Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder

by Bill Crider

  That didn’t mean there weren’t plenty of customers. It just meant that it was easier to park, and that the early arrivals didn’t have to worry about having their cars blocked in by the latecomers. Rhodes was able to park much closer to the entrance than he had done on Saturday. The motorcycles, as usual, were close to the front. It was a lot easier to maneuver one of them through the parking lot than it was to maneuver a car.

  Now Rhodes had to make a decision. He could go inside and see who Rapper was talking to, if he was talking to anyone besides his pals, or he could wait and see what developed. He decided that he was too impatient to wait, but remembering his comment to Hack about being careful, he thought he’d better call for back-up before going inside.

  “Buddy’s out on a call,” Hack said when Rhodes got him. “We got us a 415 at the Dairy Queen.”

  “Let’s switch frequencies,” Rhodes said.

  Hack agreed, and they changed to a frequency that couldn’t be picked up on citizens’ scanners.

  “Now, what kind of disturbance are they having at the Dairy Queen?” Rhodes asked.

  “Fishin’,” Hack said.

  “Hack …”

  “All right. I was just joshin’ you a little. But it’s the truth. The Methodist preacher’s wife took some kids out there to get a Pick-Nic Kid’s meal after church. You seen the set up they got for those?”

  Rhodes had seen it. The kids got to “pick” a prize with their meal, and the local DQ had a display of the prizes in something resembling vending machines.

  “You mean Fisher’s stuck again?” he said.

  “That’s right. He didn’t learn his lesson like you thought he might. Tried to pick his prize right out of the display. Ran his arm in one of those slots, and it’s in there tight as Dick’s hat band. I told Buddy to use some of that oil they cook the French fries with on him this time.”

  “Good idea. What about Ruth?”

  “She just checked in. That bullfighter fella is across the line and on his way home.”

  That meant that Ruth was practically on the other side of the county, but even at that it wouldn’t take her long to get to where Rhodes was.

  “Send her along for back-up,” Rhodes said. “You never know what Rapper might do.”

  “OK. You wait for her to get there before you go in.”

  “I can’t do that. Rapper may be gone by then.”

  “You never learn, do you?” Hack said.

  “Don’t worry. I told you I’d be careful.”

  “Yeah,” Hack said. “That’s what you always tell me.”

  The music inside The County Line was just as loud as it had been on Saturday, but the crowd on the dance floor was much smaller. There were three bikers drinking beer at the bar, and Rhodes was acquainted with all three of them, though Nellie was the only one whose name he knew. Rapper wasn’t there.

  Since the three at the bar weren’t looking in his direction, Rhodes thought he might as well go have a look at the dancers. Maybe he’d find Rapper dancing with Terry Deedham. That would put an interesting twist on things.

  That wasn’t what he found. As far as he could tell, Terry wasn’t there. There were plenty of blondes, but she wasn’t one of them.

  Terry’s husband was there, however. He was sitting at one of the tables that partially surrounded the dance floor.

  And he was talking to Rapper.

  Rhodes had seen enough. He knew better than to confront Rapper while his buddies were with him, at least not without back-up.

  He was about to leave when Rapper looked up and saw him.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Rapper was an old hand at dealing with the law, and the sight of the sheriff didn’t visibly affect him. He sat calmly, looking at Rhodes as if they were two old friends who hadn’t seen each other in a while.

  Everything would have been fine if Rhodes had been dealing only with Rapper. But he wasn’t. There was also Deedham to consider, and Deedham, while he might have had nerves of iron when he stalked the sideline of a football field plotting out defenses and revising strategies, had never before been caught in any situation quite as shady as talking to a man like Rapper about whatever it was that they were discussing.

  So he panicked.

  That wouldn’t have been so bad in itself, but in his haste to distance himself from Rapper, Deedham upset the table between them, knocking the two bottles of beer that sat on it into Rapper’s lap.

