Evil at the Root

by Bill Crider

  CITY OF CLEARVIEW

  SANITARY LANDFILL

  YOU MUST SHOW YOUR WATER BILL TO DUMP

  Rhodes didn’t know whether anyone ever really checked water bills or not. The sign was intended to keep out those who didn’t pay city taxes, but he would rather see residents of the county sneak in and dump there than to deposit their trash around in ditches and under bridges as so many of them did.

  They drove through the gate and down the caliche road for around two hundred yards. Then they went over a slight rise and they could see the dump.

  The theory was that you had a bulldozer dig out huge holes or valleys in the ground. Then you dumped the trash, and the ’dozer pushed it into the hole and covered it up. Eventually, say in four or five hundred years in the case of the plastic rings that held six-packs of beer and sodas together, the trash would biodegrade and be a part of the earth again. Rhodes had heard of cases where the theory didn’t pan out, however, and the plastic had somehow worked its way back to the surface of the earth. Tires didn’t like to stay down either.

  Bodies would biodegrade a lot sooner than tires and plastic, though, and they seldom worked their way out of the ground. Rhodes knew that he was lucky, in a way, that Billy Joe had been at the dump that morning. If the bulldozer had gotten the trash covered, they would most likely never have known about the dead man.

  Rhodes stopped the car and he and Billy Joe got out. They could see the bulldozer moving over the hills of trash and hear it chuffing along. Large sections of the ground were bare of grass in places where the ’dozer had already buried trash.

  The wind blew papers all around—napkins, newspapers, facial tissues, all kinds of papers. There were objects of every description that had been brought to the dump for disposal—bedsprings, mattresses, tires, cans galore, garbage, everything imaginable—and all were waiting to be bulldozed under.

  “You sure the ’dozer operator knew about the dead man?” Rhodes said.

  “S-s-sure,” Billy Joe said.

  “All right,” Rhodes said. “Show me where he is.” He assumed that the ’dozer operator had to get on with his work, no matter whether a gruesome discovery had been made at the dump. Keeping up with the rising piles of garbage and trash was a full-time job.

  Billy Joe led Rhodes over to a pile of trash that hadn’t been touched by the ’dozer.

  There was no question that what was lying on one side of the pile was something that had once been a man. Rhodes couldn’t tell much about his face, but he recognized the red coat. They would have to check the teeth to be sure, but it looked as if he had found Maurice Kennedy.

  “Jesus, I never saw anything like that, Sheriff,” Clyde Ballinger said. “You’ve sent some strange things my way before, but this one takes the cake. He was really mashed up.”

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “He was.” He’d never seen anything like it, himself, and he didn’t care if he never did again. Billy Joe didn’t seem particularly bothered, for some reason, and Rhodes guessed he’d seen some pretty weird things at the dump over the years.

  But Rhodes hadn’t. It looked as if most of Kennedy’s bones were broken, his mashed and bloody face was unrecognizable, and Rhodes just hoped the teeth were intact. He hadn’t tried to find out. He hadn’t even looked for his pistol, but Billy Joe had pointed it out. It was sticking out of the pocket of the reversible jacket, and Rhodes had retrieved it. It was now lying in the floor of the county car.

  “How in the world did he get in that dumpster?” Ballinger asked.

  Rhodes had been thinking about that. “Maybe he climbed in,” he said.

  “Climbed in? What for?”

  “To keep warm.” The way Rhodes saw it, that was how Kennedy had been eluding them. Who would think of looking in a dumpster? It was a place to stay out of the cold, and if you pulled some newspapers or cardboard around you, you could survive the night easily enough. Newspapers and cardboard were in plentiful supply in dumpsters. It wouldn’t be comfortable, but you could stand it. From what Rhodes had heard, there were people on the streets of Houston who got through the whole winter with less.

  “Maybe,” Ballinger said when Rhodes told him his theory. “But why didn’t he wake up when the truck was picking him up? You’d think he’d scream and take on like anything. I know I would.”

