The Wild Hog Murders (2 page)

“Is he alive?” Ruth asked.

“Looks like he’s breathing,” Boyd said.

Rhodes couldn’t tell in the dim light, but the hog’s sides might have moved slightly.

Boyd looked back at the Ford. “Must’ve just stunned him when he hit the car. Hogs got thick hides and thicker skulls. What you wanna do about him?”

“We can’t just leave him here,” Rhodes said. “We need to get him out of the road.”

“Leave him there long enough, maybe he’ll wake up and walk off,” Autry said.

“Maybe he will and maybe he won’t,” Rhodes said. “If he dies, then we have a problem.”

“Buzzards’ll take care of it,” Boyd said. “Eventually.”

“In the meantime,” Rhodes said, “there’s a dead hog in the middle of the road.”

“Yeah,” Boyd said. “There’s that.”

“You’re the animal control officer,” Rhodes said. “What’s the drill? You have a paralyzer dart or anything like that?”

“You must work for a different county if you think paralyzer darts for something this big are in the budget,” Boyd said. He eyed the hog. “Besides, a dart won’t stick in that sucker, ’less you hit him just in the right spot. Let’s make sure he’s alive before we do anything else.”

He walked over to the hog and nudged it with the toe of his shoe.

The hog, which apparently had been waiting for just that moment, squealed like a set of bad brakes. Boyd jumped straight back, almost knocking Rhodes down. Autry caught Rhodes before he fell, just as the hog lurched to its feet.

It stood on wobbly legs for a second, then lumbered sideways down the road as if it had been drinking someone’s corn squeezings. After it had gone about twenty yards, it turned and stared back at Boyd, its eyes glowing almost red in the afternoon mist. It opened and closed its mouth, showing off its yellowed tusks.

Boyd turned to run. Rhodes and Autry jumped for the ditch.

The hog lowered its head, squealed, and charged.

Boyd stepped on his own foot. He fell forward, flat on his face, and the hog ran straight over his back. Without ever slowing down, it slammed head-on into the Focus with a powerful crunching sound that signaled the breaking of the other headlight and the splintering of the fender. The hog squealed again, a high, despairing note. It stood facing the car and rocked from side to side for a moment before falling over on its side and lying still.

“Should’ve shot it in the head when we had the chance,” Autry said as he and Rhodes got to their feet. “Then it’d have been dead for sure.”

“I think it’s dead now,” Ruth said, coming up from the ditch on the other side of the road. She stood well away from the hog, as did the others.

Rhodes helped Boyd to his feet. The animal control officer had lost his cigar, which lay in the road. Boyd didn’t pick it up.

“Are you okay?” Rhodes asked.

Boyd felt his ribs and reached around to feel his back. “Might be bruised up a little. Scratched, too.”

“What about the hog?” Rhodes asked.

“Put a bullet in his head,” Autry said. “That’ll settle him.”

“No need for that,” Ruth said. “I’m sure he’s dead this time.” She walked over to the hog and put a foot on his side. “He’s not breathing.”

“That Ford must be tougher than it looks,” Boyd said.

“Better get him in your van,” Rhodes told him.

“You gonna help?”

“We’ll all help.” Rhodes looked at Autry. “Right?”

“I’ll have to charge the county for my time,” Autry said.

“That figures,” Rhodes said.

Chapter 2

Earlier that day there had been a report from a convenience store where a man had driven off without paying for the gas he’d pumped into a blue Ford Focus. The Focus had been in and out of town over the last couple of months, and the driver had committed at least three other petty crimes.

Rhodes had been driving near the store when the report came over his radio, and he’d spotted the car at an intersection just at the edge of town. As soon as the driver saw the sheriff’s cruiser in his rearview mirror, he’d sped off, and Rhodes had taken off after him.

Now the chase had ended with Rhodes helping wrestle the dead body of a stinking feral pig into the back of the county’s animal control van.

