Between the Living and the Dead (10 page)

“So you did know that Neil was dead,” Rhodes said. “That's better.”

“Not the part about the skinny little deputy,” Buddy said. “That's not better. I don't like that one bit.”

“Maybe we need to go inside, sit down, and talk this out,” Rhodes said. “We can start with you two telling me how you knew Neil was shot and go on from there.”

Earl stared at him.

“I told you to hush, dumbass,” Louie said. “You never listen.”

“I ain't no dumbass,” Earl said. “He was lying about Neil. People ought not to lie about somebody who's dead.”

“Yeah, that's right,” Louie said, “but now we have to go inside and talk. You go on, Earl.”

Earl didn't move, so Louie gave him a little push. Earl opened the screen and went through. Louie went in right behind him. As soon as he was inside, he slammed the inner door before Rhodes and Buddy had a chance to move. Rhodes heard a dead bolt snick into place.

“They can't do that,” Buddy said, although it was plain that they had.

Rhodes heard footsteps. It sounded as if Earl and Louie were running through the house.

“They're headed out the back,” he said, and Buddy took off.

Rhodes ran after him, catching up just as he turned the corner of the house. He heard a door slam and reached out for Buddy's shoulder.

“Slow down,” Rhodes said. “We don't want to run into anything we aren't ready for.”

“Right,” Buddy said, pulling his service revolver, a big .44 magnum. Rhodes felt a little inadequate as he got the little Kel-Tec from the ankle holster.

A couple of car doors slammed and an engine started.

“Let's get back there,” Rhodes said. “Be careful.”

When they got to the back of the house, they saw an old green pickup, black smoke coming from the tailpipe. Rhodes didn't know where Earl and Louie had gotten the pickup. Their cars had been shot up pretty badly in the raid on the meth house, but they'd probably made enough money to buy the old truck. There was no second vehicle, which meant that either Neil didn't have one or it was missing.

Rhodes ran to the driveway and stood in the middle of it and pointed the Kel-Tec straight in front of him. He hoped Louie and Earl had enough sense not to run over him or get shot trying, and they did. Instead of trying to get out on the driveway, they turned around and headed out across the backyard. The chain-link fence didn't slow them down much. The pickup hit a post and smashed it down, along with a swath of the fence, and they struck out across the pasture, bouncing across ruts almost like a pickup in a cartoon and running over small mesquite bushes without regard to puncturing the tires.

“Want me to shoot out the tires?” Buddy asked.

The way the pickup was bouncing around, Rhodes thought he'd be lucky to come within twenty yards of it. Or unlucky enough to hit Louie or Earl.

“Better not,” Rhodes said.

“They'll get away.”

Letting them get away was better than shooting them by accident. They knew a lot more than they were telling, and Rhodes thought Earl would crack for sure in about ten minutes. Louie might take a little longer.

“We'll just have to catch them,” Rhodes said. He put the Kel-Tec back into its holster. “Come on.”

He walked across the downed fence and into the pasture.

“On foot?” Buddy called from behind him.

“It's the only way to go,” Rhodes said.

 

Chapter 8

Rhodes jogged along in the pasture. It was tough going because the feral pigs had been rooting up the ground, leaving chunks of earth and shallow holes. The ground was soft because of last night's rain shower, and mud stuck to Rhodes's shoes. It was hot, too. Besides not wearing a hat, he didn't wear boots. He preferred rubber-soled shoes. If he wasn't the only sheriff in Texas who didn't wear a hat, he was surely the only one who didn't wear either a hat or boots. Boots would have made it a little easier to walk across the rough, sandy ground. They wouldn't have provided much protection against the thorny mesquite bushes that grew all around, however. Neither did his short-sleeved shirt. Rhodes just had to avoid them.

About a quarter of a mile in front of him, the pasture turned into woods. Louie and Earl could either drive along the edge of the trees and try to find a way back to a road without running into a fence they couldn't knock over, or they could park the truck and try to get away in the woods. Rhodes was betting they'd take to the woods. Finding them in there wasn't a sure bet, but it was still better than shooting at them.

