Red, White, and Blue Murder

by Bill Crider

  “They should know better than that,” Rhodes said. “I hope you got somebody down there before one of them got hurt.”

  “Ruth’s in the area. I gave her a call on the radio. She’ll straighten ’em out.”

  Ruth Grady was one of the deputies, and Rhodes was sure she’d give the kids a lecture they’d never forget. Most people in Blacklin County were conscious of gun safety, but sometimes adults got careless and kids took advantage. Ruth wouldn’t let them off the hook.

  “Get Ruth on the radio again,” Rhodes said. “Tell her to take up the guns and send the kids home. We’ll keep the guns here and make the parents come get them. They can have a lecture, too.”

  “Ever’body in the county has a .22 in the house,” Hack said. “You’ll be wastin’ your breath.”

  “It won’t be the first time,” Rhodes said.

  Later that evening, Rhodes was just about to get to bed at a reasonable hour when the telephone rang.

  “Let it go,” Ivy said.

  She was already in the bed, propped up on a pillow and watching the ten o’clock news.

  “I’m the sheriff,” Rhodes said. “Neither rain nor cold nor dark of night can keep me from my appointed rounds.”

  “That’s the post office,” Ivy said as Rhodes picked up the phone, “and besides, you didn’t get it quite right.”

  Rhodes didn’t ask for the correct version. He answered the phone, and Dr. White told him he was sorry for calling so late but that he thought Rhodes would like to know what he’d found out about the body from the fire.

  “I guess it wasn’t anything good,” Rhodes said. “Otherwise, you wouldn’t be calling.”

  “That’s right. Do you want the long version or the short one?”

  “The short one will do.”

  “There was no smoke in the dead man’s lungs,” Dr. White said.

  “You know what that means.”

  “He was dead before the fire started,” Rhodes said.

  “That’s right.”

  “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t die a natural death. He might have had a heart attack.”

  “He didn’t have a heart attack.”

  Rhodes sighed. “Go ahead and give me the bad news.”

  “Somebody bashed the back of his head in,” Dr. White said. “That’s what killed him.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m the doctor. I’m sure.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rhodes said.

  He wished he’d been a little more careful with that whiskey bottle.

  In fact, he wished he’d been a lot more careful.

  10

  RHODES WAS UP EARLY THE NEXT MORNING. IT WAS GOING TO BE another hot day. The leaves on the pecan trees were drying and curling up in defeat. Pretty soon they’d start dropping off, though it wasn’t anywhere near fall.

  After letting Yancey chase Speedo around the yard for a while, Rhodes fed and watered both dogs. Then he drove to the Clearview Fire Station.

  He had decided that the blow on the head was decisive, and that in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, he was going to assume that Grat Bilson had been murdered and the fire started in an attempt to cover up the killing. The first person he had to talk to was the fire chief.

  The fire station wasn’t nearly as old as the jail, but it had been built on the cheap in the 1950s, and it wasn’t anything to brag about. It was more or less a three-truck garage built of red brick. It had a concrete floor and a small office and living quarters in the rear. The living quarters had concrete floors, too.

  Trace Newman, one of the firemen, was washing a truck that he’d driven out of the garage and parked in front.

  “Watch your step,” he told Rhodes. “Don’t slip in the soapy water.”

  Rhodes said he’d be careful and asked Trace if Parker was there.

  “In the office,” Trace said. “He thought you might come by.”

  Rhodes had told Dr. White to call Parker the previous night. He wanted Parker to know what they were getting into. Apparently White had made the call.

  The door to the fire chief’s office was open, but Rhodes didn’t go inside. It was so small that there was hardly room for Parker, his small desk, and his computer. So Rhodes just stood in the doorway until Parker glanced up and saw him.

  Parker stood up and said, “Let’s go outside and sit on the bench.”

