A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  Ed settled it for the moment by checking his watch and getting to his feet. "I wouldn't worry about it," he assured her, reaching out a hand to help her to her feet. "I really appreciate your coming to me, Casey. It means a lot to me that you'd think to warn me about a possible problem."

  She almost said it then, her hand caught in his, her hesitant smile pale in comparison with the beaming delight on his face. Carefully proportioned to show sincerity. She'd seen him practice that smile in the mirror in the mornings.

  "It was the least I could do," she answered, taking her hand back. "Next time, will you kindly send me an update of people in the know? It'd sure save me some grief."

  She let herself be steered back across the dun-colored carpeting.

  "You'll be the first to know," he promised. "Are you still living with your mother?"

  From anybody but a shrink, that would have sounded like an innocuous statement. Casey caught herself bristling again. "Yeah, well, nursing just doesn't pull in the big fees."

  Ed chuckled just in time to open the door and be overheard in the waiting room. Several female faces looked up with maternal smiles. Casey imagined they thought he was being spontaneous and genial.

  She got another careful peck on the cheek and a wave. Thankfully, she didn't want more.

  * * *

  "One more time, Reeva."

  Jack clicked his pen back into gear and leaned over the table. Huffing in indignation, the skinny black woman across the table took a minute to smooth out her spandex skirt and hike her bra strap from where it was slipping down her arm. Pockmarked and bony, she was about sixteen and looked more like thirty.

  "Moses come over 'bout six," she recited in a bored monotone. "I knows 'cause we always does it while we watches the news. Moses says he gets a hard-on watchin' other people have troubles. He stay to my place till next mornin'. Tha's it. I got nothin' more to say."

  Jack leaned his chair back against the wall and stretched a kink out of his back. He'd been in the interview room for two hours trying to break Reeva's story. If Moses was with Reeva the night Crystal was killed, then he had an alibi. But Jack couldn't imagine any reason Reeva would have stayed inside on a Friday night. He couldn't imagine Moses letting her stay inside. So he settled the chair back on the floor and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.

  "How 'bout it?" he asked quietly.

  Reeva snatched one like a starving child going for meat. Jack let her light up and savor the first few drags. Across the table from her, he did his own savoring, inhaling the pungent aroma of tobacco as it curled off the end of her cigarette. Even secondhand was better than nothing.

  "Why weren't you out at your corner?" he asked.

  She watched the smoke curl from the end of her cigarette. "I had my period."

  "Doesn't keep you from givin' head."

  "When I gets my cramps, I in no mood to be gentle."

  Settled quietly in the corner with the notebook and recorder, Barb Dawson lifted one eyebrow. The woman had a point.

  There was a knock on the door. Reeva cursed. Jack reached back to grab the handle.

  "You available to take a call, Sarge?"

  Jack traded looks with Barb. "Take a message, Nick."

  The door closed and Jack righted his chair again. Barb hit the play-record button and Reeva ground the last of her cigarette onto the tabletop.

  "One more time, Reeva."

  "Shee-it."

  * * *

  Casey was back at her list. She'd learned a lot in the last few days, and she didn't know any other way to keep it straight. She didn't know how to sort the important from the useless.

  How did you weight the value of grapevine gossip? Where on the list did you include a perfect alibi that needed puncturing, or the contrary conviction that the alibi was a lie? How about an ambiguous threat? An ex-husband with a big mouth who had the ability to ruin her?

  Casey didn't want to think about the damage Ed could do in his little golf outings. She'd been as much of a patient as anyone, settling onto his couch when it had still been vinyl instead of leather and chrome, offering up her own insecurities and uncertainties. She'd come to Ed for help and ended up marrying him. In the end, he'd never really helped her. But he still held her secrets. Secrets Hunsacker would consume with the greatest of relish and then spring back on her when she could least afford it.

  Casey was a different person now. Stronger, just as Marva had said, because she'd had to be. Clearer, more focused. Much more pragmatic. She knew what a person could expect in this world, and what she couldn't. And she knew that the only way to survive was to just keep putting one foot in front of the other and focusing on the next step and the one after that.

