Of All Sad Words

by Bill Crider

  Rhodes smiled. “It’s on Larry’s property.”

  “That might be true,” Lawless said. He smiled, too, but he didn’t mean it any more than Rhodes had. “That doesn’t mean it’s his still. It belonged to Terry.”

  There were times when Rhodes just wanted to laugh and say “Nice try.” This was one of them. However, being a professional lawman, he always managed to restrain himself, even though it wasn’t easy.

  Lawless must have seen the amusement in Rhodes’s eyes, but that didn’t keep him from going on with his story.

  “We think that’s why Terry wasn’t in the house when it exploded,” the lawyer said. “He must have been going down to the creek to check on his still. We think someone was waiting for him there and shot him.”

  Rhodes wondered who had told Lawless where Terry’s body had been found. Rhodes hadn’t told him, but it didn’t matter. The whole story would all be in the report that Rhodes had written, and Lawless would get a copy of it sooner or later. The report, however, would say that Terry had been shot at the house, not down by the creek. Rhodes could have mentioned that, but he didn’t.

  Rhodes wondered about the “we” Lawless had mentioned. Did Lawless really expect Rhodes to believe that Crawford had come up with that idea on his own? Probably not. It was all part of the game to Lawless.

  “You might want to save the story about the still for the TABC rep when he gets here,” Rhodes said. “I’m not going to arrest Larry for the still. I’ll let the TABC handle that.”

  Rhodes could have arrested Crawford, because local officials often cooperated with the TABC, and Rhodes planned to do so this time. But he didn’t want to make an arrest without having the TABC agent take a look at the evidence.

  “Nobody’s going to arrest Larry,” Lawless said. “After all, it wasn’t his still.”

  “Terry’d tell you the same, if he was here to do it,” Larry said. “I tried a hundred times to convince him to get rid of it, but he never listened to me.”

  “There’d been some trouble about the still,” Lawless said. “Not between the brothers. This was something else.”

  While Rhodes usually got impatient with the same old spiel, he was always glad to hear something new, or even a variation on a theme.

  “What kind of trouble?” he asked.

  “I’ll let Larry tell you about it,” Lawless said. “Go ahead, Larry.”

  Rhodes had already suspected that there had been some coaching going on. Now he was absolutely convinced of it.

  “Well, Sheriff,” Larry began, “like I said, I tried to tell Terry that still of his was gonna get him in trouble. There’s some folks don’t like stills.”

  “The folks in the sheriff’s department and at the TABC sure don’t like them,” Rhodes said, though he was pretty sure Larry wasn’t talking about those people.

  “I don’t mean the law,” Larry said, confirming Rhodes’s suspicions.

  “Who are you talking about, then?”

  Larry looked at Lawless, who gave him a little nod. You can’t beat a good coach, Rhodes thought. Larry looked back at the sheriff.

  “Vigilantes,” he said.

  According to the story Larry told, he and Terry had been getting “anonymous threats.”

  “We got these notes,” he said. “Printed on white paper, like by a computer. They said stuff like ‘If you don’t stop what you’re doing, we’ll stop you ourselves.’ That’s why I was telling Larry he had to quit making whiskey. Besides it being against the law, I mean.”

  “I’d like to see the notes,” Rhodes said.

  “Well, see, they all got burned up when the trailer exploded,” Larry said. “Otherwise, I’d be happy to show ’em to you.”

  Rhodes wondered if Larry had ever told a teacher that his dog had eaten his homework, but he had to give Larry credit. Or maybe Lawless should get the credit. At any rate, it was easy enough to claim that the notes had existed and that the explosion had destroyed them. Nobody could prove otherwise.

  “If you want to know what I think,” Larry continued, “I think it was that Benton fella and some of his friends. He’s been spying on me and Terry, I can tell you that. He’s said a few things around town about how he’d like to get rid of us. Like he’s the king of the world or something.”

  Larry had called Benton a “nosy asshole,” Rhodes recalled. He wondered just how far Benton’s nosiness had gone. He also wondered about the pickup that had tried to run him down. Could it have been driven by vigilantes who’d come to take out the still?