  It was a tradition in Clearview for benches to be in front of the fire station. When Rhodes had been young, old men had sat there and gossiped in the shade of the lone pecan tree that grew beside the station. Sometimes they would play dominoes on a battered card table. Now, Rhodes supposed, old men had other things to do and other places to go. Maybe they were surfing the Internet or watching cable TV. Rhodes couldn’t remember having seen anyone other than a fireman on the bench in many years. In fact, even the firemen didn’t sit there now, at least not very often.

  Parker sat down in the shade, and Rhodes joined him.

  “Wouldn’t be so bad if there was a breeze,” Parker said.

  “Later on, even a breeze won’t help,” Rhodes said, glad that Parker hadn’t asked if it was hot enough for him.

  “Probably not,” Parker said. “You’re here about that dead man, I guess.”

  “That’s right. Dr. White called you?”

  “He called. Said it looked like a murder. Good thing I’m a careful man.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure whether Parker was scolding him or not, but he said, “I got careless myself. I should have hung around and done a thorough crime-scene investigation.”

  “You did right. The crime was most likely arson-related, so the investigation was my job, and I was glad to do it.”

  “Did you find anything?”

  “If you’re asking about clues, I have a whiskey bottle for you, but I don’t think it’ll be much help.”

  “You never know,” Rhodes said. “I’m glad you saved it.”

  “Tagged and bagged, as you big-time lawmen say. It’s in the office.”

  “Did you find anything else?”

  “Not a thing. That was a pretty hot fire.”

  “What about that little shed?”

  “Well, there was some stuff in there, all right, and there was some stuff missing.”

  “Missing?” Rhodes said. “How do you know?”

  “Well, the only thing in that shed was a few tools and a power mower. That’s it. What would you say was missing?”

  Rhodes thought it over and said, “What about some gas for the mower?”

  “You’re a regular Sherlock Holmes. No wonder you’re the sheriff. There wasn’t any gas, not even an empty gas can.”

  Which could mean a lot of things, Rhodes realized. But one thing it could mean was that someone took the gas and poured it on Grat, then started the fire.

  “That fire was mighty hot where Grat was,” Parker said. “That’s where it started, right there on that bed. I’m pretty sure that a petroleum accelerant was used, and I’m betting gasoline. But whoever did it might have used the whiskey and then thought of the gasoline later. Those two things together will make a big, hot fire, for sure. We’ll know after the testing’s done, but right now I can tell you that I’m ruling it a case of arson. Be a nice thing if you could find that gas can, assuming there was one.”

  Rhodes was sure there had been one. Where it was now, however, was anyone’s guess. If the killer had taken it, which seemed likely, it could be at the bottom of a lake or just stuck in a garage where no one would ever notice it. He doubted that there was anything to distinguish it from hundreds of other gas cans all over the county, all of them bought at Wal-Mart, all of them looking exactly alike.

  “I don’t think the can would help. What we need is an eyewitness who saw somebody start that fire.”

  “Won’t find anybody like that,” Parker said. “Not many folks drive out that way, and that fire was probably started so early that there’s no chance at all of anyone having been out that way
.”

  “I’ll see what I can turn up,” Rhodes said.

  “What about his wife?” Parker said. “You think Yvonne did him in?”

  “I don’t know that it was Grat out there.”

  “Want to bet it wasn’t?”

  “No.”

  Parker grinned. “So, do you think Yvonne did him in?”

  “You know what they say on TV.”

  “I’m not sure. What do they say on TV?”

  “Everybody’s a suspect,” Rhodes told him.

  Rhodes’s next stop was the offices of the Clearview Herald. Jennifer Loam most likely didn’t have a source to protect anymore, and Rhodes was going to try charming some information from her.

  The Herald offices were where they had been for as long as Rhodes could remember, just on the edge of downtown, or what was left of it. Rhodes had delivered the Herald, riding all over town on a bicycle and throwing the papers from a canvas bag that he slung across his shoulders. He had been proud of his ability to fold the papers into a flat triangle that he could throw with considerable accuracy. He figured that he hit the porch or front steps more often than not.

