Between the Living and the Dead (4 page)

The rooms contained little of the furniture that had once been in them—a couple of dressers with all the drawers pulled out and broken and an armoire with shattered mirrors on the doors. Rhodes figured those things had been too heavy for anyone to carry down. No mice jumped out of the furniture to surprise him, for which he was grateful. He didn't want to gun down a mouse.

He went into a narrow hallway and looked at the stairs to the attic. They were even dirtier than the ones to the second floor. No one had used them for years, maybe decades. He might have gone ahead to check the attic in spite of the evidence of its disuse, but he heard the ambulance arrive. By the time he got down the stairs, the JP was there, too.

Ruth had the EMTs and the JP waiting on the porch, and Rhodes told the JP to come in first. His name was Wade Franklin, and he was a tall slab of a man wearing a long robe with pajama bottoms visible below the hem and a pair of run-down house shoes. He didn't look thrilled about being called out so early in the morning, so Rhodes didn't comment on the color of the pajamas.

“Sorry to have to wake you up,” Rhodes said as they went into the hall.

“Just part of the job,” Franklin said. “What do we have here?”

Rhodes stopped him at the door to the sitting room and pointed inside. “A man named Neil Foshee. He's from Railville.”

“That's over the county line. Why'd he have to come and get killed in our county?”

“He does some business here,” Rhodes said. “With his cousins.”

“I don't think I know him. What kind of business?”

“Meth,” Rhodes said. “We just shut him and his cousins down not long ago. They're all out on bail.”

“Looks like this one will be staying out,” Franklin said. “I'd better have a look at him.”

“I don't want to prejudice your findings, but it looks to me like he's been shot.”

“Shine a light on him,” Franklin said.

Rhodes did. Foshee lay on his back, still as a plank, eyes wide open and staring at the ceiling. Two red blotches stained the front of his blue shirt.

“Looks dead to me,” Franklin said. “I'll check to be sure if you don't think I'll mess up your crime scene.”

“Just don't touch anything else,” Rhodes said.

“I know better,” Franklin said, taking three careful steps into the room and bending down over Foshee's body. In a couple of seconds he straightened and walked back to join Rhodes. “He's dead, all right. I'll get the paperwork done.”

“Thanks,” Rhodes said.

They went back to the porch. Franklin left, and Rhodes asked the EMTs to wait a few minutes while he and Ruth went back inside and looked over the body. Ruth held the flashlight, and they saw nothing nearby. Rhodes knelt down and checked the shirt pockets. They were empty. He patted the pants pockets and heard some clinking. He reached into the pockets and came out with some change and keys.

“No cell phone?” Ruth asked.

“Back pocket, maybe,” Rhodes said. He rolled Foshee over. “Nope. Just a wallet.”

“Some people have gotten smart about cell phones,” Ruth said. “Too smart to leave a helpful video on one for you to find it.”

Rhodes stood up. “Sometimes you can find one, though. Even I did.”

“With a little help.”

“From your friend Seepy,” Rhodes said. “I admit it, but I've learned a little bit about cell phones since then. I even know that if Foshee had a phone, it was probably a prepaid one that he bought at Walmart or from some guy at a flea market.”

“A burner,” Ruth said.

“A burner?”

“That's what we streetwise cops call prepaid phones. Burners.”

“You might have been hanging around Buddy too long,” Rhodes said. “He's the one who likes cop talk.”

“Just trying to clue you in.”

“I'll try to remember the term,” Rhodes said.

“They don't really burn them,” Ruth said.

“I know. They just buy a dozen or so and throw one away every couple of weeks.”

“Right. So it's like they burn them. I guess. You can even buy burner phone numbers now. Before long cell phones won't be much use for catching crooks.”

“Not unless we stay smarter than they are,” Rhodes said. “Look around. Foshee must have had a weapon, too.”

They looked but couldn't find anything else.

“Killer probably took it with him,” Ruth said.

“Probably,” Rhodes said. “We'd better call in the EMTs.”

