimiento cheese last night, but there was bound to be something in the refrigerator, he thought.

  There was nothing to eat, however, except for two s
lices of bologna that had fuzzy green-and-black mold growing in patches on them. Rhodes was not especially particular about what he ate, but he wasn’t going to eat that. He threw the bologna away and made a peanut butter sandwich on the oat bran bread.

  It wasn’t bad.

  As he ate, he thought about Hack and the reporter. There was still time to catch the noon news, so he switched on the little portable radio that he kept in the kitchen. It had terrible sound quality, but it was good enough to listen to the news on.

  He had missed Red Rogers’s introduction to the interview, in which the lawsuit was undoubtedly mentioned, but he got in on the first question.

  “So, Mr. Jensen,” Rogers said. “As the dispatcher at the Blacklin County Jail, what can you tell us about the conditions here?”

  Hack’s voice came through loud and clear. “Well, it’s better eatin’ than you can get anywhere except your mama’s kitchen.”

  “Are you saying that you eat the same food that the prisoners get?”

  “No, sir. I wish I did. They eat a lot better than I do.”

  Rogers decided to get off that topic. “What about the roof?”

  “We got one, all right,” Hack said.

  “Is it a good one?”

  “I expect so,” Hack said. “I never looked at it, but it passed the last inspection.”

  “But does it leak?”

  “Leak what?”

  “Water,” Rogers said. “When it rains.”

  “Not in here,” Hack said.

  “Ah, yes, but this is where the administrators stay. What about over the cells?”

  Rhodes smiled through a bite of the peanut butter as he thought about the “administrators.” He wondered if Hack had ever thought of himself as an administrator of the jail.

  “You’d have to ask Lawton about the cells,” Hack said.

  “He’s the jailer.”

  Good, Rhodes thought. Lawton had come in. Served Red Rogers right for trying to stir up trouble.

  “What about that, Mr. Lawton?” Rogers said.

  “What about what?” Lawton said.

  “The roof. Does it leak over the cells?”

  “Sometimes,” Lawton said.

  “When would those times be?” Rogers said, pressing his luck.

  “When the repairs wear out.”

  “Repairs? What repairs would those be?”

  “The ones we do ever’ time we find a leak. You think we want the prisoners to get wet?” Lawton asked.

  “Let’s talk about neglect,” Rogers said, changing the subject again. “Personal neglect of prisoners. Does any of that go on around here?”

  “What’s neglect mean?” Hack asked. “They eat good. They get a bed to sleep in. We don’t make ’em work for their supper. We fix the roof when it leaks. That sound like neglect to you?”

  “We don’t tuck ’em in at night, though,” Lawton said. “You got to admit that, Hack.”

  Rhodes looked for something to wash down the sandwich with. Rogers must have not had much time to do his editing. That was fine with Rhodes. He was enjoying the interview.

  “Do they get to exercise?” Rogers said. “Prisoners have a right to exercise.”

  “We let ’em do all the exercise they want to,” Lawton said. “Push-ups, sit-ups, leg lifts, they can do all of that. I never stopped a one of them.”

  “But were they supervised?” Rogers said.

  “If they asked me to, I’d’ve supervised ’em.”

  “But did they ask you to?”

  “Nope. But that ain’t my fault, is it?”

  Rhodes found about half of a two-liter bottle of Dr Pepper in the refrigerator. He opened it and poured some in a glass. It was flat, but he drank it anyway.

  “What about a law library? Aren’t prisoners supposed to have access to a law library?” Rhodes remembered that was also a part of Little Barnes’s complaint.

  “They got as much access as I have,” Hack said. “How much do you think law books cost? You think the taxpayers want to provide law books for people we got in here for drunk drivin’? For people we got in here for stealin’? You radio newsmen sure have funny ideas about how people want to spend their tax money.”

  “There you have it, folks,” Red Rogers said. Rhodes thought he detected a note of quiet desperation in the man’s voice, but he wasn’t sure. “Blacklin County has no law library, no supervised exercise program, and a jail roof that leaks. If you have an opinion on this matter, you can call me here at the station and talk to all of Clearview on the air.”

  By the time Rhodes left home, the calls were running about five to one in favor not only of keeping things at the jail as they were, but for making them worse. Blacklin County wasn’t a place where people liked the idea of coddling criminals.

  Sneaking out of the jail was the smartest thing Rhodes had done all day. He was willing to bet that he wouldn’t be bothered by Red Rogers again.