  She was just afraid that when she looked up, she'd find Hunsacker standing in front of her.

  Casey wished Sgt. Scanlon would call her back. She wanted to ask about Crystal's penchant for promptness.

  Was she the hooker with the notebook? Would Hunsacker have been in it?

  Everything else on her list was probably useless, nothing more than fuel for her own suspicions. But the notebook might be something. Casey looked down at her notes one more time, trying to pull a game plan from them.

  She was walking a more perilous tightrope now, with humiliation on one side and unemployment on the other. Each step she took had to be more careful than the last.

  Downstairs the doorbell chimed. Casey looked up and sighed. The next step was going to have to wait. She had Janice to deal with first. Shuffling her scattered papers back into order, she slid them away and turned off her lamp.

  Janice stood on her porch like a noblewoman on her way to the guillotine. Casey couldn't help but smile as she pulled open the door.

  "Finally." She greeted her co-worker with a smile she knew must look like one of Ed's. "We have the house to ourselves for the afternoon. Let's eat."

  Janice's lips fluttered toward a smile of thanks. "Your mom?" she asked, eyes tracking the high, echoing rooms.

  Casey shrugged and pushed the heavy wood-and-glass door shut. "Off saving souls in purgatory."

  Janice actually sighed. "I hope she's saving mine."

  "Food first." Her tennis shoes muttering on the hardwood floors, Casey led Janice past the entombed silence of the living room back into the cracked and comfortable kitchen.

  Casey hadn't wasted her years living with Ed. She knew enough to ease Janice into her problem. Dessert was soon enough.

  "I don't know what to do," Janice admitted, picking her chocolate cake into crumbs with the tines of her fork.

  Casey spent a moment watching dust motes drift in the sun over by the sink.

  "Wanna tell me about it?"

  Janice's eyes were wet and huge, her forehead creased like an old letter. Her hands trembled, just a little. She'd been keeping a lot in.

  "Your ex-husband ran around on you."

  Casey just nodded.

  Janice renewed the attack on her cake. "Aaron has done the same thing..." Courage seemed to require extra oxygen. Janice filled her lungs and continued. "And it wasn't with women."

  Casey's own breath whooshed out. "Oh."

  "Men," Janice spat. "A man, anyway. He knows him from the hospital."

  Aaron was a nurse who worked at one of the mid-county hospitals, a postcard-perfect hunk with devastating blue eyes and enough hair on his chest to warrant a virgin fiber tag.

  "Do you know who it is?"

  Janice shook her head. "He swears it was just a fling, just... an experiment. Casey, I don't know what to do."

  "Wow," Casey muttered, "I never handled that one before. For all Ed's quirks, he did like to be the only one in the bed with a penis."

  Janice's look of surprise made Casey smile.

  "He's a transvestite, not a bisexual. There's a difference."

  "How did you make your decision?"

  Casey sighed. "It was a final straw, not the whole reason. His running around was just a symptom of the problems."

  Janice nodded
, setting her fork down. It clanked listlessly against her plate as she studied the checkered tablecloth. "We've been having problems," she admitted. "We've been married nine years, and it seems like we're having the same arguments without resolving them. I'm frustrated, he's frustrated."

  "Does he want to stay married?"

  Her laughter was as brittle as her eyes. "Of course he does. He hates change."

  "Do you?"

  "Want to stay married?" She looked up, her eyes swimming again. "I don't know. I'm afraid I'd stay in it just because I'm as afraid of change as he is. We're comfortable together. We're a habit. Divorce is such a final thing, such an effort."

  Casey waited, instinctively knowing there was more. There was.

  "There's something else," Janice admitted, her hands on her table, her fingernails lined up like red bullets. "There's someone else."

  "For you?"

  Janice hesitated, hedged, finally shoved her chair back to give her more room. "I think I'm in love with him. I... I feel sometimes like all I want to do is escape with him, and it would take care of everything."