  On the outside, the Herald building didn’t look much different from the way it had when Rhodes had gathered at the back door after school with the other paperboys. But the inside of the building was a lot different. Rhodes remembered the Linotype machines and the presses. He remembered the smell of the ink, and he remembered the clattering of machinery, the hum of voices, the clacking of typewriters and a teletype machine.

  There was none of that now. The building was almost as quiet as a hospital, and the paper employed only a few people. Computers had changed everything.

  Jennifer Loam was at one of the four desks, seated in front of a computer monitor. There was no one else there.

  Jennifer looked up, saw Rhodes, and said, “Hot enough for you, Sheriff?”

  Rhodes grinned. He could take a joke. Besides, he was going to be charming.

  “You beat me to it,” he said.

  Jennifer wasn’t in a mood to be charmed.

  “You’re here about my source,” she said.

  “Can we talk here?” Rhodes asked.

  It was really a foolish question. The editor was in his office, and Nelson “Goober” Vance was nowhere to be seen. Vance had for a while been the paper’s only reporter, covering sports, writing features and columns, and writing all the news articles that didn’t come from some service. But Vance had gotten tired of doing it all and threatened to quit, which was why Jennifer had been hired.

  Rhodes had a feeling that the paper had gotten more than it bargained for.

  “Goober doesn’t come in until later,” Jennifer said. “He says that he can sleep late for the first time in his life now that he has a cub reporter working here.”

  “Cub?” Rhodes said. “More like a full-grown grizzly.”

  “You’re just saying that to flatter me.”

  “Not exactly, but you’re doing something here that nobody has done in Clearview in my lifetime.”

  “You mean that nobody’s ever investigated anything. Well, all I can say is that it’s about time somebody did.”

  “Probably,” Rhodes said. “But sometimes investigations have those unintended consequences you hear about.”

  “You can’t blame me for Grat Bilson’s death,” Jennifer said. “I didn’t have a thing to do with that.”

  “Not directly, no, and maybe not even indirectly. That’s what we need to talk about.”

  Jennifer didn’t look as if she wanted to talk. She looked as if she wanted to give Rhodes a good whack on the nose.

  So much for charm.

  “Am I a suspect?” Jennifer said.

  Rhodes started to give her the “everybody’s a suspect” line, but he was afraid she might not take it the right way. He said, “Not unless you make yourself one. What I want to talk about is something else entirely. I want to talk about what you have on Jay Beaman.”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Yes, you can. This isn’t about some newspaper story now. It’s about a murder. And if it’s Grat Bilson who’s been killed, I need all the information I can get.”

  “Why don’t you just talk to Beaman?”

  “Do you think he’d tell me anything? Has he told you anything?”

  “No,” Jennifer said. “No to both questions. But you’re the sheriff, not just some blond girl reporter.”

  “All the more reason he wouldn’t talk to me,” Rhodes said. “You can’t arrest him. I can.”

  Jennifer opened her mouth, closed it, and said nothing for a few seconds. Then she said, “Oh, all right, I’ll tell you. Let me get my notes.”

  Charm, Rhodes thought. Gets ’em every time.

  11

  WHEN IT CAME RIGHT DOWN TO IT, JENNIFER DIDN’T WANT TO STAY in the newspaper office to talk after all.

  “I worked hard to get this information together,” she said. “I don’t want anybody sneaking up on us and getting a look at it.”

  Rhodes didn’t think anyone would sneak up on them, but Goober Vance might come in and get nosy. So Rhodes suggested that he and Jennifer go to his office in the courthouse.

  Jennifer agreed, and she followed Rhodes in her own car. When she arrived, he bought two Dr Peppers from the machine and gave one to her.

  “I didn’t know you could get them in bottles any more,” she said.

  “You can’t except for a few places,” Rhodes said, though he didn’t know of any others. “And this is one of them.”

