Ghost of a Chance (26 page)

When he got to the jail, he told Hack that the cemetery ghosts were as good as broken. Or busted, or caught. Whichever Hack preferred. He told him to send Ruth Grady out with her lasso to round them up.

“There are probably two of them,” Rhodes said. “Maybe more. She’ll have to hunt them down.”

“Hunt what down?” Hack said. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

Lawton was there, too, getting ready to do his morning count of the prisoners.

“Yeah,” he said. “What’re you talkin’ about?”

Rhodes could have given them an even bigger dose of their own medicine, but he didn’t have time for it. So he told them about the emus.

“Dang,” Hack said. “I gotta hand it to you, Sheriff. I never would’ve thought of that. Are you sure that’s what the ghosts are?”

“I’m sure,” Rhodes said. “I saw one of them last night. Ivy saw it, too.”

“I guess if Ivy saw it, that cinches it,” Lawton said. “There’s just one little problem, though.”

“Problem?” Rhodes said.

“Yeah. If that was an emu out there in the cemetery,
what was in here? It wasn’t any emu, I can tell you that. Our security might not be as tight as in a big city jail, but it’s tight enough to keep a six-foot-tall bird out.”

“Has anybody seen a ghost in here since there was one reported out in the cemetery?” Rhodes asked.

“No,” Lawton said.

“And who’s going to tell the prisoners that we know what the one out there is?”

“Oh,” Lawton said. “Not me. What about you, Hack?”

“Not me. I don’t like ghosts hangin’ around where I’m tryin’ to do my work.”

“So as long as they think the ghost is in the cemetery, we don’t have to worry,” Rhodes said. “Right?”

“Right,” Hack said, and Lawton echoed him.

“So that just leaves one thing to worry about,” Hack said.

“What now?” Rhodes asked.

“Those emus. How’s Ruth gonna haul ‘em anywhere? She can’t use the county car. They’ll make a mess of it.”

“Couldn’t be worse than some of the drunks she brings in,” Lawton said. “You ever smell the car after one of them’s heaved in the back seat? Lordy mercy.”

“She won’t have to bring them in a car,” Rhodes said. “Hack, you call one of the commissioners, Purcell will do, and tell him we need a truck and trailer. And someone to help Ruth load the emus. That’ll take care of it.”

“I guess you’re right,” Hack said. “We could use an animal control officer around here.”

“No money,” Rhodes said. “After you call Purcell, get in touch with Buddy. He and I are going to visit the Packers.”

“You gonna pick them up for stealin’ and drug makin’?” Hack asked.

“We can’t prove a thing on the drug charge. But the stealing, well, that’s another story.”

“What about Nard King?”

“We’re not going to arrest him. I have something else in mind.”

“You want to let me know what it is?”

“He’s going back into the emu business,” Rhodes said.

Rhodes went by the office of Jack Parry, the county judge, and got a search warrant. This time he was going to be fully prepared. Then he went back by the jail for Buddy, and they drove to Obert.

Their first stop was at Nard’s house. Rhodes drove into the yard, and Buddy pulled in behind him. Nard’s pickup wasn’t there. Rhodes went to the house and knocked. No one answered. It was clear that there was no one at home.

“You think he’s skipped?” Buddy asked.

Rhodes considered that idea.

“No,” he said. “But I think we’d better be even more prepared for the Packers than we thought.”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“It just occurred to me that maybe there’s a tuition refund after all.”

Buddy didn’t get it. “Tuition refund?”

“Call it a makeup class. Rapper didn’t give the Packers their money back, but he might agree to teach them what they wanted to know, as long as they provided the classroom.”

“You think they’d be crazy enough to do it at their place?”

“They might. They have plenty of houses to do it in if you count the mobile homes.”

“They’ve got guns, right?”

“Plenty of them,” Rhodes said.

“Doesn’t bother me,” Buddy said. “You think Rapper’ll blow things up again?”

“I don’t think the Packers would let him.”

“Let’s hope you’re right,” Buddy said.

