Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (10 page)

The guineas called raucously as Rhodes drove up to the house, scattering in front of his car like balloons blown in the wind. He was sure they’d alert anyone in the house.

But Rayjean wasn’t at home. Rhodes knocked loudly on the doorframe, but no one answered. Rayjean’s car, a five-year-old Ford, was parked at the side of the house, but Rhodes thought she’d probably gone into town with her sister.

He tried the doorknob, and it turned easily. That was a little strange, but it wasn’t exactly unusual. There were still people in the country who didn’t lock their doors when they went into town. And Rayjean might have been distracted by Lige’s death.

Rhodes didn’t go inside. He had no reason to search the house. But since there was no one around, he thought he might search somewhere else.

It wasn’t far to the woods. He could walk there in a few minutes, and if there was any sign of a cockfight, it shouldn’t be too hard to find.

T
here were ruts running through the pasture toward the woods, and Rhodes supposed that Lige occasionally drove there to feed the five or six head of cattle that idly watched Rhodes walking along the ruts toward the trees.

The sun was getting high, but it was shady and cool under the trees, elms and hackberry mostly, with a few pecan and oaks, too. There was even a big hickory nut tree.

A squirrel chattered overhead and rustled through the leaves as it jumped from one tree to the next. The shaking of the limbs disturbed a blue jay that complained loudly.

Rhodes hadn’t gone more than fifty yards into the woods when he saw the clearing ahead, and in the clearing was the cockpit.

It wasn’t much, nothing more than a crude ring of boards held in place by pegs driven into the ground. There were a couple of old aluminum lawn chairs sitting nearby, with their green plastic webbing sagging and torn. Most people would probably bring their own chairs, or simply stand.

On the other side of the pit was a pickup, Lige Ward’s beyond a doubt. It had a camper cap on it; Hack hadn’t mentioned that, but it wouldn’t have been in the information he found in the computer.

There was one other thing. Rhodes didn’t notice it at first, but then he saw it, lying in the middle of the ring.

Rhodes couldn’t quite see exactly what it was, but he started running all the same.

When he got to the ring, he could see all too well. At first it had looked like a pile of dirty laundry, but it wasn’t that.

It was Rayjean Ward, and she was just as dead as her husband.

Chapter Seven

F
or just a second everything stopped. Rhodes could no longer hear the squirrel or the blue jay. Even the wind disappeared and the leaves on the trees seemed frozen in place. It was as if someone had thrown a switch and stopped time.

Then the switch was flipped again and all the sounds flooded back, but there was one other sound, something that Rhodes hadn’t heard earlier.

Someone had started running through the woods, rustling dead leaves, cracking dry sticks underfoot, and causing a jay to flutter up through the trees, squawking in disgust.

Rhodes ran across the cockpit and took off toward the noises, which were receding in the direction of a dirt road that cut through the woods and went on into Obert. Rhodes wasn’t sure who owned the land on the other side of the road, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was catching up to whoever was running away.

Rhodes didn’t know that he could catch anyone, however. He was already panting, and he knew that the road was probably a half mile away, maybe a little farther. He wondered if the exercise bike that he pedaled whenever he thought about it was doing him any good at all.

He put his arm up to ward off the branches that were trying to whip across his eyes, but in worrying about his eyes he forgot about his feet. A nimble green vine with tiny thorns snaked up through the dead leaves on the ground and wrapped itself around his ankle, sending him sprawling.

Rhodes barely had time to yell. Then he landed hard and slid about a foot through dead sticks and leaf mold. The vine tore at his socks and scratched his shoes and broke loose just as he came to a stop. He lay there on the ground for a second or two, smelling dirt and trying to catch his breath. His blood was rushing in his ears and he could no longer hear the person he had been pursuing.

He sat up and assessed the damages. There didn’t seem to be anything permanent, but he was sure he would have a few bruises to show. As his breathing returned to normal, he realized that he still could no longer hear anyone else in the woods.

He reached out, grabbed a low-hanging limb, and used it to pull himself up. He continued to listen, but he still heard nothing unusual.

