The Wild Hog Murders (16 page)

None of the men would meet his eyes. Winston looked at the dogs. Fowler looked at the early-rising moon. Garver looked at the ground.

“Something happened in those woods the other night,” Rhodes said. “A man was killed. His name was Baty. He wasn’t from around here, and maybe none of you knew him. Or maybe you did.”

Rhodes looked at Garver, who didn’t look up.

“Maybe none of you knew Rapinski, either,” Rhodes continued, “but he’s dead, too. Both of them dead, both of them out in the woods near you when it happened. Something stampeded those hogs the other night. That’s enough to make a man wonder.”

“Just a coincidence,” Winston said again. The dogs pulled him a step or two toward the woods. “That’s all it is, and you oughtn’t make it to be anything else. Those hogs stampede all the time, so that’s no surprise. Right now, my dogs want to hunt. Are you gonna go with us, or are we gonna stand here talking all night?”

Rhodes gave up. “Let’s go,” he said.

*   *   *

The walking was easier on Brown’s land. The hogs hadn’t messed it up as much as they had at the Leverett place. The trees grew a little closer together in the woods, too. That would make the hunting a little trickier, Rhodes thought, but he didn’t mention it. He just hoped that hogs were all they had to worry about.

They reached the woods without incident, and Rhodes started to relax a little. Once they were in the trees, Rapper wouldn’t be able to find them, even if he knew they were somewhere on the property. That didn’t rule out vandalism to the cars, however. Rhodes wished he’d thought of that sooner.

Then he heard the motorcycles. Their unmistakable roar sounded closer than Rhodes would have thought they could’ve gotten without betraying their presence. He turned around and saw two single headlights bouncing down the road.

The others didn’t notice or didn’t care. They didn’t know how much trouble they were in. When the motorcycles got closer, Winston looked back and said, “What the hell?”

“Trouble,” Rhodes said. “I warned Arvid. Didn’t he tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me a damn thing,” Garver said. “Can’t speak for Winston.”

Winston looked at Arvid. “Didn’t tell me anything, either. What’s the deal?”

“The men on those motorcycles don’t know you,” Rhodes said, “You don’t know them, either, but you can bet they don’t like you. They have it in for whoever killed that man last night.”

“Wasn’t us that killed him, dammit,” Winston said.

“I don’t think that matters,” Rhodes told him.

“We’re the ones with the guns,” Garver said.

“I’d be surprised if they didn’t have guns, too,” Rhodes said. “I’d just as soon not get into a shooting war. We don’t need anybody else to get killed.”

“Especially not me,” Winston said, looking over his shoulder.

The motorcycles turned off the road and came through the open gate.

“Hell,” Fowler said, “let’s quit all this talking and get ourselves in the trees. They won’t follow us in there.”

Rhodes thought Fowler was being overly optimistic, but the motorcycles were nearly on them now. They either had to stand their ground or move into the woods.

Winston didn’t waste any more time. He let the dogs pull him on into the trees at a brisk jog, and the others followed him. So did Rhodes.

Arvid seemed to know where he was going, and Rhodes thought he could make out a faint trail in the jiggling beam of Fowler’s flashlight. Maybe they’d avoid trouble after all.

Rhodes stopped to listen. He could hear the throbbing sound of motorcycles idling. Rapper and Nellie must have decided not to try crashing through the trees. They probably didn’t want to damage their machines. Rhodes ran to catch up with the hunters.

The dogs barked and lunged against the leashes.

“They got a scent,” Winston said.

“Let ’em go,” Fowler said, and Winston unhooked the leashes. The dogs ran on ahead.

Motorcycles roared.

“They’re coming in the trees,” someone yelled. Rhodes wasn’t sure who it was.

“Let’s make ’em sorry they tangled with us,” Fowler said from nearby. “Take cover and give ’em hell!”

“No shooting,” Rhodes said.

“To hell with that,” Fowler said. “It’s self-defense, Sheriff.”

“Nobody’s tried to hurt you yet,” Rhodes said.

