Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl (3 page)

Rhodes walked down to the creek bank through the tall green weeds and grass. There were quite a few pairs of shoes lined up just at the edge of the grass.

“You about finished with your business, Brother Alton?” Rhodes asked.

Brother Alton was tall and thin, and he had on a black suit, a white shirt, and a wide black tie. His pants legs were rolled up to his knees, but they were wet anyway. He wore rimless glasses that reflected the sunlight, and his face was crosshatched with wrinkles.

“It’s the Lord’s business we’re doin’ here,” he said. “And I’m not so sure we’ll be able to finish it. Sister Midgie is mighty upset with all the shootin’, and we can’t get her completely immersed. You know a baptizin’s no good if you’re not completely immersed.”

Sister Midgie looked at Rhodes miserably. Her hair hung wet and lank, water dripping off the ends of her bangs and running down her face. Her clothes were thoroughly soaked. It appeared that there had been several unsuccessful attempts at complete immersion.

“I’ll put a stop to the shooting,” Rhodes said. “But I’m not sure what I can do about the toilet.”

Brother Alton’s lip curled at the mention of the toilet. Rhodes supposed that it was all right to talk about gunshots at a baptism, but portable toilets were something else entirely. Rhodes decided to get back to a more tasteful topic.

“You just relax, Sister Midgie,” he said, “and go on and get baptized so you can get out of that water.”

“I’ll try, Sheriff,” Sister Midgie said.

“Good,” Rhodes said. “You go ahead with your ceremony, Brother Alton, and I’ll go see about those boys with the pistol.”

“Drunks,” Brother Alton said, drawing himself up self-righteously. “Slaves of the Demon Rum, and on the Sabbath day, at that.”

It was more likely the Demon Lone Star Beer than the Demon Rum, Rhodes thought, but there was no use in getting into a theological argument with Brother Alton. Rhodes started walking through the deep weeds toward the three men with the gun. His feet squished occasionally on the still-soaked ground.

After he had covered about ten yards, he looked back over his shoulder. Brother Alton had his thumb and forefinger clasped over Sister Midgie’s nose, the palm of his hand covering her mouth. All of her below her shoulders was submerged, and she was sinking fast. Rhodes figured that this time the baptism would be completed. All he had to worry about was three drunks with a pistol.

They saw him coming and started passing the pistol from one to the other, laughing loudly all the while. When he got up to them, the pistol was nowhere to be seen. He didn’t know any of them, but they knew him. Or at least they knew who he was.

“Heighdy, Sheriff,” they said, almost in unison. A heady odor of beer fumes surrounded them. The three men had probably consumed enough beer to completely immerse Sister Midgie.

“Where’s the gun, fellas?” Rhodes asked, looking them over. They were all dressed in western straw hats, western shirts, boots, and jeans, and not a one of them was more than twenty-five.

One of them laughed. “What gun?” he asked. He was a little older than the other two and he had a strong, square chin. “We don’t have any gun.”

“Sure you do,” Rhodes said. “You were using it to shoot up that toilet there.”  He pointed through the trees at the silver shape floating lazily down the creek.

The three young men broke up in laughter when they looked at the toilet, slapping shoulders and punching arms.

“I don’t guess you’d know a thing about how that toilet got there, would you?” Rhodes asked.

That impressed them as being even funnier, and Rhodes thought for a second that they might all fall down from laughing. Before they did, he told them that he wanted them to do something for him.

“Just some simple tests,” he said, and told them what he wanted them to do.

They tried, but none of them could quite touch his nose after first closing his eyes, and none of them could quite stand on one foot for more than three seconds. One of them fell over and had to be helped up by his friends, who seemed to think it was one of the funniest things that had ever happened, even more hilarious than Rhodes’ mention of the outhouse.

“Where’s your car parked?” Rhodes asked after they were all standing and the laughter had subsided.

“Truck,” the oldest one said. “We came in a truck.”

“Let’s go have a look at it,” Rhodes said. “The walk will do you good.”

Brother Alton had been right. They’d been drinking for sure, and more than a little. Rhodes thought he’d find the hard evidence in their truck. He started walking.

They didn’t give him any argument; they just followed along behind him, occasionally stumbling into one another and guffawing.

