Don't Turn Around

by Hunter Morgan

  Mandy poured water over another plant, and the office was instantly filled with the pleasant, pungent scent of rosemary. “Would you like Lincoln to be your boyfriend?”

  Casey pressed her lips together. “I don’t know. I’m so busy with work and Dad. Lincoln’s an attorney. He’s busier than I am, if that’s possible. And he’s got his grandparents to care for.”

  “Some say this will be the burden of our generation, caring for the elderly. So that’s a common bond between you?”

  “Yeah.” Casey thought about it. “I guess it is. We both take our responsibilities seriously.”

  “And what about the other guy you mentioned? The one who’s also an attorney? Have you heard from him?”

  “Actually, he left me a message this morning. I haven’t had a chance to call him back.”

  “Two men interested in you at the same time. You’re doing nicely,” Mandy said, with a smile.

  “Thank you.”

  “So are you going to go out with him too? If he asks you again?”

  “I don’t know.” Casey fiddled with the cuff of her sweater sleeve.

  The sweater was new. She’d bought two whole bags of clothes last week at the Ann Taylor Loft outlet in Rehoboth Beach. She never bought herself new clothes, but Lincoln had remarked how pretty bright blue was on her, so she’d gone out and bought several more shirts and sweaters in the same color. She was wearing new slacks, too, and kitten-heeled shoes.

  “I like Adam too,” Casey went on. “But…the case he…we were both involved with,” she said evasively. She never liked to talk to anyone about specific cases she dealt with at the hospital. Not even with her therapist. It was just too easy to cross the lines of privacy. “The case is still pending,” she finished.

  “When the case is settled, will you go out with him then?”

  “I’ve thought about it. I like him. He’s the kind of man my father would have chosen for me.”

  “You let your father choose once for you,” Mandy said evenly. “And we both know how that turned out. You need to date men you want to date. Not whom your father wants.”

  Her father had liked John well enough, but Casey knew it wasn’t John that Mandy was referring to. She ignored the door her therapist presented to her and took a second door. “Honestly, I’m not sure I could handle dating more than one guy at a time. I’ve already started a relationship with Lincoln. I think I should just stay with that for now.”

  “Have you had sex?”

  Casey made a face, surprised Mandy would ask such a thing. Doubly surprised that Mandy would allow her to pass the Billy Bosley door without so much as a knock. “That’s a heck of a question! We’ve been dating all of…two weeks. Do people really have sex after dating for two weeks?”

  “Sweetie, they have sex after one date,” Mandy said with a big-sister tone to her voice. “Sometimes a second date starts with sex.”

  “Oh,” Casey groaned. “I am so not a part of this world. You know, I have a laptop, a cell phone with a Bluetooth headset, even an iPod nano. I’m down with technology, but as far as social practices, I really would have fit in better a hundred years ago. Even fifty.”

  “So, would you like to have sex with Lincoln?” Mandy set the watering can down and leaned back against a shelf, crossing her arms over her chest. She wore a tight, pale blue shirt over black slacks. The shirt accentuated her perfectly round tummy.

  Casey felt a pang of jealousy. No, not jealousy, something else. Sadness, maybe. For herself. She was happy for Mandy, but she wanted a baby of her own. Despite her un-orthodox upbringing, she had always wanted to be a mother, and now…she was beginning to wonder if that was ever going to happen. If she was ever going to be ready to let it happen.

  Casey realized Mandy was waiting for an answer on the whole sex with Lincoln thing. “Yes. I guess I would like to have sex with Lincoln.” She threw up both hands. “Maybe. I mean, not yet, but…if the relationship keeps going the way it has…” She let her voice trail off.

  Mandy moved to her desk, then took a seat in her cream-colored leather chair. She folded her hands. “Do you trust him?”

  Casey glanced away. She looked back at Mandy. “I think I can trust him.”

  “And how do you feel about that? About trusting yourself?”

  Casey exhaled. “You know, you could have warned me. When I come in here, you should have some sort of flag system, like…green for this is going to be an easy day, yellow if you intend to pick and prod, red if we’re going to really rehash the past and bring back all the ugly feelings.”

