Survivors Will Be Shot Again (12 page)

He walked up a slight incline, and before he reached the top he saw the back of a house among the trees. Behind the house and a little to the left of it was a big barn that looked newer than the house.

The dogs ran ahead of Rhodes and around to the front of the house. They didn't bark. Rhodes watched them disappear, then stopped and thought about where he was. The house must belong to Gene Gunnison, and Rhodes wondered if Gunnison had been the one who'd run away from the Hunt place. He figured he might as well see if Gunnison was home and ask him.

When he got to the back of the house, Rhodes gave it a quick inspection. It sat up on concrete blocks and hadn't been painted in years, but it looked solid. The grass and weeds could have used a good trim, but the tin roof had only a few rust spots and probably didn't leak.

Rhodes walked on around to the front of the house, intending to knock on the door, but he saw that he wouldn't need to. Someone, undoubtedly Gene Gunnison, sat on the front porch in an old wooden rocking chair. He was a big man, and he filled the chair with no room left over. His thick gray hair hung over his ears and down his neck. Rhodes suspected there wasn't a thin spot in back.

Gunnison's left foot was encased in a black fabric walking boot and rested on a overturned galvanized bucket. A black-lacquered walking cane hung from one arm of his chair. Gus-Gus and Jackie stood in front of the porch looking at him.

Rhodes remembered that like Billy Bacon, Gunnison had once played football for the Clearview Catamounts. In fact, he'd played about the same time Billy had, but Gunnison had been a lineman, offense or defense, Rhodes couldn't remember which. Maybe he'd played both ways. High schoolers still did that in those days.

“I know these dogs,” Gunnison said in a bass rumble when Rhodes approached the porch. “They ain't yours.”

“That's right,” Rhodes said. “They belong to the Hunts. I'm looking after them today.”

“You're a long way from the Hunts' place.”

“Getting some exercise. You must be Gene Gunnison.”

“That's me, all right. Who the hell are you?”

Rhodes touched the badge on its belt holder. “Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”

“Huh. What're you sneaking around my property for, then, lawman?”

“I wouldn't say I was sneaking. These dogs chased somebody away from the Hunt place, and I followed them to see if I could find out who it was. This is where we wound up.”

“Wasn't me they were chasing.” Gunnison took the cane from the chair arm and gave the walking boot a light tap on the toe. “I got a pretty bad ankle sprain. Can't get around very well.”

“I can see that. What happened?”

“Stepped in a hole. You gotta watch where you're going around here, and I didn't. Got distracted.”

“Anybody else been around here today?”

“Not a soul. People don't come around here much. I ain't exactly what you'd call neighborly. What's Hunt done that he's got you looking after his dogs for him?”

“He's dead,” Rhodes said.

“Dead?” Gunnison didn't sound surprised or regretful, just curious. “How'd that happen?”

“Somebody killed him.”

Gunnison hung the cane back on the arm of the chair. “Too bad.”

“I heard you and Hunt didn't get along,” Rhodes said.

“We had a little bit of a disagreement once upon a time,” Gunnison said. “Stuff happens. Don't mean I killed him.”

“What did you fall out about?”

“I think that's my business, mine and Hunt's, and since he ain't going to be talking about it, neither am I. Wouldn't do any good now, and I don't like to speak bad of a dead man. I hope you ain't accusing me of killing him.”

“I'm not accusing you of anything. We're just talking.”

Gunnison snorted. “Ha. Just talking. That's a good one. A lawman doesn't ever just talk, and like I said, I'm not very neighborly. I don't have a lot of little talks with anybody. I didn't kill anybody, either. I'm laid up with this bum foot, so I ain't been away from the house for a while. I'm not up to walking very far, much less killing anybody.”

“You know Billy Bacon?” Rhodes asked.

“Sure. Used to play football on the Catamounts, same as me, and has a place down here. I can't say as he drops around for little talks like you do, though.”

“He's had some things stolen,” Rhodes said. “So has Hunt. Lots of other people, too. Anything turned up missing around here?”

