The Wild Hog Murders (20 page)

“What criminal act would that be, Sheriff?”

“I don’t have a copy of the Penal Code right here with me,” Rhodes said, “but it’s an offense if somebody uses the identity of a deceased person without legal authorization.”

“That’s true enough,” Lawless said, “but you left out the part about intent to defraud. Can you prove that Mr. Garver, uh, Dalton, had that intent?”

“I’d say he was defrauding his wife, his employer, and even me, but I don’t have to prove it. That’s up to the courts. I’m sure you can mount a fine defense for him if he’s got the money to pay you.”

“I don’t want to get into a court fight,” Dalton said. “That way those Herndon brothers will find me for sure.”

Dalton had lived in Clearview as Garver for a couple of years. Rhodes doubted that the Herndons were still looking for him, if they ever had been. Rhodes hadn’t entirely bought the story.

“We might be able to avoid any court fight,” Rhodes said. “If you tell me what happened out there that night.”

Dalton didn’t say anything. He didn’t look at his attorney, either. He just stared at the table in front of him.

“What my client’s done doesn’t qualify as a felony,” Lawless said. “He didn’t defraud anybody for gain. He wouldn’t have to do jail time.”

“We’ll see,” Rhodes said. “It would still be better if he’d talk to me.”

Dalton looked up. “I promised I wouldn’t say anything to anybody. You might think I don’t know you got Hugh and Lance in jail here because they wouldn’t tell you, but I know, all right.”

“It’s no secret they’re here,” Rhodes said, “but it’s not because they wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know. It’s because they assaulted me.”

“Well, they just did that because you tried to make ’em talk.”

Rhodes didn’t respond to that. He leaned back in his chair and waited. Sooner or later, somebody was going to tell him. Rhodes thought it would be Dalton.

“What happens if I don’t tell you?”

“Nothing much,” Rhodes said. “Unless you’ve been cheating the tax man. The IRS doesn’t like it when that happens.”

“I’m no crook. I told Mr. Allison the whole story. He knows who I am, and I’m paying taxes as Dalton.”

That explained why Trey had been so nervous, Rhodes thought.

“Well, at least the IRS won’t be after you, but whether you talk or not, you’re not going to be Ed Garver anymore. Do people call you William or Bill?”

“Neither one. Willie’s what I used to go by. Willie Dalton.”

Rhodes excused himself and left the room. He went out to where Hack was and told him to get Ruth on the radio.

“Have her check on William Dale Dalton, a.k.a. Willie Dalton, from Ozark, Arkansas. See what she can come up with.”

“Okay. Anything else?”

“That’s it. I’ll check with you later.”

Rhodes left Hack and went back to the interview room. Lawless and Dalton were talking, but they stopped when he came in.

Rhodes went to his chair and sat down. “Okay, Dalton, your days as Garver are over, no matter what. Maybe we can work a deal if you talk, though. Keep things out of the paper, so the Herndon brothers won’t read about you. You can start using your real name and stay right here in Clearview after you settle up for your crime. The Herndon brothers will never know where you are.”

“You can’t be sure they won’t. They’re sneaky.”

“I can’t be sure, but I’d bet on it.”

Dalton sat quietly for a while. Finally he said, “Okay, I’ll tell you what happened. You might not want to hear this, Mr. Lawless.”

“Are there more crimes involved?”

“Could be.”

Lawless settled back in his chair. “I’ll stick around, then.”

“Tell me what happened, Dalton,” Rhodes said.

“Well,” Dalton said, “it was like this…”

Chapter 19

The hunters had met about dark the way they always did, according to Dalton. Nothing was different at the start, not that anybody noticed, but then they ran up on a whole mess of hogs that they hadn’t expected.

“Usually they’re up and stirring around by sundown,” Dalton said, “but this bunch was still holed up, and we sort of stumbled on ’em. Even the dogs were surprised. I don’t know what the deal was. It was like they were fed and happy and didn’t need to go off and root around.”

