Survivors Will Be Shot Again (24 page)

“I kinda wish I'd brought a slicker,” Buddy said.

“Maybe you won't need it,” Rhodes said. He looked at the boat. “I'll get in first.”

Since the trolling motor was in the front, Rhodes thought it would be best if he was in the back. That way the front end of the boat would be a little higher, and maybe the motor wouldn't get stuck in the mud. Rhodes didn't think there was any chance of that, but he didn't want to upset Lawton.

Rhodes stepped into the boat, which immediately sank deeper into the water, and made his way to the back. He sat down, and Buddy pushed the boat off into the creek. He jumped in at the front, and Rhodes grabbed the sides of the boat to avoid falling out. Buddy got seated and used one of the paddles to turn the boat downstream.

Rhodes picked up the other paddle, and they got the rowing arrangements settled, paddling for a few yards before letting the boat drift. The creek didn't have much of a current, but it was enough to move the boat after a little momentum had been established.

Rhodes's plan was to move slowly down the creek, all the way across the county, looking for likely spots for marijuana patches. On the return trip they could use the trolling motor and make better time since they wouldn't have to be watching the shore.

The trees along both sides of the bank were thick and tall and grew far out over the creek, covering it completely in many places. The thunder rumbled above them and shook the leaves in the trees.

With the clouds and the trees it was almost dark along the creek. The humidity made Rhodes's shirt stick to his back, and he smelled the mud along the banks and the oncoming rain. Gnats swarmed over the muddy water, and a few mosquitoes hummed near Rhodes's ears.

Rhodes looked for the snapping turtle and the alligator, but he didn't see either of them. A few small turtles stuck their heads out of the water now and then, but they ducked back down when the boat came near. The snapping turtle could have eaten one of them in a single bite.

“That slicker might have been a good idea after all,” Rhodes said as a loud clap of thunder rattled the tree limbs.

“Too late now,” Buddy said.

The rain started to fall, widely spaced drops the size of dimes dimpling the water. Once again Rhodes wished that he wore a hat. He needed to get over his vanity and wear one for practical purposes, but he couldn't quite bring himself to do it. However, a hat would both cover the thin spot and protect him from rain. That was something worth considering.

The rain began to come down harder but in smaller drops that were closer together. The trees blocked some of it, but not enough. Rhodes thought he and Buddy would be soaked before long.

“Just what are we looking for, anyway?” Buddy asked. “Besides a house we can get into, I mean.”

“There won't be any houses,” Rhodes said, wiping the rain off his face. He wouldn't have minded finding some cover, either. “Nobody has ever built near the creek. We're looking for a place on the bank where a boat might have put in, with a trail up into the trees.”

The rain had brought a little breeze along with it, so the boat was moving along just fine without any effort from Buddy and Rhodes. All they had to do was guide it with the paddles and keep it in the middle of the creek. The bad news was that Rhodes was already starting to feel chilled. The weather might be warm, but the rain wasn't.

The boat passed Allison's place, and they were another mile along when the rain stopped. The sun came out almost at once, and while not much of it filtered through the trees, Rhodes started to warm back up. He'd gone from hot to cold to warming up, which was probably not good for his system. He hoped he didn't catch a cold.

“Look over there,” Buddy said, pointing at the bank on the right.

Rhodes looked and saw a narrow opening where a boat could pull in. A muddy trail led up into the trees.

“Let's get out and take a look around,” Rhodes said, and Buddy used his paddle to turn the nose of the boat toward the bank.

They nudged into the mud, and Buddy jumped out of the boat. A rope tied to the bow was in his hand. He slipped and slid his way up the bank and wrapped the rope around a tree trunk. Rhodes followed along behind him, nearly falling twice but each time catching his balance before pitching headfirst into the mud.

“Looks like somebody's been here, all right,” Buddy said. “There's the irrigation pipe, and your marijuana patch is right over there.”

It was smaller than the other two patches, but that was probably because the trees here were thicker and there wasn't any room for a bigger one. It had the same kind of fence as the others, so it had likely been planted by the same person or persons unknown. Rhodes and Buddy walked over to it to have a look.

