Shotgun Saturday Night

Chapter 18

Had it been physically possible, Rhodes would have jumped several feet in the air. It just wasn’t possible. He did hit the floor flat on his belly, throwing the knife away across the room in the process.

The previous confusion in the other room was nothing to what it was now. There was another shot, and a huge hole was punched through the sheetrock of the kitchen wall. There was a smashing and tinkling of glass. There were yells, and Wyneva screamed.

Over it all was the sound of Mrs. Ramsey’s voice. “I’ll get all you murderin’ scum!” she yelled. There was a fifth shot.

Rhodes staggered up. “Mrs. Ramsey! This is Sheriff Dan Rhodes! Stop the shooting!”

“Don’t you worry, Sheriff! I got ‘em covered. All ‘cept that one that went out the window!”

“Get some lights on,” Rhodes called. “My deputy’s in there. Get him untied. I’m going after the one outside.” He had to trust Mrs. Ramsey to keep things under control. He was pretty sure that Rapper would be the one who got away. He went out the kitchen door, stumbling along, feeling the needles in his hands and feet as the circulation began to return.

He was unarmed, and he hoped Rapper was, but if Rapper got to his bike he would be hard to stop.

As if to taunt Rhodes, the sound of Rapper’s bike came from Ramsey’s shed. Rhodes could see the beam from the headlight. He began looking for something to stop Rapper.

There wasn’t anything, and then Rapper came roaring out of the shed and right straight at Rhodes, pinned there in the headlight beam. Rhodes shifted to the left, and the beam followed him. Rapper intended to run him down.

Rhodes stood his ground, staring right into the headlight, trying to guess if Rapper would really do it. He thought the answer was that Rapper certainly would. At the last minute, just as the bike was about to smash him, Rhodes feinted left and dived to the right.

Rapper went with the feint and went by Rhodes’s diving figure in a rush of sound. Rhodes clambered to his feet to see Rapper doing a sliding 180-degree turn, and then the headlight was coming back again.

Rhodes started forward to meet it, then tripped. He had found the hoe handle that Nellie had been going after earlier. He grabbed the handle and rolled to the left, just in time to avoid being bashed in the head by Rapper’s front tire. Small clods of dirt thrown by the tire stung his cheeks.

Rhodes pushed himself erect with the help of the handle. He’d been taking such a beating lately that his whole body was beginning to feel like one giant bruise.

Rapper spun the bike again, pointing the light at Rhodes.

Rhodes held the handle behind him, waiting for Rapper’s charge. He felt a little like Errol Flynn waiting for the Sioux in They Died with Their Boots On. His rifle was out of bullets, but he could use it as a club. .

It would have been a good idea if it had worked, but Rapper didn’t go with the feint. Rhodes leaned right, but the headlight never wavered. It was too late to jump back to the left, so Rhodes tried to let his body go all the way right. Rapper wasn’t fooled.

He didn’t quite hit Rhodes head-on, however. The last-minute lean had carried Rhodes just beyond the bike, and Rapper, having been fooled once, didn’t want to swerve too far.

For the smallest fraction of a second, Rhodes thought he’d made it, but Rapper stuck out his leg just a little and caught him on the thigh.

If Rapper had been going fast, Rhodes would have been hurt badly. As it was, he felt the solid thunk of Rapper’s booted foot and the equally solid whump of his back meeting the ground. Rapper was coming back at him by the time he got up.

Rhodes ran at him, giving it all he had, the hoe handle straight out in front of him like a lance. Rapper saw it and turned the bike aside. Rhodes swung the handle.

It caught Rapper in the upper arms and on the shoulders, and the effect was almost magical. It was as if Rapper had been lifted off the motorcycle by a giant hand reaching down to pluck him from the seat. The bike continued on across the yard without him, as Rapper landed hard on his back.

The handle was jerked from Rhodes’s grip by the impact, and he jumped on Rapper, trying to subdue him. Most of Rapper’s breath was gone, but he fought back by instinct.

Behind them, the motorcycle hit the side of the shed with a loud cracking of weathered boards and fell on its side, the motor still roaring.

Rhodes, not feeling much stronger than Rapper, got off a few weak punches, which had no effect on Rapper at all. Rapper, sucking great gulps of air, shoved Rhodes aside.

Both men got unsteadily to their feet. Rapper put his head down and made a lumbering charge at the sheriff. Rhodes managed to step aside and hit him in the back of the neck with clenched fists, but Rapper didn’t go down. He turned and threw a wild punch that caught Rhodes a glancing blow on the right cheek and opened up the cut in Rhodes’s mouth.

Rapper looped another punch, which Rhodes blocked with his left. Rhodes then sank a hard right in Rapper’s pudgy stomach. Bad air whoofed out of Rapper’s mouth, and he staggered backward toward the fallen motorcycle. Rhodes followed and hit him again.

It wasn’t much of a blow, but Rapper stumbled on a rock and tumbled back, flailing his arms, trying to regain his balance. He couldn’t quite do it.

