Survivors Will Be Shot Again (28 page)

“I've seen a lot of TV shows about stuff like this,” Will said. “It's always the wife.”

He and Ivy would be in agreement, Rhodes thought, at least on that point.

“It's not the wife this time, Will Smalls,” Joyce said, her voice tight.

Rhodes thought it was time to see if he could get another reaction from any of them.

“There's something we need to remember,” he said. “Melvin's not the only one who's been killed.”

“What?” Joyce said. “Who?”

“Riley Farmer's dead,” Rhodes said. “Shot, just like Melvin.”

“Riley? Who'd kill Riley?”

“I had Will in mind,” Rhodes said.

Joyce walked over to her chair and pulled it back to the table. She sat down and said, “I think you're right, Sheriff. Will did it. Or maybe he wants to blame that on me, too. Are you going to accuse me of killing Riley, Will?”

“I didn't accuse you of anything. I just said—”

“Never mind what you said,” Ellen told him. “Sheriff, you'd better tell us what's going on.”

“That's what I'm trying to find out,” Rhodes said.

He'd watched the two women carefully when he'd told them about Riley's death. Will had known already, so he hadn't been surprised. Both Ellen and Joyce seemed genuinely shocked.

“I didn't kill Riley any more than I killed Melvin,” Will said. “I never killed anybody. I didn't steal anything, and I didn't kill anybody. I was wrong to try to lock you in that cellar, Sheriff, like I've been saying. I did do that, and I know it was wrong. If I had it to do over, I'd just let you look in there. Anyway, I don't have it to do over, and I did lock you in. That's all I did, though.”

It wasn't all he'd done, not by a long shot, but Rhodes didn't want to enumerate all the rest of it in front of Ellen and Joyce. They were upset enough as it was.

“My ankles hurt,” Will said. He gave Ellen a pitiful look, but she didn't show any sympathy. “I think you did break them, Sheriff, or at least sprained them. I don't plan to sue or anything, though.”

“That's mighty nice of you, Will,” Rhodes said, “but it's not going to help your case. There are two dead men and a lot of stolen goods that you're partially responsible for. If there's anything else you know, you need to tell me now.”

“You hear him, Will?” Ellen asked. “You tell him whatever else you know.”

“I don't know another thing,” Will said. “Not one single thing.”

Rhodes tried a few more questions to draw him out, but Will was through talking. He'd already said a lot more than Randy Lawless would have allowed him to say if he'd been there, but Rhodes didn't believe most of it. There was one thing that struck Rhodes, however, and reminded him of something that he wanted to think over.

He ended the interview and walked with Ellen and Joyce back into the main office of the jail. Ellen was more upset than she had been during the interview with Will, but Joyce had recovered her composure and was comforting her.

Buddy was at his desk, writing a report while regaling Hack and Lawton with his latest adventure, which involved someone trying to steal a window air conditioner from a deserted house. Rhodes interrupted the story and told Buddy to take Joyce and Ellen home.

“I'm going to the courthouse,” Rhodes told Hack when they'd left. “I'll be in touch.”

“You gonna go over there and do some thinkin'?” Hack asked.

“That's right.”

“You could just think in here,” Hack said.

“There's too much going on in here,” Rhodes said.

“Nothin's goin' on here. You just want a Dr Pepper in a glass bottle.”

“I'll resist the temptation,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

A Dr Pepper in a glass bottle was harder to resist than Rhodes had made it sound to Hack, and there was an old machine in the courthouse basement that still dispensed them. However, Rhodes steeled himself and walked right past the machine without giving in. He'd reward himself for his strength of character later if he could talk Ivy into going out to dinner for a third night in a row.

It was late in the afternoon, and the courthouse was quiet. Rhodes seldom used his office there, going over only when he wanted to avoid people, and this was a perfect time of the day for privacy. He got to his office without seeing anyone at all.

The office was much nicer than his space at the jail. The desk was newer, and its top was bare of paperwork. There were no annoying dispatchers and jailers trying to drive him crazy. Somehow, however, Rhodes never felt really at home there.

