Between the Living and the Dead (19 page)

“That sounds about right,” he said when Jennifer had finished. “There's a lot of emphasis on a ghost, though. I didn't see any ghost. Nobody else did, either. All I saw was some rats. If Seepy wants to believe that a ghost led us to the skeleton, that's all right, but don't say that I believed it.”

“You ought to,” Hack said. “What about all that gettin' cold and then warm? What about that meter thing? Sounds like a ghost to me.”

Rhodes didn't say anything about the prickly feeling on the back of his neck or about the slamming door. He didn't want to encourage Hack, not that he needed any encouragement.

“It wasn't a ghost,” Rhodes said, but by this point he was beginning to wonder. “When Andy comes in tomorrow, have him go over to the house and look through those boxes in the attic. Did Mika come by this afternoon?”

“Yeah, she was here. Did some work on the bags, lookin' for prints. She wrote up a report for you. It don't say much. All the prints were smeared because of all the grease on the bags and the fingers of whoever touched 'em. She got one or two that might do to look for a match with.”

“We'll have her check them against the prints of the Foshee boys first,” Rhodes said. “They're probably the ones who were eating that stuff. Did Wade Clement bring by his sidearm?”

“Sure did. It's a Glock automatic. Nine millimeter.”

Since Foshee had been killed with a .38, that would seem to let Wade off the hook, but Rhodes wasn't going to rule him out.

“We'll hang on to it for a while,” Rhodes said. “Tell Mika to check the registration along with those others I asked for. Tell her that I want her to examine the cloth in the evidence bag I brought in, too. Maybe she can tell what it is or give a guess as to how old it is. After that she can go through the records for the past forty years and look for missing persons reports.”

“We don't have a lot of folks goin' missin',” Hack said. “I could probably tell you most of 'em myself.”

He probably could, Rhodes thought. “What about any around the time when Ralph Moore died?”

Hack thought it over. “Nothin' comes to me. It'd be a big deal if somebody disappeared. In the papers and all over town. I'll think about it tonight and see if I can come up with anything.”

“Ask Lawton, too.”

“Lawton? Why'd I ask him? He can't even remember his own phone number, much less his birthday. I'm surprised he can find his way here. He—”

“Ask him anyway,” Rhodes said.

Hack didn't respond, unhappy at being cut off in midrant, but Rhodes knew he'd talk to Lawton about it.

“Do you have any suspects in Neil Foshee's murder, Sheriff?” Jennifer asked.

“None that I can talk about,” Rhodes said.

“That's how he is,” Hack said. “Won't tell you anything. Closemouthed, just like I was tellin' you.”

“Just doing my job,” Rhodes said. “Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to write up my report on the skeleton and then go home and try to get some sleep.”

“Good luck with that,” Hack said.

*   *   *

Rhodes's sleep for the rest of the night wasn't interrupted by any calls from the jail, but Rhodes was restless because he couldn't stop thinking about Foshee's death and how it might have come about.

Ace Gable just might be temperamental enough to try to do something about Foshee after he'd come into the store and pestered Vicki. He did have a record for assault on someone who'd bothered his date. The incident was long ago, but it was still an indicator of a temper.

Vicki herself didn't seem to be a killer, but Rhodes knew better than to rule anybody out of an investigation. He'd learned that most people were capable of just about anything, given the right circumstances. Vicki might well have wanted to get Foshee out of her life forever. He was a bad memory she didn't need to have hanging around.

Wade Clement couldn't be ruled out, either. He might have lied about the meeting with Foshee. Instead of hearing gunshots, Wade might have been the one who fired them. He'd said he didn't go inside the house, but that wasn't necessarily true. Bringing in the Glock didn't mean anything. It might be registered to him, but he could've used another gun.

Of all the people he'd talked to, Roger Allen seemed the least likely to have killed Neil. He was still upset about his cousin, but Neil hadn't been involved directly in that death. Roger just wanted to sell the county a Tahoe or two, and Rhodes hoped Mikey Burns would let the deal go through.

