by Bill Crider
As he got near the edge of the dam, Yvonne popped up from behind a bush and fired the pistol at him again. She didn’t hit a vital spot, but the bullet took the heel off his left shoe, and Rhodes fell heavily. He hit the dam and rolled down the side, headed right for the bush where Yvonne was waiting.
Rhodes’s hands were both empty. He had lost his pistol and had no idea where it was. There wasn’t anything he could do about that, so he tried to make the best of things. He managed to keep rolling and to shift himself just enough so that he rolled past the bush instead of hitting it. When he passed it, he reached out and grabbed Yvonne’s ankles, pulling her down with him.
They tumbled out onto the caked mud, and Yvonne kicked Rhodes in the face. Then she crawled toward the bank.
Rhodes grabbed her ankle and pulled her back. She hit him on the side of the head with the pistol.
Well, he thought, I guess that means it’s empty.
He didn’t let go of the ankle, so Yvonne hit him again.
He let go.
Yvonne fell backward and sat down hard on the mud, breaking through the crust and sinking an inch or two into the goop beneath. She jumped up and her foot went through the crust. This time she fell forward, and she put out her hands to catch herself. It worked in that she didn’t land on her face, but her hands both went down into the mud, and when they came out, she wasn’t holding the pistol.
Rhodes started crawling toward her as she dug down into the sludge, trying to find the gun. Maybe it wasn’t empty after all. Or maybe Yvonne just wasn’t sure.
Rhodes gathered himself, froglike, and launched himself toward her. He got his arms around her, and they rolled away from the place where the gun was sunk in the mud. As they rolled, Yvonne kicked and struggled. They broke through the sun-baked rind in several places, and soon they were sliding instead of rolling, coated with the slick mud that not too long before had been on the bottom of the tank. Yvonne was splattering mud everywhere with her struggles. It smelled old and foul, almost as if it had been part of a hog pen instead of a stock tank.
Rhodes’s hearing was getting a little better, because he was pretty sure he could hear Yvonne cursing him and calling him a son of a bitch.
He was trying to hold on to her, but she was so slick with mud that it was like trying to hold a greased eel. Before he knew it, she had slipped away and was squirming back to where she’d lost the pistol. Rhodes didn’t want her to shoot him or hit him again. His head was still throbbing from the last time. He staggered to his feet and went after her.
He didn’t get far. The mud was too slick, and he slipped down. He sat and watched helplessly as Yvonne pulled the mud-coated pistol up and pointed it at him.
She was quite a sight, kneeling there. There was mud smeared all over her clothes and face, and it was stuck in her hair as well. Rhodes was sure he didn’t look any better. It would be a shame, he thought, to get shot and killed while looking like a man made out of mud. Clyde Ballinger would have his work cut out for him to get the corpse cleaned up and ready for viewing.
Except that it wasn’t Rhodes who’d be killed if the gun went off.
“You’d better not pull that trigger, Yvonne,” Rhodes said. “That gun barrel’s full of mud. The pistol will just explode and take your hand off. Maybe your whole arm.”
“You son of a bitch,” Yvonne said.
“Just put down the pistol,” Rhodes told her. “You don’t want to hurt me, or yourself either.”
“You don’t know what I want.”
Rhodes had to admit that he didn’t, but he didn’t say so. He stood up carefully, stuck out his hand, and said, “Give me the pistol.”
“You can go to hell.”
Rhodes took a slow step toward her.
“I’ll help you up,” Rhodes said. “But give me the gun first. You don’t want to hurt anybody.”
Yvonne shook her head, and Rhodes didn’t know whether she understood him or not.
It didn’t much matter if she did. She pulled the trigger anyway.
16
NOTHING HAPPENED.
Yvonne had fired the last bullet earlier, after all, and now the gun was empty.
Rhodes took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He walked carefully over to Yvonne and held out his hand. She put the pistol in it, and Rhodes stuck the gun in his belt.
“We’d better be getting back to see what’s happening with the fire,” Rhodes said.
