Free Bill Crider - Dan Rhodes 08 - Winning Can Be Murder by Bill Crider Page B

about?” Rapper asked.
    “About where you were last night around midnight.”
    “Why that’s pretty hard to remember,” Rapper said.  “Can you remember where we were, Nellie?”
    “Not me.  I was too drunk.”
    Rhodes looked at the two men.  In the mist and the dark, standing in front of their tents, they looked like a couple of Neanderthals.  All they needed was a couple of stone axes and a club.
    Rapper stared back at Rhodes unconcernedly.  He reached under his jacket and brought out a red-and-white crushproof box of cigarettes.  Marlboros, Rhodes noticed as Rapper stuck one in the center of his tight little mouth and lit it with a green plastic lighter.
    “It’s too bad that you can’t remember,” Rhodes said.  “I’ll have to take you in for questioning, then.”
    “What’s the charge?” Rapper asked.
    “Trespassing.”
    “You must be getting forgetful in your old age, Sheriff,” Rapper said, smoke curling around his head.  “You know this land belongs to Nellie’s uncle, and Nellie’s uncle said it’d be just fine for us to stay here for as long as we wanted to.”
    “Even considering what happened the last time you were here?” Rhodes asked.
    “We talked to him real polite,” Rapper said.  “We told him we’d clean up after ourselves and that we wouldn’t piss in his lake.”
    “So what’re you gonna do now, Sheriff?” Nellie asked.  “Go away and leave us alone?”
    “No, I’m not going to do that.  I’m going to take you in.”
    “You got no grounds,” Rapper said.
    “Sure I have.  Suspicion of murder.”
    “You must be crazy,” Rapper said.  He threw his cigarette to the ground and stepped on it.  “We didn’t kill anybody.  You take us in and we’ll be out in ten minutes.”
    “Maybe,” Rhodes said.  “Maybe not.”
    Rapper dragged a hand across his face to wipe away some of the water that had gathered there.  He was still smiling.
    “You’re gonna need some help if you try that, Sheriff.”
    “And I don’t see anybody else around here but you,” Nellie said.  “And us.  Not unless they’re hidin’ in that county car.  You got anybody in the trunk?”
    Rhodes wondered where Ruth was.  She should have been there by now.  Then he remembered that he’d told Hack not to send her if she was busy.  Maybe she’d been working on something.
    But that wouldn’t necessarily have mattered.  Hack would have sent her anyway.  He never listened to Rhodes.
    If he’d sent her, though, where was she?  Rhodes was beginning to regret having come out to the lake on his own.  He was getting too old for this sort of thing.  He reached for his sidearm, and as soon as he did, Nellie lunged for him, dropping his head low and bellowing like a bull.
    Rhodes might have gotten the pistol out had he not taken a step backward in his surprise at Nellie’s charge.  His foot slipped in the mud, and he was halfway to the ground when Nellie hit him chest high, driving him backward.
    They hit the ground and skidded several feet in the muck.  Nellie had his arms wrapped around Rhodes and was butting him in the chin with the top of his head.  Rhodes gave up on trying to draw the pistol and concentrated on trying to break Nellie’s hold before Rapper got to them and did something Rhodes would regret.
    Just as he thought that, Nellie did something that Rhodes regretted — he broke the reading glasses in Rhodes’ shirt pocket.  Rhodes felt rather than heard the crack of the plastic frames.
    For some reason that made Rhodes really angry.  It was bad enough that he was rolling around in the mud with a cheap thug on top of him, but now his glasses were broken.
    Not only that, he could hear the roar of a motorcycle being started.
    He brought up a knee and slammed it hard into Nellie’s scrotum.  Nellie let out a high-pitched scream and let Rhodes go, rolling to the side and clutching himself while assuming the fetal position.
    Rhodes drew his pistol, but it was too