Too Late to Die dr-1

by Bill Crider

  Johnny must have seen him about then. The cruiser’s blue and red bar lights flashed on, and Rhodes could hear the siren screaming. The cruiser began to pull steadily ahead. But not before Rhodes was able to get a glimpse of someone else inside.

  It suddenly dawned on him why he was able to catch up so quickly. Johnny had made a stop. A little insurance. Rhodes cursed himself for not having thought of it. After all, his own house was so close by. All Johnny would have had to do was to ask Kathy to go for a ride, to have a little talk.

  Rhodes shoved the Chevy’s accelerator right down to the worn rubber floor mat. He didn’t know what else to do. He might not have much of a chance, but he was going to make a race of it, at least for a while. He had to get Kathy back, had to get her before Johnny killed her, too.

  Chapter 16

  The road on which Rhodes and Sherman were traveling was what is called a “farm-to-market” road. That meant that while it was straight for short distances, it was never straight for very long. Such roads often followed old farm routes and wound through the country without much regard to the principle of the straight line. In a way this was an advantage for Rhodes, in that Johnny couldn’t use his speed as he could have done on a highway, and the pickup, with its short turning radius, was fairly maneuverable. On the other hand, the pickup was not loaded. The rear end was very light and tended to drift on the curves. It would be easy to lose control.

  The pickup had side vent windows which Rhodes would have liked to open to direct some air on his sweating body, but he didn’t want to lower the wind resistance any more than he had to. He decided to sweat. He wondered if Johnny had on the air conditioner in the county car and figured that he probably did. It wouldn’t cut down the power too much, certainly not enough to allow Rhodes to catch him. Rhodes was in fact already losing ground, but he was trying to stay in the chase.

  The irony of the situation struck Rhodes, and he almost laughed. He had been in car chases before, but he had always been driving the powerful county cruiser. He tried to imagine a movie in which a policeman was being pursued by an old pickup truck, but he couldn’t do it. He knew that in real life the situation was ridiculous. He would need a miracle to catch Johnny Sherman.

  The miracle came sooner than he expected. He lost sight of the county car for a few seconds as it went around a curve. When he saw it again, the bar lights were off and the brake lights were on. Johnny was slowing down. Rhodes looked at the road ahead and saw why.

  About a mile away, just over the crest of a hill on the Clearview side, sat a DPS car. The trooper was positioned so that he could be out of sight of anyone approaching the hill while he tracked them with his radar gun. Johnny Sherman had no desire to go speeding by a highway patrolman with his bar lights on and his siren going. In fact, he probably had no desire to pass him at all.

  A highway patrol car on that road, on a Monday morning, was an occurrence so rare as to be invisible on a scale of probability. It might not happen again for a year or more, but Rhodes was certainly glad that it was happening now.

  In front of him, Johnny Sherman’s car took a sharp left turn onto an unpaved county road. The recent rain had helped a little, but the Plymouth still raised a rooster tail of white dust from the crushed gravel of the road’s surface.

  Rhodes turned after him, choking a little as the dust sifted in the windows of the pickup. He was very pleased with the turn of events. He had traveled these roads all his life. There wasn’t a turn that Johnny Sherman could make that Rhodes couldn’t anticipate. It was like Brer Rabbit in the briar patch. And if the other road had been filled with curves, this one was positively snakey. There was no way that either vehicle was going to get much above fifty miles an hour. Even better, in less than two miles the gravel surface gave way to just plain dirt and clay and sand. If the road had been traveled enough since the rain, and if the ground had gotten wet enough, there would be treacherous ruts and maybe even very slick surfaces, both of which would put the Plymouth at a distinct disadvantage. The pickup was made for rough conditions and would be much easier to handle.

  When Johnny Sherman hit the clay surface, Rhodes was less than a half mile behind. He could see the rear end of the county car slewing around, so he knew that the road was slick and tricky. He slowed his own speed a bit. Better to be careful than to make a mistake.

  Neither man was driving much over forty now, and Rhodes had to keep a firm grip on the steering wheel to hold the car in the ruts. The bar ditches off to the side of the road had very little water in them, but the weeds were bent in the direction of its flow. Apparently it had rained quite hard in the vicinity, and the water had run off fast.

