Too Late to Die

by Bill Crider

  “Didn’t want one of the registered voters to come in and catch us lookin’ at dirty pictures,” Lawton said apologetically. “Goes to show where that kind of thing gets you, though. That must be when Billy Joe got by us.”

  “Hard to believe he’s that smart,”‘ Rhodes said. He didn’t blame the two men for going to look at the magazine. He’d have been tempted himself.

  “Maybe he’s smarter than we give him credit for,” Hack said. “Maybe he did kill Jeanne Clinton.”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said. “But I don’t really believe it.”

  “Me neither,” Hack said. “It was just a thought.”

  “And if he didn’t, who did?” Lawton put in.

  “I wish I could tell you,” Rhodes said. “I really wish I could.”

  Rhodes reached home during a lull in the thunderstorm, which by then had become what the locals referred to as a real toad strangler. He managed to get from his car to the house with only minor water spotting.

  Kathy was in her room, reading probably. Rhodes got ready for bed and turned on his television set in time to catch the last few minutes of Hangman’s Knot, a western with Randolph Scott. Rhodes had always thought that Scott was a fine actor who had never received the recognition he was due. Could anybody name an actor who had consistently done such good work in as many low-budget westerns? Rhodes doubted it. He hoped that Donna Reed appreciated what kind of man she was getting at the picture’s end. He had read somewhere that Scott was still alive and, incredibly, in California, and he hoped that was true. Scott deserved it.

  Rhodes lay on his extra-firm mattress and tried to drift off to sleep, but it was impossible. Too many things kept running through his mind. Usually he could go to sleep almost as soon as he lay down, but the murders of Jeanne Clinton and Bill Tomkins had really disturbed him. He kept thinking that he should know more than he did, that he was asking the wrong questions or the wrong people.

  He thought about Jeanne. Barrett, Tomkins, and Claymore had all told him the same thing about her—that she was a wonderful girl who just liked to talk, that she was only someone who listened to them. Since only Tomkins seemed to know about the others, they obviously hadn’t gotten together to prepare a story. Maybe they were telling the truth. That made Jeanne Clinton a really rare individual, but it didn’t give anyone a motive to kill her, unless it was her husband.

  But Elmer Clinton seemed genuinely grief-stricken over Jeanne’s death. It was almost impossible for Rhodes to believe that Elmer had killed her. He was so incredibly protective of her reputation that he almost certainly would not have killed her, if only to keep her friendships with other men secret. He would have known that the secret would come out in any murder investigation.

  Besides, it seemed to Rhodes that Jeanne’s visitors were truly a secret from Elmer, who was shocked and angry about Bill Tomkins’s gossip. He’d heard it, but he apparently hadn’t believed it.

  Of course, there was the possibility that one of the men had pressed Jeanne to do more than talk. Barrett certainly had the strength to beat her, for example.

  But then, who killed Tomkins? Barrett hadn’t been in his store when Rhodes arrived to call in the word of Tomkins’s death. Where had he been?

  And who was the other man that Tomkins had been about to mention when he’d been shot? A few more seconds, and Rhodes would have had himself another suspect, one whose name he couldn’t even guess right now, unless he included Billy Joe, and he still wasn’t ready for that.

  Then there was Mrs. Barrett. She was a hardworking woman, no doubt tough as wet leather, but Rhodes couldn’t picture her as the type to beat another woman. That seemed to him a man’s crime, and if that made him a male chauvinist pig, then so be it. He’d just have to suffer the consequences. Even at that, he couldn’t just exclude Mrs. Barrett entirely from his suspects.

  When Rhodes finally drifted off to sleep, he dreamed that he was Randolph Scott and that Ivy Daniels was Donna Reed, or maybe it was Jeanne Clinton who was Donna, and Lee Marvin was beating her, and Rhodes was trying to get to him to make him stop, and when he grabbed Marvin’s arm, it wasn’t Marvin who looked back at him but someone else, but Rhodes couldn’t quite make out the face. He woke up the next morning with the dream still vivid in his mind.

