Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  “I looked at that this morning. It’s cotton and it’s old and rotted. That’s about all I can tell you.”

  That wasn’t a lot of help, but Rhodes hadn’t expected much. “Hack, what about Wade Clement? He have a record?”

  “Not ’less you count speedin’ tickets. Ever’ college boy has those.”

  “Any reports on the whereabouts of Louie Foshee?”

  “Nope. Not a one.”

  Rhodes hadn’t expected that there would be, but it never hurt to ask.

  “What about the gun registrations?”

  “I’ll check those right now,” Mika said.

  “You can let me know when I get back. Hack, Call Buddy and have him meet me at Miss Nora Fischer’s house in about three-quarters of an hour. I have a lead on Louie, and I’ll want backup.”

  “You think he’s hidin’ at Miss Fischer’s?”

  “No, but he might be at Merritt’s Lake. Who owns the land now?”

  “Frankie Welch,” Hack said. “Says he’s gonna start leasin’ it to deer hunters in the fall, or so I heard.”

  Welch was the owner of Clearview’s only office supply store, which was in the little strip mall a couple of doors down from Ace Gable’s parts store.

  “Call him up,” Rhodes said. “Tell him I’m going out to his place to look for somebody who might be in the old house near the lake. I’m going to talk to Miss Fischer about something else before I go out there.”

  “You gonna tell me what it is you’re gonna talk to her about?”

  Rhodes looked at Mika. “He says I never tell him anything.”

  “He tells me that about you, too,” Mika said. “You shouldn’t be mean to him.”

  She was more on Hack’s side than Rhodes had thought, or maybe she was just joshing him. She knew how to keep a straight face, so it was hard to tell.

  “You oughta listen to her,” Hack said. “We employees like to be treated well, since we don’t get paid much.”

  “I’m going to talk to her about Ralph Moore,” Rhodes said. “Anytime you want to know something else, just ask me.”

  “I ask you all the time, but you don’t tell me.”

  “Maybe I will next time.”

  “I ain’t countin’ on it,” Hack said.

  * * *

  Nora Fischer had been Rhodes’s history teacher in high school. She was around eighty years old now, and she’d lived in Clearview all her life. She knew nearly everyone in town, having taught them or their children or them and their children. And grandchildren. She’d remember Ralph Moore.

  She was cautious about opening her door, but when she saw who was there, she opened it wide.

  “You come right on in, Danny,” she said. She’d called him that ever since high school, and he wasn’t going to try to change her. “What are you doing out and about so early in the morning?”

  Nora was short, not even five and a half feet tall, and she wore her steely gray hair in a bun. She had on thick glasses, but she’d often assured Rhodes that her eyesight was just fine, thank you very much, when he’d inquired.

  “I was hoping to ask you a few questions,” Rhodes said. “About Ralph Moore.”

  “I’ve heard a little about the sad things going on at his old house,” she said. “Come on back to the kitchen, where we can sit down.”

  Rhodes followed her through the living room and down a short hall to the small, neat kitchen. A newspaper was spread on the table, and a coffee cup and saucer were beside it.

  “Would you like some coffee?” Nora asked.

  “No, thanks,” Rhodes said. “I don’t drink it.”

  “My goodness. How do you get your caffeine?”

  “I don’t get a lot of it,” Rhodes said.

  Since he’d stopped drinking Dr Pepper, he got hardly any at all. The lack of it hadn’t bothered him.

  “I have to have my coffee in the morning,” Nora said. “It gets me going.”

  She sat in the chair nearest the newspaper, and Rhodes sat down opposite her.

  “I still like newspapers,” Nora said, removing her glasses and laying them next to the saucer. “I know the Internet is where everybody reads the news now, but I’m old-fashioned.”

  Rhodes was glad to hear it. He didn’t want to go into much detail about what had happened at the Moore house, and if Nora hadn’t read about the ghost, his job would be easier.

  “I just want the newspapers to last as long as I do,” Nora said. “I’m planning on twenty more years at the very least.”