  The road twisted and turned past terraced fields and pasture, with neither man able to gain much ground on the other. Twice Johnny turned off onto side roads, and Rhodes realized that Johnny knew the country pretty well himself. And then he realized where Johnny was headed.

  There was one portion of the county that most residents referred to as Big Woods. Blacklin County was not a major population center, had no industry to speak of, and was unknown to tourists. A minor oil boom had livened things up around Clearview for a time, but it was very quiet now. There were parts of the county that remained much as they had been a hundred years before, or longer. Big Woods was one of those areas.

  Big Woods covered only about six square miles, but it was a place that could be very dangerous. People avoided it, even the people who owned the land the woods covered. The trees grew thick and tall, and the underbrush was almost impenetrable. Three years earlier a child had wandered off from a family reunion being held on a nearby farm and had gotten into the trees. Rhodes had headed the search party. They had searched officially for nearly a week, and unofficially for days afterward. No one had ever seen the child again.

  There were deer in Big Woods, but there were rumors of other things less pleasant. Hogs that wandered off farms sometimes found their way there and raised litters that returned to their wild state, and no one doubted that there were wolves there. Nearby cattlemen lost large numbers of calves every year to them.

  Johnny Sherman had been a member of the search party three years before, and Rhodes thought he must have remembered the woods. A hundred yards inside, it was dark even at midday. Let a man get settled in the brush, and someone could walk within inches of him and never know that he was there. If Johnny got in there with two pistols, it was going to be very tricky getting him out.

  They hit another stretch of graveled road. Rhodes could see the trees in the distance. Johnny Sherman put his pedal to the floor and the county car jumped ahead. Rhodes did the same, but with less than spectacular results. The pickup rocked and bounced along, sending jolts of pain zinging from one side of Rhodes’s chest to the other, but he could make up little ground on the car he was chasing.

  The weeds in the fence rows grew high here, and Rhodes lost sight of Johnny every time there was the slightest curve in the road. He knew that Johnny would get to the trees before he could be stopped.

  Rounding a last turn, Rhodes saw the Plymouth stopped dead in the middle of the road. He threw on his brakes and managed to avoid hitting it by inches. Johnny was already out of the car and across the barbed-wire fence, prodding Kathy along in front of him with the pistol barrel.

  Rhodes got out of the pickup and moved as fast as he could to the car. Just as he’d expected, the radio was smashed. There was no way to call for help, and there was no need to look for weapons. Johnny would have taken care of that, too. Then Johnny called out. “Just stay right there, Sheriff. As soon as I get to the woods, I’ll let Kathy go. Don’t try to come after me before I get there. I don’t want to hurt her.”

  Rhodes didn’t believe him, but he said nothing. He went back to the pickup and jerked the seat forward. There was a Zebco 33 spincast reel attached to a cheap rod under there, along with a few tools: pliers, a screwdriver, a wooden-handled hammer with only part of the handle. There was also a walking cane. Rhodes took the cane a
nd headed for the fence. Johnny was more than halfway to the trees by then.

  Rhodes bent painfully and separated the second and third strands of the fence wire, holding down the lower one with the cane. He got his body through the opening, but his pants leg hung on a barb. He pulled to free it, lost his balance, and fell. The pain that shot into his head almost shorted his circuits; he barely heard the ripping of his pants leg. He did hear his own involuntary yell.

  With the aid of the cane he stood up, feeling like a very old man. Johnny had heard the yell and turned to face him. He was taking aim with the pistol, but not at Kathy. He was aiming at Rhodes. Kathy was on the ground beside him. Whether she’d slipped or been hit, Rhodes didn’t know.

  Johnny didn’t fire the weapon, however. Kathy launched herself at his legs and knocked him off balance. He struck out with the pistol barrel and hit her in the head.

  Rhodes tried to run, but he couldn’t move very fast.

  Johnny looked back at him. “I’m sorry, Sheriff,” he called out. “I never meant to hurt anybody, least of all you or Kathy.” He turned and trotted toward the trees, which soon swallowed him up.

