A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  "The police talked to me, you know," he said, hands in pants pockets, his jacket bunching up around his forearms, head down a little.

  "I know," Casey answered, her attention on the little knots of people wandering over the grounds. She still expected Hunsacker to show up out of nowhere.

  "You really must have impressed the police with your fear of Dale. They took your story quite seriously."

  "And why shouldn't they?" Casey asked.

  Ed took a minute to think about that. "Dale has some problems," he admitted, watching the path ahead of him instead of Casey. "Things we've been working through together, about his sexuality and self-image. I won't deny that, and I doubt he would, either. But you've made rash judgments based on only a slice of information, and I think you should know the rest."

  "Does he know you're telling me this?"

  "No. He'd never let me if he knew."

  "Then I don't want to know."

  "But you have to. You of all people..."

  She stopped and swung on him. "I don't—"

  "Dale's father abused him." Ed stopped right across from her, his voice implacable and soft. "He beat him mercilessly and locked him in closets for days and humiliated him in public. He molested Dale's sister repeatedly, and Dale couldn't stop it. He's never gotten over it."

  Casey instinctively shook her head. "I don't want to hear about it," she demanded, rigid and unyielding. "He's lying to you just to get your sympathy, Ed. He's lying to you like he's lying to everyone. He told everybody at M and M and Izzy's that he and I were having an affair, did you know that?"

  Much to her astonishment, Ed nodded. "Casey, he's so afraid he's gay, he does and says outrageous things to protect his self-image."

  "Like slicing off a woman's ears?"

  The firs whispered with a soft wind. Down the path two people turned at the sound of Casey's strident words, and then walked on, more uncomfortably.

  "Somebody is taking advantage of this," Ed insisted. "I can't explain why. I just know that as a psychiatrist, I've evaluated Dale and know he's confused, frightened, full of shame, but that he'd never do what you're accusing him of. He's incapable of violence."

  Casey couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't seem to still her hands, rubbing them together as if she could erase some stain. "Did he ask you to intervene, Ed? So I'd lay off?"

  Ed shook his head and tried to lay a commiserating hand on Casey's arm. She flinched from him. "I came on my own when I found out the police were dragging him back in all over again. They're trying to tie him into yet another killing." He shook his head, frustrated, more defensive than he'd ever been with her. "Don't you understand, Casey? He came to St. Louis to try and escape his past, and now you're dragging it all back out again."

  "He's lying," she insisted, not knowing what else to say. Desperate and convinced, furious at the compassion Ed demanded. "You're dazzled by him, just like everybody else. You can't see what he's really like."

  Whirling away, she tried to walk back to the building. Ed caught her by the arm and forced her to a halt.

  "Casey, listen to yourself," he said, truly concerned. "You're not being logical at all. It's not going to help you to project your unresolved problems onto Dale just to punish other people in your life."

  Casey looked over to see that Ed's forehead was pursed, his eyes truly bemused behind the horn-rims. She pulled away from his hold. "The only reason he reminds me of other people in my life is that he acts just like him, only smoother."

  But Ed shook his head. "I'm not talking about Frank," he said. "I'm talking about your father."

  That brought Casey to a dead halt. "What?"

  "Haven't you noticed the resemblance?" he asked, truly surprised. "He looks just like him."

  She felt so frightened suddenly. So small and lost. "My father had an honest job," she snapped. "He was an officer at the brewery."

  "Your father—"

  "Is dead," she hissed. "Has been dead most of my life. Thanks for the little talk, Ed, but I have to get back now. I'm sure I hear an ambulance calling."

  Ed didn't stop her this time. He stood in the center of the path, his hands limp by his side, his expression forlorn. "Casey—"

  But Casey wouldn't turn around. She just walked faster, her eyes focused on the red emergency sign over the doors she sought. Which was why she didn't see Dr. Hunsacker walk out of the trees to her left and stroll away.

  * * *

  The phone calls started again that night.

  Jack had been waiting for Casey just as he'd promised when she finally got out of work at midnight, slouched in his front seat reading a book on Immanuel Kant and the Categorical Imperatives and listening to some strange kind of fusion jazz on the radio. He asked how Casey's evening had been, and she snapped at him. The rest of the ride had been silent.

