Survivors Will Be Shot Again (15 page)

Something flashed in Billy's eyes, but it came and went so quickly that Rhodes wasn't really sure he'd seen it.

“I know,” Billy said. “You're the sheriff, and you have to do your job.”

Rhodes stood up. “I will,” he said.

*   *   *

Clyde Ballinger was the owner and director of Ballinger's Funeral Home, where he lived a sedate bachelor life in what had once been the servants' quarters of the mansion where the funeral home was now located. Rhodes had sometimes wondered what the original owners of the fine home would have thought had they known the purpose to which it would eventually be put, but he'd decided that they wouldn't care, not in their current situations, at any rate. They'd been Ballinger's clients in his old location and were now safely buried in the local cemetery.

Ballinger had at one time been a fan of old paperback books, but he'd taken to reading on a tablet for a while. Then, as he'd explained to Rhodes, he'd gone back to books because he missed them. There were a couple of them lying on his desk when Rhodes walked into his office on the ground floor of the former servants' quarters. The odd thing was that they looked brand-new.

“They are,” Ballinger said when Rhodes asked about them. “Seems as if a lot of small companies are starting to reprint things that you couldn't find anywhere, no matter how hard you looked, until the Internet came along. Then you could find them, but some of them were so expensive that you couldn't afford them.”

“You could,” Rhodes said.

“Well, maybe, but I liked finding them for a quarter at a garage sale. The rare ones never turned up there. Now I can buy them for a few bucks. You take this one, for example.”

Ballinger picked up one of the books, a trade-sized paperback, and handed it to Rhodes, who looked it over. The cover was just as tawdry as any of the older ones Rhodes had seen in the office and showed a nude woman diving into a swimming pool where a man waited for her. Two titles adorned the cover along with the nude woman and waiting man:
Lust Queen
and
Lust Victim.

“Racy stuff,” Rhodes said, handing the book back. “Lots of lust. I didn't know you went in for that kind of thing.”

“It's not as racy as it looks,” Ballinger said. “See, back in the old days a lot of writers, big-name guys sometimes, wrote midcentury erotica because it paid well and they could write it fast.”

“Midcentury erotica?”

“Sounds better than soft porn. Anyway, the books were mostly mystery or crime stories with some sex thrown in. Pretty good stuff.”

“I'll bet,” Rhodes said. “Don't let Buddy catch you with any of those.”

Buddy had a puritanical streak, and the naked woman would've been shocking to him.

“I'll keep it out of sight,” Ballinger said, opening the middle drawer of his desk and sliding the book inside. “Not that there's anything wrong with it. These stories were all pretty moralistic. The wicked were always punished, usually in ways that gave some business to my profession.”

“Speaking of the wicked being punished,” Rhodes said, “let's talk about Melvin Hunt. Did Dr. White get here to do an autopsy on him?”

“He did. I have the report for you, and a couple of slugs that he took from the body.”

Ballinger took the report and a couple of plastic bags out of a desk drawer and passed them to Rhodes. Rhodes was a little surprised to learn that the slugs were from a .32, but he knew well enough that a .32 could penetrate enough to kill, especially if it hit a vital spot. The first one hadn't, but the second one had. Survivors will be shot again.

Billy Bacon's gun was a .38, or the one that he claimed belonged to his wife was. If that was the only one they had, Billy was in the clear, but Rhodes knew that Billy could have an off-the-books gun, just like a lot of other people in Texas.

Rhodes flipped through the report until he came to the important part. Hunt had indeed died a day before he'd been found. Dr. White had determined this in a couple of ways, one of which was the growth stage of the maggots in the wounds. The blowflies that Rhodes had brushed away had laid eggs, and the maggots had just hatched. If Billy could prove his alibi for the day of the death, the gun wouldn't matter. Rhodes would mark him off the list of suspects. So far he had only his wife to vouch for him, however.

“Anything interesting in there?” Ballinger asked

“Maybe,” Rhodes said, “but not anything that's going to help me find out who killed Melvin.”

“You'll find out,” Ballinger said.