  “My job is to pick and prod. You’ve made tremendous progress, Casey. You’re handling an incredibly difficult career, the care of an aging, ill parent, and you’ve actually found a social life. I’m here to pick at the wounds to be sure they’re healed.”

  Casey met Mandy’s warm brown gaze across the desk. “I feel healed.”

  “Any anxiety?”

  Casey gave a humorless laugh. “Every day.”

  “You know what I mean,” Mandy intoned.

  “Nothing like before, no. Just the daily stresses, nothing I can’t handle.” She placed her hands in her lap. “You know, I feel as if this thing with Lincoln…” She tried to choose her words carefully. “It’s too early to say for sure—I mean the man is a Democrat—but I see possibilities.”

  “Good.” Mandy smiled, glancing at her computer screen. “So is two weeks from now good for you for your next appointment?”

  Casey grabbed her purse off the floor and rose from her chair. “Same time, same place. Ciao.” She gave a little wave over her shoulder as she went out the door.

  On the way home, Casey called Adam’s office. She was placed on hold. He picked up in less than a minute.

  “How are you?” His voice was warm. He sounded genuinely happy to hear from her.

  “I’m good. Busy.” She chuckled. “Sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Busy day.”

  “I understand. Things are crazy here, too. I guess you saw the headlines this week. The Jameson case has been moved to Sussex County. Looks like I’m going to be lead prosecutor.”

  Casey had read the news in the paper. The Jameson case was big. Due to the defendant’s notoriety in Kent County, and belief that he would not get a fair trial, he had been asking to have his case moved. A judge had agreed to his petition. The Kent County state’s prosecutor could have kept the case, but the paper had indicated that the attorney general’s office wanted Adam Preston III on it. It was a big feather in Adam’s cap.

  “I did hear. Congratulations, I guess. I mean, attempted murder, racketeering, attempted bribery of state officers—sounds like it’s going to get intense.”

  “Just the kind of case I like,” he told her.

  She laughed at his bravado. On him, it worked. “I just hope this doesn’t mean you’ll be too busy for the Gaitlin case.”

  “Absolutely not,” he said firmly. “We’re still waiting on the lab. Turns out, the lab was waiting for a trial date before they ran the evidence.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Casey tapped her brake. A little boy ran down the sidewalk along the street with what appeared to be a big sister chasing him down.

  “It happens more often than you think,” Adam continued. “Labs don’t work like the ones you see on the TV crime shows.”

  “Yeah, I know. But still, you don’t expect delays like this, not when a woman was murdered.”

  “Don’t worry, Casey. We’re going to get the evidence we need. I promised you, remember?” Adam said, his voice more intimate. “We’re going to get Gaitlin. It’s just going to take time.”

  Hitting the Georgetown Circle, she waited to merge with traffic. Lincoln’s office was only two blocks off the circle. She considered stopping by unannounced. He’d invited her to come by anytime. She just hadn’t taken him up on it. It seemed as if going to his office would change the dynamics of the relationship. Going to see him would almost make her his girlfriend.

&nb
sp; “Listen, I know you’re busy,” Casey said into the phone, feeling guilty that she was talking to Adam, practically letting him flirt with her, while she was thinking about Lincoln. Adam was too nice a guy to do that to. “I was just returning your call.”

  “I really didn’t need anything. I just wanted to touch base with you since it had been a few weeks,” he said. “Your dad okay?”

  “Yeah. Yeah, he’s good. He’s okay. How about your grandfather? Any change?”

  “Unfortunately not. He’s still in a coma.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” Casey finally saw an opening in the traffic circle and hit the gas.

  “I appreciate your concern. Say, we never got to have that cup of coffee, glass of wine, whatever. You busy Friday night?”

  Casey had known this was coming. It was why she had put off returning his call all day. “Actually, I am. Sorry.”

  “Saturday night?” he pushed gently.

