Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 20 - Compound Murder (19 page)

“Ranch style,” Duke said, joining Rhodes at his car. “From the fifties, right?”

“I think so. It’s been kept up, though.”

“Not the yard,” Duke said.

“Not everybody likes yard work.”

“I do. What’re we after this college guy for besides that he lied to you?”

“I’m not sure,” Rhodes said, “but something’s going on with him. I thought it might be a good idea to have someone with me in case he assaulted me with a poetry book.”

Duke hitched up his holster. “I’m your man.”

“Let’s go, then,” Rhodes said.

They went up the cracked walk, and Rhodes knocked on the front door. No one responded, and Rhodes was about to knock again when he heard someone moving around inside. Harris’s voice, muffled by the door, asked who was there.

“Sheriff Dan Rhodes.”

The door opened, but only a little bit. Harris didn’t take off the chain latch, and Rhodes could see only a bit of his face through the opening.

“I was about to go back to the campus, Sheriff,” Harris said. “Can we talk there?”

“Better that we do it here and now,” Rhodes said.

“Who’s that with you?”

“Deputy Duke Pearson. He’ll be sitting in on our discussion.”

If Harris didn’t want to let them in, there was nothing Rhodes could do, aside from kicking down the door, which might be fun but which wasn’t strictly legal, no matter how many times it happened on TV shows.

Harris either didn’t know that Rhodes didn’t have a right to kick down his door or he didn’t want to avoid Rhodes badly enough to take the chance. The door closed. Rhodes heard the chain slide out of the slot, and then the door opened.

Harris didn’t look as dapper as he had on the previous morning. His eyes were red, as if he hadn’t slept much, and he didn’t have on a jacket and tie, just some khaki slacks, a white shirt, and a pair of scuffed loafers.

“I’m supposed to have office hours this afternoon,” Harris said. “I really do need to get back to the campus.”

“We won’t keep you long,” Rhodes said.

Harris gave in. “All right. Come on into the den.”

Rhodes and Duke followed Harris into a paneled room with new carpet and bookshelves along two walls. The bookshelves were filled with neatly arranged volumes with colorful spines. If there was one thing Rhodes had learned so far in the investigation, it was that college English teachers owned a lot of books.

A big flat-screen TV set hung on a third wall of the den. The furniture looked as if it might have come with the house, but if it had, it had been well taken care of. Harris stood near the sofa. He didn’t invite them to sit, so maybe he planned to do the looming this time if Rhodes gave him a chance.

Rhodes didn’t. “We’ll be here long enough for you to have a seat,” he said.

Harris dropped down on the sofa. The inlaid mahogany coffee table in front of it held a couple of coasters and the TV remote.

Duke sat in an uncomfortable-looking chair, while Rhodes loomed.

“I have a couple of questions about yesterday morning,” Rhodes said.

He waited a couple of seconds, but Harris didn’t respond.

“You said you were in the faculty lounge when you heard about Wellington’s death,” Rhodes said.

Harris looked up at him. “I did? Then I must’ve been there.”

“I don’t think you were,” Rhodes said. “I’ve talked to several people who were, and nobody remembers having seen you. You’re usually on hand to get your early cup of coffee, so what happened to keep you away yesterday?”

“I’m pretty sure I was there,” Harris said.

Harris had been nervous at the campus when Rhodes talked to him, but he was worse now. His voice was weak. He slumped, twisted his hands together, and didn’t look up at Rhodes.

“Not according to the people I talked to.”

Harris tried to buck up. He straightened his back and put his hands on his knees.

“They must be mistaken, then,” he said.

“I don’t think so,” Rhodes said. “I think you’re hiding something from me. Why don’t you tell me now and save us both some time.”

Harris was undergoing a transformation. He stood up and looked Rhodes squarely in the eyes.

“I don’t know a thing, and it’s time for me to get back to the college. Unless I’m under arrest. Am I under arrest?”

TV, Rhodes thought. Everybody watched too much TV.

“You’re not under arrest,” he said. “You can go whenever you want to.”

“I thought so. You can go first. I’ll see you to the door.”

“No need of that,” Rhodes said. “Come on, Deputy Pearson.”

Duke hadn’t said a word the whole time. He unfolded his lanky frame and got up out of the chair. It didn’t look easy, but he managed it. Rhodes was halfway to the door when Duke caught up with him.

