Dangerous Undertaking Read Online Free PDF Page B

breezy Saturday. Reverend Lester Pace and I were hiking along a five-mile rail spur that ran to an abandoned quarry. Friday afternoon’s search had netted no sign of Dallas in the immediate area. The truck yielded no clues, and there were no missing person or stolen vehicle reports to indicate Dallas had hijacked someone on departing the scene. Tommy Lee had checked with the Norfolk-Southern and the CSX rail lines. Neither reported trouble with any of their freights running along that stretch. It was as if, as Deputy Hutchins had said, Dallas had vanished into thin air. The search was being conducted regardless, and Tommy Lee had coordinated groups of officers from other counties with his own team, pairing the searchers so no one worked alone or without someone familiar with the area. A few civilian volunteers were included who knew the coves and hollows, but each was instructed to adhere to any orders or commands issued by the accompanying law officer. Tommy Lee’s goal was to comb the rail lines within a thirty-mile radius of Dallas’ truck.
    Pace and I were the exceptions. Tommy Lee had reluctantly given in to my request to be a part of the search because he respected the training I had received on the Charlotte force. He teamed me with Reverend Pace because Pace knew the area as well as anyone, and he too wouldn’t take no for an answer. We were given a dead-end stretch of track and told to stay on it. Tommy Lee insisted we be armed for our own protection. I carried my five-shot .38 Smith & Wesson Special high on my hip. Tommy Lee also insisted that if we saw any sign that Dallas might be or had been in the vicinity, we were to summon up the proper authorities to take further action.
    Of all the preachers I dealt with in the funeral business, Pace was my favorite. He had been a Methodist circuit-rider for over forty years. Time might have lessened his step but not his stamina. He carried a twisted rhododendron trunk as a walking stick, which he brandished like a drum major marshaling the band. Although the temperature couldn’t have been above forty-five, I worked up a sweat matching stride with him. As we walked along the rusted steel rails, the preacher searched the right side of the gravel bed and I took the left.
    “Haven’t seen your dad in about a month, Barry. How’s he doing?” Pace asked the question after we’d covered a couple miles and thoroughly talked out the shooting at Crab Apple Valley Baptist Church and the possible reasons for Dallas Willard’s actions. It was not lost on Pace that the missing man was mentally disturbed and needed compassion along with capture. Pace’s compassion was genuine; so was the .32 Colt tucked in his belt.
    “Dad is more frightened,” I said. “Stays upstairs most of the time. A few steps out in the hall and he forgets where he is going. Forgets where he is. And there are times he looks at me and can’t quite place my face.”
    The old preacher shook his head. “Alzheimer’s is a hell of a thing. Hardest on the ones closest. God give you strength.”
    I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want God’s strength. I wanted Him to take this curse off my father, the gentlest man who ever lived. Pace read my thoughts.
    “Your father is quite courageous. You know that?”
    “Yes,” I replied tersely.
    “A few years ago, he told me he had only one fear. That fear wasn’t for himself. He knows his death will come through a painless oblivion. His fear is for you.”
    “Me?” I stammered before I could stop myself.
    “He’s afraid you will become bitter. Bitter that your love for him and your mother disrupted your own life. Brought you back to the small town and the job you had no interest in having. He has accepted you wanted more than Gainesboro could give and that he would not pass the funeral business on to you like your grandfather had handed it to him. But then, it happened.” Pace took a deep breath and seemed to stare back five years to that dreadful day