He sat in the desk chair, which was more comfortable than the one at the jail, tilted back, and put his feet up on the desk, something he never did in the jail. It was feet that had started him thinking about, or rethinking, the whole case.

It was obvious that Will Smalls's feet weren't seriously injured. They might be bruised, and his ankles might even be strained, but not sprained or broken. He was trying for sympathy from Rhodes at first and then from his wife. He'd had better luck with his wife, but not by much.

It had occurred to Rhodes that Will wasn't the only one who could fake an ankle injury. Take that injury away, and everything changed. The puzzle pieces all started to fall into place. Not all of them, but enough, considering what Rhodes had decided earlier in his little trip down the creek with Buddy. The picture was just about complete. It still had a couple of pieces missing right in the middle, but he hoped to find those later.

Could he prove that what he was thinking was the truth? Maybe not. He might need a little bit more evidence, but he thought he had an idea where that could be found. He'd have to get it, and that might not be easy. He'd need a search warrant, but while he still wasn't sure about everything, he had enough evidence to convince the county judge to issue one.

Rhodes swung his feet to the floor, picked up the receiver of the old black telephone on the desk, and called the judge, hoping that he hadn't left for the day. He hadn't, and when Rhodes explained what he wanted, the judge said to give his administrative assistant the information, and he'd have the warrant ready by the time Rhodes could get to the office.

“I'm in the building,” Rhodes said.

“Then give us fifteen minutes,” the judge said, and transferred Rhodes back to his administrative assistant, whose name was Becky Carr.

Rhodes gave her the information, hung up, and thought things over one more time. The missing pieces bothered him. A couple of things just weren't right, but he decided not to worry about them. Maybe one of his earlier suspicions had been correct. If so, that would solve the problem. For the moment he was going to go with what he was almost sure was right and work out the rest of it later.

He went down the hall to the county judge's office. The building was almost deserted now, and in a few minutes everyone would be gone. Rhodes had called just in time.

Becky Carr stood up at her desk when Rhodes walked in and handed him the warrant.

“Thanks,” he said.

“Good luck finding what you're looking for,” she said.

“It's not about luck,” Rhodes told her. “It's about good police work.”

It wasn't entirely good police work this time, though. Some of what Rhodes was relying on was guesswork. The guesswork was
based
on good police work, however, so Rhodes thought he was on safe ground to say so.

“Right,” Becky said. “I know that. You and Sage Barton know the drill. He kills a lot more people than you do, though.”

“I plan to keep it that way,” Rhodes said.

“Probably a good idea,” she said.

Rhodes thanked her again and went back to his office, where he called Hack.

“Is Buddy still there?” Rhodes asked when Hack came on the line.

“Nope. He's back out on patrol.”

“I'm about to leave for Gene Gunnison's place,” Rhodes said. “Call Buddy and tell him to meet me there.”

“You gonna tell me what for?”

“I'll put you in the loop when we get back,” Rhodes said.

“Yeah, right. But that's okay. If you don't, Buddy will.”

“It's always good to have a backup source,” Rhodes said.

“'Specially with you bein' the primary one,” Hack said, “and not very forthcomin'.”

“Just get Buddy on the way out to Gunnison's.”

“I will if you'll hang up.”

Rhodes hung up and got on the way himself.

*   *   *

Rhodes parked the Tahoe at the end of the road leading up to Gunnison's house and waited for Buddy to arrive. He showed up about five minutes later and parked beside Rhodes, who put down the window and motioned for him to get out of the car.

Buddy got out of the county car and came over to the Tahoe. “What's going on, Sheriff?”

“I think Gene Gunnison killed Riley Farmer and Melvin Hunt,” Rhodes said. “You and I are going to confront him about it. If he denies everything, I have a search warrant, so we can search his property. We should find the evidence we need to arrest him.”

“You mean it wasn't Melvin's wife that killed him?”

“Why would you think that?”