  Casey dropped her own fork. "No," she said. "Don't do that."

  Janice looked up at her, startled.

  Casey faced her, surprised at her own vehemence. Wouldn't it just figure that she'd get into this conversation right after visiting with Ed the Led?

  "Believe me when I tell you that running into a new relationship like that isn't going to solve your problems left over from your old one. It's just going to create new ones."

  "You did that after Ed?"

  "I did that with Ed. He was my escape. My savior who understood me and would make me feel better. All I did was step from the swamp into the morass. Trust me, Jan, it isn't the solution."

  "Then what?" she demanded, jumping to her feet. "Life with Aaron is impossible right now. He doesn't understand, and I can't make him. We'd been making love less and less even before I found out about... the other thing. I think I want to leave, but I'm not sure I have the courage on my own."

  "Thinking you want to leave is a lot different than knowing it," Casey advised. "Until you know, tell the other guy to keep his pants zipped."

  She actually got a smile out of Janice on that one. A brief flash of revelation that betrayed just what kind of bedmate this new guy was. No wonder she was confused. Sex confused everything.

  "You're a woman," Casey challenged her. "You're too intelligent to let your gonads lead you around."

  Janice laughed and settled back into her chair. "But they're such lonely gonads."

  It was Casey's turn to laugh. "Honey, when they've been singing solo for three years, you come talk to me. Till then, I got no sympathy." Scraping back her own chair, she got up to refill the tea glasses. "Get thee to a counselor, woman. Make Aaron go, too, so he can work out this experimentation shit. Move out if you need to, to see if you'll feel better. Live all on your own for a few months, because chances are that's what you'll be doing anyway if you leave. Then, and only then, will I permit you to run off with Studley Do-Right if you so choose."

  Janice looked up with a fair amount of frustrated humor in her eyes. At least it was better than all that angst. "Gee, Mom, it's all so easy, isn't it?"

  Casey topped off Janice's glass and turned to her own. "Of course not. But it is logical."

  "Which is why we all respect your advice so much."

  Casey snorted and sat back down. "If everybody respected my advice, we'd have three more nurses on the work lanes and Ahmed would be put on waivers."

  They'd comfortably moved on to dishing dirt when the phone rang. Casey got to her feet, figuring Helen was calling for a ride home from her Sodality blow-out. She was surprised to hear the fatigued growl of Sgt, Scanlon on the other end.

  "Can I call you back in about half an hour?" she asked immediately, turning toward the wall. Even Janice could innocently betray her now.

  "You can," he retorted shortly. "But I thought you might want to know this now. Wanda Trigel's been found."

  Chapter 10

  Casey completely forgot about Janice. "Where?" she asked, already hearing her answer in the caution in his voice.

  "Couple of hunters found her down a ditch about half a mile from the Ramblin' Rose."

  She didn't realize she'd lifted a hand to the ache in her chest. "And?"

  He didn't answer right away. Casey guessed cops were as hesitant to be forthright to civilians as nurses were. "She'd been there a while. There wasn't a whole lot to go on. They think it was blunt trauma to the head."

  Casey instinctively nodded. "How did you hear about her?"

  Scanlon grunted. "APB's out on some guy she was buying drinks for that night. He's wanted here, too."

  So, she wanted to say. I was right. Wanda didn't run off, she didn't leave her car behind. She was dead all the time and nobody looked for her until some poor schmucks in their camouflage and feed hats tripped over her rotting carcass back in the woods.

  "He didn't do it," was all she said.

  "Jefferson County seems to think so."

  It was Casey's turn for a grunt. "They also thought she'd run off with a trucker."

  It was news Casey had expected all along. It served to indict Hunsacker yet again in her mind. But she knew just the same it wouldn't help. Nobody would go looking for him just because he'd been called a shit-filled douche bag by the victim. In the end, the news of Wanda's death would only serve to increase Casey's sense of impotence.

  "What did you want to tell me?" Scanlon asked. "I was in interrogation when you called."

