by Bill Crider
What Rhodes had been overlooking for a while was something that people had told him about Colley. Maybe he really had been trying to get his life back together, to change the way he was living and become different. Buck Sandstrom had mentioned that idea, and so had Mary Jo.
If Larry had known something about Bud Turley that he’d kept secret for years, and if the secret was something like murder, maybe he’d decided to come clean as the first step on his turnaround.
That by itself might not have been enough to cause Bud to kill him. It would be just Larry’s word against Bud’s. But what if Larry had some hard evidence, something like Ronnie’s baseball cap, for example? That would be enough to cause Bud considerable worry, the kind of worry that might lead him to kill his friend to protect himself from a murder charge.
Friendship was all well and good, but when it came to choosing between friendship and life in prison, Rhodes was cynical enough to believe that most people would say to heck with friendship and do whatever it took to save themselves.
Well, he thought, maybe not. Not if whatever it took was murder. He wasn’t quite cynical enough to think that most people would commit murder, but he thought a good percentage of them might very well consider it, and some of them would even go through with it.
Rhodes wasn’t absolutely certain that Colley had taken the baseball cap, but it made a kind of sense. Someone had searched Colley’s trailer, and a boy’s baseball cap would fit into a cereal box if you stuffed it inside.
One thing still bothered Rhodes. His idea was that Colley had taken the cap from Ronnie’s body, probably to keep it as evidence in case he ever needed to prove that Bud had killed Ronnie.
If that was true, why had Bud taken the caps from Colley and Louetta?
Well, Rhodes had never expected his unconscious mind to provide all the answers.
And, to tell the truth, he wished it had provided him an answer without so many maybes in it. That would have made things much easier all around.
One thing he considered was the fact that Bud had been so insistent that none of his Bigfoot buddies disturb the area where the mammoth had been found. As it was, the mammoth bones were a good distance from where Ronnie—if it was Ronnie—had been buried, but if a bunch of people started probing around the entire area, they might well have run across the other bones. Bud wouldn’t have wanted that.
Before Rhodes could come up with any more theories, Speedo got tired of running around the yard with Yancey and located his ball. He brought it over and dropped it at Rhodes’s feet, and the game began. Speedo never seemed to get tired of it, and neither did Yancey, whose contribution consisted more of yipping and yapping than anything else.
Rhodes enjoyed the game, too, but he couldn’t play all morning, as pleasant as that might be. He liked it out in the backyard before the day got started. It was cooler than it would be until the next evening, and playing ball with a couple of dogs was a lot more fun than dealing with whatever problems had occurred in the county overnight.
Someone had to deal with them, though, and he was the one who was drawing a salary. He got up and stretched. After putting out food and water for Speedo, he called Yancey, and they went inside.
“Those women were moonin’ people again,” Hack said when Rhodes entered the jail. “They’ve been doin’ it for two nights in a row now, and people are gettin’ tired of it.”
“Did anybody get a license number?” Rhodes asked.
Lawton and Hack laughed at that.
“Nobody was lookin’ at a license plate,” Lawton said. “Hack here’s still jealous that they ain’t mooned him yet.”
“Don’t start that,” Rhodes said. “I don’t have time for it. I’m going to be out and about this morning, and I might need Ruth to help out. Tell her to stay handy.”
“What’s goin’ on?” Hack said.
“I’ll tell you later,” Rhodes said, and left, knowing it would drive Hack and Lawton crazy.
He was smiling at that thought when he drove away and headed for Bud Turley’s place.
26
TURLEY’S HOUSE WAS QUIET, AND SO WAS THE SHOP BACK IN the barn. Rhodes got out of the county car and shut the door. He stood for a minute, listening, but he didn’t hear any country music.
He walked around to the barn. The big doors on the front were closed. Rhodes looked at the cars and trucks parked outside. He’d seen them in the dark, but he hadn’t really examined them.