“I wish you’d look at the tushes on that rascal,” Boyd said, looking down at the hog’s impressive tusks. “They could open up a fella’s belly like a buzz saw.”

Rhodes preferred not to think about that and said so.

“What you think got them so stirred up?” Boyd asked.

“Hunters,” Rhodes said.

Feral hogs were a big problem in Blacklin County and all over that part of the state. There were well over a million of them roaming around Texas. Some people estimated the number was closer to two million, all of them rooting up wetlands and fields, tearing up cattle feeders, breeding faster than rabbits, and eating everything in sight. Hunting them did very little to reduce their numbers. Some people seemed to enjoy it, however, and at least the hunting got rid of a few of them. Some of the hogs, the younger ones, could be used for meat, but the older ones, like the one that had hit the Ford, were next to worthless.

“Let’s load it up,” Rhodes said.

Boyd had driven past the hog and backed the van up to it. He got out and opened the van’s back doors. Everybody bent down and took hold of one of the hog’s legs.

“Heave,” Rhodes said, and they lifted the dead animal up. Grunting with the effort, they guided its narrow head into the back of the van.

Everybody shoved, and the hog slid into the van. Boyd slammed the door.

“Sure hate to drive back to town with that thing smellin’ like it does,” he said.

“That’s why they pay you the big bucks,” Autry said, wiping his hand on his pants. “Who’s going to help me hook up that Focus?”

“I would,” Rhodes said, “but I’d have to charge you for my time.”

“Ha-ha,” Autry said, and he clomped off to do his job.

“Drop it off at the impound lot,” Rhodes called to him, “and don’t touch anything on the inside.”

“I know my job,” Autry said.

“What about us?” Ruth asked. “What’s our job? Are we going after the men from the Ford?”

“That’s why they pay us the big bucks,” Rhodes said. “I heard a lot of shooting earlier.”

“The hunters are bound to be gone by now, don’t you think?”

“Maybe, but there might be some more of those hogs hanging around. We’ll need to be careful.”

“I’d hate to have to go after anybody in those woods,” Boyd said. “’Specially if they had guns.”

“All you have to do is get rid of that hog,” Rhodes said.

“Thinkin’ about what you’re gonna do, I’d say the hog don’t smell so bad after all.”

Boyd got in his van and drove away. Autry already had the Focus up on the wrecker, and he followed Boyd. They’d have to drive about a quarter of a mile before they found a place to turn around and head back to Clearview.

Rhodes and Ruth got their shotguns and flashlights out of the county cars.

“Watch where you walk,” Rhodes told the deputy. “The hogs have torn up the field pretty bad.”

Rhodes hoped he could make it to the woods without falling. Not that he was eager to get into the woods.

“Didn’t you have a problem with some hogs once upon a time?” Ruth asked.

“It was before you came to work with us,” Rhodes said, remembering the time he’d spent in the hospital. “It could’ve been worse.”

They walked a little farther, picking their way carefully, and Ruth said, “Did you get a look at the men in the car?”

“Not much of one. I know that one of them was smaller than the other one and had on a blue shirt. That’s about it.”

“What about the clerk where they stole the gas?”

“I don’t think so. He was busy with a customer.”

“Security camera?”

“There’s one in the store, I’m sure,” Rhodes said. “I don’t know if they have one for the parking lot.”

In fact, he was pretty sure they didn’t. Clearview, Texas, wasn’t exactly the place to go to see all the latest high-tech surveillance equipment in action.

“So we don’t have much to go on,” Ruth said.

“We don’t,” Rhodes said, “but if we run across two men lost in the woods, we can be pretty sure they’re the ones we’re looking for.”

“What about the hunters?”

“They won’t be lost, and like you said, they’re probably gone. I haven’t heard any shooting lately, and I haven’t heard anything from the dogs in a good while, either.”

Almost as soon as Rhodes spoke, they heard shots, two flat cracks from somewhere in the trees.

