Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  Patterson didn’t look happy about it, and Rhodes soon found out why. “This was Sunday, of course, and I was paying him double time. He finally had to unseat the toilet and reach into the line. That’s where he found the teeth. Don’t ask me how they got there. I just don’t know. But I suppose Mr. Kennedy could have set them on the back of the commode and knocked them in by accident. If he didn’t notice them in there, and then he flushed the toilet, well...”

  Rhodes could imagine. Kennedy must have lost his own teeth at least two days before Bobbit’s death, since that was when Bobbit’s teeth had disappeared. Kennedy’s dentures then stayed in the pipes long enough to back them up. Rhodes was glad he hadn’t been the one to retrieve the teeth.

  “You still haven’t located Mr. Kennedy, I suppose?” Patterson said.

  “No,” Rhodes said. “But we’re still looking.” Ruth had checked the Whataburger that morning, according to Hack. Kennedy had not shown up there. She was checking other places now.

  “The poor man. I hope he’s staying warm at night.”

  Patterson’s concern was almost touching. It had been another cold night, even colder than before because the cloud cover had disappeared. It had dropped into the upper twenties, according to the report Rhodes had heard Red Rogers giving on the radio that morning. It didn’t seem possible that Patterson, who really seemed to care about his residents, could be a killer. Still, Rhodes had to consider every possibility.

  “I understand that Sunny Dale is in a little bit of a financial bind,” he said.

  Patterson looked startled. “Who told you that?”

  “A confidential informant. Is it true?”

  Patterson reached out and fiddled with the teeth. Then, as if remembering where they’d been, he jerked his hands back. “It’s true,” he said.

  “How bad is it?”

  “Not bad,” Patterson said, though not very convincingly. “It’s more of a cash-flow problem than a bind. You know how it is when there’s government red tape involved.”

  Rhodes didn’t know. He said so.

  “Many—most—of my guests can’t afford the kind of care we provide here. I like to think we do a very good job, and it’s expensive. But the government has programs to help out. Sometimes there’s difficulty getting the money from the government, and then I have trouble keeping up my payments on the place and meeting my bills. It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before.”

  “A hundred thousand dollars would come in pretty handy, though, wouldn’t it?” Rhodes said.

  “Oh, my.” Patterson was aghast. “I can see what you’re getting at, Sheriff, but I assure you, I would never, ever, kill anyone. Not for a hundred thousand dollars, not for any amount of money. I built Sunny Dale so that I could help people and make their lives easier. I could never do something to hurt one of my guests.”

  “You did know about Mr. Bobbit’s will, though.”

  “Of course I knew. But I hadn’t thought of it since he died. Not until this very minute. I couldn’t take advantage of the demise of one of my guests. I just couldn’t. I haven’t even mentioned the will to Miss Bobbit, since her father died, and I don’t intend to. Even if she were to contest the will, I wouldn’t care. I didn’t want Mr. Bobbit’s money.”

  Rhodes believed him. The man looked shocked at the very suggestion that he might have been involved in Bobbit’s death, and Rhodes did not think that Patterson was much of an actor. Nevertheless, he had to ask a few more questions.

  “Did you visit Mr. Bobbit’s room the day he was killed?”

  Patterson started to smooth his hair. Then, as if he remembered having touched the teeth, he jerked his hand down. “I must have,” he said. “I visit all my guests nearly every day, if only to say hello. Surely you can’t think that I—”

  “I don’t know what I think, not yet. There are a lot of things about this that bother me.”

  “But I would never—”

  “Don’t worry,” Rhodes said. “Kennedy is still the best suspect. But until we can find him and question him, we have to keep on investigating.”

  “I understand,” Patterson said, but it was clear that he didn’t like it.

  Rhodes was sorry about that, but there was nothing that he could do. Until he was certain about who was guilty, he would do what he did best, ask questions, sift the answers, watch the people. Sooner or later, he would know who had murdered Bobbit. He was sure of that.

  He changed the subject back to Kennedy, asking about the red jacket.

