Shotgun Saturday Night

by Bill Crider

  Buster Cullens lay where he had fallen. He was dead.

  Ivy helped Rhodes search the house. The other two rooms contained nearly nothing. There was a bed, surprisingly neatly made up. There was a chest of drawers containing a few changes of clothing for Cullens and Wyneva. That was it. No place to cook. Nothing else. There was no form of identification for Cullens, not even in his pants pockets. There was a little money, about fifteen dollars. That was all.

  “They must have eaten out a lot,” Rhodes said.

  Ivy looked at him and laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “You know when that man was trying to get in the car? You were rolling around in all that mud, and all I could think of was the fight scene in North to Alaska. You should see yourself now.”

  “You like North to Alaska?”

  “Even Fabian.”

  Rhodes felt mud crack on his face as he grinned. “I knew you were a woman of taste,” he said. “Now there’s a little favor I have to ask.”

  “First the compliment, then the favors,” Ivy said.

  “Well, for that matter you aren’t so clean yourself,” Rhodes said.

  “Never mind. What’s the favor?”

  “Ride that thing down to Mrs. Ramsey’s and call the J.P., the ambulance, and Hack. I’ll stay here and watch things.”

  “I could watch.”

  “Don’t start,” Rhodes said. “Nobody likes a smart aleck.”

  “All right, I’ll make your calls. Anything else?”

  “Yeah. Bring back the bike. It’s evidence.”

  They went outside. Standing off to one side, his tail between his legs, was the dog. He eyed them with suspicion.

  Rhodes knelt on the porch and whistled. The dog came forward a step or two, then stopped. “C’mon, boy,” Rhodes said.

  After continued coaxing, he managed to get the dog to come to him. He ran his hand over its head. There was a large lump. “That Jayse sure liked that axe handle,” Rhodes said. He rubbed the dog.

  “Is he one of the men you hurt?” Ivy asked.

  “Yeah, the one in the front room.”

  “Good,” Ivy said. She walked over to the motorcycle. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Take your time,” Rhodes said. “I won’t be going anywhere.”

  Back in the house, Rhodes inspected Cullens’s body. Bruises had formed around his kidneys and abdomen where he’d been repeatedly struck. Rhodes wondered if Rapper had been taking revenge because of Wyneva. Maybe she was like Bert Ramsey. Once you were one of the dead, you were always one of the dead. Rapper seemed just the kind of man to kill out of jealousy or revenge.

  This was clearly different from Bert Ramsey’s death, though. Cullens had been tortured. There was generally only one reason for torture, and that was to gain information. What information did Cullens have that Rapper wanted? And had Rapper gotten it?

  Rhodes tied up the nameless man with a belt he found in the chest of drawers. Jayse was still out. He hoped they’d be able to answer his questions. He’d give a lot, sometimes, to be like the stereotypical Texas sheriff in movies and cheap novels, with a sadistic deputy and a cattle prod to use on recalcitrant prisoners. Unfortunately, he couldn’t work like that.

  He went back out on the porch. The dog was still there, and he rubbed its head. He figured the dog could tell him a lot if it could only discuss things with him. It could probably have told him, for instance, where Wyneva was. Obviously, she hadn’t come back here after the funeral fiasco at Ballinger’s chapel, which was probably for the best. Rapper might have finished her off, too. He might be looking for her even now.

  Rhodes’s back ached. He knew he’d have a huge bruise on it by the next day. Besides, he was covered with mud. If Cullens had had indoor plumbing, Rhodes would have washed off, but there was only an old well in the backyard.

  Thinking of the well put another, much less pleasant, thought in Rhodes’s mind. He went around to the back, the dog at his heels. When he got to the well, he lifted the cover off and looked down. It was just a well, and he could see light reflect off the water below. For a minute, he’d been afraid that Rapper had thrown Wyneva down there.

  Since he was already there, Rhodes let down the galvanized bucket and drew it back up. The water was clear and cold, and he washed off his hands and face as best he could.

  Then he heard the motorcycle returning and went back around to the front. He still found it a little hard to believe that Ivy could ride the bike so well.

