Between the Living and the Dead (23 page)

“Who are you talking about?” Rhodes asked.

“The one who killed Neil. He's gonna get away with it.”

“You're not showing much faith in your local law enforcement agency,” Rhodes said. “We caught you and Earl, didn't we?”

“Hogs is what caught Earl, you said.”

“I said they ran over him. We'd have caught up with him, hogs or not, just like we caught up with you.”

Louie snorted. “Earl ratted me out is how you got me.”

“Just good police work,” Rhodes said. “You were there when Neil was killed, weren't you? You didn't do anything about it then.”

“That goddamn Earl. He told you that, didn't he. He told you I was there.”

Rhodes didn't bother to deny it. Now that Louie was talking, it seemed like a good idea to let him keep right on doing it.

“Earl don't know a thing,” Louie said. “He don't know what it was like. He thinks I ran off and left Neil there, but that's not the way it was. Earl don't know squat. He just likes to shoot off his mouth. Only reason he wasn't with us is because he's afraid to go there. Funny things happen in that place. It didn't bother Neil, but it bothered me and Earl. I didn't like to go there much more than Earl did, but I'm not yellow. I went, but it didn't do Neil any good. He's dead anyway.”

“Earl didn't tell me anything about what happened at the house,” Rhodes said, “and he didn't mention being afraid. What kind of things was he afraid of?”

“I don't like talking about it,” Louie said. “You'll think I'm crazy.”

Rhodes thought about what Mika had said. He thought about the rat and all the other things that had happened over the last couple of days. If Louie and Earl had experienced things like that, he couldn't blame them for being a little bit spooked.

“I've been in the house,” Rhodes said. “I felt like somebody was watching me. I saw some big rats in there, too.”

“Rats don't bother me none,” Louie said. “I've lived around rats all my life. It was the other things. What you said about somebody watching you? I felt like that, too, ever' time I was there.”

“Were you there often?”

“I ain't saying I was, and if I was there, it wasn't to do anything wrong. Sometimes a fella just likes to get out of the house and have him a hamburger in a private place without anybody to bother him.”

Sometimes a fella wanted to run a drug deal, too, and Rhodes was sure that was what had been going on in the house for a while. He didn't expect Louie to admit it, however, at least not immediately. He found it interesting that Louie had also had the feeling of being watched, but it didn't prove that there were any ghosts lurking about. Anybody might feel that way in a creepy old house with a bad reputation. It was only natural.

“How did Neil feel about being there?” Rhodes asked.

“Didn't bother him a bit. He said he liked ghosts because they weren't like people. They were just spirits, he said. They couldn't shoot you or run a knife in you, he said, but look what happened to him.”

“It wasn't a ghost that killed him,” Rhodes said. “It was somebody with a gun.”

Or maybe it was a
yurei
with a gun. That is, if a
yurei
could or would use a gun. What would Moore's ghost have to worry about, anyway? He'd been buried properly, as far as Rhodes knew. Of course, the skeleton hadn't. If there was a ghost in the Moore house, it was more likely to be the ghost of whoever the skeleton had belonged to. Not that Rhodes believed even for a second that there was a ghost.

Then Rhodes remembered the bullet hole in the windshield of the Foshees' truck, and he started putting a little theory together. He thought he'd try it out on Louie, who didn't seem inclined to ask for a lawyer at the moment.

“You didn't go in with Neil because you didn't like the place,” Rhodes said. “Neil wasn't worried. He was just going to talk to some college kid, so he didn't need to have you with him. That about right?”

“That goddamn Earl. He told you that.”

Earl had implied some of it, but Rhodes wasn't going to tell Louie that. He said, “I think I know what happened next, too, and Earl couldn't have told it to me.”

“If you're so smart, lay it out there,” Louie said.

“You were waiting in the pickup. You were a little nervous because you felt somebody or something was watching you. How am I doing so far?”

