Free Dangerous Undertaking by Mark de Castrique

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?”

Chapter 6
    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