  When she arrived home, Casey thanked Jack for his consideration and told him to go home and get some sleep. She still didn't tell him about what Ed had said, or the fact that of all the people she worked with at M and M, only Marva and Abe had spoken to her all evening long. She was exhausted and sore and sick, and she didn't want to deal with having Jack under the roof again that night.

  So she said good night and walked around to let herself in the back door. She brewed a pot of coffee and was in the process of pulling her shoes off when she realized that Jack was still sitting out in her driveway, the headlights off and the map light on. Reading Kant.

  "Son of a bitch," she muttered and threw open the front door. "Get in here!"

  He rolled down the window. "I'm fine," he assured her.

  "You're a pain in the ass!" she retorted loudly enough that if it hadn't been that late, all the neighbors could have taken notes. "And this time you'll sleep in the goddamn guest room!"

  She could have sworn she heard a chuckle.

  He didn't sleep in the guest room, of course. He dropped his shoes on the sun-room floor and his tie over the couch. He'd evidently decided, however, that it was time to bring a shaving kit with him. That ended up in the downstairs bathroom.

  Casey didn't talk to him. She couldn't. She left him the coffee and headed upstairs.

  The phone woke her from the middle of a dream. Not the afghan dream, another one. She was sweating and shaking, the echo of a small voice dying in her. "Daddy, no! Don't go!" The words clotted in her chest like old blood.

  It rang again, insistent and shrill. Casey jumped from the bed and ran for the phone.

  "Hello?"

  She heard Jack pick up just because she knew he would. But Hunsacker kept his peace, as always. Casey curled up into her chair, her bare feet flat on the cool wood of the seat, her face buried in a trembling hand, her hair damp and sticky.

  He was a menace tonight, a force, like the wind plucking at the edges of her windows, always trying to get in. Persistent, sneaky, wearing. Close to slithering past her defenses and hearing her dreams. Tonight, she didn't think she could hold out. She desperately tried to shore up her anger, her hatred. She recited her litanies as fervently as Helen chanted the rosary, praying for salvation. For... what was it Jack said, redemption? For redemption.

  But tonight, Hunsacker was too real, too powerful. Casey bit the heel of her hand to keep from screaming at him.

  Then, the click. Quiet, controlled, satisfied. Casey couldn't move, couldn't even reach over to replace the phone. She heard the flat hum of a dial tone, and didn't notice that there hadn't been a corresponding click from downstairs. She knew she should go down and talk to Jack about it, should at least tell him she was all right. She couldn't. Curled up in her hard-back chair, like a child against a wall, she held on to the phone, her eyes squeezed shut, her hand against her mouth, frightened for reasons that had nothing to do with murder.

  * * *

  Jack waited for her to hang up. The phone hummed in his ear. The night creaked and moaned around him. Still no corresponding click from Casey's room. Instinctively he looked up, as if he could see through two floors. The c
all had unnerved him, and he'd heard some of the most awful things one person could say to another. That silence had been turgid, sinister. Jack had felt it crawling up and down his spine like the instinct that the enemy crept beyond the buffalo grass back in the jungle. A huge emptiness with a feral smell to it.

  She was too quiet. Too still. Jack finally hung up the phone and climbed the unfamiliar stairs.

  The second story was as quaint as the first, family antiques and worn carpeting and more Sacred Heart pictures. Four doors opened off the corridor. Jack didn't try any of them. He headed up again.

  The big room brought him right to a stop. Small blue and red votive candles flickered. The smell of incense permeated the wood, and hundreds of curling holy cards crowded the chipped portable altar like a Taoist family shrine. Jack expected joss sticks and paper petitions instead of a kneeler and dispossessed life-size statue of Mary.

  He saw the light seeping around the edge of the door and hesitated. She was still so quiet. And she'd been trying to deal with these calls on her own. He wanted to throttle her.

