Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder (21 page)

“Other thing?”

Mr. Spence looked vague.  He took off his hat and wiped his hand across the top of his bald head.  He put the hat back on, pressing it down so that it mashed down on the tops of his ears, making them stick out at a funny angle.

“You said you wanted to see me about a couple of things,” Rhodes told him.  “One was the injunction.  What was the other one?”

“Oh, yeah.”

Mr. Spence smiled broadly.  He still had a great many of his teeth, but there didn’t seem to be any two of them together, giving his smile a snaggle-toothed charm.

“The other thing was somethin’ that woke me up last night,” he said.

“And what was that?” Rhodes asked.

Mr. Spence smiled again.  “Motorsickles,” he said.

R
hodes drove about a hundred yards past Mr. Spence’s house and turned down a one-lane dirt road that was lined with leafless trees.  Their branches reached out and almost scraped the county car, and Rhodes wondered if the tree-whacker would be coming down that way in the spring.  It did a good job of cutting back the limbs that stretched toward passing cars, but Rhodes wasn’t fond of the tree-whacker, having come a little too close to getting whacked by it himself at one time.  He’d just as soon not see it again.

According to Mr. Spence, the narrow, tree-lined road led to an abandoned house that had just about fallen to pieces.

“But the barn’s in pretty good shape,” Mr. Spence said.  “The folks who owned the place, the Pearsons they was, I think, they didn’t put much stock in takin’ care of their house, but they did just fine on the barn.”

Rhodes and Mr. Spence both figured that the motorcycles meant someone might be using the barn to bunk in.

“Why else would anybody be ridin’ out here on motorsickles?” Mr. Spence asked.  “Ain’t another damn thing around here for miles, that I can see.”

Mr. Spence hadn’t actually visited the barn in several years, but he thought it would provide a decent shelter.

“That is it would if you don’t mind mice.  Never knew an old barn that didn’t have mice in it.  And where there’s mice, there’s gonna be them damn hognose snakes.  I never did like a snake, not even a hognose snake, even if they do eat mice.  But there prob’ly won’t be no snakes this time of the year, bein’s how it’s gettin’ on toward winter.  So I guess it’ll be just mice.  Mice like to come inside where it’s warm, just like people do.”

Rhodes didn’t think Rapper and his friends would mind mice.  He made Mr. Spence promise to turn his lawn mower around and go home, and then he headed for the Pearson place.

The house was just about as Mr. Spence had described it.  The porch was still intact, though it had folded in the middle. The faded walls of the house were intact as well, but they had sagged inward when the roof collapsed.  Dull-red bricks from the chimney littered the ground on one side.

The barn was about fifty yards behind what was left of the house.  Probably the reason it was still standing was the fact that it had been built of sheet iron that was now covered with the gritty reddish-brown rust of age.

The barn had a covered feeding area, but the wooden feeding trough that had once been there was now long gone.  One of the support posts was missing, and the roof sagged down at one end.  At the other end of the barn there was a large storage room that Rhodes knew would have a wooden floor built well up off the ground.  That was where the mice would be, if there were any mice.  That was also where Rapper and his friends would be staying.

Rhodes knew Rapper was there, and probably Nellie as well. He could see two motorcycles parked under the overhang where the feeding trough had once been, and while he was far from an expert, the motorcycles looked to him like the same ones Nellie and Rapper had been riding at the Gottschalk farm.  Born Too Loose and his pal must have left the county, or at least Rhodes hoped they had.

Rhodes parked his car in front of the house where it couldn’t be seen from the barn and radioed Hack.

“Has Ruth checked in this morning?” he asked.

“She’s right here.  You want to talk to her?”

“No need for that.  You know where the old Pearson place is, around the corner from where J. D. Spence lives?”

“I guess I know where just about ever’ place in this county is.  Why?”

“There’s somebody staying there.  I want you to send Ruth out here.  I might need some back-up.”

“I’m surprised you’d ask.  And this is the second time lately.  You must be gettin’ smarter in your old age.”

“You can skip the editorial comment,” Rhodes said, and signed off.