“People keep telling me that.”

“You and Sage Barton always come through.”

“People keep telling me that, too. I wish they'd stop.”

“Not gonna happen.”

“That's what I'm afraid of,” Rhodes said.

*   *   *

Rhodes's next stop was the jail, where his worst fears were realized. Seepy Benton was there. Rhodes had hoped to see Mika Blackfield, not Seepy, but Mika had already done her report and left. Rhodes was stuck with Seepy.

It wasn't that Seepy was a bad person. It was just that he always wanted to be helpful. Even worse, he
had
been helpful in the past, and that gave him some credibility. After that, Rhodes had consulted with him a couple of times, thus giving Benton leverage, or so Benton thought. Most recently Benton had been operating his ghost-hunting business and had in the process led Rhodes to an important clue in a murder case. Benton wasn't the kind to forget something like that.

Benton, Hack, and Lawton were talking when Rhodes came in. They were so engrossed in their conversation that they hardly looked up, so Rhodes put Hunt's possessions and the slugs in the evidence room and filed Dr. White's report. When that was done he sat at his desk and looked over another report, the one Mika Blackfield had left for him.

She hadn't found anything on Hunt's cell phone. She'd made a list of his calls, but there were only five recent ones. Hunt wasn't the kind of person to do much phoning. Three calls had been to Riley Farmer. The other two had been to Will Smalls. Nothing suspicious about that, although Rhodes wasn't convinced that Smalls was innocent in this case, not after his appearance at the Hunts' place earlier.

Mika had found no social media accounts for Hunt, which wasn't surprising. Rhodes would've been shocked to discover that Hunt even knew what social media were. She also hadn't turned up anything on Hunt by using various search engines. He hadn't left an electronic presence behind.

Rhodes put the report away and thought through everything that had happened. He was almost sure he'd missed something that would clear things up a bit, but he couldn't quite dredge it up from wherever it was hiding.

“I hear you have another tough case,” Seepy Benton said from behind him.

Rhodes turned in his chair to see Seepy standing there.

“Are you going to keep me in the loop?” Seepy asked.

Rhodes looked over to where Hack was pretending to be busy at his desk. Lawton had his hands in his pockets and was looking at the floor as if there might be a speck of dirt there that he could sweep away.

“You're not one of the deputies,” Rhodes said. “You're not a commissioner. You're not on the city council. You don't have a place in the loop.”

“I'm a citizen of the county,” Seepy said. “We citizens need to be in the loop to keep you law enforcers honest. You don't use body cameras, so you need some checks and balances.”

“It's a good thing I know you're joking,” Rhodes said.

“Okay, I'm joking, but I do want to help out, the way I've done before. You remember, don't you?”

Rhodes nodded but didn't say anything.

“I'll take that as a yes,” Seepy said. “So once again I've dropped by to see if can I help out. Do my civic duty. Maybe help you catch an alligator.”

Rhodes thought he heard Hack chuckle, but he couldn't be sure because he could see only the dispatcher's back. Lawton's face was impassive.

“My guess is that you're already in the loop,” Rhodes said.

Seepy glanced over at Hack, who didn't look at him.

“Maybe I am,” Seepy said. “I want to hear about the marijuana patch, if you don't mind. I'm interested in that kind of thing.”

Benton looked more like a rabbi than a man who'd be interested in marijuana, not that Rhodes had seen many rabbis in his life and not that he'd know what one thought about marijuana. Seepy had an even bigger thin spot in his hair than Rhodes did. In fact, he didn't have any hair at all on the top of his head, but he did have a nice graying fringe, and he wore a short, neatly trimmed beard. Rhodes didn't see Seepy's hat, but he was sure it was around somewhere, maybe in a chair by Hack's desk.

“Have a seat,” Rhodes said, and Benton sat in the old wooden chair by Rhodes's desk. Maybe Seepy could be of help after all. “What do you want to know?”

“First let me tell you something,” Seepy said. “You're going to be finding more of those patches all the time.”

“What makes you think that?” Rhodes asked.