Did that mean that whoever he’d been chasing had already made it to the road? Impossible, he decided, unless he’d been chasing an Olympic sprinter. He was slow, but he wasn’t
that
slow.

Rhodes looked through the trees ahead of him. That’s all there were—trees. There was no sign of anyone else in the woods at all. Had he only imagined that he’d heard someone?

No, he’d heard something, all right, not much question about that.

Another thought occurred to Rhodes. What if the person he’d been chasing was just as winded as he was?  Whoever it was might have heard Rhodes fall and taken the opportunity to catch his breath.

Might have heard
. That was a laugh. He would’ve had to be deaf not to have heard. Rhodes had probably sounded like a derailed locomotive engine plowing along ground.

Rhodes stood silently and listened. Still nothing. He started moving as quietly as he could through the trees. He wasn’t exactly as silent as an experienced woodsman. The Deerslayer would have scoffed at him, Rhodes was sure, and whoever was hiding up there ahead, if anybody was, was probably scoffing too.

And probably waiting to jump out from behind a tree and do away with Rhodes just as he’d done away with Rayjean Ward, though Rhodes didn’t see any trees that really looked big enough to conceal anyone.

He was cautious nevertheless, and it therefore came as a big surprise when someone landed on his back and bore him to the ground even harder than the first time he’d fallen.

He had been careful to look behind the trees, but he hadn’t thought about looking
up
.

He didn’t have time to be disgusted with himself, however. He was too busy trying to catch his breath and to buck the heavy weight off his back.

He inhaled part of a scratchy dry leaf and started to cough, but the cough was cut off when something hard smacked him across the back of the head. After that his eyes wouldn’t focus right, and his mind went blank for a while.

W
hen Rhodes came back to himself, he didn’t really even notice the pain in the back of his head. What he noticed was that he could hear someone running through the trees again. Whoever it was, he wasn’t any more of a woodsman than Rhodes. He was making as much noise as a rogue buffalo.

Rhodes knew he had to get back in the chase. He shook himself and stood up.

Then he fell right back down. In the last fall, he had twisted his right ankle, and the pain felt like someone might be hitting him on the ankle bone with a short iron rod.

He got up again, more carefully, and hobbled forward. For the first time he thought of his .38 revolver. He never liked to use a gun when he didn’t know who he was shooting at. There was always the chance he might shoot someone who didn’t deserve it.

This seemed like a special circumstance, however, so he drew the pistol from the holster he wore in the small of his back and fired a shot into the tops of the trees.

“Stop,” Rhodes croaked, feeling like a fool. He coughed up the leaf fragment that had lodged in the back of his throat and spit it out. “Stop, or I’ll shoot.”

The runner didn’t stop. He started moving even faster, if anything.

“Damn,” Rhodes said, sticking the .38 back in the holster and stumbling forward, wincing every time his right foot touched the ground.

He was able to keep going, however, and he was within twenty yards of emerging from the trees when he heard a car door slam and an engine start.

He cleared the last of the trees just in time to see a car pulling away, dust swirling around it. It was a black Cadillac Fleetwood. Just like the one Brother Alton drove.

T
he walk back to the cockpit was slow, but Rhodes was convinced that his ankle was getting better already. All he had to do was walk on it a little and keep it limber.

Rayjean Ward was still there when he got back. She was lying on her side with one hand underneath her head as if she had just lain down for a nap. Rhodes didn’t stop to examine her any more closely. He hobbled on back toward the house. He had to get to a telephone.

A
fter he made his phone calls, he searched the house. There wasn’t anything that looked like a clue. There was the big TV set and a VCR, and in the kitchen there were quite a few other electronic gadgets—a microwave oven, a bread maker, a juicer—that Rhodes thought were probably mementos of Ward’s final days in the hardware store.

