A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  "No," Casey demanded, grabbing her mother's arm and yanking her back around. "Not this time. You're going to talk to me." She wanted to shake her until she rattled, until every ridiculous aphorism clattered right out of her head onto the floor. The urge was so strong, so overpowering that she let go. Helen swayed like a sail in a gust of wind.

  "My visitors are my—"

  "How long has he been coming here?" Casey demanded, walking right up to her, her hands clenched to keep from striking her own mother. Incensed, terrified, revolted.

  Helen shrugged away from her, lifting the vase between them. "A few weeks. He... he stopped, and then... then he came back yesterday. I missed him." Her attempt at rebellion faltered and died, and she clutched at her chipped green vase as if seeking foundation. "He said you'd leave me if you found out."

  "Then why do it?" Casey demanded, taut and disbelieving. Still unable to quite grasp the idea that Hunsacker had touched her things, sat at her table, chatted with her mother while Casey had been working to put him away. "You saw his picture on the television. You knew who he was. Why in God's name did you let him in the door?"

  "You don't understand," Helen objected, her eyes filling. "You never did."

  "Understand what?" Casey retorted with a wave of her hand. "You invite a murderer into my house, and I'm supposed to understand?"

  Casey felt Jack's hand on her arm and tried to pull away. He wouldn't let her.

  "We need to discuss this rationally," he advised evenly.

  Casey spun on him. "He sat on my furniture," she spat, her eyes burning and her chest so tight she couldn't breathe. "He got them to lift my suspension so he could come back into my house! Don't you understand? He's raped me without even unzipping his pants!"

  She'd forgotten Mr. Rawlings. He rustled at her harsh words, too delicate to object, too distressed to stay.

  "I'm sorry," he apologized. "I thought you knew. I thought he was a friend."

  "Thank you for telling us, Mr. Rawlings," Jack acknowledged him, hand still restraining Casey. "Could I talk to you in a few minutes?"

  "Oh, yes." He scuttled from the tension in the room like a fox from a forest fire.

  "We need to sit down, Casey," Jack said.

  Casey couldn't take her eyes from her mother. She couldn't understand. Truly couldn't. How could her mother have lived through all this, and then blithely invited a serial murderer to tea?

  "Explain it to me," she said, still ignoring Jack. "Tell me why you had to invite him in."

  "He understood," Helen whimpered, head down, tears tracing a familiar course down hollow cheeks. "He was sent to absolve me."

  "Absolve you from what?"

  But Helen shook her head, the tears building. "You don't understand. You never did. You have no charity."

  "Tell me!" Casey demanded, grabbing Helen's arm, endangering flowers and vase. "Make me understand why you want a murderer to make you feel better."

  "Because he knew," Helen retorted, her eyes suddenly hot and afraid. She pulled away, standing alone, her flowers brave and bright before her. "He talked to me in Mick's voice. He told me what you can't even tell me. You want me to talk, but it's you who won't talk. You won't even listen. He offered to take my guilt with his."

  "Guilt?" Casey demanded. "What guilt? Which guilt? That man doesn't have anything to do with us."

  But Helen was beginning to fade, to fold into herself with the weight of her words. She began shaking her head, her shoulders shuddering and the vase drooping in uncertain hands. "You don't remember," she said. "You refuse to remember."

  "Remember? Remember what?"

  "That I killed him!" she shrieked suddenly, all the years of docility exploding along with the vase as it hit the floor. Helen's hands flew to her mouth as if she could shove back in the words. Flowers tumbled at her feet and water splashed over the hem of her dress.

  Casey wanted to scream. How many times had they had this conversation? Every Lent, every anniversary, every time she looked at Mick's picture on her mother's dresser. "Aw, God, Mom," she moaned in disgust. "I can't tell you again that leaving the convent doesn't kill a man."

  "No!" Helen insisted, still hiding behind her hands, the flowers at her feet like an offering to the Madonna. She was sobbing, now, a new sound of grief. Of horror. "No, no, no. You don't know. You refuse. You turn away and run, because you don't want to know. You want nothing to do with it, with me because of what I did. What I made you help me do. Don't you understand yet? You were with me. You knelt right next to me in the living room every night and helped, you took my message to church with you. You and Benny and I, day after day. Praying to stop his uncharitable acts."