The best place to hide something was in plain sight, Rhodes had heard, or at least that had been the theory expressed by one of his English teachers long ago when the class had discussed some story by Edgar Allan Poe. So if you followed Poe’s logic and you wanted to hide an old Chevy S-10 pickup, why not park it with a bunch of other vehicles and hope no one would notice?
It was a good theory, but there was no S-10 anywhere around. There was, however, a 1957 Oldsmobile, red over white, with rusted-out fenders. It would look good, Rhodes thought, if someone restored it properly, but he didn’t think Bud Turley was the man for the job. Besides, Rhodes already owned a creampuff Edsel, if there was such a thing, so he didn’t need an Oldsmobile. For that matter, he didn’t need the Edsel.
He walked along the side of the barn to the open area in back, which hadn’t been visited by a lawn mower since the Carter administration. Junked bodies of old cars hulked all around, some of them nearly hidden by grass and tall weeds.
A wrecked black Ford older than Rhodes, maybe as old as Hack and Lawton, sat with its hood up and nothing in its engine compartment except a hackberry tree with a trunk a couple of inches thick growing up through the middle.
This might be an even better place to hide a truck you wanted to get rid of, Rhodes thought, but he didn’t find the S-10 there, either.
Rhodes left the cars and checked the barn’s back doors. He found them closed and held together with a chain that ran through two holes in the sheet metal. Rhodes rattled the chain and gave it a good hard pull. It clanged against the inside of the doors, and Rhodes decided that the ends were hooked together by a padlock.
The barn had a couple of big windows on each side, but Rhodes couldn’t see through them. They were too high. He could peer through the crack between the doors, but he couldn’t really see much except the shape of the ATV that Turley had been working on.
Rhodes decided that he didn’t need to see much more than that. It was clear enough that Turley wasn’t there. His Jeep was gone, so he was, too. Rhodes would just have to look for him somewhere else.
Larry Colley had frequented the Pool Hall and the Dairy Queen. Rhodes thought that Bud would be likely to hang around the same places.
He went to the Pool Hall first. It was a big square building made of concrete blocks painted white. At that time of day, only a couple of cars were parked in the lot, and Turley’s Jeep wasn’t one of them. Rhodes drove on by.
Turley’s Jeep wasn’t at the Dairy Queen, either, but Rhodes figured he’d better stop and perform a more thorough investigation just to be sure that Turley wasn’t hiding inside. When Rhodes went through the glass door in front, the woman behind the counter looked up and said, “Good morning, Sheriff. The usual?”
Rhodes knew then that he’d been buying too many Blizzards.
“Sure thing, Julia,” he said. He’d reform tomorrow.
While he waited for the Heath Bar Blizzard, Rhodes performed a conscientious check of the booths, but he didn’t see Bud Turley in any of them.
The mixing machine hummed, swirling together the soft ice cream and the bits of Heath Bar. Rhodes got out his billfold.
Julia set the Blizzard on the counter, and Rhodes paid her. She got his change and said, “Don’t see you in here on Bean Day much lately.”
The Dairy Queen had a big pot of pinto beans one day a week, and you could have all the beans and cornbread you could eat. Rhodes liked beans and cornbread, but not as much as he liked Blizzards.
“I’ll stop by one of these days,” he said. He picked up a
napkin and a spoon for his Blizzard and went outside.
Rhodes sat in the car in the parking lot and ate the Blizzard while he thought about where Turley might be.
It was possible that Bud had figured out that Rhodes was on to him and left the county, but Rhodes didn’t see how that could have happened. He hadn’t told anyone his suspicions except Ivy, who certainly hadn’t told Bud, and he was unlikely to figure it out for himself.
Only one other place to look came to mind, and that was the mammoth dig. Rhodes finished his Blizzard and got out of the car to throw the cup in the trash.
Getting back in the car, he thought of something else. Jennifer Loam might have asked Turley to come by the newspaper office for an interview. Rhodes started the car and headed over to the building that housed the Clearview Herald.