  Rhodes traveled as fast as he could to where Kathy lay. Her face was smeared with mud, but there was little blood. She looked up at her father.

  “Are you all right?” Rhodes asked.

  “I think so,” Kathy said, putting a hand to a knot that was rising on her head. “I can’t believe this. I knew Johnny was acting funny, but he says you think he killed Jeanne Clinton. Then he dragged me out here, and he hit me. . What’s going on? I don’t understand.”

  “I can’t explain it all now,” Rhodes said. “Can you stand up?”

  Kathy didn’t answer. Instead, she got her feet under her and stood. “My head hurts,” she said.

  Probably a slight concussion, Rhodes thought but didn’t say. “I want you to try to walk back to the road,” he told her. “You remember how to start a car without the keys?” He had showed her once, in case she ever lost her keys.

  “I think so,” she said vaguely.

  “Try to start the pickup,” he said. “Go back to town and see if you can find some help. Talk to Hack. He’ll know what to do.”

  “I’ll try,” she said, and started unsteadily across the field.

  Rhodes watched her go. He could wait for help, or he could go in after Johnny. Either way was a loser. If he waited for help from town, Johnny could hide himself so well that no searchers could ever hope to find him. If Rhodes went in, he might not only lose Johnny, but he might get so lost himself that it would take him days to get out. If he got out. In those woods, it would be hard to tell who was the hunter and who was the game.

  “Damn ribs,” Rhodes said aloud to no one. He started for the trees.

  Thirty yards into the woods might as well have been a hundred miles. There was nothing to see in any direction except trees, front, sides, and back. It was dim and still and hot; no breeze could penetrate in there. The light was filtered through hundreds of branches, and the trees closed around Rhodes like the waters of the sea.

  Rhodes was not an experienced tracker, but Johnny Sherman was not an experienced fugitive, either. Rhodes could follow the crushed vines and the broken limbs fairly easily at first. But he couldn’t move very rapidly. His ribs hurt, and his leg was scratched from the barbed wire. His pants leg flapped where it had been ripped. The footing was soft and uncertain, the ground covering as likely to give way underfoot as not. Rhodes didn’t want to fall again.

  A few hundred yards into the woods, Rhodes paused to listen. If Johnny was blundering along, Rhodes could hear nothing to indicate the fact. He heard a few birds twitter, and there was a woodpecker hammering somewhere not too far off, but that was all. He kept going, trying to keep in a straight line, laying about him with the cane to break more branches and limbs to mark the path clearly.

  Another reason Rhodes went slowly was the possibility of a trap. If Johnny were to jump him, Rhodes knew he was a goner. He hoped it wouldn’t happen, and he put the thought out of his mind. His shirt was sticking to his back, and sweat was running into his eyes.

  Then Rhodes came to a deadfall. What had once been one of the larger elm trees in the woods had long ago fallen prey to blight, or lightning, or insects. In falling, it had brought down a few smaller trees. Now, brush and vines grew around the decaying trunks and almost obscured the rot beneath. Dead limbs stuck out of the greenness here and there.

  Somewhere a squirrel chattered. There was no other sound. The area around the deadfall seemed unnaturally quiet. If Johnny were going to make a try for him, Rhodes thought, this would be a perfect spot.

  “You in there, Johnny?” Rhodes said. His voice came out in a hoarse whisper. He cleared his throat as he waited for the answer, but there was none. Not that one had really been expected.

  Rhodes looked the setup over carefully and then took a few steps forward. Johnny could be at either end, or he could be half a mile away. There were no signs to read. Johnny had become much more careful about things, which meant either that he was trying to throw Rhodes off, or that he was trying to trap him. Or that Rhodes had lost him entirely.

  Rhodes took a firm grip on the cane and started around the end of the deadfall to his right, at the point where the huge elm had split and fallen. The cover there seemed to Rhodes a little less dense.

  Just as he rounded the deadfall, he heard a noise. It was in front of him, not to the side, and he looked up. Thirty feet away, walking between two pecan trees, were several Poland China hogs. Or what had been Poland China hogs at one time. They were still black, and they still had the characteristic drooping ears of the tame breed, but they were clearly no longer the hefty meat hogs once bred on nearby farms.

