Between the Living and the Dead

by Bill Crider

  Chapter 18

  Fran searched the closet with Rhodes watching, but the revolver wasn’t there. Rhodes didn’t think it would be. It couldn’t have gotten out of the safe without the help of someone who knew the correct combination for the keypad, and if Fran hadn’t taken it, the list of suspects was very short.

  “Clifford must have taken it,” Fran said, naming one of them. “I don’t know why he’d have wanted it.”

  “You don’t have the combination written down anywhere, do you?” Rhodes asked.

  “Well,” Fran said. “That’s an embarrassing question.”

  “You want to answer it?”

  “You saw that I had trouble remembering the combination. It’s not like I open the safe often. So, yes, I have it written down.”

  “Where?” Rhodes asked.

  “It’s on a piece of paper in my dresser drawer,” she said.

  She came out of the closet and into the bedroom. She went to the dresser, pulled open one of the top drawers, and brought out a piece of paper.

  “Here it is,” she said, and handed the paper to Rhodes.

  Rhodes took the paper but handed it back without looking to see what was written on it. He didn’t doubt that the combination was there. If Wade knew the .38 was in the gun safe, he wouldn’t have had any trouble locating the combination.

  “You know where Wade and your husband are right now?” he asked.

  “Cliff said he was going to his office at the city hall,” Fran said. “I don’t know about Wade. He borrowed my car and didn’t say where he was going.”

  Fran didn’t drive an SUV like her husband. She had a more modest Lexus, the smaller ES model. It was black, like the SUV. It would be easy to spot, but it would have to be where someone could see it.

  “He didn’t even give you a hint?” Rhodes asked.

  “He’s Cliff’s nephew, not mine. He comes here and visits, and it’s like he’s on his own. Cliff doesn’t tell him what to do, and I don’t think it’s my place to do it. If he wants to borrow a car, I give him the keys and send him on his way. It’s the middle of the afternoon. How much trouble could he get into?”

  “If he has a gun?” Rhodes said. “Plenty.”

  * * *

  Rhodes wished he’d stopped in Thurston for that hamburger as Louie had suggested, because now it seemed as if he might miss lunch, an all too frequent occurrence. Nevertheless, he had to try to find Wade Clement.

  The first thing Rhodes did was to call Hack and have him alert the deputies on patrol to look for Fran’s car.

  “Why?” Hack asked. “She gone missing?”

  “Wade Clement’s driving it. He’s the one I’m looking for. He might be armed, so be sure to mention that.”

  “You think he’s dangerous?”

  “I’m not sure. Just tell them to be careful.”

  When he had to, Hack could be serious and do his job. He didn’t try to get Rhodes into a discussion. He just said he’d take care of things.

  Rhodes signed off and drove by the city hall. He saw Clement’s SUV parked in his allotted space by the side of the building, but there was no sign of Fran’s ES. Rhodes parked and went to the mayor’s office.

  “Well, well,” Alice King said when he got to the door. “What a pleasure to see you again so soon, Sheriff. I’ll bet you didn’t come to see me, though. You’re probably here on business.”

  “I’m always happy to see you,” Rhodes said, “but I admit that I’m looking for the mayor.”

  “Then you’re in luck, because he’s here, doing the will of the people.”

  Clement came to the door of his office before Rhodes could ask what the will of the people was today. He scowled at Rhodes, making it clear that he wasn’t feeling nearly as perky as Alice and that he wasn’t nearly as happy to see Rhodes as she seemed to be. Sometimes Rhodes thought she was only pretending, but maybe she really was happy to see him. Not Clement. He wasn’t pretending. He wasn’t happy in the least to see Rhodes standing there.

  “You again,” Clement said. “What’s the problem now?”

  “I’m looking for your nephew,” Rhodes said.

  “He’s a grown man. I don’t keep up with him.”

  “What about your wife’s .38? Do you keep up with that?”

  Clement glanced at Alice, who was trying to look as if she couldn’t hear a word that was being said. She wasn’t very successful at it, but Rhodes had to give her credit for trying.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Clement said.

