Bill Crider: Shotgun Saturday Night

“Let’s go back in there,” Rhodes said. “I have to make some calls, and we can call one of your friends.”

“All of my friends will be in church,” she said.

“Well, you can sit down while I call,” Rhodes told her. He started around to the back, and Mrs. Ramsey followed slowly.

Inside the house, Rhodes walked through the kitchen to the living room. There was a huge Sony television set against one wall, with a Super Beta video recorder sitting in a cabinet beside it, along with a compact disc player. There were two La-Z-Boy chairs and a large, comfortable-looking couch, all sitting on a very thick, brown carpet. There was no telephone.

Mrs. Ramsey sank down in one of the chairs and immediately cranked up the footrest. “Lets me get the weight off me feet,” she explained in a dead voice. “The phone’s in the bedroom.” She pointed to a door on Rhodes’s left.

Rhodes entered the bedroom, which was dominated by a king-size waterbed. There was another television set and another VCR in that room. A red push-button phone sat on the night table beside the bed. Rhodes walked across the plush carpet, wishing he’d remembered to dust off his shoes before coming in the house.

First he called the justice of the peace, then the ambulance. Then he called Hack Jensen. “Get hold of Ruth Grady,” he said. “Tell her I want her to footprint and fingerprint every arm and leg in those three boxes. We’ve got to make sure we can account for all of them one way or another.”

Hack said he’d get right on it, and Rhodes went to look at the body of Bert Ramsey. He’d seen shotgun wounds before, and he already knew just about what he’d find. Whoever had shot Bert had been very close to him, so close that the pattern of shot hadn’t had time to spread out before it hit him in the chest. He couldn’t locate any stray pellets, so he figured that the shot had come from only a couple of feet away. Bert must have gone to the door and been shot almost as soon as he opened it, unless he had known whoever was there. Then he might have stood there for a while, talking.

Rhodes went back to the living room, where Mrs. Ramsey still sat in the La-Z-Boy chair. She had put her purse and Bible on the floor beside her and was wiping her eyes with a handkerchief.

“Mrs. Ramsey,” Rhodes said.

She made another brief wiping motion and wadded the handkerchief in her hand. “Yes, Sheriff?”

“This Buster Cullens. Where does he live? He from around here?”

“He lives down on the Long Bridge road,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “You go on past the church and turn right at the old hay barn. It’s about two miles to the Long Bridge Crossing. He’s livin’ on the Kersey place.”

“I know where that is,” Rhodes said. “What makes you think he’s the kind of man to do something like this?” Rhodes hated asking these questions, especially at a time like this, but he knew it was something that had to be done.

“He’s a hard man,” Mrs. Ramsey said. “Bert wasn’t a hard man, Sheriff. He liked to work, and he was honest and fair. Anybody’d tell you that about him. Buster Cullens ain’t like that.”

“How do you mean?” Rhodes asked.

“He hangs out with a mean crowd. He rides a motorsickle. . ” Mrs. Ramsey’s eyes seemed to unfocus momentarily as she stared off into the vague distance of her thoughts.

“Mrs. Ramsey?”

She snapped her attention back to Rhodes. “It was Buster that done it,” she said with renewed conviction. “Listen, Sheriff, I live down past the church, too, not but a quarter mile past that old hay barn. Last night I heard motorsickles! I know that was it! All the rumblin’, roarin’, and poppin’ like they do, it had to be motorsickles! It was Buster Cullens!” She grabbed the handle on the right side of the chair and snapped it up, causing the footrest to drop. It was almost as if the chair had propelled her to her feet. She scooped up her Bible and purse. “It was Buster Cullens,” she repeated.

Just then the ambulance arrived. “Sit down for a few more minutes, Mrs. Ramsey,” Rhodes said. “There’s a few things I have to do.”

She sank into the chair again, and Rhodes left the room.

Later, after the ambulance and the J.P. were gone, Rhodes went back inside to talk to Mrs. Ramsey once more, but she had nothing to add to what she’d already told him. He offered to drive her to the church, but she said, no, she’d rather go in her own car. He walked her outside and watched her get in the old Ford. The driver’s side sagged and the springs groaned. Under other circumstances, Rhodes might have thought it was funny.

She pulled the door shut, and Rhodes stepped over to the car. “Did you hear anything else last night?” he asked.

“No, Sheriff, I didn’t,” she said. “I know what you mean, but I didn’t hear a thing, except for them motorsickles. And I guess my house is just about the closest one to here.” She started the car and circled around by the shed, then drove away.

Rhodes watched her go. The fact that she hadn’t heard any gunshots didn’t necessarily mean anything. She could have had the television set turned up, or she could have been asleep. He watched the old Ford travel down the road, dust pluming up behind it. It turned into the churchyard just as the first people were coming out the door. Maybe she would find some comfort there, Rhodes thought. He went back into the house.

There was nothing where Bert Ramsey had died to tell Rhodes anything, but he intended to search a little further. There was no evidence that anyone else had looked through the rooms, and therefore, it seemed likely that robbery wasn’t the reason for the killing. So Rhodes decided to see what he could find.

It didn’t take him long. In the back of a dresser drawer, rolled up in a sock, there was nearly six thousand dollars.

Rhodes drove the county car across Long Bridge, a rickety wooden structure that really wasn’t very long at all. It had gotten its name from a certain Mr. Long, who had built the original bridge at this crossing nearly a hundred years ago. Rhodes knew this because he’d once read a book on the history of Blacklin County. He doubted that there was anyone else in the county-well, maybe there were two or three others-who either knew, or cared. Most of them didn’t even know the bridge was there.

The Kersey place was a quarter of a mile past the bridge. There was a barbed wire fence with what people called a “gap” in it, a gate made of barbed wire that looked like part of the fence. Off the road twenty or thirty yards was a house.

Rhodes got out of his car and opened the gap, then got back in and drove through. He didn’t bother to close it.

The house was old and weathered. It had been painted once, no doubt, but that had been many years ago. No trace of the original color remained. The boards were weathered a uniform light gray. The roof looked to be in pretty fair shape; it was probably no more than thirty or so years old. Nearly all the windows that Rhodes could see had glass in them, except for one on the front corner, which had a pane missing.

The house was small, probably four rooms, Rhodes guessed, and small ones at that. Out back there was another very small house, which Rhodes recognized immediately as the privy. It was made of the same weathered boards as the main house.

Beside the house, under the scanty shade of a huge mesquite tree, there was a black motorcycle. Rhodes knew nothing at all about motorcycles, but he could see the Nighthawk on the gas tank, along with the word Honda. From what he recalled of The Wild One , Marlon Brando had ridden a Harley-Davidson.

The house sat up on wooden blocks, and as Rhodes stepped toward the porch, a brownish dog that must have had a Collie in its ancestry came out from the cool shadows beneath the house. It gave a half-hearted growl and its fur ruffled slightly, but that was all. It looked at Rhodes incuriously for a moment, then turned around, got down on its belly, and crawled back under the house. “Mighty fine watchdog I got myself there,” said a voice from the front doorway. Rhodes, whose attention had been on the dog, looked up. A man pushed open a half-collapsed screen door and looked back at him.