“Don’t give a damn,” Yvonne said. “You gonna put me in jail?”
“Well,” Rhodes said, “let me see. You’ve assaulted a police officer, attempted to murder him, tried to blow up a fireworks stand, set a grass fire, unlawfully possessed a deadly weapon, and recklessly endangered me and Linda Fenton. Did I leave anything out?”
“Yeah, you son of a bitch. You left out abusive language.”
“Right,” Rhodes said. “I think you made some terroristic threats, too, but I’m willing to forget those.”
“Does that mean you won’t lock me up?”
“No,” Rhodes said. “It doesn’t mean I won’t lock you up.”
“Damn. I don’t want to be a convict. That’ll make me no better than that whore Fenton.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Rhodes said. “That’s the least of your problems. Let’s go.”
They started up over the dam, and Rhodes located his pistol. He was glad he saw it before Yvonne did, not that she seemed inclined to violence any longer. He picked the pistol up and held it well away from her.
“Be careful,” he said when they started down the side of the dam. “I wouldn’t want you to fall and hurt yourself.”
Yvonne laughed. “Don’t worry, Sheriff. I’ll be careful.”
After they came out of the trees, they had to walk around the grass fire, which was just about extinguished. A large area of the field was completely blackened, but there were no flames that Rhodes could see. The pumper trucks had things pretty much under control. Rhodes didn’t see Chief Parker anywhere, but he waved at Trace Newman, who was too busy hanging on to a hose and spraying water to wave back.
Jennifer Loam was waiting when they got back to the fireworks stand, but Linda Fenton was nowhere around.
“She left,” Jennifer said. “There was an old pickup parked over there, and I guess it was hers.”
“Probably Jay Beaman’s,” Yvonne said. “Cons don’t have trucks.”
“She wasn’t a con,” Rhodes said.
“Same thing as one, then.”
“You two look like you’ve been making mud pies,” Jennifer said.
Rhodes said he thought it was more likely they looked like they’d been working as extras in a remake of Creature From the Black Lagoon.
“What’s that?” Jennifer said. “A movie?”
“Never mind,” Rhodes said. He had a tendency to forget that most people Jennifer’s age had never seen a black-and-white movie, even on television. “Thanks for calling the fire department.”
“I thought I’d better. You looked too busy to do it yourself.”
“Well, I appreciate it. I think the fire’s contained since there was no wind. We got lucky.”
Rhodes could feel the mud hardening on him. He was going to be encased in a hard shell like an M&M, except that his shell wouldn’t be made of candy.
“Are you going to take Ms. Bilson to the jail?” Jennifer asked.
“That’s right,” Rhodes said.
“Would it be all right if I interviewed her?”
“Here?”
“No. In the jail. After she gets cleaned up.”
“I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said.
“I’m not talking to anybody,” Yvonne said. “I’m not saying another word to anybody.”
“You heard what she said,” Rhodes told Jennifer.
“I’m coming by anyway,” Jennifer said to Yvonne. “Maybe you’ll change your mind.”
“Not likely.”
“I have to go write a story now,” Jennifer said. “
I’ll see you later.”
“Won’t do you any good,” Yvonne said, but Jennifer didn’t reply. She got in her car and drove away.
That was all right with Rhodes. He didn’t particularly want an interview with Yvonne appearing in the local paper. He touched her elbow and guided her to the county car. When they got there, he saw that the hood and top had been dented and scorched by the helicopters and Roman candles.
Yvonne saw what he was looking at and said, “I know what you’re thinking.”
Rhodes gave her a skeptical glance.
“Damaging county property,” Yvonne said. “That’s what you’re thinking. Go ahead and add it to that list of charges you’re making out. See if I care.”
“I thought you weren’t going to talk to anybody.”
“I meant reporters. I’ll talk to you, but I’m not talking to any reporters.”
“All right,” Rhodes said. He opened the back door of the car. “You can get in now. Watch your head.”
Yvonne got inside, and Rhodes shut the door.