  Although she and Lincoln had not made definite plans, for the last two weekends, she had seen him on both Friday and Saturday night. She thought about just telling Adam she was busy both nights, but that wasn’t really very fair to him. Even if it weren’t for Lincoln, she wasn’t sure she would want to date Adam right now, not if there was even a chance the situation could be misconstrued in some way. There was no way she wanted to jeopardize Linda’s case. “Listen, Adam, I…” She should have thought this conversation out better. “I would love to go out with you, but with this Gaitlin case still open, I think we’d better hold off.” No sense closing doors completely. “You mind?”

  “So if I passed the case off to someone else, you’d go out with me?” he teased.

  “Please don’t do that. We…I need you on this case. Linda deserves the best.”

  “It was good talking to you, Casey.”

  “Good to talk to you too, Adam.”

  He hung up and checked his wristwatch. He could still work another forty minutes or so before leaving for the nursing home. He reached for his cup of coffee and took a sip. It was lukewarm. He set the cup down and searched for a document on his desk.

  Adam was disappointed that Casey hadn’t agreed to go out with him, but he wasn’t ready to give up on the idea. He liked her and he thought they would get along well. His mother was still giving him a hard time about being a bachelor. She said she couldn’t overemphasize the fact that in the political arena married men made out far better than those who were single. Citizens trusted married men more.

  Adam could imagine Casey making a good wife to a politician. She had the looks, the education, the smile. She was definitely wife material. Of course, he couldn’t marry her if she wouldn’t even agree to go out with him.

  She’d change her mind, though. It was just going to take some time to wear her down. It wasn’t as if he had time to seriously date right now, anyway. Not with his caseload. With his grandfather so ill and his parents not expected back in the States until after Christmas.

  Finally locating the document he’d been looking for, Adam slid it in front of him to peruse the wording and reached for another sip of cold coffee.

  The next day, Casey went out to run errands during her lunch hour. She went to the bank, the dry cleaner’s, and the drugstore, where she picked up her father’s blood pressure medication. She took a late lunch, so by the time she returned to the hospital, the parking lot was full of afternoon visitors. She ended up having to park in the rear parking lot near the woods line that she could see from her favorite table in the cafeteria. She didn’t mind the walk across the parking lot, even though it was cold and the wind bit at her bare neck. It felt good to stretch her legs.

  As Casey approached the rear entrance, she passed a light blue car. It appeared to be the same one she had seen in her rearview mirror the day before when she’d been talking to Adam. How did she know this car? She stared at the cracked taillight on the driver’s side thinking. She didn’t recognize the license plate. From where she stood she could see nothing inside that would identify the driver. Nothing inside but a car seat.

  Then it hit her.

  Charles Gaitlin. She immediately scanned the parking lot.

  The woman who had picked up Charles in the parking lot the day he had been released from police custody had been driving this car. An old blue boat with a cracked taillight.

  Was Charles following her? Watching her? Was the girlfriend?

  Casey dug into her purse, removed a small notebook and pen, and quickly scribbled down the plate number. She noted the date on the sticker on the upper right side of the blue and gold plate. The tags had expired.

  Suddenly feeling as if she was being watched, Casey hurried to the brick staircase that led up to the rear public entrance. At the top of the steps, a full story up, she gazed out over the parking lot. The blue car hadn’t moved. She spotted a woman removing a toddler from the rear of her minivan to deposit him in a stroller. Casey turned at the sound of a loud crash. Over the railing she saw a black man, dressed in a cafeteria employee smock, with his back to her. He was throwing bags of trash into a Dumpster. From above, it looked like it might be Sarge, her soup guy, but she couldn’t tell for sure.

  No one was watching her.

  Slipping out of her coat, she hurried through the pneumatic double doors and straight to the elevator bank. She took an elevator to the second floor, exited, and followed the corridor to her small office.

  “Looky here. Small world.”

  Casey looked up from the bottom file drawer of her desk, where she was putting her purse. Charles Gaitlin stood in her doorway. She flinched at the sight of him.

  “Mr. Gaitlin, what are you doing here?” She closed the drawer with her foot, afraid to take her eyes off him.

