Death on the Move

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes drove by slowly, but saw no sign of life. There was no place to hide a large green truck, either, so he drove on down the road. He passed several similar houses in the next couple of miles, but there was nothing particularly suspicious about them. Then he saw the one with the barn.

  Chapter 10

  It wasn’t much of a barn. It looked as if it had been built in a hurry and then abandoned for thirty or forty years. The tin roof was only partially in place, and Rhodes could see rusty segments of corrugated tin lying in the trees beyond. Those pieces of tin could have been blown off by Saturday’s norther, or they could have been blown off years before. There was no way to tell.

  The house wasn’t in much better shape than the barn, but at least some of the windows had glass in them. There was no candle on the porch, but a hand-lettered sign nailed to a pecan tree said “BeWAR oF THe DOg.” Rhodes didn’t see the dog. He drove into the yard and parked beside a battered Dodge pickup that had once been black. It was now rusted and scraped so badly it had almost no color at all.

  When Rhodes got out of his own pickup, he turned to Speedo. “You stay put, you hear?”

  Speedo’s answer was a low growl. Rhodes looked around, but still didn’t see the dog the sign warned of. Then he heard a rumbling noise from underneath the porch. He peered in, but it was too dark so see anything, though he thought he caught sight of two big eyes. He decided not to walk up and knock on the door.

  “Hello,” he called. “Anybody home?”

  There was no answer, but he waited patiently. If anyone was in there, normal curiosity would get the better of them sooner or later. It didn’t matter where you lived. If there was a stranger parked in your front yard, you would eventually go out to see what he wanted.

  No one came. Where was everyone today? Rhodes wondered. He continued to stand, leaning on his pickup, for nearly five minutes.

  All right, he thought. If no one’s here, I’ll just have a look in that barn. He walked to the back of the truck and let down the tailgate. Speedo jumped down, and they walked together toward the dilapidated barn. Speedo’s neck hair was ruffled and he looked back over his shoulder at the house several times. Rhodes hoped that whatever was under there would stay put.

  The rough ground made for hard walking. Rhodes had to be careful not to step in a rut or on a clod and turn an ankle. Speedo followed him closely, never getting more than a foot away.

  When they got to the barn, Rhodes saw that it was sturdier than it had looked from the road. Although it did seem almost to lean at an angle, the boards were tight and in fact had been repaired in several places with relatively new one-by-fours.

  There was no door in the side of the barn that faced the road, so Rhodes and Speedo walked around to the other side, where there was a large open area, covered only by the remains of the tin roof. A feed trough made of wood was mostly rotted away.

  The rest of the barn was taken up by a storage room that looked to be about ten by fifteen feet. The room had probably once been used to store hay and store-bought feed, but from the looks of the trough there hadn’t been any feed to keep in there in years.

  So why did the room have a practically new door, with bright hinges and a new brass padlock on it?

  There was no legal reason for Rhodes to open the door. There was no truck here, and no way there could be a truck in that room. He had no probable cause to open the door. No judge in the world would give him a search warrant to open it. Still, it was clearly suspicious. He walked closer, with Speedo trotting at his heels, to see if there was a way he could peer in between a crack in the boards.

  There was a deep-throated growl at his back, and he and Speedo turned together to find themselves facing a supremely self-confident Pit Bull.

  “I should have known that if there was anything in this place, they wouldn’t have left it without a guard,” Rhodes said to Speedo.

  The words were meant as an apology, but Speedo didn’t hear them. He was concentrating on the other dog. Rhodes had come across Speedo on another case and had taken him home when his owner was killed. Speedo had been no great shakes as a watchdog. He was fairly big, obviously part Collie, along with several other strains, all of them obscure, but Rhodes wasn’t sure what kind of fighter he’d be.

  On the other hand, Rhodes was pretty sure what kind of fighter the Pit Bull would be. Whoever lived here wouldn’t have it around if it were a pussycat. It had been lying in wait underneath the house. When they went too far in their trespassing it came out after them.