Turley wasn’t there, however, and neither was Jennifer Loam. Sharon Moncrief, who sold classified advertising and had a desk in a little cubicle near the front door of the Herald building, told Rhodes that Jennifer had called Turley earlier and told him to meet her at the mammoth dig. She wanted to get some photos of him there.
Rhodes thanked Sharon and left to drive to the site. He should have mentioned to Vance and the others that it wouldn’t be a good idea to talk about finding the human bones, but it was too late to worry about that now. They would almost certainly say something about them to Turley, who would be very much on his guard.
Rhodes hoped that Turley wouldn’t do anything stupid, and then he had to smile at himself for thinking such a thing. If there was any chance at all to do something stupid, Turley would be the one to do it. That was the story of his life.
When he reached the dig, Rhodes saw Turley’s Jeep parked off to the side of the road in a line of other vehicles. Jan’s black Aviator was there, along with Vance’s pickup and Jennifer Loam’s little car. Anderson and the high school students hadn’t arrived yet, which Rhodes thought was just as well.
He pushed through the weeds in the ditch and walked down to the dig, where he saw Bud Turley crouched under the canopy near one of the little red flags. Bud was holding a little brush in his hand and appeared to Rhodes to be pretending to dust off a rock.
Jennifer Loam took a picture of him, checked it in the viewer, and told Bud that it looked fine. He stood up and handed the brush to Vance.
Rhodes looked Turley over. He was wearing his many-pocketed vest and another T-shirt with the arms ripped away. His tattoos showed up to good advantage on his muscular arms. Rhodes wondered how they’d look in the picture, but what he was really interested in was the way the vest sagged on the left side. Turley was carrying one pistol in the vest, and he might have another one or two concealed somewhere.
Rhodes remembered that he’d told Ivy that he’d be careful. He hoped Turley would let him.
Just then Claudia looked up and saw Rhodes standing there. She nudged Jan, and they waved to him. Rhodes walked down the bank to the dig.
Turley watched him come. He didn’t look worried. Maybe no one had mentioned what the hogs had turned up.
“Hey, Sheriff,” Bud said. “I’m gonna be a media star.”
“I think I can get a whole page in the weekend edition for this story,” Jennifer said. “But there’s something I need to talk to you about, Sheriff.”
Rhodes had a sinking feeling he knew what she had in mind. Bud might not have found out about the bones on his own, but nothing got by Jennifer.
“Can it wait?” he said.
“I don’t think so. Claudia tells me there’s been another find out here.”
“I hope that was all right,” Claudia said. “You didn’t tell us it was a secret.”
Rhodes shrugged. Jennifer would have found out as soon as she read the police reports, which she did nearly every day, but that might have been a little later, and Bud wouldn’t have been around.
“It’s no secret,” Rhodes said.
“Do you know who it was yet?” Turley said.
He hadn’t been wearing his cap for the picture, but he had it back on now. Rhodes didn’t know where it had been.
“We might never know,” Rhodes said, which was no doubt stretching the truth a bit, but he didn’t really care. “Even if we find out, it’ll take a long time. It’s not easy to get a positive ID on remains that have been in the ground for a long time.”
Turley seemed to relax a little at that comment, and Rhodes didn’t mention that he was having the dental records checked. That shouldn’t take long at all.
“It would be easy on TV,” Jan said. “For that crew on CSI, I mean. They’d do a DNA analysis and have it back before the show was over.”
“It always looks easy on TV,” Rhodes said. “A real DNA analysis is more likely to take weeks, or even months.”
Vance, who had been standing off to the side, walked over to join them. “Besides, there aren’t very many crime labs as well equipped as the ones you see in those shows. There’s a shortage of money to equip them, and voters don’t like tax increases.”
“I take it you don’t mind paying taxes,” Rhodes said.
“Not when they’re for a good cause. But the money’s probably already available. It’s just being spent for other things.”
“Not in this county,” Rhodes said.
“No. I’m talking about the big cities.”
“I hate to change the subject,” Jennifer said, “but I think you’re trying to avoid my question, Sheriff.”