“Preemptive strike.” Fowler’s flashlight went dark. “Can’t take any chances.”

Rhodes saw the other two flashlights blink off. He wished he had a plan to stop what was about to happen, but he couldn’t think of anything that might even come close to working.

At least the motorcycles had slowed down to a near crawl. Rapper and Nellie were having a hard time getting through the trees. Rhodes hoped they’d just turn around and leave, though he didn’t think that was likely. Rapper wouldn’t give up that easily.

The thrumming of the engines stopped.

“There are men with guns here!” Rhodes yelled. “Go on home, Rapper. I’ll find out who killed Hoss.”

Nobody answered.

“You know I will,” Rhodes said, hoping that Rapper was listening. “I can do it legally, and I’ll put whoever did it in jail for a long time.”

The dogs barked. They were either on the trail or had a hog cornered. Rhodes couldn’t tell. He thought he heard someone moving around in the brush, but if he did, he didn’t know who it was. It could have been anybody.

He felt a chill, and he thought again of that old movie where the trees had grasping arms. Only this time he didn’t think it was the trees that would be grasping. Rapper and Nellie were more likely to be the culprits.

Rhodes wasn’t much of a woodsman. He had trouble moving quietly in the trees, and he thought Rapper would have the same problem. It was hard to say about Nellie. He was sneakier than he appeared to be. Rhodes looked around. He was behind a big tree, or maybe he was in front of it, depending on which direction someone might be coming from. He bent down and got the .32 from the ankle holster.

As he was straightening, he heard the sound of a blow and a muffled cry. Branches rattled, and something fell to the ground. It didn’t take much imagination to think it must have been a body, but Rhodes didn’t know whose. Not Fowler’s. Fowler wasn’t far away, in a clump of brush that hadn’t moved.

The moon was bright, but while some light made its way through the thick limbs overhead, Rhodes couldn’t make out much other than shades of light and darkness among the shadows. He stood still and listened.

If he’d been a real woodsman, he could have heard footsteps on the leaves. Or the snapping of a twig. As it was, he didn’t really hear anything other than the frantic barking of the dogs. He wondered how long the dogs could hold a big hog in position before the hog got tired of being barked at and decided to attack. The Kevlar vests might not be enough to save the dogs if the hog got rough.

The barking became more shrill. One of the dogs howled.

“Dammit to hell!” Winston said.

He broke cover about twenty yards from where Rhodes stood and ran in the direction of the dogs. A dark figure stepped out behind him and swung what looked like a tree limb, though it might have been a baseball bat. It caught Winston in the back of the head. He dropped his rifle and dived forward, arms outstretched. When he landed, he skidded along the ground on his face. By the time he stopped skidding, the dark figure was gone.

The dogs howled louder, but they didn’t sound hurt. They sounded like they were on the run. Maybe the tables had turned and the hog was now chasing them. Or hogs. Rhodes hoped there was only one.

The sound of the chase was drowned out by the noise of the motorcycles starting up. Rapper and Nellie gunned the engines and made the exhausts rumble like an earthquake.

Fowler’s .357 blasted. Rhodes saw the muzzle flash twice from the brush, and then the motorcycles were on their way out of the woods.

“Hold off, Arvid,” Rhodes said. “You want to spend the next fifty years in prison?”

“I want to get those bastards,” Fowler said. “I think they killed Winston and Garver.”

“I don’t think so, but we need to check on them. Put the pistol away.”

Rhodes came around the tree and headed for Fowler’s hiding place without waiting for an answer. He hadn’t gone more than a couple of steps before the dogs broke out of the trees and flashed by him like a couple of low-flying jet planes.

The hog wasn’t far behind them. It thundered out of the brush, snorting and kicking up dirt as it ran, looking to Rhodes as big as a bear, though it probably wasn’t as big as the one the hunters had killed the previous night.

Rhodes dived behind a tree just as Fowler started blasting away. The big pistol rattled the leaves with its roar.

