Dangerous Undertaking Read online

  The telephone rang, breaking the moment.

  “So much for doctor’s orders,” she said. She lifted the receiver and spoke curtly, “Room 237, who’s calling please?”

  Her face flushed with the slightest hint of red. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece and offered me the phone. “She says she’s your wife. I think I’d better excuse myself.”

  She left me alone to confront the voice of the woman who still managed to disrupt my life, even by long distance.

  “Hello, Rachel.”

  “My God, Barry. What happened? I heard your name on the news. The news here in Washington. Are you all right?” She sounded so genuinely concerned, I suppressed the sarcastic tone I usually used as defense against her constant criticism of my small-town life.

  “Yes. Just got in the way of a little buckshot. I’m sure the press has exaggerated my involvement.”

  “Don’t deny you could have been killed.” She sighed. “And people say the cities are dangerous.”

  After a few seconds of long-distance hum, she went on, “I’m glad you’re all right, Barry.”

  “I know you are, Rachel.” There was a knock at the door, and the face of a pirate leered at me. “Sorry, someone’s here,” I told her. “I’ve got to hang up. Thanks for the call. I’ll give your best to Mom.”

  “And your dad too,” she added. “Even if he doesn’t understand.”

  “Thank you, Rachel,” I said, and I meant it. She and I couldn’t live together, but there was still a basic bond of caring. In some ways, she had been the victim of my father’s Alzheimer’s as much as any of us. I had been forced to quit my job with the Charlotte police department and leave my graduate studies in criminal justice at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in order to help Mom and her brother Wayne care for Dad and run the funeral home. Even Charlotte had been too small for Rachel, and there was no way she would survive in a mountain town the size of Gainesboro. The divorce had been sad but polite, and she had carried her life away to Washington.

  The pirate bent over my bed. The upper edge of his black eye-patch cut diagonally across a bushy brown eyebrow, and from underneath it, a thin, pale scar sliced over the sharp cheekbone to the corner of a wide, tooth-filled grin. He fixed his one eye on my bandaged shoulder.

  “Well, now, Barry,” said Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins in a gravelly voice. “Mighty thoughtful of you to get shot in a cemetery. Inconvenient as hell not to die. You feel like telling me why Dallas Willard wanted to take you out along with the rest of his family?”

  “No,” I croaked.

  “Hmm,” he grunted. “Sounds like you need a drink.” He looked in the empty Styrofoam pitcher, and then brought a glass of water from the bathroom. “Want to sit up?”

  I nodded an “okay” and the sheriff pressed a control button that set motors whirring. The top half of the bed rose to a forty-five-degree angle and jerked to a stop.

  “Here, sip on this.”

  I took the glass and let the cool water seep between my cracked lips. I was acutely aware of the ache in my shoulder and just as acutely aware that Tommy Lee Wadkins would not be sympathetic if he thought I had any information he needed. Pulling a chair beside the bed, the sheriff straddled it backwards, took a notepad and pencil from the chest pocket of his desert tan uniform, and stared at me.

  “What happened?” I asked, beating him to the question.

  He smiled. “Not much. Just the bloodiest mess I’ve seen since ’Nam.”

  Everybody in Gainesboro, or the whole of Laurel County for that matter, knew Lieutenant Tommy Lee Wadkins was a bona fide war hero. He had brought his ambushed platoon through a hellfire, refusing to leave anyone behind. Even though shrapnel to the face had taken an eye and slashed through his cheekbone, the young officer had dragged a dying comrade through the jungle and provided cover while the choppers evacuated his men. Hanging from the skid, he had emptied his magazine as the last chopper lifted him above the smoke and fire to carry him to safety and unwanted glory.

  Sheriff Tommy Lee Wadkins never spoke of the war. In all the years I had known him, the word Vietnam never passed his lips until today.

  “You’re one lucky son of a bitch,” he said. “So, we’ve both been shot, but at least I knew why ‘Charlie’ wanted to kill me. You got any ideas?”

  “Not a clue. You get him?”

