“Billy Joe won’t cut too much of a figure on the witness stand,” Johnny said. “He isn’t too smart, you know.”
Rhodes let go of the chair back and flexed his fingers. He’d been squeezing too hard. “No, he surely won’t. But with everything else, maybe we won’t need him. It’s too bad we don’t have Bill Tomkins and Mrs. Barrett with us anymore.”
“What have they got to do with this?”
Once again, Johnny’s surprise looked real. He should have been an actor, Rhodes thought, not a deputy sheriff.
“They probably saw you, too,” Rhodes said. “That’s why you had to kill them. I really wish you’d stopped with Jeanne.”
“Sheriff, I never killed anybody,” Johnny said with sincerity and conviction. There was no quaver in his voice as far as Rhodes could tell. “I hope you believe that. I may have done some wrong things in my time, but I never killed anybody. And that’s the truth.”
“I’d like to believe that, Johnny, I really would. And if it is the truth, you’ll be as much in my good graces as you ever were. We have to find out, though, and the best way to do that is for you to come on down to the jail with me. I imagine you can hire Billy Don Painter; you won’t have to spend long in jail with him on your side. He’ll get you a low bail setting, and you’ll be out right up till the trial.”
“There won’t be any bail, Sheriff, or any trial,” Johnny said. “I won’t be going in with you.”
“‘Yes, you will,” Rhodes said. “One way or another, you will.”
“If you believed me, I think I would,” Johnny said. “But I don’t think you believe me, even though I’m telling you the truth that God loves. And if you don’t believe me, then I might have more trouble than I need if the case comes to trial.” He took his hand from under the shirt in his lap. He was holding his.38 Police Special.
Rhodes stood there looking at the pistol. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he kept quiet. He felt a little like a fool. He would have felt more like one if he’d said something like, “You’ll never get away with it.”
“I’m sorry about this, Sheriff, I really am,” Johnny said “Now if you’d just take your thumb and first finger and pull your own pistol out of the holster, I’d appreciate it.”
Rhodes did as he was told. The pistol dangled from his hand.
“Now lay it on the floor,” Johnny said.
Rhodes laid the pistol down, then straightened. “If you’re really innocent, Johnny, this is going to look mighty bad for you,” he said.
“I know that. Ever since you came in, I’ve been trying to think what to do. Every idea I’ve had has been worse than the one before it, though, and like I said-if you don’t believe me, a jury sure wouldn’t. So I guess I’ll just have to disappear.”
“It can’t be done, Johnny. This is 1986, not 1934. Bonnie and Clyde could do it, for a while, but they couldn’t do it forever. I don’t think you’ll last as long as they did.”
“We’ll see. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to get lost these days if you know what you’re doing. How many thousands of people do you think are living right on the streets of a city like Houston, pushing their belongings around with them in shopping carts? You think anybody ever stops one of them to check an ID? Hell no. Nobody cares. So don’t worry about me.”
“You wouldn’t like living like that,” Rhodes said.
“Maybe not, but it’d beat the hell out of living in one of those prison farms like we send people to. I wouldn’t look good in a white uniform, and I wouldn’t feel good crawling around weeding a field on my hands and knees. Besides, I never said I was going to Houston. I just said that’s one way to disappear.” He stepped closer to Rhodes.
“Now, Sheriff, I hate to hurt you, but if you’ll just turn around. .”
Rhodes didn’t turn. Instead, he made a lunge for Johnny, who had apparently been waiting for just such a move. Anyway, he wasn’t surprised. He clubbed downward at Rhodes’s head with the barrel of his pistol.
Rhodes flung up his arm and managed to take the force of the blow with that instead of his head, but the pistol connected nevertheless. Rhodes felt the side of his head hit the floor, and then Johnny was kicking him. Hard.
Rhodes groaned as the kicks thudded into his ribs and tried to twist away. He wasn’t able to escape, however. He was too weak, and Johnny was too quick. He could hear Johnny’s breath coming in short gasps that sounded almost like laughter. Maybe it was laughter. Johnny liked violence.
Finally Rhodes lay still. The pain from his rib cage weakened him. He raised his head. Johnny kicked him again.
The next thing he felt was Johnny’s hand in his front pants pocket. He must have blacked out momentarily, because he had no idea how he had gotten turned over on his back.
Johnny’s hand was gone, then, and Rhodes heard shoe heels on the linoleum floor. He opened his eyes slightly. At the door, Johnny was putting on his shirt. Rhodes closed his eyes.
The door slammed. Rhodes rolled over, pain shooting up and down his rib cage. He knew that several of his ribs must be cracked. He hoped that the damage was no more severe than that. He’d be in big trouble if one of them had punctured a lung.
He heard a car start outside. The county car. Johnny would have a beefed-up engine, and he’d be able to tune in the radio. He’d taken the keys from Rhodes’s pocket. The thought didn’t make Rhodes feel any better.
He tried to sit up, pushing with his arms. It wasn’t easy but he made it. He edged over to the recliner and pulled himself erect, looking hurriedly around the room. His pistol wasn’t there. Well, he hadn’t really thought it would be.
He heard the county car pulling out of Johnny’s drive, and forced himself to stand still. It wouldn’t do to go to the door too soon and get shot with his own pistol. When he heard the car ease down the street, he moved. Slowly. Holding one arm wrapped around his ribs, he made his way to the door.
Johnny’s pickup was parked farther down the drive. It wasn’t exactly the vehicle that anyone would choose for a chase, but Rhodes didn’t have much choice. He hobbled down the drive.
One of the things that both criminals and lawmen know is how to hot-wire an automobile. Rhodes took out his pocket knife and had the pickup started in under five minutes. It was an old green Chevy six cylinder, with a top speed of maybe eighty when it was new. Rhodes didn’t have much hope of doing any good, but he backed it down the drive. At least there was more than half a tank of gas.
There were plenty of roads into and out of Clearview; three of them led eventually to major highways. The third, the one closest to Johnny Sherman’s house, took longer to get to a major thoroughfare and wound through some pretty wild country on the way. Rhodes figured that Johnny would choose that one. It offered plenty of opportunities to turn off onto little-traveled county roads, and there wasn’t much likelihood that there would be any highway patrol cars cruising in that area. Rhodes headed in that direction, praying that he was right.
The little Chevy chugged right along. Johnny obviously kept it tuned up, but he had a pretty good head start and Rhodes wasn’t sure that he could catch up even if he had picked the right road. He was quite surprised when he spotted the county car only a half mile ahead.
Rhodes pushed down on the accelerator, causing the pickup to give a forward jerk, but without attaining any great increase in his forward speed. He groaned as his back hit the seat cushion.
Johnny must have seen him about then. The cruiser’s blue and red bar lights flashed on, and Rhodes could hear the siren screaming. The cruiser began to pull steadily ahead. But not before Rhodes was able to get a glimpse of someone else inside.
It suddenly dawned on him why he was able to catch up so quickly. Johnny had made a stop. A little insurance. Rhodes cursed himself for not having thought of it. After all, his own house was so close by. All Johnny would have had to do was to ask Kathy to go for a ride, to have a little talk.