“What do you mean?” Claymore said. His voice sounded suddenly unsure.
“I mean what I said. Nothing’s been proved yet.”
“Listen, Rhodes,” Claymore said, “I know what you’ve been doing. I know that deputy of yours has been sneaking around asking questions about me. You’re not going to drag me into this! I won’t stand for it.”
Well, well, thought Rhodes. Buddy must have been really worried about losing his job to do some investigating on his own. He’d have to speak to him about that. “Calm down,” he told Claymore. “If you don’t have anything to hide, you won’t be in any trouble.”
“I know it looks bad, Rhodes,” Claymore said, a pleading note finding its way into his voice now. “But you’ve got to believe me.”
“I’ll think about it,” Rhodes said. Then he hung up and did.
Hack may have taken his time, but it was less than an hour when he called back. “I done what you told me, Sheriff,” he said.
“Good,” Rhodes said. “Now look where the butt plate was. Are there any initials carved on the stock there?”
“Not a thing,” Hack said.
Rhodes sighed. “OK,” he said. “Hang on to that rifle for a while. Put it somewhere safe in case we need it. I don’t think we will, though.”
“Something the matter, Sheriff?” Hack asked.
“No,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that things would have been easier right now if there had been some initials carved on that gun butt. I guess you looked all over the house.”
“Sure did. I guess I could’ve missed something, but I think if I did you’ll have to do some damage to find it. I didn’t take up any floors or anything like that. You want me to give the place a real goin’ over?”
“No,” Rhodes told him. “I don’t think you’d find anything if you did. Thanks, Hack.”
Rhodes hung up. He’d had a bad feeling ever since Johnny had talked to him in the woods, but it could all have been worked out had Hack been able to find the right gun in the house. Since he hadn’t, Rhodes would have to put his mind to work again. He already had a pretty good idea of how the pieces would fit. It didn’t make him happy.
They let Rhodes leave the hospital the next day, not that they felt very good about it. He didn’t feel too good about it, himself. His ribs felt as if someone were hitting him in the side with a sledge hammer at every step.
In another way, though, it was a relief to get out of the hospital and back into some real weather. The cold air in there had been making him feel even worse than his ribs. Air-conditioning was all right in moderation, but there was no pleasure in too much of a good thing.
Besides, he’d hardly been able to sleep at all the previous night. Every time that he dozed off, someone came in to check his blood pressure or to give him a pill or to shine a light in his face to see if he was asleep. It was the light that exasperated him.
So he’d spoken to Dr. Williams, who had objected to his leaving at first but who had given in when Rhodes threatened to walk out with his gown on and not come back. Williams had cautioned him to take it easy-no strenuous exercise needed. R amp; R was the order of the day. That was all right for Williams to say. He didn’t have an unsolved murder on his hands.
Kathy picked Rhodes up and drove him home. “I’ve put fresh sheets on your bed,” she said. “You can just get right in bed and watch television. I checked the schedule, and The Searchers is on this afternoon. You can watch that and get a good rest.”
“That’ll be the day,” Rhodes said, in a lame imitation of John Wayne. “I’m going to eat lunch, and then you’re going to take.me to see the DA. I need to find out if we can go ahead and charge a dead man with murder.”
Kathy swerved the car to the right, almost running up over the curb and onto a lawn. “I thought you said that Johnny didn’t. .”
“I said he beat her up, and I think he beat her pretty badly. She could have died as a result, I guess. Anyway, you’re the only one who knows what he said, except for me, and I could have been addled when we talked. I was doped up and might have said anything. Right now, I think Johnny will be charged. If I change my mind later, well, we can worry about that when it happens.”
“You’ll tell me why, I guess.”
“Maybe,” Rhodes said, but she couldn’t get any more out of him.
The district attorney was a young man with a shock of wild reddish hair that he could never quite get combed down. It made him look even younger than he was, and he always wore navy blue blazers to compensate for it. Rhodes suspected that he’d read a book about “power colors.” Anyway, it seemed to work. He had a good record for convictions.
Of course they could charge a dead man with murder, he told Rhodes, but since Johnny had confessed it might be easier just to take the whole thing off the books. Was Rhodes sure that the confession was freely given and that Johnny wasn’t just trying to shield anyone else?
“I didn’t exactly read him his rights, if that’s what you mean,” Rhodes said. “But you’d have to call it a deathbed admission.”
“Perfectly acceptable,” the DA said, shaking his red hair. Rhodes shook his hand and left.
At the jail, Hack and Lawton were glad to see Rhodes back. “Not that things have been too tough for us, you understand,” Lawton said.
“Not a bit,” Hack said. “We may be old, but we’re still able to do this piddlin’ little job.”
“Course we did have one bad one this morning,” Lawton said.
Rhodes waited.
“Case of a parrot in a tree. Kids let it out of its cage, and it flew up in a pecan tree in the yard. Buddy went out there.”
“Worse than a cat in a tree,” Lawton said. “With a cat, you know it’s not going anywhere, except maybe higher in the tree. Parrots can fly on off.”
Rhodes admitted that parrots could probably do that. “So how did they get it down?” he asked, knowing that he shouldn’t have.
“Well,” Hack said, “Buddy didn’t hardly know what to do, so he just stood there lookin’ up at it for a minute, tryin’ to come up with some idea of how to get it down. While he was lookin’, one of the kids came up with a rock and chunked it.”
Lawton shook his head sadly. “Killed that parrot dead as a hammer,” he said.
“Got it out of the tree, though,” Hack said. “You got to admit that.”
“That kid is goin’ to make some team a fine pitcher one of these days,” Lawton said. “You mark my words.”
Rhodes was just glad it wasn’t Buddy who had thrown the rock. He went out and got in the car, which had been brought back to town. It was time for one more trip to Thurston.
While he drove, Rhodes thought about what he knew and what he now thought he knew, and he wondered just how much the election meant to him, really. He knew it meant a lot, in a way, but did it mean enough to make him do something he knew wasn’t right?
It wouldn’t be hard, and it wouldn’t be exactly wrong, either. After all, Ralph Claymore should have come forward immediately when he heard about Jeanne Clinton’s death. Instead, he’d kept quiet and hoped he wouldn’t be found out. Just like any other man would have done, maybe, but no other man was a candidate for sheriff. Hod Barrett and Bill Tomkins had kept quiet as well, but they weren’t running for anything, much less the highest law enforcement job in the county.
So he could go public, tell what he knew about Claymore, back it up with witnesses, and probably win the election hands down. And if he could prove that Claymore actually had something to do with Jeanne’s death, that would just be the cherry on top of the whipped cream.
The trouble was that he wanted to win the election because he was the best man. And not just that. He wanted the voters to choose him because he was the best, not just because they had no other choice.