R
hodes knew that the smart thing to do would be to wait until Ruth arrived.  Or then again, that might
not
be the smart thing to do.  Rhodes looked at his watch.  It was seven thirty. Right now there didn’t seem to be any sign of activity at the barn, but before too long Rapper or Nellie or both of them would be stirring around.  It might be a good idea to tackle them before they had a chance to come to full alertness.  If he waited too long, they might even decide to leave.

It wouldn’t hurt to walk down to the barn and have a look at things, he told himself.  He would be very quiet.  Rapper and Nellie were probably still asleep.  He could wake them and arrest them without a struggle.

He was almost to the barn when the outside door of the storage room opened and Nellie stepped out.  He saw Rhodes immediately and did an almost comical double take before he popped right back through the door that remained open, dangling on its sprung hinges.

Bad idea
, Rhodes thought. 
I’m not as smart as Hack thinks I am.  I should have stayed in the car
.

But it was too late to worry about having lost the element of surprise.  Rhodes drew his sidearm and walked steadily toward the closed door.

He was still twenty yards away when he heard a loud slam.  There was another door, this one leading to the feeding area.  Nellie and Rapper both piled out, jumped on their bikes, and kicked them into life.  The rumble of the engines reverberated off the sheet iron.

The bikes roared out of the feeding area with dirt spurting from beneath their back wheels and headed straight for Rhodes.  It was obvious that this time Rapper wasn’t going to turn back as he had at The County Line.  He was going to run Rhodes down and flatten him into the pasture grass.

Rhodes didn’t bother to fire a warning shot.

He aimed at Rapper and pulled the trigger.

Chapter Eighteen

R
hodes didn’t shoot to kill.  He just wanted to slow Rapper down or throw him off course.

The bullet pinged off the motorcycle’s gas tank and sliced through the leg of Rapper’s pants.  It didn’t do a thing to slow the biker down, and it didn’t cause him to alter his course by a millimeter.  Rhodes barely had time to jump to one side and avoid being flattened.

Rapper stuck out his leg as he sped past and kicked hard at Rhodes.  He hit the sheriff’s gun hand with the steel toe of his black leather boot, and Rhodes’ pistol went spinning away.

Rhodes didn’t have a chance to go after it.  He had to dive to his left to avoid Nellie, who was thundering along in his pal’s wake.

Rhodes landed on his stomach and rolled across the dead grass.  He felt his new glasses break.

Oh, well, he thought.  At least no one had kept any cattle on the Pearson place for the last few years.

He didn’t have time to be grateful for long, however, because Rapper and Nellie were coming back after him.

Rhodes experienced a strong feeling of
deja vu
, remembering the last time he and Rapper had tangled and Rapper had lost part of his fingers.

Rapper might have been remembering the same thing.  Rhodes could see that he was smiling, maybe because this time Rhodes didn’t have a hoe handle.

Rhodes didn’t have his pistol, either, and he couldn’t see where it had gone.

There was only one thing to do in that case, and Rhodes did it.  He turned and ran for the barn, wishing that he was still the will-’o-the-wisp.

He wasn’t, but the two bikes roaring along at his back gave the incentive he needed to run as fast as he was capable of, which wasn’t very fast.  At least he had a head start, even if it wasn’t much of one.  As he labored ungracefully across the grass, he imagined he could feel the treads of Rapper’s front tire running up his back.

Rapper was yelling something at either Rhodes or Nellie, but Rhodes couldn’t make out what it was because his blood was pounding too loudly in his ears.  He couldn’t even hear the roar of the motorcycles behind him, and he didn’t dare look back to see how close they were.  He kept his eyes focused on the barn door.

It was only about ten yards away, and Rhodes covered those yards in what seemed like one giant step, throwing himself toward the open door as if he were straining for the end zone in the championship game.

He flew through the opening and hit the wooden floor just as Rapper swooshed by, skidding into an odorous bedroll that belonged to either Rapper or Nellie.  There had been hay stored in the barn at one time, and though that had been long ago and virtually nothing remained of it, Rhodes could smell it in the dust that rose from the floor.  Even the smell of the bedroll couldn’t mask it.

Rhodes sat up, looking around the storage room for anything that could be used as a weapon.  Rapper and Nellie hadn’t left him much that he could see, and he was about to search through their gear when he saw something hanging from a nail on one of the bare studs.  It was a hay hook.