As he drove back to Clearview, he got Hack on the radio and told him to get Ruth Grady to the jail.
“What for?” Hack asked.
“Never mind. Just have her there.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Sheriff, sir. You’re the boss. I’m just the hired help. You give the orders, and I follow ’em. I don’t need a reason. That’s the natural order of things.”
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Rhodes said.
“Great gobs of goose grease!” Hack said when Rhodes and Yvonne came in through the jail door. “I wish Lawton was here. He ain’t ever gonna believe this when I tell him about it. You two look like you’ve been in a mud-rasslin’ contest.”
“We have,” Rhodes said. “Is Ruth here?”
“’Course she is. You told me to get her, didn’t you?”
“Then where is she?”
“Well, I didn’t mean she was here, exactly. But she’s on the way. She was down in Thurston. It’ll take her a few more minutes. I can see why you needed her, though. What on earth happened?”
“I’ll tell you later,” Rhodes said, feeling good about being one up on Hack for a change.
Hack would have had something more to say about it, but Ruth Grady came in. She stood looking at Rhodes and Yvonne for a second. Then she said, “When I was a little girl, I used to read this comic book called Swamp Thing.”
Rhodes said, “I saw the movie. Adrienne Barbeau and Louis Jourdan. But I was thinking more along the lines of Creature From the Black Lagoon.”
“What’s that?” Ruth asked.
Rhodes sighed and said, “Never mind. I want you to take charge of the prisoner, get her booked and cleaned up. In that order.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruth said.
“When you do that, there’s somebody I’d like for you to go looking for.”
“Yes, sir,” Ruth said.
The bottom of the bathtub looked like someone had dumped a sack of potting soil into it. Rhodes hoped he didn’t clog up the pipes by washing all that dirt into the town’s sewer system. He turned the spray from the shower on it and watched it streak off the porcelain and wash down the drain. He felt a little bit guilty about having used so much water, but he’d needed it to get clean, and now he needed more to be sure the tub could be used again.
Rhodes felt considerably better now that he’d taken a bath. He was clean, and he was even cool, having soaked in the water for a while. He’d also turned the air-conditioning down a notch or two. He’d have to remember to turn it up again before he left.
He looked at his face in the bathroom mirror. There was a little scratch where the tree bark had hit him, but otherwise he looked pretty much the same as always. He finished drying his hair with the towel and looked around for a comb. Ivy was always after him to use the hair dryer, but he preferred the towel. He found that as his hair thinned out, he could dry it quite quickly without electrical aid, proving, he supposed, that there were advantages to all kinds of things if you just looked at them in the right way.
There was a scale in the bathroom, conveniently located near the tub so you could weigh yourself on it either before or after your bath. Or both, if you wanted to.
Rhodes didn’t want to. Ivy weighed now and then, but her weight never seemed to vary more than a few ounces one way or the other. Rhodes didn’t weigh. It was a matter of principle with him. Or that was what he told Ivy if she asked. The truth was, he just didn’t want to know his weight or how much it might vary.
After he was dressed, Rhodes went into the kitchen to see if there was anything in the refrigerator besides the tofu bologna and tofu cheese that Ivy thought was good for him.
There wasn’t anything he wanted, however. Not even an old moldy piece of real cheese. He thought about going to the Bluebonnet for a hamburger, but he needed to get back to the jail. So he ate a sandwich with the fake stuff. It was okay, he supposed, though a good, greasy hamburger would have been a lot better. Some fried onion rings wouldn’t have hurt, either.
No wonder I stay away from that scale, he thought.
Yvonne was sitting on the bunk in her cell. She looked much better than she had the last time Rhodes had seen her, even though her hair was still damp and hanging down in straight clumps and the jail-issue jumpsuit didn’t really fit her very well.
“Linda Fenton said something at the fireworks stand that I wanted to ask you about,” Rhodes said. “Something about Grat having a girlfriend.”
“That son of a bitch.”
“Never mind his ancestry. Let’s talk about the girlfriend. Who is she?”
“I don’t want to talk about her.”