  “Of course,” Patterson said. “I should have thought of that. He wore it all the time when he was sitting on the porch. It was reversible, you know.”

  Rhodes didn’t know.

  “Yes. Red on one side, black on the other. Quite a nice jacket, really.”

  Nice, maybe, but the fact that it was reversible was a real pain for Rhodes. It went a long way toward explaining how Kennedy was eluding them. Reverse the jacket, take out the teeth, and Kennedy would look like a different man, given the quality of observation you could usually expect from people these days. Leave the jacket behind, and you’d have a third appearance. It wouldn’t be too hard to get by like that for days, even in a town as small as Clearview.

  “When’s Mr. Bobbit’s funeral?” Rhodes asked.

  “This afternoon,” Patterson said. “Will you be attending?”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said.

  Mr. West was watching TV again, but not a fishing show. “Jeopardy” was on, and Alex Trebek was reading an answer:

  “This young prince avenged the murder of his father at the request of his father’s ghost.”

  “Who was Hamlet?” Rhodes said, just before one of the contestants gave the same question.

  West did not move anything but his eyes, shifting them toward the door. “Pretty good, for a sheriff.”

  Rhodes didn’t mention that Hamlet was the only Shakespeare play he knew anything about. “How’re you feeling today, Mr. West?” he said.

  “Same as ever. And that ain’t so hot. How about you?”

  “I’m fine,” Rhodes said, and compared to Mr. West, he was. “I went out for a visit with your son this morning.”

  “He’s a fine boy,” West said. He’d said something similar before, but Rhodes detected something ironic in West’s tone of voice.

  “He’s not doing much business at the store,” Rhodes said.

  West made a motion with his head which Rhodes took for agreement, though it could have been annoyance or even just a meaningless twitch.

  “Was a good store, once,” West said. “But Obert’s not much of a town anymore. Hell, it ain’t a town at all. And that road by the store don’t go much of anywhere but to Obert.”

  “It goes on to Stilson,” Rhodes said.

  “Which ain’t much better’n Obert. If that fella gets the college restored, maybe there’ll be some traffic out that way. Otherwise, that store might’s well close up. Andy’s a good boy, but he ain’t much of a businessman.”

  “I understand your son’s engaged to Miss Bobbit.”

  “She’s a nice girl,” West said. It sounded as if he were trying to convince himself as much as Rhodes.

  “Her father had a good deal of money, too,” Rhodes said.

  “He sure did. Gas money. I always wished they’d strike gas on my land out there by the store, but they never did. It’s not even leased now. If Andy marries that girl, he won’t have to worry about that, though.”

  Rhodes got the impression that West thought his son was marrying Miss Bobbit for her money. That was one attraction that Rhodes hadn’t thought about, though he should have. Money had the power to make even a cold fish look good.

  “I’d like to ask you again about Maurice Kennedy,” Rhodes said. “Did you ever talk about Louis Horn, or about the old days in Clearview at all?”

  “Not a damn time. He and I didn’t associate. I don’t think he liked me. He damn sure didn’t like Bobbit. Maybe we reminded him too much of those old days.” />
  The conversation wasn’t going anywhere. Rhodes glanced back at the TV screen, where a woman was giving the wrong question to the answer, “Her face launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium.”

  Rhodes didn’t know the answer, either, but he figured it wasn’t Brenda Bobbit.

  The Stuarts were glad to see Rhodes, and they had already heard about the discovery of the body in the well, as Red Rogers was calling it on his news show. The problems of the jail were already forgotten.

  “You think it’s Louis Horn, Sheriff?” the Stuarts wanted to know.

  Rhodes did, but he told them how hard it would be to prove it. He asked if they had heard any more scuttlebutt around the nursing home.

  They had heard about the discovery of the teeth, but that was it.

  “That’s why I wasn’t sure about Kennedy, that day,” Mrs. Stuart said. “He was eating just fine, but kind of funny at the same time. I’d probably seen him with his own teeth before, and now that he was using someone else’s, he didn’t look that different. Just different enough to be worrisome.”

