“No, but then they never came around very often. I’d hear ‘em in the night, though. Late. They always woke me up.” Mrs. Ramsey shifted her weight on the couch.
Ivy stood up. “Thank you, Mrs. Ramsey,” she said. “I believe it’s time for us to go.”
Rhodes stood up with her. “Yes,” he said. “I appreciate your time, Mrs. Ramsey. I may have to talk with you again.” Mrs. Ramsey started to rise from the couch. “Don’t you get up. We can see ourselves to the door.”
When they were in the car, Rhodes said, “I ought to swear you in. You’d make a good deputy.”
Ivy smiled. “Probably not. She just needed someone she felt comfortable with. You’re too intimidating.”
Rhodes had to laugh at that. He considered himself one of the least intimidating men he knew, even though he wore a badge.
Ivy shook her head. “No,” she said, “don’t laugh. It’s true. I know you don’t threaten or bully, but you look so serious.”
“I am serious,” Rhodes told her. “Murder is serious. I don’t like it.”
“I know,” Ivy said. “That’s one of the things I like about you.”
It had gotten dark while they were in the house with Mrs. Ramsey, and Rhodes hoped that Ivy couldn’t see him blushing.
Chapter 7
As they drove slowly down the back roads on the way to town, Rhodes remembered summer nights as a child, riding in the car with his family. There hadn’t been any television sets then, and often his father would drive them around in the family car, touring the dark and peaceful country. The country still looked peaceful, despite the death of Bert Ramsey, but it was no longer dark. Every house and yard and most of the barns were bathed in the eerie blue glow of a mercury vapor lamp.
Rhodes stopped the car in Bert Ramsey’s front yard. “I just want to see what it must have been like,” he told Ivy. “Whoever shot him was in plain sight of the road, what with that lamp lighting everything up. If anybody came by, they would have seen. Somebody took a big chance.”
“Not too many people come by here,” Ivy said. “I’ll bet we could sit here for hours and not see more than one car go by.”
Something in her voice made Rhodes turn and look at her. Her face looked a little strange and unearthly in the blue light, but suddenly Rhodes felt like a teenager, or at least as much like a teenager as a middle-aged man could feel. Here he was, parked in the country, on a lonely stretch of road, with a woman beside him in the car. For an instant, or the briefest part of an instant, he remembered other summer nights and other cars, not the ones his father drove, but the ones he drove. He remembered the girls who had ridden in those cars with him, and he felt a tightening in the back of his throat and in the pit of his stomach.
He put his right arm up on the seat back, and Ivy slid into the curve that it made. They looked at each other, and when he kissed her he knew that he was in real trouble this time.
Dr. Malcolm Rawlings didn’t look very much like a doctor to Rhodes. He had on a polo shirt with an alligator where the pocket should be, but there was no pocket. A cigarette package caused the doctor an obvious problem, because he was carrying it in his left hand. He had on a pair of old blue slacks, held up with a brown belt, and a pair of brown loafers. He had thinning, reddish-brown hair and the build of a former athlete, maybe a baseball player.
He stood looking around the jail office and then shook a cigarette out of his package. Jamming the package in the left front pocket of his slacks, he brought a disposable lighter from the right pocket and lit the cigarette. Then he walked over and shook hands with Rhodes.
“I’m Dr. Malcolm Rawlings,” he said. “You must be Sheriff Rhodes.”
“That’s right,” Rhodes said. “This is Hack Jensen.” Hack walked over from the radio table and shook hands.
Rawlings took a deep drag from his cigarette and puffed the white smoke into the air. Its odor seemed particularly sharp to Rhodes, since neither he nor Hack smoked.
Rawlings pulled a worn billfold from his back pocket, opened it, and took out a folded piece of paper. “Here’s that list you asked for, Sheriff. That ought to take care of everything.” He stood waiting, as if ready for Rhodes to tell him to leave.
“Fine, Dr. Rawlings,” Rhodes said. “Come on over here and have a seat.” Rhodes walked to his desk and sat in his chair. There was a captain’s chair by the desk. Rawlings sat in it reluctantly.
“What’s that hole over there?” Rawlings asked suddenly, looking at the opposite wall.
“That’s where the air conditioner used to be,” Hack said. “Kinda warm in here, ain’t it?”
Rawlings didn’t answer. He turned back to Rhodes. “I’m in kind of a rush, Sheriff,” he said. “I have to get back and-”
“Just a minute,” Rhodes said. “You don’t seem to realize the problem here. I called the state Health Department about an hour ago, and I was told that I’d have to sue you if I wanted to get you to take care of what you’ve dumped in my county. And I was told that I’d probably lose the suit unless I could definitely prove that you’d caused a health problem, which I probably can’t prove. So, I’m a little frustrated. On top of that there’s been a murder. And you think you need to leave in a hurry?”
Rawlings looked around for an ashtray. Not finding one in sight, he moved his fingers to the cigarette’s filter tip. “Uh, well, I just thought that, ah. .”
“You just thought you’d leave me stuck with the problem, I guess,” Rhodes said. “But it won’t work like that. You’re not going anywhere until we both go over to the funeral home and check that list against the remains in the boxes. And then we’re going to decide what to do with them.”
“Can you force me to do that?” Rawlings asked. “I mean, is it legal?”
“I’m not sure,” Rhodes said. “Shall we call the county judge and get a ruling?”
“No, no, of course not,” Rawlings said. “That won’t be necessary at all. I’ll be glad to go with you.”
“Fine,” Rhodes said. “Let’s go. You can ride with me.”
Rawlings didn’t look happy, but he went.
Clyde Ballinger watched as Rawlings and Rhodes inventoried the contents of the boxes. “Tell you what, Doctor,” Ballinger said, “as one professional man to another, I can’t see how you could do such a thing as to dump those body parts like that. Seems like you could get in real trouble with your professional organizations. I know if I were to try it, why I’d be branded forever.”
Rawlings looked up. “I’ve explained the circumstances,” he said. “There’s not going to be any report of this, is there?”
“Not if everything tallies and we can arrange a satisfactory way to dispose of these things,” Rhodes said. He didn’t really have any desire to ruin Rawlings’s reputation.
“I don’t know,” Ballinger said. “It just doesn’t seem right. I bet Carella or the boys at the 87th wouldn’t let something like this slide by.”
It was Rhodes’s turn to look at him. “Seems to me you could be a little more helpful, yourself, Clyde,” he said. “You don’t seem to want to do a thing about this.”
“And get sued? You must be kidding. I wouldn’t touch this for a million bucks. Not without a court order. The way I see it, it’s the doctor’s problem.”
“I did nothing illegal,” Rawlings said.
“Just immoral,” Ballinger said.
“Cut it out,” Rhodes told them. “Let us finish checking, Clyde.”
It was a fairly gruesome business, going through the three boxes, and Rhodes wasn’t too happy to be doing it. However, it was necessary, and he kept going along, matching the limbs up to the list that Rawlings had brought, watching the doctor as he made a neat little check mark whenever there was a match. Soon they were all done.
“Everything accounted for,” Rawlings said. “Let’s get out of here.” He had goose bumps on his arms from the chill of the room. “I need a cigarette.”
“We’re not going anywhere,” Rhodes said. “Not until we settle the question of what’s to be done with all this.” He gestured at the boxes and the neatly wrapped limbs scattered around.