  “The gun’s missing, and so is Wade,” Rhodes told him.

  Clement was no longer scowling. He looked puzzled instead. “I don’t understand,” he said.

  Rhodes laid it out for him. “Wade didn’t mind bringing in his Glock, and it’s no wonder. I found out that Foshee was killed with a .38. Your wife has a .38, but it’s missing. So is Wade. If you don’t have the .38, then I think he does.”

  Clement’s scowl deepened. “That doesn’t sound good.”

  “It’s not good,” Rhodes said. “That’s why I’m looking for him. Did he say anything today that might give me a hint as to where he’s gone?”

  “He hasn’t said a lot since you talked to him yesterday.” Clement shook his head. “I can’t believe he has Fran’s gun. He had his own gun. Why not use that one?”

  “If you’re going to shoot somebody,” Rhodes said, “it’s a good idea not to use a gun that can be traced to you, especially if there’s another one handy. He could use your wife’s gun, put it back in the safe, and who’d be the wiser?”

  “You’re telling me he didn’t put it back, though,” Clement said. “Do you think he’s crazy?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “It seems as if he might have killed Neil Foshee with Fran’s gun. Isn’t that what you’re saying? He must think he’s some vigilante in the movies, shooting down drug dealers to clean up the city.”

  Clement was getting carried away. Rhodes started to give him another little lecture on implying and referring, but the time didn’t seem right for it.

  “We don’t know that he’s killed anybody,” Rhodes said. “I just want to find out about that gun.”

  “There’s something else you should know,” Clement said. “The only thing he’s mentioned since yesterday also sounds crazy. He told me that just being outside the Moore house gave him the creeps. It was like he was being watched.”

  “There’s nothing crazy about that,” Rhodes said, trying not to sound defensive. “Anybody might get a feeling like that.”

  Clement looked doubtful. “I don’t know. Sounds crazy to me.” He scratched his beard. “You think he might have gone back to that house?”

  Rhodes hadn’t considered it, but it made sense in a way, especially if Wade had experienced the same sensation that Rhodes had. He might have thought someone had seen him with Foshee and hoped to find some kind of clue in the house. He wouldn’t, however. Rhodes was sure that he and Ruth and Andy had found anything that was there to be found.

  “Maybe that’s where he went,” Rhodes said. “I’ll go take a look.”

  “Are you going to arrest him?”

  Clement sounded concerned. Rhodes wondered if he was worried about his nephew or about how the arrest of a relative might affect his chances for reelection.

  “Well?” Clement said. “Are you?”

  “We’ll just have to wait and see,” Rhodes told him.

  * * *

  Rhodes found the Lexus ES parked in back of the Moore house. He stopped beside it and got Hack on the radio.

  “Send me some backup to the Moore house,” he said. “Wade Clement might be inside.”

  “Buddy’s closest, out in Milsby. Take him a little while to get there.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Rhodes said. “Just tell him to come on.”

  “Will do,” Hack said.

  Rhodes got out of the car. It was shady in the yard, but heat and humidity seemed to rise up out of th
e weeds and hang in the air. There was no breeze to stir the leaves on the trees. Rhodes stopped by the old pickup with the puny hackberry tree sticking up through it near the radiator, or where the radiator would’ve been had it not rusted almost away.

  Standing near the front fender of the nearly fossilized Dodge, Rhodes realized he had no sensation of being watched. He looked at the house and listened for any sound from inside it. All he heard was the sound of a car on a street a few blocks away. He bent over and got the Kel-Tec from the ankle holster. He checked the clip and started toward the house.

  He stopped at the back door and listened again. He could hear faint noises, as if someone might be moving around, but not nearby. Rhodes debated with himself about whether to wait for Buddy to arrive. He decided that he could handle Wade on his own, so he pushed up the crime-scene tape that crossed the door and went inside.

  It was cooler in the old house, but Rhodes didn’t feel any sense of relief from the heat outside. The afternoon sunlight came in through the broken windowpanes, and dust motes floated in the air. Rhodes went carefully from room to room, being as quiet as he could and hoping that the dust wouldn’t make him sneeze. It hadn’t before, so he figured he would be all right.