  The problem was that Rhodes didn’t want to believe in the vigilante idea. It was like something out of the Old West, from some old black-and-white movie with Randolph Scott or Joel McCrea. Judge Parry would believe it, though. He’d even come up with the same idea. As much as Rhodes hated to admit it, maybe there was some truth to the possibility.

  “It’s an interesting thought,” he said, “but I’m not the one you should be telling it to. Somebody from the TABC will be here later today. You can talk to him.”

  “I don’t want to talk to him.” Larry looked to his lawyer. “Will I have to?”

  “Not for a while,” Lawless said. “If ever.”

  “Maybe I’d just better arrest you right now,” Rhodes said. “To be sure you talk to him. We found some whiskey at that still, and you made it.”

  “No, he didn’t make it,” Lawless said.

  He sounded confident, and Rhodes wondered why. Then he remembered: no fingerprints.

  “You don’t have to worry about Larry running off, Sheriff,” Lawless continued. “And you don’t have to worry about the TABC, Larry. You’re completely innocent. Your late brother will have to shoulder the blame.”

  That’s going to be pretty hard for Terry to do, Rhodes thought, considering where he is. Rhodes had to admit that it was a good ploy, about the only one Larry had. Blame the dead man. Lawless could probably drag it out in the courts for years. That is, he could if Larry had the money to pay him, which seemed pretty unlikely.

  Unlikely, that is, unless there was a big settlement for the explosion that had taken out the manufactured home. Terry hadn’t died in it, so wrongful death was out of the picture, at least for the propane company. That didn’t mean that Larry couldn’t collect the value of his home, plus some damages, however. Lawless must have thought that was a good possibility, or he wouldn’t have Larry for a client. Rhodes needed to talk to Chief Parker to see if he’d finished his investigation into what caused the explosion. If he had, Rhodes wanted to know what he’d found out.

  However, he didn’t want to discuss any of that at the moment. He had something else on his mind.

  “Let’s talk about Jerry Kergan,” he said.

  “I don’t think my clients have anything to say on that subject,” Lawless told him.

  “You know he was murdered, don’t you?”

  “I heard that he’d been killed, but I’m not sure murder was mentioned. I don’t see any connection between that and my clients anyway.”

  “They knew him, or one of them did. Pretty well, I’ve heard. Right, Larry?”

  “I knew him,” Larry said, looking down at the thick carpet as if it were the most fascinating thing he’d seen in years. “We were friends. Terry and me grew up around Thurston, and we knew him there. We ate at his place once or twice, talked over old times. That’s about it. We weren’t real close buddies or anything.”

  Lawless stood up. “You don’t have to talk about Jerry Kergan, Larry. The sheriff is just fishing around. Unless he’s going to arrest you for something or other, I think he should go now.”

  Rhodes didn’t mind leaving at that point. He at least knew more now than when he’d come in. He had only one more thing he wanted to say.

  “I have a question for you,” he said to Lawless. “It’s about these vigilantes Larry thinks were after him.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about them.”

  “You were in our Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy, thoug
h. You know the others who were in the class. Benton, for one. Did you ever hear any of them talking about Larry and Terry and what they suspected them of?”

  “Not a word,” Lawless said. “If the others talked about things like that, they knew better than to do it in front of a lawyer. A couple of them were lawyers, too. Well, one of them was.”

  “Not in Texas,” Rhodes said, thinking of Max Schwartz.

  “A lawyer’s a lawyer,” Lawless said. “They train us well. We all think alike.”

  “Now there’s a scary thought.”

  Lawless nodded. “I’d have to go along with that. Now, don’t you have some important sheriff business to do? What about that book signing at the Wal-Mart? I was planning to get you to sign a copy for me.”

  “I might not be there,” Rhodes said. “I’m sure the authors will be more than happy to sign a book for you if I can’t make it.”

  “It wouldn’t be the same.”

  “You’d get over it.”