It was about a half mile to the county road where they’d parked, near a bridge that was a lot more rickety than the one Rhodes had stopped by. On the way there they passed three empty aluminum beer cans. He had the men pick them up.

“They’re bringing about thirty cents a pound,” Rhodes pointed out. “Besides, you don’t want to mess up the environment.”

“We didn’t put those cans here,” the spokesman said.

“Maybe not,” Rhodes agreed, looking at the can the man was holding.

It wasn’t Lone Star after all. It was Coors Light. The Silver Bullet.

Well, Rhodes thought, you can’t be right about everything. Anyway, considering what the outhouse looked like, what could be more appropriate?

When they reached the road, the men were a little more sober than they’d been when the walk had started, but not much.

It was no wonder. There was a red Toyota pickup parked by the bridge. It was backed up to the side of the bridge, so that something heavy, like a portable toilet, could have been slid out and into the creek.

The pickup’s tailgate was open, and the truck bed was littered with Coors Light cans, even more than Rhodes had expected. The drinking had been going on for quite a while. Many of the cans were partially flattened, probably from the outhouse’s having rested on them. There were sticks and dry leaves and chicken feathers mixed in among the cans near the cab of the truck.

Rhodes walked behind the truck and closed the tailgate. He noticed that the TO and TA had been painted out, so that the tailgate no longer announced the manufacturer’s name. It just said, “YO.”  The tailgate was hot from the sun, and Rhodes moved his hands.

“You can throw those cans you’re holding in there with the rest of them,” Rhodes said, and they did. The cans clattered against the bed, bounced a time or two and were still.

“Now then,” Rhodes said. “Let’s take care of a little unfinished business. Where’s the pistol?”

One of the younger men, who had ears that stuck out from the sides of his head, said, “He’s got it.”

He pointed to their spokesman, who didn’t say anything. He just reached behind his back and pulled the gun from under his shirt.

Rhodes took it from him. “That’s good,” he said.

The pistol was a .38 caliber Smith and Wesson revolver. Rhodes opened the cylinder, but there were no cartridges inside. That was even better.

“Now,” he told the three men, “let’s see some identification.”

They got out their wallets and showed him their drivers’ licenses.

The oldest one was Michael Ferrin, age twenty-five. The one with the big ears was Kyle Foster, twenty-three. The one who still hadn’t said a word was Lawrence Galloway, also twenty-three.

“Well now,” Rhodes said, “which one of you wants to tell me how that portable toilet got in the creek?  How about you Lawrence?”

Lawrence blinked. “Larry,” he said. “Ever’body calls me Larry.”

“All right, Larry. How about it?”

“I guess that was our fault,” Larry said, looking down at his dusty boots. “We sorta put it there.”

“I figured that,” Rhodes said. “The question is, how are you going to get it out?”

The three men looked at one another. No one seemed to have any idea until Ferrin said, “We can rope it.”

“Right,” Foster said. “That’s what we can do. Where’s that lariat rope?”

“In the truck,” Ferrin said.

Rhodes couldn’t think of anything better to do. “Get it,” he said.

Ferrin opened the door on the driver’s side and pulled the seat forward. He reached behind it and came out with a coiled rope. He slammed the door.

“Here it is,” he said. “We can rope that son of a bitch.”

Rhodes wasn’t sure that any one of the three was in any kind of shape to rope a tree stump, much less the toilet, but at the same time he thought it might be a good idea to try to get it out of the creek before it floated into the next county. It was worth a try.

“All right,” he said. “We’ll walk back down to the other bridge. There’s a good clear space there just before you get there, and maybe you can get a rope on that thing from the bank.”

“Why do we have to walk?” Larry Galloway asked. “Why can’t we go in the truck?”

“Because you need a little fresh air,” Rhodes said. “And because you don’t want a DWI on your record.”

“I’m not intos—intos—in
tox
icated,” Galloway informed him. “And I wouldn’t be drivin’ anyhow. It’s not my truck.”

“It’s mine,” Ferrin said.

“I don’t care whose truck it is,” Rhodes told them. “We’re going to walk.”

They started back toward the spot where the baptizing was going on. Rhodes could hear the Brother Alton’s small congregation singing “Shall We Gather at the River,” so he supposed the ceremony was over. Maybe they would be gone by the time the outhouse and the ropers arrived.