  The door was unlocked. He tapped and opened it at the same time, not giving her the chance to beg off. Again, he was brought to a halt. It was like the kitchen downstairs, a flash of color in this pastel house, blues and purples and greens on wall and blanket and curtain, clothes tossed around and books and magazines stacked haphazardly wherever there was room. This was a place with life.

  But then Jack saw Casey. All he could think about was finding her on the bathroom floor. She was curled into herself, her hair tumbled over her arms, her bare toes peeking out from under a modest flowered cotton nightgown, her fingers clenched and trembling around the phone.

  "Casey?" He heard it. The ache of frustration in his own voice, the grate of fury. He was shaking, and it hadn't been his call.

  Giving a little shudder, Casey lifted her head. Her eyes were dry and wide, her face taut. She looked like a mine-site survivor, steeling herself against the pain. Looking into hell and needing the strength to walk away.

  "Don't come in," she said quietly in a voice that was surprisingly calm.

  Jack halted. His instincts pulled him to her, to take her back in his arms and cushion the fall. His hands, restless with the inability to act, slid into his pockets. His chest hurt almost as much as his gut. "I'm here if you need me," he offered lamely, furious with himself for not having more. Suddenly impatient with a distance he was beginning to resent.

  She shook her head, still tightly folded. Still rigid as pain. "I can't," she whispered, her eyes liquid with turmoil. "It's too easy to do with you."

  Jack couldn't quite breathe. He'd spent too many sleepless hours down on that cramped little couch to be listening to this. He was too tired and too frustrated and too attracted. And, she was much too vulnerable.

  "I was an Eagle Scout, too," he offered with a wry grin. "Always faithful, always trustworthy."

  Casey tried to grin back and looked as if she were going to cry instead. "Well, I wasn't," she retorted thinly, tears finally filling her eyes.

  Jack did the only thing he could. He stalked right up to her and took the phone away. "Come on," he commanded, hanging up the receiver and pulling her gently to her feet. "You need some sleep."

  She started at his touch, skittish and shy. Even so, she followed. Jack steered her for the mountain of color on her bed and pulled it back. When she climbed up into the bed, he covered her up and smoothed the comforter, much as she had two mornings ago when she'd thought he'd been asleep.

  "I'm here," he repeated, brushing back her hair. "I'll be here until this is over."

  Casey grinned wearily. "I don't suppose that's negotiable."

  Jack smiled back. "After we catch Hunsacker, we can negotiate anything you want."

  Giving in to impulse, he bent over and sealed his offer with another kiss. Not like the one in the bathroom, more a promise than punctuation. A kiss that betrayed the fact that he was beginning to need as much as she. And then, not giving either of them a chance to react, he turned and left.

  * * *

  Casey didn't get any sleep that night, either. Jangling like a telephone wire in a high wind, she tossed and turned until she heard Helen shuffling around beneath her, and finally got up for the day. Another day with Jack at the breakfast table. Another day hunting Hunsacker. Another day with Helen and the crew at work and the phone, sitting on her desk like a somnolent adder, striking without warning, relentless and deadly.

  Jack had already made breakfast by the time Casey got downstairs.

  "The call last night came from Creve Coeur," he offered, handing over a mug of coffee. "We're checking to see if our friend was out and about. Is it always like it was last night?"

  Casey accepted the cup with a silent nod of thanks. "Every time. He seems to know that silence is worse for me than words."

  Jack nodded, sipping thoughtfully at his own cup. He hadn't shaved yet, and was still barefoot, just as he'd been the night before when he'd walked into Casey's room. She'd wanted him to hold her so badly last night, to banish the ghosts. She wanted it again, so she turned away.

  "Do you know what Ed tried to tell me last night?" she asked, still incredulous, especially after sitting through that phone call. "That Hunsacker told him this gruesome abuse story. A real Daddy Dearest fairy tale that fueled all his problems."

  She looked to Jack for disdain, to reassure her and reinforce her. She needed her outrage so badly right now. She needed his support.

  Instead, he contemplated his coffee. "Actually," he said quietly. "It's true."

  Casey stopped halfway to the table where her English muffin waited, the butter dripping and the jam red and sweet. Something slipped inside her, something that threatened her balance.