  “Guess this is your office, ain’t it?” He looked at the name sign on her desk. “Casey McDaniel,” he read.

  Casey’s heart raced. So she’d been right. Not paranoid. The car in the parking lot was connected to Charles Gaitlin. Had he been following her yesterday? If so, why? “How can I help you, Mr. Gaitlin?”

  “Don’t know that you can help me at all.” He was wearing wrinkled khaki work pants and a uniform-style navy blue work shirt that might have once sported his name above the breast pocket. The patch had been ripped off, leaving a tear in the worn fabric. He carried a nondescript navy jacket over his arm.

  She realized that there was no need to be afraid of Gaitlin here in her office. There were plenty of people in the hall, in nearby offices, but the fact that he was here at all unnerved her. “Then what are you doing here, Mr. Gaitlin?” she asked pointedly.

  He slid his hand into his pocket, taking a step into her office. “Guess I got off the elevator on the wrong floor. Came to see this buddy I got. Wrecked his bike. Hit a tree. Ruptured spleen. It’s bad.” He looked around. “Nice office.”

  “Mr. Gaitlin, I’ll have to ask you to leave.” She pressed her fingertips to the smooth desktop, refusing to suggest in any way with her body language that she was intimidated by him. Men like Gaitlin fed off intimidation. “You can’t be here.”

  “I ain’t doin’ nothin’ wrong. No signs or anything when you get off the elevator sayin’ this floor’s off limits to the public.” He studied the diplomas on her wall. “You talk to a lot of women in here? Try to get ’em to make up shit about their old men?”

  Casey reached for her phone. “Mr. Gaitlin, I really must insist you leave. I can’t talk to you. Your case is still pending.”

  “So I’m right, am I? This where you put crazy ideas into women’s heads?” He picked up a small plaque one of her clients had given her as a thank-you gift. It read “Hope Is the Thing Dreams Are Made of.” “You a man hater, Casey McDaniel?” he asked. “That why you wanna get me back in court? That why you wanna see me get thrown in jail for the rest of my life for something I didn’t do? I loved Linda. What would make you think I’d wanna kill ’er?”

  “I’m calling security.” She picked up the handset and punched in the extension.


  “All right. All right.” He raised both hands, palms toward her. “I’m goin’. Crazy bitch,” he said under his breath as he walked out the door. “Just got off on the wrong floor is all.”

  “SCH security,” a male voice said on the other end of the phone line.

  “This is Casey McDaniel,” she said, her hand shaking as she drew the receiver closer to her mouth. “I need you to send someone to the admin floor.”

  Ten minutes later, Casey was called to the security office in the basement of the hospital. It was right down the hall from the morgue. The gentleman who had called had been curt.

  Casey now stood face-to-face with Charles Gaitlin in the security office. It looked little different from her own except that here there were no windows.

  “Mr. Gaitlin says he doesn’t understand what the problem is, Miss McDaniel. He says he just got off on the wrong floor looking for a patient’s room. The patient’s name checked out,” the rail-thin security officer said from behind his desk, checking his notes on a notepad. “We do have a patient by the name of William Pusey.”

  The security officer was the daytime shift supervisor, apparently. Casey recognized his face, but she rarely saw him in the hospital halls. He was a smoker. She saw him regularly from her window huddling with other hospital employees against the building, in a tiny courtyard, grabbing a cigarette.

  “Mr. Gaitlin says he recognized your name on your door and just stopped to ask for directions. He said he didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  Casey glanced at Gaitlin. He was staring straight ahead, hands tucked behind him, looking quite the part of the victim. “Did Mr. Gaitlin tell you that I’m a witness in a murder case against him?”

  “With all due respect, sir,” Gaitlin said to the security officer, “I was falsely accused and the charges were dropped. You can check if you want. I ain’t got nothin’ but a few parkin’ tickets maybe need payin’. Don’t we all?” He chuckled.

  The officer chuckled with him, which pissed Casey off. This was so typical of the way women were treated by society. The security officer didn’t think Gaitlin was a threat to him, so he made the assumption that he was a threat to no one.