  Chapter 11

  Saturday morning at the Blacklin County jail was pretty much the same as always. A good many drunks were in the cells, but they would all be gone by noon. No other crimes to speak of overnight, unless you counted the poisoned beer.

  “Poisoned beer?” Rhodes asked Hack. “That’s a new one on me.”

  “New one on all of us,” Hack said. “Jack Turner, down on the Bellem Road, found a six pack of Miller on his front steps about three o’clock when he got in from clubbin’. He figured nobody’d leave a six pack on his porch ‘less there was a good reason. He figured the best reason would be that it was poisoned.”

  “Considering how much he’s probably had to drink by that time of the morning, I can see how he might come to that conclusion,” Rhodes said.

  “Yeah, I guess,” Hack said. “But I don’t take much to gettin’ woke up at that time of mornin’ to hear some drunk tellin’ me about how somebody is tryin’ to poison him with beer.”

  “So what came of it?” Rhodes asked.

  “Not much. Turns out some fella down the road from Turner had borrowed a six pack off him a week or so back and just returned it. Since nobody was home, he just left it on the steps. Turner recalled that about the time he got home and called the guy.”

  “He come back?”

  Hack laughed. “He surely did. He was so afraid we’d send the stuff off to be analyzed that he came back to get it. I ‘spect it’s been drunk by now. Anyway, it’ll never last till night.”

  Rhodes agreed. He checked a few reports and decided to take another trip to Thurston. He was just about to leave when Billy Don Painter walked in.

  Billy Don Painter was the nearest thing to a hotshot lawyer in Blacklin County. He’d graduated from the law school at Austin and managed to pass the bar on his second try. A couple of times early in his career he’d gotten lucky with juries and managed to get a couple of men off when nearly everyone had thought he didn’t have a prayer. Ever since, he’d had the reputation of the man to get if you were really in trouble or if you wanted to win a big suit.

  Women seemed to find him attractive, or maybe it was his money they liked. At any rate, he’d been married three times to progressively younger brides. The current one was about twenty-three. Billy Don was close to fifty himself.

  No one in Clearview had ever seen Billy Don Painter without a jacket and tie. He didn’t buy the suits locally, either. They were expensive and conservative. His ties always matched. He was tall and trim and looked good in his clothes. He’d always reminded Rhodes of a tall James Mason, with a Texas drawl.

  “Mornin’, Sheriff,” he said as he strolled into the jail. He always entered a room as if he owned it and anyone else there was merely visiting. “How you all doin’ this fine day?”

  “I’m fine, Mr. Painter,” Rhodes said. “What can we do for you?”

  “Not me, Sheriff, not me. You can do nothin’ for me. It’s my client, Mr. Terry Wayne, for whom you can do something.”

  Rhodes had known it was coming as soon as Painter had stepped in the door. Painter hadn’t had a hot case in nearly a year now, and a good police brutality contest would get him back in the public eye, where he loved to be.

  “And what is it I can do for poor Mr. Wayne?” Rhodes asked.

  “Why, you can give him justice. Fire that brutal deputy of yours and see to it that the county recompenses Mr. Wayne for the terrible physical suffering that he has undergone.”

  “He looked pretty healthy to me the other night,” Rhodes said.

  “That was before I had him examined by a doctor,” Painter said. “He has suffered serious internal injury to his vitals, and this county is responsible.”

  “Well, I guess
that could be a matter of opinion,” Rhodes said. “I guess the county could hire a doctor, too.

  “You had better do so, then,” Painter told him. “I am on my way at this moment to the office of the district attorney to file charges against you, your deputy, and the commissioners of this county. Unless we can come to some settlement, of course.”

  “Of course,” Rhodes said. “Naturally you’ve consulted with the commissioners about this.”

  “Naturally,” Painter said.

  Fine, Rhodes thought. That’s just fine. He wondered why the telephone wasn’t ringing at that very moment. He didn’t say anything, however.

  Painter stood and looked at Rhodes for a second or two. Then he turned to go. “See you in court, Sheriff,” he said.

  Not if I see you first, Rhodes thought, then chided himself for acting like an adolescent. Still, he couldn’t bring himself to respond.