“It's always the wife,” Buddy said. “On those TV shows, anyway. You ever watch those?”

Rhodes thought, not for the first time, that the world might be better off without TV.

“Ivy watches them,” Rhodes said. “I don't. Anyway, it wasn't the wife this time. At least that's not the way the evidence points.”

Buddy didn't argue the point. “Okay.” He patted the grip of his big revolver. “I've heard Gunnison's a rough customer.”

“We shouldn't have to shoot him,” Rhodes said, “but we'll be ready, just in case.”

“We?” Buddy asked with a skeptical look.

Rhodes turned sideways as well as he could and drew up his knee far enough to reach the ankle holster. He removed the Kel-Tec pistol and showed it to Buddy.

“We,” Rhodes said.

“All right,” Buddy said. “You want me to follow you up there?”

“Good idea,” Rhodes said.

He put the pistol on the seat and waited for Buddy to get in his car. Then he started the Tahoe, put it in gear, and headed up the road.

 

Chapter 24

Gunnison was sitting in his usual spot on the porch with his foot up on the bucket when Rhodes and Buddy drove up. Rhodes got out of the Tahoe and stuck his pistol in his belt while he was concealed by the door. Buddy got out of his county car and walked to the front of it. Rhodes stood in front of the Tahoe. It wouldn't be a good idea for the two of them to be standing close together.

“You must have heard us coming,” Rhodes said.

“Yeah,” Gunnison said. “That's what I like about having a long road up to the house. You might remember that I told you before I'm not very social. Now I got two visitors. I don't much like it.”

“We're not here for a visit,” Rhodes said.

“I can't think of any other reason why you'd be here. If you're not visiting, what do you want?”

“I want to talk to you about marijuana. To start with.”

Gunnison brushed a gnat away from his face. “We talked about that already. I told you I don't know anything about it, so why don't you and Peewee there go on back to town and leave me alone?”

Rhodes noticed that Buddy stiffened, but the deputy was a professional, and his fingers didn't drift toward the Magnum on his hip.

“Well,” Rhodes said, “I don't think you told the truth about the marijuana. I think you're growing it in four different places in the county and maybe more. You have a boat and access to the creek. It would be easy for you to establish some crops in out-of-the-way places along the bank.”

Gunnison shrugged. “So could anybody else.”

“It wasn't anybody else who was nosing around Melvin Hunt's house the other day. I chased you through the woods, remember?”

“Wasn't me.”

“It was you, all right. You were there to kill Joyce Hunt.”

Gunnison's left cheek twitched, but that was his only reaction. “Why would I do that?”

“For the same reason you killed Melvin. He knew about your marijuana. I think that one day he must have walked along the creek to Billy Bacon's place to do some stealing or to look things over, and he caught you in the field. Maybe he asked you for a little money to keep from talking about it. You thought it over after he left, then followed him up to the barn and shot him and left him there in Bacon's barn. After you got to thinking about it later, you wondered if Melvin had come that way on purpose, if maybe he'd been that way before when you weren't around, and you wondered how much he'd told his wife and Riley Farmer, since Farmer was his best friend. So you decided to get rid of them, too. You got Riley, but I showed up at Melvin's house before you could get to Joyce. You took off, and the dogs and I followed you.”

“I said it wasn't me.”

Rhodes ignored that. “Joyce told me that her dogs liked you because you brought them treats. You had some with you at the house, and you tossed them on the ground to distract the dogs when you were running. I thought it was funny that they ran over and ate something on the ground. Now I know it was those treats.”

“You got any remains of the treats to prove it?”

“No, but I know that's what it was.”

“There's a little problem with all your guessing, Sheriff,” Gunnison said with what he might have thought was an affable smile. He took his cane and touched his ankle boot. “I can't do any running.”

“Anybody can put one of those things on,” Rhodes said. “You might have had a bad ankle once and kept the boot. You put it on in case I showed up, which I did. It was a good alibi and I even believed your story. I tend to be a little gullible sometimes. Then I saw your tracks down by the creek at those marijuana patches.”