The Garbage Man

by Candace Irving

  "I already did. She says fine. But, well, she keeps crying. It's a miracle she made it here without having an accident."

  Intrigued, Kate watched as the sergeant pushed his Styrofoam cup to the side. He withdrew a small memo tablet and pen from one of the storage pouches attached to his wheelchair. As he began writing, Kate refocused her attention on her call—and the valid reprieve it offered.

  "Ma'am, I understand Ms. Carson's upset. Anyone would be. But it may help her to talk things out." Especially with someone who may be able to use the woman's insight to help find the bastard who killed her ex.

  "That's why I called."

  The sergeant recaptured Kate's attention as he tore the uppermost page from his tablet. He folded it and pushed the resulting square of paper to the center of the table.

  "Deputy? Are you there?"

  Kate turned her back on that tempting square and its owner. "Ms. Yarbrough, where can I find Ms. Carson?"

  "Are you still in the cafeteria?"

  "Yes."

  "She should be at the lab by now. It's on the same floor. Hang a left as you exit the cafeteria and follow the signs. I'll call the lab and let them know you'll be arriving."

  "Thank you."

  Kate tucked her phone home as she faced the table, intent on offering up her excuses.

  Fremont beat her to the punch. "You have to go."

  "I do. I need to interview someone asap." She stared at the square of paper. Was she supposed to take it?

  The sergeant nudged it forward. "That's my number. Well, the phone rings at Saint Clare's, but they take messages. If you decide you want to talk—really talk—with someone who's been there, done that and has the missing legs to show for it, give me a call. I do my best to check in daily."

  Temptation won as Kate snagged the square and shoved it in her pocket. Just because she'd accepted the man's number, didn't mean she intended to take him up on his offer.

  "Thanks." She tried to add more, but the words clogged in her throat. She returned the sergeant's nod and made her way across the cafeteria. Rattled or not, it was time to put the past in its place and concentrate on the present.

  Her case.

  The receptionist had been spot on. The path to the lab was clearly marked. Kate followed the signs and arrows through the mostly deserted maze that formed the hospital's main floor until she reached her destination.

  A lanky black gentleman in a hospital coat appeared to be waiting for her. "Deputy Holland?"

  "Yes?"

  Despite bloodshot eyes and the lines of exhaustion bracketing his mouth, the man's handshake was firm. "Neal Roche. I head up the lab. Debra Yarbrough called to say you were coming this way. I thought you might want to speak to me."

  "I do."

  "Do you mind if we talk here? I wasn't sure if you'd want Ian's co-workers overhearing, and Abby's resting in my office. I know she doesn't need to hear the details. Not now."

  "This is fine." Kate flashed her credentials. "As your receptionist may have mentioned, I'm with the Braxton PD. I take it you're aware of the particularly heinous nature of these murders?"

  The man's sigh was resigned. "Unfortunately. I read the paper an hour ago."

  "Did you know both victims?"

  "Yes, though not well. Ian Kusić worked for me, of course. He was friendly, especially with the patients. But he tended to be circumspect about his personal life. As for Mr. Dunne, I only met him in passing. I understand he was new and worked evenings. I work weekdays. I'm only in now because of the call I received. I wanted to arrange grief counseling for those who knew the men and get the details posted as soon as possible."

  "I understand. Regarding Mr. Kusić, do you know how long he's been missing from work?"

  The supervisor rubbed his temple. "No. Ian put in for vacation a month back. I asked the staff. The last time anyone can be certain they saw him is a week ago yesterday, the day his vacation began. He was in a good mood as he left the lab."

  "Do you know where he went on vacation, or where he intended to go?"

  The man shook his head. "Like I said, Ian was tight-lipped about his personal life. I respected that. Of course, Abby may know. You could also try Grant Parish."

  Astonishment ripped in. "Did you say Grant Parish?"

  "I did. Dr. Parish is a surgeon at our facility across town. He stops—stopped—by the lab now and then to talk to Ian. I've also seen them dining in the cafeteria, so Grant may know Ian better than me. I can get his number for you."

