Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (11 page)

Brother Alton didn’t look up again. “Um, yes. Working on my sermon. My little flock is eager for the Word.”

Rhodes had to take only a step from the door to the desk. He put a finger on the open Bible. “Anything in there about cockfights?”

“Um, cockfights?  That’s … um … a topic that the Lord’s Word don’t have much to say about. What’re you askin’ that for?”

Brother Alton made the mistake of glancing up as he phrased the question and found Rhodes looking right into his eyes. The preacher’s right hand twitched nervously and knocked one of the crumpled papers across the desk. It fell to the floor at Rhodes’ feet.

Rhodes picked up the paper and smoothed it out. “Jesus spoke to that sinful woman at the well,” he read aloud. “And he told her all about her whole iniquitous life.” Rhodes stopped reading and put the paper on the desk. “Have you been to see any sinful women today, Brother Alton?”

“God knows,” Brother Alton sighed. “God knows.”

“He’s not the only one that knows,” Rhodes said. “I saw your car. How old are you, anyway?”

“How … huh?”

“How old?  I wouldn’t ever have thought to look up in that tree for you.”

“God forgive me,” Brother Alton said. “I surely didn’t want to do that, Sheriff.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Rhodes said. “You made me twist my ankle.”

Brother Alton sighed again. “I’m surely sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You shouldn’t have run.”

“I know that. But you don’t know how it felt, walking up on a dead woman like that. She was an awful sight, lyin’ there in that ring. And then to have the sheriff come up on me. How was I to know what you might think?  I was afraid that you might believe I had somethin’ to do with killin’ her, so I ran. And then when you fell down—”

Brother Alton looked at Rhodes. “Are you sure you didn’t hurt your ankle then?  Instead of when I jumped on you?”

“I’m sure,” Rhodes told him.

“Well, then, I’m mighty sorry for hurtin’ you. Anyway, when you fell down, I thought maybe I could stop and get my breath, but you got up so quick and came after me that I was still blowin’ like a bellows. I was afraid you’d catch up to me sure. So I climbed up in that tree and jumped on you. It wasn’t very high.”

Rhodes reached up and touched the knot on the back of his head. “Jumping on me’s not all you did.”

“God forgive me,” Brother Alton said, shaking his head from side to side. “God forgive me.”

“What did you hit me with, anyway?” Rhodes asked.

Brother Alton stopped moving his head. “Just a little old hick’ry limb. I didn’t hit you very hard.”

“Hard enough,” Rhodes said.

“Lord knows. Lord knows.”

“Let’s leave the Lord out of this,” Rhodes said. “What were you doing at that cockpit?”

“I’d heard about the fights that Lige was havin’,” Brother Alton said. “I wanted to see if it was true.”

Rhodes shook his head. It seemed as if everyone in the county had heard about the cockfights except him.

“What if it was?”

“If it was, then I was goin’ to have a talk with Miz Ward. She’d called and asked me to preach Lige’s funeral, and I didn’t know if I could do that with Lige havin’ a sin like that on his account. I didn’t want people thinkin’ I was tryin’ to gloss anything over.”

Rhodes wondered whether Brother Alton was more worried about Lige or about what people would think about their preacher.

“You could’ve gone in the front way,” he said. “Why didn’t you do that?”

Brother Alton brushed at the shoulder of his suit jacket. There was a piece of a leaf there that Rhodes hadn’t noticed before. The leaf fell onto the top of the desk.

“I didn’t want to just go right up to Miz Ward and accuse her husband of anything that wasn’t the truth,” the preacher said, “him bein’ dead and all. I thought I’d just check it out first without her seein’ me.”

“And you found Mrs. Ward in the woods?”

“Just like you saw her. She was lyin’ there dead.”  He looked out the little window and back at Rhodes. “I heard you comin’ and ducked back in the trees. Then I just started to run. I shouldn’t’ve done that. I shouldn’t’ve run. But I didn’t kill her, Sheriff.”

Rhodes had never thought of Brother Alton as a killer, and he said as much. Then he asked, “Did you see anyone else when you were coming along through the woods?”

“Not a soul. Whoever killed her was long gone by the time I got there.”

“Were you planning to call me, by any chance?  Let me know there was a dead body out there?”