That was unusual enough in itself, but what happened next was the really bad part, and the confusing part as well. Dalton still hadn’t quite figured it all out.

“That’s when the shooting started,” he said, but he didn’t know who was doing the shooting.

“All I know is, the bullets ricocheted all around us, the bark flew off the trees, the dead limbs fell all over the place. We thought somebody was trying to kill us. The hogs thought somebody was trying to kill them, too, I guess, ’cause they jumped up squealing and snorting and took off at a dead run.”

Rhodes knew about that part.

“Nobody got hit, though,” Dalton said. “We were lucky, or maybe whoever was doing the shooting was aiming at something else. That’s the whole story, Sheriff.”

Rhodes didn’t think so. If that had been the story, it wouldn’t have been a secret, and every one of the hog hunters would have marched right to the jail to file a complaint against the unknown shooter. Or shooters.

“There must be a little more to it, Dalton,” Rhodes said. “You might as well tell me the rest.”

Dalton didn’t have any more to say. “That’s it, Sheriff. That’s all I know.”

“No, Dalton, that’s not all you know. With what you’ve told me, I can probably get Hugh and Lance to fill me in on the rest, but it would be easier if you did it.”

Dalton looked at Lawless.

“You’re on your own,” Lawless said. “I told you not to talk, but you didn’t listen.” He relented a little. “You still don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.”

“Hell, he’s right,” Dalton said. “Somebody else’ll tell him now if I don’t. I sure hate it that the others will know I ratted ’em out, though.”

“I won’t tell them,” Rhodes said.

“They’ll figure it out.”

“Maybe not. Go ahead and tell me.”

Dalton slumped down in the chair. “Somebody shot back.”

Now they were finally getting to it. Rhodes had suspected something like that because even as he’d fled the stampeding hogs, he’d been sure he’d heard more than one gun.

“Who shot back?” he asked.

“All I know is, it wasn’t me,” Dalton said. “It might have been one person or it might have been two. I was ducking and covering, and I didn’t pay any attention.”

Rhodes wasn’t sure he believed that. Last night, Fowler hadn’t hesitated to shoot at Rapper and Nellie, and the others had been ready to do the same. Rhodes figured Fowler might have fired the first shot the other time, too. He’d have to ask him about that.

“So after it was over,” Rhodes said to Dalton, “you all agreed not to talk about it?”

“That’s right. It didn’t last long, and we got out of there as soon as we could. We didn’t think anybody was hurt, so there was no harm done. We just wanted to get away from those woods in case somebody came back after us.”

“And you didn’t see who it was.”

“We didn’t see anybody, and we didn’t know why they started shooting at us. We were scared, Sheriff. Wouldn’t you have been scared?”

Just running from the hogs had been scary enough for Rhodes, without any shooting involved.

“Nobody was hit?” he asked.

“That’s what I said. We were all fine, and we didn’t see who was shooting. I guess they got away, too.”

Rhodes wondered what had happened to the shooter, or shooters. What had they been doing there, and why had they started shooting? What did they have to do with the murder of Baty, if anything?

Dalton didn’t seem able to answer those questions, but Rhodes didn’t trust him. He’d lied about who he was for years, so who was to say he wasn’t lying now?

There was something else that worried Rhodes, too, so he asked about it. “You all left the woods together? Nobody stayed behind?”

“We wanted out of there,” Dalton said. “Who’d stick around and maybe get shot? Not me.”

What if he had, though? What if he’d been the one who killed Baty? The bank robberies had been in Arkansas, and that’s where Dalton came from. A coincidence, maybe, but one that deserved a little consideration.

Hoss Rapinski was yet another consideration. Dalton had disappeared into the trees, and Hoss had been killed. A second coincidence?

Rhodes wondered about Rapinski, too. He was a bounty hunter, true. Everybody seemed to know that, but what if he’d been more than a bounty hunter? What if he’d been a licensed private investigator? Or even an unlicensed one? Could he have been in Blacklin County for more than one reason? Could he have been hired by the Herndons to find Dalton?