  “You think you’re going to find him, Sheriff?” Mr. Stuart asked.

  “Sooner or later,” Rhodes said, hoping that it was the truth.

  Mr. Bobbit’s funeral was sparsely attended. Many of his contemporaries were in Sunny Dale and didn’t feel up to being there, and apparently his daughter was not overly supplied with friends who wanted to comfort her. Andy West was there, but he was the only one Rhodes recognized.

  Rhodes had come on the off chance that Maurice Kennedy might show up. You never could tell about some people. Unfortunately, Kennedy didn’t cooperate. Wherever he was, he stayed there.

  The service was mercifully short. The songs were piped in over the sound system, and the minister was brought in on short notice. It was clear that he had no idea just exactly who Mr. Bobbit had been and was merely going through the motions.

  Rhodes looked through the visitors’ register, but saw no names he was familiar with. He hadn’t really expected to see Maurice Kennedy’s name, but he thought he would look just in case.

  After the service, he went out back to talk to Clyde Ballinger, who was of course fascinated with the discovery of the bones.

  “I can see that they’re buried, no problem,” Ballinger said. “Not like the last time,” he added, in reference to a case where a number of anonymous human limbs had turned up in the county. “It would be nice to know who we’re burying, though.”

  “Did Dr. White have any thoughts on that?” Rhodes said, assuming that White would have examined the remains by now.

  “All he could say was that the bones belonged to a young male, early twenties, who probably—and I guess it’s a big probably—died from a blow on the head. Or several blows.”

  Rhodes had noticed that the skull was caved in. He thought it might have happened while the body was in the well.

  “Might have,” Ballinger said. “We’d have to get a real forensic specialist in here, or send the bones off, to find all that out, Dr. White says. Will that be necessary?”

  “Maybe not,” Rhodes said. “Maybe someone will confess.”

  “It’s Louis Horn,” Ballinger said. “Got to be.” Ruth had told him the story when she took the bones to the funeral home. “This’d make a great book. Crime from the past, still affecting lives in the present. Real Ross Macdonald stuff.”

  “Does he work at the 87th precinct?” Rhodes asked.

  Ballinger gave him a disgusted look. “Never mind. When are you guys gonna find Maurice Kennedy?”

  “I don’t know,” Rhodes said. He wished people would stop asking him that.

  As he was driving away from the funeral home, the radio came to crackling life.

  “Godamighty, Sheriff. Godamighty! You there, Sheriff?” Radio discipline in Blacklin County was so lax as to be almost nonexistent, but even Hack wouldn’t go that far. Rhodes took the mike. “Is that you, Lawton?”

  “Yeah, yeah. It’s me. Listen, Sheriff, you gotta come to the jail. You gotta come right now!”

  “I’m on the way,” Rhodes said. At least Lawton knew enough not to give away what was going on to all the scanner listeners in the county. “Where’s Hack?”

  “He’s got a date this afternoon,” Lawton said. “With Miz McGee.”

  Monday was usually a slow day at the jail, and Hack had asked for the afternoon off more than a week before, Rhodes remembered.

  “Sheriff, you gotta get here quick,” Lawton said. “Billy Joe Bryon’s found a dead man in the city dump!”

  So much for not giving things away, Rhodes thought. He slapped the mike on its hook and stepped on the gas a little harder.

  All he needed right now was another dead man.

  Chapter 14

  Billy Joe Bryon had been in the county jail more than once, but not for the purpose of reporting a crime.

  Rhodes was not quite sure how old Billy Joe was. Probably nobody knew. He’d been around the county ever since anyone could remember, making sort of a living by selling soft-drink bottles when they were made of glass and then switching over to aluminum cans, which were going for a little over fifty cents a pound these days.

