Booked for a Hanging
Page 15
“Well, all right,” Clyde said. “Ask something.”
Now that he had the chance to ask, Rhodes didn’t know where to start. He decided that Graham’s death was as good a place as any, but he wanted to work up to it gradually. He’d get to Miz Coates after they talked about Graham.
“How long had you two been working at the college for Mr. Graham?” he said.
“Off and on, ever since we moved to Obert, I guess,” Clyde said. “Wouldn’t nobody else give us a job, on account of they didn’t like our daddy, but Mr. Graham, he didn’t care about things like that.”
“Like what?” Rhodes said.
Neither of the twins responded.
Rhodes waited quietly for a full minute. Then he said, “I asked you a question.”
“I can’t see a thing,” Claude said. “You blinded me with that pistol.”
Rhodes didn’t feel like telling him again that he wouldn’t be permanently sightless or that it was Claude’s own fault that the gun had gone off in his face. So he didn’t say anything at all. He just stood there looking up through the cedar trees to catch a glimpse of the evening stars that were beginning to show in the dark sky. They were clear and brilliant, almost white. There was a cricket singing somewhere nearby.
Finally Clyde said, “Folks say our daddy’s an outlaw. They say we steal stuff.”
“What folks?” Rhodes said.
“Like that Miz Coates. She’s called the Laws on us before.”
“And do you steal things?” Rhodes said. He didn’t have to ask about their father. He was already convinced that Appleby was an outlaw.
“You told us that everything we say can be used against us, didn’t you?” Clyde said.
“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “I did.”
“Then we didn’t steal nothin’.” The falsity of the statement was almost palpable in the darkness of the early evening.
“It won’t do you any good to lie,” Rhodes said. “I’ve already got a warrant to search your house. Whatever’s there, I’ll find it.”
“We sold ever’thing already,” Clyde said.
Claude kicked him in the ankle. “You dumb shit,” he said.
“There are worse things than stealing,” Rhodes said, thinking about Miz Coates and what Clyde had said about her calling the Laws.
“What’d’you mean?” Clyde said. “About things bein’ worse.”
“Murder,” Rhodes said. “For one thing.”
“We didn’t kill Mr. Graham,” Claude said, surprising Rhodes. “We might’ve took things, but we never killed him.”
“What about Miz Coates?” Rhodes said. “You don’t seem to have liked her much. Did you kill her?”
“You tryin’ to fool with us?” Clyde said. “Like they do on tv?”
“I’m not trying to fool with you,” Rhodes said.
“Well, you must be. Miz Coates ain’t dead.”
Rhodes couldn’t see Clyde’s face well at all. It was too dark on the porch for that. But it would be hard for anyone who knew Miz Coates was dead, much less the person who had killed her, to sound so convincing.
“She’s dead, all right,” Rhodes said. “Someone killed her this afternoon.”
The twins thought about that.
Claude said, “Well, I can’t say we’re sorry. She never did treat us right. But we didn’t kill her. We been right here, ever since you come to the house looking for our daddy.”
“Can you prove it?” Rhodes said.
“Sure,” Claude said. “Clyde, he can tell you I was here. And I can tell you he was here. We got an alibi.”
“That’s right,” Clyde said. “An alibi.”
Rhodes didn’t bother telling them what he thought about their alibiing one another. “Why did you think that you had to hide out?” he said.
“We didn’t want you gettin’ after us because of stealin’ them—” Claude said. He was cut off in mid-sentence by Clyde, who jammed an elbow into his ribs.
“That’s all right, Clyde,” Rhodes said. “I already had you two figured for helping with the cows. Your daddy couldn’t have done it by himself.”
“We don’t know nothin’ about any cows,” Clyde said. “Do we, Claude.”
“Hell no,” Claude said. “All I know is, I’ve been blinded. I’m gonna sue for police brutality.”
Rhodes started to tell the young man that the Sheriff’s Department had already been sued by experts and that the experts had lost, but he thought better of it. And he wasn’t interested in the talking about the cows right now. The cows were the least of his worries. He could get back to the cows some other time, though, if the blood testing didn’t prove what he hoped it would prove.
“And you haven’t left this house all day?” Rhodes said, ignoring Claude.
“That’s right,” Clyde said. “We sure ain’t.”
“All right, then,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go to jail.”
He wasn’t at all satisfied with the way things were turning out. It was obvious that Cy Appleby couldn’t have killed Oma Coates. He had been in jail at the time of her death. And now he didn’t think Clyde and Claude were guilty, either. Which made it all that more important to find Hal Brame and discuss the discrepancies in his story. Miz Coates had seen his car the night Graham was killed, and Rhodes wished more than ever that he had pressed her and tried to make her tell him whatever she was holding back.
“What’s the charges?” Claude said.
“We’ll start with assaulting a police officer and work from there,” Rhodes said. “Cattle theft is a possibility we can consider, too.”
“We don’t know nothin’ about those cows,” Clyde said. “And we didn’t know it was an officer we was assaultin’ in the basement. It was dark down there.”
Rhodes nodded in agreement. “That’s what I’d say, too, if I were you,” he told the twins. “It might even work. But it won’t keep you out of jail.”