Rhodes didn’t see any motorcycles when he drove into the Packers’ yard, but there were a couple of pickups that hadn’t been there the day before.

Buddy came along behind Rhodes and blocked off the entrance, though Rhodes didn’t think that would help. The Packers would know about other ways to get out, and so would Rapper. He was no Eckstine, but he’d fooled Rhodes more than once. He was the kind of guy who’d just as soon leave by the back door as the front. Maybe he’d rather.

Rhodes got out of his car and waited for Buddy to join him. There were pools of muddy water standing in the yard, and the chickens looked more bedraggled than ever in the dense mist, though it didn’t stop them from pecking around in the mud for whatever it was they found there.

Buddy walked up and stood beside Rhodes.

“Where do you think Rapper and his students are?” the deputy asked.

“Not in any of these places,” Rhodes said, looking at the mobile home. Drops of water slid down its rusty sides.
“There’s another mobile home shell just over the hill in that field behind the house. I’d guess that’s where they are. If they’re anywhere.”

“Think we should check the house, just in case?”

“Wouldn’t hurt. You go ahead.”

While Buddy was knocking on the door, Rhodes walked on toward the back. The ruts that he and Ruth had seen on their previous visit were still there, but they were cut deeper into the mud. Rhodes didn’t want to try driving the county car along them for fear of getting stuck in the mud. He went back to the car and got the shotgun.

After a minute or so, Buddy came out to the car, shaking his head.

“Find anyone?” Rhodes asked.

“Just a kid,” Buddy said. “He told me there was no one else there, but I think he was lying. I could hear the TV going. Sounded like
The Jerry Springer Show
, judging from all the yelling that was going on.”

Rhodes wouldn’t have expected the Packers to be watching PBS.

“They probably told the boy what to tell you,” Rhodes said. “Anyway, I think the people we want will be back in the field.”

“Think I need my shotgun?”

“It might be a good idea.”

Buddy got his shotgun, and the two of them walked around the house and followed the ruts up the hill. The ground was squishy under Rhodes’s shoes, and the wet weeds brushed his pants legs, which kept getting heavier as he walked along and more water soaked into them. Rhodes brushed his hand across his hair. It was as if he’d been standing under a shower.

“You oughta get you a hat,” Buddy said.

Buddy wore a hat day and night, and today he’d put a clear plastic cover on it to keep off the dampness. Drops of water stood up on it as if it were a freshly waxed car. Buddy wasn’t going to have water spots on his Stetson.

“Hats bother me,” Rhodes said.

“Keep your hair dry, though,” Buddy said.

They went through the gap in the fence and stood looking down the hill to where the mobile home sat. There were two motorcycles and a blue pickup parked behind it.

“That Nard King’s truck?” Buddy asked.

“Looks like it.”

Buddy hefted his shotgun.

“How many of them do you think there are?”

“I’d guess six or seven,” Rhodes said. “No more than eight at the most.”

“Gonna be pretty hard for you and me to surround that place. We should’ve brought Ruth with us.”

“You’re probably right,” Rhodes said. “But she’s busy rounding up emus.”

“We gonna try to sneak up on them?”

“I don’t think they’ll be expecting us. But it might be a good idea to be quiet and careful.”

“Quiet and careful are my middle names,” Buddy said.

Then he took two steps forward, stepped into a hole that had been dug by a nesting rabbit or a passing armadillo, and loosed off a shotgun blast that reverberated across the wet field and shook the mist out of the air like rain.

35

T
HERE WAS A MOMENT OF TOTAL SILENCE AFTER THE
shotgun’s roar. It was as if the world had come to a complete stop and was waiting for some signal to put it back into motion.

“Dadgum it,” Buddy said, and things started to move again.

Rhodes rushed toward the mobile home, mounted the concrete step in front of the door, and raised his foot.

“Sheriff’s Department!” he yelled, and kicked the flimsy door in.

The door flew back and hit the wall inside, but by that time Rhodes was sitting on the ground beside the step, which was just as well. Otherwise he would have been hit by one or more of the bullets that zipped through the open doorway.