Rhodes's shirt was sticking to his back before he got halfway to the woods, but he'd been right about Louie and Earl. They stopped the truck and bailed out. Earl, who'd been driving, ran into the woods on the left, and Louie went into the trees on the right.

“You take Louie,” Rhodes said to Buddy, who was panting along beside him. “Don't spend all day looking for him. If he gets away, we'll get him some other time. And no shooting.”

“What if he shoots first?” Buddy asked.

Rhodes hadn't seen either of the Foshees with a gun, but that didn't mean they didn't have one. “If he doesn't kill you, then you can shoot.”

“That's not real encouraging,” Buddy said.

Rhodes stepped on a soft spot and almost fell, but he caught his balance in time and stumbled for a few steps.

“You okay?” Buddy asked.

“I'm fine,” Rhodes said. “Just clumsy.”

When they came to the pickup, Rhodes was tempted to stop and search it, but Earl already had a good head start on him. Rhodes kept going. As he passed the front of the truck, he saw Buddy disappear into the trees on his right.

Rhodes entered the woods. It was a bit cooler in the shade, but there wasn't a hint of a breeze. Rhodes didn't hurry. He didn't want to try running, what with all the sticks, leaves, and broken limbs on the ground. There was also the danger of snakes. Copperheads weren't unusual in the spring, especially in the woods, and there might be a rattlesnake or two around.

Rhodes got out his pistol. Snakes weren't usually aggressive, but if you stepped on one or got too close to it and agitated it, you'd be in big trouble. If you were of the non-boot-wearing persuasion, you could be in even bigger trouble, so it paid to be careful. Rhodes was careful. He didn't like snakes. He thought for a second of Bud Turley, a man who hadn't been careful. Rhodes wished he'd warned Buddy about snakes, but Buddy had lived in Blacklin County for most of his life. He'd be careful. So would Louie and Earl.

Rhodes started walking. Besides snakes, there was the threat of poison oak and poison ivy. Rhodes didn't need to spend the next few weeks itching like a dog with the mange, so he tried to avoid contact with anything green, just to be on the safe side.

There was another threat, too, the feral pigs who'd torn up the pasture. The pigs usually came out at night, but in the daytime they'd lie up in some concealed shady spot in the woods to wait for darkness so they could begin their plundering. They were wreaking havoc all over the county, all over the state, and almost all over the country.

Some commissioner in Harris County, which included Houston, had gotten permission to trap the feral pigs in several parks, have them butchered, and give the meat to the food bank. Rhodes thought that was an excellent plan. If they had enough traps, they could feed the whole county forever because the pigs could reproduce faster than they could be trapped. Better not to think about the pigs, though.

Every so often Rhodes stopped to look for signs of Earl's passage through the woods. He saw some crushed plants and knew he was on the right track, but he couldn't hear anything other than birds twittering. Mockingbirds, he thought. They made so many different sounds that Rhodes couldn't know for sure. Birdsong identification wasn't one of his strong points.

Aside from the birds, everything was quiet. Rhodes walked slowly, and now and then he looked up into the trees. He'd learned the hard way that most people didn't look up, so it was easy to hide if you could climb a tree. Earl didn't look like a climber, but you could never be sure about someone like him. He might be more agile than he appeared. However, Rhodes didn't see Earl. He didn't even see any birds. They were all hiding from him among the new green leaves the trees were putting out.

Earl didn't seem to Rhodes like someone who could be quiet for very long, any more than he seemed like a climber. He appeared to be more like the kind who'd crash through the woods like a hippo, so Rhodes assumed that he was either resting or had been able to run so fast that he'd already gotten away. If he'd gotten away, there was no need for Rhodes to be in a hurry. He continued to ease along, hoping that he was still on the right track.

He was. Somewhere ahead of him he heard a commotion, then a yell, then something that sounded like a stampede.

It didn't take a genius to figure out what had happened. Earl had been unlucky and had stumbled across a passel of hogs. The hogs hadn't been pleased, which wasn't much of a surprise. A passel of hogs aroused from a nice daytime nap was rarely a happy passel.

The noise got louder. The hogs, and probably Earl, were headed in Rhodes's direction.