He urged the twins off the porch and started them toward the car, Clyde leading his brother along. When they got to the car, Clyde turned around and faced Rhodes.
“Maybe we could make a trade,” he said.
Everybody watches too much tv, Rhodes thought, not including himself in that number. After all, he watched mostly old movies; that didn’t really count.
“I don’t make trades,” he said. He meant it. He was pretty sure that the twins hadn’t told all they knew about things, the cattle theft being the least of the things they knew about, but he wasn’t going to let them go free just for giving him information. He was sure they would tell him what they knew sooner or later.
“We’re juveniles,” Clyde said. “You can’t do anything to us anyhow.”
The fact that Clyde had a point didn’t make Rhodes feel any better.
He opened the back door of the car. “Get in,” he said. “Watch your heads.”
“I can’t see,” Claude said.
“Don’t worry,” Rhodes told him. “I’ll help you.” He put his hand on Claude’s head and guided him into the back seat. Then he got in the front and drove them to Clearview.
“James Allen called,” Hack said after the twins were booked and Lawton was putting them into a cell next to their father. “He didn’t sound real happy.”
Allen was an old friend of Rhodes. He was also a county commissioner, and Rhodes was sure he must have heard Red Rogers’ news broadcast.
“Did he say what he wanted?” Rhodes said.
“Nope,” Hack said. “He didn’t sound like he was callin’ just to see how you were doin’, though. I told him you were on a hot case and maybe you could call him tomorrow.”
“What did he say about that?”
“He said he hoped that hot case was the one from out at Obert. Said he hoped he could count on you havin’ it solved by tomorrow when you called him.”
“Is that all?”
“Nope. He said he thought maybe we’d need the Rangers on this one. It’s gettin’ too big for us small-town boys.”
The radio crackled, and Hack responded. It was Ruth Grady, reporting that she’d found an abandoned car.
“Gimme the license number,” Hack said. He wrote down the number. “Got it. The Sheriff’s right here. I’ll send him on out.” He listened a little longer. Rhodes could make out Ruth’s description of an automobile and its location. “Right,” Hack said. “A black Volvo. Got it.” He signed off and turned to his computer.
“You don’t need that,” Rhodes said. “I think I know who that car belongs to. Hal Brame.”
“Thinkin’s one thing,” Hack said. “Knowin’s another. And I’ll tell you somethin’ else. If we had portable computers in all the patrol cars, Ruth coulda done the checkin’ herself. I think we oughta—”
“Don’t start,” Rhodes said. “We’re lucky to have what we’ve got.”
“All the same, I wish you’d talk to the commissioners about gettin’ computers for all the cars. It’d save a world of time and bother.”
“It would save a world of time if you’d just enter that license number right now,” Rhodes said.
Hack looked hurt, but he typed the license numbers into his computer. He watched the information come up on the monitor screen.
“Name’s Henry, not Hal,” he said. “That Hal part, that must be a nickname. But you were right about the owner, sure enough. I guess you’re right about the computers, too. I guess we don’t really need computers long as we got a hot-shot lawman like you around. All you gotta do is hear the make of the car and then you know all about who it belongs to. I guess—”
“All right,” Rhodes said. “I get the point. Are you going to tell me where the car is, or not?”
“Huh?” Hack said. “You mean to tell me you don’t already know? I’d figure you could tell me, you bein’ so good at stuff like that.”
“Hack,” Rhodes said.
“Out east of Gorton,” Hack said. “Take a left on that gravel road that goes to that wooden bridge over Little Man Creek. It’s down in the creek by the bridge.”
“Was there anyone in it?”
“Not that Ruth saw. She was gonna wait on you to make a complete search.”
“Will we need a wrecker?”
“She says yes. It’s partly in the water. Creek’s up a little bit now, what with all the rain we got in the Easter spell.”
“I’d better call Ivy,” Rhodes said.
“I’d say that might be a good idea,” Hack said. “I expect it’s gonna be a long night.”
Rhodes didn’t know how Little Man Creek had gotten its name. In actuality it was hardly a creek at all; generally it was more like a trickle, and often during especially dry summers it wasn’t even that. At some time in the distant past, however, it must have been a fast-moving stream, since it had cut a deep ravine through the landscape, thus necessitating the bridge that now spanned it.
The road down which Rhodes traveled to reach the bridge did not see much traffic these days. There were only a few farm houses left along it, and several of these were deserted. At one time Blacklin County had been one of the largest producers of cotton in the state, but hardly anyone grew cotton now, or anything else. Most of the land that had once been farmed was used for grazing cattle or for nothing at all. There were quite a few nearly-deserted roads like this one in the county. You could travel along them for miles without meeting a car or seeing anyone.
Ruth had been patrolling it only because of the current situation in Obert. Rhodes had told her to make a thorough sweep through that part of the county. Even at that, as she explained to him when he arrived at the bridge, she had seen the car only by accident. She had noticed that the weeds in the bar ditch were broken and flat, and then one of her headlights had glinted off the back bumper of the Volvo, so she had stopped to investigate.