Probably the motorcycle should have shut itself off when it fell over, Rhodes thought later, but it didn’t. The chain was still engaged, and the back wheel was still spinning. Rapper’s left hand dropped in among the spokes.

Rapper screamed.

If he’d been thinking, Rhodes might have tried to find the ends of Rapper’s fingers. Maybe the doctor could have done something with them. By the time he did think about it, the next day, it was too late. He didn’t even bother to go and look for them. He’d had too many loose body parts to take care of lately.

The engine of the motorcycle sputtered and died. “Need any help, Sheriff?” Buddy called from the back door.

Rhodes felt a little like someone who’d been run over by a herd of rogue elephants. There was probably somewhere that he didn’t ache, but he couldn’t identify the spot.

Buddy and Mrs. Ramsey had tied Wyneva and Nellie, and then Buddy had yelled for Rhodes. He’d come out and helped Rhodes drag Rapper into the house, where they’d stopped the bleeding and tied him as well.

Mrs. Ramsey was telling her story. “So when the lights never came back on, I figured you all hadn’t come to see about things. I went to the gun cabinet and got my husband’s old thirty ought-six and came to see if I could find out what was goin’ on. A lucky thing, too.”

Rhodes didn’t feel like the time was right for a speech on the dangers of citizens taking the law into their own hands. “Yes, it was,” he said. Buddy was at the car, radioing Hack.

“That woman has caused me grief,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “It’s the dope that’s ruinin’ the nation. People like her have got to be stopped.”

Mrs. Ramsey sat stolidly in one of the wooden chairs where Rhodes and Buddy had been tied. Rhodes sat in the other, his head drooping down on his chest. He was almost too tired to answer. “You’re right,” he said.

Wyneva, Nellie, and Rapper, tied hand and foot, were propped against the wall of the room. Mrs. Ramsey’s rifle was safely out of their reach, and safely out of Mrs. Ramsey’s reach for that matter. Rapper was in even worse shape than Rhodes, barely conscious. Nellie and Wyneva sat quietly, seemingly with little to say.

Mrs. Ramsey was the only one who felt like talking. “She took Bert, and she turned him,” she said, looking malevolently at Wyneva. “He was a fine man, until she turned him. She’s to blame.”

“That’s not so,” Wyneva said. Rhodes looked up. “Bert and me got along,” Wyneva said. “I really liked Bert. More than anybody, ever.”

“Humph,” Mrs. Ramsey said.

It was very late when Rhodes got home, but he remembered to feed the dog, who was waiting patiently in the back yard. He also refilled the water dish. Then he went inside.

The late movie was The Magnificent Seven. Rhodes tried to stay awake for his favorite line, when Horst Buckholtz tells Yul Brynner that the men of the Mexican village have hidden their women for fear that Brynner and his gunslingers might rape them. “Well,” says Brynner, “we might.”

He didn’t make it, though. He went to sleep while Brynner and Steve McQueen were still driving the hearse to Boot Hill.

Rhodes was at the jail early the next morning. Rapper, Nellie, and Wyneva had been booked in the previous night. Malvin and Cox were due to arrive at nine-thirty for their chance at questioning them, and Rhodes, who had been simply too tired the night before, wanted to get a few minutes with them first.

Before he could get to them, however, he had to get through Hack. “Mornin’, Sheriff,” Hack said.

Rhodes waited. He knew something more was coming. It usually did.

“You feelin’ better today?” Hack was being solicitous, something he liked to practice on occasion, to put off telling what was really on his mind.

“I’m fine, Hack,” Rhodes said.”I guess we made things a little hectic in here last night. I was pretty tired after it was all over. How about yourself?”

It was the opening Hack had been waiting for. “I was pretty tired, too,” he said. “But I didn’t get to go right to sleep like some people. I tried to sack out on my cot, but you might know there’d be trouble.”

Now he was getting to the heart of the matter. “What kind of trouble?” Rhodes asked.

“Damned rabbit hunter,” Hack said.

“Rabbit hunter?” Rhodes asked. “It must have been two o’clock in the morning.”

“ ‘Bout that,” Hack said. “That was the trouble.”

Hack stopped. Rhodes knew that Hack wanted him to say something to urge him on, but Rhodes couldn’t think of anything. So he just sat and waited.

“Well,” Hack said finally, “there was this fella who waved Ruth Grady down. Wanted to buy a permit to shoot rabbits at night, he said. Said he used to do that all the time up in Arkansas when he was a boy and wanted to give it a try here. Spotlight ‘em, he said. Like deer.”

“That’s illegal,” Rhodes said. “Deer and rabbits both. Maybe they don’t know that in Arkansas.”

“They don’t know diddly in Arkansas, if you ask me,” Hack said. “Anyway, Ruth told him about it bein’ illegal. Then he wanted to know if she was a real deputy sheriff. Them people in Arkansas got a hell of a nerve. She could tell he was about three sheets to the wind, so she brought him in. He’s still sleepin’ it off upstairs.”

Rhodes had to restrain his laughter. Hack’s indignation was comical enough on its own, but based on Hack’s past feelings about Ruth Grady it was downright hilarious. Rhodes kept a straight face with difficulty. “I hope the judge sets a high bail,” he said.