  Chapter 10

  Rhodes had been thinking about the well where Louis Horn’s body was supposedly dumped. Horn’s car had been found down by the river, not far from the highway bridge, not that there had been much of a highway in those days. More like a rutted mud road, probably considerably churned up by the rain the night Horn had disappeared. But the bridge was still in more or less the same place, though it was no longer made of wood as it had been in Horn’s time.

  Not far from the bridge was the Old Settlers’ Grounds, or what was left of it.

  Even when Rhodes was a boy, the Old Settlers’ Grounds had been mostly just a memory. About the only thing left of the original grounds by then was a dance pavilion to which electricity had been run and where the Girl Scouts held square dances with whatever willing, or unwilling but nevertheless available, boys they could round up. A time or two, Rhodes recalled, he had been one of those boys.

  He had been swimming there at the Grounds, too, in what remained of the two big swimming pools that had been constructed down by the river. There were times when the river water would flow in and boys would go down there and swing out over the pools on a long rope tied high in the branches of a giant pecan tree and let go and drop down into the cool green water.

  No one went down there anymore. Too dangerous, Rhodes had heard. The old pool’s concrete sides had crumbled, and anyone diving in was likely to hit his head on a chunk of it and drown. Dropping from a rope high above would have been unthinkable. And of course the river water was now a murky grayish-brown instead of a clear green, and God knows what chemicals it might contain. The whole place was overgrown with brush and trees, and there were no doubt snakes in plenty when the weather was warm.

  There had been a time when there were swings and seesaws and men selling red hokey-pokey to drink. Kids yelling and having fun, parents worrying about them and watching.

  Rhodes had missed all of that, though he had heard about it. All he remembered was the pavilion and the pool. And one other thing. The Wishing Well.

  It had originally been a well for drinking water, so that thirsty picnickers and swimmers could refresh themselves, but by the time Rhodes saw it, it had long since been dry, not that anyone would have drunk out of it even if there had been water.

  So it had become the Wishing Well, a place for the Girl Scouts and the boys from the square dances to visit and toss pennies in, wishing for whatever it was that kids in those days would have wished for. Rhodes knew that he had thrown more than one penny down that well, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember his wishes.

  The road to the Old Settlers’ Grounds was still pretty much as it had been in the days when Rhodes was making those wishes, whatever they were. Just before the bridge, Rhodes turned off into two ruts with dead grass and some live weeds between them, the trees close on either side. There hadn’t been much rain lately, so the ruts were packed hard. The bare tree limbs scratched along the side of the car as Rhodes drove.

  It was less than a quarter of a mile from the highway to the gateway to the Grounds. There was
an entrance arch of wrought-iron between two high wooden posts, one of which leaned precariously forward, throwing the arch askew. Rhodes could still read the words OLD SETTLERS’ GROUNDS on the arch, however. He drove the car under the arch and onto the Grounds themselves.

  He was not surprised to see that the grass around the old pavilion was mashed flat. He’d heard from the deputies that the Grounds were now used as a lovers’ lane by a lot of the Clearview high school kids. The deputies would roust them when there was nothing else to do, but even from the car Rhodes could see by the number of condom containers scattered around that some of the visitors to the Grounds had not been rousted before they had the opportunity to practice safe sex.

  He stopped the car, got out, and walked down to the pavilion. The clearing was thickly overgrown with trees, and that plus the overcast sky made it almost dark. It was cold in the shadows, and looking at the old pavilion made Rhodes feel even colder.

  The last time he had seen it, which must have been thirty years ago, it had not seemed in bad shape. It had been old, even then, but it had been solid. He could remember the sound of the feet shuffling on the floor as he and some girl did a do-si-do, the hard benches around the sides, the bare light bulb hanging from the roof and drawing hundreds of moths.

  Now half of the roof was caved in, hanging dangerously low over a floor that was rotten and full of holes. The sides of the pavilion had fallen both inward and outward, and rotted wood lay on the grass and the floor. Rhodes had thought he might step up on the dance floor for old times’ sake, but the steps were already broken and clearly would not hold his weight. He tried to remember the girls he had danced with there and wondered what they looked like now.

  He shook off the feeling of nostalgia and thought about the Wishing Well. It had been down a slope, between the pavilion and the swimming pools. He walked around the dance floor. There appeared to be a path still running in that direction, though it was not as well defined as the ruts in the road. He started down the path, pushing the tree limbs out of his way with his hand.