Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 20 - Compound Murder (2 page)

“I’ll start making the calls,” Lonnie said.

“Use your cell,” Rhodes told him. “I doubt that your burglar used the phone, but we have to be careful. You can call in here, but don’t touch anything.”

“I’ll be careful,” Lonnie said.

Rhodes went out to the county car, got Hack on the radio, and asked him to send Ruth Grady to the Beauty Shack. “Tell her there’s been a burglary. She can get the details from Lonnie when she gets here. I want her to work the scene.”

“She’s on patrol,” Hack said.

“I know, but she’s needed here now.”

“Take her a while to get there.”

“That’s all right. Lonnie’s closing the shop.”

“I’ll tell her,” Hack said. “Hang on. I got a call coming in.”

Rhodes waited. The Beauty Shack was a little past the edge of Clearview’s old downtown area, and it was quiet at that time of day. For that matter, it was quiet just about any time of the day. There wasn’t much left of downtown, a lot of which was like the building across the street, empty and about to fall down. In fact, some of the buildings had already fallen down. Where there had once been busy stores, there were concrete foundations and floors and nothing more.

A little breeze stirred up a dust devil at the edge of the parking lot, but the breeze didn’t do much to cool things down. The day was warm even though it was the middle of October. Rhodes was used to it. The summer had been brutal, the drought had been severe, and there hadn’t been much of a fall so far. The weather had been extreme for several years, and Rhodes wondered if things would ever straighten out again.

He didn’t wonder long because Hack came back on the radio.

“You better get out to the college,” Hack said. “Quick.”

“What’s the trouble?”

This time Hack didn’t obfuscate or beat around the bush.

“In the parking lot in back of the building,” he said. “Somebody’s dead.”

Chapter 2

Rhodes was at the campus in under five minutes. He wasn’t sure it was technically a campus, since it consisted of only one building, and maybe it wasn’t even technically a community college. The college and its main campus were located in another county. This was a branch campus. It had been in Clearview for several years now, having originally started out in one of the crumbling downtown buildings. When that building became uninhabitable owing to the fact that it was about to collapse, the new building had been constructed on the outskirts of town.

Rhodes pulled into the asphalt parking lot behind the college building and immediately spotted a small group gathered near a couple of big gray-painted metal Dumpsters. Other people were trying to get closer and not succeeding. Seepy Benton was there, doing crowd control. It was probably too late for that, though. There had already been enough trampling and touching to thoroughly contaminate the scene if a crime had been committed, not that many traces would have been left on the asphalt.

Dr. C. P. Benton, known to his friends and acquaintances as Seepy, was a math teacher who’d been in the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy. He now considered himself some kind of unofficial deputy, which could be irritating at times. At other times, however, he’d proved helpful.

Rhodes stopped the county car and got out. Benton came over to him and said, “I’ve kept everybody away from the crime scene as best I could, Sheriff, but I didn’t get here in time to do much good.”

“You’re sure it’s a crime scene?”

“That would be my professional judgment as a graduate of the Citizens’ Sheriff’s Academy.”

Rhodes suppressed a sigh.

“The body’s over here,” Benton said.

He led Rhodes to the Dumpsters. The body was there, all right, lying on its side between two big containers. A male, probably middle-aged, wearing khaki slacks and a blue shirt.

“Any idea who it is?” Rhodes asked.

“Earl Wellington,” Benton said. “English teacher.”

Wellington would have looked as if he were sleeping if it hadn’t been for the fact that the back of his head was bashed in. The brownish hair was matted with blood that wasn’t quite dry. Wellington hadn’t been dead long. Rhodes saw that one of the sharp corners of a Dumpster had something on it that looked a lot like hair and blood, probably from Wellington’s head.

“Was Wellington married?” Rhodes asked.

“No,” Benton said. “Bachelor, like me.”

“Family?”

“Not that I know about.”

Rhodes nodded. He’d find out about the next of kin later. He didn’t know any Wellingtons in Blacklin County.

“Get everybody cleared out,” Rhodes told Benton.

“I can move everybody but Dean King,” Benton said. “She outranks me.”

Rhodes hadn’t seen the dean, but he wasn’t surprised she was there. “That’s okay. Just move the others out of here. Get them into the building. Don’t let anybody walk away or leave the parking lot in a car.”