Rhodes motioned for Buddy to go around back. Buddy was up and running, but he was too late. Rhodes heard
glass shatter, and he knew that Rapper would be on his way out.

Rhodes stood up and fired his shotgun upward through the door. He wasn’t trying to hit anyone, just let them know that he was about to come through. Now that they’d had a second to think about it, maybe they’d hold their fire. They wouldn’t want to kill an officer of the law.

Or maybe they would, though Rhodes didn’t really think so.

He heard motorcycles thunder to life, and then he heard Buddy yell, “Freeze!”

Nobody froze. Nobody ever did. Buddy fired his shotgun.

When he did, Rhodes jumped through the door of the mobile home, turning in midair and sliding in on his back. He fired the shotgun left and right, straight up at the ceiling, before his head hit the wall. The pellets ripped through the cheap ceiling tile and tore through the metal roof.

Rhodes jumped up, waving away the acrid smoke with one hand, but he didn’t see a single soul. They’d all gone out through the sliding glass door on the back, though they hadn’t bothered to slide it.

Rhodes stepped through the door and down into the field. There were Packers running in all directions. They were all armed, but none of them was taking the time to shoot. One of them looked like an explosion in a hair factory, and Rhodes recognized him from the cemetery. He recognized Dude, too, and Ferrell. He was sure he could make a case against them when the time came.

Rapper and Nellie had almost reached the trees along the creek on their motorcycles. Mud was spraying up from beneath their rear tires.

Buddy was standing rigidly by Nard King’s pickup, holding his shotgun about a foot away from King’s left ear. King had his hands clasped in back of his neck. He looked like a man who’d just lost his last dollar and been told his dog had died.

Rhodes ran over to the pickup and opened the door. The keys were in the ignition, ready to help someone make a quick getaway. Rhodes put the shotgun in the seat, got in himself, and started the pickup.

“I’ll be back,” he told Buddy. “Don’t let King get away.”

Buddy made some kind of answer, but Rhodes didn’t hear it. He was already swerving down the hill, the pickup’s tires sliding first one way and then the other over the slick, muddy ground.

“Don’t let me get stuck,” Rhodes said aloud, turning on the windshield wipers and bouncing around in the truck cab like a BB in a bucket. He fought the steering wheel as it spun under his hands.

He was fifty yards behind the motorcycles when they disappeared into the trees. He figured that Rapper and Nellie would go in different directions, and the one he wanted was Rapper. Which way would he go, right or left?

Rhodes drove into the trees. Their limbs slapped at the windshield and obscured his vision. Then one of them grabbed the left wiper and ripped it off the truck. Rhodes wondered if Nard had insurance, not that he really cared.

He made a left turn along the creek bank, heading away from the deep hole where the Packers had tried to hide their Dodge Ram. Somehow the left turn seemed easier to Rhodes, and he hoped it had seemed the same to Rapper. Either Rapper or Nellie had made the turn, Rhodes knew, because he could see the ruts cut by the motorcycle wheels.

The going along the side of the creek wasn’t easy, but it was easier for Rhodes than for whoever was on the motorcycle. Rhodes crushed bushes under the pickup’s tires and bulled his way right over small trees. Once he nearly slid into the creek, but he managed to jerk the wheel in the right direction and save himself.

After what seemed like forever but was probably more like thirty seconds, Rhodes spotted a motorcycle lying on its side right at the edge of the creek bank, its back wheel hanging over the lip of the bank and still spinning. There was a long skid mark leading up to the motorcycle, but there was no sign of its rider.

Rhodes stopped the truck and got out. The woods were no place for a shotgun, so he drew his pistol and walked over to the motorcycle. Its rider had made clear tracks in the mud and leaves leading away from it into the trees.

Rhodes followed the tracks cautiously. Nellie wouldn’t be a problem, but Rapper was another story. Rapper would figure out some way to trick Rhodes if he could. And he could. Rhodes was just hoping it wouldn’t happen again.