  She came to a stop near the porch, got off, and reported. “Hack’s sending Ruth Grady, and the ambulance and J.P. are on the way.”

  “Good,” Rhodes said. “I’d like to get this all settled out.”

  “I’ll bet,” Ivy said. “Easier said than done.”

  “Maybe,” Rhodes said. A pain shot across his back and he winced. “I seem to get a lot of roughing up without getting very good results.”

  “You’ve got two prisoners,” Ivy reminded him.

  “And another corpse,” Rhodes said.

  “Not to mention a dog,” Ivy said, looking at the animal, which had followed Rhodes around to the front.

  It sat a few yards away, its tongue hanging out. It was looking at Rhodes expectantly.

  “Oh, no,” Rhodes said. “Wait a minute.”

  “Somebody has to take care of it,” Ivy said. “Surely you weren’t planning just to leave it here to starve to death.”

  “Ah, well, I hadn’t really thought about it, to tell the truth,” Rhodes said.

  “Well I had,” Ivy said. “I think you should take it.”

  “I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said. “How was Mrs. Ramsey doing?”

  Ivy’s face clouded. “I’m not sure. I told her a little of what was going on here, and she started in about ‘that Greer woman being to blame’ and about how Bert had been a fine man until he met her. She was still upset about her being at the funeral, I could tell. She looked stony hard to me. I wouldn’t want her coming at me like she went at Wyneva Greer this morning.”

  “I know what you mean,” Rhodes said. “Let’s check on our prisoners.”

  Neither man was in any condition to talk, but Rhodes figured they would both be in pretty good shape by the next day. He just hoped that he would. Now that he’d had time to stiffen up, it hurt him even to take a step. “What time is it, anyway?” he asked.

  Ivy looked at her watch. “Nearly two o’clock.”

  “Seems like I never eat lunch anymore,” Rhodes said. “Now that you mention it. . .”

  “I guess in all the goings on, I kind of forgot,” Rhodes said. “To tell the truth, I never thought about eating until right now.”

  “Me either,” Ivy said.

  The dog barked. “Him either,” Rhodes said. He was almost resigned to having to adopt the dog. Then he remembered how the dog had come out from under the porch the first day he’d driven up. “Don’t you need a good watchdog?”

  “Watchdog?” Ivy was incredulous. “He didn’t do Buster Cullens much good, did he?”

  “I guess he didn’t at that,” Rhodes said. He shook his head and looked at the dog.

  Then he looked down the road and saw the ambulance coming.

  Chapter 12

  Rhodes did not like to ride in the car with dogs. He insisted that if it would be safe to leave the motorcycles in the country overnight, it would also be safe to leave the dog. “He’s used to it here,” he said.

  It didn’t do any good. Neither Ruth nor Ivy would listen to him, and so the dog was riding back to town with them in the county car. The fact that Rhodes had to share the back seat with him didn’t help. “After all,” Ruth told him, “you’re at least as dirty as the dog.”

  Rhodes didn’t point out that Ivy wasn’t much cleaner. Probably, Ruth would have put the dog in front if he had. Ruth listened to the radio as she drove, a country station. Rhodes had once liked country music, but now it all sounded to him as if the singers were trying to get a jo
b in a Vegas lounge. Occasionally there would be a song he’d like, but not often. It was the same with rock music. Rhodes had grown up with rock, and he had listened for hours to songs like those he’d played for Ivy a few nights before. But somewhere rock music had taken a turn that he had missed. The road forked, and he had taken the wrong fork. He seldom turned on the radio anymore.

  So, what with having to sit in the back seat, the prisoner’s seat, Rhodes thought ironically, and having to share the seat with the dog, and having to listen to Kenny Rogers croon through a forest of syrupy violins and cooing backup singers, Rhodes wasn’t in a particularly good mood. Besides, he was dirty, and his back was sore. On top of everything, Rapper and Nellie had gotten away.

  It didn’t improve things when Ruth brought up Clyde Ballinger’s latest telephone call. “Hack said you wouldn’t like it,” she said, explaining that Ballinger wanted to talk to Rhodes. Apparently, there was a hitch in the burial plans.