  Rhodes had a theory about that, too. In fact, he had two theories. One was that the truck was making so much noise that the workers inside, who would have had the windows rolled up, the heater fan on, and the radio turned up loud and tuned to some station that played rap songs, could not hear Kennedy’s yells. Kennedy, being old, and despite his prowess with a tree limb, none too agile, would not have been able to get out of the dumpster in time to save himself.

  The other theory was that Kennedy might have been drinking to keep himself warm. The fact that alcohol didn’t really work like that probably wouldn’t have bothered him. If he’d drunk enough, he might never have known what was happening to him.

  Rhodes hoped the second theory was the correct one, even if Kennedy probably was guilty of having killed two men. The thought of him being aware and awake while he was being crushed was just too much, no matter what his past crimes were.

  “Dr. White ought to be able to tell you if he’d been drinking,” Ballinger said. “There’s enough blood left in him for that. Boy, he was sure a mess, though.”

  Rhodes wondered if Ballinger was thinking of Kennedy as a challenge to his professional abilities. Probably not. No one would much care if there was a closed casket at the funeral. There might not even be anyone there to notice.

  “I guess you’re glad to have all this wrapped up,” Ballinger said. “The boys at the eight-seven couldn’t have done it any better.”

  “I didn’t do anything,” Rhodes said.

  “Doesn’t matter. Folks will give you the credit. Two murders cleared up, one of ’em more than fifty years old. You’ll be a hero.”

  Rhodes didn’t feel like a hero. He just felt tired and sore. But no matter how sore he was, Kennedy was in much worse shape. Getting whipped up on with a tree limb was nothing compared to getting mashed to death. The only good thing about finding Kennedy, as far as Rhodes was concerned, was that he could close the cases and worry about the lawsuit. And about getting married.

  He went back to the jail to write his reports. Hack and Mrs. McGee were there, along with Lawton.

  Mrs. McGee didn’t like the cold. She was wearing a knit cap which she had pulled down over her forehead, completely covering her hair. She was wearing a puffy ski jacket like Mr. Bobbit’s, except that hers was green, and she had on a pair of wool pants that looked as if they might have belonged to her late husband. She was also wearing a pair of galoshes with buckles up the front. Rhodes hadn’t seen galoshes like that in years. She was much shorter than Hack, who was tall and thin. Mrs. McGee was more Lawton’s size, though not quite as chubby, and certainly not as smooth-faced.

  “You boys have a lot goin’ on all the time,” she said when Rhodes came in the door. “Lawton here was just tellin’ us about the man at the dump.”

  “Who was it, Sheriff?” Lawton asked. Rhodes could tell that he was feeling really good, because for one of the first times in years he had most of the lowdown on a story that Hack had missed out on. Rhodes wondered how long it had taken him to tell everything to Hack and Mrs. McGee.

  “I haven’t established the identity yet,” Rhodes said. “Dr. White is going to have the dentures checked. But I’m pretty sure it’s Maurice Kennedy.”

  Hack and Lawton took the news about the same way Ballinger had. They were sure the Sheriff’s Department would get credit for finding Kennedy, which would show how efficient the operation was and take the heat off the lawsuit. They weren’t particularly sorry for Kennedy, either.

  Neither was Mrs. McGee. “Got exactly what he deserved, the old scoundrel,” she said. “Anybody that’d take a man’s teeth, well, he’d do just about anything. I just know he killed that Louis Horn.”


  It didn’t really matter whether he had or not, though Rhodes agreed with Mrs. McGee on that point, and it didn’t really matter whose bones they had uncovered at the Old Settlers’ Grounds, either, though Rhodes was confident that they were Horn’s. Rhodes was sure they could close the Horn case now and that everyone would be happy. For some reason, however, he still wasn’t so sure about the death of Mr. Bobbit.

  “Where did you two go this afternoon?” he asked Mrs. McGee.

  “To the movies,” Hack said.

  Clearview still had a theater, although it had fallen on hard times. It charged an admission of one dollar in the evenings and fifty cents in the afternoons. It showed mostly films that were about a week away from being released on video cassettes, which were the things that had just about killed its business. The only advantage in going there was that you could at least see the movie on a big screen. Even that was not as good as it sounded, since the prints the theater received were often scratchy, poorly spliced, and so dark that you could hardly make out the actors.