“Those weren’t rifle shots,” Ruth said.

“Handgun,” Rhodes said. “Somebody’s doing some close-in work.”

“On a hog?”

“The dogs could’ve pulled one down. The hunters could have used a pistol to kill it.”

Ruth was skeptical. “You said you hadn’t heard the dogs, and neither have I. The hunters are gone. Even if they were here, I don’t think they’d be using a pistol.”

“We’ll just have to see what we find,” Rhodes said. “And be careful.”

When they entered the woods, the going wasn’t any easier. There were lots of oaks and pecan trees, which was to be expected. The hogs looked for mast and rooted up the ground as they fed on it. Rhodes stumbled but put out a hand and caught hold of a tree branch to avoid falling.

“I’m surprised a lot of those hunters don’t break their legs,” Ruth said while Rhodes steadied himself.

“I think there have been a couple of them in the ER this year,” Rhodes said.

“You might be there next.”

“I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”

They started on their way again, and Ruth said, “Where do you think those shots came from?”

“Straight ahead, more or less. It’s hard to be sure, though, in these trees.”

The mist was thicker under the trees, and it was darker than it had been in the field. Rhodes remembered some scary animated movie he’d seen when he was a kid. He didn’t recall much about it other than tree branches grasping at people in the dark, but grasping trees weren’t nearly as dangerous as wild hogs.

Or as people with guns, for that matter.

“Do you hear something?” Ruth asked.

Rhodes stopped to listen. He heard some night noises, a squirrel or a bird in the tree branches, a car on the road a long way off, a screech owl somewhere ahead of them.

“People talking, I mean,” Ruth said when he told her.

“No,” Rhodes said.

“I was thinking about those pistol shots,” Ruth said. “If somebody shot a hog, they’d be hauling it out of here. The dogs would be barking. We’d hear a truck.”

Rhodes had thought the same thing.

“We’d better be careful,” Ruth said.

“I thought we were being careful.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rhodes knew, all right, and he planned to take plenty of care, though it was hard to walk through unfamiliar woods without making noise. The only good thing about it was that they hadn’t had to use the flashlights yet. The lights would have made them good targets.

“What’s that up ahead of us?” Ruth whispered.

“Looks like somebody’s sitting there,” Rhodes said, and they stood still, trying to make out the person or whatever it was.

Rhodes could see a dark bulk lying still near the trunk of the tree. If it was a man, he wasn’t moving. Rhodes moved forward. Ruth moved away from him, and both of them brought up their shotguns.

When they got to within ten or fifteen yards of the figure, it became clear that it was a man. Rhodes called out to him.

“This is the sheriff,” he said. “Put your hands behind your head and don’t move.”

He waited for a couple of seconds, and Ruth said, “Maybe he heard you. He’s not moving.”

“He’s not putting his hands behind his head, either,” Rhodes said.

He punched the button that turned on his flashlight and, holding the light well away from himself, trained the beam on the man. His head was at an odd angle, and his open eyes reflected the light.

“I think he’s dead,” Ruth said.

Rhodes directed the beam at the man’s chest, and then he saw the dark stains on the front of a blue shirt.

“It wasn’t a hog that we heard being shot,” Ruth said.

They walked over to the man and shined both flashlights on him. He was the smaller of the two men Rhodes had seen, the one who’d been driving. He hadn’t shaved in a day or so, and his clothes looked as if they hadn’t been changed for a while.

“This probably explains those pistol shots we heard,” Rhodes said. “This is a crime scene now.”

“Unless it was an accident,” Ruth said.

“Possible. Not likely.”

“We can’t work the scene very well in this weather,” Ruth said.

“We’ll do the best we can,” Rhodes said. “I’ll get started. You go back and radio Hack and tell him to get Duke and Buddy out here to patrol the area. Tell him to put out a bulletin, and tell him to spread the news that there’s an armed and dangerous man on the loose out here.”