  “I hope you get there,” Rhodes said. “I’m not so sure the newspapers will.”

  “That would be a real shame. You didn’t come here to talk about that, though. You asked about Ralph Moore. What did you want to know about him? It’s been a long time since I’d thought of him at all.”

  “I’m not sure what I want to know,” Rhodes said. “Just tell me about him.”

  “He taught chemistry and physics. He was very smart.”

  “What I’d like to know about is more personal,” Rhodes said, “not what he taught.”

  Nora thought for a while. “Do you remember any stories you heard about him? There used to be so many.”

  “I remember some of them,” Rhodes said.

  “A good many of them were true. Students didn’t like his classes. They thought he was arbitrary and unfair. He didn’t like animals any more than he liked his students, and he chased them off his property, used a pellet gun on them. At school he could be hard to get along with.”

  Nothing new in any of that.

  “What about friends?” Rhodes asked. “Did he have any?”

  “Oh, yes, several.” Nora took a sip of her coffee and set the cup back in the saucer. “He could be ingratiating when he wanted to be, and he could even be charming if you were a woman.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure, but he thought Nora might have blushed.

  “It’s just that he didn’t suffer fools gladly,” Nora went on. “If you were an intelligent adult, he could get on well with you. If he had doubts about your intelligence, it was a different story.”

  Rhodes thought that Moore would be depressed if he knew that his house was now a haven for rats and mice.

  “You mentioned women,” Rhodes said. “Did he have women friends?”

  “I heard rumors, but nothing substantial. No one ever saw him out with a woman. Some women I knew wouldn’t have minded going out with him, though.”

  “Anybody in particular?”

  “Lindy Holmes. She taught home ec. Do they still have home ec, I wonder?”

  “If they do, it wouldn’t be the same kind of course it was back then. What happened to Lindy Holmes?”

  Nora laughed. “Dave Hardesty was hired as an assistant coach, and she forgot all about Ralph. She and Dave got married and moved to Dallas. He had a coaching job in one of the big schools there.”

  So much for the idea that Lindy Holmes might have been the skeleton in the attic.

  “Do you remember anyone in town having disappeared around the time Ralph died?” Rhodes asked.

  Nora gave Rhodes a quizzical look. “Danny, what are you getting at here? I don’t understand.”

  Rhodes figured he might as well tell her most of the story. It was already on the Internet, and it would be on TV by tonight if it wasn’t already, and she’d see it in the paper tomorrow. The big cities couldn’t resist a story with murder and a ghost.

  After he’d laid out most of the details, Nora said, “I can’t imagine Ralph killing anyone.” She paused. “I know everyone says that after a mass murderer goes on a rampage, but Ralph was different. He had a sense of humor, and he had empathy. Not with students, necessarily, but with some of the faculty. I remember when Fran Sanderson’s husband died. Ralph was so kind to her. He just wasn’t the type to kill anyone.”

  Nora got up from the table and carried her cup and saucer to the sink. She set them in it, ran water in the cup, and returned to the table.

  “So you don’t think
the skeleton in the attic could’ve been someone he murdered,” Rhodes said when she was seated.

  “I suppose it could’ve been, but it’s awfully far-fetched. Killing someone? I can’t see that. Putting the body in his own attic? I can’t see that, either. Anyway, no one disappeared around that time, at least not that I heard of, and I’m sure I’d have heard about it.”

  “What about a few years before or after Ralph died?”

  Nora shook her head. “If it happened, I don’t remember it. Could it have been someone who came here, someone from out of town?”

  Rhodes should’ve thought of that. Moore could’ve had a visitor and gotten into an argument with her, an argument that resulted in her death.

  “Did Ralph ever mention a visitor? A friend? A relative?”

  “Not that I recall,” Nora said. “All his relatives lived out of state. One of them could’ve come to visit. He wouldn’t necessarily have mentioned it. He was a very private person.”

  “I can believe it,” Rhodes said. He stood up. “Thanks for talking to me. You’ve given me some things to think about. I appreciate the help.”