“Anybody could've figured that out. Sure, I was nervous. I just didn't like that place. It seemed like it was okay when we first went there. Kind of peaceful, you know? An old place where nobody'd been for a long time. After we'd been there a time or two, though, it got different. It made me nervous, like you said. It was just a bad feeling, like something in there had been asleep and then it had woke up and started to watch us.”

The pastureland on both sides of the road slipped by. The grass was greener than it had been, thanks to the recent rain, but it could've used more water. Rhodes thought it might have rained a bit more down this way than at the Moore house. Someone had put new fencing up for the pastures along both sides of the road. It must have been expensive, but it looked good.

“I don't know what was watching you,” Rhodes said, “but I know that ghosts don't use guns. Somebody shot Neil and then came out to shoot you. I saw the bullet hole in the windshield of your pickup.”

“Damn near had a bullet hole in me, too,” Louie said. “That thing came through the windshield and buzzed right by my ear like a wasp. Went right on through the back window, too. Scared me more than a ghost.”

Louie had been more than bothered, and Rhodes knew it. A nervous man, someone shooting at him from a haunted house? There was just one natural reaction.

“You got out of there,” Rhodes said. “Fast.”

Rhodes looked at Louie in the rearview mirror. Louie was staring out the window. There wasn't much to look at other than the pastures and the new fences, but Rhodes had a feeling Louie wasn't seeing them anyway.

“Can't blame you,” Rhodes said. “You knew it wasn't Neil shooting at you, so he had to be dead. You'd be dead, too, if that bullet hadn't missed you.”

“You don't know about Neil and us,” Louie said, turning to stare straight ahead. “If it wasn't for him, me and Earl'd probably have jobs somewhere, maybe not good ones, but jobs. It was Neil told us we could make easy money cooking meth. He said it was dangerous, but it'd be worth it. He was right about it being dangerous, but it was you and your deputy that like to killed us, not the meth. If you're careful, you won't get hurt, he said, and we was always careful. We never used, neither. That was another thing Neil told us. He said that meth was bad stuff, and that if he caught us using, he'd shoot us. Me and Earl believed him, and we stayed off it. The money came in, just like he said it would, and it was good money. Here I am, though, handcuffed in a cop car, and Earl's in the hospital, been run over by hogs.”

Louie stopped and looked out the window again. Rhodes was tempted to say something like
Crime does not pay
or
You can't blame somebody else for all your troubles
, but he knew Louie wouldn't appreciate it.

“I shoulda stayed to help Neil,” Louie said after a while. “Or at least shot back, but I didn't, and now me and Earl are in trouble again, all for nothing we did. Earl's been run over by hogs, and I've been hiding in a broken-down dump that don't have more'n half a roof.”

“Earl's going to be okay,” Rhodes said. “He's just a little banged up. You two won't be in prison too long. You're young enough to do something with yourselves when you get out if you can give up dealing.”

“You talk like it's a cinch we're going to the pen.”

“It is a cinch,” Rhodes said. “Count on it. Even at that, you're better off than Neil. He's dead.”

“That damn college kid killed him,” Louie said. “Except he wasn't no college kid. He was working for the DEA. I tried to tell Neil, but he just laughed, said I didn't know what I was talking about. He thought the kid was lying about some class thing he was going to do. He thought the kid just wanted to make a buy. I guess he was wrong about it, though. Otherwise, he'd still be alive.”

They were getting close to Clearview, so Rhodes eased up on the accelerator and slowed the car. He had a feeling Louie wouldn't talk much once they got to the jail.

“You sure it was the college kid that shot at you?” he asked.

“Damn right. He was waiting for Neil in there. I don't know what happened, but he must've given himself away. College kid, my ass. He was DEA from the git-go. You can't ever trust anybody looks like that.”

“Looks like what?”

“Like a kid. Can't trust anybody looks old, either.”

Life as a meth cooker had turned Louie into a cynic, if he hadn't been one before.

“So you got out of there and went back to the house,” Rhodes said. “Talked to Earl. Got your stories straight.”

“We thought you'd show up,” Louie said, “you being like you are and all. We were gonna bluff it out, but I could tell you didn't believe us.”

