The Wild Hog Murders (10 page)

Rhodes got up and refilled his water glass. “That cabbage sure is hot,” he said when he sat back down.

“It’s not the cabbage. It’s the pepper. Now stop avoiding the subject.”

“What subject?”

“You know what subject.”

The dangers of Rhodes’s job, though he didn’t consider them great, had been a topic of discussion before.

“Don’t worry about me,” Rhodes said. “I’ll be fine. I always am.”

“That depends on the definition of ‘fine,’” Ivy said.

Rhodes grinned. “I didn’t say ‘clean.’”

“I know it’s your job,” Ivy said, ignoring him, “but sometimes I think you take more risks than you really have to.”

“Not this time. I promise.”

“Not that I could stop you even if you didn’t.”

“True,” Rhodes said, “but you wouldn’t try to stop me, would you?”

“Not a chance,” Ivy said.

Later that night, Rhodes wished she’d tried.

*   *   *

Arvid Fowler was a wiry man about five and a half feet tall. He had a face like a wise monkey and wore rimless glasses. He had a big pistol strapped around his skinny waist. Rhodes judged it to be a .357 Magnum.

“Reason we go to the Leverett place,” Folwer said in answer to a question from Rhodes, “is that nobody knows for sure who owns it. We don’t do any trespassin’, and we just go where we’re invited, or where the land’s open like out there.”

“Some people don’t like it that you come here,” Rhodes said.

They were standing by Fowler’s old red pickup, which was parked on the side of the road not far from where the Ford Focus had stopped the previous day.

“If they don’t, ain’t nothin’ they can do about it,” Fowler said.

“You were parked on a different road last night,” Rhodes said.

“Other side of the woods, yeah,” Fowler said. “Thought we’d come in from this side tonight.”

It was just about dark. Fowler had told Rhodes that the other hunters would be arriving soon.

“Any reason why you decided to make the change to this side of the woods?” Rhodes asked.

Fowler shrugged. “Just seemed like the thing to do.”

Rhodes didn’t think that was the truth, but he didn’t push it. He figured he’d find out more when some of the other hunters arrived.

“Here comes somebody now,” Fowler said. “I don’t think I know that truck, though.”

It wasn’t a truck, Rhodes saw as it came to a stop behind the county car. It was a Hummer. Hoss Rapinski got out, put on his hat, and joined them.

“Fancy meeting you here, Sheriff,” the bounty hunter said. “Who’s your friend?”

“This is Arvid Fowler,” Rhodes said. “Arvid, meet Hoss Rapinski. He’s a bounty hunter.”

“Fugitive recovery agent,” Rapinski said.

He and Arvid shook hands.

“I seen you on TV,” Arvid said. “You’re the one brought in Slick Tomlin.”

“That’s right,” Hoss said. He looked at Rhodes. “The law couldn’t find him, but I did.”

“What do you think you’ll find out here?” Rhodes asked.

“Don’t know,” Rapinski said. “I asked around town and found out this was where the murder happened.” He took off his hat and fingered the brim. “I like to look at the scene of the crime and talk to the witnesses.”

“Now just a minute,” Fowler said. “Ain’t nobody a witness to anything. We’re just here to hunt hogs.”

“I meant witnesses to the hog hunting,” Rapinski said. “That’s all.”

Before Fowler could question him, a pickup pulled to a stop behind the Hummer. Rhodes heard dogs barking.

“That’s Winston,” Fowler said. “He brings the dogs.”

Len Winston got out of his truck, and Fowler went to help him with the dogs.

“You ever hunted hogs?” Rapinski asked Rhodes.

“Nope. Might be interesting, though.”

“Come on, Sheriff, you don’t care about any hogs. I know you’re looking for witnesses, same as I am.”

“Witnesses to hog hunting?”

Rapinski put his hat back on and didn’t answer. Another pickup arrived. A man named Ed Garver got out and helped Fowler and Winston with the dogs. Rhodes walked over to see what they were doing. Rapinski followed him.

