Final Undertaking: A Buryin' Barry Mystery (Buryin' Barry Series)

by Mark de Castrique

  The wail of sirens pierced the air.

  “Then we’ll get him.” Reece grabbed my arm. “Will you go to the hospital? Keep me posted?”

  “Sure.” I looked at the old man’s body again. “Let me know if you get an ID. It’ll be the first question out of Tommy Lee’s mouth.”

  We both smiled in spite of the dire situation. We knew Tommy Lee too well.

  While Reece cleared the street in preparation for the ambulances, I made a quick round of the injured. Fletcher kept his hand pressed against Cindy’s side. His face was nearly as pale as hers, and she looked like she was going into shock.

  Susan had stripped the unknown girl’s blouse away from the stomach wound and used the cloth as a compress. “I think the bullet went through clean. The head injury could be more serious, but I won’t know till I get her in OR.”

  “Is she the priority?”

  “They’re all a priority.”

  I saw Fletcher whispering encouragement to Cindy. Patsy was stroking Tommy Lee’s forehead, and Dr. Bond was bent close to the sheriff’s chest.

  “First ambulance here takes you and this girl,” I told Susan. I could see Reece flagging an emergency team at the cross street. A second vehicle with flashing lights came from farther down the block. Both cut their sirens and I didn’t hear another.

  My gut tightened. I knew what Tommy Lee would want. He’d gone back for a dying comrade in the face of enemy fire. His bravery cost him an eye, but he’d have done it again without hesitation.

  Susan must have read my mind. “I don’t think Cindy’s as bad as Tommy Lee.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I can’t be one hundred percent sure.”

  “Then Cindy goes next.” I looked around in desperation. Cars had been banned from the street for the dance. I turned to the stage. The Dickens family stood like a Grand Ol’ Opry tableau, instruments quiet in their hands. The mandolin player had her arm around the pint-sized banjo picker. His face was buried in her blouse. The lanky grandson leaned against his big bass fiddle, staring out as if watching a movie.

  “Hey,” I yelled. “How’d you get that bass here?”

  “In our van,” the young man answered.

  “Where is it?”

  “Behind the stage.”

  “Empty it out. We need it.”

  He looked to his grandpa.

  “You heard the man,” Roscoe said. “Git crackin’.”

  The EMTs hit like a SWAT team. Portable gurneys appeared and Susan helped direct the load-in.

  I ran alongside her as the unknown girl was transported to an ambulance. “I’ve got a van, if you want it.”

  She turned to the EMT behind her. “What do you think? Is a van better than a delay?”

  “We’ve got a small stretcher for bringing people out of ravines. We could put a vehicle in the pocket and be at the hospital in five minutes.”

  “The pocket?” I asked.

  “Between the two ambulances,” he explained. “A convoy.”

  Two patrol cars pulled to the curb. I saw Deputy Steve Wakefield hop out of one, his shirt half unbuttoned. Word on the scanner must have mobilized even the off-duty officers.

  “All right,” I said. “Get this girl in and give me the stretcher. We’ll put Tommy Lee in the van.”

  Dr. Bond, Reece Hutchins, Wakefield, and an EMT helped me get Tommy Lee strapped on the stretcher. Patsy walked with us as we carried him behind the stage. The jostling must have roused him. He groaned and opened his eye as we approached a rusted Econo-van with the hand-lettered words DICKENS MOUNTAIN MUSIC: Best Square Dancing Round These Parts.

  “Always wanted to be in a band,” Tommy Lee muttered.

  “Good,” I said. “Your first gig’s at the hospital.”

  “Just don’t book me in your damn funeral home.”

  At the emergency room, I caught Susan as she headed to scrub.

  “I’ll be with Patsy. If you can, have someone get me an ID on the girl. Who’s on call?”

  “O’Malley’s on his way,” Susan yelled over her shoulder as she ran down the hall. “Chandler’s already here. We’ll share OR staff as best we can.”

  Double doors closed behind her and I was alone. Three surgeons, three victims. No, there had been four. I wondered who the dead man was, lying in the street. I’d never seen him before, but, as the town undertaker, I was the only one who could help him now.