Rhodes couldn’t tell if the hog had been hit, but the shooting was enough to turn its attention to Fowler instead of the dogs. It skidded to a stop and stood shaking its head from side to side.

Long ago Rhodes had been in a similar situation, and the hog had plowed into him, putting him in the hospital for longer than he liked to think about. The .32 would be useless against the hog, but Rhodes knew he’d use it if he had to. Maybe he’d get in a lucky shot.

He didn’t have to worry about it, however, because the hog charged the bushes where Fowler was hidden.

Fowler panicked. Instead of shooting, he ran out of the cover and dodged through the trees. Maybe he was out of bullets. Rhodes hadn’t counted.

The hog wasn’t far behind Fowler, and it proved to be as nimble as the man when it came to dodging the trees.

Rhodes chased after the hog, not that he had a plan. He just thought he ought to try to help Fowler, even if he didn’t know how he was going to do it.

He should have stayed where he was. The hog heard him trampling along behind it and spun around, planting its trotters and lowering its head. Its tusks glinted in the moonlight, and to Rhodes they seemed to be about twelve inches long.

Rhodes didn’t stand there to admire them, however. Wishing he’d worn his Kevlar vest like the dogs had, he turned and ran. He was getting chased by feral hogs way too often lately. It was good exercise but not the kind he enjoyed.

Not far ahead of him was a pecan tree with a limb that was just a bit higher than his head. When he got to it, he grabbed hold of the limb and swung his legs up. The hog ran right under him.

If Rhodes had been Sage Barton, he’d have pulled himself up, thrown a leg over the limb, and sat there laughing at the hog.

Unfortunately, Rhodes wasn’t Sage Barton, and there was little chance he could perform the necessary acrobatics. Hanging on to the limb with his right hand, he made a quick turn.

So did the hog, who seemed to be puzzled by Rhodes’s sudden disappearance. Rhodes grabbed the limb with his left hand again and reached out with his feet to the trunk of the tree.

It was about eighteen inches too far away. Rhodes moved hand over hand until he could reach the trunk. He risked a look at the hog, which was looking at him but not moving.

On his next try, Rhodes’s foot touched the trunk. He thought he could step up it and hook his leg over the limb. It might have worked if his hands hadn’t slipped.

Rhodes fell and landed flat on his back. His breath went out of him with a whoosh. He struggled to suck in some air. Even if someone had offered him a million dollars to get up, he wouldn’t have been able to move.

The hog grunted and huffed somewhere nearby. Rhodes figured it would rip him to shreds with those twelve-inch tusks.

It didn’t happen, though, because the dogs came back. They announced their presence with barking, and the hog broke for the brush. The dogs went after him.

Rhodes lay where he was, waiting until he could breathe freely again. It took a couple of minutes. Then he stood up, glad that he was able to do it and not worried about how he’d feel the next day.

He took a couple of steps. Nothing seemed to be broken, and he didn’t even hurt that much. He would later, he knew, but he couldn’t worry about that now. He went to look for Winston and Garver.

Garver lay where he’d fallen, near a clump of what Rhodes was certain was poison ivy. It made him itch just to look at it, and he was careful to avoid touching it. He felt Garver’s neck. The pulse was strong and even, so Garver would probably be all right. Rhodes left him there and looked around for Winston, who was sitting up, leaning against the trunk of a tree.

Rhodes went over to him and located the flashlight that Winston had dropped. Rhodes turned the light on and asked Winston how he felt.

“How do you think I feel?” Winston asked in return. “Like the back of my head’s been bashed in.” He put his fingers behind him and touched his hair. “I’m bleeding back there.”

Rhodes held up a couple of fingers and asked Winston how many there were.

“Two. I feel like I’m a little out of it, but I can tell that much.”

“You might not have a concussion,” Rhodes said, “but then again you might. I’ll call the EMTs and get them out here. Garver’s going to need them, too. More than you.”

Winston didn’t argue.

Rhodes hated cell phones, so he didn’t carry one often. He’d brought one along this time, just in case, and he used it to make the call. After that was done, he asked Winston if he’d seen Fowler.