  Rhodes wished he had brought his pistol with him, but he had left it off. It wasn’t even in the pickup. He’d decided that his only weapon was diplomacy.

  “Good boy,” he said.

  The Bull growled and advanced a step. Rhodes didn’t think diplomacy was going to work. Besides that, Speedo was now definitely taking up a defensive posture, but from behind Rhodes.

  Rhodes looked around. There was nowhere to run. He couldn’t get into the storage room, and there was nowhere else to go. Barns were supposed to have lofts, but this one didn’t. He had seen many an old movie where a man involved in a barn fight would grab a handy pitchfork and go after his attacker with a vengeance. Here, there were no pitchforks in sight.

  Rhodes took a tentative step backward, and nearly stepped on Speedo. The Pit Bull took a step forward, keeping the distance between them the same. The hair along its backbone was beginning to stand up, and its teeth were bared.

  Rhodes was just as glad Speedo wasn’t trying to defend them. The Pit Bull would have ripped him to shreds. Speedo wasn’t a small dog, but he was clearly no match for the Pit Bull.

  There was no loft and no pitchfork, but there might be something Rhodes could throw. He looked around, but didn’t see a thing.

  Rhodes heard a car on the road and hoped it would go on by. The only thing worse than being trapped here by the dog would be to have the dog’s owner show up and find him.

  The car stopped in the yard, and Rhodes heard two doors slam. Just his luck. When things started going bad, they never seemed to improve. He sneaked a look at his watch. Not quite eleven o’clock. Ruth Grady wouldn’t even begin to look for him for another thirty minutes.

  “Samson,” a deep masculine voice called from the front of the house. “Samson. . . . Now where in the hell is that sumbitch? If he’s off chasin’ rabbits again, I swear I’m gonna skin his ass. . . . Samson!”

  The third time was the charm. The Pit Bull barked, lowered his head, and charged Rhodes.

  Rhodes froze momentarily as all the stories about Pit Bulls that he had ever seen on the six o’clock news flashed through his head. Pit Bull mangles mailman. Pit Bull mauls toddler. He knew that Pit Bull owners hated those stories and insisted they were merely isolated examples of vicious behavior and similar examples could be found about any breed if you looked—but the fact remained that it wasn’t just any breed that was charging him at that moment.

  Speedo began to bark frenziedly but stayed behind Rhodes’s legs, perhaps under the illusion that he was protected there.

  About three feet from Rhodes the dog jumped. It wasn’t built for jumping, and the absurd sight unfroze Rhodes. He reached out and grabbed at the dog. He didn’t know why he did that. It just seemed like the thing to do.

  He surprised himself by getting a handful of fur and skin, and let the dog’s momentum carry him into a turn. He could feel the dog’s teeth snapping at him. Without thinking too much about it he let go of his hold, trying to put a little wrist into his throw. The dog sailed away and hit the door of the storehouse with a solid and very satisfactory thud.

  Unfortunately, the dog was only stunned. Rhodes could hear his feet scrabbling at the hard ground almost as soon as he hit. Rhodes was already off and running, Speedo at his heels, barking wildly. Rhodes came up short at the rotting feed trough, bent down, and grabbed at one of the wooden legs, which was made from a four-by-four. He straightened and turned just as Speedo skidded by him, his claws seeking a grip on
the packed earth.

  Rhodes had never been much of a baseball player, but he put his arms into the swing he made at the charging Pit Bull, who, not having learned a thing from its previous attempt, once more launched himself into an awkward dive.

  Rhodes connected solidly with the side of the dog’s head, knocking it aside and down but not far, because the dog was too big and heavy. This time the Bull lay still, but its sides heaved. He was still breathing, though not as heavily as Rhodes. Speedo trotted over to the Bull and stood over him, barking.

  Rhodes had to smile. “Great job,” he said.

  “That dog damn well better be all right, mister,” a deep voice said. “If he ain’t, I’m gonna kill you and your dog, too.”