“Nothing missing that I know of. I don't have anything worth taking. You think I've been stealing from Bacon and Hunt?”

“Somebody has.”

“Not me. Don't know a thing about it. Don't care. No skin off my butt if somebody's taking their stuff. I'll take care of mine, and they can take care of theirs. I mind my own business.”

Gus-Gus and Jackie walked over to Gunnison's dirt driveway and sniffed around at the back of his pickup. One of them started to bark. There was a jon boat in the pickup bed.

“Some nasty oil spots around that truck,” Gunnison said. “Those dogs get that oil on 'em, it'll be hard to clean it off.”

Rhodes wasn't too worried about the dogs getting oil on them. They were jumping around the pickup and might scratch it, but Rhodes wasn't worried about that, either.

“I notice you don't have a dog,” he said.

“Don't need one,” Gunnison said. “I'm not worried about anybody sneaking up on me, and like I said, I don't have anything worth taking. You better watch those dogs of Hunt's, though.”

“They won't get any oil on them,” Rhodes said. “I'll take them back home now.”

“Best way to go is just follow my driveway to the road. Shorter that way, and you won't have to go through any trees.”

“Thanks,” Rhodes said.

He walked over to the driveway and told the dogs to come along. They barked a bit more and ignored him.

“You like to fish?” Rhodes asked Gunnison, indicating the jon boat.

“Now and then when I have the time. There's good fish in the creek sometimes when it's high like it is now. You?”

“When I have the time,” Rhodes said. He called the dogs, and this time they paid attention, running to him and following him down the long, sandy driveway through the trees to the road.

 

Chapter 10

The road, such as it was, was even sandier than the driveway. The bar ditches were lined with weeds and vines, so there was nothing for Rhodes to do but walk in the sandy ruts. Sand got in his shoes and covered the bottoms of his pants. The sun was warming things up, and Rhodes hoped the top of his head wouldn't blister at the thin spot.

Gus-Gus and Jackie didn't mind the sun or the sand, nor did they stay in the ruts. They romped along the road and through the ditches, and when they scared up an armadillo, they took off across a pasture in full cry. Armadillos were surprisingly fast, and Rhodes didn't think they could catch it unless it got tired and stopped running before they gave up. Even if they caught it, they couldn't do much with it if it balled up and presented its armor to them. He just hoped they'd come back to the road after they'd had their fun.

No cars came from either direction as Rhodes trudged along the road, and he was glad of that. A car or truck would have stirred up the sand, and it would have blown all over Rhodes. He was dusty enough as it was.

He wondered about Gunnison. No watchdog, no worries about being burglarized. It seemed odd, but then people who lived alone in the country were sometimes odd. So were people who lived in town and didn't live alone. Everybody was a little eccentric. It didn't have to mean anything.

After a few minutes Gus-Gus and Jackie came running back. They didn't appear to be a bit tired from their armadillo chase, and they kept right on with their explorations of the ruts and the ditches.

In a few more minutes they came in sight of the Hunts' house. Rhodes felt as if he'd wasted a lot of the morning already, but he still wanted to take a look around the house and barn. If he found something that had been taken from Billy Bacon's barn, then he'd at least feel that he'd accomplished something. If he didn't find anything, that would be useful information, too.

Rhodes saw a pickup parked in front of the house, which was turning into quite a popular spot for visitors that morning. When Rhodes got to the house, Will Smalls, Joyce's brother-in-law, came out the front door and stood on the porch.

“I saw the county Tahoe, Sheriff,” Will said. “I was wondering where you'd gone off to.”

True to his family name, Will wasn't a large man. He was a good five or six inches shorter than Rhodes, although the sweat-stained straw hat he wore just about made up the difference. He had on a pair of little rimless glasses that hid his eyes under the brim of the hat. At his hip he wore a pistol in a black leather holster.

