Dangerous Undertaking (7 page)
Then I saw Pryor look around the room and decide it was time for him to get to the purpose of his visit. He cleared his throat just loud enough to halt conversation around him. The silence rippled through the room as he walked over to the Colemans. He pulled a brown envelope from his inside pocket and handed it to Luke.
“We hope this can help in your hour of need.”
Everyone watched intently, recognizing the standard pay envelope of Ridgemont Power and Electric. Luke opened the unsealed flap. He studied the enclosure without removing it, and then passed it to his wife. “Thank you, Mr. Pryor,” he muttered, never lifting his eyes.
Harriet removed the check and held it between her splintered fingernails. She looked over its edge to the body of her son. Tears flushed her eyes and the check shook uncontrollably.
“A hundred dollars. A hundred dollars for the life of my Jimmy.” Her face twisted, and the check fluttered to the floor.
The color rose in Fred Pryor’s cheeks. Those were not the words of gratitude he expected. The woman had humiliated him. I knew he wanted to snatch up the check and storm out.
“It’s an hour of need. Need and understanding,” said Wayne. “We thank you for your thoughtfulness, Mr. Pryor.” My uncle stood behind the sobbing woman and turned his gentle smile on the whole room, diffusing the tension. Wayne’s sensitivity, like that of my father, was something you don’t learn in embalming school. It was something I found difficult to express.
Fred Pryor pushed the bile back in his throat and managed to nod an acceptance of the compliment. Leroy Jackson knelt and picked up the check. As he raised it past Harriet Coleman, she reached out with the swiftness of a serpent, snared it from his hand and clutched it to her breast.
I felt a body bump against me, and I slid aside as Fats McCauley squeezed between me and the doorjamb. He made no apology as he stood staring into the room, his heavy face moving side to side as he searched for someone.
“Brenda,” he said. “I want to tell the mother about my Brenda.”
Only the rustle of clothing broke the silence as people turned to see who had spoken. Odell Taylor stepped forward as if challenging Fats to intrude farther.
A hand grabbed Fats firmly by the shoulder and pulled him back into the foyer. With strength beyond his physical appearance, Reverend Pace spun the obese man around.
“Not tonight, Travis.” Pace put his face only inches away from the other man. “This is not the time. Right now we have to take care of the living.” Pace looked at Susan and me. “Would you take him home?”
We got Fats’ raincoat from the closet. He draped it over his shoulders like a cape and followed us out the rear of the funeral home and into the steady drizzle. We drove to his furniture store in the old section of Main Street. Gainesboro’s small downtown had not yet been totally cannibalized by the shopping malls, but on this rainy Sunday night we encountered no one. The silence of the ghost town was invaded only by the whoosh of my tires on the wet pavement and the steady slap of the windshield wipers.
We stopped in front of the brick two-story building with “McCauley’s Furniture” scripted across the plate glass window.
“We still live upstairs,” he said softly. “Thank you.”
He wedged himself out the curb-side door, and then he crossed in front of my headlights. I rolled down the window, wondering if he had left something at the funeral home.
“Can we talk tomorrow?” he whispered. He glanced over at Susan and spoke even softer. “Private?”
“Sure,” I said. “I’ll come by.”
He reached in with a damp hand and gently patted my bandaged shoulder. Then he turned and lumbered into the store like a black bear retreating to his den.
“What was that all about?” asked Susan.
“I don’t know.”
“Something’s hurting him. Who’s Brenda?”
On Monday the hunt for Dallas Willard was smaller in scale since most of the weekend volunteers held regular jobs and Tommy Lee had limited manpower. I planned to drop by the Sheriff’s Department early and lend a hand in whatever way I could. I hoped that Reverend Pace and I would be paired together again. With the odds growing that we might be looking for Dallas’ body, I preferred someone whose exuberance for the chase was not quite as overt as that displayed by Deputy Reece Hutchins. I’m sure Reece made a fine law officer, but most of my conversations with him during our search had revolved around his fantasies of how he would react to an ambush. Maybe he was just steadying his nerves, but he got on mine.
I was also unsettled by Fats’ request to speak with me. Something was bothering him, and for some reason he wasn’t comfortable discussing it in front of Susan. It could have merely been his old-school notion that there are some topics men should only talk about with other men. He certainly had seemed shocked by the idea of Reverend Pace having a female colleague. I suspected the terrible tragedy of little Jimmy Coleman’s death lay beneath Fats’ anxiety, and I decided I should see him before meeting Tommy Lee.
I had been six when Brenda McCauley was murdered. We had been in first grade together. A handyman who did odd jobs for Fats lured the trusting little girl into his car. Her body was found in a drainage ditch three days later. The killing cut our community to the quick. My classmates and I were sheltered from the grisly details, and only when I was much older did I learn she had been sodomized. The murderer died a week later in a shootout with police in north Georgia.
