The Wild Hog Murders Page 3

  “I wondered when you’d get here,” Ivy said, marking her place in the book with a piece of paper and laying it on the table.

  “Had some trouble with wild hogs,” Rhodes said.

  “Not Mrs. Chandler again, I hope.”

  “No, this was different—and worse.”

  Rhodes sat across from her and told her the short version of the story. Yancey lay under Rhodes’s chair, keeping a wary eye on Sam, the black cat who’d recently come to live with them. Sam liked to lie near the refrigerator, and he didn’t like Yancey. He didn’t like much of anybody, for that matter, as far as Rhodes could tell. He looked at Yancey with slitted eyes.

  “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt,” Ivy said when Rhodes had finished his story. “Do you want some supper?”

  “I could use some,” Rhodes said, wondering what Ivy might have cooked up this time. She was trying to help him eat healthy meals, which wasn’t easy. For every healthy meal she served, Rhodes sneaked two hamburgers. Or cheeseburgers. His schedule didn’t make it easy to follow a diet of any kind unless fast food counted as a diet.

  Ivy stood up. She was short and shapely, and to Rhodes she still looked around thirty in spite of the gray in her short hair.

  “What are we having?” Rhodes asked.

  Ivy smiled. “Meatless meat loaf.”

  Rhodes thought about that. “Isn’t that one of those oxymorons, like ‘congressional ethics’?”

  Ivy slipped on a pair of oven mitts. “There you go, getting cynical again.”

  Rhodes wasn’t sure if she meant he was being cynical about the alleged meat loaf or about Congress.

  “You’ll like it,” she said, so he figured she’d meant the meat loaf, which she took out of the oven.

  “I kept it warm,” she said.

  Rhodes wondered if that mattered. Ivy put the pan with the meat loaf on a hotpad in the middle of the table, then went to the cabinet for a plate.

  Rhodes noticed that some of the loaf was missing.

  “Have you already eaten?” he asked.

  Ivy put his plate and a glass of water in front of him. “I got hungry.”

  She laid a fork, knife, and spoon beside the plate and handed Rhodes a napkin.

  Rhodes cut a slice of the meat loaf and used his fork to get it on his plate. Ivy set a bowl of mashed potatoes on the table, and Rhodes spooned some of them out. When Ivy sat down, he started to eat.

  The meat loaf wasn’t bad. Rhodes thought it had a lot of cheese in it, and he liked cheese, especially in cheeseburgers. He thought cheese was probably more fattening than meat, but he didn’t mention that to Ivy.

  “Are you going back out tonight?” Ivy asked as Rhodes ate.

  “I don’t think so. The killer’s either out of the county or hiding out somewhere. We have a bulletin out on him, but there’s no description. It could be anybody.”

  “So he could be outside right now, knocking on our door, and you wouldn’t recognize him.”

  “That’s right,” Rhodes said.

  He heard Yancey’s nails clicking on the floor and glanced over at Sam. The cat had given up watching Yancey and gone to sleep. Yancey was trying to sneak up on him, something he’d never attempted before.

  “Have you been feeding Yancey vitamin pills?” Rhodes asked.

  Ivy laughed. “He’s just curious.”

  “He’s never been curious before.”

  “I think he’s gotten more used to having Sam around. Maybe they’ll be friends.”

  Rhodes almost choked on a mouthful of meat loaf. When he’d managed to swallow it, he had to take a swallow of water before he could talk.

  “That’ll be the day,” he said at last.

  Yancey eased along until he was about a yard away from Sam. Sam’s eyes popped open, and he bared his fangs. Yancey yipped, turned, and ran. His toenails clicked down the hallway.

  “He’s headed for the bedroom,” Ivy said. “He’ll hide in there under the bed all night.”

  “Just another dust bunny,” Rhodes said.

  Ivy was indignant, or pretended to be. “I’ll have you know there are no dust bunnies under the beds in this house.”

  “Just kidding,” Rhodes said.

  He finished eating and wiped his mouth with the napkin.

  “I think I’ll go check on Speedo,” he said.

  Speedo was a border collie who lived outside. Rhodes didn’t like to come home without paying him at least a quick visit.