Rhodes figured there were at least fifty or sixty students and faculty standing around, maybe more. There was no way he and his small staff of deputies could question all of them, much less everyone who was already inside the building, but he had to make some kind of effort.

“Tell everyone not to leave the campus. Tell them that I want to talk to anybody who might have some information about this. Can you handle that?”

“You know I can,” Benton said.

He stepped away and began talking to people, then shooing them inside. As he did, Sue Lynn King came up to Rhodes.

“This is terrible, Sheriff,” she said. “Terrible. The college isn’t going to look good when the news gets out.”

“It’s not going to do much for this fella, either,” Rhodes said, indicating the dead man.

The blood in Wellington’s hair had already attracted a few buzzing flies. An ant crawled across the dead man’s cheek and up on his nose.

“Of course not for him,” Dean King said. She wasn’t looking at the body. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

The dean was a statuesque woman a bit past middle age with very black hair stiff with hair spray. Rhodes couldn’t see a single touch of gray. He wondered if the dean was a customer at the Beauty Shack.

“Benton told me that his name was Wellington.”

“Yes,” the dean said. “That’s correct. Earl Wellington. He taught English.” The dean’s mouth twisted into a grimace. “It’s always the English teachers.”

“You’ve had other English teachers who were killed?”

“Killed? You mean it wasn’t an accident? Or a heart attack?”

“Could be,” Rhodes said, “but I don’t think so. I think someone killed him. Maybe by accident, but someone killed him just the same.”

“Oh, my God. This will really be a black eye for us.” The dean put a hand to her stiff hair and gave it a little push. “I didn’t mean
that
the way it sounded, either. I’m somewhat discombobulated. I meant that we often seem to have problems with our English teachers.”

“What kind of problems?”

“Nothing serious. Academic problems.”

That didn’t really explain anything, but Rhodes could find out more later if he needed to.

“Was Wellington full-time?” he asked.

“Yes. We have only two full-timers, and he was one of them. I hope he had his grades up to date. I hope I can find someone to replace him this late in the semester.”

She seemed a lot more concerned about her own problems than about Wellington, but Rhodes supposed that was only natural. Wellington didn’t have problems, not anymore.

“I’ll need to see about grief counseling,” the dean continued, but she wasn’t talking to Rhodes. She was just thinking out loud. “The morning classes will be a mess, but we’ll have to try to carry on.”

Rhodes interrupted her. “I’ll have more questions for you, but right now you need to go on back in the building. I’ll come by your office when I finish here. Don’t let anyone into Wellington’s office, and don’t go in yourself. If it’s open, close the door and lock it.”

The dean looked at him vacantly but said she’d take care of things. Then she turned and left.

Seepy Benton had gotten everyone into the building, and he came over to talk to Rhodes.

“You want me to work the scene?” he asked.

Benton wore a straw cowboy hat, jeans, running shoes, and a blue cotton shirt. His mostly gray beard was neatly trimmed. Even with the beard, he didn’t look like Rhodes’s idea of a college teacher, but then Rhodes hadn’t been to school in a long time.

“I don’t want you to work the scene,” Rhodes said. “I want you to wait in your office until I come by and talk to you.”

“I could handle the scene,” Benton said.

“I’m sure you could, but you haven’t had the training.”

“We did a scene at the academy. I was very good at it.”

“That wasn’t a real scene, just a setup. I’m going to get Deputy Grady out here to do this one.”

Benton seemed pleased by that. “Can she come by and give me the third degree later?”

Benton had been dating the deputy for a while. Rhodes didn’t see that they had anything in common, and he wasn’t particularly fond of the idea. It was none of his business, however, as he often reminded himself, so he tried to stay out of it.

“We don’t do the third degree anymore,” Rhodes said. “We ran out of rubber hoses.”

“That’s too bad,” Benton said.

Rhodes heard a siren. “Did someone call an ambulance?”

“Not me,” Benton said. “I know better.” He looked around. “I’m probably the only one who does, though. There were a lot of people here, and they all have cell phones. Half of them probably called. And took videos.”

“Who found the body?”

“I don’t know. There was a lot of excitement in the halls just before the bell was about to ring for the eight o’clock class, and I stepped out of my office to see what was going on. Someone said there was a body out here. And there was.”