“It wasn't what I'd call award-winning acting.”

“Yeah, I guess not. We weren't in the drama club at school.”

Rhodes doubted that Louie and Earl had been in any clubs. He doubted that they'd even been in school for any longer than the state required them to be.

“So you ran.”

“Yeah. So we ran.”

“And we caught you. You should've just leveled with me to begin with.”

Louie leaned back in the seat and didn't bother to say anything about leveling. That would've been the last thing to enter his mind where the law was concerned.

As they drove into Clearview, Rhodes thought that it at least looked a bit better than Thurston. He could see signs of life. The college building, Max Schwartz's barbecue place, the strip center with its florist shop, the new motel. It was only going back into town and to the jail that the decay became obvious. Still, some of the downtown was coming back to life, and new businesses were restoring a few of the old buildings that were left and moving into them. The town wasn't dead yet.

At the jail Rhodes got Louie booked, and Lawton took him off to get him installed in a cell.

“Sheriff told me I'd get something to eat,” Louie said.

“I'll see what I can find,” Lawton said, and they went out into the cellblock.

Instead of asking Hack about things he needed to know, which could have led to all kinds of digressions, Rhodes asked Mika about the gun registrations.

“What I'm wondering about is .38s,” he said. “Wade Clement own one?”

“If he does,” Mika said, “it's not registered in his name. Ace Gable owns one, though.”

Ace could've gone to the house as easily as Wade could have. If Wade's story was true, Ace would've been the one waiting there when Neil arrived.

“Vicki Patton doesn't own a gun, or at least not one that's registered,” Mika went on. “That doesn't mean she doesn't have one or access to one.”

Like Ace Gable's. He would've let her borrow it without asking too many questions, but Rhodes found it hard to believe she'd kill Neil. She'd broken it off with him, and there was no danger she'd ever go back. If Neil had forced the issue, she might've done something about it, but Rhodes liked to think she'd have come to him and let the law take care of it. He'd like to think that, and he almost did. Almost, but not quite. In fact, she'd probably have gone to Ace, which led right back to that .38.

“Getting back to the Clements,” Mika said, “the mayor owns a Glock nine, like the one his nephew brought in. The nephew was telling the truth about that one. It's his, and he has a CHL.”

Rhodes had been hoping that the mayor or Wade owned a .38. It would have made things easier, at least if Louie was right about Wade.

“Thanks,” Rhodes told Mika. “That helps to narrow it down.”

“That's not all,” Mika said.

“The sheriff, he's kind of a sexist,” Hack said, looking happy to work his way into the conversation.

“I don't think that's it,” Mika said.

“It ain't that he means to be,” Hack said. “It's just that when he was raised, things were different, and he has a trouble adjustin' to the times we live in now.”

Lawton came in as Hack was talking about adjusting to the times, and he joined right in, too.

“You're a fine one to talk,” he said to Hack. “Back when you were raised, cars still had cranks on 'em.”

“Now you know that ain't so,” Hack said. “They might've had runnin' boards, but they sure didn't have cranks. The only old crank I've ever seen is you.”

“I had a sweet little '40 Chevy with runnin' boards,” Lawton said, ignoring the insult. “It was old when I got it, but it still ran like a sewin' machine.”

“Had an engine 'bout as powerful as a sewin' machine motor, too, I'll bet,” Hack said. “You prob'ly bought it new off the showroom floor, you being as old as you are.”

Rhodes often wondered how topics of conversations with Hack and Lawton could get so far off the track, going in such a short time from .38s to sewing machine motors. They had a gift for it.

“Let's get back to how I'm a sexist,” Rhodes said. “And how it has anything to do with what we're supposed to be talking about.”

“Tell him, Mika,” Hack said.

Mika smiled at Hack. “I think what you must mean is that the sheriff didn't let me finish my report on the Clements.”

“I apologize,” Rhodes said. “I thought I had. Please go on.”

“See what I mean?” Hack said. “He thought he'd let you finish, but you hadn't mentioned somebody he'd plumb forgot. Sexist, like I said.”