Ghost of a Chance Read Free Page B

locked, day or night. I’ve never even seen them closed. And the caretaker doesn’t live there anymore. There hasn’t been anyone living on the grounds there in years. People go in and out at all hours.”
    Rhodes knew that was true. The deputies tried to patrol the place, especially on weekends, to keep out the local teenagers who found it a nice, quiet place to park. That was one thing that hadn’t changed in Clearview. Rhodes could remember having parked there a time or two himself, a long time ago.
    “So what do you want us to do about all this?” Purcell asked.
    “I want you to have the sheriff put a stop to it,” Berry said, which was exactly what Rhodes had been expecting.
    The trouble was, it wouldn’t be possible, not unless he got very lucky or unless the commissioners hired ten or eleven more deputies, neither of which was the least bit likely. There were so many little cemeteries sprinkled around the county that it would be impossible even to visit all of them on any particular night, and leaving a deputy on watch at one of them for any extended period of time would deprive some other part of the county of an expected patrol.
    That was the way the commissioners saw it, too, and Berry had been quite upset. But he’d behaved himself well. He hadn’t shouted or made any other demands. Instead he’d simply said that he’d patrol the cemeteries himself. Six of the cemetery association presidents had said they’d do the same, and the other six had promised that, while they wouldn’t be going out on patrol themselves, they had people in the association who’d be more than glad to do so.
    Rhodes knew that at least some of those who set themselves up as cemetery guardians would be armed, most of them legally so, thanks to the fact that it was now legal to carry concealed firearms in Texas, just as long as the carrier had been through the proper course of education. Rhodes figured that was just what the county needed: cemetery vigilantes.
    He’d recommended that the sheriff’s office be given a little time to try to put a stop to things, but that hadn’t satisfied Berry.
    “You haven’t done anything in the last six months,” he said. “In six more, there won’t be a statue or an urn left in the county. In a year, there might not be any gravestones.”
    Rhodes thought that was a pretty big exaggeration, and he was sure Berry knew it was, too. Not that it made any difference.
    “It’s a free country,” Berry said. “At least it used to be. If we want to drive past the cemeteries at night, we have a right to do it.”
    Rhodes couldn’t argue with that, or he hadn’t thought he could at the time.
    Now that it was too late, he wished he had. Maybe if he’d argued, Berry wouldn’t be lying there at his feet in an open grave that was meant for someone else.
    Rhodes looked at Berry’s face. The worry line that Rhodes remembered being between his eyebrows was still there, but right at the top of it was a small hole, probably made by a .22-caliber bullet. There was no exit wound. A .22 was likely just to rattle around inside the skull, scrambling the brain like a skillet full of eggs until it slowed to a stop.
    Rhodes scanned the ground around the body, but he didn’t see anything that looked like a clue to who had killed Berry, or why. He bent down and lifted the body to look beneath it. Berry’s body was light as a child’s.
    There was nothing on the ground, so Rhodes lowered the body and looked up at Ballinger.
    “Help me out of here,” he said, putting up a dirty hand.
    Ballinger backed away a step. “You might pull me down in there with you. I have some men on the way. They’ll help you out.”
    Rhodes didn’t mind the wait. He used the time to examine Berry’s clothing and the slick walls of the grave. He didn’t find anything resembling a clue, though he did locate Berry’s wallet and pickup keys, both of which seemed to rule out robbery as a motive. Rhodes could see at the top edge