“I didn’t think about it to tell the truth,” Brother Alton admitted. “All I wanted to do was get out of there. I’ve seen dead people before, plenty of ’em, but they’ve all been in hospitals or funeral homes. That’s the first time I ever saw one dead in the woods like that.”

“What about when you got back here?”

“I was goin’ to call, but I got started workin’ on my sermon. It sorta calms me down to do that. I needed a lot of calmin’ down.”

Brother Alton’s head shook, and then the shaking moved down to his shoulders and chest. He put his hands down flat on the desk, and the shaking stopped.

“I guess I’m not calmed down yet,” he said. “But I never killed anybody sheriff. And I never meant to cause you any trouble. I just got scared.”

Rhodes thought the preacher was telling the truth. Murder was enough to spook anyone, and he didn’t blame Brother Alton for being a little afraid of the consequences of finding a corpse.

But he was the sheriff, after all, so he said, “It’s a crime not to report a body. You know that, don’t you?”

Brother Alton half rose from his chair. “You aren’t gonna arrest me, are you? I’ve never been in any trouble, Sheriff. I’ve never done anything against the law.”

“I’m not going to arrest you, but if you think of anything else you saw out there, something you can’t remember right now, you’d better call.”

Brother Alton sank back into his chair in relief. “I’ll call, Sheriff, you can count on that. I know I’ve done wrong, and I’ll try to make amends.”

Rhodes left the office wondering if Brother Alton’s humbling experience would affect his preaching. If the pastor hadn’t identified with his flock’s secret wrongdoings before, he could certainly do so now.

Rhodes was afraid that it wouldn’t make much difference; things didn’t generally work out that way. By tomorrow, Brother Alton, if he was like most people, would probably have convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong at all.

Chapter Eight

B
etty Ward was about five years older than her sister and looked a lot like her, except that her hair was cut short and died dark black.

She didn’t take the news about Rayjean’s death well at all, and Rhodes was glad he’d thought to call Ruth Grady on the radio and get her to meet him at Betty’s house before giving her the news.

Betty’s husband had died of a heart attack two years previously, and now she’d lost her brother-in-law and her sister on successive days. It was no wonder that she was almost in a state of shock.

She was, however, able to tell Rhodes and Grady that Rayjean had no more enemies than a newborn calf and that Rayjean, like Lige was universally liked in Clearview and Obert.

“It’s gangs,” she said. “It must be gangs, coming in from outside, selling dope and causing trouble.”

Rhodes had dealt with that kind of thing before, in a small way, and he didn’t think that was the case this time, but Betty Ward couldn’t offer any better explanation.

Rhodes left Ruth with her in case she thought of something else, but he didn’t hold out much hope that would happen. There was a motive for the killings; there always was. But it looked as if it was going to take a while to find it out.

Rhodes drove back to the jail to do his report. He wondered just what the death of Rayjean Ward had to do with that of her husband. It seemed obvious that the two deaths were related, but for the life of him Rhodes couldn’t figure out how, and Rayjean’s sister had been no help at all.

Ward’s pickup full of feathers offered pretty good circumstantial evidence that Ward had been rustling emus. That fact could possibly connect him with both Nard King and Press Yardley, though there was no proof that King had received stolen emus from Ward, just as there was no proof that Ward had stolen part of Yardley’s flock.

And even if all those things were somehow connected, there was no reason why Rayjean Ward should be any part of them. It was true that Rhodes could easily enough believe that Lige would resort to holding cockfights to raise money, and there was no way that Rayjean could have been unaware of it, since the fights were held almost within sight of her house. But at the same time, Rhodes couldn’t see Mrs. Ward as having any part in stealing emus. Cockfighting was one thing. There were plenty of people who didn’t see anything wrong with it, didn’t believe it should be against the law. Rayjean Ward might have been one of those people. Theft was something else.

It was a little like the filed gaff that had been in Lige’s clothing. Cockfighters were engaging in an illegal activity, but they had a code of their own. There were limits to what they would do, though the limits were generally defined by how much they could get away with. Still, they wouldn’t like it if someone were using a gaff like the one Rhodes had found.

Reflecting on the gaff, Rhodes had another thought. What if Lige had been doing more than simply organizing the cockfights? What if he had been taking part in them? What if someone had caught him using the filed gaff and confronted him? There might very well have been a fight that ended in Lige’s death. A fight would at least explain the bruise on Ward’s chest.