“He’s guilty of something,” Duke said. “I don’t know what it is, but I know it’s something.”

“I’ll find out.”

“You think so?”

“I know so,” Rhodes said.

Chapter 17

Duke went back on patrol, and Rhodes went to the jail. He didn’t have time for Hack and Lawton’s banter, so to avoid it and to satisfy them, he told them pretty much what he’d been doing. They didn’t have any good stories to entertain him with, so Rhodes worked for a few minutes on his reports. He had a feeling there was something he’d overlooked, maybe more than one thing. He figured it would come to him if he didn’t worry about it, but there was a little itchy feeling at the back of his brain that wouldn’t leave him alone. He’d almost figured it out when Buddy came in, and then Rhodes remembered what it was.

“How’d it go at the courthouse this morning?” Rhodes asked.

“The judge released the kid on a personal bond,” Buddy said. “I hope that was the right thing.”

“The boy needs him an education,” Hack said. “Might as well let him get one. Without it he might end up like me, a broke-down old dispatcher for a sheriff who don’t appreciate what-all he does.”

“You know better than that,” Rhodes said. “Everybody appreciates you.”

“You think I’m broke down, though.”

“I think you’re healthy as a hog.”

“Now you’re callin’ me a hog.”

Rhodes looked at Buddy. “See what I have to put up with? It’s all right, though. I’m used to it. Here’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask you. Did you have to take Ike home?”

“Nope. Somebody picked him up.”

“Who was it?”

“I don’t know. I just know I offered him a ride, and he said he didn’t need one. I never thought to look to see who it was that came for him.”

“See if you can find out,” Rhodes said. “Go back to the courthouse and ask around. Some of those guys who sit out under the pecan trees all day might be able to tell you.”

Buddy left to do some asking. Rhodes checked his computer to see if Jennifer Loam had any breaking news to report. He immediately wished he hadn’t checked because the top story, crowding Wellington’s death down the page, was the epic tale of Sheriff Dan Rhodes versus the wild hog at Hannah Bigelow’s house. There were even photos of the house, the pig, Hannah, and Mr. Wooton.

Rhodes looked over at Hack, who was sitting at his desk and trying to appear busy while affecting a look of childlike innocence at the same time. He wasn’t pulling it off.

“Hack,” Rhodes said.

Hack turned to face Rhodes. “You need somethin’?”

“I need to know if there are spies in this department.”

“Spies? What kind of spies?”

“The kind of spies that’re feeding information to Jennifer Loam for her Web site.”

Hack’s look of surprise was no more convincing than his look of childlike innocence.

“You thinkin’ maybe Lawton’d do somethin’ like that?” he asked.

“I’m thinking maybe
you’d
do something like that.”

Hack looked hurt. Again, unconvincing. “Me?”

“You,” Rhodes said. “This story quotes ‘unnamed sources in the sheriff’s department.’”

“That could be Lawton,” Hack said. “Since it’s unnamed and all.”

Lawton was cleaning the cells and so not able to defend himself, but Rhodes didn’t think Lawton was the guilty party.

“Besides,” Hack said, “just because we work here don’t mean we don’t have freedom of speech. If somebody was to call here, and I’m not sayin’ anybody did, and ask about what the sheriff was workin’ on or if there was any big stories, well, a person would be obliged to tell ’em. We work for the public, and we gotta keep ’em informed about what-all is happenin’ and how we’re keepin’ ’em safe from things like wild hogs and such as that.”

“We don’t have to tell them about hogs that aren’t wild.”

“Sure we do. That’s the very kind of thing that folks care about. You think they care about people stealin’ copper wire or car batteries? Well, maybe they do, a little bit, but what they
really
care about is a hog gettin’ into Hannah Bigelow’s house.”

The sad thing about what Hack said was that Rhodes thought it was probably true.

“You ain’t gonna start makin’ us clear it with you when we talk to reporters, are you?” Hack asked. “That’d be like we were livin’ in Soviet Russia in the days when there was such a thing. Censorship, that’s what it’d be.”