She was right, but Rhodes just gave her a smile and said, “Sorry. I got sidetracked.”
“That’s all right. I wanted to ask you if you’ve considered that the remains that were found here might be what’s left of Ronnie Bolton.”
Turley stiffened and looked at her sharply.
Rhodes said, as if it were the first time he’d thought of it, “Ronnie Bolton? He disappeared a long time ago. You weren’t even here then. How did you happen to hear about him?”
Jennifer waved away a bug that had flown in front of her face. “I read a lot of things about this county before I moved here. Well, that’s not strictly true. There’s not a whole lot available to read. But the disappearance of Ronnie Bolton was big news at one time, and it turns up quite a bit on Internet searches for Blacklin County.”
Technology, Rhodes thought. He knew there was a good reason he didn’t trust it. The Internet was as bad as gossip.
“You didn’t mention Ronnie Bolton to us,” Claudia said, giving Rhodes an accusatory look. “What’s the story?”
“You can look it up on the Internet later,” he said.
“We’d like to know now,” Jan said, and Vance nodded in agreement.
Rhodes sneaked a look at Turley out of the corner of his eye. The big man was nervous, but he didn’t appear anywhere near panic. Rhodes had planned to talk to him, but he’d intended to ease into the subject of Ronnie Bolton in a roundabout way. He hadn’t wanted it brought up so abruptly, and he hadn’t wanted anyone else to be around.
He moved a little closer to Bud, who moved over by Jan and said, “That’s an old story around here. Nobody’s interested in it anymore.”
“I am,” Jennifer said. “It would make a great article. Can’t you just see it? Two sets of bones uncovered along Pittman Creek in the same week. One set is from a mammoth dead thousands of years, and the other is from a young boy who disappeared not that long ago. How long has it been, Sheriff? I can’t remember.”
“A little over ten years,” Rhodes said.
“A great article,” Jennifer repeated. She shook her head and looked sheepish. “I’m sorry. I get carried away sometimes when it comes to stories that I might write. I realize that Ronnie Bolton was someone’s son, and there must have been a lot of grief over the years, but I can’t help being excited about writing about what happened.”
“I don’t blame you one bit,” Claudia said. “We writers have to take our material from life, and we need to find out the truth about things that happened, no matter what.”
“
We don’t know what happened,” Rhodes said, more for Bud’s benefit than for Claudia’s. “And we don’t know that we’ve found Ronnie Bolton. Like I said, it will take a long time to be sure about that.”
“What if it is him?” Vance said. “What will you do then?”
Turley had gotten to within only a step or two of Jan, and he’d managed to get her between himself and Rhodes.
Rhodes put out a hand to point down toward the spot where Ronnie’s remains had been found and took a few steps in that direction. Bud had a reputation for violence, and having seen an example of how excitable and quick to react he’d been during the little argument in the Round-Up on the previous night, Rhodes didn’t want him to get upset and start something, not with all the civilians around.
“If there’s been a crime, we’ll investigate,” Rhodes said. “That’s what we always do. But we don’t know that it’s him, or even that there’s been a crime committed.”
“Dental records,” Jennifer said.
Great, Rhodes thought. I should have known someone would come up with it.
“That’s right,” Vance said. “A good lab can compare the Bolton boy’s dental records with the teeth in the skull we found here. That wouldn’t take long at all.”
Rhodes could have said that Ronnie Bolton had never been to a dentist in his life, but he knew nobody would believe him, least of all Turley, who was swiveling his head to look from his Jeep to Rhodes as if trying to determine his chances of getting away.
“You said that you’d been looking for Bigfoot out here for years, Mr. Turley,” Jennifer said, seemingly unaware that he was becoming more and more jittery. “Were you here when Ronnie Bolton disappeared?”
That was it for Bud. He said, “I’m leaving. I gotta get to work.”
“You don’t have to be in such a rush,” Jan said. “You know this area as well as anybody, and we’d like to talk to you about what might have happened here.”
“You can go with me, then,” Bud said.