  The man who had spoken was as big as a bear, had a three-day beard that somehow did not look nearly as fashionable as it did on a lot of TV stars, and wore heavy-laced boots. He was also wearing about three flannel shirts, one over the other, with the lower layers revealed at the neck and wrists. Also revealed was the Saturday Night Special he held in his right hand, a .22-caliber pistol probably made in Bulgaria or some equally unlikely place, but no less deadly for all that.

  There were some people who weren’t afraid of a .22. Rhodes had talked to them. Their general theory was that a .22 had no stopping power and that a man with five or six .22 bullets in him could keep right on going and still have the strength to overwhelm his assailant—which proved that they really had no idea what they were talking about. Those little bullets could tumble around inside you and hit any number of vital organs before they ran out of steam. Just one of them, if it moved around in there enough, could do as much damage as a .357.

  The man with the pistol spit a brown stream of snuff onto the dirt and wiped the back of his left hand across his mouth. That was when Rhodes heaved the four-by-four at him.

  The man threw up his hands to block the board. The pistol went off as his finger reflexively pulled the trigger, and Rhodes and Speedo jumped him at the same time.

  Why his dog had gotten so brave all of a sudden, Rhodes didn’t know, but to tell the truth, Speedo was more of a hindrance than a help, barking and slobbering as Rhodes tried to get a grip on the man’s gun arm.

  The man twisted under Rhodes and tried to hit him with the pistol. Rhodes moved his head aside, and Speedo got a grip on the man’s wrist. The man howled, or tried to howl. It sounded more as if he might be strangling on his snuff.

  Rhodes grabbed the pistol and struggled into a sitting position on the man’s chest. Holding the gun in his left hand, he clipped the man on the point of the chin with his right. His teeth clicked together and he quit howling. Speedo released the man’s wrist. Rhodes stood up, glad to get away from the man, who, he had just noticed, smelled worse than Speedo’s breath.

  The Pit Bull was beginning to stir, but now that he actually had a pistol, Rhodes had no desire to shoot the dog. He walked over to the trough, laid the pistol in it, and grabbed hold. He dragged it over to the Bull, removed the pistol, and toppled the trough over on the dog.

  Let him bite the inside of the trough for a while, Rhodes thought. It might be good for his teeth.

  “Looks like you have everything under control,” Ruth Grady said.

  Rhodes looked around. Ruth was there, holding her pistol pointed at another man, this one much smaller than the one on the ground, but just as mean-looking. He was dressed in a similar fashion and wearing a yellow gimme cap on which the initials a.p.f. were placed in a horizontal row beside the words “a perfect fertilizer.”

  “This one was about to come around here with a 12-gauge shotgun,” Ruth said. “I persuaded him not to.”

  “Good idea,” Rhodes said. He looked at his watch. “You’re early.”

  Ruth smiled. “I’ve learned that it’s not a bad idea to be a little early when it’s you I’m backing up.”

  Rhodes looked at her prisoner. “You have a key to that storeroom?”

  He stared back, saying nothing. His eyes looked as hard as marbles.

  “If you don’t let me in there, I’m going to get a warrant and come back with an axe,” Rhodes said.

  “I got a key,” the man said. His voice was hoarse, and he sounded as if he might have a bad cold.

  “Reach for it very carefully and toss it on the ground,” Rhodes said.

  He did what he was told. Rhodes picked up the key and opened the storeroom.

  “I bet you one thing,” Lawton said. “I bet those two ain’t had a bath since the Carter administration.”

  Hack put down the hamburger he had brought in from the Bluebonnet. “I’d just as soon not talk about that right now,” he said. “I’m tryin’ to eat my lunch.”

  “How much dope you reckon they had in that storeroom?” Lawton asked Rhodes, who was also eating.

  “Four or five pounds,” Rhodes said. “Not cleaned or anything. That’s counting seeds and stems.”

  “You can put in the papers that it has a street value of a million dollars,” Hack said. “These days, if it don’t have a street value of a million dollars, it don’t even rate the front page.”