  “Don’t stay long,” Ivy said. “It’s almost bedtime.”

  “You think you can sleep with a killer roaming the streets?”

  “Haven’t you told me more than once that murder’s usually an impulsive act and that hardly anybody kills a second time?”

  Rhodes was impressed. “I’m not sure if I said that. Maybe you heard it on a TV show.”

  “You said it, all right, and I believed it. Besides, who said I was planning to sleep?”

  Rhodes got up and headed for the kitchen door.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  Chapter 4

  Early the next morning Rhodes went outside to visit with Speedo and make up for the time he hadn’t spent with him the previous evening. The wind was from the north, and it had blown the mist away. The sun hadn’t risen far enough to take all the chill out of the air. It outlined the low clouds in the east with pink.

  Speedo dashed around the yard as if he liked the weather. Yancey, who’d also come out for a visit, bounced after him like a dust mop gone mad. Speedo had his chew toy, and Yancey wanted it. Rhodes sat on the porch and watched them romp.

  He didn’t really believe what Ivy said he’d told her, that no one ever killed a second time. Some people certainly did. The first murder might be an impulsive or desperate act that would never be repeated, but now and then there was a second murder to cover up the first one. Rhodes hoped that didn’t happen this time.

  He’d given a lot of thought to the situation at the Chandler place. It was messy. That was the only way to describe it.

  It had all started with a pig named Baby.

  Or maybe not, Rhodes thought. It had really started when Janice Chandler had moved to Clearview and bought the old Tallent place to open an animal shelter. And not just any animal shelter. She seemed to have a soft spot for swine, and the first animal she’d taken in was Baby, a pet pig that had belonged to a man named Floyd Pearce. Floyd had been up in years, and he couldn’t take care of Baby anymore. So he asked Janice if she’d take him off his hands.

  That had been the right thing to do. A lot of people would have just turned the pig loose in the woods and let him go feral like so many others, but not Floyd. He was too attached to Baby to do that, and of course Janice was glad to add him to the several other pigs she already had.

  The other pigs were already feral. They’d been shot and wounded, or hit by cars, or otherwise put out of commission but not killed. Janice had taken them in. She had pens for them.

  The other hogs didn’t like Baby. Baby didn’t like them. So Baby had crashed out. It would have been better if Baby had never been seen again, but that wasn’t the case.

  It was a few weeks ago that Hack had gotten the call that sent Rhodes out to see Janice Chandler and her son, Andy. Andy had come to town with his mother, and he helped out around the place.

  One thing was for sure, the Chandlers had done things right. The story going around town was that Janice got a big insurance payout when her husband had died. There was a new house on the property, with an asphalt road leading up to it and a circular drive in front. There was a new hog-proof fence along the road up to the house and all along the county road in front. The fence was about three feet high, too high for hogs to climb. It was made of steel wire like a rectangular net with openings too small for hogs to get through, so it worked to keep hogs both in and out.

  The Chandlers stood by the gate, waiting for Rhodes. That wasn’t all that waited for him. Baby was there, too, or what was left of him.

>   Rhodes parked the car and got out.

  “Who’d do a thing like that?” Andy Chandler said.

  Andy was about forty, Rhodes guessed, and about twice as big as his mother. He didn’t look much older than she did, as far as Rhodes could tell, but he’d never really gotten a good look at her.

  Andy was a couple of inches taller than Rhodes, and Rhodes wasn’t a short man. Andy looked as if he could pick up a fully grown hog and carry it around if he wanted to.

  “Somebody very sick, that’s who,” Janice Chandler said.

  She looked almost like a child standing by her towering son. She wore an old-fashioned sunbonnet to shade her eyes and overalls over a blue work shirt. Rhodes wondered if she’d bought the overalls in the children’s department.

  “What are you going to do about it, Sheriff?” she asked.

  The it to which she referred was the remains of Baby. Or most of the remains. Rhodes could see the tail and hide, which lay over the pig’s entrails. He couldn’t see the head.

  “It’s not there,” Andy said when Rhodes asked. “The sick SOB who killed Baby must have kept it. God knows why.”

