Survivors Will Be Shot Again (3 page)

Billy gave an impatient wave. He was a loan officer in the Clearview First Bank, but about twenty years ago he'd been a star running back on the Clearview Catamounts football team. They'd called him “Shakin' Bacon.” His powerful legs had eaten up the field in huge gains, and the town had loved him. As had the college recruiters. He'd been good enough to get a full scholarship to Texas A&M, but a car accident during the summer before he was to begin college had shattered his right kneecap and put an end to his football career. Walking wasn't easy for him even now, but loan officers didn't have to do much walking.

Rhodes got back into the Tahoe and drove through the gate. He stopped just inside the fenced area and started to get out.

“No need to close the gate,” Billy called. “All the cattle are down in the back pasture. I just closed it out of habit.”

Rhodes got back in the Tahoe again. He was getting plenty of exercise with the new vehicles if getting in and out and stepping up and down counted as exercise, which they certainly did in Rhodes's book. He drove the fifty or so yards to where Billy was waiting for him. Billy still looked a little bit like a running back, but one who'd put on a few pounds. His wide shoulders stretched the white cotton shirt he wore, and his stomach lapped over the buckle of the belt that held up his faded blue jeans. Rhodes could identify, though he wasn't as hefty as Billy. Billy couldn't exercise much because of his knee. Rhodes, however, didn't have that excuse. Maybe climbing into the Tahoe was helping.

When he stopped the Tahoe by Billy, Rhodes didn't get out. He just pushed the button that let down the window so Billy could talk to him. Rhodes could smell hay and the musky manure scent of the corral, a mixture that wasn't unpleasant to anybody who'd grown up around cattle.

“I tell you what, Sheriff,” Billy said, sounding a little nervous as if he thought the criminals might still be around, “these thieves are gonna run me out of the ranching business. This is the third time they've hit me in the last few months. And I'm not the only one down here they're stealing from, as you well know. It's about time you came to have a look around instead of sending one of your deputies.”

“Down here” was the southeastern part of Blacklin County, a few miles farther east than Able Terrell's compound. Rhodes had dealt with Terrell before, but so far Terrell hadn't made any complaints about theft from his place. There were some who thought they knew why.

Others who owned property or homes closer to Bacon's place were the ones who were being hit. Some of them, like Melvin Hunt, had lost high-ticket items. Hunt's welding rig, which cost around ten thousand dollars, had been stolen not long after the thefts had begun. It could easily have been driven a few miles to the interstate and then straight south to Houston or straight north to Dallas in a couple of hours, never to be seen in Blacklin County again.

“Looks like with all the evidence you have, videos and all, you'd have caught 'em by now,” Billy said.

Rhodes didn't know what Billy meant by the “and all.” Aside from the video, there wasn't much of anything else. Billy himself had supplied the video evidence of the thefts from his place. His security camera had recorded it and stored it in something called “the cloud.” Rhodes didn't know for sure what that was, but he knew it didn't have any connection to actual clouds.

One man showed up in the video, but he was smart. He was covered from top to bottom in loose-fitting camo gear, a hood pulled over his head and drawn tight around his face. He stayed away from the outside camera most of the time, and he stuck to the heavy shade of a metal canopy. When he came within range of the inside camera, he never looked directly at it. Rhodes wasn't sure that there was only one thief, but if there was another person involved, he was keeping out of camera range.

“The videos haven't been much help,” Rhodes said. “It's impossible to tell anything about the man in them except maybe his size.”

Billy took off his Clearview Catamounts cap and wiped his forehead. It was the first week of September, still summer in Texas. The late afternoon sun was warm, and some days it was downright hot. Billy looked at Rhodes. “On the TV shows, they can enhance those videos to where you can practically see somebody's fingerprints.”

Rhodes suppressed a sigh. “Sometimes those TV shows exaggerate the abilities of their technicians and their computers.”