  Casey pulled fingers through her hair and shot a sidelong look to where Janice was listening with more than a little interest. "Let me call you back on that. I have company right now."

  "Suit yourself."

  She wanted him to understand, but she couldn't say anything. "Thank you," she said instead. "I appreciate your calling me with the news."

  "I thought you'd want to know."

  Hanging up, Casey focused on the shaft of sun again, where it flowed in from the back bay window. Thick and golden and trembling with dust, it reminded her of the sun of cathedrals, ringing with enlightenment and inspiration, swollen with faith. Carrying prayers and incense up through the windows to God.

  Carrying back warmth to earth to feed decay, warming a corpse so the bacteria could balloon, so the maggots could feed and grow and hasten dust back to dust. Melting identity and individuality back into fertilizer, the hopes and prayers decaying along with all the other body parts.

  "Bad news, Casey?"

  Casey offered Janet an apologetic smile. "A friend from back at St. Isidore's. Everybody thought she'd run away from her husband. They found her dead this morning."

  Janice's mouth closed into an 0 of surprise. "God, how horrible. Do they know who killed her?"

  "They think so. Somebody she was out drinking with."

  Poor slob. Casey hoped he had an airtight alibi, or else he'd get snared in Hunsacker's web, too.

  She was just about to return to the table when the phone rang again. She picked it up.

  "Is Benny there?"

  Well, it definitely caught Casey's attention. "Mom?"

  "Catherine, dear, is Benny there?"

  "No, of course not." Even so, she caught herself looking around, as if he could have snuck in behind her back. "Why in heaven's name did you ask?"

  "Because I've been thinking of him," her mother answered as if Casey were slow. "I'm sure it's a message from Our Lady. She wants me to prepare."

  "Good, Mom. Fine. Are you ready to come home?"

  "Of course," came the answer. "I have to start dusting."

  To dust to dust. Maybe it was a message. Maybe Benny was as dead as Wanda. They hadn't heard in two years. And maybe Casey needed an afternoon at the movies to clear her head.

  "On my way," she said and hung up.

  She didn't get back to Scanlon till later that afternoon.

  "Sgt. Scanlon," he answered as if finishing a se
ntence.

  "I'm sorry it took so long to get back to you," Casey apologized. She was sitting back up in her room, her notes condensed to a small list of things Scanlon might like to know. They lay on her old walnut desk next to her Taber's Medical Dictionary and three historical romances.

  The rest of the room was much the way she'd kept it when she'd left for school. A canopied bed, window seat, rocker in the corner. The bulletin board with pictures of Paul Newman and Robert Redford had been traded for a series of Erte posters, and the stuffed animals had given way to books and stethoscopes, but it would always be Casey's haven. The top of the house, closest to the sky, the first room the moon found at night and the sun found in the morning. A bubble of quiet in a house that echoed.

  "Is it all clear now?" Scanlon asked, just a hint of weary humor in his voice.

  Casey couldn't say she was amused. "I've become a little more cautious in the last few days. I seem to have attracted Dr. Hunsacker's attention."

  She expected Scanlon to blow her off, so it was a surprise to hear a funny little silence on his end.

  "What do you mean?" he asked, suddenly not quite so tired.

  "He's playing little games with me. Letting me know that he knows some of my secrets. I'm not sure I want him to have all of them just yet. The company I had over when you called before thinks he walks on water."

  "He really has you spooked, doesn't he?"

  Casey heard the distant tap-tap of a pen across the line and fought a smile. The sergeant was at work. "I'm looking forward to hearing your opinion of him after you meet."

  Another silence punctuated by tapping. "What did you want to tell me earlier?"

  "Oh, yeah." She pulled her notes up, glad he'd changed the subject. She knew she'd been cryptic about Hunsacker, but not everyone in St. Louis needed to know about Ed quite yet. "I wanted to ask if Crystal was obsessed with punctuality."

  "What?"

  "Did she yell at her, uh, customers if they were late for appointments?"