  Sudden tears choked Casey. Bile seared the back of her tongue. Her hands sought her ears. She didn't even realize she put them there, shutting out her mother's words. She didn't hear the harsh rasp of her own breathing or the thunder of her heart, a child's heart.

  But it was too late. Helen had finally let reality catch up with delusion.

  "Every night," she sobbed, her hands clutched to her breast, a mea culpa that bruised. "Every morning when he woke up. Every day for ten years. 'Please, sweet Jesus,' I prayed. 'Help your poor sinner. Give refuge to your children. Grant this one prayer. Save us.' And then he'd come home, and I'd sit across the table from him, waiting, waiting for that last bourbon, and knowing what would come. And I'd pray, 'Please, my lady, my mother and sweet solace, who comforts the ill and oppressed, I don't know what else to do to stop it... please.' Every night, our hands like steeples as we prayed together. 'Please. Jesus, Mary, Joseph. Just... let... Mick... die.'"

  "No," Casey rasped, her ears hurting, her cheeks wet, her arms too numb to feel Jack next to her.

  The dreams. The echoes of that child's voice. The stark, stale terror of the darkness.

  Helen crumpled. Jack rushed forward to gather her in. She kept sobbing. "I couldn't take any more. I couldn't take any more, couldn't watch Benny suffer... I went to Father, and he said pray for guidance. I went to the police, and they said I'd made my bed, he was my husband. But I was weak. I was evil. And because I was weak, I murdered him. He understood. He prayed, too. He remembered."

  Jack led Helen back to the table and gently sat her down. Casey couldn't move from where she stood, numb and frightened and confused. She tasted salt against the palm of her hand, where it shut in the sounds of anguish that clamored in her chest. She heard Helen's sobbing and Jack's soothing murmurs, and still couldn't escape the echoes that suddenly wouldn't end.

  Benny. Sweet, serious Benny, who had slept just below her. Who had always crawled into the big room where Helen did her sewing and hid amid the boxes so his father couldn't find him. Who had prayed the hardest, tow head bent over the tips of his trembling fingers, tears splashing the beads of his rosary.

  Helen, tiptoeing in her own house to escape her husband's blind wrath, who had never made it any farther than the big room outside Casey's door before Mick had caught her and beaten her, her terrified shrieking and sobbing echoing in the big house.

  Casey, trapped in the blackness of her room beyond the terrible sounds, sinking beneath the guilt and shame and terror, wondering why Benny and her mother were so much worse that they had to be hurt and she didn't. Begging to be included just to take away her own shame.

  Helen had taken down the sewing machine the day after Mick died. She'd dismantled her sewing room and begun constructing her chapel of guilt, and all these years Casey hadn't realized that she'd prayed at her mother's altar all along.

  Casey's door had never been strong enough to blot out the noise. The clatter of furniture, the roaring threats, the pitiful protests, the wrenching cries of pain and terror. She'd lain in her bed and put her hands over her ears and watched the sky. The black, endless, empty sky where nobody lived, where she could be all alone and not hear everything.

  Where she wouldn't have to get up in the morning and kiss her daddy hello and feel shame because she loved him so much. Because even as sh
e prayed right alongside her mother and brother, she begged him not to go.

  She felt Jack's hand on her shoulder and turned to his embrace. "Damn him," she cursed with blind sobs, her face against the limp cotton of Jack's shirt, fists clenched against his chest. "Damn him, damn him... damn..."

  Jack bent his head over hers. Casey could feel the warmth of his cheek against her, his hand tentatively stroking her hair. He didn't say anything. Just held her so tightly she couldn't escape, couldn't crumble.

  Her stomach heaved with revulsion. Her chest closed off. She kept shaking her head, trying to push away the pictures she hadn't allowed in so long, swimming in their recriminations.

  She'd been the only one to run to Mick when he'd collapsed. Benny and Helen had sat frozen, their forks halfway to their mouths, their eyes stark as dead fishes, their dread so mixed up with hope they couldn't tell them apart. But Casey could. She'd tugged at her father and screamed, hating herself for it, hating her mother for making her feel this way.