Rhodes didn't think Earl could outrun the hogs. He stuck his pistol in his belt. The Kel-Tec would be about as much use against stampeding hogs as a fly swatter. He looked around for a tree with low branches that would support his weight. He'd been a great climber of trees when he was a boy, but he was long past boyhood, and the last time he'd climbed a tree, somebody had taken a shot at him.

Better to climb than to be trampled, however. Rhodes grabbed a sturdy limb on an elm tree and pulled himself up. He got a leg over the limb and with only a little straining managed to get himself uncomfortably seated on it. His legs dangled down only a couple of feet off the ground, but they were high enough to avoid trouble if he raised them.

He'd barely gotten situated when he saw Earl coming with at least a dozen hogs squealing along in a thundering pursuit. Earl was sprinting for all he was worth, dodging trees and limbs as best he could. When he couldn't dodge or duck a limb, he just let it slap him in the face and body.

The hogs churned up dirt and leaves and sticks, and some piglets came squealing along behind the adults as fast as their little trotters could carry them.

Earl dodged the trunk of the tree where Rhodes was sitting, probably not even noticing that Rhodes was there. He had other things on his mind. The hogs passed right under Rhodes's raised feet, snorting and snuffling.

Earl had a good head start, but Rhodes didn't think he could make it back to his pickup. Hogs could run ten miles an hour or so, and Earl didn't look to be able to run ten miles at all. It turned out not to matter how fast he could run because about ten yards past the tree Earl's feet got tangled up with a broken limb that lay in his path, and he fell sprawling. He slid a little way on his face and stomach and then lay still.

The hogs didn't slow down. They charged right over Earl as if they didn't even know he was lying there. Not all of them trampled him, of course. Some of them passed on either side of him, but a good number of them rumbled right over him. One of the piglets stopped for just a second to look at what was left of him and then ran on after the others. Rhodes had no idea how far they'd go before they stopped, and it didn't matter. What mattered was Earl.

Rhodes climbed down from the tree and went to where Earl lay flat on his face in the leaves. His clothes were ripped, and there was a good deal of blood. The back of Earl's head looked a bit mashed. Rhodes didn't think any of the hogs had gotten their tusks into Earl, but their hooves had done plenty of damage. Earl's shirt was ripped, and so were his pants. There were cuts on his back and legs. Hog hooves could be sharp.

Rhodes knelt down, turned Earl's head to the side, and felt the carotid artery. He found a pulse. It wasn't strong, but it was there.

Rhodes reached in his back pocket for his cell phone and was glad to find it hadn't fallen out while he was climbing the tree. He called 911 and gave the best directions he could to the place where Earl was lying. He hoped that the low-slung ambulance could get across the pasture and that the paramedics could get into the woods and find him and Earl.

When he'd completed the call, he pulled the Kel-Tec from his belt and fired four shots into the ground near a tree. That ought to bring Buddy, who might be on the way already if he'd heard Earl's yells.

Rhodes didn't think it would be a good idea for him and Buddy to try to move Earl, but they might have to if the paramedics couldn't find them. Earl was too heavy for two people to try to move anyway. The paramedics would have a stretcher, and four people could carry Earl out of the woods. Even with four, it wouldn't be easy.

Rhodes walked over to a hickory tree and leaned back against the trunk. If any nuts had ever fallen from the tree, they were gone now. Hogs would have eaten them.

After Rhodes had been standing under the tree for about ten minutes, he heard someone coming through the trees. He was still holding the Kel-Tec, just in case, and stood quietly, concealed by the trunk of the hickory tree.

Buddy walked right past the tree and stopped when he saw Earl lying on the ground.

“He's alive,” Rhodes said.

Buddy twitched, but he didn't panic. He turned around and said, “You sure are sneaky, Sheriff.”

“I don't mean to be,” Rhodes said, and returned the pistol to its place.

“It's okay,” Buddy said. “Good thing I'm not the nervous type.” He looked down at Earl. “What'd you do to Earl?”

“Wasn't me,” Rhodes said. “Hogs.”

Buddy kicked a clod of dirt. “Should've known that, the way the ground's torn up. He alive?”

“For now. What about Louie?”