  Tommy Lee shook his head. “As soon as I got the word, we issued a BOLO.”

  Since I’d served three years as a patrolman in Charlotte, Tommy Lee freely used cop lingo with me. BOLO. Be on the lookout for.

  “Dallas and his truck have disappeared,” he said. “A manhunt is underway in four counties and the state has lent a chopper for aerial surveillance. There is no sign he returned to his cabin. He could have gone to earth anywhere within a twenty-mile radius. I figure that’s the travel time he had before we got organized.”

  “He knows these hills,” I said.

  “As well as anybody. For all we know, he may have an arsenal stored somewhere. I’m hoping this is just some family feud taken to the extreme and he’s not a danger to anyone else.”

  I saw Dallas Willard smiling at me from across the casket. “But I’m not family. I suggest you learn what happened to Dallas Willard during these few days since his grandmother died.”

  “I’ve already started. Did you know that last night Dallas filled up an answering machine tape at the mental health clinic?”

  “No. Was he trying to reach Dr. Soles?” Dr. Alexander Soles was the psychologist who led a support group for families who were coping with Alzheimer’s. Mom and I attended, and Dallas, Norma Jean, and Lee had been a part of it until two weeks ago when Martha Willard’s condition took a sharp turn for the worse.

  “No, not Dr. Soles,” said Tommy Lee. “Dallas Willard was asking for you.”

  “Me? At the clinic?”

  “Yeah, he said he had to reach you and that all he got at the funeral home was an answering service. He said he needed you to tell his grandmother something.” Tommy Lee scooted his chair forward as if closer proximity would somehow inspire me to find a sane answer to an absurd question. “Barry, why would Dallas Willard think you could talk to his dead grandmother?”

  I shifted on the bed, trying for a more comfortable position that would clear my head. “I don’t know. The only times I ever spoke with Dallas were when he came to the Alzheimer’s meetings with Lee and Norma Jean.”

  “You must have said something,” Tommy Lee said.

  I took another sip of water as I tried to remember the few conversations I had with Dallas. “I first started talking to him a couple of months ago. During one of the sessions, Norma Jean told everyone how Grandma Martha had started calling him Francis.”

  “Francis?”

  “Yeah, for Saint Francis. Martha Willard thought he could talk to the animals. Dallas became very upset. He said that was private. Between him and his grandma. He stormed out of the room. I went after him to try and calm him down. I guess I felt sorry for him.”

  Tommy Lee looked at his notes. “Alex Soles told me he suspects Dallas is a borderline paranoid/schizophrenic and believes his grandmother’s death may have triggered a full-blown psychotic episode.”

  “Triggered is right.” I moved again and felt the pain in my shoulder. “I’d always sensed something odd about him. He had difficulty expressing himself in our sessions. The night he got so upset I found him leaning against the hood of his pickup, crying like a baby.”

  “Did you say anything to him?”

  “I told him not to let what other people said bother him. That it was obvious he had a special relationship with his grandmother just like I did with my father. He said he didn’t care about what other people thought. He just didn’t like to think of living without Grandma Martha. We talked for a while, and then I asked him to come back inside with me because I didn’t want to leave my mother alone. He followed me in as docile as a lamb. At the next meeting, he sat beside me. He would say hello an
d goodbye only to me and hardly anything else in between.”

  “He’s always been a quiet one,” said Tommy Lee, “but then a lot of these mountaineers are. Since he was never in trouble, I never gave him much thought.”

  “Then he stopped coming altogether. Must have missed three sessions in a row. I asked Norma Jean where he was and she said my guess was as good as hers. She said Dallas spent more and more time alone, wandering off in the woods. Two weeks ago, he came to the last meeting before Martha’s general health failed. He sat next to me, and as we were leaving, he caught my arm and asked to speak to me alone. ‘Mr. Clayton,’ he said, although he was only a couple years younger. ‘How do you think a person gets to Heaven?’”

  “Where’d that come from?” asked Tommy Lee.