The first thing Rhodes wanted to check was whether the patch was guarded by an intimidating reptile, but this time there was no reptile of any kind to be seen. Rhodes thought he knew why, but to check he took a short walk up in the direction of where a road was likely to be. He was in the trees all the way to the road. Nobody had put a cabin or a house or a barn on this property. The marijuana grower, or growers, must have assumed they were safe from scrutiny. You'd have to be looking for the patch to find it, and nobody but a snoopy lawman would cruise along the creek for that purpose, and how likely was that? No need for a guard here.

Rhodes returned to the patch, where he didn't see anything helpful. Nobody had been thoughtful enough to leave him any clues, so he and Buddy returned to the boat. They drifted all the way down the creek past Billy Bacon's land and found only one more small patch of marijuana. It was also on entirely wooded property. There wasn't a lot of land like that in this part of the county. Most of it had been farmed at one time or was being used for ranching now, so it had been cleared. Mesquites and other trees were returning to take it over again in some cases, but they weren't thick enough to hide anything yet. Trees grew all along the creek bank, of course, but the land beyond them was cleared and in use most of the way along the water. Whoever was growing the marijuana didn't have a lot of choices for hiding places, at least in this end of the county.

Rhodes and Buddy turned the boat around, and Buddy lowered the trolling motor into the water. It worked smoothly and quietly after he started it, so they started back up the creek. A bit of water left over from the rain sloshed around in the bottom of the boat, but it wasn't too bad. Rhodes's clothes had dried, and he was fairly comfortable. The slight breeze didn't chill him, and it didn't appear that the motor's propellor would get stuck in the mud. Rhodes was sure it would be fine all the way.

When they passed over the Deep Hole, Buddy said, “Kinda wish I'd brought some fishing gear along. I've heard there's big fish in here.”

“Used to be,” Rhodes said, wishing he'd brought some fishing equipment himself. “I don't know about now.”

“Guess we don't have time for fishing, though,” Buddy said. “Gotta fight crime and keep the citizens safe.”

“That's the job,” Rhodes said.

“Too bad you didn't find out anything from those marijuana patches.”

“At least we found them,” Rhodes said.

“Yeah, but that's all we found. We still don't know who the growers are. Maybe this wasn't a wasted trip, but we didn't really learn much.”

“You might be surprised,” Rhodes said.

“You see something you're not telling me about?”

“No. I'm just shoving some puzzle pieces around. Some of them are starting to fit. Or maybe I'm forcing them where they don't belong. We'll have to wait and see.”

“We gonna burn those marijuana fields?”

“Eventually. We need to settle some other things first. I don't think there's going to be a harvest anytime soon.”

“You gonna let Seepy watch the burning?”

“Not a chance,” Rhodes said.

 

Chapter 20

After Rhodes and Buddy returned Lawton's boat and motor, Rhodes dropped Buddy off at the jail and went home to get the Tahoe. He'd decided that he'd visit the Hunts' house after all. Will might not be an expert at removing things, so maybe he'd overlooked something that would help Rhodes to put some more of the puzzle pieces in the right places. Rhodes thought he'd found some of the missing pieces. The picture was starting to shape up, but it still had some big gaps in it. Finding a few more pieces would help a lot.

Rhodes realized that there had been times when he hadn't been able to complete the puzzle. However, even though the picture he wound up with wasn't whole, there was enough of it for him to recognize what he was looking at. The pattern was clear even with the missing pieces. Sometimes that had to be enough.

Rhodes called the jail to let Hack know where he'd be. Hack didn't have any major crimes to report, just a squabble between a woman and her son, whom she accused of stealing her postage stamps.

“I don't think you need me to handle that one,” Rhodes said.

“Nope. Stamps might be a federal crime, anyway.”

“Good thought. You planning to call the FBI?”

“Nope.”

“Probably not a good idea,” Rhodes said. “I'll check in again later.”

“That's right. You just go on and do whatever you want to,” Hack said. “Don't bother to tell me what you found out this mornin' on your little river cruise.”