Rhodes didn't know what every lawman in the state thought about the new open-carry law, but those he did know weren't in favor of it. There had been only one incident in Blacklin County so far, when a man thought that he was being carjacked in the Walmart parking lot by another man who'd simply gotten mixed up about which black Ford pickup was his. Both men had fired shots, but neither had hit his target or anyone else, although a Buick got its back window blown out before the two men had settled down and figured things out with the help of Ruth Grady, who'd arrived on the scene in time to prevent any further damage.

“I've been for a little walk,” Rhodes said. He didn't want to mention the prowler, at least not yet. “Giving Gus-Gus and Jackie some exercise.”

“I'd think they get plenty of that by themselves.”

As if to show he was right about that, Gus-Gus and Jackie sat down and started scratching behind their ears with their back legs.

“They might get plenty of exercise scratching for fleas,” Rhodes said. “Anything's possible. But they've been cooped up in the barn all night. They needed an outing. So here we are.”

“Well, I'll take over for you now,” Will said, coming off the porch. “Joyce told me you were going to feed the boys here, and she felt like she was imposing on you. She asked me to come do it, so here I am.”

“They're all yours,” Rhodes said. “The food bag's out by the barn.”

“I saw it when I was looking for you. I'll feed them, and you can go on back to town.”

“I'm going to have a look around first,” Rhodes said.

“Well, now, about that,” Will said.

He took off his glasses and examined the lenses as if there might be dirt on them. He pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his jeans and wiped the lenses, returned the handkerchief to his pocket, and put the glasses back on. Rhodes hadn't known anybody carried a handkerchief anymore.

“Where was I?” Will asked.

“I said I was going to have a look around. You said, ‘About that.'”

“Yeah, I remember now. I was gonna say that I don't think you need to be going through the house or the barn unless you have a search warrant. Seems like more and more the government is taking away our rights and doing things that are against the Constitution, like making illegal searches and listening to our phones and spying on us with drones and watching us with hidden cameras everywhere we go.”

“The county doesn't have any drones,” Rhodes said.

He could have added “yet,” because he knew that Commissioner Mikey Burns would love to have drones. The topic hadn't come up, but that's how Burns thought. He liked toys and weaponry.

“That's what you'd like us to believe,” Will said.

“We don't have any cameras, either,” Rhodes said. “Some of the stores do, but the county doesn't. We're not like Houston and Dallas. For that matter, we aren't listening to your phone calls.”

“So you say.” Will edged closer to Rhodes. “But you'd do a search without a warrant. You'd violate a man's castle and his property rights.”

Rhodes was getting tired of Will's rant, but it wouldn't do to say so. Will might want to fight him, and Rhodes would have to hurt him. Worse, Will might draw his pistol, and that would lead to serious problems.

“I have your sister-in-law's permission to look around,” Rhodes said.

“You
did
have her permission, but I educated her about that, and now you don't have it. You might as well get in your big truck that my tax dollars are paying for and go on back to town.”

“You're probably right,” Rhodes said.

“I know I am. You cops can't just run over everybody like we don't have any rights.”

“That's true,” Rhodes said.

He thought that it might be time to tell Will that someone else had been there to look around without a warrant, but he decided against it. He didn't have any proof that anyone had been there, nothing that would convince Will, anyway, and maybe whoever it was wouldn't come back while Will was there. If he did and if Will got hurt, Rhodes would try not to feel guilty about it. If Will shot somebody, Rhodes would regret his decision, but Will would do the shooting whether Rhodes warned him or not.

“You take good care of the dogs, you hear?” Rhodes said.

“You don't have to worry about the dogs,” Will said. “I'll see to it that they're fed and watered.”

Rhodes didn't have any more to say. He got in the Tahoe and drove away. He watched in the mirror as Gus-Gus and Jackie chased the Tahoe about a hundred yards down the road before turning back to the house, where Will was waiting for them.

Blacklin County had quite a few people like Will, Rhodes thought, people who believed that the government was intruding into their lives, watching their every movement, listening to their phone conversations, tracking their computer use, and probably planning to swoop down in black helicopters, raid their homes, take their guns, and lock them away in abandoned Walmarts around the country, all of them connected by a secret network of underground tunnels.