After an hour or so of tossing, turning, and wondering, Rhodes finally went to sleep. It was a restless sleep, because for the rest of the night he dreamed about skeletons.

*   *   *

The next morning Rhodes filled Ivy in on the night's events. She'd been asleep when Rhodes came in, and even Yancey's yips hadn't waked her.

“The skeleton story was better than anything you've told me for quite awhile,” she said. “I like ghost stories, and this is a real one.”

“Except that there was no ghost,” Rhodes said.

“I think it was a ghost,” she told him. They were sitting at the kitchen table with a breakfast of reduced-calorie orange juice, turkey bacon, and Egg Beaters. “It was trying to find a resting place for those bones, and now after all these years they're going to have a proper place.”

“I wouldn't call the state crime lab a proper place,” Rhodes said.

He crunched a piece of turkey bacon between his teeth. It was okay. Not good, but okay. Yancy yipped softly under the table, and Rhodes slipped him a bit of the bacon. The cats slept by the refrigerator, as still and quiet as if they were just stuffed toys. They didn't care for turkey bacon.

“The lab will return the bones to you, and you can see to it that they're buried properly,” Ivy said. “You'll put a name with them, too.”

“You sound pretty sure of yourself.”

“I am. I know you. You don't quit until you find what you're looking for.”

Rhodes washed some bacon down with orange juice. “Sometimes it takes a while.”

“The ghost has waited a long time,” Ivy said. “It can wait a little longer.”

“I didn't see any ghost,” Rhodes said, “so there wasn't a ghost.”

“‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio…'”

“Everybody's quoting literature to me,” Rhodes said. He'd already mentioned Harris's quotation from Wordsworth to Ivy.

“Sometimes literature is where the answers are.”

“I liked Harry's quote better.”

“I think mine's closer to the truth.”

“If I'm remembering the play correctly,” Rhodes said, “Hamlet would've been better off if he hadn't paid any attention to that so-called ghost.”

Ivy smiled. “Things didn't work out very well, I have to admit.”

Rhodes didn't want to push the argument any further. He just returned Ivy's smile and finished his breakfast.

*   *   *

The Blacklin County hospital had grown considerably in the last few years with the addition of two new buildings. Rhodes wasn't sure about the reason for the growth, but he had some theories. One was that the population of the county was aging and needed more medical care. Young people didn't stay around the rural counties in Texas anymore after they graduated from high school. They went to college, or if they didn't go to college, they went to the cities, which was where the jobs were.

Long ago, there had been jobs in Blacklin County, too, but many of those jobs no longer existed. Even longer ago than that, there had been cotton farms all over the county, and every little town had a cotton gin. A lot of families had made their living by farming. Not anymore. Farming was too uncertain, and it no longer paid. Rhodes hadn't seen a cotton crop since he was a boy. The gins were gone, with nothing left of them but a few stray bricks.

So the youngsters left, the population got older, and more medical care was a necessity. Clyde Ballinger's funeral home wasn't likely to be lacking in business for years, either. Rhodes didn't even want to think what might happen to the county in fifty years. There might not be anybody left.

This early in the day the hospital parking lot had plenty of empty spaces. Rhodes parked and went inside, stopping at the reception desk to ask where to find Earl Foshee. He got the room number and went down a hallway to the room. He hadn't posted a guard on the room because he didn't have enough deputies to put one there and because he didn't think he needed one. Earl wasn't going to slip away, and if he did, Rhodes would just bring him back, not that they'd had much luck in locating Louie so far.

The hospital smelled like every other hospital Rhodes had been in. He didn't know what it was, but it always reminded him of sickness and death, or injuries, like the one Earl had suffered, or worse. Rhodes had spent enough time in hospital beds not to want to do any more time in one.

Rhodes went into Earl's room and found Earl sitting up in bed and eating breakfast. He had bacon, eggs, and orange juice, all of which reminded Rhodes of his own breakfast, except that he supposed the bacon was pork, the eggs were real, and the orange juice was full of sugar. Earl didn't look any the less healthy for it.

