Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (22 page)

“If I’m so smart,” Ferrin said, “how did you managed to catch me?”

“You searched Lige’s clothes,”Rhodes said. “Looking for the gaff. You didn’t find it, but you left something behind. You left your fingerprints on his wallet.”

“I never touched his wallet. And I didn’t kill him.”

“Then how did your fingerprints get there?” Rhodes asked.

“They didn’t,” Ferrin said. “You’re lying. You’re setting me up for somethin’ I never did.”

“And you killed Mrs. Ward, too. I know that for a fact.”

Rhodes knew nothing of the sort, but he figured that while he was lying, he might as well do a good job of it.

“You don’t know a thing. You’re goin’ to get me for a murder I never did!”

Ferrin squeezed the rooster tighter and looked wildly around the barn as if wondering how he could escape without being stopped by Rhodes.

Rhodes took a step forward and put out his hand. Ferrin yelled and threw the rooster in Rhodes’ face.

Chapter Sixteen

I
t’s all very well to know for a near certainty that fighting roosters don’t fight human beings. Knowing that fact, however, isn’t really much of a comfort when one of them is screeching like a hawk and flying directly at your head.

Rhodes bent down and twisted aside, feeling only a flurry of heat and feathers as the rooster flapped by him. It landed behind him and staggered awkwardly for several feet before righting itself. It fluttered its wings and crowed loudly, as if proud of its accomplishment.

Rhodes turned to see where Ferrin had gone. The young man had run to the open end of the barn and thrown aside the tarp. He was climbing on a red four-wheeled ATV.

The ATV started with a roar just as Ruth Grady entered the barn and fired off a shot in Ferrin’s direction. The bullet pinged through the tin side of the barn.

“Don’t shoot him,” Rhodes yelled.

He wasn’t sure Ruth could hear him. His ears were ringing from the shot and the blare of the ATV’s engine, and he could hardly hear himself. He started running after Ferrin, who gunned the ATV out the back of the barn.

“Get the car,” Rhodes yelled over his shoulder, roosters bumping against his legs and scrambling to get out of his way as he ran.

By the time Rhodes got out of the barn, Ferrin was well on his way across the small fenced pasture. Rhodes didn’t have any hope of catching him on foot, but he kept on running.

The footing wasn’t good. The sandy ground was soft, the weeds were high thanks to the recent rain, and there were fire ant mounds all over the place. The thick weeds tugged at Rhodes’ legs as he tried to jog around the fire ant mounds, and his feet sank into the sandy soil.

Even worse, the pasture had been plowed at some time in the past, and most of the terraces had never levelled out. The ATV was bouncing high, throwing Ferrin up off the seat. Rhodes was stumbling across the rises, and every step was aggravating his sore ankle. The going would be even rougher in the car, but at least it wouldn’t hurt his ankle.

Ruth pulled up beside Rhodes after he’d gone about fifty yards. While the car was still moving, he opened the door and jumped in. Ruth pushed the accelerator down hard before he was settled in the seat, and he grabbed for the seat belt as the car bucked along.

“Keep moving,” he said.

The car nosed up over a terrace and landed with a
whump
on the other side. Rhodes tried to talk as Ruth fought the wheel.

“There are places—” Whump!  “—we could get stuck—” Whump!  “—in this sand if you—” Whump!  “—slow down too much.” Whump!

Rhodes gave up. Riding in the car across the pasture was like riding a bronco at the Clearview Rodeo. It wasn’t a situation that was favorable to conversation. Rhodes kept thinking his stomach was going to fly out his mouth. Either that or the bottom of his spine was going to punch a hole in the car seat.

There was a gate in the fence that surrounded the pasture, just barbed wire attached to a moveable cedar post. Ferrin jumped off the ATV, opened the gate, got back in the saddle, and zipped through opening. Ruth went through the gate only seconds behind him. Ferrin hunched over the handlebars of the ATV, rumbling along a rutted road that led downhill, and Ruth followed him. The road wasn’t exactly a highway, but the car wasn’t bouncing nearly as much as it had been in the pasture, for which Rhodes was thankful.

At the bottom of the hill the road leveled out for a few yards before it crossed through a shallow creek bed. The creek was a very small one, not more than ten feet wide, with only a few inches of water in it.