  “Just drive by there right now,” Rhodes told her.

  “Now?” Ruth looked at him in the mirror.

  Ivy turned in her seat and looked back through the grille that separated them. “Are you sure? I think if you had a bath and something to eat. . . .”

  “I don’t want a bath, and I don’t want anything to eat,” Rhodes said. “I want to get this mess settled.”

  “All right,” Ruth said. “You’re the sheriff.”

  For a minute or two, no one spoke. The dog lay quietly in the seat, his tongue hanging out.

  “So,” Ruth said finally, “what are you going to name the dog?”

  “Don’t start,” Rhodes said. “Just don’t start.”

  “It’s a sensible question,” Ivy said. “Are you sulking because I can ride a motorcycle better than you?”

  “Of course not,” Rhodes said. But then he wondered if maybe she had a point. “I think I may name the dog Carella.”

  “What?”

  “Carella?”

  “What kind of name is that?”

  “Italian, I think.”

  “That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Ivy said. “I meant, what kind of name is that for a dog to have?”

  “I think it’s kind of nice,” Ruth said. “It has a nice sound.”

  “I like it,” Rhodes said. He could hardly wait to tell Ballinger.

  Ballinger liked the name, all right, but it didn’t change his mind. “I can’t bury them,” he said. They were in his office, and he looked at Rhodes as if he wished Rhodes would disappear, or at least go home and change clothes. Ruth and Ivy were looking at the books that lined the shelves and not really listening. Every now and then they would pull one down and read the cover blurbs.

  “You took Dr. Rawlings’s money,” Rhodes said. “You’ve got to bury them.”

  “I can send the money back,” Ballinger said. “I’ve talked to my lawyer, and he says burying them would be a mistake. What if someone decided to sue?”

  Rhodes sighed. It was the modern way. Everybody was suing everybody else. He supposed that even a mortician could be sued. “No one’s going to sue,” he said.

  “How do you know?” Ballinger asked. He didn’t ask in a smart way. He really wanted to know.

  “Because all those limbs are from people who believe that they’ve already been disposed of.” Rhodes didn’t know if he was telling the truth, but it sounded plausible. “They’re from amputees who paid someone to remove them. They were supposed to be burned. No one will ever know that you buried them.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Rawlings hauled them off up here and dumped them in a pasture. You think a doctor would take a chance like that if there was even a remote possibility he could be sued?”

  “You’ve got a point there,” Ballinger said. “That lawyer of mine probably isn’t as smart as he thinks. I’ll do it.”

  “I hope so,” Rhodes said. “I’m getting tired of thinking about those boxes. So give me an exact time. I want to be there.”

  Ballinger thought for a second. “Tomorrow evening, seven o’clock. The north end of the cemetery. No use calling any more attention to this than we have to.” The north end of the cemetery was well back from the road and overlooked miles of open pasture.

  “I’ll be there,” Rhodes said.

  They left Ballinger and went back to the car, where the dog was waiting quietly. Ruth and Ivy were talking about the books.

  “Can you believe there’s really a book called Guerrilla Girls?” Ivy asked.

  “How about Backwoods Hussy?” Ruth said.

  “Don’t laugh,” Rhodes told them. “Some of those old books are pretty good.”

  Both women looked at him, but neither said a word. Rhodes sat in the back seat and rubbed the dog’s head.

  After he had bathed and eaten a sandwich, Rhodes felt better. Several ideas about what was going on were beginning to form, and while he didn’t think he had all the answers, he did think he was getting a handle on things.

  He went outside and looked at the dog, which seemed content to lie by the back steps. Of course, he’d eaten practically a whole package of Rhodes’s bologna, so he certainly should have been content, at least for the time being. Rhodes knew he’d have to buy some real dog food pretty soon.