  Even that wouldn’t have been much of an annoyance in the course of a normal evening at The County Line. Similar things probably happened fairly often, and Rapper took it coolly enough, bending over to pick up the bottles as they slipped from his lap to the floor, the beer puddling around their necks.

  What was an annoyance, at least to one particular patron of The County Line, was the fact that when Deedham jumped up, he pushed his chair backward, hard, into the chair of the man at a nearby table.

  The man was taking a drink from his beer bottle at the time, and when Deedham’s chair hit him, he jammed the bottle into his upper lip, cutting it on his incisors.

  The man, having had several earlier beers, wasn’t in a mood to be trifled with.

  “God damn!” he yelled, spinning around and standing up.

  Rhodes caught a glimpse of the blood on his upper lip as he grabbed Deedham by the collar and tried to fling him across the dance floor. The irate man was much smaller than Deedham and ordinarily wouldn’t have been able to fling Deedham very far, but the football coach was off balance and on the run. He stumbled to the dance floor, flapping his arms in an attempt to regain his balance, but he couldn’t. He collided with a dancing couple and sent them sprawling. As they fell, they dragged down others, none of whom were pleased with the way things were going.

  The man with the bloody lip still wasn’t satisfied. He decided that Rapper must have had something to do with things, so he jumped across the tipped-over table at him.

  Rapper moved only slightly, and the man went right past him. As he sailed by, Rapper hit him in the back of the head with one of the beer bottles that he had picked up from the floor. The man dropped straight down without making a sound.

  He had friends. Three of them. They all jumped for Rapper, but Rapper had friends too. Attracted by the commotion, they came in from the bar and joined the squabble. Not wanting to be left out, half the people who had been sitting at tables decided to join in as well.

  Rhodes tried to get to the dance floor and grab Deedham, but another minor riot had broken out, and he didn’t have much luck. No one seemed quite sure who was responsible for knocking everyone down, so to be on the safe side, everyone was trying to take revenge on everyone else.

  Women were kicking shins and scratching faces. Men were punching and butting. The County Line’s bouncers, two heavily muscled men in tight white T-shirts, had gotten into the action, throwing people aside as they waded through the mob, but they weren’t having much effect. Things had gotten out of control too quickly for two men to be able to do anything to quiet people down. Everyone in the place was either yelling or grunting with effort. Rhodes could no longer even hear the music from the jukebox.

  Deedham was getting away. He elbowed his way across the dance floor without getting knocked down and reached a door behind the platform where the bands played. A red sign over the door said, “FIRE EXIT.” A beer bottle aimed at Deedham’s head bounced off the protective chicken wire and shattered as it fell.

  Rhodes stepped over two men who were wrestling on the floor and shoved aside another man who was staggering around in a stupor. At Rhodes’ gentle push, he slid into a silent heap.

  “You can’t do that to Bo!” a woman screamed.

  Rhodes turned his head, and he just had time to read the woman’s T-shirt — “Sex Is Better Than Drugs If You Have The Right Pusher” — before she jumped on his back and began to pull his hair.

  Rhodes tried to throw her off, but she fastened her left arm around his neck and clamped her skinny legs around
his waist. She didn’t weigh much, so he kept going.

  “You killed Bo!” she yelled, grabbing a handful of hair and yanking.

  Rhodes winced, but he didn’t bother to tell her that Bo was just drunk. It would have been wasted effort. He carried her past struggling twosomes and threesomes, dodging punches as best he could until he reached the fire exit.

  “This is the end of the line, ma’am,” he said.

  He took her wrist and peeled her arm from around his neck, then grabbed her other wrist and pried her hand loose from his head, losing a little tuft of hair in the process.

  He pulled her arms down to his sides, but she refused to release him from her jean-clad legs, clinging to him like some kind of outraged monkey.

  He didn’t want to hurt her, so he said, “Ma’am, I’m Sheriff Dan Rhodes. If you don’t let go of me, I’m going to arrest you for disorderly conduct and assaulting an officer.”