Losing a classmate when you’re six makes a lasting impact. I couldn’t see Fats without thinking of the lively red-haired girl who had once sat in the desk beside me. If I still felt some pain, what pain must Fats McCauley have had to endure every day of his life? Surely it was unbearable. Fats’ wife left him on the first anniversary of their daughter’s death, unable to separate her husband from the anguish of their loss. I thought about my father and his fading memory and thought at times it could be a blessing.
At ten till eight, most of the Main Street stores were still closed. Of course, P’s Barbershop bustled with the usual crowd of Monday morning gossips who clustered around the central kerosene heater, drinking coffee, watching haircuts, and telling tall tales. It was the place to learn who did what to whom over the weekend.
McCauley’s Furniture was three stores down from the barbershop. I parked at the curb and peered into the dim store front, but I couldn’t see any activity. The “Drink Sundrop” open-for-business sign taped inside the front door announced Monday—Friday: eight-thirty to five. I guessed Fats would be up by now since the store should open in less than an hour.
I jiggled the door latch and wasn’t surprised to find it locked. I banged on the window glass, but the anemic rattle did not sound as if it could be heard beyond the love seats and winged-back chairs visible in the morning sunlight.
I noticed no cars were parked at the curb. Fats’ vehicle must have been kept in the rear alley. I cut through the walkway between McCauley’s Furniture and Larson’s Discount Drugs, dodging the boxes of trash set out by the druggist for Monday pickup. The furniture store had no exit along the side. At the rear, an old silver Buick sat snug against Fats’ loading dock door. On the far side was a service entrance with an electric buzzer to signal a delivery. I had expected that. I didn’t expect the broken windowpane above the doorknob. The sight of the jagged daggers of glass snapped me fully alert like no cup of coffee ever could.
I carefully reached for the inside latch, and swung the door open with my knee, leaving my good arm free should the intruder be waiting in the shadows. A floorboard creaked as I stepped across the threshold. It was the only sound other than my own breathing. I waited for my eyes to adjust. In the gloom, a packing crate became visible in the corner by the stairway to the second floor. Its lid had been pried off for a preliminary inspection of its contents. A crowbar dangled from the splintered edge where the nails had been ripped from the wood. I grabbed the flat end and balanced the cool iron in my hand. A swift swing would turn it into a lethal weapon, capable of breaking an arm or skull.
From the rear of the store, I could clearly see the silhouettes of furniture cluttered against the daylight of the front windows. The cash register at the counter appeared undisturbed. Perhaps the burglar, if he had indeed gotten inside, had fled before getting a chance to rifle the cash drawer. I decided to announce my presence in case an alarmed Fats McCauley was upstairs loading a shotgun.
“Mr. McCauley! Mr. McCauley, it’s Barry Clayton.” I kept the crowbar by my side and climbed the stairs, calling out with every step. I pushed open the door to the apartment and heard the sound of running water. Then I felt the wetness soak through my shoes. I crossed the small living room toward the hallway. My footsteps squished in the puddles that collected in the depressions of the hardwood floor. I found a wall switch and the overhead light illuminated the short corridor. Water flowed under the door at the end of the hall, its pink tinge offering an ominous explanation of why no one answered.
I slowly pushed the door open. In the dim light, I saw a shapeless mass quivering above the porcelain rim of the tub. I needed a few seconds to comprehend that I was staring at what once had been a human being.
The remains of Fats’ head lay against the spigot, bobbing in its generated turbulence and floating just above the surface, while the rest of his body filled the tub. His flaccid mass was not round but layered in folds where the fat creased back on itself. The buoyant flesh rippled in macabre vibrations as the water swirled around the corpse and flowed over the tub’s edge onto the floor.
“Oh, hell,” I muttered. I saw the thick splotches of blood, hair, flesh, and brains splattered against the tile wall from the soap dish to the ceiling. A single discharged shotgun shell lay in the dry wash basin to my right. It was a number one buck Remington twelve gauge, the same kind of shell I saw ricochet off Martha Willard’s casket.
“Don’t disturb anything,” ordered Tommy Lee. “I’ll be right there.”
I started to remind him I had worked in a police department, but I decided I’d probably say the same thing to anyone standing smack in the middle of a murder scene. I set the phone receiver back on the cradle, careful to hold it where I would not smudge any prints. There was nothing I could do for Fats. I took the few remaining minutes before the coming onslaught of law enforcement officials and media hounds to indulge my old police curiosity about the crime scene.
