Bill Crider: Shotgun Saturday Night

“I need to talk to you about Bert,” Rhodes said. Mrs. Ramsey shook her head but still said nothing. “You knew about what he was doing, didn’t you?”

Rhodes asked.

Mrs. Ramsey nodded. Rhodes waited. “It was that woman that ruined him,” Mrs. Ramsey finally said.

“He was a good man,” Ivy said. “He put in some flower beds for me once. He really had a skill for working like that.”

Mrs. Ramsey didn’t look at her. She seemed to be staring inward more than looking at anything in the room around her. “He surely did,” she said. “He was a fine boy. It was that woman.”

“She’s the one, all right,” Rhodes said. “If it hadn’t been for her, he’d never have gotten into growing that dope. I know that. How did you find it out?”

“It was the money,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “All that money. He bought things for me. I knew he wasn’t earnin’ that kind of money from puttin’ in flower beds. It had to be somethin’ else. He finally told me what it was.”

Now that she had started, Mrs. Ramsey didn’t need much coaching. “You knew Los Muertos was mixed up in it,” Rhodes said.

“Those motorsickles,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “He got away from that a long time ago, and that woman brought it all back.”

“The night Bert was mu-the night he died, you didn’t really hear anything, did you?” Rhodes asked.

“Naw, I never did. That Buster Cullens, he was one of ‘em, though, and he had a motorsickle. They were around, somewhere. It was all their fault, them and that woman. They ought to all be in the pen.”

Rhodes agreed, and he hated to tell her that they weren’t in jail, except for Wyneva, and that they weren’t likely to be. The one in jail would be Mrs. Ramsey. It was pretty much as he’d thought, so far. All the little things that Mrs. Ramsey had said pointed that way. It was Wyneva and Rapper and the rest that she wanted to punish. They were really to blame for Bert’s death, she thought, and Rhodes had to admit that she had a point. They hadn’t pulled the trigger, though.

“Do you have a shotgun, Mrs. Ramsey?” he asked.

“My husband’s old Remington automatic is in the gun cabinet,” she said.

“I expect you carried it with you when you went down to talk to Bert last Saturday night, didn’t you? In case you met any of his friends along the way?”

“I guess I did,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “I guess that’s right.”

“What happened then?” Rhodes asked, though he thought he knew. Mrs. Ramsey had expressed her feelings about dope pretty clearly, already.

Mrs. Ramsey sighed. “I told Bert that he’d have to give up doin’ what he was doin’. I told him that it was the Devil’s work that he was into, and that he’d lost the woman, and that it was time to stop.”

“And he didn’t want to?”

“It was the money,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “He got to where he liked it. You don’t know how it is, to have all that money. He had plenty for what he needed, just by doing jobs around town, but after he was getting so much, he got to where he liked it.”

The large old woman shook her head and closed her eyes. Her chin sank slowly toward her chest. “I didn’t go to kill him,” she said. “But that dope is the ruination of the world.”

Those words, or something like them, were what had not quite registered on Rhodes the previous night. If he hadn’t been so tired, so beaten up, maybe he would have caught on sooner. No one had told Mrs. Ramsey that Bert had been involved with marijuana. Cox and Malvin hadn’t talked to her, and Rhodes certainly hadn’t told her. But she had known, and with her attitude being what it was, she couldn’t have been happy. So she’d talked to Bert about it.

“He argued with me,” she said. “Told me that if he didn’t do it, someone else would. I guess we got to yellin’. I. . I didn’t point the gun at him, but it got in his face. He grabbed the barrel, and then it just. . it just. .”

Ivy reached out and put her hand on Mrs. Ramsey’s hand. “It’s all right,” she said. “We know you didn’t mean to do it.”

Large tears rolled down Mrs. Ramsey’s cheeks. “No,” she said, “I didn’t mean to do it.”

Later that night, after they had carried Mrs. Ramsey to the jail and gotten Lawton to install her in the “good” cell, Ivy asked Rhodes, “What do you think really happened?”

They were sitting outside her house in the county car. Rhodes wasn’t feeling particularly romantic, and he sensed that Ivy wasn’t either. “I think she’s telling the truth, as she sees it,” he said. “I don’t know that we’ll ever find out exactly what happened.”

Ivy curled one leg up under her and turned to face him in the front seat. “What does that mean?”

“I’m not trying to hide anything,” Rhodes said. “It’s just that what she believes happened and what really happened may not be the same thing. I mean, she really thinks that it wasn’t her fault. It was Rapper’s fault. Or it was Wyneva’s fault. Failing all that, it was Bert’s fault. But it wasn’t her fault.”

“You mean that she can’t admit it to herself, even if it’s true that she went there with the intention of shooting him,” Ivy said.

“Maybe that’s what I mean,” Rhodes said. “I’m just a sheriff, not a psychologist. They have those in cities, but we don’t have one here.”

“You seem to do all right,” Ivy said.

“Yeah, but it’s no fun,” Rhodes said. “I’ll always wonder about a few things.”

“Such as?”

“Such as why she gave me the story about the motorcycles. Had she really heard them? Why try to put the blame on Buster Cullens? He was a likely suspect, in a way, but would she have let him be arrested? And why wait until the next morning to report the murder? That’s the thing that the prosecutor will hammer into the jury, if she’s tried for murder.”

“ ‘If’?.”

“If. Somehow I doubt that anyone will want that. I imagine that she’ll go to trial on a reduced charge and get a light sentence. Probably probated.”

“And do you care?”

Rhodes wasn’t sure how to answer that. If he had known for sure what had happened that Saturday night when Mrs. Ramsey picked up the shotgun and walked out of her house, he could have answered with certainty. But he didn’t know, and he never would. “I care more about Rapper,” he said finally.

“I’m glad you care,” Ivy said. Then, after a minute, “At least one good thing came out of all this.”

“What?”

“You got yourself a dog.”

It got hot early the next morning. Rhodes went out to the back yard to check on the dog, who was already asleep under the shade tree. Rhodes put out some fresh food and water, but Speedo took very little interest. He had settled in, now, and he knew there would be food and water whenever he wanted it. Rhodes walked over and scratched the dog’s head, then drove to the jail.

Hack and Lawton were waiting expectantly when he walked in. That meant that there was something going on, but he was determined to go on the attack first. “How’s Mrs. Ramsey doing?” he asked.

“Fine, just fine,” Lawton said. “ ‘Course, that cot’s not near close to bein’ big enough for her, but she did all right. I think she spent most of the night readin’ one of those Gideon Bibles. Anyway, Ruth’s back there with her right now, seein’ that she’s comfortable. I put that Wyneva up on the second floor.”

“Judge ought to be settin’ bail for Miz Ramsey before too long,” Hack said. “I don’t expect she’ll be around by this afternoon.”

“She called a lawyer yet?” Rhodes asked. He wanted to be sure a lawyer was present when Mrs. Ramsey was informed of all her rights and while she gave her legal confession.