  After the lawyer had left, Hack broke the silence. “Never a dull moment,” he said. “Hard to remember what I did for fun before I took up this here law enforcement career.”

  “I’m glad the county could help you out,” Rhodes said.

  It was funny how big things could drive little things out of your mind. Rhodes hadn’t even thought about the robbery of Hod Barrett’s store until he drove up to the door. It would make a good excuse to begin his talk with Hod.

  Barrett was inside, counting out change for a customer. “. . . And twenty-five makes a dollar,” he said, putting a quarter into the hand of a woman in a cotton print dress. “You come again, now, Miz Barney.”

  “I will, Mr. Barrett,” the woman responded, picking up the small brown sack that held her purchases. She stepped by Rhodes without noticing him.

  It was quiet in the store, especially for a Saturday morning. There was no one on the loafer’s bench, and no one else in the store. “Where is everybody?” Rhodes asked.

  “That damn Safeway in Clearview is havin’ a big sale,” Barrett said. “Won’t be anybody in here today unless they run out of bread and milk. I might just as well close up.”

  “Can’t be that bad,” Rhodes said.

  “Bad enough,” Barrett said. “At least I ain’t been robbed in a day or two, though.”

  Given his opening, Rhodes asked, “Tell me a little bit more about that robbery, Hod. What with Jeanne getting killed and all, I really didn’t get to ask you everything I needed to know.

  “What else could I tell you?” Hod asked. “You saw the break-in. I told you what was taken.”

  “You didn’t tell me exactly what was taken,” Rhodes said. “You just said ‘smokes and beers,’ as I remember.”

  Barrett came out from behind the counter and led Rhodes to the back of the store. In front of the stacks of Northern tissue was an opened case of Merit Menthol 100s. “Got about six cartons out of here,” Barrett said. “They got a few six packs of Lone Star, too. As far as I can tell, that’s all they got. Like I said, probably just some kids out to get somethin’ for free.”

  “Probably,” Rhodes said. “By the way, Hod, where were you yesterday morning? I came in here to use your telephone, and Larry Bell was minding the store.”

  “He does that for me every now and then,” Hod said, “I had to go to the house for a minute, and I was deliverin’ an order or two. I’m not like a Safeway. If my customers can’t come to me, I’ll go to them. Not that that keeps them from going to Clearview when they have the time.”

  It sounded likely, and it might even be true, Rhodes thought. “Have you talked to your wife about your going over to the Clintons’ house?” he asked.

  Hod brought up his hands, then jammed them in his pockets. “I don’t want to talk to you about that no more, Sheriff. I said more than I ever wanted to say already. You got to believe that has nothing to do with me or my wife now. Jeanne’s dead, and I’m sorry. Real sorry. But now I got to go on and maybe find somebody else to talk to. But that somebody won’t be my wife.”

  “I may need to talk to her again,” Rhodes said.

  “You just go right ahead, Sheriff. I expect you’ve done all the damage you can do me in that way,” Barrett told him.

  “Before I do,” Rhodes said, “there’s one more thing I’d like to ask you. Think about it before you say anything, because it won’t be obvious. If it was, you’d already have told me. But did you ever see anyone else at Jeanne’s when you went there? Or maybe somebody just hanging around there at night?”

  Barrett shook his head. “Never.” ‘

  “Are you sure? There were others there from time to time, whether you knew it or not. Bill Tomkins certainly knew.”

  Barrett jerked his hands from his pockets. “That damn silly Tomkins didn’t have no more sense than a possum eatin’ persimmons. He told all kinds of tales here in the store about one thing or another, but nobody ever paid him no mind.”

  “I believe he was telling the truth about this,” Rhodes said. “One man he saw has already admitted it . . . besides you, I mean. He was telling the truth about you, too. Come to think of it, your wife may have heard about you from Tomkins.”

  “That’s enough of that, Sheriff,” Barrett said. “Plumb enough. I got a store to run here, and you ain’t helpin’. I never saw anybody around Jeanne’s, and that’s that. Bill Tomkins was a gossip and a fool, and anybody else in town would tell you the same.” He stepped around Rhodes and went back to the front of the store.

