Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 07 - Murder Most Fowl by Bill Crider Page B

Sheriff.”
    Rhodes had never thought of Brother Alton as a killer, and he said as much. Then he asked, “Did you see anyone else when you were coming along through the woods?”
    “Not a soul. Whoever killed her was long gone by the time I got there.”
    “Were you planning to call me, by any chance?  Let me know there was a dead body out there?”
    “I didn’t think about it to tell the truth,” Brother Alton admitted. “All I wanted to do was get out of there. I’ve seen dead people before, plenty of ’em, but they’ve all been in hospitals or funeral homes. That’s the first time I ever saw one dead in the woods like that.”
    “What about when you got back here?”
    “I was goin’ to call, but I got started workin’ on my sermon. It sorta calms me down to do that. I needed a lot of calmin’ down.”
    Brother Alton’s head shook, and then the shaking moved down to his shoulders and chest. He put his hands down flat on the desk, and the shaking stopped.
    “I guess I’m not calmed down yet,” he said. “But I never killed anybody sheriff. And I never meant to cause you any trouble. I just got scared.”
    Rhodes thought the preacher was telling the truth. Murder was enough to spook anyone, and he didn’t blame Brother Alton for being a little afraid of the consequences of finding a corpse.
    But he was the sheriff, after all, so he said, “It’s a crime not to report a body. You know that, don’t you?”
    Brother Alton half rose from his chair. “You aren’t gonna arrest me, are you? I’ve never been in any trouble, Sheriff. I’ve never done anything against the law.”
    “I’m not going to arrest you, but if you think of anything else you saw out there, something you can’t remember right now, you’d better call.”
    Brother Alton sank back into his chair in relief. “I’ll call, Sheriff, you can count on that. I know I’ve done wrong, and I’ll try to make amends.”
    Rhodes left the office wondering if Brother Alton’s humbling experience would affect his preaching. If the pastor hadn’t identified with his flock’s secret wrongdoings before, he could certainly do so now.
    Rhodes was afraid that it wouldn’t make much difference; things didn’t generally work out that way. By tomorrow, Brother Alton, if he was like most people, would probably have convinced himself that he had done nothing wrong at all.
     

Chapter Eight
     
    B etty Ward was about five years older than her sister and looked a lot like her, except that her hair was cut short and died dark black.
    She didn’t take the news about Rayjean’s death well at all, and Rhodes was glad he’d thought to call Ruth Grady on the radio and get her to meet him at Betty’s house before giving her the news.
    Betty’s husband had died of a heart attack two years previously, and now she’d lost her brother-in-law and her sister on successive days. It was no wonder that she was almost in a state of shock.
    She was, however, able to tell Rhodes and Grady that Rayjean had no more enemies than a newborn calf and that Rayjean, like Lige was universally liked in Clearview and Obert.
    “It’s gangs,” she said. “It must be gangs, coming in from outside, selling dope and causing trouble.”
    Rhodes had dealt with that kind of thing before, in a small way, and he didn’t think that was the case this time, but Betty Ward couldn’t offer any better explanation.
    Rhodes left Ruth with her in case she thought of something else, but he didn’t hold out much hope that would happen. There was a motive for the killings; there always was. But it looked as if it was going to take a while to find it out.
    Rhodes drove back to the jail to do his report. He wondered just what the death of Rayjean Ward had to do with that of her husband. It seemed obvious that the two deaths were related, but for the life of him Rhodes couldn’t figure out how, and Rayjean’s sister had been no help at all.
    Ward’s pickup full of feathers offered pretty