  “Baby was as gentle as a puppy,” Janice said. “Just as friendly, too.” She paused to wipe her eyes. “He’d do anything for an apple.”

  “Somebody didn’t like him,” Rhodes pointed out.

  “Hunters,” Andy said. “We’ve heard them in the woods.”

  They’d done more than just hear them, or so Rhodes had been told. The rumor was that the Chandlers hunted the hunters. Not with bullets but with shotguns loaded with shells holding rock salt instead of shot. Rock salt wouldn’t do much damage unless the shooter was within a yard of whoever he was firing at, but it could sting and scar if it hit bare skin.

  So far Rhodes hadn’t had any complaints from hunters, who probably thought they could deal with the Chandlers in their own way, so Rhodes didn’t know if the rumors were true. If they were, Rhodes figured the Chandlers had more to be worried about than the hunters, who, after all, were using real ammo. It wouldn’t be smart for the Chandlers to go after them.

  “You haven’t bothered the hunters, have you?” Rhodes asked.

  Andy stiffened and seemed to get even taller. “What right do they have to kill innocent animals?”

  Rhodes didn’t think that answered his question. He said, “The hogs aren’t exactly innocent.”

  “They’re just doing what comes naturally, and people are slaughtering them.”

  Rhodes didn’t see that he’d get anywhere by arguing, but Andy was just getting started.

  “The next thing you know, they’ll be hunting them from helicopters. Did you know hunters from other states can arrange to come to Texas just to hunt hogs?”

  Ranchers could already hunt hogs from helicopters and had been doing it for years in some parts of the state. It wasn’t a sport. It was what Andy had called it, a slaughter. Still, the hogs had to be controlled somehow.

  “I don’t think anybody came here in a helicopter or from out of state to kill your pig,” Rhodes said.

  “Maybe not,” Andy said, “but somebody killed it—and mutilated it. What are you going to do about it?”

  “I’ll try to find out who’s responsible.”

  “You’d better do more than try,” Janice said.

  She didn’t tell him what would happen if he didn’t, which was just as well, since he hadn’t had any luck. There were no clues at all other than the pig parts, and Rhodes could learn nothing from them.

  The next call had come a few days later. Baby was back, or his head was. It was a lot the worse for wear, but Andy said it was Baby, all right. It was in the road by the gate, almost exactly where the other pig parts had been.

  “This has to stop,” Andy said.

  This time his mother wasn’t with him. Andy said she just couldn’t face the sight of Baby’s head lying there like that.

  Rhodes started to say that he thought things had already come to a stop because there wasn’t anything else of Baby that was missing, but he knew that wouldn’t be wise.

  “When did you find it?” he asked.

  “This morning when I came down to put a letter in the mailbox.”

  The Chandlers were on one of the rural routes, and a big black mailbox stood on a post near the gate. Andy must have put the letter inside already, because the box was closed and the red flag on the side was up.

  “Any idea when it was put here?” Rhodes asked.

  “Had to have been last night,” Andy told him. “I had to get some stuff from Walmart’s, and it was dark when I got back. Baby wasn’t here then.” Andy shook his head. “I’m real disappointed in you, Sheriff. I thought you’d have found the killers before now.”

  Rhodes wasn’t ashamed. He might have found some answers if he’d had anything to go on, but he didn’t. He suspected it was hog hunters, but every farmer and rancher in the county hated hogs. Any of them might have decided to have a little fun at the Chandlers’ expense.

  “Fun” was the right word, too, because whoever had killed Baby had probably thought it would be quite a joke to leave the remains for the Chandlers to find. Rhodes didn’t consider it a joke, and the Chandlers certainly didn’t, either, but there were those who would.

  “It better not happen to any of our other animals,” Andy said. “I can’t be responsible for what we might do if somebody sick enough to do this tries it again.”

  It was Andy’s final comment that had Rhodes worried now as he watched Yancey snatch up the squeeze toy that Speedo had dropped on the grass. Yancey bounded away, with Speedo in hot pursuit.