  Nora started to stand, but Rhodes said, “I’ll see myself out. You finish reading the newspaper. If you think of anything that might help me out, give Hack a call at the jail.”

  “How is Hack doing these days?” Nora asked.

  “Ornery as ever,” Rhodes said.

  Nora laughed. “I’m not at all surprised.”

  Chapter 16

  Rhodes was about halfway down the sidewalk in front of Nora Fischer’s house when Buddy pulled his county car to the curb. Rhodes walked over to the car, and the window whirred down.

  “Hack says you got a line on where Louie’s hiding out,” Buddy said.

  “He could be at that old house at Merritt’s Lake,” Rhodes said. “That’s what Earl told me, for what it’s worth.”

  “Earl oughta know. Be a good place to hide out.”

  “Maybe. I’ll head out there and you can follow me,” Rhodes said.

  “Check,” Buddy said, and the window whirred up.

  Merritt’s Lake was down past the town of Thurston, to the north of the area of the county usually called the Big Woods. It would take a while to get there, and while he drove, Rhodes thought about the skeleton and the ghost. Although he hadn’t admitted it to anybody, and didn’t want to admit it even to himself, there was something very strange about all that had happened at the Moore house over the past couple of days.

  No matter how hard he tried, Rhodes couldn’t explain the behavior of the rat. It was easy enough to say that the feeling he’d had of being watched was just a natural reaction under the circumstances, but that rat had certainly seemed to be up to something. It was almost as if it were leading him to the closet where the skeleton was.

  Or that was what it might look like if a person let it. The power of suggestion, that was all it was. Had to be. Rhodes had let himself get a little spooked by the whole haunted house thing, and his imagination had taken over. That was the answer.

  The other things, the temperature drop, the slamming door, and the EMF meter readings, didn’t have to point to anything unnatural, but they were strange when taken together with everything else. But ghosts? It just wasn’t possible. Not that Seepy Benton would agree. He’d be touting his ghost-hunting abilities from now until forever.

  The skeleton itself was another problem. Rhodes kept asking himself the same two questions. Where had it come from? How had it gotten into the attic?

  Rhodes wondered about what Mika had told him. What was the word she used? Yurei. An unquiet spirit, roaming the earth until it had some kind of satisfaction, some rite performed or something settled. Revenge, maybe, or just having its earthly remains buried.

  Rhodes shook his head. He didn’t want to believe that.

  As he was crossing over the river that flowed out of one of the county’s larger lakes, something else occurred to him.

  Ralph Moore had taught chemistry and physics, subjects that weren’t too far removed from biology. Rhodes remembered that the biology teacher was Will Seegers. He’d still been teaching when Rhodes was in school, but somehow Rhodes had managed to avoid biology class. There had been a skeleton used in biology class at one time, though. Rhodes was sure of that even though he hadn’t taken the class. He’d seen the skeleton when walking down the hallway past the biology classroom. Rhodes didn’t know whether the skeleton was real or plastic, but what if it had been real? If Seegers and Moore had been friends, it wasn’t impossible that the skeleton could’ve been stored in Moore’s attic. It was worth checking into.

  Seegers had retired and moved away. He now lived down on the coast somewhere, Galveston, maybe. Rhodes would find out and give him a call. It would be quite a relief if the skeleton turned out to be nothing more than a prop for biology lectures. The clothing scraps could have been from something else, and any plastic monofilament holding the skeleton together would have long since decayed. The caved-in skull could’ve been the result of an accident at school, and it might even explain why the skeleton had been moved out of the biology class. It all made sense, and Rhodes was hopeful that he’d come up with the solution.

  He was feeling fairly cheerful as he passed through what was left of Thurston, which wasn’t much. At one time, in the days when cotton was king, Thurston had been a thriving community with several cotton gins, grocery stores, a drugstore, a service station, a hardware store, and much more. Now only a few buildings were standing, and the population was dwindling. Rhodes drove by the building that had once housed a store owned by Hod Barrett. It was still a store, but the new owner had made it over into something more resembling a fast-food restaurant. He’d installed a grill in back, and his wife cooked hamburgers and chicken. He sold a few things, but mostly candy and ice cream along with a few staples. And beer. He’d added a cooler, and now residents of Thurston and anybody else who happened by could purchase a six-pack to go if they wanted one. It was the only business left in town.