It bothered Rhodes that whoever had been shooting at the hunters had gotten away without being seen, and it bothered him even more that Baty’s killer had done the same.

If Dalton had killed Baty, what had happened to the man who jumped out of Baty’s car? Had he run from all the shooting and disappeared? Why hadn’t anyone seen him?

Those were all questions that had been bothering Rhodes, and he would have liked to find the answers. He had a feeling Dalton either didn’t know them or wouldn’t tell.

“You’re sure you didn’t see who was shooting at you?” Rhodes asked.

“I’m sure,” Dalton said.

“The Chandlers are rumored to do that kind of thing.”

“Might’ve been them. I wouldn’t know. I told you, I was too scared to worry about who it was.”

“You know why they don’t like hog hunters?”

“Animal lovers,” Dalton said. “Got that farm and all. Had some trouble about a pig, so I heard.”

“And of course you wouldn’t know anything about what happened to the pig,” Rhodes said.

“That’s right. Nobody I know had anything to do with it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Maybe Dalton was telling the truth. Maybe not.

“You’re not planning to leave town, are you?” Rhodes asked.

“No, sir,” Dalton said. “If you don’t think the Herndons will get me, I’ll stay right here.”

“What about your name?”

“I’ll fix that. I’ll talk to Mr. Allison. He’ll understand. I’ll keep right on doing my job for him if you don’t put me in jail.”

“I’m not going to put you in jail,” Rhodes said. “Not yet, anyway. Don’t do any more hog hunting, though. You understand?”

“I sure do. I don’t want to hunt any hogs for a while. Maybe never.”

“That’s what Fowler said last night. He was kind of trigger-happy, wasn’t he.”

“I don’t know what you mean, Sheriff,” Dalton said, but Rhodes thought he knew, all right.

“He’s told you everything you’ve asked, Sheriff,” Lawless said. “Are you going to arrest him? If you aren’t, then cut him loose.”

Rhodes thought it over. There was no reason to hold Dalton at the moment, so he said, “He can go.”

“Thanks, Sheriff,” Dalton said. “I’m a solid citizen. Always have been. You watch and see.”

“I’ll be watching, all right,” Rhodes said. “You can count on it.”

*   *   *

As it turned out, Dalton wasn’t the only one who’d been cut loose. When Rhodes returned to the outer office, Hack said, “The Eccles boys are back on the street.”

“Back on the county roads is more like it,” Lawton said.

“What happened?” Rhodes asked.

“It was your college pal that did it,” Hack said.

“My college pal?”

“The goofy one,” Lawton said.

“Seepy Benton,” Rhodes said.

“That’s the one. He went their bail. Said to tell you to give him a call. Jennifer Loam wants you to call her, too. Wants an update on the murders.”

“What about Ruth?”

“She’s on her way in,” Hack said. “She’ll tell you all about that Dalton fella.”

“Garver is Dalton,” Rhodes said.

“Huh?”

“Later. I have work to do.”

Rhodes sat at his desk. He didn’t plan to call Loam or Benton at the moment. He started to write up his interview with Dalton. He had the recorder to refresh his memory, but he didn’t really need it.

Ruth came in after about ten minutes. She told Rhodes that she’d looked on the computer in her car and found out about William Dale Dalton from Ozark, Arkansas.

“He disappeared about three years ago,” she said. “He went squirrel hunting and never came back. His wife said he might have been killed in the woods. That’s about all I could find. I guess they’re still looking for him. Is he around here?”

Rhodes told her about Ed Garver, who was really Willie Dalton. Hack listened in.

“Well, well,” Ruth said. “It’s easy enough to live under a false identity if you work at it. Remember that case in Florida, Pompano Beach, I think? A man robbed a 7-Eleven, got caught, then escaped from prison, and lived free for thirty years or so under a name he got from a stolen driver’s license.”