  Actually, Rhodes had been disappointed with the find. It was certainly more than he had expected, in one way, but it was much less in another. There wasn’t a trace of a refrigerator or a TV set, no old furniture, no tools, nothing that might have come from the burgled houses. The two men, brothers named Burl and Lonnie, swore they had no idea about any burglaries, no idea about the whereabouts of any green truck, and in fact no idea at all about how the dope could have gotten into their barn.

  Rhodes figured they would change their minds about the dope, but he was pretty sure they were telling the truth about all the rest. When he brought up the dead woman, they had almost panicked. They knew that they were in trouble because of the marijuana, but murder was something even they didn’t want to get mixed up in. Either they were excellent actors, or they were mostly innocent. Rhodes believed the latter.

  He was curious about the marijuana, though. It wasn’t often that much dope turned up in such a small, out-of-the-way county. He had encountered a large quantity of it only once before, and he wondered if these two had any connection with a man named Rapper, who had been behind the other deal. He hoped not. He didn’t want to see Rapper back in Blacklin County anytime soon.

  “We been goin’ over that computer list of the people who bought the trucks,” Hack said, folding up the paper that had held his burger and collecting the little cardboard containers from the french fries. “It came in with the mail. Not a single familiar name, and no address even close to here.”

  “Keep looking,” Rhodes said. “You might find something.”

  “All right,” Hack said. “We got something else for you, too. Calls came in from the Storm and West families about those funeral registers.”

  “What about them?”

  “They looked at ‘em.”

  Rhodes got a grip on his patience. “That’s all they did, just look?”

  “Well,” hack said grudgingly, “they did say they noticed one thing.”

  Rhodes leaned forward in his chair. “What?”

  “Wasn’t much of anything,” Hack said.

  “Tell me anyway,” Rhodes said.

  “See, we don’t think it amounts to anything,” Lawton said. “We been talkin’ it over, and we think—”

  “Tell me anyway,” Rhodes said again, his voice hard.

  “It’s just that both of the families said there was names of people on there that they didn’t know,” Hack said. “I don’t see how—”

  “What were the names?”

  “You don’t have to get so snippy about it,” Hack said. “I got ‘em written down here somewhere.” He began to ruffle through a stack of papers that he had jumbled in front of the radio. “Here they are. The Wests say they ain’t ever heard of Mr. and Mrs. Jeffery Sheldon or Sammie Faye Woods. And the Storms never heard of Sammie Faye or Mrs. and Mrs. Johnathan Spence.”

  Rhodes slammed
his hand down on the desktop. “That’s it!” he said. “Sammie Faye Woods!”

  “Why is she it?” Hack said.

  “The same person going to view both bodies, and the families never even heard of her. She must be the one who’s doing the stealing,” Rhodes said.

  “See, that’s what you can get by jumpin’ to conclusions,” Lawton said. “That’s what Hack and I were sayin’. She didn’t do anything.”

  “How do you know?” Rhodes said.

  “ ‘Cause she’s been around this county for eighty-five years,” Hack said. “She goes to the funeral home just about ever’ day to see who’s there. She thinks it might be somebody she knows. You can ask Mr. Ballinger about her. He knows her. Ever’body knows about how she likes to go to funerals and see the bodies.”

  “I think I’ve heard about her,” Rhodes admitted.

  “Sure you have. Ever’body has,” Lawton said.

  “What about the other couples they never heard of?” Rhodes said. “There might be something in that.”

  “You can study on it if you want to,” Hack said. “I don’t see it myself.”

  Rhodes stared at the list. “I still think there’s something to this. What else could there be?”

  “You’re the sheriff,” Hack reminded him. “By the way, that Washburn fella’s comin’ in at four o’clock. Said it was the soonest he could make it. All Ruth told him was that it had something to do with the burglary of his property at the lake. You gonna talk to him?”

  “Yes,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be here. It’ll take me that long to go over that list of truck buyers.”

  “Won’t help none to look at it,” Hack said.

  “Probably not,” Rhodes said. “But we’ll see.”

  Chapter 11

  Washburn turned out to be a large man with a full black beard with hardly a touch of gray in it despite the fact that he was almost as old as Rhodes. He wore jeans and a white shirt. He told Rhodes that he was a teacher.