The wide tires of Ferrin’s ATV sluiced through the water, throwing up a silvery spray that flashed in the light of the sinking sun, and then Ferrin was bouncing up the other side of the creek bed and headed up another hill, leaving a cloud of sand in his wake. At the top of the hill was a thick stand of woods.

Rhodes wasn’t sure that the county car would cross the creek quite as easily as the ATV had, but it was too late to say anything. Ruth had a determined look on her face and wasn’t slowing down a bit.

The nose of the car slammed into the shallow water, and if Rhodes hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt, his head would have hit the roof.

The car nosed out of the creek, and the back wheels spun for a second or two on the slick bottom. Rhodes had a sinking sensation, but then the tires grabbed some traction and the car shot out of the creek and up the hill.

“If he gets to those trees, he’s going to get away,” Ruth said. “He can maneuver in there, and we can’t.”

Rhodes reached for his pistol. “Maybe I can shoot out a tire.”

“That’s what I was trying to do,” Ruth said. “In the barn.”

Rhodes should have known that she wasn’t trying to shoot Ferrin, but he didn’t take the time to apologize. He rolled down the window and stuck his arm out, steadying it as best he could with his left hand.

He fired off two quick shots, with no result. He told himself that shooting uphill from a moving car while eating grit would be tricky for anyone.

“Can you catch him before he gets to the trees?” he asked.

“We’ll see.” 

Ruth floored the accelerator. The car didn’t exactly jump forward, but it moved faster up the sandy hill.

“Try to get beside him,” Rhodes said.

“Are you going to shoot him?”

“No. I’m going to try to jump on him.”

“You’ll kill yourself,” Ruth said.

“Probably,” Rhodes agreed. “Randolph Scott could do it, though.”

“That wasn’t Randolph Scott in those old movies. That was a stunt man.”

“I knew that,” Rhodes said.

Ruth didn’t reply. They were within twenty feet of Ferrin. She swung out of the road, bouncing the car over the ruts, and pulled alongside the ATV.

Ferrin looked over just as Rhodes opened the door. Rhodes hesitated just long enough to let Ferrin swing the ATV to his left. The front tire of the ATV struck the door and slammed it shut. Then Ferrin started to angle away from the car, out of the road and toward the trees.

“Try it again,” Rhodes said, regretting his hesitation and determined not to be indecisive this time.

Ruth complied. The car bounced over the ruts in the opposite direction and pulled up beside Ferrin. This time Rhodes was ready. He threw the door open and jumped almost in the same motion.

Ferrin jerked the ATV to the right, but he wasn’t quick enough. Rhodes landed on him and knocked him loose from the handlebars, but both men remained atop the ATV, which swerved wildly to the right and left. Rhodes couldn’t make much headway in subduing Ferrin. For the moment, it was all Rhodes could do just to hang on as the ATV slewed up the hill.

Ferrin grunted and jabbed a sharp elbow into Rhodes’ ribs. Rhodes felt a stab of pain that made his head jerk backward.

He tried to tighten his arms around the writhing Ferrin, and looked to see where they were headed. What he saw didn’t make him feel any better. What he saw was a tree just at the edge of the woods. He let go of Ferrin and threw himself aside just before the ATV hit the tree.

The sandy ground wasn’t hard, but Rhodes rolled right through a mound of very angry fire ants who were instantly on the attack, swarming onto his shoes and socks and crawling up his pants legs. He jumped up, slapping at his pants and hopping from one foot to another. Then his ankle gave way and he fell.

Ruth pulled up in the county car. She jumped out and drew her sidearm.

“He’s getting away,” she said.

Naturally, Rhodes thought, swatting at the ants, which were busily stinging him. Anybody else would have broken an arm or a leg, but Ferrin was apparently uninjured. And he was loose in the trees. At least he didn’t have the ATV anymore.

Rhodes got up and said, “Let’s go after him.”

“Can you walk?”

“Sure,” Rhodes said, though he wasn’t sure at all.

It turned out that he could, if you wanted to call it walking. Hobbling was more like it. But he was more worried about the fire ants than about his ability to walk. He knew he was going to have blisters for days. He kept trying to smash them, but he knew he wasn’t getting all of them.

“Come on,” Ruth said, apparently not sympathetic with his plight.

Rhodes followed her, and they entered the woods beside the quiet ATV, which looked as if it had tried to climb the tree and had stopped only after its front tires left the ground.