“Have you checked it out?” Rhodes said. They were standing at one end of the bridge, looking down. Ruth had parked nearby and had her car’s spotlight trained on the car.
“No,” Ruth said. “I can see something in the front seat, though. Can you?”
Rhodes wasn’t sure. There might be something, or someone, in there, but it was hard to tell. The spotlight was creating quite a few shadows in addition to casting light.
“Anyway,” Ruth said, “I thought I’d better wait until you got here before I went down there. I didn’t want to fall and slip in the creek.”
“Good idea,” Rhodes said.
The sloping bank was steep, and the weeds might hide treacherous footing. They might also hide snakes. Rhodes had never seen a rattlesnake in the county, it was true, but he had seen cottonmouth water moccasins. There wasn’t much to choose between them and rattlesnakes when you got right down to it. In fact, a cottonmouth might be the meaner of the two.
He was going to say that they could wait for the wrecker, but he knew that he should go down to the car. There was always the chance that there was something to be found, and the wrecker driver would need help hooking on to the car.
“I’ll go on down now,” Ruth said.
“I’ll go,” Rhodes told her. It wasn’t that he was a male chauvinist. He just thought that it was his job to do. He was the sheriff. He took his flashlight and started down the slope, hanging onto some of the taller and tougher weeds to keep himself from sliding too fast.
He didn’t fall, and he didn’t encounter any snakes. The car rested at the bottom of the creek bank, nose down into the sluggish water that showed up black in the spotlight. Only the Volvo’s front bumper and grille were in the creek. Most of the car was high and dry.
Rhodes slipped just as he got to the back of the car and almost fell. He braced himself on the car trunk and told himself that what he saw in the front seat had not caused his near-fall.
What he saw was a person, or at least the head of one, resting against the car’s steering wheel.
Rhodes steadied himself and moved carefully to the front door on the driver’s side. He shined his light in through the closed window and into the dead face of Hal Brame. Brame’s eyes were open and it was almost as if he were looking at something very interesting on the steering column. Brame hadn’t been wearing a seat belt.
Rhodes didn’t climb back up the bank immediately. He knew the wrecker would arrive soon, and it did. The driver climbed down and with a little help from Rhodes got hooked on to the Volvo. Before long he had pulled it to the road. Rhodes climbed back up after it.
“You want me to haul it to the jail?” the driver said.
“Not yet,” Rhodes said. “We’ll have to call a justice of the peace. There’s a dead man in there.”
“Right,” the driver said. He wasn’t surprised at the mention of the dead man, and he didn’t seem to mind waiting, despite the lateness of the hour. The county was paying him good money.
Rhodes radioed Hack and told him to send the EMS unit and the j.p.
“I looked around up here,” Ruth said. She pointed her flashlight to the other side of the road. “You can tell that a car backed into the weeds over there, but you can’t tell whether it was the Volvo or another one.”
Rhodes looked at the mashed weeds. There could have been another car, all right. It could have pulled onto the bridge, then backed around and turned toward Gorton. The weeds were too thick for the car to have left any tire impressions on the edge of the ditch, however.
The fact that another car had been there didn’t mean much, though Rhodes was already beginning to wonder if Brame’s death was an accident.
He thought about the possibilities. If it was an accident, why here? What would Brame have been doing in this part of the county? There was nothing here to interest him.
Then there was the possibility of suicide. Brame, if he was guilty of killing Graham and Oma Coates, had been unable to live with the knowledge and had driven off the road deliberately.
Well
, it was possible, but Brame could have found a much better place for suicide. He would have been much more likely just to get a few bruises than to kill himself at this spot.
It took a while for things to get squared away, but finally the j.p. declared Brame dead and his body was taken away in the ambulance. The wrecker chugged off down the road, towing the Volvo behind.
“Let’s go on back to town,” Rhodes told Ruth Grady. “You can go over the car for prints, and we’ll see if we can find anything helpful in it.”
Ruth didn’t want to risk getting stuck in the ditch. She drove across the bridge and went on until she came to a side road that furnished her with a better place to turn around. Rhodes followed her and turned at the same spot. He didn’t want to get stuck, either.
The wrecker driver dropped the Volvo at the jail, and Rhodes searched it thoroughly after Ruth had lifted what prints she could. It seemed as if he were searching a lot of abandoned property lately.
He didn’t find anything inside that was of any use to him. There were some book catalogues, a road map, a quart-sized insulated plastic drink cup with a top so that the contents wouldn’t spill, a box of Kleenex tissues, and an owner’s manual. The manual told him that he was dealing with a 1984 Volvo DL, but that hardly seemed relevant to the murder. There was a battered leather suitcase in the trunk, filled with clothing and toiletries.
There was there no sign of anything that looked like Tamerlane. That didn’t surprise Rhodes at all.
Chapter 16
Rhodes got home very late. He got hold of Dr. White and arranged for him to have a look at Brame’s body as soon as he could, got the body taken care of by Ballinger’s, instructed Hack to make a few phone calls as early as he could the next morning, and finally got away from the jail a little before two o’clock.
Ivy was watching Fort Apache when Rhodes walked in.
“It must be John Wayne week,” Rhodes said.