“Buddy's filled you in, I expect,” Rhodes said.

“That's right. I'm glad I can count on some people.”

Rhodes signed off with a laugh.

*   *   *

This time when Rhodes arrived at the Hunts' house, there were no dogs under the porch, and Will's pickup was gone. Rhodes went out to the barn first. It wasn't locked, so he went in and looked all around. He found some old pieces of rope and quite a few scraps of metal. A broken-down riding lawn mower sat in one corner of the barn, where a few tools hung on the wall. The tools didn't look like they'd had a lot of use, and they didn't seem good enough to have been stolen from anywhere. A gas can sat near the mower, but it didn't hold diesel fuel like the ones stolen from Billy Barton.

Among the tools was a pair of bolt cutters. Rhodes took them down and looked them over. They didn't appear to have had much use, but if they'd been used to cut the lock on Billy Bacon's gate, it should be possible to match them to the cuts. Rhodes took the bolt cutters to the Tahoe and tagged them.

After dealing with the bolt cutters, Rhodes went back to the house and searched the rooms. He didn't find anything that looked to be of any help there, either. If there had ever been anything to find, Will had removed it.

There were very few hiding places. The closets were practically bare, and the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom held only what might be found in anybody's house, none of it new. Rhodes looked in the little jewelry box on top of the dresser in the bedroom that Joyce and Melvin had shared, but he saw only a cheap watch and some costume jewelry, nothing that had turned up on any list of stolen items.

Rhodes remembered to check in the cabinet to see if the pistol Joyce had mentioned was there. It was, and Rhodes picked it up to examine it. Either Melvin hadn't had it with him when he was killed, or it had been returned to the cabinet. Rhodes thought it was more likely that it hadn't left the cabinet in quite a while. It wasn't loaded, and Rhodes didn't see any cartridges for it. He put it back where he'd found it and went back into the room with the new TV set.

Rhodes sat in the rocker where Joyce had sat when he told her about Melvin's death and thought things over. The way Rhodes had arranged the puzzle pieces had Melvin behind the thefts of all the various items that had been taken. Melvin had been down on his luck for a while, and maybe the thefts had been the only way he believed he could turn things around. It had worked, as the big TV set and satellite dish proved.

In the sequence of thefts, some small things had been taken first, and then Melvin's welding rig had been spirited away. Except Rhodes didn't think that the welding rig had been stolen at all. He'd been suspicious from the first because of the dogs. There was no way that Gus-Gus and Jackie were going to let anybody slip around the property without alerting everybody in the house. They might even attack a stranger, as they'd almost attacked Rhodes on his first visit.

Add to that the fact that the welding rig had been insured. Rhodes believed that Melvin had done some smaller thefts and then pretended that the welding rig had been stolen so he could blame it on whoever committed the earlier crimes. After collecting the insurance money, he had to keep on stealing things for a while to make sure that nobody suspected that he was the guilty party. It had been a successful plan up to a point, but then somebody had killed him. That was as far from successful as you could get.

Billy Bacon had a motive for the killing. He'd been pretty hard hit, and the thief had kicked in his well and taken his father's saddle and saddle stand besides. In spite of Joyce's high opinion of her husband, Rhodes was pretty sure that Melvin was the thief and also the one who'd kicked in the well just for meanness. It was an excellent theory, and it was too bad Rhodes had no evidence to support it.

Evidence. That was the problem. Where was the evidence? Rhodes was sure that Melvin could have disposed of most of it easily enough. Houston and Dallas weren't that far away. Just stick the stolen goods in the back of a pickup and take off for the big city. A flea market would be a quick and easy place to get rid of just about anything. Pay for a booth, drive the truck onto the grounds, and start selling.

The thing was that Joyce didn't seem to know anything about the thefts. She would almost have to have known if Melvin had been going to the city to sell the goods. That meant that someone else was selling them instead of Melvin.

That's where Riley Farmer came in. He was Melvin's best friend, maybe his only friend, and was therefore most likely to have been Melvin's partner. Rhodes hadn't found anything on Farmer's property, though, and it was hard to believe that the two men could have gotten rid of everything.