  Rhodes watched him go. The screen doors opened, and someone came in, handing Barrett an order list which he started to fill by going around to the shelves on the left wall. Rhodes went on out the back door.

  The cooler was still on the ground where it had fallen. Hod probably hadn’t had time to get his wife to build a new stand for it. Rhodes looked at the opening thoughtfully. Someone had nailed boards to the window facing from the inside. Maybe Barrett had done that himself.

  Rhodes wondered about who had broken in. Kids, young kids, would have taken more candy than anything, and teenagers would have taken a lot more beer. Hungry people would have taken food.

  Rhodes began to feel that he was looking at a jigsaw puzzle, with the pieces scattered all over a table. If he could just push the pieces around until they began to look like something, he might be able to assemble them. In fact, his mind was pushing them around right now, and he wasn’t too pleased with the picture that he thought might result when the assembly was done. He kicked at the wooden frame. It was time for him to go see James Allen.

  James Allen lived on one of the country roads between Clearview and Thurston in a house like the one that Jack built. Allen had started out in a small five-room house when he’d first married, and then he and his wife had begun having children on a yearly basis. They’d stopped after seven, but Allen had kept adding rooms onto the sides and back of his house for years. Anyone familiar with the original dwelling could still discern part of the front of the house, but that was about all.

  Allen had been a bulldozer operator who had gone into partnership with his brother and soon found himself making a lot of money in heavy equipment jobs. He needed the money to finance his housing additions, but within a few years he was making a comfortable living even beyond his basic needs. That was when he decided to run for county commissioner.

  People in the country around Clearview knew him and liked him, and he won his precinct handily. He and Rhodes had gone to school together, played football together, and even dated some of the same girls. He was Rhodes’s best friend among the commissioners.

  He was mowing his front yard as Rhodes drove up. “Can’t you get one of the boys to do that?” Rhodes asked as he stepped out of his car.

  Allen grinned and killed the mower. “I need the exercise,” he said. “Besides, all those boys are too tired after being out half the night chasing girls. What can I do for you, Dan?”

  “I guess you’ve heard about that Terry Wayne hiring Billy Don Painter,” Rhodes said.

  “Yep. Heard it from the man himself,” Allen said
.

  “Let’s go sit down.”

  They walked over to two aluminum lawn chairs webbed with colorful green and yellow plastic strips. The chairs were situated under a tall pecan tree, but the sun had shifted since they were placed there. Rhodes and Allen each took a chair and moved it back nearer the trunk of the tree, into the patchy shade of its branches. Rhodes sat and took a deep breath. He loved the smell of new-mown grass, especially if he hadn’t had to mow it himself.

  “What do you think will happen?” Rhodes said.

  “The usual,”‘ Allen responded. “The judge will call a special meeting of the commissioners, and we’ll all piss and moan about the situation, and then we’ll support the sheriff’s department one hundred percent just like we always do.”

  Rhodes laughed. “Yeah, I know how that support goes. It sounds fine in the paper, but off the record I’m going to get my butt chewed.”

  “Off the record you probably will. There’s two or three men who don’t think too much of Johnny Sherman, and they weren’t happy when he hired on with the department. They may use this little scrape as an excuse to get his job.”

  “There’s never been any question about his work before,” Rhodes said stiffly.

  “I know that, and so does the rest of the court,” Allen said, “but some of them remember when Johnny was a kid. He had a few problems back then. Little things, mostly, but there were one or two times when things got more serious.”

  “That must’ve been when I was out of the county, then,” Rhodes said. “I never heard about them. Not even privately.”

  “They weren’t the kind of things anybody’d want to bring up, exactly,” Allen told him. “In fact, you could kind of say they were covered up, in a way.”

  “What kind of way?”

  “The kind of way things get covered up. Johnny was a good ball player, and the team was in the district race. So what if he got into a few fights? It’s true that the other boys involved never wanted to press charges, and that they even refused to say that Johnny started the fights when it came right down to it, but one of them was beat up pretty bad. He was on the football team too, but he was only a second-stringer, so nobody worried too much about him except maybe his folks. He didn’t play any more ball that year, that’s for sure.”