Too Late to Die

Chapter 14

Rhodes didn’t even go by the jail the next morning. Sunday night was the quietest night of the week. It was almost impossible to get liquor or beer on a Sunday, so there were very few accidents or fights. Even the few burglars in the area seemed willing to take the day off. Too, he wanted to talk with Mrs. Barrett before questioning her husband. He doubted that a night in jail would do anything to soften Hod up, and if there was a chance that Mrs. Barrett could provide him with any solid information he wanted to get it.

As he pulled into the Barrett drive, he once more marveled at the way things were kept. Such neatness, while undoubtedly commendable from most standpoints, was foreign to him. He got out of the car and knocked at the door.

There was no answer. Rhodes waited about thirty seconds and knocked again. Still no answer. It was possible that Mrs. Barrett had taken some sort of medication after arriving at home. She had certainly been in a state that would seem to have called for something like that.

Rhodes knocked for a third time, much more loudly than before, at the same time calling Mrs. Barrett’s name. When he still received no response, he opened the screen and tried the door knob. It didn’t move. The door was locked.

Rhodes thought he might as well try the back door before disturbing the neighbors. He walked around the side of the house on the neatly trimmed lawn, hoping that he wasn’t displacing any of the carefully manicured blades of grass beneath his feet.

The back yard was as meticulously cared for as the front. Rhodes walked to a small screened-in porch and opened the door. Then he stepped inside. There was a wooden door leading from the porch to the kitchen. The top half of the door had a window in it, but Rhodes didn’t try to peek past its curtains. He knocked loudly and called.

No one answered, and Rhodes tried the knob. Locked. He peeked in the crack between the curtains. He could see very little, but what he could see was more than enough. He stepped back, took off his left shoe, and smashed out the window, after which he reached in and unlocked the door.

Mrs. Barrett lay in the middle of her kitchen. There was a.30-.30 rifle on the floor beside her. Most of her head was gone. There was blood and other material on the ceiling and on the walls. Even a little on the stove, and of course on the floor.

Rhodes looked around. No note was evident. He stepped carefully around the body and looked quickly through the house. There was nothing out of the ordinary that he could spot.

There was a wall phone in the bedroom. Rhodes picked it up and began making his calls.

Once again it was afternoon when Rhodes got back to the jail. He felt that it was his job to tell Hod Barrett about his wife. In a way it was Rhodes’s fault that she was dead.

Rhodes spoke briefly to Hack, filling him in. Then he went up to Barrett’s cell. Billy Joe was nearby, making not a sound. Barrett was making enough noise for both of them.

“Goddammit, Sheriff,” he said. “How long you think you can keep me locked up like this? I may be just a dumb country storekeeper, but I know that I got as many rights as the next fella. I guess it’s time I called me a lawyer and saw about suing the whole lot of you!”

Rhodes didn’t answer. He opened Barrett’s cell, not locking the door behind him, and went to sit on the bunk.

“You tellin’ me I can go, leavin’ the door open like that?” Barrett wasn’t quite sure what was happening.

“You can go, Hod,” Rhodes said, “but first you got to listen to what I have to say. You aren’t going to like it, any more than I’m going to like saying it. Your wife’s dead.”

“Dead? What you mean, ‘dead’? She was fine yesterday.”

“She was in her kitchen, shot dead with a.30-.30. The rifle was right there on the floor by her. You have a rifle like that, Hod?” Rhodes asked.

Barrett couldn’t quite take it in. He sat beside Rhodes on the bunk. “Yeah, yeah, I got a gun like that. Winchester. Haven’t fired it in years. Keep it behind the bedroom door. In case of break-ins at the house. A man’s got a right to protect his house.”

“Of course he does,” Rhodes said. “I’d be willing to bet money that rifle’s the same one used on Bill Tomkins, though. It won’t take too long to find out.”

Barrett’s mind wasn’t working in sequence. “Dead? My wife is dead? Shot in our own house?”

“That’s right, Hod. I know how you must be feeling, and I know what you must think of me and my department. She’s dead.”

Barrett shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “This is some kind of cheap trick to get me to say something. Well, it won’t work, because I got nothin’ to say. I sure didn’t kill Bill Tomkins, but even you can’t be dumb enough to think I could kill my wife while I was locked up in your jail.”

Rhodes shook his head. “No tricks,” he said. “I wish it was a trick. She’s really dead, Hod.”

Barrett wrapped his huge hands around the edge of the mattress of the bunk and squeezed. “If she’s dead, who killed her? Answer me that one.”

“I think it was meant to look like she killed herself, Hod.”

“With my gun? She didn’t have no more idea how to use that gun than a chicken. She couldn’t even have got the safety off,” Barrett said with disgust.