  "Daddy, no! Don't go, Daddy, please!"

  * * *

  Outside the window, the sky muttered. The weather service had finally promised rain today, a storm to sweep out all the stagnant air in the city. The sky was tumescent, a dirty green-gray that swirled above the motionless trees.

  A storm was coming.

  Jack should have known. He should have spotted it the minute Casey talked about the other man, the one who had made her crawl. It was such a familiar pattern, one he'd learned through years of counseling, years of domestic disturbances. Still he couldn't quite quell the rage that ate new holes in his stomach. Rage against a dead man. Rage against a system that had protected him and reserved room in hell for his family.

  Helen was up in bed, whimpering and lost. Casey had walked her up, hollow-eyed and spent, her own hands shaking as badly as her mother's. Left behind, Jack had stood in the living room staring at a wasted piano and the harmless family that populated Helen's walls. Family that had given support and succor and love when her real family, her real faith, hadn't.

  No wonder Casey had no patience with God. Jack hardly blamed her. He had a few things to say to Him himself.

  "The license is K2F-309," he said, phone propped on his shoulder as he read off the notes he'd taken from the interview with a surprisingly observant Mr. Rawlings. He wanted to say something about how thorough the patrolman who'd interviewed him had been, but didn't. It had been his responsibility to follow up on it, and he hadn't.

  "I'll get it right over to DMV," Bert promised. "Sounds like it's going to tie right in to Billie Evans. The evidence crew's on its way over to dust for prints. How's Casey?"

  "Pretty tapped out. I think Hunsacker's finally getting to her."

  "I can't wait till we have this son of a bitch in our hands," Bert retorted. "I'm looking forward to paying him back for this one. Casey's one of the good guys."

  It took Jack a minute to answer that. He couldn't quite get past the hard knot in his throat. Casey's scent still lingered on his hands. His shirt was still a little damp from her tears. He'd come a lot closer than he wanted to admit to walking right out of the house and blowing that asshole's brains all over those clean white walls of his.

  "We'll get him," Jack promised in a voice every policeman in the city recognized and respected. "And when we do, I get first crack at him."

  Bert actually chuckled. "I'll hold your coat. What else can we do right now?"

  "The Evans alibi is our best bet until I can get that hooker back from Chicago," Jack said, glad to be back on familiar territory. "I gave Casey copies of the paperwork, and she's trying to come up with something. You'll be over here when?"

  "Two hours. When do you leave for Boston?"

  Jack checked his watch. "Plane leaves at four. I'm meeting with the Boston detectives tonight, the family and shrink in the morning. Now, you won't leave her for a minute?"

  "I'll even have a guy sitting in her waiting room at work."

  "Don't let her know. She'll ream you a new asshole and then pitch him right out the back door."

  Bert allowed another chuckle. "I borrowed one of the undercover narcs. He'll fit right in."

  Jack nodded instinctively as he flipped his notebook closed. "Thanks, man."

  "My pleasure. Let's catch this asshole."

  * * *

  "Call in sick."

  Casey looked up at the mirror to see that Jack stood behind her. He was dressed for work, with a new dark shirt and skinny tie, his hands on his hips and his jacket splayed back over his arms. Casey could just see the curve of his gun handle behind his right wrist. "Just when I get back to work?" she asked, knowing how lifeless her voice sounded. "They'd demote me to rehab right on the spot."

  She could tell he was frustrated. Those creases between his eyebrows were deep, the line of his jaw taut. He looked even more tired than she felt, and she had a feeling he was wishing he had his Maalox bottle. She was surprised at the sharp ache she felt at the thought that he was hurting for her.

  Sighing with resignation, she turned to face him. "I'll be okay," she promised. "Marva's on tonight. She'll shore me up."

  Jack just shook his head'. "I'd rather you didn't leave this house."

  "I'd rather I didn't have to walk back into this house," she countered, the nausea surging briefly. Everything she looked at she saw Hunsacker's fingers on. She smelled his cologne when she knew she couldn't, heard his silky laughter in her kitchen where she used to feel safe.

  "Bert will be over in a few minutes," Jack reassured her.