  “Out of the blue. We’d never talked about an afterlife in the group sessions.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I believed each of us has to find God for himself, and that as for me, I tried to be a good person, treated others like I wanted to be treated, and tried not to harm anyone. If I did that, then I felt sure God would take care of me when I died.”

  Tommy Lee chuckled. “Billy Graham can give thanks you won’t be taking over his ministry. What did Dallas say then?”

  I paused, remembering the scene in the hallway of the mental health clinic. Dallas had backed away from me and smiled the same strange smile I had seen right before he shot me.

  “Well?” prompted Tommy Lee.

  “The last words Dallas said to me at the clinic were, ‘You’re a good man, Mr. Clayton.’”

  Tommy Lee jotted something in his notepad and asked, “Do you remember the last words he said to you in the cemetery?”

  “Remember them? I’ll never forget them. He’d just shot Lee and Norma Jean, and he shouted, ‘They’re goin’ to Hell, and so am I. You tell Grandma I’ll save the land. Tell her I love her.’”

  Tommy Lee gave a low whistle as we both reached the bizarre conclusion.

  “Dallas meant to send me to Heaven as a personal emissary to talk to his grandmother. He was sending me because he thought he was going to Hell for killing his brother and sister.”

  “I know it sounds crazy, my friend, but it looks like being a good man nearly got your head blown off.” His pencil scribbled across the page. “‘I’ll save the land.’ He’d never said anything about the land before?”

  “Never.”

  “I’ll look into it, but the first thing I’ve got to do is find Dallas,” he said, flipping the pad shut.

  “And do me a favor,” I said as he headed for the door. “Keep me posted.”

  Tommy Lee and I enjoyed a special kinship. At fifty, he was twenty years my senior, a bridge between the generation of my father and my own. He had led countless funeral processions for Dad in the eighteen years since he was first elected sheriff, and during the past two years, he and I had forged our own friendship. He knew I had given up my own law enforcement aspirations in order to help Mom cope with one of the most painful, heart-wrenching situations a family can face. Alzheimer’s is a cruel and malicious disease, stealing the person and leaving the shell as an ever-present reminder of the loss. Tommy Lee understood sacrifice, and for all his teasing, I knew I had his admiration. He didn’t have to tell me he was upset that Dallas Willard had nearly gunned me down. I felt confident that when Tommy Lee said “I’ll look into it,” his one eye would see more than any other two in the county.

  The nurse came in so quickly that she must have been waiting outside the door. She carried a tray with a hypodermic syringe and a menu for tomorrow’s meal selection. I checked off an assortment of bland options and let her assist me in rolling over on my good side.

  “Now, Mr. Clayton,” she said, “that ought to take the edge off and let you sleep.”

  She came around to help me lie on my back. “Nurse…” I left the word hanging as I struggled to see her ID badge.

  “Carswell, but I go by Millie.”

  “Millie, would you hand me the phone?”

  “I’ll be glad to dial for you.”

  “Just the hospital switchboard.”

  She punched zero and gave me the receiver.

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be all right.”

  Millie left as the operator came on the line.

  “Is it possible to order flowers out of the hospital?” I asked.

  “You have flowers in your room you don’t want, sir?” The woman was clearly surprised a patient would make such a request.

  “No, I want to order flowers to be delivered elsewhere.”

  She connected me to the hospital floral shop where the elderly proprietor complimented me on my thoughtfulness. I had him repeat the message for the card. “For Dr. Susan Miller, at the O’Malley Clinic—Patient Barry Clayton is grateful for her loving care.”

  I hung up the phone and rewarded myself with sleep.

  I awoke to a Saturday morning much like the day before. Low clouds coated what little scenery was visible from my hospital window with a scrim of white. The shoulder still hurt, but the pain had leveled out to an even plateau. There was a creak in the shadowed corner of my room, and Dr. Alex Soles stood up from the visitor’s chair. A big bag of Snickers dangled from one hand and a magazine was curled in the other.

  “Brought you something to eat and read.” He laid his gifts on a table under the window, then pulled the chair closer to the bed but didn’t sit down. He grabbed my wrist and gave a gentle squeeze.