  “What did you see?” he asked.

  “Batman,” Hack said. “Now there’s a guy knows how to fight crime.”

  “Hack’s right,” Mrs. McGee said. “if you had that Batmobile, Sheriff, you wouldn’t have any trouble with criminals in this town at all.”

  Rhodes was afraid he wouldn’t even be able to drive the Batmobile, much less operate its complicated weapons system. And he wondered just how much good it would do him in the case of stolen dentures. Batman had more serious things to occupy his time.

  Hack and Mrs. McGee left to go somewhere for a burger. It occurred to Rhodes that he had missed lunch again, and he bribed Lawton to go over to the courthouse for a couple of bottled Dr Peppers.

  He spent the rest of the afternoon writing his reports and wondering if Ivy was going to talk to him that night.

  Ivy was indeed willing to talk. She seemed to have gotten over any hard feelings she had against Rhodes for getting himself beaten nearly to a pulp, and she was glad that Maurice Kennedy had been found and dealt with. She admitted, however, that it seemed a pretty horrible way to go.

  “Have you told Mr. Patterson?” she asked.

  “I gave him a call this afternoon. He was sorry to hear it, I think. No matter what Kennedy did, he was still one of the ‘guests’ to Mr. Patterson.”

  “What about Miss Bobbit?”

  “I thought I ought to tell her in person,” Rhodes said. “I thought you and I could go out for supper, maybe to the Jolly Tamale, and I could go by her house on the way out there.”

  It sounded like a good idea to Ivy. They would be able to ride in the county car since they were on official business; the only drawback from Ivy’s point of view was that there was no reason to use the siren.

  When she got in the car, her foot kicked the pistol Rhodes had put there earlier.

  “What’s that?” she said.

  Rhodes reached around her and picked up the gun. “It was on Kennedy’s body,” he explained. “I was going to clean it, but I forgot all about it.”

  “I’m sorry I touched it,” Ivy said.

  “It was in his jacket,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think it got too bloody.”

  “Just the same…”

  Rhodes opened the back door and put the pistol on the floor. He would clean it in the morning. A cursory glance at it that afternoon seemed to indicate that it hadn’t been harmed by being compacted along with Kennedy. Rhodes didn’t like to think about how it had been cushioned or about what he might find when he cleaned it. But it was a good gun. He would have to take care of it sooner or later.

  Later seemed better, this time.

  Chapter 15

  Ivy waited in the car while Rhodes went up to Miss Bobbit’s house. There was another car parked in front, a dilapidated Ford about ten years old, and Rhodes wasn’t surprised to find that Andy West was inside when Miss Bobbit answered the door. She asked Rhodes to come in, and he entered the foyer.

  “I just wanted to come by and tell you that we found Mr. Kennedy today,” Rhodes said.

  She looked surprised and glanced back over her shoulder. West was sitting on the couch. He got up and walked over to the door. It was the first time Rhodes had seen him without his apron on. He looked pretty much the same except that he was scowling even more than usual.

  “Is this gonna cause us any more problems?” he said. He was clearly agitated about something.

  “I was just telling Andy that we might have to delay our marriage,” Miss Bobbit explained to Rhodes.

  “Why is it that the law always has to complicate things?” West said. He turned to Miss Bobbit. “I wish I’d known about that power of attorney.”

  “I…why, it never seemed important,” Miss Bobbit said. “I never knew that it ended with death. I guess Mr. Dunstable told me, but I don’t remember. Anyway, probate won’t take too long. Mr. Dunstable has assured me that there won’t be any problems. Finding Mr. Kennedy won’t change that.” She looked at Rhodes, her eyes hidden by the glasses. “He’s in jail, I hope. “

  “No,” Rhodes said. “He’s not in jail.”

  “But you said—”

  “I said we found him. I didn’t say he was alive.” It was totally inappropriate, but Rhodes found himself thinking he sounded like Hack and Lawton.

  “Oh. You mean—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” West said. “Just make things easier for us, I bet.”