  Rhodes didn’t find Wade in any of the rooms. He didn’t encounter any rats, either, so he had that going for him. Occasionally he heard a noise from above, as if someone, probably Wade, were searching the second floor. Or the rats were moving around. Rhodes didn’t think rats would have parked the Lexus in the yard, however.

  Rhodes went up the stairway and was again impressed by the fact that the steps didn’t squeak. He looked through each of the rooms and found no one. There was no sound from the attic, either, but if Wade was in the house, that was where he had to be.

  Sure enough, the door at the top of the attic stairway was open. Rhodes went on up the stairs, stopped at the top, and looked inside the attic. He didn’t see anybody, so he stuck his head around the corner and looked toward the closet.

  Wade Clement stood in front of the empty enclosure, peering into it. Unlike the closet, Wade’s hand wasn’t empty. He was holding a revolver.

  Rhodes didn’t want to scare him. A frightened person could be even more dangerous than a calm one. A calm person acted with deliberation. A frightened one might shoot at a shadow, or even at a sheriff.

  Rhodes stepped back and down a couple of steps. He trained the Kel-Tec on the doorway and said, “Wade Clement, this is Sheriff Rhodes. Put your weapon on the floor and shove it away from you with your foot.”

  “Sheriff Rhodes? What are you doing here?”

  “The question is, what are you doing here, Wade. You crossed a police line. That’s illegal, you know.”

  “I was looking for something,” Wade said. “I thought it would be all right if I didn’t bother anything.”

  “Did you leave something here the other night?” Rhodes asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You must have left something when you were here to meet Neil Foshee. That’s the only time you would have been here.”

  Rhodes moved up one step. He could see into the attic, but he couldn’t see Wade, who was still off to the side near the closet.

  “I told you I wasn’t here,” Wade said.

  “You told me the Glock was your gun, but I see you have another one.”

  “How can you see it?”

  Rhodes thought he might as well mess with Wade’s mind a little bit. He said, “I have ways of seeing things like that.”

  “I don’t believe you. This house is crazy, though. There’s something in it. Did you know that?”

  “There’s nothing here anymore,” Rhodes said. “The house is empty. Put your gun on the floor and shove it away from you. Let me hear you do it. Then we can talk.”

  “You must think I killed Neil Foshee,” Wade said. “I didn’t do it. Somebody else did. Or something else. It’s not here anymore, though. You’re right about that.”

  “Put the gun on the floor,” Rhodes said.

  For a while Wade didn’t say anything. Then Rhodes heard the clunk of something solid hitting the floor.

  “Did you hear that?” Wade asked. “That was the pistol. I’m going to push it away from me.”

  Rhodes heard a scraping noise.

  “Put your hands on your head and stand facing the door,” Rhodes said.

  “All right,” Wade said. “I’m doing it.”

  Rhodes decided to take a chance that Wade was telling the truth. He went up the last step and through the door, his pistol gripped in both hands and extended in front of him.

  Wade Clement stood facing him, hands on his head, just as he’d been instructed. The revolver lay on the floor a few feet away.

  “I guess I shouldn’t have come here,” Wade said.

  “You guess right,” Rhodes said. “Turn around and walk into the closet.”

  Wade glanced behind him. “I really don’t want to do that.”

  Rhodes didn’t much blame him, but he said, “Do it.”

  “I won’t do anything,” Wade said. “I promise.”

  Rhodes gestured with his pistol. “Turn around and walk into the closet.”

  “You won’t shut the door, will you?”

  “I won’t shut the door. Now go on.”

  Wade turned and walked into the closet. He stood facing the back wall, and Rhodes picked up the revolver. He sniffed it. It didn’t smell as if it had been fired in years, and there was no odor of Hoppe’s cleaning solvent, either. It was as if the gun had been in the safe in Fran Clement’s closet for a long time. Rhodes stuck the gun in his back pocket.

  “Why’d you have the gun with you?” he asked.

  “I was afraid to come here without it,” Wade said.

  “What were you scared of?”