  “Yes,” Lawless said, “I guess I would.”

  Chapter 16

  MOST SMALL COUNTIES IN TEXAS WEREN’T LUCKY ENOUGH TO have a doctor trained in forensic pathology living in them. As a result, they shipped bodies that required an autopsy to the medical examiner in some nearby large city. This resulted in a big expense for the small counties, and it added more bodies to the huge backlogs that the bigger cities already had waiting for examination.

  Blacklin County, on the other hand, had Dr. Alan White. He’d served his two-year internship after medical school and become certified as a forensic pathologist, only to decide that he didn’t want to make examining dead bodies his career. He’d once told Rhodes that he preferred to deal with the living and to heal when he could, rather than probe into the secrets of the newly, and usually violently, dead.

  However, Dr. White had been persuaded to take on the job of medical examiner for the county after he’d been assured that he could continue his private practice, since there would be few opportunities for him to do autopsies in such a small county. He was also promised that he wouldn’t have to take any additional jobs from the neighboring counties if he didn’t want to. With that assurance, he’d taken the job and had been doing it for years. He’d never taken any bodies from other counties, and he now insisted that if there was ever anything complicated or mysterious about a death, the body would have to be sent somewhere else for autopsy. Blacklin County didn’t have the facilities for anything other than routine work.

  Rhodes didn’t think there was anything too mysterious about the death of Terry Crawford, who’d simply been shot. So when he left the Lawj Mahal, Rhodes drove to the old redbrick mansion that now served as Clyde Ballinger’s funeral home to see if the autopsy report was ready.

  Rhodes couldn’t remember when the funeral home had been anything other than what it was, but he’d heard stories about the old days, when one of the town’s richest families had lived there and the grounds had occupied the entire block. There had been tennis courts and a swimming pool, a great rarity on private property in those days.

  Now the place occupied only half a block. Big elm trees lined the lawn along the street, and a walk led up to a wide concrete porch that featured tall white columns.

  Rhodes never went in the front door on business, however. He always drove around to the back, where Clyde Ballinger lived and had an office in the small building that had served as servants’ quarters in the long-forgotten days when the mansion had been a family home instead of a funeral home.

  Ballinger was in his office, reading, when Rhodes came in. There was nothing unusual about that. Ballinger nearly always had a book in his hand if he wasn’t conducting business. It was the books themselves that were unusual, since Ballinger’s choice of reading material was old paperbacks, preferably of the hard-boiled type written forty or fifty years earlier.

  The funeral director looked up when Rhodes entered the office. Seeing who the visitor was, he held up the book so Rhodes could see the cover.

  Rhodes was surprised. The book looked brand-new.

  “I didn’t know you bought new books,” he said.

  “I usually don’t,” Ballinger replied. He stood up and handed Rhodes the book. “Take a look.”

  Rhodes looked at the cover, which had an old-fashioned painting on it. The title of the book was The Gutter and the Grave, by Ed McBain. Rhodes knew that Ballinger was a big fan of McBain’s 87th Precinct series, but the book didn’t look as if it was about the cops Ballinger knew so well. Rhodes handed the book back to Ballinger.

  “I thought McBain died a couple of years ago,” he said. “I remember that you told me there wouldn’t be any more books about the Eighty-seventh Precinct.”

  “That’s right.” Ballinger put the book on his desk. “This book’s about a private eye. McBain wrote it nearly fifty years ago, but there’s this publisher called Hard Case Crime that’s reprinting books like that. Man, it sure beats finding them at garage sales.” He picked up the book again. “Of course, it cost me six-ninety-nine, plus tax. I used to get ’em for a dime at garage sales.”

  “You could have waited till this one got old enough to show up at a garage sale,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “Couldn’t wait. I’m getting old and impatient. You’re as patient as ever, though, because I know you didn’t come here to listen to me yammer about old books.”

  “Sometimes I think all I do in this job is listen to people yammer.” Rhodes thought about Terry Crawford and Jerry Kergan. He thought about his shoulder and chest, which were still painful, even if they didn’t hurt as much as before. “Now and then, there’s a little bit more to it, though.”