  “You aren’t the sheriff. You killed Bo!”

  Rhodes couldn’t wait any longer. He didn’t want Deedham to get away and do anything foolish.

  “I’m sorry I have to do this,” he said.

  He let go of her right wrist and grabbed her left arm with both hands, giving her what he and all his friends in elementary school had called The Indian Wrist Burn. It was painful but harmless. It was also effective.

  The woman screamed and let go with her legs. She sagged to the floor and Rhodes went through the fire exit, leaving her there to rub her arm and wail.

  His first thought was that Deedham would try to lose himself in the trees that grew in back of the building, but he saw at once that wasn’t a possibility. The trees were too thinly scattered to offer much concealment, and the lights strung in the branches made searching among them too easy. Deedham had gone in another direction.

  Rhodes turned to run to the front of the building, which was where Deedham must have parked his car.

  By the time he got to the parking lot, the fight had spilled out through the front doors. Brawling was the favorite sport of many of those who frequented The County Line. They were good at it, and they were enthusiastic.

  One man had foolishly decided that the bikers were responsible for the whole thing. It was a logical conclusion to draw, considering Rapper’s involvement. Logical, but not smart, especially in view of the fact that being unable to find a biker to vent his wrath on, he was taking it out on one of the bikes that he had tipped over. He was holding a bottle of beer and each time he took a sip, he stomped on the spokes of the front wheel with his boot heel.

  Even an assault on his person was not as likely to arouse a biker to fury as an attack on his bike, and Rhodes, being too far away to do anything, watched helplessly as Born Too Loose galloped over, grabbed the man by the back of the shirt, turned him around, and hit him in the face five times. When Born Too Loose let the man go, he dropped to the ground and didn’t move.

  The biker didn’t care about the man. He bent over to look at the spokes in the wheel of his bike.

  Rhodes looked around for Deedham, but he didn’t see him. He did see Rapper, Nellie, and the other biker come out of The County Line. They went straight for their bikes, straddled them, and started the engines. Born Too Loose picked his bike up, shrugged, and cranked it. All four of them turned the bikes to start out of the lot.

  While not full, the lot didn’t offer a straight line of egress. Rhodes was able to weave through the maze of cars and get in the bikers’ path.

  They didn’t seem worried by him. Rapper smiled, and his bike jumped forward.

  Rhodes stood right in the glare of Rapper’s headlight. He pulled his pistol, fired one shot in the air, and levelled the gun at Rapper.

  Rapper didn’t hesitate. He turned abruptly, his rear tire throwing up a cloud of caliche dust and small stones, most of which ticked off the sides of the cars, all except for the one that bounced off Rhodes’ right shoe.

  The other bikers, following Rapper’s lead, turned as well, heading right back the way they had come.

  That was fine with Rhodes. There wasn’t any escape for them in that direction.

  Or so he’d thought. He hadn’t reckoned with the fact that the front door of the honky-tonk was wide open.

  Rapper and the others drove straight for it. The fighting stopped as people threw themselves out of the way of the retreating bikers.

  Rapper pulled up his front wheel to get it over the single low step, gunned his engine, and shot through the door with the others right behind him. The noise of the bikes’ exhausts thundered through the building.

  Rhodes holstered his pistol and ran to the door. He was just in time to see the bikers, with Rapper still in the lead, roar across the dance floor, scattering people left and right like terrified chickens.

  Rhodes thought the platform would stop them, but he should have known better. Rapper jerked up his front wheel and went airborne, smashing through the chicken-wire barrier as if it were sewing thread. Rhodes was later sure that he only imagined the twang he heard as the wire broke.

  The fire exit door was still open, and Rhodes watched in frustration as the bikers accelerated through it and disappeared, leaving nothing behind but the throbbing echo of their engines.

  Rhodes walked over to the bar and leaned against it. Deedham was gone, Rapper was gone, and Rhodes had nothing to show for it.

  Zach walked down to him. “You want a Dr Pepper, Sheriff?”