  In the waiting room, I found Helen Todd sitting with Fletcher and Patsy. Helen wore sweatpants and an extra large tee shirt with a bright red cardinal and the word café under it. Promotional wardrobe for her diner.

  I guessed the tee shirt also served as her pajamas since Helen had probably been in bed. She got up at four in the morning to make sure her patrons would have a hot meal at six.

  When Helen saw me, she burst into tears. “Oh, Barry.” She got to her feet and I hugged her without saying anything. “Tell me she’s going to be all right.”

  “We think so. They’ve got her in surgery. She never lost consciousness, Helen. Susan says that’s a good sign.”

  Patsy had also stood up. I could tell she was trying hard not to cry. “Anything on Tommy Lee?”

  I shook my head. Her husband had lost consciousness again halfway to the hospital. But Dr. O’Malley, the head of Susan’s clinic, was a thoracic specialist and I knew he’d be the one operating on Tommy Lee. “We probably won’t hear for a while. Can I do anything for you?”

  Her eyes moistened. “No. I’d better call the kids. Kenny’s got a car at the house.”

  Tommy Lee and Patsy had two great children. Kenny was home for the summer from N.C. State and Samantha was finishing her first year in high school. They’d be a comfort when they arrived.

  Standing behind Patsy, Fletcher asked me, “Is there something I can do? Anyone I should call?”

  I thought how the news would spread like wildfire through our little community. I expected concerned friends would soon fill the waiting room. “Yes. You can tell my mother. But not over the phone.” Mom loved Tommy Lee and his family. I wanted someone to tell her in person.

  “Sure,” Fletcher said. “I’ll sit with her for a while. See if I can help with your father.”

  “Thanks.” I shook his hand. “Tell her not to wait up for me. I’ll call if there’s any update.”

  Fletcher left, and I was grateful for the young man’s sensitivity. He’d told his advisor he wanted an internship in a small, quiet town, preferably with a family funeral business. I hoped he hadn’t gotten more than he bargained for. Family meant he would have to adjust to the ways of my seventy-five-year-old Uncle Wayne and my Alzheimer’s-afflicted father. I’d anticipated that would be a challenge. I hadn’t figured that the small, quiet town would have a Friday night shootout to rival the OK Corral.

  Fletcher had been gone only a few minutes when a nurse stuck her head in the door. “Mr. Clayton?”

  “Yes.” I stood up.

  “May I speak with you a moment?” The nurse waited for me to join her in the hall.

  Patsy and Helen paled, worried that I would be given bad news for one of them.

  “I’ll be right back,” I said.

  The nurse retreated a few yards to pull me out of earshot of the others. With a gloved hand, she held out a small beige pouch attached to an elastic belt. Blood stained half the material. I recognized the pouch as a passport carrier to be worn close to the body. I’d used one like it when I’d traveled through Europe several years ago.

  “You’d better glove before examining this. We cut it off the girl. Dr. Miller said you’d want to see it.” The nurse opened a door behind her. “You can use this treatment room. Gloves are on the shelf. I’ve got to get back to OR.”

  “How are things going?”

  “Everyone’s alive.” Her face gave no clue as to how alive.

  I pulled the latex gloves over my hands and took the pouch. The nurse closed the door, leaving me alone. I laid the blood-soaked belt on the
paper protecting the examination table. The girl must have worn it under the low waistline of her jeans, because I hadn’t noticed it when Susan treated her at the scene.

  At this point, I looked at everything as evidence and was glad all contact with the belt had been through gloved hands. The pouch itself was flat and not much larger than a four-by-six notecard. Whatever she was carrying in it couldn’t be very thick. Maybe emergency money or some identification cards. My first thought was to turn the pouch over to Reece without opening it, but I knew it might be hours before he could get to the hospital. If there was a chance the girl’s identification was in the pouch, both Reece and the hospital personnel needed to know now.

  The snap yielded easily enough. I lifted the flap and slipped two fingers inside. I felt crisp bills and a plastic card. I pulled them clear, trying to avoid the blood. The money was all new twenties and the plastic was a VISA card issued by Wachovia. Lucy Kowalski was the name embossed on the face. I searched the pouch a second time, but there was no driver’s license or other photo ID that could prove the girl on the operating table was Lucy Kowalski. Lucy. “This is for Lucy,” the old man had shouted. Here was the connection in my hand. But what did it mean?