“Body armor,” Fowler said when Rhodes asked. “Kevlar, just like the bulletproof vests you lawmen wear.”

“You think somebody’s going to shoot at the dogs?” Rapinski asked.

“Hogs’ tusks are worse than bein’ shot,” Winston said. “Who’re you?”

Rhodes introduced Rapinski to Winston and Garver.

“Don’t know as we need any more people,” Garver said.

Garver worked as a plumber for a man named Trey Allison, and he was nearly as big as Rapinski. Like Fowler, he had a pistol, which Rhodes was sure was a .38. He wasn’t as impressed by the bounty hunter as Fowler had been.

“We won’t get in the way,” Rhodes said. “Mainly we’d like to hear about last night.”

“I already told ’em we didn’t see anything or hear anything,” Fowler said.

“What about Lance and Hugh?” Rhodes asked. “You think they’ll be here?”

“Doubt it,” Fowler said. “If they were comin’, they’d be here already.”

He explained to Winston and Garver what had happened between Rhodes and the Eccles cousins.

“Those two are about half crazy,” Winston said. “I don’t know why they’d run off like that. Do you, Ed?”

“Nope,” Garver said. “They got nothin’ to hide, far as I know.”

It was dark now. The dogs whined and strained at their leashes, eager to be off on the chase. Winston had trouble holding them back. The dogs were tan with dark muzzles.

“What kind of dogs are those?” Rapinski asked.

“Black Mouth Curs,” Winston said. “Won’t no other kind of dog will do for huntin’. Coons, hogs, you name it.”

“They run quiet,” Fowler said. “Don’t start to bay till they got ’em a hog.”

“Strong, too,” Garver said. “Not afraid of anything. They’ll stand at a hog’s head till you get there with the gun, no matter how big and mean that sucker is.”

“You must have had one bayed up last night,” Rhodes said. “I heard the dogs.”

“Sure,” Fowler said. “That’s the way it was.”

“What happened to the hog?”

“He got away. We left. That was it.”

Rhodes wasn’t convinced, but Garver changed the subject.

“Harvest moon tonight,” he said, looking across the field. “Ought to be able to see pretty well without lights.”

“Yep,” Fowler said. “Let’s go.”

“Before we do,” Rhodes said, “just tell me some more about what happened last night. You know there’s more to it than hog hunting. I heard all the shooting.”

“Don’t know nothin’ about that,” Fowler said. “You can stay here if you want to, but we’re goin’. Right, boys?”

“Right,” Winston and Garver said together. “Can we leave, Sheriff?”

“Don’t let me stop you,” Rhodes said.

“Hold the dogs,” Winston said to Garver, handing him the leashes. “I got to get my gun.”

He went to the cab of his pickup and brought out a .30-30 rifle.

“I’m ready now,” he said, and Fowler jogged down into the bar ditch and out into the field on the other side. Winston and Garver followed. The dogs were so eager it was as if they were dragging the big plumber behind them.

“Well,” Rapinski said to Rhodes, “did you learn anything?”

“Not a thing,” Rhodes said.

“You going with them?”

“I guess so,” Rhodes said.

“Let’s go, then,” Rapinski said.

He and Rhodes moved down into the ditch. They were almost to the woods when Rapinski spoke again.

“That Garver’s a big guy. You know him?”

“I’ve heard he does good work,” Rhodes said.

“Been around here long?”

“Couple of years. Came up here from Galveston before Hurricane Ike blew in and decided he liked this part of Texas. No hurricanes.”

“Seems like he’d have had a lot of work if he’d gone back home after the storm. Took ’em a while to rebuild. He could’ve made a lot of money.”

“I’m sure he does all right here,” Rhodes said. “Everybody needs a plumber now and then.”

“I guess so,” Rapinski said.

They walked in silence for a while, careful to avoid twisting an ankle on the dirt clods. The shadows cast by the bright orange moon made walking across the field even more treacherous than usual. Rhodes still felt an occasional twinge from last night’s adventure, and it was hard for Rapinski to walk in his expensive boots. They looked good, but they weren’t made for hog hunts.

