Bill Crider - Shotgun Saturday Night

“Yeah,” Lawton said. “They wasn’t gone at all. They was still patrollin’ in the area, and when she came out of the oil field, they ran right up on her.”

“Brought her in and charged her,” Hack said. “She called a lawyer, and he come down early this mornin’ and put up bond.”

“What about the heart attack?” Rhodes asked.

“Oh, she had that right after she got here,” Hack said.

“Fell right down on the floor and rolled her eyes and kicked a little bit and yelled that her time was comin’. Said she had a weak heart, and the police brutality had done her in.”

“Wasn’t much to it,” Lawton said. “You remember old Billy Lee Tingley? Now, there was a guy who knew how to have a heart attack. I’ve seen him throw one or two right here in this room that would’ve fooled Dr. Denton Cooley his own self.”

Hack smiled a reminiscent smile. “He could sure do it, all right. Whatever happened to him?”

“Got drunk one night and went to sleep on the railroad tracks down near Thurston,” Lawton said. “Train killed him.”

“About this prisoner,” Rhodes said.

“Not much to tell,” Hack said. “Betty Thornton was her name. She ought to have been ashamed of tryin’ to fool two old hands like me and Lawton. I could do a better job myself.”

“Gave that DPS boy a few bad minutes, though,” Lawton said.

“Yeah, I didn’t know him,” Hack said. “He must be a new one. But he’s smart. He caught on pretty quick when you tipped him.”

“Yeah, and that young woman didn’t try to carry it too far,” Lawton said. “She even laughed a little about it. I hated to put her in a cell. It’s not the nicest place in town.”

“You give her the front one?” Rhodes asked. They kept the front cell for women prisoners. It was fairly clean, and it was private, separated from the others by a plywood wall.

“Right,” said Lawton. “We took good care of her, Sheriff. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Good,” Rhodes said. “Now I’m going to make a phone call. Hack, get on the radio and talk to the DPS, see if that new fella’s on patrol. Ask him if he’s seen any motorcycles around lately. Same thing with Buddy and Bob.”

“OK, Sheriff,” Hack said.

Rhodes got through to Charles Adams without any trouble. As Adams talked, Rhodes could hear a television set in the background, with an announcer doing a play-by-play of an NFL exhibition game. When he told Adams what the problem was, the Houston man began to sputter.

“Damn,” Adams said. “Damn, damn, damn.”

“That’s just about the way I feel, too,” Rhodes told him, trying to get comfortable in his squeaky chair. “You don’t think you could enlighten us any, do you?”

Adams hesitated, and Rhodes could hear the TV announcer clearly. Danny White of the Cowboys had just been sacked for a ten-yard loss by a Miami linebacker.

Finally, Adams spoke. “You got a brother-in-law, Sheriff?” he asked.

“No,” Rhodes answered. “I surely don’t.”

“Well, I do,” Adams said. “He’s a doctor, an M.D. Works out of a little hospital not far from here up the interstate. We got to talking the other day, and I told him I was clearing some land, having the brush burned. He was real interested. Seems he was having this little disposal problem. . ”

“I think I’m beginning to get the picture,” Rhodes said. “Can you give me his name and number? I think I need to give him a call.”

“Sure, I guess so. He. . he’s not in any trouble is he?” Adams hesitated. “Hell,” he said, “I guess he must be in trouble or the sheriff wouldn’t be calling. I mean big trouble. He isn’t in big trouble, is he?”

“I’m not sure, to tell the truth,” Rhodes said. “That’s one of the reasons I need to talk to him.”

“Well, all right,” Adams said. He gave Rhodes the telephone number. “His name’s Rawlings. Dr. Malcolm Rawlings.”

Rhodes thanked Adams for his time and hung up. Just as he put the phone down, the air conditioner began to clank louder and faster.

“It’s goin’ out, I know it’s goin’ out,” Hack said, shaking his head gloomily.

“Try to think positively,” Rhodes said. “It might last through the night if you don’t think too many negative thoughts.”

“Sometimes I worry about you, Sheriff,” Hack said. “I really do.”

“I do, too,” Rhodes said. “What about the DPS?”

“Not a thing,” Hack said. “No motorsickles around, least not in a bunch. Not that the DPS knows about, anyway.”

That information didn’t really mean too much, Rhodes thought. There were plenty of places in Blacklin County where hundreds of people could hide if they were of a mind to.

“Ask Buddy and Bob when they come in,” he said. “I’ve got to make another call, if I can hear anything over that racket.”

“It’s goin’ out,” Hack said.

Rhodes turned to the telephone.

Dr. Malcolm Rawlings was in, apparently watching the same game his brother-in-law had been tuned in to.

Rhodes wasn’t quite sure, because the air conditioner was making so much noise that he had difficulty hearing the background noise. He could hear Rawlings just fine, however. The man’s voice boomed out when he answered the telephone. When Rhodes told him who he was and what he wanted, however, Rawlings got considerably quieter.

“Well, ah, you see, Sheriff, there’s been a little problem here, and. . well. . ah. .”

“Let’s put it this way,” Rhodes said. “Just answer yes or no. Did you put those boxes in that brush pile?”

“Well, now, Sheriff, there’s a word you lawmen use. . I think it’s ‘extenuating.’ Yes,” Rawlings said, sounding relieved, “that’s it. ‘Extenuating circumstances.’ That’s what we have here, Sheriff, a plain case of extenuating circumstances.”

“Yes or no?” Rhodes said.

“Well, yes, I did put the boxes there, but there are extenuating circumstances,” Rawlings said. Rhodes thought of Raymond Burr playing Perry Mason.

“Just exactly what are the circumstances?” Rhodes asked.

“Well, as you may know, Sheriff, we usually burn amputated limbs.”

“I know,” Rhodes said. He was getting a little tired of Rawlings’s runaround. “But not in fields.”

“Of course not,” Rawlings said. He chuckled to show that he understood Rhodes’s irony. “But I’ve been doing some work with tissue samples. That’s why I had the limbs in the first place, you see. I certainly didn’t do all those amputations in the little hospital here. We’re just not equipped. And in fact, that’s the real problem. A lack of proper facilities. The furnace is just too small, frankly. It just wouldn’t handle the job.”

“So you decided to dump the remains,” Rhodes said.

“Well, I, ah, wouldn’t say ‘dump.’ I just wanted to dispose of them in an accepted and sanitary manner. They would have been burned, you know.”

“There’s just a little complication,” Rhodes said. “The man who found those boxes is dead. Someone killed him last night.”

There was a lengthy silence. Rhodes listened to the clanking of the air conditioner and snatches of the football game. Finally, Rawlings spoke again. “Do you think that this, ah, incident will get into the news media? I have a. . a professional standing.”

Rhodes thought of the Blacklin County news media.

He thought of Clyde Ballinger. “It might,” he said. “But that’s beside the point. Right now, you’re connected with a murder case, and that’s more important than your ‘professional standing.’ Besides, there’s the matter of proper disposal. I’ll be talking to the state Health Department tomorrow about that problem.”