  I counted the twenties. The girl had been carrying exactly five hundred dollars. I replaced the bills and the credit card, closed the pouch and wrapped the belt in tissue from a dispenser. Then I tucked it in the front pocket of my pants.

  When I stepped back into the waiting room, I told Patsy and Helen we had no update. The nurse’s only information concerned the unidentified girl, and her name might be Lucy Kowalski.

  “Never heard of her,” Patsy said.

  “Me neither.” Helen frowned. “Why do you say might be?”

  “She had one credit card in a money belt. No other identification.”

  “I don’t remember that name coming through the restaurant. I’m pretty good at keeping names and faces together.”

  Pretty good didn’t begin to describe Helen’s memory. I’d seen her shock a tourist by remembering his name a year later.

  “Tommy Lee will start a trace and then—” I stopped in mid-sentence. Tommy Lee lay on an operating table. “Well, I’ll get this to Reece.”

  Patsy sat down and buried her face in her hands. A few minutes later, her children, Kenny and Samantha, arrived. Samantha was crying. As a young college man, Kenny tried to keep his composure, but I’d conducted enough funerals to recognize the grief churning just beneath the surface.

  I stepped out to the main lobby, off the emergency room. The night would be a long one and I wouldn’t leave until I had word from Susan. I told the duty nurse I’d be outside, getting some fresh air, and be sure and have someone find me if there was any news.

  The entrance offered a few benches along a landscaped walkway where people could smoke free of the health standards imposed by the hospital. Several people were sitting on the benches, indulging their habit, determined to someday become business for both the hospital and me. I took my stroll in another direction where I could be alone with my thoughts.

  The shooting played like a video loop in my head. The old man’s determined look changing to confusion as he stared at the unidentified fallen girl. Was she his Lucy? Had he killed someone he loved? Then Tommy Lee’s expression as the man whirled around. Uncertainty. Was he afraid to pull the trigger because Cindy and I might be hit? Or had he thought the old man wouldn’t fire? I prayed to God I’d be able to ask him.

  In the meantime, the recycling images stirred one immediate question—who was the man who ran away? Who was Lincoln? Then my police instincts kicked in. I hadn’t been thinking clearly. I needed to get Lucy Kowalski’s name to Reece. The first few hours after a crime can be critical to its solution. And here I stood with money and Lucy Kowalski’s credit card in my pocket and my cell phone locked in my jeep a block off Main Street.

  I ran back to the hospital. The woman at the main information desk directed me to a bank of phones around the corner. At this time of night, I had my pick. The dispatcher for the Sheriff’s Department routed me straight to Reece.

  Without so much as a hello, he blurted out the question foremost on his mind. “Any word on Tommy Lee?”

  “No. He’s still in surgery. No update on the others either.”

  “Damn. That’s not good.”

  “It means they’re still alive.”

  Reece exhaled into the receiver. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “Listen, I’ve got some information on the girl who was shot. Ready to write?”

  “Shoot.”

  “She was carrying five hundred dollars and a credit card in the name of Lucy Kowalski. That’s K O W—”

  “A L S K I,” he finished. “We identified the dead man from his driver’s license. Mitch Kowalski of Delray Beach, Florida.”

  “Reece, just before he shot, Kowalski said, ‘He took my Lucy from me.’ Maybe the girl was a runaway and Kowalski’s the grandfather.”

  “Maybe, but you know what Tommy Lee thinks about coincidences.”

  I did. He hated them. He only accepted them as a last resort for explaining events in an investigation. “What’s the coincidence?”

  “I just got off the phone with a Lieutenant Roy Spring in the Delray Police Department. He knew Mitch Kowalski. And he knew Lucy Kowalski. She’s not the girl you’ve got at the hospital. Lucy Kowalski was Mitch Kowalski’s wife. She was in her eighties, and he buried her two weeks ago.”

  Chapter Three

  “He took my Lucy from me.” Mitch Kowalski’s words rang in my head again, but this time I heard the utter despair. Was he grieving for a dead wife and not the wounded girl in front of him?