Earl was just about finished eating when Rhodes came in, and Rhodes told him go to ahead.

Earl nodded and kept on eating. Rhodes pushed a blood pressure monitor out of the way and sat in the visitor's chair. He wondered why chairs in hospitals were so uncomfortable. He didn't think they were cheap. Maybe hospitals didn't want visitors to linger.

After a few minutes Earl wiped his mouth with his napkin, tossed it onto his plate, and leaned back against the elevated mattress. Rhodes got up and pulled the folding table away from the bed.

“Good breakfast?” he asked.

“Pretty decent for a hospital,” Earl said.

“How's the head?”

Earl touched his head, which had a bandage stuck where the hog had kicked him. His hair was shaved all around the bandage. It made his mullet look even worse, which Rhodes wouldn't have thought was possible.

“Hurts a little,” Earl said. “They told me I got a bad concussion. Need to stay here a day or so. Might hurt myself if I move around too much. The doctor said it was maybe a grade three concussion, whatever that means. I can't remember how I got it, and he says that's not a good sign.”

“Hogs ran over you,” Rhodes said, sitting back down.

“Yeah, that's what the doctor said. I got bruises all over me, so I can sure believe it. I don't remember any of it, though, not after I got out of the pickup and went in the woods. The doctor says that happens sometimes.”

“What
do
you remember?”

“I remember you chasing me. You were after me and Louie, but we got away.”

Rhodes looked around the room with its institutional green walls. The window looked out on the parking lot and street.

“I wouldn't call this getting away,” he said. “When you're discharged, you'll have to go to jail.”

“I didn't mean to run. Louie made me.”

“Why would he do that?”

Earl looked out the window as if there might be something interesting outside, but there wasn't.

“Earl?” Rhodes said.

“I saw a squirrel out in the parking lot this morning,” Earl said, still looking out the window. “Lots of squirrels around these days. Didn't use to be squirrels in town, but they're all over the place now.”

“We weren't talking about squirrels. Why did Louie make you run?”

“I don't want to talk about it.”

“You might as well. Sooner or later you're going to have to.”

Earl turned his eyes back to Rhodes. “I don't know anything for sure anyway.”

“That's okay. You don't have to be sure. Just tell me about Louie.”

Earl looked back out the window and didn't say anything for a few seconds. Rhodes waited.

“The thing is,” Earl said, “Louie was with Neil the other night. At that house.”

“I knew somebody was,” Rhodes said. “Neil had to get there some way or other, and there was no transportation around.”

Earl stared at the ceiling. “A man ought not to speak against his brother.”

“Family's important,” Rhodes said. “I know that.”

“That's what Louie says.”

Rhodes didn't know where the conversation was going, but it seemed promising. He wanted to keep Earl talking.

“Neil was your family,” Rhodes said, “but it's the law's job to find out who killed him. Not yours or Louie's. Louie should know that.”

“Louie don't care about that. That was all just talk. Anyway, that's kinda what worries me.”

“You don't have to worry. I'll find the one who killed Neil. You need to tell me where Louie might be so I can find him before he gets in real trouble.”

“I think he's in real trouble already,” Earl said.

“Running away was bad,” Rhodes said, “but he's already in worse trouble than that.”

“I don't mean cooking meth,” Earl said.

“What do you mean, then?”

Earl sighed. “I mean I think Louie's the one that killed Neil.”

 

Chapter 15

Rhodes sat quietly for a while and let Earl's comment sink in.

“You hear what I said, Sheriff?” Earl asked.

“I heard you,” Rhodes said. “I was thinking it over. Why would Louie do a thing like that? Kill his cousin, I mean.”

“He thought Neil was gonna sell us out.”

An orderly came in to pick up Earl's breakfast tray at that point. He was another person who looked about fifteen years old to Rhodes. Maybe there was something in the water they drank. Or maybe it was vitamins.

“How was breakfast?” the orderly asked.

“It was pretty good,” Earl said. “I like sausage better than bacon, though.”