Billy returned his cap to his head, covering his thinning gray hair. Rhodes remembered that when Bacon had been Shakin' Bacon, he'd had long hair that hung out from beneath his helmet and bounced when he ran free down the field. Those days were gone, however. Rhodes could remember when his own hair had been thicker and longer, too, and now he had a thin spot of his own on the back of his head. Maybe he needed a cap like Billy's.

“Well,” Billy said, “you won't be getting any video this time. You know why.”

Rhodes knew. On their last visit the thief or thieves had stolen Billy's video camera, the final indignity. Billy hadn't replaced the camera.

“I haven't looked to see what they got this time,” Billy said. His mouth had a bitter twist. “Since the thieves come in the afternoon when I'm at the bank, I thought I'd sneak down here early, maybe catch them in the act, but I was too late. My wife thought I was crazy. She told me I'd get hurt if the thieves saw me, but I'm not scared of them. When I got here and saw the lock was cut on the gate, I figured I'd better call you before I looked things over. Wasn't that much left here for them to take, so I don't know why they bothered to come back.”

“There must've been something,” Rhodes said.

“Not enough to make them happy. See my well?”

Rhodes nodded.

“They did that,” Billy said. “Just out of meanness. Tried to knock down the whole wall. Lot of the bricks fell down in the well. Just meanness.”

Rhodes didn't know what to say to that, so he nodded again.

“Get on out of the truck and come look in the barn,” Billy said.

Rhodes got out. The tin door cut in the wall of the barn was a full step up off the ground. It hung open, but Rhodes couldn't see very far inside.

Billy stepped up into the barn with some difficulty and disappeared into the dark interior. Rhodes followed him. The only light came from the doorway and some nail holes in the tin roof and sides. It took Rhodes's eyes a couple of seconds to get adjusted. When they did, he looked around. All he saw was a few bales of musty hay that might have been there for years and the bare tin walls.

“You ever haul hay?” Billy asked him.

“One summer when I was in high school,” Rhodes said.

He remembered how it had been, tossing the heavy bales up onto a trailer where another boy, Robert Haskins, had stacked them. When the trailer was loaded, they'd drive to the barn, unload it, and then go back for another load. The bales were heavy and dusty. By the end of the day Rhodes had been so tired he could hardly move. He'd itched all over, and his eyes and nose had been red and runny.

“Don't haul much of it on wagons anymore,” Billy said. “I just have it rolled up instead and leave it out in the field instead of bailing it. That's what everybody does now. Been that way for years. Can't hardly find a regular bale anymore.”

“I wouldn't want to have to load a hay wagon now,” Rhodes said.

“It wasn't so bad,” Billy said. “Tell you the truth, I kinda liked it. It was good for me. Kept me in shape for the football season. You played a little ball, too, back in your day, didn't you?”

Billy was talking fast. He seemed jittery. Rhodes couldn't figure out why.

“I didn't play much,” Rhodes said, thinking that his day hadn't been so long before Billy's.

“I remember hearing about you. Will o' the Wisp Rhodes, they called you.”

Rhodes had gotten lucky in the first game of the season, returned a kickoff for a touchdown, and gotten a nickname. He'd been injured in the next game and spent the rest of the season on the bench. That had been his whole football career.

“That nickname was mostly a joke,” Rhodes said.

“Maybe so, but you were a hero for a little while there.” Billy paused. “Folks still blame you a little bit for what happened with the team a while back, I guess.”

Rhodes knew what he meant, but it hadn't been Rhodes's fault that a football coach had been murdered. Rhodes had just followed the investigation to its logical end.

“I think they're getting over it,” he said, but he knew better. The Clearview Catamounts hadn't gone to the championship as everyone had thought they would, and that was a terrible thing to people who took their high school football seriously, which meant just about everybody in the state of Texas. Nobody in the town of Clearview would ever get over it. They'd pass along the story to their kids and grandkids, and long after Rhodes was gone people would be talking about the time the sheriff cost them the state championship. They might not remember Rhodes's name, but they'd all know the story. Not that it would matter to Rhodes.

It was hot and close in the barn because of the sun shining on the tin roof and sides all day, and dust motes floated through the little shafts of light from the nail holes. Rhodes sneezed.