  “I thought you didn’t have one.”

  Zach shrugged. “I don’t. I just asked if you wanted one.”

  “Very funny, Zach. Does this kind of thing happen very often around here?”

  Zach looked out over the dance floor, where those customers still standing were helping the others to their feet. Most of them were laughing in spite of bloodied noses, demolished hair-dos, torn jeans, and ripped shirts. The bouncers looked as dazed as the customers.

  “Now and then,” Zach said.

  Rhodes could hear the jukebox again, though he couldn’t identify the song.

  “I saw Bob Deedham in there,” he said, nodding toward the dance floor. “He was with a biker named Rapper. Was Rapper the man you saw him with before?”

  “I don’t know,” Zach said. “I didn’t see him come in tonight.”

  Rhodes looked around the room at the people who were coming from the outside.

  “I ought to arrest the whole bunch,” he said.

  “Put quite a strain on the jailhouse if you did,” Zach said.

  Rhodes pushed away from the bar. He hurt all over, and he was probably going to have more than few bruises on Monday.

  “You’re probably right. No wonder we don’t get many calls from out here.”

  “Just doing our civic duty,” Zach said. “We wouldn’t want to add to the county’s problems.”

  “I appreciate it,” Rhodes said, starting for the door.

  “And just to show you that there’s no hard feelings, I’m not going to bill the county for all the damage you caused, either.”

  Rhodes turned around. He was still rankled because everyone he’d been after had gotten away.

  “Don’t push it, Zach.”

  Zach held up his hands, palms outward. “Just a little joke, Sheriff.”

  A few people remained out in the parking lot, but they were no longer fighting. Most of them were sitting or leaning on cars, just talking or drinking beer from bottles that they somehow had neither dropped nor spilled during the recent altercation.

  Rhodes located his car, got in, and drove away.

  His mood improved immensely about five miles away from The County Line. That was when he saw Ruth Grady. The bubble bar was flashing on top of her car, and she was standing by the door of the car she’d pulled over, shining her flashlight in the face of the driver.

  The driver was Bob Deedham.

  Rhodes smiled as he pulled over to the shoulder of the road and stopped. He got out and walked up to Ruth.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” she said. “I was on my w
ay out to give you some back-up, but this gentleman was headed back to Clearview doing about eighty-five, so I had to make a U-turn and pull him over. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Rhodes didn’t mind at all. “Get out of the car, Deedham. We’re going to have to take you in.”

  Deedham didn’t want to get out. “What did I do? You can’t take me in for speeding.”

  “That’s true,” Rhodes agreed. “We’ll take you in for inciting a riot.”

  “That’s not fair! I was just in a hurry to leave. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

  “And there are a few other things, too,” Rhodes told him. “Suspicion of murder, for one.”

  “I didn’t kill anybody! What are you talking about?”

  “Just get out of the car, Deedham. We’ll talk it over at the jail.”

  Deedham crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  Rhodes looked at Ruth. “How long has it been since you shot someone trying to escape?”

  “I never did that,” Ruth said. She tapped her fingers on the flashlight. “I killed that man last year for speeding to avoid arrest, though. That might work again.”

  “It would save the state the expense of a trial,” Rhodes said. “I’ll back you up. You want me to hold the flashlight?”

  Ruth handed him the light. “It’ll look better if I shoot him through the back glass. You hold that light steady now.”

  She started to walk to the back of the car.

  “You’re just trying to scare me,” Deedham said. “She won’t shoot.”

  Rhodes took a deep breath. “You’re right. I shouldn’t joke around like that, but I was still a little upset about what happened back at The County Line. Come on back here, Ruth.”

  “I sure did want to shoot him, Sheriff,” Ruth said when she got back to the door.

  “It still might not be a bad idea,” Rhodes said. “But that’s not the way we work. Look, Deedham, let’s put it this way. You’re just wanted for questioning. Are you going to come in peacefully?”