Rhodes could find out from Hack who’d called it in. Even if no name had been given, they’d have the number of the caller. The caller might not have discovered the body, however.

“Do you have any idea what Wellington was doing out here?” Rhodes asked.

Benton smiled. It wasn’t quite a smirk, but it tended in that direction. “You don’t want me working the scene.”

“What does that have to do with it?”

Benton pointed to a cigarette butt that lay not far from Wellington’s body. “There’s no smoking in the building. If you want to smoke, you have to come outside. The Dumpster’s a great big ashtray.”

“You don’t seem too upset by all this,” Rhodes said.

“Danger is my game.”

“Sure it is, but there’s more to it than that. So tell me.”

Benton stared off somewhere to the west. Rhodes looked in that direction. There was a field and then a small housing addition. Above that, blue sky with some fluffy clouds floating around. Benton wasn’t looking at any of that.

“Well?” Rhodes said.

“I thought you wanted me to go to my office.”

An ambulance pulled into the parking lot, siren whooping.

“All right,” Rhodes said. “I need to send that ambulance away. Don’t go anywhere.”

The ambulance stopped, and the siren trailed off into a low whine.

“Except to my office,” Benton said.

“That’s right,” Rhodes said.

Benton turned away, and Rhodes started for the ambulance. As he did, a car peeled out of the parking lot, tires smoking and screeching. Someone had been keeping out of sight, waiting for the chance to get away.

“Benton!” Rhodes called. He was already running for the Charger. “Keep the EMTs away from the body. Keep people away from the scene.”

“I thought I was supposed to go to my office,” Benton said.

“Not now,” Rhodes said, his hand on the door latch. He wondered if everybody had been taking lessons from Hack. “I’m deputizing you. Temporarily.”

“I’ll make you proud,” Benton said. He pointed to the badge holder dangling from Rhodes’s belt. “Do I get one of those?”

Rhodes ignored him. He opened the door, jumped in the Charger, and took off after the car, which was on the highway headed back toward town. Rhodes was out of the parking lot before he got his seat belt hooked.

The car he was chasing was a gray Chevy Malibu at least ten years old. The trunk had a line of rust across it, and the headliner drooped down. There was nothing wrong with the engine, however. The car was flat-out moving. Rhodes could barely see the top of the driver’s head above the headrest.

Rhodes turned on the siren and light bar, then grabbed the radio and called Hack. “Get Ruth Grady out to the college. Tell her it’s an emergency. And get the justice of the peace out there.”

“What’s goin’ on?” Hack asked.

“Later,” Rhodes said. He hooked the mic, then unhooked it and called Buddy, another of the deputies.

“I’m chasing a gray Malibu,” Rhodes said. “It’ll be over the overpass in a few seconds. Where are you?”

“Out by the McDonald’s.”

“That’s the way we’re headed.”

“Hot pursuit?”

Rhodes glanced at his speedometer. It was nearing eighty.

“Yes.”

“Roger that,” Buddy said. “I’m on the way.”

Rhodes hadn’t been involved in a high-speed chase in years, and he didn’t like them. They were dangerous to him, to the driver he was chasing, and to any citizens who might happen along. Rhodes wouldn’t have gone after the Malibu if there hadn’t been a dead man involved. Even at that, he wasn’t sure it was worth it.

Buddy, on the other hand, loved anything that promised excitement. He’d probably burned rubber for a mile along the highway as soon as Rhodes was off the radio.

The Malibu was down the opposite side of the overpass and nearly to the first stoplight when Rhodes got to the top. The light was red. Rhodes didn’t think the driver would stop, but as soon as he thought it, the Malibu’s brake lights came on. Rhodes heard the squeal of tires and brakes.

A pickup had gotten into the intersection. The Malibu’s driver slid into a turn and almost avoided the truck, but the car clipped the back bumper and spun the truck around. Rhodes had to mash down on his own brakes as the pickup whirled around in the intersection, brakes and tires howling.

The driver of the Malibu kept on turning and made a right onto the street that led through the mostly deserted downtown and into a residential area. Rhodes came almost to a stop. He saw that the pickup hadn’t hit anything and that the driver, a young woman, seemed okay. All the other traffic had stopped, and the drivers were already on their cell phones, calling 911 or the ambulance service or their friends. Or taking pictures.