  These were feral pigs, the generations of breeding fallen away. They were thin and mean. Their backbones stuck up sharply. Razorbacks. Rhodes could see the tusks growing high on each side of their snouts. The largest of the animals had one tusk that was broken in two.

  Rhodes heard them snuffle and grunt. They had not seen him yet, and he hoped that they never would. It was one thing to face another man with a gun. It was something else entirely to face feral pigs. He was about to turn and make a quiet retreat behind the deadfall when something struck him hard in the back. He suddenly found himself sliding forward on the ground, his mind wrapped in a red haze of pain.

  He heard Johnny Sherman’s voice. “You shouldn’t have come, Sheriff.”

  “H-had to,” Rhodes managed to get out. His hand felt for the cane. He heard Johnny walk toward him, and he wondered if he had just one more fast move left in him. Probably not.

  Then Johnny noticed the hogs. Rhodes didn’t want to lift his head, but he could hear them pawing the earth and rooting in the soil and grunting. It wasn’t a pleasant sound.

  “Godamighty,” Johnny said.

  While Johnny was momentarily distracted, Rhodes swung the cane at the deputy’s shins, connecting solidly.

  There was a sharp crack of cane against bone, and Johnny Sherman yelled out in pain. At the same time, he accidentally fired a round from the pistol he had been holding in his right hand. He stumbled toward the razorbacks, yelling and hopping from one foot to another.

  The hogs were puzzled by his behavior and frightened by all the noise and confusion. A few of the more timid ones fled back into the trees, but two of the old boars looked up with a savage light in their tiny eyes. Their sharp hooves pawed at the soft ground.

  Rhodes was trying to stand and having no luck at all. He got to his knees, however, in time to see Johnny turn toward him. Rhodes made a turning, clumsy twist toward his deputy, sticking out the cane’s hooked end and managing to grab an ankle. He pulled, and Johnny tumbled down. He dropped the pistol, and both men reached for it.

  Rhodes tasted dirt as his face was mashed into the forest floor. Sherman was on top of him, one hand on his head, the other reaching for the pistol.

  Rhodes tried to raise himself and throw the d
eputy off, but he was hurting in places he didn’t even know he had. Johnny squirmed over the top, getting his knee on Rhodes’s neck. Rhodes managed to turn out from under him, but Johnny had the pistol again.

  Johnny straightened and turned. That was when the hogs charged. Rhodes could barely see, his eyes being clogged with dirt and twigs, but he heard the sound as one of the hogs crashed into Johnny’s back. All the air went out of the deputy in a loud sigh. The razorback didn’t even slow down. It ran right up over Johnny’s back, and its hooves churned the earth in front of Rhodes’s face. Rhodes didn’t move. He didn’t even breathe.

  Johnny was thrashing around. Rhodes could hear his heels striking ground. He could also hear the enraged grunts of the other boar as it dug its snout and tusks into Johnny’s side. Johnny’s voice came out in a continuous low moan.

  Rhodes picked up his head and tried to look for the pistol. The other boar had returned, and the two were savaging Johnny as if he were a stuffed doll. His arms and legs swung wildly, but whether he was moving them or whether they were simply flopping, Rhodes could not tell. He saw the pistol and inched toward it.

  He reached the gun and got his fingers around it. The hogs were grunting and slobbering; they showed no inclination to desert their prey.

  There were four shots left in the pistol. That wasn’t much against two wild hogs. Rhodes used the cane to push himself into a sitting position. He was hurting everywhere from the first beating and from the latest kick, and his hands were not exactly steady. He took a deep breath, held it, and then let it out slowly.

  He took careful aim at the right eye of one of the hogs that was nearly facing him and pulled the trigger. The hog stiffened, and there was a high-pitched squeal. The hog took one or two stiff-legged steps and then keeled over, blood pumping from the eye socket.

  The other boar looked up. It was the one with the broken tusk. It studied Rhodes as if wondering where in the hell he had come from. Then it charged.