Ruth went to tell them they could come in and get the body. Rhodes heard her warning them to be careful of touching anything, but he thought it was probably unnecessary. The room looked to be clean of any clues. He'd have someone go over it carefully in daylight, but he wasn't expecting to find anything. If there had been any bullet casings, they'd have seen them already. The killer had used a revolver, or he'd picked up the brass. Maybe the trash in the kitchen would provide some clues, but Rhodes knew even that was unlikely. They'd never find the prepaid phone, either. The burner. It would be at the bottom of a creek by now or smashed up with a hammer and thrown in a trash pile.

If life were fair, Neil Foshee would've written a dying message in his own blood on the dirty floor of the sitting room and made things easy for them, unless the message was like the ones in books and movies and too cryptic to be figured out by anybody but some genius private investigator. Blacklin County lacked genius private investigators, and for that matter it lacked private investigators of any kind. Rhodes considered that a good thing.

Neil Foshee might have looked at it another way. He might have thought that if life were fair, nobody would have shot him, but considering his life choices up to this point, it was almost inevitable that he'd come to a bad end, like Vincent Price in
Cry of the Banshee.

The EMTs came in, laughing at some joke or other one of them had told. Death didn't bother them. They'd seen too much of it. Auto accidents, heart attacks, bad falls, lots more. To them Foshee was just another body.

Rhodes wondered if there was anyone to mourn Foshee. Maybe his former girlfriend Vicki Patton would, but Rhodes didn't think she'd have any reason to. Foshee had thrown her out of his pickup at a roadside park, leaving her without any clothes or even her purse. She'd been the one who'd helped Rhodes find the meth house where Foshee and his cousins were cooking up a batch of chemical mischief, and Rhodes hoped she hadn't seen him since then. He'd have to ask Ivy about it. Ivy had become friends with Vicki after Rhodes had introduced them. It had been an awkward introduction, since Vicki had been wearing nothing more than a raincoat at the time. Rhodes grinned at the memory. It wasn't often that he got to take a naked woman home with him and surprise his wife.

Foshee wouldn't be doing any grinning, not anymore. The EMTs loaded him into a body bag and hauled him out. That was the end of the story for him.

Except it wasn't, not really. His death would affect other people, and somebody would have to pay for it. Rhodes didn't know who or how, but he knew that the story of a death like Foshee's didn't end when the body bag was zipped up.

“It's kind of creepy, isn't it,” Ruth said when the EMTs were gone.

“What's creepy?” Rhodes asked.

“This house is supposed to be haunted, and a man was killed here tonight. Do you think there'll be another ghost to keep the first one company?”

“I don't even think there was a first one,” Rhodes said.

“Maybe not,” Ruth said. “What do we do now?”

“I'm going to call the jail and tell Hack to get in touch with the sheriff's office over in Railville and let somebody there get in touch with Foshee's next of kin. You're going to stay here and look around for clues.”

“It's a little dark for that.”

“You don't have to look too hard. Mainly I want you here in case somebody decides to come back and check what happened.”

“What about the trash in the kitchen?”

“When you finish your shift, put up some tape. I'll get someone to go through it tomorrow. For now, concentrate on this room.”

“What about ghosts?”

“I wouldn't worry about them.”

“Okay. It's not them I'm worried about anyway,” Ruth said.

“What are you worried about, then?”

“Mice.”

Rhodes wished he hadn't flinched at the mouse. “I think you can handle the mice.”

“What if they gang up on me?” Ruth asked.

“Maybe it's Hack you've been hanging around for too long,” Rhodes said. “Instead of Buddy, I mean.”

“Now you've hurt my feelings.”

“Time for me to leave, then,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

When Rhodes called Hack, the dispatcher tried to pump him for information about what had happened at the Moore house, but Rhodes gave him only Foshee's name and condition.

“Who killed him?” Hack asked.

“He didn't give us a name,” Rhodes said.

“Have I mentioned that you're gettin' sarcastic lately?” Hack asked. “'Cause if I haven't, I should've. You need to watch that. It's not like you. You ever get yourself checked out for that low T problem?”

“I don't have a low T problem.”

“How do you know you don't if you ain't been checked out?'

“I just know. My problem is that somebody woke me up from my good night's sleep.”

