Free Between the Living and the Dead by Bill Crider

asked.
    â€œHe was just a drug dealer, wasn’t he?”
    Rhodes didn’t like the word “just” in that context or the direction in which the conversation seemed to be headed.
    â€œHe hadn’t been convicted yet,” Rhodes said. “Now he never will be.”
    Clement looked surprised. “He won’t?”
    â€œWe don’t convict dead men.”
    Clement recovered his composure. “Of course not, but he would’ve been if he hadn’t been killed.” Clement’s tone left no room for doubt. “People like that are a black eye on our town. Trash, that’s all they are. It’s a waste of city and county funds to spend too much time investigating what happened to him. We have too many of his kind around here. One less is good news.”
    Rhodes was liking the conversation less and less. “We investigate every crime, especially something like this. It doesn’t matter if the dead man’s a drug dealer or a mayor.”
    Clement’s eyes snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    â€œNothing,” Rhodes said, “except that we owe it to the county and the city to do the best job we can, and if somebody’s been killed, we owe it to the victim and his family to find the killer. It doesn’t matter who the victim is.”
    â€œYou don’t owe anything to a dead man,” Clement said, “and as far as the family goes, those Foshees are a plague on this county. They’re nothing but trouble. We don’t owe them anything at all.”
    â€œLet me see if I have this right,” Rhodes said. “A man’s been killed, and you want me to slough off the investigation.”
    â€œI didn’t say that.”
    â€œYou implied it.”
    â€œMaybe you just inferred it.”
    There were times when Rhodes thought that everyone in the world had changed into Hack and Lawton, but maybe it was his own fault. Maybe he brought out the worst in people. He stood up.
    â€œI don’t want to argue with you, Mr. Mayor,” he said. “I’m going to investigate this crime just like any other one. If you think it over, I know you’ll figure out that you want it done that way.”
    â€œYou’d better keep things on the quiet,” Clement said. “I don’t want the reputation of this town spoiled by some meth dealer’s death getting splattered all over the Internet.”
    â€œI don’t think Jennifer Loam has many readers outside the county,” Rhodes said, though he didn’t really know. “You don’t have a thing to worry about.”
    Clement did look worried, though, and it made Rhodes wonder why. It wasn’t just the town’s reputation that was bothering him.
    â€œI’d better not see any sensationalism about this on that site,” Clement said.
    â€œI don’t have anything to do with it,” Rhodes said, “and I’m sure you wouldn’t want to interfere with the freedom of the press. Or is that just something I’m inferring?”
    â€œDon’t get smart,” Clement said.
    Rhodes grinned. “I don’t think there’s any danger of that happening.”
    Clement snorted, and Rhodes left him there.
    Alice King smiled a perky smile at Rhodes when he came back into the outer office.
    â€œDid you two have a nice talk?” she asked.
    â€œJust peachy,” Rhodes said.
    â€œThat’s great. You have a great day, now.”
    â€œYou, too,” Rhodes said, and got out of there.
    *   *   *
    When he got back to the county car, Rhodes got Hack on the radio and asked if he’d heard anything from Buddy about the Foshee boys.
    â€œHe’s out around Milsby somewhere, lookin’ for ’em,” Hack said. “They gave an address out there when they bonded out.”
    Milsby had once been a little town, but there wasn’t much left of it now. The meth lab that the Foshees were