  They went into his office. Jennifer sat in front of the desk, holding her Dr Pepper in one hand and a manila folder in the other. The folder had been locked in the bottom drawer of her desk at the newspaper building.

  “I’d just as soon not give you the folder,” she said. “You can ask questions, and I’ll use the notes to answer them.”

  Rhodes took a drink of Dr Pepper. He wanted a look a the actual notes, but maybe he could find out what he needed to know without it. On the other hand, maybe he couldn’t. If that turned out to be the case, he could turn on the charm again.

  “Okay,” he said, “here’s the first question. What do you have on Jay Beaman?”

  “You’ll have to be more specific.”

  She was worse than Hack and Lawton, Rhodes thought. He said, “Grat Bilson is probably dead. He told you some things about Beaman. I have to know them. What were they?”

  “You don’t have to get snippy. For one thing, Mr. Beaman was having an affair with Mrs. Bilson.”

  “Apparently everyone in town knows that,” Rhodes said. “What else?”

  “You’ll notice I said was. The affair was over a while ago. Mr. Beaman had a new interest.”

  Hack would be sorry to hear that, since he preferred to be the first with all the news. It was too bad that Rhodes couldn’t mention it to him.

  “And who was the new interest?” Rhodes asked.

  “I’ve never met her,” Jennifer said.

  “I might get snippy again if you don’t be more forthcoming,” Rhodes said. “How did you find out about this new interest?”

  “Mr. Bilson told me about her. He found out about it by accident.”

  “How?”

  Jennifer flipped a few pages of notes until she found what she was looking for.

  “He went in to see Mr. Beaman one day, but Mr. Beaman wasn’t in his office. Mr. Bilson just happened to look at the computer screen, and that’s when he found out.”

  Rhodes could just imagine how much truth there was in that story. Bilson had probably gone into the deserted office on purpose, and he’d no doubt deliberately looked at the computer screen. He might even have done a little snooping in the files.

  “Exactly what did he find out?” Rhodes asked.

  “That Mr. Beaman was dating a convict,” Jennifer said.

  “Dating a convict? You might want to explain that one to me.”

  Jennifer smiled. “I’d be glad to. What
do you know about janesinjail. com?”

  Rhodes just looked at her. He didn’t have any idea what she was talking about.

  “Now you’ll have to explain your explanation,” he said.

  “It’s a Web site. I thought you might have heard of it.”

  Rhodes didn’t have a lot of time to play around on the Internet.

  “You were wrong,” he said.

  “It’s an interesting site,” Jennifer told him. “Female inmates from several states, including Texas, post their pictures and a little information about themselves. Of course they don’t tell you why they’re in the penitentiary.” She looked down at her notes. “They say things like, ‘sensitive, poetry-loving woman wants to meet a man who appreciates free verse.’ And the pictures are sometimes years old. Some of them are pretty provocative. The pictures, that is, not the inmates. But you don’t care about that.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure whether he cared or not. He’d heard that everything was available on the Internet, but he’d never expected anything like this.

  “Somehow I don’t think the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sponsors that page,” he said.

  “No. It’s sponsored by an individual. If you want to get in touch with one of the women, you have to go through him.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Nobody knows, at least not that I can find out about. You have to go through an e-mail address to get in touch with him. Or her. It could be a woman, for all I know. Anyway, whoever it is sells you the address of the inmate you’re interested in, and you can become her pen pal. No pun intended.”

  “I’ll bet,” Rhodes said. “How much does the address cost?”

  “Five dollars.”

  “Cheap enough,” Rhodes said. “You have to admire the guy’s entrepreneurial spirit. But there’s a big difference in writing some woman who’s behind bars and dating her. Dating was the word you used, wasn’t it?”

  “That’s right. And that’s what I meant. But I did use an incorrect word. I said he was dating a convict. I should have said that he was dating an ex-convict. Mr. Bilson said the woman had been released.”