  Rhodes worried that the Chandlers might decide to load their shotguns with something more lethal than rock salt. Or that even if they didn’t, one of the hunters would shoot back.

  Then there was the dead man. Not to mention a killer on the loose.

  Rhodes sighed, stood up, and called the dogs. Speedo reached him first, and Rhodes gave him a good petting before going back inside with Yancey bouncing along behind.

  Ivy was in the kitchen. She’d fed Sam his breakfast of what Rhodes assumed was a delicious blend of turkey and giblets from a foil package. Rhodes was faced with the less appetizing prospect of miniature rectangles of shredded wheat, to be covered with nonfat milk. It was a little like eating hay, but Rhodes knew it was supposed to be good for him.

  “Any calls?” he asked, sitting at the table.

  “Not a one,” Ivy said. She handed him the milk carton. “Did you think the killer might have turned himself in this morning?”

  “Too much to hope for,” Rhodes said.

  He poured the milk on the cereal and watched Yancey edging toward Sam. The cat turned and looked at Yancey. That was all it took. Yancey scooted from the room and down the hall.

  “I have to go now,” Ivy said. “You be careful today.”

  “I’m always careful,” Rhodes said.

  “Right,” Ivy said. She leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. “Sometimes I forget how careful you are.”

  She left, and Rhodes finished the cereal. Sam looked at him as if hoping Rhodes would give him the milk that was left in the bowl.

  “You wouldn’t like it,” Rhodes said. “Trust me.”

  He ran water in the bowl, then put it and the spoon in the dishwasher.

  “You behave yourself today,” he told Sam, but the cat didn’t deign to answer. The cat never did.

  * * *

  The crime scene looked hopeless. The churned-up ground didn’t take tracks, and no one had helpfully dropped a driver’s license. Rhodes scanned the area for more than an hour without turning up a thing.

  He had a feeling that Ruth Grady was having the opposite kind of luck in fingerprinting the car. She would be finding more prints than they could possibly sort out. Maybe she’d find something useful in the car itself, but Rhodes didn’t think it was likely.

  The county had bought a metal detector a few years back, and Rhodes had brought it along. He wasn�
��t going to give up on the scene until he’d tried everything. He slipped on the headphones and turned on the machine.

  After another half hour, he was ready to quit, but he kept going. After ten more minutes, he got a faint signal. It took him a few seconds to zero in on the object, which was hidden under a leaf in a hog track.

  A shell casing. Rhodes picked up a convenient nearby stick and stuck it in the casing’s opening. He put the casing in a paper bag and set it aside while he searched some more.

  Eventually he quit without finding a second. Either the shooter had picked it up or it had eluded him. Well, one was good enough, Rhodes figured. Now all he had to do was find a gun to match it to. It was possible, even likely, that the killer had ditched the gun—in a creek, in a ditch, even somewhere else in the woods. If he hadn’t, however, the shell casing might very well prove useful later on.

  Rhodes gave up on the crime scene after another half hour and walked back through the woods. He didn’t know where the hogs holed up during the daytime, but he was sure they weren’t anywhere nearby. Or if they were, they were quiet and well hidden. If there was any solution to the problems they caused, Rhodes didn’t know what it was. Live traps didn’t work. Hunting didn’t work. Rhodes wouldn’t be surprised if the whole countryside was overrun by hogs before long, and after that the towns.

  He got back to the car and started for the Chandler place. He’d just turned around when a call came through from Hack.

  “Mikey Burns has the answer,” Hack said.

  “The answer to what?” Rhodes asked.

  “The hogs.”

  “He told you that?”

  “He just got off the phone.”

  “What’s the answer?” Rhodes immediately regretted asking. He knew Hack wouldn’t tell him.

  “You’ll have to ask him,” Hack said.

  “He didn’t tell you?

  “He did, but you oughta hear it from him.”

  “I can hardly wait,” Rhodes said.

  * * *

  Mikey Burns was a county commissioner, and he and Rhodes had a prickly relationship. Burns never seemed to think Rhodes was doing his job as well as it could be done by someone who was smarter and quicker on the uptake, but since Rhodes had won the previous election by a landslide, having run unopposed, Burns was stuck with him.