  "That won't be necessary." He was on her speed dial. Though why, she was no longer sure. Clearly, their relationship was rockier than she'd assumed if Grant knew both victims well enough to dine and visit with on a regular basis, yet hadn't bothered to so much as mention either man's name.

  Though her present, uppermost concern centered on that PTSD therapy group. Had Ian Kusić been a member as well?

  If Kusić had, there was an excellent chance the group had formed the killer's nexus.

  Which meant Grant and the remaining attendees could be in immediate danger.

  Kate resisted the temptation to excuse herself so she could dial Grant's number. "Mr. Roche, I'm sure you're aware that Mr. Kusić was an Army veteran. Do you know if he attended group or private therapy for PTSD?"

  The supervisor frowned. "I know he served. But, no, he never mentioned therapy, or even the need for it. Why? Is it important?"

  Kate pushed her suspicion aside. With Grant ducking her calls, there was no way to confirm anything until her interview with the shrink. "It may be nothing. You mentioned that Mr. Kusić was well liked. Were there any complaints against him? From his co-workers, other staff, patients, or a possibly a patient's relative?"

  The supervisor smothered a yawn. "Sorry. I caught a midnight movie at the Rave with my son last night. Now I wish we'd waited. As for complaints against Ian, there weren't any. Which was a bit unusual—and refreshing. Sick patients can get testy. That said, I did hear rumors a few weeks ago about a blow up he supposedly had with a patient. But I never got a name, and when no one came into the lab to file a formal complaint, I wrote it off as gossip."

  "What about overly friendly fans? Did Mr. Kusić complain about a patient or relative of a patient who stopped by the lab, followed him around the hospital, or to his car?"

  The man's stare grew wide. "You think Ian knew his killer? That he and Mr. Dunne were stalked here at Fort Leaves? Sweet baby Jesus, as if those paper bags weren't enough."

  Kate agreed, but she shook her head. "Mr. Roche, I don't yet know how the men were targeted. I'm simply asking the standard questions for an investigation like this. Please keep that in mind. While the staff should take precautions, it would do more harm than good for your co-workers to speculate on the specifics, let alone a particular person. Understood?"

  They didn't need a full-blown panic.

  The supervisor blew out his breath. "I understand, and I apologize."

  "There's no need. This is a trying time for everyone involved, and while I believe guarding one's tongue is best until we know more—" Kate retrieved several business cards and passed them to the supervisor. "—if you or a co-worker think of anything, no matter how minor, that may shed light on either murder, I'd appreciate a call."

  The man pocketed her cards. "I will. You should probably speak to Abby now. A nurse administered a sedative before your arrival. It'll be kicking in soon. It won't knock her out—Abby didn't want that—but it'll relax her enough that her answers may be affected. She's in my office, through there."

  Kate wished she'd known about the sedative earlier. She'd have altered the order of her interviews.

  She thanked the supervisor as she opened the door he'd indicated. The office was modest, with an executive desk anchoring the far end, along with half a dozen pieces of medical equipment. A gray couch braced the wall to her left. The blond from the photo on Kusić's refrigerator was seated in the middle. Tortoiseshell glasses framed eyes that briefly met Kate's before slippin
g away to stare down at the fingers knotted tightly together in the woman's lap. Those eyes were twice as bloodshot and a dozen times puffier than the supervisor's had been.

  The woman didn't acknowledge Kate as she closed the door. She continued to stare at that knot of fingers. From that initial glance, Kate couldn't tell if grief had glazed those blue eyes, or the sedative the supervisor mentioned.

  "Ms. Carson?"

  That glazed gaze finally shifted to Kate and stayed there. More specifically, to the Braxton PD insignia on her jacket. Fresh tears spilled over and down, welling up at the base of those tortoiseshell frames. Definitely grief. The woman didn't bother wiping as she resumed the silent study of her fingers.

  Kate stepped closer. "Ma'am?"

  "It's true, isn't it? Ian's really dead."

  "I'm afraid so."

  Swollen lips trembled. The woman finally unwound her fingers to raise a hand, then lowered it, repeating the motion as if she was stuck in a loop and couldn't figure out what to do with her own body.