  He had owned only one dog before, when Kathy was small. The dog’s name was Speedo, for no good reason that Rhodes could remember. Like most dogs, Speedo had soon become like another member of the family and had lived with them happily for nearly ten years. Then one day he had run into the street, something he never did, and been hit by a passing car. Claire and Kathy had cried and cried—Kathy continued to sniffle for days—and Rhodes had taken Speedo into the back yard and buried him. Rhodes had cried a little, too. The rock that marked Speedo’s grave still got in the way on those rare occasions when he mowed the back yard, but he’d never even given a thought to moving it. They had never gotten another dog.

  “What the heck,” Rhodes said to the dog. “You don’t look Italian. I think I’ll just call you Speedo. Nobody but you and I will know that your real name is Mr. Earl.”

  The dog, his tongue still hanging out slightly, looked at Rhodes. His tail thumped twice.

  “That’s settled, then,” Rhodes said. He went back inside, ate another sandwich, using the last piece of his bologna, and went down to the jail.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Hack said when Rhodes walked in. “What you drivin’?”

  Rhodes didn’t really want to think about the shot-up car he’d left at Buster Cullens’s house. “I’m in my pickup,” he said.

  “Hear you got yourself a dog,” Lawton said, “one with an Eye-talian name.”

  “His name’s Speedo,” Rhodes said. “I changed it.”

  “Oh,” Lawton said. Whatever joke he’d planned about the dog’s name was ruined.

  Hack took up the slack. “Guess you heard about the demonstration.”

  Rhodes hadn’t heard, of course.

  “Big demonstration down by the phone company,” Lawton said, wanting to get in on things. Hack looked at him and Lawton shut up.

  “Lady called,” Hack said. “She thought it might be commonists, wantin’ to blow up the phone company.”

  “I didn’t know there were enough Communists in Blacklin County to hold a demonstration,” Rhodes said.

  “You may be right,” Hack said, “but I figured you’d want me to send somebody out to investigate.”

  “Absolutely right,” Rhodes said. “We wouldn’t want a Communist takeover right here in the middle of Texas.”

  “That’s exactly what I thought,” Hack said. “So I sent Buddy.”

  “That reminds me,” Rhodes said. “What about that doll?”

  “The evidence is safe,” Lawton said. “Flatter than a flitter.”

  “About this here demonstration,” Hack said.

  “What about it?”

  “You know where the Presbyterian church is?” Hack asked.

  “That’s the one where the Reverend F
unk preaches,” Lawton put in. Hack glared at him.

  “Sure I know,” Rhodes said. “What’s that got to do—Wait a minute. There wouldn’t have been a wedding there today, would there?”

  Hack was a little disappointed that Rhodes had caught on. “Yeah, there was,” he said. “Right catty-corner from the phone company. Looks like I sent Buddy down there to bust up a weddin’ reception. They was all out on the walk, wavin’ little bags of rice around and laughin’ and goin’ on. It prob’ly looked like a demonstration to somebody.”

  “I can see that,” Rhodes said, not really sure that he could. “Did the caller give a name?”

  “Nope. One o’ those ‘nonymous calls. Good thing, too. Whoever it was’ll feel bad enough when she finds out, anyway.”

  “I doubt it,” Rhodes said. “Whoever it was will just think it was a bunch of demonstrators disguised as a wedding party.”

  “You may be right, at that,” Hack said.

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter,” Rhodes said. “As long as it’s taken care of. Now, have you sent a wrecker out for the county car?”

  “Sure have. Commissioners are gonna love that. First the air conditioner, and then the car. Bet our insurance goes up.”

  Rhodes changed the subject. “I’m going out to Gottschalk’s place. You ever call him?”

  “Yep. That Nellie is his nephew, all right. Hasn’t seen him in years, though. Remembers him as a pretty good kid when he was little.”

  “Well, he’s not little anymore,” Rhodes said.

  “What you goin’ out there for?” Lawton asked. “They surely won’t be stayin’ around after what happened this mornin’.”

  “I know that,” Rhodes said. “They might have left something behind, though.” He was pretty sure they hadn’t. Rapper may have been psychotic, but he was smart. There wasn’t anything else he could do today, however. He knew that the doctors at the hospital wouldn’t let him do any serious questioning of Jayse and the other man until the next morning, after all the tests had been run and the injuries determined.

  “Better take you some backup, just in case,” Hack said.