“It might help me find out who killed Grat.”
“You said he might not be dead.”
“He might be. He probably is. You know that.”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“So tell me who the girlfriend is.”
“Vernell Lindsey,” Yvonne said. “That whore.”
17
VERNELL LINDSEY CAME TO THE DOOR WEARING A T-SHIRT THAT SAID Famous Novelist on the front in big red letters. Rhodes figured the shirt was intended ironically, though her romance novels had been fairly successful, or so he’d heard. The writers’ conference she’d recently sponsored hadn’t turned out so well, however.
“What do you want?” Vernell said, taking a puff from the cigarette she held in one hand.
“To talk to you,” Rhodes said.
“I don’t have time to talk. I’m in the middle of a big sex scene.”
Rhodes looked at her.
“In the book, I mean. I hope you didn’t think I had somebody in here with me.”
Besides the T-shirt, Vernell was wearing jeans and rubber flip-flops. Her hair was pulled back and held in place with a big plastic clip, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup.
“You never know,” Rhodes said. “But that’s sort of what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Come on in, then,” Vernell said. “I’m always willing to talk to a guy about sex. Maybe you could give me some pointers.”
“I, um, I—”
“For the book, I mean,” Vernell said.
Rhodes decided to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t like to feel so inarticulate.
They walked back into Vernell’s den. Vernell wasn’t much of a housekeeper, but it didn’t seem to bother her. It didn’t bother Rhodes, either.
“Have a seat,” Vernell said. She mashed out her cigarette in an ashtray shaped like the state of Texas. “Just shove some of those books out of the way.”
Rhodes moved some colorful paperbacks out of a chair. Most of them had pictures of Terry Don Coslin on the cover. Terry Don was a local boy who had made good as a model for romance novel heroes. He had long hair and soulful blue eyes, and he looked great wearing a shirt that appeared not to have any buttons. His abs looked as if they’d been chiseled out of stone. Not that any of those attributes had done him any good when it came right down to it. His
death had been the reason for the relative failure of Vernell’s writers’ conference.
“He was one good-looking man,” Vernell said as Rhodes sat down. “Terry Don, I mean.”
“I guess so,” Rhodes said. “How are your goats?”
Vernell’s goats, Shirley, Goodness, and Mercy, were often a cause of concern and controversy in the neighborhood, but Rhodes hadn’t heard any complaints about them lately.
“I gave them away,” Vernell said. “They needed to be out in the country, and I didn’t really have time to fool with them, now that my writing’s started to pay off. But you said you came here to talk about sex.”
Rhodes didn’t remember having put it quite that way. He said, “I came here to talk about Grat Bilson.”
“Oh,” Vernell said. “Him. I heard he might be dead.”
“How’d you hear that?”
“I don’t remember. I got a call from someone.”
“And you don’t remember who?”
“I get a lot of calls. People are always interrupting my work. It could have been anybody.”
Rhodes decided to let it go for the moment. He said, “Were you dating Grat Bilson by any chance?”
Vernell looked surprised, then laughed aloud.
“Excuse me for laughing,” she said when she’d recovered. “But are you serious?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s just crazy. Grat’s married. Why would I date somebody who’s married? I might write romance novels, but I’m not trying to live in one.”
“Grat’s wife thinks you were dating him.”
“Yvonne is nutty. You should know that. She runs around with half the men in the county, but she’s crazy jealous of her husband. If that’s not nutty, I don’t know what is. I wouldn’t be surprised if she killed Grat.”
Rhodes hadn’t looked at it quite that way, but he could see how it would fit. Yvonne could have gone out to the deserted house to confront Grat about his supposed infidelity and gotten into an argument with him. If the argument had turned violent, there wasn’t much doubt that Yvonne would have hit him with a whiskey bottle. In fact, considering her behavior of earlier that morning, it was even likely that she’d do something like that. If jealousy over Linda Fenton’s involvement with Beaman could result in a shooting incident, there was no telling what Yvonne might do if she thought Grat was seeing another woman.