  He had cobbled together a shack out near one of the city’s former dump sites—sanitary landfills was the preferred term these days—and he still spent a lot of time combing through the treasures delivered up by the trash trucks at whatever site the city was using at the time. People threw away things that Billy Joe salvaged, some of them still useful, some of them simply junk. He sold whatever he could for whatever he could get. Billy Joe was not of what most people would call “normal intelligence,” but he had gotten by without help from the government or anyone else for a long time. He was a common sight in the county, rambling along the side roads, pushing a rusting grocery cart filled with junk and cans.

  He was sitting at Rhodes’s desk looking at Wanted posters when Rhodes walked in the jail.

  Billy Joe jumped up and looked guiltily at the sheriff when the wind ruffled the posters.

  “Hey, Billy Joe,” Rhodes said. “How’re you doing?”

  Billy Joe was wearing a pair of ragged overalls, leather work shoes that were cracked near the soles so that his socks showed through, and the remains of two or three flannel shirts. The one on top was red and green. A grayish T-shirt showed at the neck.

  “F-f-f-fine,” Billy Joe said.

  “He found a dead man at the dump,” Lawton said. “It’ll take him forever to tell you. I like never to’ve got it out of him.”

  The shock of a real crime had done wonders for Lawton’s own reluctance to get on with the story. “The trash trucks pick up downtown on Mondays,” he said. “Billy Joe likes to be there when they dump so he can sift through and pick out the good stuff. Lord knows what all he finds. Anyhow, the way I get it, he found a body there this morning. Then he walked into town to tell us about it. The ’dozer operator knows about it. He’s still there, makin’ sure nothin’ happens to it.”

  Billy Joe was looking at Lawton with fascination, his mouth hanging slightly open, as if hearing the story for the first time. Maybe in a way he was.

  “Is he telling it right, Billy Joe?” Rhodes said.

  Billy Joe swiveled his head to look at Rhodes. “R-r-right.”

  “Now, this is important, Billy Joe,” Rhodes said. “Did the body come from the truck, or was it already there?”

  “F-f-from the truck.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “He’s sure,” Lawton said. “It was all mashed up.”

  Rhodes thought about the trash trucks. They picked up the dumpsters, which were lifted hydraulically to the top of the container on the back of the truck. When the contents had been emptied into the container, they were compressed with a plunger of some sort so that they wouldn’t take up any more space than necessary. It was only natural, then, that the body wouldn’t be in very good shape. Rhodes didn’t even like to think of what it must look like.


  “I guess we’d better get on out there, then, Billy Joe,” Rhodes said. “Can you find the body again?”

  “He can find it,” Lawton said. “He knows right where it is. He told me that already. Besides, the ’dozer operator knows, too.”

  Billy Joe nodded in agreement.

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “Come on, Billy Joe. Let’s go see what you found. Lawton, you call the Justice of the Peace and an ambulance and tell them to meet us out there.”

  Even in the winter, Billy Joe smelled a little ripe in the close quarters of the county car. Rhodes figured that Billy Joe’s outfit had been assembled sometime around Thanksgiving of last year, before it got to be really cold, and had probably not been removed since.

  Rhodes headed for the current dump site, which was just off one of the unpaved county roads to the east of town. Every time the city had to look for a new site, there were complaints from the people who lived nearby. It wasn’t so much that they objected to the smell, which could be pretty bad at certain times in the summer; what they really didn’t like was the fact that the trucks would be driving up and down the roads near their houses all day, five days a week. So the city tried to find spots in relatively isolated areas of the county if possible.

  They had done a pretty good job this time. After Rhodes turned off the pavement, he and Billy Joe passed only one house on the way to the dump. All they saw on either side of them were barbed-wire fences, pastures full of mesquite trees and dead grass, and an occasional cow.

  Billy Joe wasn’t much of a conversationalist. He sat with his face turned toward the window and watched the passing scenery with just as much fascination as he had looked at Lawton’s face in the jail when Lawton was telling about the finding of the body. Anyone who didn’t know better might think that Billy Joe had never seen a mesquite tree before in his life.

  They-came to a break in the fence, with a road leading off to the right. There was a gate, but it was open and pulled back and the chain used to keep it closed was looped around a fence post. There was a sign on the fence that read: