“Go ahead and talk if you want to,” Johnny called. “I can hear you all right.”
“I’ll wait,” Rhodes said, leaning back in the rocker, trying to relax and organize his thoughts.
In about ten minutes, Johnny was back. He had put on his uniform pants and his black shoes, and combed his hair. He had his uniform shirt in his right hand. “Still kind of warm to me,” he said. “I just had a bath before you drove up, and it got me pretty steamy. I’ll put on the shirt in a minute if you don’t mind.”
“That’s OK,” Rhodes said, leaning forward in the rocker.
Johnny sat in the recliner, but he didn’t put up the footrest. “So what did you want to tell me?”
“It’s about Jeanne Clinton. .” Rhodes began.
“I’ve been keeping my eyes open,” Johnny said. He looked earnest and solemn. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands. The shirt lay in his lap. “I haven’t noticed a thing. Tell you what I think, though, is that those break-ins at Hod Barrett’s store are tied in to the murder.” He waited expectantly for Rhodes to speak.
“How’s that?” Rhodes asked. “How can you connect them?”
“Well, not with evidence or anything,” Johnny said. “But I think it’s transients. That big new power plant they’re building down near Simmonsville? Uses that lignite coal to generate electricity? No telling how many folks that’s brought into the area, and not all of them are the kind of folks we need around here, let me tell you. You ought to see how they live-little cracker-box trailers that you wouldn’t think could hold two people, and they’ve got eight or ten in there.”
Rhodes knew all about the power plant, which was in a neighboring county. “I don’t think somebody would drive all that way for a few cigarettes and beers,” he said.
“They might to see Jeanne Clinton, though,” Johnny said. “She was really something.”
“I’ve been wanting to ask you about that,” Rhodes said. “Didn’t you say you went to high school with her?”
“Yeah, I might have said that. We weren’t good friends or anything like that, but we were in the same class.”
Rhodes stood up. The rocker was not very comfortable to him. “It seems natural that a man might want to drive by some night to see how his old friend was doing,” he said.
“Now wait a minute, Sheriff,” Johnny said.
“No, Johnny, I’ve already waited too long,” Rhodes said. “Let me say what I have to say, and then we’ll see what you think about it.”
“OK,” Johnny said, leaning back in the recliner. “I’ll listen.”
“Good. Let’s say you might have driven by to see Jeanne. You might not have even wanted to stop, but it would be easy to see that Elmer wasn’t there. In fact, taking into account all the visitors that she had, I’d be surprised if you didn’t see one or two of them at her house some night or the other.”
“Not saying I did, Sheriff, but so what? If she had all those visitors like you say, why should I mention it?”
“Early on, it might not have made any difference,” Rhodes said. “Later it did. When Jeanne was killed you surely should have mentioned it to me, especially if you knew any of them. It might have been important to me. But you didn’t mention
“Next I guess you’re going to tell me I robbed Hod Barrett’s grocery store,” Johnny said with a good-natured grin. “You know better than that, Sheriff. I can afford to buy beer.”
“I’m sure you can,” Rhodes said. “I don’t think you robbed anybody. I think Billy Joe Byron robbed that store. When I picked him up, he smelled like a brewery; and he had enough Merit cigarettes stashed in his clothes to last him quite a while. I guess I know where he got ‘em. You can rest easy on the robbery business.”
“Meaning I can’t rest easy on something else?” There was a hard edge in Johnny’s voice, and he wasn’t grinning anymore.
Rhodes sighed. “I should have figured it out sooner, but I trusted you. You were one of my men. You were dating my daughter. That’s my only excuse. It was right there all the time.”
“I don’t follow you. What was right there?”
“That fight with Terry Wayne and his pal. They weren’t lying. They were telling the truth. You were coming back in, and you needed some way to explain the scratches and the blood, even if there wasn’t much. So you spotted those guys in the Paragon lot, stopped, and started a fight with them. You knew we’d all believe your side of it.”
“I guess that makes me a pretty clever guy,” Johnny said, a trace of a smile back on his face. “Even if it were true, which it isn’t, it’s still my word against theirs.”
Rhodes walked behind the rocker and put his hands on the chair back. “Yeah, but they’ve got Billy Don Painter on their side, and I’m afraid that they’ve even got me on their side. Anyway, I don’t know how many times you’ve washed the shirt you wore that night, but blood’s mighty hard to get out. There might be enough left for the lab boys to type.”
“That’s pretty slim pickings to go to trial on.”
“I’d have to agree with that. But of course that’s not all. You and I both know there was a witness to whatever happened in Jeanne Clinton’s house that night. I’m beginning to wonder just how many witnesses there were. They must have been lined up three deep.”
For the first time Johnny Sherman betrayed surprise. “You’re really getting over my head now, Sheriff. Three deep? Why haven’t all these witnesses come forward?”
Rhodes shoved down on the rocker, causing it to slide a bit on the linoleum floor. “Because two of them are dead. You missed the third one, though.”
“You’re crazy,” Johnny said, and Rhodes was taken slightly aback. He’d been sure of his man, as sure as he could be without hard evidence, but Johnny sounded convincing. He really didn’t seem to know what Rhodes meant.
Rhodes thought for a minute. “Let’s start with Billy Joe,” he said. “Lawton didn’t leave that cell door open. You opened it. I’d bet you even led Billy Joe right down to the door to the office. Then you got out that magazine with the spicy pictures in it and showed it to Hack and Lawton. A little loud talking and laughing, and Billy Joe could be out the front door and on his way home, which was the only place he knew to go.”
“Billy Joe saw me at Jeanne’s, right? So I let him out of jail? You’ll have to do better than that, Sheriff. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“It makes sense all right. Billy Joe’s never been scared of me in his life, but he ran from me that morning I picked him up. It wasn’t me he was running from. It was the uniform and the car. He thought I was you. We’d picked him up for window peeping a few years back. I guess he was doing it again. But this time he saw something he didn’t bargain for. He saw you beating Jeanne Clinton. I think after it was over, he even went in and tried to help her, but it was too late. I think you let him out of jail to kill him, and you would have if I hadn’t come along so soon.”
“You must think I’m a pretty mean fella, Sheriff,” Johnny said. “Next you’ll even tell me you have a motive for me.”
Both men were silent as the air conditioner’s hum filled the room. Then Rhodes spoke. “I’ve got one,” he said. “You were always a little hot tempered, a little fast with your fists. I think that with Jeanne you lost your temper when you tried to go a little farther than she wanted to go. You saw all those visitors, decided to have a little fun yourself, and didn’t believe it when she told you that all she did for those men was talk to them.”
“It’s pretty hard to believe, you’ll have to admit,” Johnny said.
“I admit it. I didn’t exactly believe it at first, myself. But it was true. Too many people told me for it not to be true.”
“So Billy Joe was scared of me,” Johnny said, changing the subject again. “Then why did he come out when I opened his cell? Why’d he follow me out? Why not just stay where he was safe?”
“I haven’t figured that one out yet,” Rhodes said. “It’s bothered me some, but I’ll get it if I keep after