Of All Sad Words Read Free

had become a serious problem in Blacklin County, just like it was in so many others. Anybody could cook it up with ingredients they’d bought at Wal-Mart, using a recipe they’d looked up on the Internet. As often as not, they got careless and blew up an old house or a mobile home.
    Sometimes they survived. Sometimes they didn’t.
    “What happened, Sheriff?” Jennifer Loam said, walking up beside him.
    Loam was a reporter for the Clearview Herald. She held her little digital recorder, and Rhodes knew it was turned on. She was short, blond, and tough, a good reporter, probably better than Clearview deserved. Rhodes liked her, but he wished she wouldn’t turn up every time something happened.
    “I’d say there was an explosion,” he told her.
    She looked around. “Nothing gets by you, does it?”
    “That’s why I’m a successful lawman.”
    One of the cars parked nearby was a gray Saturn. There were more Saturns in Clearview than there were Infinitis, but not many. Rhodes saw C. P. Benton talking to Ruth Grady.
    Benton looked, as he did every time Rhodes saw him, a little disheveled. He wore an old black hat, and his gray pants were baggy. His paisley shirt, which looked like it had been new about the time the Beatles broke up, wasn’t tucked in, but it didn’t quite manage to conceal the bulge of his stomach.
    Ruth Grady was short and stout, but Benton didn’t tower over her. He waved his hands while he talked, and Rhodes thought he might be describing the explosion. He walked over so he could hear. Jennifer Loam was right behind him.
    “I told you this was going to happen,” Benton said, catching sight of Rhodes. “Meth labs are notoriously dangerous.”
    “A meth lab?” Jennifer said. “Are you sure about that?”
    “She’s a reporter,” Rhodes told Benton. “Be careful. There are laws against libel.”
    Benton looked thoughtful. “Then I’m not sure what it was. I thought it might have been a meth lab, but I could have been mistaken.”
    Jennifer looked disappointed in his response. Rhodes said, “Was anybody hurt?”
    “I don’t think so,” Ruth said. “At least nobody we’ve found. We haven’t been able to do much looking.”
    “If anybody was in that place, they’d be in pieces by now,” Benton said. “I heard the explosion all the way over at my house. It sounded like a bomb, so I called the fire department. Then I called the EMS and your office.”
    The red-and-white ambulance was parked a little farther up the road. Rhodes saw some of the EMTs standing beside it. There was nothing they could do at the moment.
    “The Crawford brothers live here,” Rhodes said.
    “Lived,” Benton said. “Drug dealers.” He looked at Jennifer. “Or so I’ve heard. Don’t quote me. Anyway, Sheriff, I tried to tell you about this place. Cars used to come to the gate all the time. They’d stop for a while and then drive away. We learned about those signs in the academy.”
    Rhodes pointed to Loam’s recorder. “That thing’s taking down every word you say.”
    “The Crawfords might have been selling Amway products,” Benton said. “I don’t really know.”
    “We never caught the Crawfords at anything,” Rhodes said. “Not even selling Amway.”
    “I don’t think what they did matters now,” Benton said. “Not if they were inside when the place blew up.”
    Rhodes didn’t have any idea if anyone had been inside or not. He stood and watched the firemen hose down the wreckage, the water making silver streams in the bright sunlight.
    After a couple of seconds, Rhodes’s gaze drifted over to the trees that lined the sides of the creek flowing by the Crawfords’ property. It was late summer, just about time for school to start, and the trees suffered from the heat and the lack of rain. Their leaves had already begun to turn brown and drop off.
    The creek ran all the way across the county, through the big woods on the eastern side. Rhodes had already had one bad experience along the