Though the sun hadn’t set, there was much less light by the time they got ten yards inside the woods. The sun had sunk a little below the hill, and its rays filtered only dimly into the trees.

Rhodes could hear Ferrin running along ahead of them. Ruth sprinted out after him, and Rhodes tried to keep up. He found that it didn’t really make much difference to his ankle whether he walked or ran, so he kept running.

Dead leaves crackled beneath his feet and low branches whipped by his face. He put up a hand to keep them from swiping his eyes.

“He can’t be too far ahead,” Ruth said. “He’s not going very fast.”

Maybe he’d been hurt after all, Rhodes thought. Enough to slow him down, anyway. It seemed only fair.

“This way,” Ruth said, turning to the right, where the trees didn’t seem quite so thick.

Rhodes followed her after reaching down to scratch at his ant bites. He could still hear Ferrin up there ahead of them. Ferrin apparently wasn’t much more of a woodsman than Rhodes was. If he kept making that much noise, he would be easy to track, but the farther they got into the trees, the darker it got.

Abruptly the noises in front of them came to a stop. Rhodes heard something flutter through the leaves over their heads, but that was all.

“Maybe he fell,” Ruth said.

“Or maybe he’s waiting for us,” Rhodes said. “We have to be careful.”

He was about to say more when a fire ant stung him behind the knee. He rubbed his pants hard, hoping to squash the ant. He hoped none of them had gotten any higher. They were painful enough where they were. On the more delicate parts of the anatomy, they were pure torture.

Ruth went forward slowly. It was easier to walk than it had been, but the trees were still fairly close together. It would be easy for Ferrin to be lurking behind one.

Or
in
one, Rhodes thought, remembering Brother Alton. Rhodes drew his pistol and looked into the thick leaves. There was a dark shape in a tall burr oak tree not far from Ruth. It was obviously Ferrin.

“Hold on,” Rhodes said to Ruth, who stopped and looked back. “He’s up there.”

Rhodes gestured with his pistol, and Ruth looked in the direction that he indicated.

“Come on down, Ferrin,” she said. “We’ve got you covered.”

Rhodes thought it was a good line. Randolph Scott couldn’t have said it any better.

Unfortunately, Ferrin didn’t move. Maybe it wasn’t him up there after all.

“I’m going to count to three,” Ruth said. She didn’t appear to have much doubt that Ferrin was in the tree. “If you’re not down by then, I’m going to start shooting.”

It was very still in the woods. Somewhere nearby a cricket started up.

“One,” Ruth said.

She waited a beat. “Two.”

She cocked her revolver. Rhodes could hear it from where he stood, but there was still no movement in the tree.

“Three.”

Still no response.

Ruth pulled the trigger. A bullet ripped through the leaves and thudded into the trunk of the burr oak above Ferrin’s head. The leaves trembled.

 “Next one’s in your leg,” Ruth said.

“All right, I’m comin’ down,” Ferrin said.

The leaves rattled as he lowered himself to the bottom branch and then jumped to the ground. It wasn’t far, only about a foot and a half.

Ruth had him put his hands on his head before she went up to him. She got him cuffed and marched him up to Rhodes.

“Let’s put him in the car,” Rhodes said. “It’s time we were getting back to town.”

Chapter Seventeen

M
ichael Ferrin refused to admit that he had killed Lige Ward. Oh, he admitted killing Rayjean, and he admitted that it had happened pretty much as Rhodes thought it had. But that was as far as he would go.

That worried Rhodes, but not because he’d been so sure that he was right. He’d been pretty sure, it was true, though he’d been leaning pretty heavy on a couple of inferences here and there. But what had worried him from the beginning was the fact that he hadn’t ever quite been able to bring himself to believe that Ferrin had been sober enough to work out a plan as complicated as the one Rhodes attributed to him.

Ferrin admitted that Rhodes had guessed right about Ferrin’s drive past Press Yardley’s place. He even admitted having stopped there and talked to Ward.

“But that’s all,” he said. “I never killed him.”

“You followed him back to his place, didn’t you?” Rhodes asked.

“OK, sure, I did that. We even had a little argument. He knocked me down a time or two, but that’s all. I told him that I didn’t have any money and that he could tell Wally Henry whatever he wanted to. Hell, what was Wally gonna do to me?  Whip my ass, maybe, but that’s all. He wouldn’t kill me.”