  “Yeah, crime busting and all that. I might have to buy me another new book today just to read all about that kind of thing.”

  “You mean the one Claudia and Jan wrote?”

  “Blood Fever,” Ballinger said. “Good title. Kind of gets you excited just hearing it. I bet the sheriff in that one’s a real go-getter.”

  Rhodes wondered if that was a crack. He decided that it wasn’t.

  “He is. His name’s Sage Barton. He’s a crack shot and a devil with the women.”

  “Just like you,” Ballinger said. “I hear you’re the model for him.”

  “I don’t know how stories like that get started. I just happen to know the authors. I’ve never been involved in the kind of things they’re writing about. Just ordinary little murders like Terry Crawford’s.”

  “Yeah. And I guess that’s the reason you’re here. Dr. White left the autopsy report for you. It’s over here on my desk.”

  Ballinger put down The Gutter and the Grave, located the report, and handed it to Rhodes.

  “Take a seat and read it over. Take your time. I’ll read my book some more. I like the murders in books a lot better than real ones.”

  Rhodes wondered if Ballinger liked old books about murder and mayhem so much because he knew they weren’t real. Maybe they helped him distance himself from the bodies he dealt with just about every day. Could be, he thought, but psychology wasn’t his strong suit. He settled down to read the autopsy report.

  It didn’t take long, and the report pretty much confirmed what Rhodes had already guessed. Terry Crawford had died from two small-caliber gunshot wounds to the chest. Both bullets had remained in the body, and White said they were probably .25-caliber.

  Rhodes thought using a .25-caliber pistol was about the same as throwing rocks, unless you were pretty close to the target. That meant that Terry had probably known his killer, or at least had let the person get close enough to shoot with some accuracy. But not too close. There were no powder burns on the T-shirt Terry had been wearing.

  The bullets had tumbled in Terry’s body and one had nicked his heart. Rhodes was surprised he’d gotten as far from the house as he had.

  Another thing: Dr. White thought that Terry had bled so much because he’d been moving, maybe running. Rhodes wondered what Terry was running from.

  Then
there was the pistol. A small pistol like a .25 is a shopkeeper’s gun, Rhodes thought, something like Max Schwartz might keep under the cash register. Or something like Jerry Kergan might have had in the restaurant.

  Of course, it was also the type of pistol someone might buy at a flea market, the kind of thing you could easily conceal, even carry in a pocket.

  “Dr. White left the bullets for you,” Ballinger said when Rhodes looked up from reading the report. “You want to go get them?”

  Rhodes nodded, and they left the office for the back room of the mansion, where the autopsy room was located. Rhodes got the bullets from the locker where Dr. White had put them. They were in a plastic bag with a label on it. White had printed the label so it could be read easily, not that his handwriting was as bad as people joked it was.

  “What about Jerry Kergan?” Ballinger asked. “Why no autopsy on him?”

  “We know how he died,” Rhodes said. “No question about it. I was practically there when it happened.”

  “Too bad about him,” Ballinger said. “I thought he was going to make a go of that place and get himself set up pretty well.”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said. “We’ll never know now.”

  “I guess not,” Ballinger said.

  After leaving the funeral home, Rhodes drove by the fire station, a brand-new building located across the street from the old fire station. Some of the old-timers remembered a third fire station, which had been located a couple of blocks down the street, but that building, like so many others in Clearview’s downtown, was long gone, whether having been demolished or having crumbled on its own, Rhodes didn’t know.

  Chief Parker was sitting on a bench in front of the station, as if he’d been waiting for the sheriff to come by. Rhodes drove into a spot at the side of the building. He got out of the car and joined Parker on the bench, but not before admiring the big red engines in the bays.

  “You ever think about being a fireman when you were a kid?” Parker asked when Rhodes sat down.

  “All the time. I used to listen for the sirens and beg my daddy to take me to see the fires, but it wasn’t the fires I cared about. It was the engines. What about you?”