Survivors Will Be Shot Again Read Free Page B

thin gray pieces of concrete that had covered the bricks. The bricks might have once been red, but now they were a faded pink.
    Billy saw the Tahoe and waved. Rhodes opened the door and got out. He was still getting used to being so high off the ground when he drove. He didn’t have to use the assist step, but anyone shorter than him would have needed it.
    A chain was looped around a post and around the end of the gate frame. The heavy padlock that had held the ends of the chain together lay on the ground where it had fallen after it had been cut away with a bolt cutter. Rhodes put on a pair of nitrile rubber gloves and got an evidence bag. He didn’t think there would be any fingerprints on the lock, but you never knew. He put the lock in the bag, sealed it, and put it in the Tahoe. He tossed the gloves in, too, and pulled the gate open. It was well balanced and squealed only a little bit. It was painted silver, and the B-Bar-B brand was welded to it in two-foot-high red letters. The hinges of the gate were to Rhodes’s right and attached to a tall post that looked like a telephone pole cut in half. Rhodes noticed four nails in it that had white cardboard behind them as if something rectangular had been ripped down from the post.
    Billy had been watching all this. He called out to Rhodes, “You might want to drive on in, Sheriff, and get your vehicle away from the road. People come around that corner too fast sometimes, and you don’t want that thing to get hit.”
    Billy was right about that. Rhodes was in enough trouble with the commissioners about damages to county vehicles already. He didn’t mind walking, but he didn’t want the Tahoe to get a scratch on it.
    Billy gave an impatient wave. He was a loan officer in the Clearview First Bank, but about twenty years ago he’d been a star running back on the Clearview Catamounts football team. They’d called him “Shakin’ Bacon.” His powerful legs had eaten up the field in huge gains, and the town had loved him. As had the college recruiters. He’d been good enough to get a full scholarship to Texas A&M, but a car accident during the summer before he was to begin college had shattered his right kneecap and put an end to his football career. Walking wasn’t easy for him even now, but loan officers didn’t have to do much walking.
    Rhodes got back into the Tahoe and drove through the gate. He stopped just inside the fenced area and started to get out.
    â€œNo need to close the gate,” Billy called. “All the cattle are down in the back pasture. I just closed it out of habit.”
    Rhodes got back in the Tahoe again. He was getting plenty of exercise with the new vehicles if getting in and out and stepping up and down counted as exercise, which they certainly did in Rhodes’s book. He drove the fifty or so yards to where Billy was waiting for him. Billy still looked a little bit like a running back, but one who’d put on a few pounds. His wide shoulders stretched the white cotton shirt he wore, and his stomach lapped over the buckle of the belt that held up his faded blue jeans. Rhodes could identify, though he wasn’t as hefty as Billy. Billy couldn’t exercise much because of his knee. Rhodes, however, didn’t have that excuse. Maybe climbing into the Tahoe was helping.
    When he stopped the Tahoe by Billy, Rhodes didn’t get out. He just pushed the button that let down the window so Billy could talk to him. Rhodes could smell hay and the musky manure scent of the corral, a mixture that wasn’t unpleasant to anybody who’d grown up around cattle.
    â€œI tell you what, Sheriff,” Billy said, sounding a little nervous as if he thought the criminals might still be around, “these thieves are gonna run me out of the ranching business. This is the third time they’ve hit me in the last few months. And I’m not the only one down here they’re stealing from,