They weren’t gone, however. They had walked back to their cars, but they all stood there watching, waiting to see what Rhodes was going to do. Even Midgie, wrapped around with towels now, was standing there to see what would happen.

What happened was that Michael Ferrin tried to twirl a noose into the rope and got so tangled up in it that Rhodes had to free him. The other two were laughing too much to be of any help.

“I thought you were a roper,” Kyle Foster said when he got his breath back.

Rhodes thought that someone had better be a roper or it was going to be too late. The portable toilet was already directly in front of them, and in a minute or two it would be on down the creek and behind the cover of the trees again.

“Give me that rope,” he said, and Ferrin handed it to him.

Rhodes had never harbored any illusions about his abilities as a rodeo cowboy, but when he was young he had read a biography of Will Rogers and for a few weeks afterward had spent a lot of hours in his back yard trying to learn a few simple rope tricks. He’d never gotten very good at any of them, but he’d also spent some time lassoing his parents’ lawn chairs, and he’d gotten fairly good at that. That had been a long time ago, however. Maybe it was like riding a bicycle and would all come back to him. He hoped so.

He spun the noose above his head, letting the rope out gradually through the loop. When he judged things were about right, he looked at the toilet, which was about ten yards offshore, and let the noose fly.

It flattened out and settled over the outhouse as if Rhodes had been doing that sort of thing every day for years. The members of Brother Alton’s congregation applauded.

Rhodes pulled the rope tight, trying to look casual. Then he handed the rope to Ferrin. “You three can pull it in now that I’ve done the hard part.”

The three young men didn’t look especially happy about having to do any physical labor, but they pulled on the rope and after a little struggling they had the silver metal building lying on its side on the bank of the creek. There were a number of bullet holes in the sides. There was a peculiarly unpleasant odor about it, but Rhodes supposed that was to be expected. It was a toilet, after all.

He could read the lettering now. It said, “SANI-CAN INC. CALL 555-4545.”

“Where did you say you got this thing?” Rhodes asked.

“We didn’t say,” Foster told him, and they all three laughed at his wit.

“My mistake,” Rhodes said. “Where did you get it?”

The men looked at one another, no longer laughing. Finally Ferrin said, “We don’t exactly know.”

“Why not?”

“Well, we were just ridin’ around, you know?  And we saw this thing shinin’ in the sun, and somebody thought it’d be a good idea to take it. But I don’t remember exactly where we were when we found it.”

The other two didn’t remember either. They looked at the ground and shook their heads when Rhodes asked them.

“All right,” he said. “You saw it shining in the sun. Then what?”

Ferrin said, “We stopped and put it in the truck. Somebody said it’d be fun to throw it in the creek and see if it’d float.”

Rhodes had an idea who the “somebody” was, but he didn’t say so. “It floated, all right. Whose idea was the pistol?”

Nobody said anything, but Rhodes had a pretty good idea about that one, too.

“Well,” he said, “I guess we’d better be going into town. The county car’s right up that way.”  He pointed in the direction of the road.

“What about my truck?” Ferrin asked.

“I’ll send somebody for it,” Rhodes said. “You’re not in any condition to be driving.”

Ferrin opened his mouth and looked as if he might argue, but all he said was, “Well, what about my rope?”

The portable toilet was lying on the rope. Rhodes supposed they could lift it up and remove the rope, but he didn’t see any need to do that now.

“I’ll have someone put it in the truck later,” he said.

Ferrin obviously didn’t like that idea. “It’s a real good rope,” he said.

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s going to steal it.”

Once again, Ferrin looked as if he might argue, but he didn’t. He turned toward the road, where the members of Brother Alton’s congregation were getting into their cars.

“Let’s go,” Ferrin said to his buddies.

Rhodes started after them, but there was something about the odor hanging about the toilet that was bothering him.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

The three men turned back to him, and he walked over to the toilet. The door was facing him, with the handle about on a level with his belt buckle. The toilet was not completely out of the water, but Rhodes could reach the door handle without getting his feet wet. Just muddy, but then they were muddy already. He thought he’d better have a look and see if there was anything inside the toilet.