  Kate closed her own hands over those trembling fingers and guided them to the woman's lap as she sat beside her.

  The woman thanked her quietly and finally met her stare. She was so lost in torment, Kate's mutilated features failed to register. Instead, a fresh wave of grief trickled down.

  "Ma'am...are you sure you're up to speaking with me?"

  Her answering nod was fractured, but firm. "I know it sounds crazy, but I need this. I need to help. And it's Abby. Abby Carson."

  Kate shook her head. "It's not crazy. It's...normal."

  If anything about this could be normal, it was that. The quest to know, to help, had driven her through each of the murders she'd worked with Army CID, including those mass graves. And those crimes hadn't been personal to her.

  "Before I start, is there anything you'd like to know about the circumstances of Mr. Kusić's death?"

  Abby's attempt at a polite smile failed miserably. "Thank you, but no. I shouldn't have, but I read that article in the paper. I think I need time to let all that awful...stuff sink in."

  "I understand. I've left my card with your boss. If you decide you'd like to discuss anything later, just call."

  "I will." The woman removed her glasses and scrubbed her cheeks with shaking palms before re-donning them. "So, detective, what do you want to know?"

  "It's Deputy Holland. But feel free to call me Kate. What I'm attempting to do today is trace both men's movements. I understand you dated Mr. Kusić. Did you know Jason Dunne too?"

  "Just Ian. He transferred here about a year ago. I was hired a few months later. We worked together for a while before he asked me out, and it...kind of went from there."

  "Were you two serious?"

  The woman's lips thinned. "I thought so. But I wasn't enough."

  "There was someone else?"

  "No." The woman scraped her tousled hair past her shoulders as she shook her head. "It was something."

  Ahhh. "What was Mr. Kusić's drug of choice?"

  Surprise cut through that reddened stare. "How did you know?"

  "I found the pad of empty scripts."

  "Oh. I guess it doesn't matter then."

  Kate waited, hoping Abby would add to that intriguing declaration on her own.

  It took a good half a minute and a deep, hiccupping breath, before she did. "We broke up a week ago Thursday. Ian had been acting odd for a month or so. Distant, silent. But that last night, he was downright mean. I'd found his stash in the pocket of his discarded jeans. Oxycontin. The name on the bottle wasn't his, so I believed him when he said it was an old habit that had gotten its teeth into him again. He swore he'd kicked it before and, since he hadn't been on the stuff for long this time, he could easily kick it again. I wanted to believe that. I did believe it. In him. For a night."

  "What changed?"

  "You have to understand; Ian was a good man. A hero. Before he got a job with the VA, he served in the Army. But he was tortured by something he saw in Iraq. The pills, they helped him deal with the memories—the nightmares."

  Again, Kate waited. Experience had taught that she'd get more if she allowed Abby to face her shattered dreams on her own schedule. When the woman finally blew out her breath and retreated into the corner of the couch, Kate knew her patience had paid off.

  "Five years ago, some soldiers were in a market in Mosul when an IED exploded. Several soldiers had to be flown to Germany. One wasn't hurt—not physically. But he suffered all the same. To take his mind off what happened, he got involved with a local woman and deserted, only to be murdered a couple days later by terrorists."

  As soon as Abby mentioned the Iraqi woman and desertion, Kate knew where the story was headed, but she let her finish uninterrupted.

  "It was terrible. The soldier was strung up in the window of a bombed-out building and tortured. Those bastards sliced his abdomen open and let his intestines spill out onto the dirt—and then they set him on fire. Ian was part of the search team that found the soldier and cut him down. That's why he started using the oxycodone the first time, and why he started again. The nightmares, they just wouldn't leave him alone."

  Silence thrummed as Abby crossed her arms, almost daring Kate to argue with the unspoken absolution of her ex. She needn't have worried. Kate had seen too many soldiers slither down that same hole, dusted with drugs and despair. She might not agree with the method of escape, but she sure as hell understood the siren that'd enticed them there.

  But unlike the majority of soldiers who'd gotten hooked on prescription meds during the treatment of their physical wounds, Kusić had swallowed his on his own. He'd had a choice. Far too many of her fellow soldiers in arms hadn't.