The refrigerator held things that made Rhodes’ mouth water. Whole milk. Cheddar cheese. There was even a half gallon of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla in the freezer compartment. Things Ivy wouldn’t let in the house. The peanut butter was in a built-in pantry. Rhodes thought for a second about having a sandwich, but he didn’t. He was even more tempted by the package of Oreos, but he resisted those, too.

In the garage there was a neatly laid-out workshop, with a table saw, a router, and some other woodworking tools. On one wall there were several rods and reels hanging from hooks. They were all covered with fine wood dust, and Rhodes wondered if Ward had ever used them. Rhodes hoped that he had.

There was also a dusty filing cabinet that contained most of Ward’s old business papers but nothing that was of any interest to Rhodes.

He went back into the house and searched the bedrooms and bathroom. There were clothes in the closets and dressers, the usual toilet articles and nonprescription drugs in the bathroom. The only thing that Rhodes thought was out of the ordinary was a Victoria’s Secret catalog in one of the dresser drawers that otherwise held only four plain white cotton nightgowns, and for some reason looking at it made him feel even sadder about Rayjean Ward than he had at first.

He put everything back as it had been except the catalog, which he stuck deep into a black plastic bag that lined a trash can under the kitchen sink. He pushed it under old newspapers and orange rinds where he was sure that Rayjean’s sister would never see it. Then he went back outside and drove down to the cockpit. His ankle was still hurting, and he didn’t feel much like walking.

B
y the time the ambulance had come and gone and the J. P. had done his duty, Rhodes had gone over the cockpit thoroughly. He hadn’t found anything of interest there either, however.

He had also looked over Lige Ward’s pickup. There was nothing of interest in the cab, but the camper was littered with feathers that looked a lot like the one Rhodes had picked up at Ballinger’s the previous evening. There didn’t seem to be much doubt that Ward had been hauling some kind of fowl in his truck, and Rhodes was convinced that the fowl had been emus. He would have Dr. Slick come to examine the truck just to make certain.

He stopped at the Ward’s house and called Slick, who confirmed that the feather Rhodes had given him had come from an emu, and Rhodes told him about the truck.

“Don’t worry about the yellow ribbon,” Rhodes said. “Just walk right under it and look in the pickup camper. Anytime today will be all right.”

Slick said he’d try to get there but that he had a lot of sick cats coming in that morning. “Some kind of virus. They just lie around all day like wet noodles.”

Rhodes said, “I thought cats did that all the time anyway.”

“You might have a point there,” Slick admitted. “But the owners of these cats are mighty upset.”

Rhodes told him that the camper was important, and Slick said that he’d stop by after his office hours if he couldn’t get away before then. Rhodes thanked him and hung up the phone.

It was time to pay a visit to Brother Alton and the Free Will Church of the Lord Jesus.

B
rother Alton’s full name and title—The Reverend Alton Holmes—were painted in flaking black letters on a lopsided sign in front of the church building located just outside the Clearview city limits.

The building itself wasn’t in much better shape than the sign. It hadn’t been painted in a good many years. It sat on concrete blocks and leaned slightly to Rhodes’ left as he faced the front door. The black composition shingles were peeling off the top of the steeple, and one of the windows had a missing pane that had been replaced by a piece of cardboard held in place by silvery strips of duct tape.

Brother Alton’s car was parked on the shady side of the building near the entrance to a small room that stuck out from the side and that looked as if it had been added as an afterthought.

The afterthought was Brother Alton’s office. There was a set of prefab concrete steps in front of the unpainted door, and Rhodes mounted them before he knocked.

“Come in,” Brother Alton called from inside.

The doorknob hung uselessly in its socket, but Rhodes gave it a couple of turns for luck before pushing open the door.

Brother Alton sat behind an old desk coated with dark varnish that was peeling off in long strips. There was no electricity in the room; the only light came in through the dirt-streaked windows. Pages of paper, some of them crumpled, covered the desktop, and a large leather-covered Bible lay open in front of the preacher, who looked up at Rhodes through his rimless glasses.

“Good morning, Sheriff,” Brother Alton said, looking quickly back down.

“Working on your sermon?” Rhodes asked.