The writing desk in his bedroom was tidy. I had used the black rotary-dial phone I found squared in the back right corner. The goose-necked lamp was on the left. A plain white message pad lay in the center of the desk. Several sheets had been torn off leaving a red-gummed rim of adhesive binding sticking a quarter inch above the top sheet. Nothing was written on the pad, although I noticed an imprint from the previous notation—“Barry Clayton weather.”
Just to the side of the desk was a wire-mesh waste basket, its bottom covered with wadded note sheets. I wondered if the one bearing my name was among them. On the floor next to the waste basket lay a retractable ballpoint pen with “McCauley’s Furniture” gilded on the blue plastic barrel. The tip was clicked in position for writing.
Everything else in the sparsely furnished room seemed in order. The clothes I had seen Fats wearing yesterday were piled in the desk chair. The single bed was made, but the spread had been neatly folded back from the pillow. A closed black Bible rested on the crisp white pillowcase.
I returned to the hall and opened the door across from Fats’ bedroom. Inside, it was as dark as if night had suddenly fallen on that half of the apartment. I fumbled along the wall until I found the face plate through my handkerchief. I flipped up the stubby switch.
In the light, I found myself staring nearly twenty-five years into the past. Against the far wall was a single bed covered with a faded peach spread. The oversized white pillow provided support for a collection of cherished stuffed animals: a teddy bear, a purple frog, a Raggedy Ann and Raggedy Andy. Stacked on the nightstand were
My First Speller
and
My First Math
, school books that had never been returned. Everything was waiting for the touch of a little hand that would never come. Fats had turned the room into a shrine.
“This changes everything.” Tommy Lee slowly twirled the silver pen in his hand. Around it rotated the discharged shotgun shell he had carefully lifted from the sink. The two of us stood in the bathroom, momentarily oblivious to the floating corpse behind us. We stared at the evidence both of us saw linking Dallas Willard to another murder.
“I’ve got my search teams spread out through the hills, and he walks into town and shoots an innocent man in the bathtub.”
“What’s the motive?” I asked.
“I’ll be damned if I can see it. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe he’s just nuts. Maybe this didn’t come from Dallas’ shotgun and I’m the one who’s nuts. Or simply the last to learn that Remington number one buckshot is the new weapon of choice. Well, I’ll run down Main Street wearing only my holster if the firing pin mark on this shell doesn’t match those from the cemetery.” He slipped the shell into a plastic evidence sleeve. “If it’s Dallas, and if there is no logical motive, then every citizen in this county is a potential victim.”
“Let me show you something else,” I said. I took Tommy Lee into Fats’ bedroom and pointed to the notepad on the desk. “Looks like Fats or somebody wrote down my name and the word weather. Maybe the sheet is in the trash.”
“Weather?”
“It was raining last night. Could be two separate thoughts.”
“The state mobile crime lab is on the way. I want them going over the apartment before we remove the body. I’ll tell them to look out for anything that might have come off this pad. No way to know if he wrote it last night or last week.”
“Last night he asked to speak to me. Maybe I was on today’s to-do list.”
“Speak to you about what?” asked Tommy Lee.
“I don’t know. He was upset by the death of that little boy. Just look in his daughter’s room if you want a glimpse of Fats’ private hell.”
“Listen, Barry. I want you to watch your back. Dallas tried to kill you once. He may now have your name in the same pocket as his shotgun shells. Motive or not, he has moved beyond killing his immediate family.”
“And there has got to be a connection,” I said. “It must be about the land. Was Fats trying to buy it from Dallas’ brother and sister?”
“Fats never went out of town. You think he could tote his bulk up and down the side of a mountain?”
“I meant as an investment.”
“Hell, Barry, to be honest I haven’t had two minutes to worry about the land.”
“Then no one talked to Linda Trine?” I asked. “Remember Alex Soles told me she observed Dallas ranting at the migrant workers.”
The sheriff shook his head. “One of those meant-to-do things. Since we knew Dallas pulled the trigger, I didn’t waste time trying to build a case against him when the priority was to bring him in. Want to do us both a favor?”
“Sure.”
“Go see Linda Trine for me. And see if she knows anything about this.” He pulled a folded sheet of common white typing paper out of his chest pocket and smoothed the creases until it lay flat on the desk. An oval had been sketched with what looked like three bands drawn across it. A lopsided sandwich. The top layer was labeled L.W. and bottom layer, N.J. The initials F.W. were imprinted on the middle one. Martha Willard’s signature was in the upper right-hand corner of the page, and beneath it was the date April 25th.
“Here is a photocopy of what I found on Dallas’ kitchen table when I searched the cabin after the shooting. I figure this is a map. If all the Willard property is deeded in Martha’s name, then this may be how she wanted it portioned up. N.J. is Norma Jean, and L.W. is Lee Willard. F.W. must be some other relative, meaning Dallas Willard got shut out completely. Must have driven him over the edge and he killed the other two.”