“Damn right,” Hack said. “Damn Arkansas.”

Rhodes went back to the cell area. The cells were old and uncomfortable. The mattresses were thin, the pipes were rusty. Blacklin County needed a new jail, and before too long they would have to build one. Or else some judge would order them to do it. So far no prisoners had complained, but that was probably because Lawton took such good care of things. Everything was old, but everything was clean. Lawton was mopping the hall when Rhodes stopped in front of Rapper’s cell.

“Did you give them a good breakfast today?” Hack asked.

“The best,” Lawton said. “Miz Stutts outdid herself.”

Mrs. Stutts cooked for the jail. It was sort of a hobby for her, and she did it mostly as a favor to the county, which paid for the groceries and a little for her time. Mrs. Stutts’s meals were another reason that no one had ever complained very strongly about the jail. Most prisoners would readily admit that they ate better there than anywhere else. Some got themselves arrested regularly around Thanksgiving, just for her dressing.

Rapper didn’t look especially thrilled with what he had eaten, but his plate was clean. He sat on his cot, looking like a pudgy man with a problem, his oiled hair in disarray. He was leaning forward, with his elbows resting on his knees, his hands hanging down. The left hand was tied with a white bandage that was already beginning to look a bit dirty. He looked up as Rhodes stopped outside his cell.

The disappointing thing to Rhodes was that Rapper looked better than Rhodes did. Rhodes was sore in places that he didn’t know could even get sore, but Rapper looked basically unscratched except for a few streaks of red on his face where the ground had scraped it. And, of course, his hand. Rhodes knew that under the bandage three of the fingers were shorter than they had been the night before.

Rapper looked up at Rhodes with bored eyes.

“I think we can tie you in to the Cullens murder as an accessory,” Rhodes said by way of opening the conversation.

Rapper almost laughed. “If that’s what you booked me for, I’ll be out of here before you can read me my rights. I’ve already called my lawyer.”

“There are a few other things,” Rhodes said. “Like assault on a police officer, possession of a deadly weapon, conspiracy, intent to commit murder. .”

Rapper stood up and walked over to the bars. “Don’t try to shit me,” he said. “I doubt any of that will stand up. Most of it’s your word against mine. Yours and your deputy’s maybe. Nothing solid. Nothing.”

“Maybe,” Rhodes said. “Maybe not. Then there’s the dope. Lots of solid evidence there.”

“Growing on Bert Ramsey’s land,” Rapper said, gripping the bars and smiling. “Prove I ever had a connection with Ramsey. What Wyneva said last night? Forget it. She’ll never say it again.”

“Let’s say we just forget it,” Rhodes said. “Fine by me. Then we have you, Nellie, Jayse, all standing around in the room with a dead body and Jayse holding the murder weapon. You got a pretty good lawyer?”

“The best,” Rapper said, the grin still in place. “Good enough to get Wyneva to admit the murder again if I want her to.”

Rhodes hated Rapper for being able to stand up so easily. If Rhodes had been able to sit on a soft cot, he would have done so. He had to stand. He wished he’d been able to hurt Rapper more. Then he was sorry he’d wished it.

“All right,” Rhodes said, “but there’s still Bert Ramsey. We’ll get you on that one. All I have to do is find the gun. And when I tell Wyneva that you killed Bert, she’ll tell us everything she knows. The only riding you’ll be doing then is in the prison rodeo down in Huntsville. No more motorcycles for you.”

Rapper laughed, let go of the bars, and went back to sit on the cot, giving Rhodes a little satisfaction, but not much. Rhodes didn’t like the laugh. It was entirely too confident.

“There’s only one little problem with that idea, Sheriff,” Rapper said.

“What’s that?”

“You’ll never find the gun.” Rapper put his arms behind his head, lifted his feet up on the cot, and lay back.

“I’ll find it,” Rhodes said.

“It won’t be easy,” Rapper said to the ceiling.

“I didn’t say it would be easy,” Rhodes said. “I said I’d find it.”

“How’ll you prove it’s mine?” Rapper asked, still looking up.

Rhodes paused. He didn’t know.

“Anybody ever see me with a gun?” Rapper said, pressing it. “Did you? Except for your own pistol, of course.”

“Fingerprints,” Rhodes said, but he wasn’t confident.

“What if I wiped it clean?” Rapper said. “Or better yet, what if I didn’t kill Ramsey?”

Now it was Rhodes who was gripping the bars, looking in at Rapper. “If you didn’t, who did?”

“How do I know? I’m not the sheriff.” Rapper sat up. “Look, you’ve caught me and roughed me up, and I’m not complaining. I may even be guilty of a couple of things. Or maybe I’m not. But I’m not going to be set up for some stupid charge like murder. Think about it. Why would I kill Ramsey? The guy was a gold mine for me. We were raking it in. That is, we were if what you think is true. So why do I kill him? Answer that one.” Rapper put his hands behind his head and lay back down.

Rhodes stood looking at him through the bars for a minute, then went out into the office. He sat in his chair that no longer squeaked and waited for Cox and Malvin.