Rhodes didn’t think it would be as bad as all that, but he couldn’t really blame Hack for telling Jennifer the story. Hack might have made it sound more interesting than it had been, but Jennifer Loam was the one who’d gone out for the photos and the interviews, and Bigelow and Wooton exaggerated the whole thing because they enjoyed the attention. Unlike Rhodes, who could’ve done without it.

Rhodes couldn’t even blame Jennifer, since she was trying to get more hits for her Web page. The more hits she had, the more advertising she’d get, and the more advertising she got, the more money she’d make.

Even though he understood how things worked, Rhodes didn’t like it. He needed some help in finding out how Wellington had died and who was responsible, not publicity for getting a pig out of a house, especially when the hog wasn’t even a real threat to anybody. Or even a hog.

“I’m not going to tell you not to talk to reporters,” Rhodes told Hack. “I just wish the reporters wouldn’t make such a big deal out of things.”

“It’s a big deal for around here,” Hack said. “We don’t have terr’ists blowing up stuff like Sage Barton does. We have to settle for hogs in an old lady’s house.”

“Another page from the story of my life,” Rhodes said.

“Huh?”

“Never mind,” Rhodes said, and he was saved from further conversation by the ringing of the phone.

Hack answered, talked awhile, then muted the receiver and turned to Rhodes. “Your pal Seepy Benton is on the line. He says he has some information for you, but he doesn’t want to talk on the phone. Says he’d like for you to come to his office if you’re not too busy savin’ people from wild hogs.”

“You’re making that last part up,” Rhodes said.

“Cross my heart,” Hack said. “I guess he looks at the Internet like ever’body else.”

“More than most, I expect. Tell him I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

Hack told him. Rhodes put things on his desk into a semblance of order and went to see what Seepy had to say.

*   *   *

“I heard some students talking,” Seepy said.

Rhodes was in his office, and the same equation, or whatever it was, that Benton had written on the dry-erase board at noon was still there. It didn’t make any more sense to Rhodes now than it had then.

“You’re not investigating, are you?” Rhodes asked.

“No, nothing like that. You’ve stripped me of my badge. I just happened to overhear them. I was meditating in the restroom. They didn’t even know I was there.”

“There’s not a faculty restroom?” Rhodes asked.

“This is a democratic community college,” Benton said. “Nobody gets special treatment. Anyway, I was in the restroom—”

“I don’t need too much personal information,” Rhodes said. “Just tell me what you found out, if anything.”

“I found out that Dr. Harris is an interesting guy.”

Anything about Harris might prove to be of use to Rhodes, though the fact that he was interesting to students seemed like minor news. Seepy, however, like everyone else that Rhodes dealt with, never gave the important facts first.

“I assume you mean interesting in a way that might affect what I’m working on,” Rhodes said. “So tell me.”

“They don’t like the way he teaches. They say he drones on and on about poetry. He tells them what to think about poems, and if they disagree with him, he gets upset.”

That didn’t sound interesting to Rhodes. “Kids always gripe about their teachers, don’t they?”

“That’s not the point,” Seepy told him. “The point is that they looked him up on ProfessoRater before they signed up for his class. According to that source, he’s almost as awesome as I am.”

“And we all know that couldn’t possibly be true.”

Seepy didn’t respond to Rhodes’s crack. He turned to his computer and called up a Web page with a few strokes of his keyboard.

“Look at this,” Seepy said. “They were expecting something a lot better than they got.”

Rhodes moved over to the computer to see what Seepy had for him. It was Harris’s page on ProfessoRater. According to the site, Harris was good. He was very good.

“You’re right,” Rhodes said. “He’s as awesome as you are.”

“Almost. I said he was
almost
as awesome, and that’s what it says here, but the students didn’t believe it. They said they’d both rated him low, and so had a lot of other students they knew. If that’s true, it’s not showing up here.”

“Maybe there’s a time lag.”

“Not that much of one. The students who rated him had his class last year.”

“So what does this mean?” Rhodes asked.

For once Seepy had to admit that he didn’t have the answer. “I don’t know. I can think of a couple of possibilities, but that’s all.”

“One possibility is that the students were just talking,” Rhodes said, “and that they didn’t really go to the trouble of doing the ratings.”

“There’s that,” Benton said. “I don’t think that’s true, though.”

“So what’s another possibility?”

“That Harris has found a way to beat the system, that he hacked into it and changed his ratings.”