  “Glad you’re in the hospital and not your own funeral home,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  Alex stood for a few seconds, not saying anything. He and I did not know each other well. Outside of the sessions on dealing with Alzheimer’s, I had only crossed paths with him a few times at social functions. I pegged him in his late forties. Cordial, professional, and dedicated were adjectives that best described him. Especially dedicated. He had the reputation for being a therapist who calmly and confidently steered others through their own trials.

  “Any word on Dallas?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Why in the hell did he do it, Barry?” Alex’s eyes locked on mine, and I knew he had submerged his personal feelings for the moment and was professionally struggling for an answer. “You must have some idea. My secretary played the answering machine tape yesterday when I came in at ten. Of all days to have a damn Rotary breakfast meeting.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Dallas just rambled on about how you had to talk to his grandmother. Tell her he’d been cheated. Cheated by his family. I phoned Sheriff Wadkins immediately, but it was too late. The call had just come in from the cemetery.”

  Again he reached out and squeezed my wrist. “I’m so sorry. I wish I could have gotten to him. He sounded so agitated. Extremely paranoid. So much so that I’d have to say his actions were in keeping with his mental state.”

  “Can I hear the tape?”

  “I turned it over to Sheriff Wadkins. But you’re in no condition to worry about it right now.”

  “I’m in no condition to forget it. The man tried to kill me, Alex.”

  Alex smiled and sat down in the chair. “We’re alike, Barry. You know that?”

  “In what way?” I asked.

  “We’ve got to know why people act as they do. That’s why you were studying criminal justice before your father’s illness, isn’t it? Curiosity as to why people behave as they do, and how anti-social, illegal behavior can be modified. Psychology and criminal justice are linked because when psychology fails, the criminal justice system usually inherits the problem. And you and I both feel guilty that we didn’t do enough for Dallas Willard in time.”

  “Nobody could find him, Alex.”

  “I mean earlier, before Martha died. Linda Trine mentioned Dallas to me several weeks ago. She handles the social services for a lot of the migrant workers. Seems Dallas kept coming down into the camp accusing them of taking his land. Like they were s
ome foreign invaders. The migrants have been picking for forty years or more. Nothing new about them being here, and Dallas doesn’t even have any cleared land in production. Linda thought Dallas needed some help because he’d never acted that way before. That last Alzheimer’s session wasn’t the appropriate time, and I was swamped with other cases and didn’t follow up with him.”

  “I know other members of the staff must also have people they can’t get to, Alex.”

  “But how many shoot three people?”

  “I was afraid these beauties would die if left solely to my care,” announced Susan Miller as she came in carrying a basketful of wildflowers, the multitude of blossoms arranged in a kaleidoscope of colors.

  “That’s comforting,” I said. “Do you feel that way about your human patients?”

  She ignored the question and cleared a spot on the table by the bag of Snickers and the magazine. “Who thought you needed Psychology Today?” she asked.

  “Alex Soles was by earlier. Must be from his waiting room. Probably from the last century.”

  She laughed. “No, for a doctor’s office, it’s current. Last April.” Susan set down the basket of flowers and turned the arrangement to catch what little light came through the window.

  “Good. This way I can take care of both of you at the same time,” she said. “And thank you. Saturday deliveries aren’t cheap.”

  “I’m billing that portion to my ex-wife.”

  She came over to the bedside and gave me a kiss. “I know she means well. I stopped by the funeral home and gave your mom an update. She hopes to drop by after lunch. Now let me take a look at my handiwork.” She laid her hand on the bandage, testing the security of the wrapping. “O’Malley been in yet this morning?”

  “Yes. About an hour ago. He said you had the morning off and I may have to go home today.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “Room service here is better than my cabin. I had to let the butler go. And I don’t know where the chauffeur parked my limo. Actually, Mom will insist I come to the funeral home. You know she already spends most of the day waiting on Dad, and I’d just as soon stay here until I can fend for myself.”