  "Come on," she objected again. "Hunsacker'll say anything he can to look sympathetic."

  Jack looked up at her, and she didn't like what she saw. "The family hushed it up because of the money," he said quietly. "The place in society. Evidently the famous surgeon went into uncontrollable rages when he drank. He beat his son and molested his daughter, and his wife refused to do anything about it. I read the report yesterday."

  Casey couldn't defend herself against something like this. She needed her anger too badly. She needed her sense of distance.

  "Bullshit," she accused baldly.

  Jack shook his head. "I contacted a detective in Boston. There was always some question about that fire, and he filled me in on the stuff that never hit the news. It's a classic pattern for serial killers, abuse so bad at home that the kid becomes expert at dissociating. All that rage and guilt boiling beneath the perfect facade."

  A tiny child, cowering in the dark, weeping with the terror of a sudden bellow, the sound of footsteps. Screams. Helpless and alone and afraid.

  No. Hunsacker was a monster. He hurt people just to see it happen. He'd never been a child. He'd never been trapped with no way out.

  "Well, good morning, Father. Look what Mr. Rawlings brought us."

  Casey actually flinched at the sound of Helen's too-bright voice. She couldn't quite breathe right, couldn't keep the mug still in her hand. She knew Jack was watching her, but she couldn't face him. Her gaze fell instead on Helen, who was too puffy and tremulous for enthusiasm. Casey had hoped she'd be better after yesterday. Instead she looked worse, more strident, like a tightly wound top ready to topple. From anxious to desperate, and Casey couldn't say why. But she felt it, too.

  "Good morning, Mrs. McDonough," Jack greeted her. "Mr. Rawlings."

  Casey turned then to find that Mr. Rawlings had followed Helen in, a bunch of iris and dahlias and gladiolas in his arm. He was smiling at Jack.

  "I promised you a ride in the Mustang, didn't I?" Jack asked as Helen gathered the flowers from Mr. Rawlings and went for a vase. Mr. Rawlings smiled the way a person would who had just made a successful transaction. Any other time Casey would have smiled, too. Today she stood silently and stared at her breakfast, her appetite sudde
nly lost.

  "I would like that," Mr. Rawlings enthused with an efficient nod, and then smiled like a boy in a locker room. "Although I have to admit, what I'd really like to do is have a crack at that Porsche."

  Casey didn't hear it. She was too distracted, stretched too thin. Jack heard it.

  "Porsche?" he asked, his voice deceptively quiet.

  Mr. Rawlings nodded. "The one Casey's other friend drives. The one who comes in the afternoons sometimes to keep Helen company."

  Casey heard it then. She heard Jack's sudden, harsh silence and turned to see his expression harden to stone. She turned to Mr. Rawlings.

  Suddenly her heart was pounding. She flushed with fear. Casey stood very still. Yet she knew everyone could hear the scream of outrage that was building behind her throat. She knew they could see the revulsion that swelled in her chest.

  "What other friend?" she asked, her voice strained, desperate to keep it even. She wanted to close her eyes, as if it would make him change his answer. Her hands were clenched around the hot mug, and her chest was frozen. Waiting. Dreading. Knowing.

  And still Mr. Rawlings didn't sense the disaster he was announcing. "Why that blond gentleman," he said, and turned to Helen for confirmation. "Didn't I hear you call him Mick?"

  Here. Hunsacker had been here, and her mother had invited him in. Casey never heard the mug shatter against the floor or felt the coffee burn her bare leg.

  Chapter 20

  "What were you thinking?" Casey shrilled, whirling on her mother. "Just what the bell were you thinking letting that man in here?"

  Jack stepped in front of her. "Casey—"

  "No," she snapped, waving away his intervention, glaring at him with accusation. "He was here. In my house. In my house! And she let him!"

  Helen held the flowers in front of her like a shield, the long stems trembling in her grasp, her face paper white at Casey's venom. "I don't recall any visitors," she objected lamely, her eyes skittering away. Turning, she walked toward the door. "Now, I must give these to our lady..."