  Driving through didn’t take long. Rhodes checked his rearview mirror to be sure that Buddy was still behind him. He was, and Rhodes flipped his blinker light on for a left turn. He left the paved road and drove down a one-lane dirt road that wound among pastures and woods. Trees grew close to the road in a lot of places, and patterns of light and shade flowed over the car. Rhodes hoped he didn’t meet another driver on the narrow road. It wasn’t likely. Not many people lived out in the country around here.

  Rhodes crossed over a wooden bridge at Sand Creek and kept going for several more miles, winding around from one dusty county road to another and passing an occasional isolated house. Only one of them appeared to be occupied.

  Something else was nagging at him just below the level of consciousness, something that didn’t fit with everything else, but he couldn’t quite bring it to the surface. The more he tried to think what it could be, the farther it slipped down into the dark recesses of his mind. He figured it would make itself apparent eventually, or if it didn’t, maybe it wasn’t important in the first place.

  Rhodes looked down the dusty road in front of him. He wasn’t far from Merritt’s Lake now. If he hadn’t known where he was going, he wouldn’t have been able to find it. He was way off the main roads, back in the areas of the county where hardly anyone traveled these days. He saw an iron gate in the fence on his left. A white sign with faded red letters hung on the gate. It said POSTED—KEEP OUT. Rhodes didn’t think it applied to him, but just to be sure, he stopped the car in front of the gate and got on the radio to Hack.

  “Did you get Frankie Welch on the phone?” he asked.

  “Sure did,” Hack said. “You can go right ahead and take a look around his place. He said to tell you not to go fishin’, though. He’s savin’ all the big bass in that lake for hisself.”

  “Seems a little selfish,” Rhodes said, not that Welch had anything to worry about. There had been a time when Rhodes routinely carried fishing gear in the
back of his county car, but that time was long past. Rhodes hadn’t been fishing in so long, he wasn’t even sure he could remember how to cast a lure.

  “Can’t blame a fella for wantin’ those big, fat fish to be at the end of his line and not yours,” Hack said.

  Rhodes knew Hack was just trying to get a rise out of him, so he signed off, racked the mic, and got out of the car. Buddy was parked right behind him, the window of his car already down.

  “We gonna go in hot and fast?” Buddy asked as Rhodes approached.

  “Nope. We don’t even know that Louie’s around, and if he is, we don’t want to scare him off. We’ll go in as quietly as we can. The way I remember it, the lake’s down in a depression just past those oak trees there.” Rhodes pointed. “The road winds past them and down to the lake. We’ll go about halfway around the lake and then stop. We won’t try to go any farther in the cars.”

  “We need some rugged vehicles,” Buddy said. “For bouncing around in pastures and such.”

  Rhodes thought about the Tahoe that Roger Allen had mentioned. This would be a good time for it. Or for an MRAP, for that matter. In something like that they could just roll up to the old house and push it over. That would be a bad idea, even though Mikey Burns would probably go for it. It wouldn’t be as exciting as blowing pig parts all over the county, but if Louie was in there, it might squash him like a bug. Mikey might even go for that, but it didn’t fit with Rhodes’s ideas about enforcing the law, and Mikey wouldn’t go for the lawsuit that Welch might file if they demolished his house without permission.

  “Maybe we’ll get some new vehicles soon,” Rhodes said. “For now we’ll stop and walk. That way maybe we won’t alert Louie that we’re here, and we won’t be bouncing around so much.”

  “Okay,” Buddy said. “Is that gate locked?”

  “Never has been,” Rhodes said. “Wouldn’t do any good. If anybody wanted in, they’d just climb over it.”

  “You think that’s what Louie did?”

  “Louie had to walk here, so he probably came across country from the other side. Maybe he’ll be tired out and won’t give us any trouble.”