“Aren’t you going to arrest those hooligans?” Ivy asked.
“Nope. They saw me just as clearly as we saw them,” Rhodes said. “And they know I’m not going to disrupt this funeral procession to go chasing after them. It’s just their formal salute to a departed member, I guess. Nothing to make a fuss about.”
“It seemed awfully dangerous to me,” Ivy said.
“Dangerous for them, yes. Not for anybody else, as long as the lane was clear.” Rhodes didn’t mention that he suspected the four riders of crimes a lot more serious than reckless driving. “Their day will come. Maybe I can get them for jaywalking.”
“Maybe,” Ivy said, but Rhodes could tell she didn’t like it.
The burial site looked like a picture from a magazine. The rain had freshened the grass, and the tombstones looked newly cleaned, sparkling white in the late morning sun. The little church was white too, and so close by that with its white steeple it added a note of gravity to the scene. The ground was still wet from the rain, but not muddy enough to be a bother to the men. The women in heels had a problem, however.
Everything was arranged by the time Rhodes and Ivy got to the graveside. The minister read from Ecclesiastes about the sun also arising and began his brief remarks.
Rhodes heard the motorcycles. He looked over his shoulder and saw them coming down the muddy country road.
The preacher, heeding Mrs. Ramsey’s advice from the chapel, preached on as best he could over the noise.
The motorcycles stopped beside the cars, their engines idling.
“Moreover,” the minister was saying, “though Bert Ramsey is not with us, yet his spirit lives. For God is the God of the living; He is not the God of the dead.”
Rapper’s voice cut through the air. “That’s what you think, preacher. Once you’re one of Los Muertos, you’re always one of Los Muertos. And Ramsey was sure one of us!”
Everyone had turned to watch Rapper. The four bikers revved their engines and skidded away, slinging mud from the spinning rear tires.
The minister stared after them with his mouth open. Rhodes looked at Mrs. Ramsey. Her mouth was a tight, white line in her puffy face. He looked at the Lindseys. They could hardly contain themselves. Whatever they’d seen in the last fifteen years, nothing would ever come up to this day.
The preacher finally recovered himself and finished as quickly as he decently could. The casket was being lowered into the open grave as Ivy and Rhodes made their way back to the car.
“I really wish you could do something about those men,” Ivy said when they were in the car.
“I’m not sure what I can do,” Rhodes said.
Ivy didn’t say anything.
“Since we’re so close, I might ride down and say a few words to Buster Cullens,” Rhodes said. “He might know those guys. Want to go along?”
“Do I have a choice?” Ivy was not being sarcastic. She was obviously curious.
“Sure. I can take you back to town.”
“Too much bother. I’ll just stay in the car and you can do all your interrogating.”
“Wyneva may be there. I thought she’d come back here after she left the chapel, but I guess she’d had enough.”
“I wouldn’t blame her,” Ivy said.
“I wonder how she got there?” Rhodes said. “I didn’t see hide nor hair of Buster Cullens.”
“Maybe she walked.”
“Not from here; this road’s a mess.” Rhodes wasn’t exaggerating. The road had been dusty before, but the rain had rutted it with mud, which, though not deep enough to cause a real hazard, still made driving difficult. Rhodes held the car firmly in the ruts to avoid sliding sideways into the ditch.
Rhodes saw the motorcycles in Buster Cullens’s yard before he turned in at the open gap. “Looks like Buster and Wyneva have company,” he said. He stopped the car and got out. The soil of the yard was of a different consistency from that of the road, blacker and stickier. It slopped up over Rhodes’s shoes.
“You better wait,” Rhodes told Ivy.
“That’s what I planned to do, remember?”
“Yeah.” Rhodes started toward the dilapidated house, slopping through the mud. He stopped outside the front door beside the motorcycles. “Cullens!” he yelled. “You in there?”
There was no answer. The day suddenly seemed to get warmer and more oppressive as the silence lengthened. “Cullens!” Rhodes called again. “Rapper! Who’s in there?”
There was still no reply, and Rhodes took another step closer to the door, his feet lifting from the mud with a sucking sound.
“Cullens? If you’re in there, sing out. Otherwise, I’m coming in. I don’t like standing in the mud.” Rhodes wasn’t particularly keen on the idea of going inside the house, not knowing just where Rapper was located or what, if anything, was happening to Buster Cullens.
Then Rhodes heard a high-pitched groan and the sound of something falling to the floor. He didn’t wait any longer. He stepped up on the porch and opened the screen door. When he stepped into the house, his short-barreled.38 was in his hand. The dog! he thought. What about the dog? Then something hit him on the back, hard, and he was on the floor. The gun was no longer in his hand, and something hit him again.
“Kill him!” someone yelled. “Kill the sonofabitch!”
It was Rapper.
Chapter 11
Rhodes had no intention of letting anyone kill him, not with Ivy sitting in the car, not if he could help it. He rolled over on his back, which he hoped wasn’t broken, just in time to see Jayse swinging an axe handle at him. He put up his hands to take the blow and was able to get a grip on the handle. Pulling with the force of the blow, he threw Jayse off balance.
Jayse stumbled and Rhodes kicked upward at his stomach. It wasn’t much of a kick, but Jayse lost his hold on the handle. Rhodes didn’t. He got himself into a sitting position and swung the handle at Jayse’s shins as if he were Reggie Jackson trying for one more long ball. He got the left one.
The sound was horrible, but not as horrible as the scream Jayse let out before he collapsed on the floor. He screamed and cried as Rhodes struggled to his feet and through the door into the back room.
Rapper, Nellie, and the fourth man were there. Buster Cullens was on the floor, a gag around his head. Rhodes couldn’t tell if he was alive or dead. He wasn’t moving.
When Rhodes came through the door with the axe handle, the scene appeared frozen. Obviously, the three men were expecting Jayse. They didn’t know who was yelling in the next room, but they’d thought it was Rhodes. When they realized it wasn’t, they went into motion.
Nellie and the other man charged Rhodes, who swung the handle. It hit the man whose name Rhodes hadn’t learned in the head with a sound like hitting a watermelon with a drumstick. The man dropped like a sack of horse and mule feed, but Nellie caught Rhodes on his follow-through and drove him back into the room where Jayse lay clutching his shin and whimpering.
Rhodes smashed into the wall hard enough to bring a shower of dust and dirt from the ceiling overhead. Pain shot through his already sore back, and he was momentarily stunned, unable to move or even lift the axe handle.
Nellie was looking around the bare room for something to hit him with when his eyes fell on Rhodes’s pistol. He started for it just as Rapper came into the room. “Let me have it,” Rapper said, stooping to pick it up. His face was red and distorted. He looked dangerously out of control.
Rhodes got his breath and stepped up to hit Nellie, who was between him and Rapper. But Rhodes was still stunned, and Nellie had other ideas. He stepped under Rhodes’s feeble swing and hit Rhodes in the stomach. Hard.
Rhodes staggered backward, but this time he missed the wall. Instead, he hit the screen door, which, because it was hinged to swing out, offered no resistance at all.