“I said it was meant to look like she did it, not that I thought she did. Anybody who’d think Mrs. Barrett would mess up her kitchen just to kill herself didn’t know your wife very well,” Rhodes said. “I only met her at home the two times, but I knew her well enough to know that much.”

“We had our troubles,” Barrett said, his voice cracking slightly, “but I never thought about her bein’ dead. Good lord, Sheriff, how many more folks are goin’ to get killed around here before you put a stop to it?”

“No more, if I can help it,” Rhodes told him. “Could you identify that rifle of yours, Hod?”

Barrett gathered himself, pulling himself erect on the cot. “How do you mean? You mean officially? No way. I bought it off a fella at a flea market five or six years ago, the way I bet half the guns in this county get bought. There wasn’t any recordin’ of serial numbers that I can recall. There’s probably guns like it all over Thurston.”

“That’s what I thought, and that’s probably what the killer thought, too, if he switched his gun for yours like I think he might have done. But I meant unofficially. I expect you marked your gun some way. Most folks do that.”

“Yeah, I did that,” Hod said. “It’s got a butt plate on it, and my initials are carved under the butt plate. Just take out the screws and check it. Ought to be an ‘H.B.’ under there if it’s mine.”

“I’ll check it,” Rhodes said.

“Who did it, Sheriff? You know who did it?”

“I thought I had a pretty good idea yesterday,”‘ Rhodes said. “At first I thought your wife might know something she hadn’t told, but then I had another thought. Your wife doesn’t fit into the pattern too well, but I guess she could be made to fit.”

“Why are you sittin’ here talkin’ to me then?” Barrett asked. “Why ain’t you out arrestin’ the sonuvabitch that did it?”

“There’s a big problem there,” Rhodes said. “I can make all the facts fit, but there’s one thing I don’t have. The important thing. I don’t have one bit of evidence.” He smacked his fist down on the thin mattress of the bunk. A faint cloud of dust motes rose in the air.

Barrett stood up to his full height, balled his fists, and worked his arms in the air. “Evidence my ass. You get me the man who did it and then we’ll worry about evidence.”

“That door’s open right now, Hod,” Rhodes said quietly, “but if you keep talking like that, I’ll close it mighty damn quick. You know better than to say things like that.”

“It’s my wife that’s been killed, Sheriff,” Barrett said.

“It’s too late to cry about that,” Rhodes said. “You should have worried more about her when she was alive. Maybe none of this would have happened if you had.”

Barrett looked at him. “What do you mean by that?”

“I don’t know,” Rhodes said. “Forget it. It’s hard to say anybody is really at fault in something like this. It’s my fault as much as yours, or as much as anyone’s, I guess. I’d just like for you to calm down and stop thinking about going out there and righting wrongs. That’s my job, and I’m the one to do it.”

Barrett stepped back to the bunk and sat again. “Can I see her?” he asked.

“You can see her if you want to, but I think you’d be better off not doing it,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think it would be a good idea. I think maybe you ought to go on home. Hack can drive you back.”

Barrett continued to sit on the bunk, staring at the floor. Rhodes got up and went out the cell door. “I’m leaving the door open, Hod,” he said. “You can leave when you get ready to.” He walked out and down the corridor, taking a last look back over his shoulder. Hod Barrett still sat, his shoulders moving slightly as if he were crying. In the next cell, Billy Joe Byron sat watching him, his eyes round.

Rhodes paused and looked at Billy Joe. If Billy Joe could get over his fear and start talking, things would probably work out, but that seemed unlikely. Rhodes was going to have to go with what he had, which was suspicion, hunch, and guesswork. Everything fit, but there wasn’t enough to make a case with. He’d just have to see how far he could get by just talking, and maybe with lying a little.

He went on down the stairs. He hoped he was wrong, but he didn’t see how he could be. There was no other answer that fit with the facts. Maybe some scientific crimefighter somewhere could have done better, could have come up with the answer quicker, but Rhodes didn’t see how. The autopsy of Jeanne Clinton had told them nothing except how she’d been killed, which they’d known already. He had to find a rifle that fired the bullets that killed Bill Tomkins before he could pin that one on anybody, and now that he’d found it someone else was dead.

He reached the bottom of the stairs. “Hack, if Hod comes down and needs a ride home, you give him one. I’ll be out for a while. But before I go, call the DPS lab and ask them to check under the butt plate on that rifle from Hod’s house. See if there’s any initials carved on the stock.”

“Sure thing,” Hack said. “I guess Lawton could handle the dispatchin’ work while I’m gone.” He turned to the phone.

There were no initials on the rifle stock. Rhodes hadn’t expected that there would be.

“Where you headed, Sheriff?” Hack asked.

“I’m going to have a little talk with Johnny Sherman,” Rhodes said, starting out the door.