Rhodes parked in front of the jail without reaching any conclusions. He had to find out a lot more about a lot of things before he did that.

Hack was watching the little TV set when Rhodes walked in. Lawton was looking over his shoulder. Rhodes strolled over for a glimpse of the program that had them so engrossed.

“What’s that?” Rhodes asked.

The jailor and the dispatcher looked up sharply. They hadn’t heard Rhodes come in.

Hack reached out and switched the TV set off. “Nothin’,” he said. There was a shifty look in his eyes.

“It was
All My Children
,” Rhodes said. “I recognized Susan Lucci.”

“Who?” Lawton asked.

“She plays Erica,” Rhodes told him.

“Who’s Erica?” Hack asked.

“There’s nothing wrong with watching soap operas,” Rhodes said. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it, as long as you get your work done.”

“We weren’t watchin’ it,” Lawton said. “We were just flippin’ through the channels, seein’ what was on.”

Rhodes nodded. “Right.”

“Besides,” Hack said, “we got a lot more things to worry about than some soap opera.”

“Like murder,” Rhodes suggested.

“There’s that, all right,” Hack agreed. “Sure was a shame about Miz Ward. You know who did it yet?”

“I don’t have any idea.”

“Well, you better be gettin’ one,” Lawton said.

Hack glared at him. Hack liked to think that he was in charge of the conversation; he didn’t like it when Lawton tried to horn in.

Lawton glared back. He thought he had just as much right as Hack to impart information to the sheriff.

“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on instead of trying to stare each other down,” Rhodes suggested.

“We’re not starin’,” Hack said. “Not me, anyway.”

Rhodes waved a hand dismissively. “Never mind that. Just tell me what’s on your minds.”

“There’s nothin’ on our minds,” Hack said.

“Just that woman,” Lawton said, giving Rhodes a look. “He thinks about that woman all the time.”

Hack started to get up. “I’m tired of you talkin’ about Miz McGee that way.”

Lawton’s face was bland. “What way?”

“You know what way. I’m tired of it.”

Rhodes was tired of the whole conversation. “Let’s forget Hack’s love life and get back to the beginning of this. Why had I better be getting an idea about who killed the Wards?”

“Love life,” Lawton said. “That’s a good one.”

Rhodes regretted his choice of words. “You know what I mean. Now what did you two have to tell me?”

Hack sank back in his chair. “You’re gonna have a visitor,” he said.

“Who?” Rhodes asked.

“That’s the good part,” Lawton said. “You’ll be real glad to see him.”

Rhodes could tell by Lawton’s gleeful tone that he wasn’t going to be glad at all.

“Who?” he asked again.

“Well,” Hack said, “he’s got red hair.”

Rhodes groaned inwardly. “Red Rogers.”

“The one and only,” Lawton said.

“He called about ten minutes before you got here,” Hack said. “He wants the whole story about how Blacklin County’s becomin’ a hotbed of rooster fightin’ and murder.”

Rhodes walked over to his own desk and sat down. “He really said that?  ‘A hotbed?’”

Hack nodded. “That’s what he said, all right. It’ll sound real good on the five o’clock news.”

Rhodes groaned again, audibly this time.

“Just a fella tryin’ to do his job,” Lawton said reassuringly.

“I know,” Rhodes said, and he did. He just didn’t like Rogers’ job.

Red Rogers was the nearest thing Blacklin County had to a media personality. His real name was Larry Redden, and he had a daily four-hour country music show on the local radio station. He also did all the news broadcasts and the Saturday Trading Post, on which anyone in what he grandly called the “Tri-County Area” could offer goods to swap.

His most recent undertaking, however, was a weekly talk show in the manner of Rush Limbaugh. The talk show was what bothered Rhodes. While Rogers was more than willing to take on world and national politics, offering his pat solutions to any and all problems (cut all foreign aid, allow every citizen to carry a handgun, let the poor fend for themselves,
etc
.), he didn’t limit himself to the big picture. All too often, from Rhodes’ point of view at any rate, Rogers ranted about purely local issues, sometimes about things that involved the sheriff’s office.

What happened as a result was entirely predictable. The County Commissioners got nervous and, being elected officials, they immediately began looking for someone either to blame or to hold responsible.