“Not my fault people go and get killed when you're asleep. You oughtn't take it out on me.”

“You're right,” Rhodes said, tiring of the argument. “When Andy Shelby comes in this morning, tell him to get out to the Moore house. Ruth will fill him in, and he can finish working the crime scene.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else you want me to do while I'm at it?”

“When Buddy comes in tomorrow, you have him look for Earl and Louie Foshee. They should be easy enough to find. We probably have their address there in the office. We need to ask them some questions.”

“Yes, sir. Anything else?”

“Neil Foshee was living in Railville, so call the sheriff over in Bates County and tell him what's happened. If there's a next of kin there, he'll know, and he can do the notification.”

“You want me to wake up the sheriff in the next county?”

“Wouldn't be a good idea. He's not as easygoing as I am. He might come over here and shoot you.”

“This ain't his jurisdiction.”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said. Nobody ever got his sarcasm. “Don't call the sheriff. Just call the department.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Just don't wake me up again,” Rhodes said.

“I promise not to,” Hack said. “Not tonight, anyway.”

“It's morning already,” Rhodes said.

“There you go, then,” Hack said.

*   *   *

Driving home, Rhodes considered what might have happened to Neil Foshee. Drug deal gone bad? That was certainly possible, considering Foshee's propensity to sell meth that his cousins Earl and Louie cooked up. Someone getting revenge for something Foshee had done? Also a good possibility, since Foshee was the kind of man who'd force a woman to take her clothes off and get out of his car in a roadside park. Rhodes didn't think that Vicki Patton would kill anybody, but if there was anything he'd learned during his years as a sheriff, it was that anybody would do just about anything, given the right circumstances. Or the wrong ones.

Two questions nagged at Rhodes. Why was Foshee in the Moore house and how did he get there? The tracks in the backyard would need some study. If Foshee had come with someone, who was it? If Foshee had arrived in his own vehicle, who'd taken it away?

The set of keys in Foshee's pocket had included a key to a car or pickup, but that didn't necessarily mean someone else couldn't have had a key. For that matter, Foshee could have walked to the house from somewhere else.

Rhodes decided not to worry about things for now. There would be plenty of time for that after the investigation got started, and that wouldn't be until tomorrow. As for right now, Rhodes would just try to get a little sleep.

*   *   *

Rhodes tried to be quiet going into his house, but Yancey came yipping out of the dark as soon as Rhodes opened the door.

“Good boy,” Rhodes said. “No burglar's going to get past you.”

Rhodes didn't really believe that. He was just trying to contribute to Yancey's self-cofidence. In reality, if a burglar came through the door, Yancey would cower under the bed and not make a sound.

“You'd better be quiet or you'll wake up Ivy,” Rhodes said, as Yancey continued to caper.

“He's already done that,” Ivy said, coming out of the bedroom. She wore a long green gown and looked as fresh and awake as if she'd been up for hours. Rhodes could never understand how she managed it.

“You look a little bedraggled,” she said. “Did somebody beat you up?”

It was a logical question, Rhodes supposed. He'd occasionally found himself in physical confrontations.

“It was raining,” Rhodes said. “I'm sorry we woke you. I hoped I could slip in without Yancey getting excited.”

“Have you ever managed that before?”

“I can't remember,” Rhodes said as Yancey danced around his feet and yipped.

“I can,” Ivy said. “None. That's how many.”

“You could be right. This time I thought I might get lucky.”

Ivy cocked her head and looked at him. “You thought you might get lucky?”

“I meant about Yancey.”

“Well, you never know about getting lucky,” Ivy said. “Are you coming to bed?”

Rhodes grinned. Low T, indeed. “I'll race you,” he said.

 

Chapter 4

Rhodes hadn't gotten a lot of sleep, so he was a bit bleary-eyed the next morning. He and Ivy sat on the steps into the backyard while Rhodes threw a squeaky ball for Speedo and Yancey. Speedo, a border collie, was considerably bigger than Yancey, but that didn't matter to Yancey, who had the advantage of being somewhat more agile and could occasionally slip in under Speedo's jaws before they could clamp down on the ball.