  Did Dr. Manning know about the oxy and the reason for its abuse?

  She was actually looking forward to interviewing the shrink.

  But first, she had this interview to finish. Abby Carson's true demon had finally clawed its way to the surface. The evidence was in the woman's stare as it shifted toward the opposite wall, then the desk and medical equipment at the far end of the room. Kate knew that stare like she knew the thick, mottled scars and ugly pits that formed damned near half her face, neck and torso.

  Avoidance.

  Unfortunately, she couldn't honor it. It was time for Abby to admit to what this was really about. That breakup had had nothing to do with oxycodone. Ian Kusić had done something that had caused Abby to walk out, even though she was still in love with the man. The landlady's comments, combined with the fresh grief trickling down past Abby's glasses to soak her cheeks, revealed that much.

  "Abby, what did Ian do?"

  That damp gaze slipped back. "He scared me."

  "How?" But she knew. She'd interviewed too many battered women to not recognize the monster coming into focus.

  Abby had to name it. For both their sakes.

  Fingers slipped beneath the woman's frames in an attempt to stem the fresh tears, and failed. "The morning after I found the pills, I woke determined to help him. He was in the shower when the phone rang. As I reached the kitchen, the machine answered. The message was odd, but I recognized the caller. When I picked up the phone, Ian knocked it out of my hand. I told him the doc sounded upset. Instead of apologizing, he slammed my head into the doorjamb and threatened me if I touched his phone again. He was still yelling when I grabbed my keys and left. We both worked that day, so I went out of my way to ignore him until my vacation began. I haven't seen him since." She rasped out the rest. "I still have the lump."

  Kate absorbed the woman's story. Not only did it mesh with Sergeant Fremont's characterization of the tech, the picture that was emerging bore striking similarities to Jason Dunne's. The steroids, the stolen pad of scripts and the oxycodone abuse, the violent lashing out toward women, that AK-47 and the hefty stash of Benjamins. Hypocritical behavior for two decorated war vets who were supposedly extending their so-called selfless service in one of the nation's VA hospitals.

  What else were th
e men hiding? And why did she suspect that the clusters of misbehavior were somehow linked to their deaths?

  "Abby?"

  "Yeah?"

  Kate frowned. Given what she'd put this woman through, how did she phrase this? "Mr. Kusić had a lot of...nice things in a not-so-nice residence, especially for a tech with his salary."

  "Some relative left him money. I thought he should invest in a starter house closer to work instead of buying and fixing up that dive, but it wasn't my place to tell him."

  Another family-money fable. Kate suspected a shadier source. Especially since the former tended to get deposited in a bank or brokerage account, while the latter often made its way under a mattress...or inside a plastic storage crate in a bedroom closet.

  Even more curious, "Are you certain Mr. Kusić owned that trailer?" Not according to the landlady.

  Another lie? Except the locks had been changed.

  His ex nodded. "I know Ian was going to make an offer. But I suppose he could've changed his mind, or maybe it didn't go through. He was still working on it when we...broke up."

  "About his vacation? Do you know where he was going?"

  "No. He was supposed to go to Jonesboro with me. My sister had her C-section scheduled this past week. I thought if we went our separate ways, he'd realize how much he'd hurt me, and I don't mean physically. I guess I hoped he'd beg me to take him back. But, well..." She swallowed a soft sob.

  "He never got the chance."

  "Yeah."

  Given what she'd managed to piece together, Kate doubted Kusić would've put Abby ahead of much. But she'd be damned if she'd admit it to a grieving woman. And there was that photo. Yes, it had been shoved to the side of the fridge. But Seth hadn't found it in the trash. That was something. She just doubted it would've been enough, even if the tech had managed to escape his killer's crosshairs.

  "You mentioned an odd message on Mr. Kusić's machine. Do you remember the words?"

  Abby slipped her fingers beneath her glasses again, this time to rub her eyes. She blinked as she lowered the frames, struggling to focus. "He wanted Ian to call him before he left for work. He also said he agreed; they had to be careful. Then Grant said they were running out of time."