  Casey could actually grin at that. "It'll almost be worth seeing the expression on some of my neighbors' faces in the morning."

  "You don't go anywhere without him," Jack demanded. "You hear me? I don't want you or your mother alone for a minute."

  Casey offered an uncomfortable little shrug, her gaze sliding away from his. "I hate this," she managed, surprised by the tears that were still so close, so unpredictable.

  She wasn't as surprised as she would have been a week ago that Jack walked right up and took her back in his arms. She folded into him, glad for his strength, his undemanding silence. He didn't wear cologne, his smell clean soap and shaving cream. She thought it smelled like baptism.

  "I'll be back tomorrow night," he promised. "If we can establish a pattern from Boston, we can reinforce the circumstantial evidence we have already."

  She nodded, eyes closed, heart stumbling past the pictures that once released wouldn't dim. Chest taut with the battle between compassion and hatred. She needed the hatred, but the compassion wouldn't be squeezed out. "I don't want to feel sorry for him," she admitted in a strident whisper. "I want him to be a monster."

  "He is a monster," Jack told her, his workman's hands gentle against her back. "But monsters are usually products of worse monsters."

  She shook her head blindly, overwhelmed by what she'd realized. "We have so much in common." Except that Casey hadn't been the one flinching away from that powerful, inescapable hand. She hadn't had to hide the bruises and crawl into corners. She'd just had to watch.

  "The sons grow up to be serial killers," she observed wryly. "The daughters grow up to be nurses."

  Except that Benny hadn't turned to murder to vent his shame and pain. He'd turned to oblivion. He'd disappeared into the mist like a sad, silent wraith, a child-ghost trapped between earth and eternity, just alive enough to be felt, a tug on the conscience, but not seen. Not ever seen again. Maybe it was only the rage that kept the men really alive.

  Casey took a few more selfish minutes fortifying herself with Jack's strength. Then, she straightened, shaking herself like a dog trying to rid itself of water. "Okay," she announced, lifting her face to smile up at him. "It's showtime. Be careful in Boston."

  Jack was surprised into laughing. "I'm the one with the gun, remember?"

  Casey tilted her head in challenge. She wasn't fooling him. She knew it and he knew it. Even so, she needed to get her facade good and set for work. "I
'm a nurse," she said. "I don't need a gun to be threatening. Now, head on off. I'll wait for Bert before I leave."

  He took her by the shoulders, and for once his eyes were forthright and honest. "Promise me you won't do anything stupid," he demanded, not smiling now. Not teasing at all.

  Casey nodded, just as sincere. "Hurry back."

  Neither of them said what they were thinking. Casey didn't even know how to phrase it yet. She just knew that she was doing something she'd vowed on everything that had still been holy to her that she would never allow herself to do again. She was anticipating. And she anticipated seeing Jack again even before he left. God, she hoped she wasn't making another mistake.

  She got another kiss. This one neither promise nor punctuation. This one hot and slow and savory, the kind that made you forget your troubles and think of only your hormones. Casey's hormones, so badly neglected all these years, sprang right to attention. By the time Jack pulled away, a little breathless and smiling himself, Casey was forgetting every promise she'd ever made to herself. Except the ones about Hunsacker, because until there was some kind of resolution about him, there could be no future for her.

  When she left for work, Casey saw that the sky was still unsettled. The temperature had risen; humidity weighted the air. Clouds boiled over in the southwest horizon, angry and threatening. Casey loved storms. She sat up in her room and watched them rip at the city, shaking the ground with their great feet and tearing apart the trees with their cool, swift breath. She didn't feel excited now. She felt edgy, nervous, charged like the air around her. Waiting and uncertain.

  * * *

  "What do you remember about the night Billie came in?" Casey asked Marva as they sat down to dinner.

  Marva looked up from her tuna salad. "Not much," she admitted. "Why?"

  Casey waved the chart copies at her. "Because somewhere in there is Hunsacker's mistake. I can feel it in my bones, and I can't figure out how to find it."

  Marva squinted at her. "I sure wish you wouldn't broadcast that quite so much," she advised. "Barb didn't look too happy at your four-letter professions of love."