The hook was attached to a short wooden handle and looked like it belonged at the end of a pirate’s hand.  Rhodes walked over and took it down, fitting his own hand around the smoothly worn handle.  Rhodes hand was throbbing, and a bruise was forming on his wrist where Rapper had kicked him, but he could grip the handle easily.  The hook wouldn’t be good for anything other than close-in work, but it was better than nothing.  It was too bad there wasn’t a pitchfork.

Rhodes heard someone yelling outside.  It was Nellie, who said, “I’ve got his pistol, Rapper.”

That wasn’t exactly good news, and neither was Rapper’s reply.

“Well, use it then.”

Rhodes didn’t really expect Nellie to start shooting.  Both he and Rapper would have known that if they killed a law officer, even Texas wouldn’t be big enough to hide in.

Apparently they didn’t care.  Maybe it was the excitement of the moment, or maybe they were just crazy.  Or maybe they were the ones who had killed Brady Meredith and thought that another murder wouldn’t really make much difference.

Rhodes heard the sharp report of the pistol, and a bullet spanged through the sheet metal wall about three feet to his right.

The bullet went right on out through the other wall, and Rhodes hit the floor.

Nellie fired three more times in rapid succession, but none of the bullets came anywhere near Rhodes, who could see the dust motes dancing in the sunlight that slanted in through the bullet holes.  The dust made him sneeze.  He had always been allergic to hay.

“Think I got him?” Nellie called out.

“Why don’t you go in and see?” Rapper suggested.

That was Rapper, Rhodes thought.  Always considerate of his friends.

But Nellie wasn’t entirely stupid.  “You go,” he said.  “You’re closer than I am.”

Rhodes didn’t care which of them came, and he didn’t care if neither of them did.  He was going to stay right where he was until Ruth arrived.  He was sure that she’d be there soon.

He heard a motorcycle getting closer, and he rolled to the right of the door and stood up quietly.  The sound of the bullets whanging through the metal walls was still ringing in his ears, but he thought he could hear mice chittering under the floor.  They were probably more frightened than Rhodes was.

“Can you see him?” Nellie called.

“It’s dark in there,” Rapper said. 

He was only a few feet from where Rhodes stood, and Rhodes tightened his grip on the hay hook.  His wrist gave a little twinge, but he ignored it.

“Can you hear anything?” Nellie asked.

“Not with you yelling like that,” Rapper answered.

“Better get off your bike and check it out.  See if he’s playin’ ’possum.”

“Why should I check it out?  I didn’t leave anything in that barn that I have to have.  If he’s dead, he’s dead; if he’s not, to hell with him.  Let’s just ride on out of here and not come back.”

Apparently Rapper’s desire for revenge had played out.  Either that or he had realized how stupid he and Nellie were being.

“Fine with me,” Nellie said.  “I never did like the idea of coming back to this county in the first place.”

It might have been fine with Nellie for them to leave, but it wasn’t fine with Rhodes.  He couldn’t let them go.  They might be able to elude the law for a long time if they did.  He peeped through one of the bullet holes to see where Rapper was located and saw the biker straddling his machine right in front of the doorway.

Rhodes gathered himself and whirled through the door, making a jump for Rapper.  He saw Rapper’s eyes widen in surprise, and then he crashed into him, dragging him off the bike, and rolled away.  Rapper got to his feet first and charged Rhodes, who had somehow managed to hang onto the hay hook without puncturing some tender part of his anatomy.

Rhodes rose to his knees and swung the hook just before Rapper reached him.  The hook hit Rapper’s upper thigh with a sound that was solid and meaty and wet all at the same time, and Rhodes jerked backward.

Rapper’s leg slipped out from under him, and his foot barely missed Rhodes’ head.  Rapper screamed and collapsed in a heap, writhing on the ground in front of Rhodes, his hands clutching at the hook sunk into his leg.

Nellie, with a show of disloyalty that didn’t surprise Rhodes in the least, turned his bike for the road and roared away.

He didn’t get far.  Ruth Grady was just pulling into the yard, and she spun the steering wheel, positioning her car to block the gate.

Nellie veered off the path and tried to jump the sagging barbed wire fence, but the bike didn’t make it.  The front wheel caught the top wire, which stretched a little but didn’t break.  Nellie’s bike flipped over twice before it landed in the middle of the dirt road.