  My mind jumped to the obvious question. “How’d she die?”

  “Drug overdose. OxyContin.”

  “Foul play?”

  “Spring didn’t think so. He said the lady was old and her pain kept getting worse. She might have chewed her pills and that destroyed the time-release coating.”

  That didn’t explain Mitch Kowalski’s deadly appearance in Gainesboro. “Does this police lieutenant have any clue as to why her husband would try to kill a man named Lincoln?”

  “No. But Spring’s going to look into it.”

  I had another idea. “Ask him if there’s a granddaughter. Maybe named Lucy. The girl could still be the link.”

  “Brilliant. Why didn’t I think of that?” Reece’s sarcasm dripped through the receiver.

  Maybe it was the pressure of the situation or maybe Reece just couldn’t deal with me giving him advice. Either way I wasn’t going to let him bait me. I let silence be my response.

  Finally Reece sighed. “Something, ain’t it?”

  “What?”

  “Tommy Lee gets shot on Main Street because some blue-haired lady down in Florida overdosed.”

  “Reece, the sins of the world can’t be stopped at the county line.”

  “No, they can’t. But Tommy Lee sure as hell tried.”

  Reece was right. Tommy Lee was the kind of sheriff a town like Gainesboro couldn’t buy. He had to be home grown, and Tommy Lee was one of a kind, a war hero whose bravery and courage now protected the community he loved. If he didn’t pull through, there was no one who could even come close to replacing him.

  I promised Reece I’d get back to him in an hour unless I heard something sooner.

  A few minutes after eleven, both Susan and O’Malley came to the waiting room. By now more than twenty people, including off-duty deputies and friends and neighbors of Patsy or Helen, had gathered for prayers and support. The room fell silent as the doctors entered.

  Dr. O’Malley wore his mask draped around his neck, and exhaustion deepened the wrinkles in his gray-stubbled cheeks. “Mrs. Wadkins,” he said softly. His trace of a smile sparked hope in Patsy’s eyes.

  Kenny grabbed his mother’s arm and they walked to the door. Samantha followed a few steps behind, hesitant to come too close to what could be bad news.

 
When O’Malley had taken them into the hall, Susan gave me a barely perceptible nod. I felt the tension flow out of my body. Tommy Lee would be all right. I then looked at Helen Todd leaning forward on the edge of her chair.

  Susan went to her. “Cindy’s in recovery, and out of danger. Would you like to come with me?”

  The question needed no answer. Helen wiped tears from her eyes, clutched the hands of well-wishers around her, and hurried to see her daughter.

  Susan turned to me. “Meet you for a cup of coffee when I’m done.”

  The hospital cafeteria was nearly deserted when I got there. A few bleary-eyed residents snacked on junk food from vending machines. Hot breakfast would be available at six, but since it wasn’t yet midnight, I hoped to be gone long before then. Twenty minutes later I was finishing my second coffee refill when Susan sat down across from me. She’d changed into her street clothes and snagged a honey bun pastry to go with her own black coffee.

  “What about your girlish figure?” I asked.

  “If you ever hope to see it again, you’ll let me eat this guilt-free.”

  “Can I warm it in the microwave?”

  She smiled. “No, thanks. I’d probably be asleep before you got back. What a night.” She sipped her coffee while I waited. She was the one with the news. “Tommy Lee was lucky. He lost a lot of blood, but the only vital organ damaged by the bullet was his right lung. The lung will heal but scar tissue will probably limit its efficiency.”

  “How bad?”

  “Well, if he planned to run a marathon someday, he’d better go to Plan B. But with proper recuperation and physical therapy, O’Malley says he should be back to normal activities in six to eight weeks.”

  “And Cindy?”

  Susan took a bite of the honey bun, and then licked her fingers. “I operated on her. Bullet mangled her spleen. Given the area, she did okay. You can live without a spleen. I’m afraid she won’t be starting her internship in two weeks.”

  “How’s Helen taking it?”

  “No mother likes to see her child hooked up to monitors and IVs, but the words ‘she’s going to make it’ were all Helen wanted to hear.”