“How’d you happen to wind up here tonight?” Rhodes asked, hoping for a more definitive answer than the one he’d gotten before. “It took me a long time to find out the hunters would be here again.”

“Confidential sources,” Rapinski said.

“You seem to have a lot of those.”

“Just part of the job,” Rapinski said.

He might have said more, but they had reached the woods. The three hunters weren’t far ahead of them. Rhodes heard Fowler say, “Let ’em loose.”

“There they go,” Garver said. “Old Joe’s got a scent already. Look at him run.”

“Sarah’s right behind him,” Winston said. “We better see if we can keep up.”

Rhodes remembered the stampede and hoped it wouldn’t happen again. So far he hadn’t heard any shooting, so maybe it wouldn’t.

“Let’s see if we can catch up,” he said.

“Won’t be a problem for me,” Rapinski said, and he took off at a run that Rhodes wouldn’t have thought possible in those fancy boots.

Rhodes followed as fast as he could.

Chapter 10

Trying to run through the woods at night, no matter how bright the moon, wasn’t as easy as it looked in movies, Rhodes thought. He’d often wondered how those horses managed not to slam into a tree every eight or ten paces. If he’d been riding, the horse would’ve had a concussion before it had gone a block into the woods.

Rhodes couldn’t see Rapinski or the others, but he could hear them. He couldn’t hear the dogs, however. They were running as quietly as he’d been told.

Then he did hear them, baying loudly in the distance. He picked up the pace a little, dodging tree limbs attached to the trees and jumping over fallen ones. He hadn’t gone far before he saw lights, and then he came out of the trees into a little clearing.

The dogs had a hog backed up against a deadfall. The men stood well back. Rapinski wasn’t there, and Rhodes figured he’d gotten lost along the way.

The men were silent as they moved around, playing their flashlights on the hog, trying to get a shot at him as the dogs danced around him. They weren’t baying now. They growled and snarled, lips pulled back, teeth bared as they held the hog at bay.

The hog grunted and lunged at them, ripping upward with his three-inch tusks, tusks that could take the stomach out of a man, much less a dog. The armor was a good idea.

Rhodes didn’t know how much this hog weighed, but he figured it to be close to two hundred pounds, maybe a little more. Its neck and shoulders were overlaid with fat and muscle that could stop a bullet from a small-caliber gun, but the pistols and rifle the hunters carried would be enough to stop it if they could get in a shot.

Rhodes understood the necessity for keeping down the hog population. He knew that the hogs were destructive and caused thousands of dollars of damage to farms and crops at a time when nobody could afford the losses. There was never a time when people could afford losses like that.

He knew that the hogs could never be trapped or killed out of existence, and he suspected that when the end of the world finally came, whether it was by fire or ice, the cockroaches and the hogs would be left behind to fight it out for supremacy.

Yet when he saw the desperation and fear in the little black eyes of the hog, Rhodes couldn’t help but feel a bit of the same kind of sympathy that the Chandlers must have felt for the animals. Even if the hunters killed ten or twenty a night, they couldn’t make a dent in the population, so why bother?

Rhodes even knew the answer to that: Every little bit helps. Hunting and trapping combined would at least do something toward keeping the number of hogs smaller, if not eliminating them. It didn’t make him feel a lot better about what he was seeing.

“I’m gonna see if I can go around and come in from behind him,” Garver said. “Don’t shoot me.”

He moved away with his flashlight. Rhodes lost sight of him and turned back to see what Fowler and Winston would do. They said nothing but kept their lights trained on the hog.

The hog and dogs were getting tired, but that didn’t reduce the level of their savagery. The dogs backed up a bit, however, and that gave Winston a clear shot with his rifle.

The crack of sound didn’t frighten the dogs. It didn’t scare the hog, either. The animal dropped, kicked out with one of its back trotters, and lay still.

It was quiet in the clearing after the rifle shot. A bit of smoke drifted through the moonlight, and Rhodes smelled gunpowder. The dogs walked over to the hog and sniffed it, then backed off. They were no longer interested now that it was dead.