“Dusty in here,” Billy said, waving his hand in front of his face as if to ward off any germs that Rhodes might have expelled. “Nothing left but hay, straw, and dust.”

“What about mice?” Rhodes asked. He wasn't fond of mice.

“Might be some mice, but they don't come out during the day. Nothing much for them to eat anymore, so maybe they're all gone. Look over there.”

Rhodes looked. He didn't see anything except a spot where the floor might have been a little less dusty.

“That's where I had my daddy's saddle,” Billy said. “They took the saddle, the saddle stand, the tack, everything. It wasn't worth a whole lot, but it was my daddy's. He's been dead ten years now. It was about the only thing of his I had left. You know who I think is doing this?”

Rhodes wanted to say that he wasn't a mind reader, but in this case he was. Or at least he knew just about what Billy was going to say. Others had expressed opinions about the thefts, and Rhodes expected that Billy shared them.

“It's Able Terrell,” Billy said when Rhodes didn't answer quickly enough. “Him and that bunch in his compound. They're the ones behind it.”

“You have any evidence to support that claim?” Rhodes asked.

“They live there all to themselves, act like they don't have to depend on anybody else. They have to get money some way or another. Thieving is one way to do it. That or making meth. You oughta arrest the whole lot of 'em.”

Rhodes didn't believe that Terrell was guilty of either of those things, although his son had been involved in some thefts once before. Nothing like that was going on now, however. Or Rhodes hoped it wasn't.

“We need evidence to make an arrest,” Rhodes said.

“You could at least search his place.”

“For that we'd need a warrant. We don't have any cause to justify one.”

“They don't need any warrants on the TV. Did you ever see that show about a guy called Castle?”

Rhodes shook his head. “Can't say that I have.”

“Well, when the cops on that show go after somebody, they don't worry about any warrant. They just bust down the door and go on in with their guns out and ready to blast away.”

“Like I said, TV shows exaggerate sometimes.”

“Maybe so, but that's the way it oughta be. We're too soft on crime around here. You need to get you a SWAT team together and go in that compound like you did the last time.”

Rhodes and his deputies had been forced to go after a killer in the Terrell compound. It wasn't something Rhodes wanted to do again.

“That wasn't exactly a SWAT team,” he said.

“Whatever. The Terrells are the ones behind all this. You need to stop 'em.”

“Get me the evidence, and I'll do it,” Rhodes said.

Billy didn't respond other than to walk over and kick a clump of dirt on the floor. Dust flew into the air.

“Did the thieves take anything besides the saddle and tack?” Rhodes asked.

“I don't know,” Billy said. “I haven't been down to the new barn yet. When I saw the door open here, I checked inside and then called your office. I didn't go any further. I didn't want to mess with the evidence if there was any.”

“All right. We'd better have a look, then.”

“Can't you go by yourself? I'd just get in the way.”

“Who'll tell me if something is missing if you're not there?”

“Oh,” Billy said, looking unhappy. “Yeah. I guess I need to come.”

“You go first,” Rhodes said. “I'll come along in the Tahoe.”

“We can walk,” Billy said. “It's not that far.”

Rhodes wondered about Billy's knee but said, “That's fine. I can use the exercise.”

“So can I,” Billy said. “My dang knee's killing me, but I can make it.”

He went out of the barn, stepping down gingerly from the door, and Rhodes followed. Billy led him to another gate, this one mostly hog wire with a wooden frame, and opened it.

“You go on through,” he told Rhodes. “I have to keep this one closed. I don't see any cows, but they might come wandering up anytime. They get down there in the creek bottoms, and I sometimes don't see them for a week. I don't go there. Nothing but thick woods and tall weeds. Might be a chupacabra down there, or a bigfoot for all I know.”

Rhodes knew about the bottoms. He'd been born not more than a mile from where they were now, and before his family had moved to town when he was about ten, he'd spent a lot of time roaming around in the woods, fishing in Crockett's Creek, and looking for deer and bobcats and armadillos. He'd seen plenty of deer and armadillos, but only a couple of bobcats.