Read Rattlesnake Crossing for Free Online Page A

and stepped inside.
    Wrestling with probable-cause issues, Joanna hesitated, thinking it would be better if she remained outside until Clyde himself invited her into the house.
    "It's okay if you wan'ta come on in," Belle called back to her.
    Joanna considered. As far as she knew, no crime had been committed. She was there to talk with Clyde. The man certainly wasn’t a suspect in any ongoing investigation.
    "So are you coming or not?" Belle urged.
    Shrugging, Joanna stepped over the threshold. Her first Impression upon entering the hot and stuffy little house was that a goat lived there. The place stank. It smelled of dirty mocks and dirty underwear, old shoes, stale beer, and cigarettes. Even though the unscreened windows stood wide open, without air-conditioning, the heat inside the room was overwhelming. The room was tall and narrow with a rust-stained tin ceiling. A single light fixture dangled from the center of the room. Ratty, broken-down furniture was littered with a collection of beer cans, paper trash, garbage, and bugs.
    "'That's the other thing about Clyde," Belle said. "His mama never taught him about cleanliness bein' next to godliness and all that, and he never did learn how to pick up after hisself, either. As you can see, once't I quit doing for him, the whole place went to hell in a handbasket. Hang on," she added. "If you think it's bad out here, you sure as heck don't want to see the bedroom. He allus sleeps in just his birthday suit with hardly any covers."
    Joanna nodded. "You go on ahead," she agreed. "I'll be happy to wait out here."
    Belle lumbered toward a short hallway. Beneath filthy, chipped linoleum, the aged plank floor groaned in protest with each passing step.
    "Clyde?" Belle said tentatively, tapping on a dingy gray door that might once have been painted white. "You in there? It's me—Belle. There's somebody here to see you. A lady, so don't you come wanderin' out with no clothes on, you hear?"
    There was no reply. In the answering stillness of the house, there was only a faint but insistent mechanical sound that Joanna assumed had to be coming from the bedroom air conditioner Belle had mentioned earlier.
    Belle knocked on the door again. "Clyde?" she said insistently. "Listen here, you gotta wake up now. It's late. After three, but if you're very nice to me, I might consider whipping you up an omelet just because. Okay?"
    Again there was no answer. Belle glanced apologetically over her shoulder in Joanna's direction. "Sorry about this. The man always did sleep like a damned log. Guess I'm gonna have'ta go give him a shake. If you'll just wait here ..."
    With that Belle opened the bedroom door. As soon as she did so, a chilly draft filtered into the room, carrying with it an evil-smelling vapor, one that totally obliterated all other odors. That putrid smell was one Sheriff Joanna Brady recognized and had encountered before—the awful scent of death and the rancid stench of decaying flesh. Without even seeing it, Joanna guessed what kind of horror lay beyond that open door, but for a time, Belle seemed oblivious.
    "Clyde?" she said again. "Wake up, will you?"
    Then, after a moment of silence with only the air conditioner humming in the background, the whole house was rent by a terrible, heart-wrenching, wordless shriek. Hearing it, Joanna cleared the living room in two long strides. When she reached the doorway, she stopped long enough to observe a scene that might have been lifted straight from some grade-B horror movie.
    With her cigarette still in her mouth, Belle had crossed the room to where a male figure lay on an old-fashioned metal-framed bed with a sagging single mattress and no box springs. Just as she had predicted, the man was naked. Above him swirled a cloud of flies.
    As Joanna stepped inside she saw Belle lift the man up by the shoulders. Belle began shaking him back and forth the way a heedless child might shake a loose-jointed Raggedy Andy doll. It was only then, when she