  He was right about that, Rhodes supposed. There wouldn’t be any ongoing investigation to interfere with the probate process.

  “What happened to the old guy, Sheriff?” West asked. Rhodes told them.

  “Heck of a way to go,” West said, but he didn’t seem too concerned about it. It was clear that the main thing he wanted was to make sure there were no impediments to his marriage.

  “Did he have the…the teeth?” Miss Bobbit said.

  “He had dentures,” Rhodes said, remembering Kennedy’s crushed head. “We’re not sure yet whose they were, but Dr. White will have given them to the dentist by now. We’ll know tomorrow.”

  “Well, I guess that settles that, then,” West said. “He took the teeth and killed Lloyd. It’s a damn shame.”

  Miss Bobbit didn’t seem to think it was a shame. She didn’t seem very upset by the two deaths. “There won’t be any more publicity about all this, will there?” she asked.

  “It’s not every day we find a body in the city dump,” Rhodes said. “I’d say this will be a front-page story.”

  “But my name won’t be involved, will it?”

  “Maybe not,” Rhodes said. “Not too much, anyway.” Most of the story would concern the discovery of the body in the dump, the sensational part, if he knew how newspapers worked. Billy Joe Bryon would make good copy, too. The colorful local character. The newspaper would want to run a picture of his house. Maybe Red Rogers would even try to interview him. Rhodes would like to hear that one. And of course there would be a lot about Kennedy’s connection with the Body in the Well. The Bobbits would most likely be just a footnote.

  Miss Bobbit seemed relieved. Rhodes left her there with her fiancé and went back to the car. They seemed to him to be a strange couple. He and Ivy were pretty normal by comparison, or at least he liked to think so.

  “How did she take the news?” Ivy asked when he was back in the car.

  “She was glad to hear it, I guess. With her, it’s hard to tell. She’s glad it’s over, though.”

  Ivy smiled. “Well, King, this case is closed,” she said. “Thank you, Sergeant Preston,” Rhodes said.

  At the Jolly Tamale, Rhodes and Ivy had chicken fajitas for two, with side dishes of beans and rice. Guacamole, pico de gallo, cheese, and sour cream were provided to garnish the chicken, which they rolled in flour tortillas along with grilled onions and green peppers. They also had tortilla chips to eat with the red sauce on the table. Rhodes washed it all down with Dr Pepper, t
hough Ivy stuck to iced tea.

  After he had finished eating, Rhodes suspected that he knew why he was gaining weight even when he skipped lunch. He was afraid he might have to loosen his belt buckle to get out of the restaurant.

  They drove back to Rhodes’s house, and Ivy insisted on going around to the back yard to greet Speedo. Speedo was glad to see both of them, frolicking around the yard, barking and running, and Rhodes felt guilty that he didn’t have more time to spend with his dog.

  When they went in the house, the phone was ringing. Rhodes picked it up and answered. It was his daughter, Kathy.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said. She sounded well and happy, for which Rhodes was grateful. She was twenty-four years old, teaching school near Dallas, but Rhodes still worried about her.

  “Hi, yourself,” he said. “What’s going on?”

  “I was wondering about the big wedding,” she said. “Is it still on for Friday?”

  “You’d better ask Ivy about that. She’s right here.”

  “Let me talk to her then.”

  Rhodes handed Ivy the phone. She listened for a few seconds, then laughed, looking at Rhodes.

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s still on.”

  She listened again.

  “I hope he sounded worried,” she said. “I did get a little upset with him, but I got over it…. No, it wasn’t anything he did to me. He’s usually very sweet.”

  She looked at Rhodes, who felt his ears getting warm. He didn’t like to hear himself talked about that way, not even if it was to his daughter.

  “What?” Ivy said into the phone. “No, it was nothing like that. It was just something that happened. It’s bothered me before, and I know I should be used to it by now, but it’s not easy…. Yes, I’m sure you worry about him, too.”

  Rhodes didn’t like to hear that, either. He was supposed to be the one who did the worrying in the family. Other people weren’t supposed to be worrying about him.