  “Ghosts,” Wade said, his voice echoing off the wall.

  Chapter 19

  Rhodes marched Wade down the two flights of stairs and out of the house into the backyard, stopping him beside the abandoned pickup. Buddy drove up at that moment, and he stepped out of the county car with his .44 Magnum pointed at Wade.

  “This the fella that killed Neil Foshee?” Buddy asked.

  “I never killed anybody,” Wade said. “I want a lawyer.”

  “We have some good ones here in Clearview,” Rhodes said, “but you’re not under arrest, so you don’t really need one. You can put your hands down now.”

  “You sure about that, Sheriff?” Buddy asked. “Want me to cuff him? He looks dangerous to me. Looks like he might run.” Buddy grinned. “Nobody can outrun a bullet, though.”

  Rhodes lowered his own gun. “You can put your sidearm away, Buddy, and don’t bother with the cuffs. Wade’s not going to run. Are you, Wade?”

  Wade let his hands fall to his sides. “No, sir. I’m not going anywhere if I’m not under arrest. You did say I wasn’t under arrest, didn’t you?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  Rhodes took the .38 from his back pocket and handed it to Buddy. “Bag that and take it to the jail. Ask Mika to test it to see if it’s been fired recently.”

  Buddy holstered his Magnum and took the .38. “You sure you’ll be okay here?”

  “I’ll be fine,” Rhodes said.

  Buddy bagged the .38. When that was done, he got in the car, gave a little wave, and left. Once he was gone, Rhodes leaned over and returned the Kel-Tec to the ankle holster. Rhodes was glad to be out of the house. He was grateful for the shade of the trees, too. He didn’t have to worry about his head blistering.

  “Let’s talk a little bit,” he said to Wade. “You mentioned ghosts.”

  “Yeah. I guess I shouldn’t have. I know it sounds crazy.”

  Rhodes wished people would quit saying that.

  “It’s not crazy, but I’d like to hear why you thought about ghosts.”

  “Because this place is weird. That night when the man was shot, I was outside in the car, and I felt lik
e someone was watching me, or maybe wanting me to come inside. All I wanted to do was get away. I don’t think I’d have gone in even if I hadn’t heard the shots. It was the weirdest feeling I ever had about anything.”

  “Why were you in the attic today?”

  “That’s crazy, too. I didn’t really want to come back here, but most of the day yesterday I had the feeling that I should. I thought I needed to look around, to find something. I’d been over the rest of the house and was just getting to the attic when you showed up.”

  “You didn’t find anything, though.”

  “No. Whatever it was that was there before, it’s gone now.”

  “You said the feeling was gone, too.”

  “Yeah. I didn’t want to mention it to you yesterday. It sounded—”

  “Crazy. You mentioned that. What you don’t know is that yesterday we found a skeleton in the attic.”

  “A skeleton? A real one?”

  “It could be just something from a high school biology class, but it’s real enough. We’re still trying to figure out how it got there.”

  “You believe in ghosts, Sheriff?”

  “No,” Rhodes said. “I don’t. Some people do, though. They believe a person’s spirit can linger around after death looking for revenge or something.”

  Not Seepy Benton, however. He had a different take on things, which was no surprise.

  “Other people have a much more complicated idea about ghosts,” Rhodes said. “They can even make ghosts sound like a scientific possibility.”

  “I wouldn’t know about that,” Wade said.

  Rhodes was afraid that Wade might ask for an explanation that Rhodes couldn’t give him, but he didn’t.

  “All I know,” Wade said, “is that I felt something watching me, something that wanted me in that house. So I came back, to look around to see if I could find out what it was that wanted me there. That’s all. I didn’t kill anybody, Sheriff. I’m guilty of crossing your police line, but not anything else. Are you going to arrest me now?”

  Rhodes thought it over. A night in jail might do Wade some good, but it didn’t seem likely.

  “Not if you stay out of trouble for the rest of your visit,” Rhodes said. “I want you to go by your uncle’s office and explain to him what you were doing and why you had the gun. Be sure to apologize to your aunt for sneaking it out of the house. Stay away from this place, too. All right?”