“Two things. Meth's getting easier to make, and there's cheap meth coming up from Mexico that's taking over the market. It doesn't pay to make it here anymore, not in quantities big enough to sell, anyway, so marijuana's coming back as a cash crop.”

“You're a regular bundle of information about drugs,” Rhodes said. “How do you know all this?”

“I read the newspapers,” Seepy said. “The old-fashioned kind. I get the
Dallas Morning News
every day. You can still learn a lot from newspapers if you're paying attention. That's where I learned about making meth in two-liter soft drink bottles.”

Rhodes knew a good bit about that, too. That method of meth cooking was cheap and fast, and now, along with exploding meth houses, Rhodes had to deal with the occasional exploding motel room. Not to mention the time that someone had blown up the men's room at the Walmart. Or the time someone had set fire to the trunk of his car in the parking lot there.

“I've had some practical experience with the meth problem,” Rhodes said.

“I know, but those little batches in the soft drink bottles are just for personal use. You can't make enough to sell that way. The meth houses are dangerous and not as profitable as they used to be. Marijuana still is. You've had some trouble with marijuana patches here in the county in the past. Hack and Lawton were just telling me about it.”

“That was a while ago. This new patch isn't as big as the one they must have told you about.” Rhodes paused. “Where does all this interest in drugs come from, anyway? You're not going to set up a meth lab or a grow room, I hope.”

Seepy grinned. “You know me better than that. I'm a law-abiding citizen. Besides, Ruth would handcuff me and lock me up in one of your cells if she caught me growing pot.” Seepy looked thoughtful. “The handcuffing part might not be so bad, though.”

“I don't want to hear about it,” Rhodes said.

“I don't blame you, so forget about the handcuffs. When it comes to drugs, I don't need them to be in a state of euphoria.”

Rhodes had to admit that Seepy was relentlessly cheerful, and while Rhodes had nothing against cheerfulness, it could sometimes be a little wearing on him when it was a permanent condition in others.

“A few years ago,” Seepy continued, “before I moved here, I was invited to a peyote ceremony that was being held on land sanctioned by the State of Texas for Native American Church ceremonies. I didn't take part because what I experience normally is what most other people experience on peyote. That's what happens to your brain when you live a creative life.”

“I'm not a bit surprised,” Rhodes said. He'd known for a long time that Seepy's brain didn't work like a normal person's. “But if you're naturally high, why are you so interested in drugs?”

“I'm not interested in drugs for mind-altering purposes,” Seepy said. “I'm interested specifically in marijuana because of its medical properties. Here's an old saying that I just made up: ‘The weed of crime bears medicinal fruit.'”

“I suppose the Shadow knows,” Rhodes said.

“You can count on it, and he'd probably agree with me that every state should legalize marijuana for medical use, or the federal government should. We advocates prefer to call it cannabis, by the way, not marijuana, which has bad connotations.”

“If you're waiting for Texas to legalize marijuana, you might have a long wait.”

“Cannabis. And maybe the wait won't be as long as you think. The legislature passed a very narrow bill that allows for the use of small doses of a marijuana-derived product with most of the THC removed. The problem is that it can be prescribed only for epilepsy, and a regular doctor can't prescribe it. Only a neurologist or epileptologist can. That's a start, but that's all it is. There's a lot of evidence that cannabis can cure or help with a lot of diseases including several kinds of cancer, but if you're suffering from those things in Texas, you can't get it to help your condition. I just don't think that's right.”

“You've done some research,” Rhodes said. “It's almost like you're on a crusade.”

“I am on a crusade,” Seepy said. “My bucket list includes getting cannabis made legal in every state. You want to know why?”

Rhodes didn't think he had a choice. Seepy's eyes were lighting up as if there were a lantern in his head. It wasn't the light of fanaticism, or Rhodes hoped it wasn't, but there was a zeal there that was impossible to miss.

“You're not going to sing that medical marijuana song you wrote, are you?” Rhodes asked.

“I'm glad you remembered it,” Seepy said. “It's on my YouTube channel. I've written a new one, too. You can watch it anytime you want to.”