A Man to Die for (33 page)

Casey turned back to Tom and came very close to begging. The realization pushed bile up her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she allowed, taking a deep breath, clenching her hands to keep them, still. “What can I do?”

She couldn’t even mention the hospital’s cowardice in making her come to them. She didn’t even mention getting a lawyer of her own, because like most nurses, she was working without a contract. The hospital could fire her for bad breath if they wanted. They wouldn’t, of course. They’d make her quit so they didn’t have to pay severance. The suspension was just the first sign.

Tom shook his head, his attention back on the ball. “Leave Dr. Hunsacker alone,” he pleaded. “You’re officially suspended for two weeks without pay. The situation will be reevaluated at that time.”

On her way home, Casey drove by the new billboard announcing the newly expanded obstetrical facilities at Mother Mary Hospital. The Hospital with Heart.

Poppi tapped on the back door right around dinner-time. Clad in matching pink sweatsuit and headband, she looked like a Jane Fonda advocate. The truth of the matter was that the only exercise Poppi got was climbing the stairs to her room each night. She wore sweats to commune with the great cosmic forces.

Bent over a pot of chili, Casey didn’t bother to wave Poppi in. It was another sacred tradition in the McDonough house. Poppi could smell chili a mile and a half away, and showed up within ten minutes of serving time.

“Looks like it’s going to rain,” Poppi observed, cushioning the swing of the screen door with her backside so it wouldn’t slam.

“It’s looked like that for five days,” Casey snapped. “I wish it’d just do it and get it over with.”

“Gee, you’re in a lovely mood. And there isn’t any beer left in the fridge.” The last sounded more hurt than accusatory as she closed that door, too. Tradition was a delicate thing, and beer was part of the rite of chili.

“Where’s Jason?” Casey asked, shaking in just a little more cayenne pepper. She was sweating already. She might as well make a day of it.

Poppi approached warily. “At class, like every Wednesday night. What’s the matter? Too much Latin around the old McDonough homestead tonight?”

Casey refused to look up. “Helen is delivering food to a neighbor who had surgery. It’s her Christian duty, you know.”

Poppi waved off the acrimony. “You can’t spoil my mood, Case. I just got back from a lovely trip.”

“Smoked, licked, or injected?”

Poppi’s eyes grew very round. “Oh, you are in a snit tonight. And without beer.”

Casey reached over and lifted her glass from the counter. Ice cubes clicked amid amber liquid. “We’re playing in the big leagues tonight.”

Poppi took a minute to digest that one. Leaning back against the counter, she considered Casey with patient eyes. “Want to tell Aunt Poppi about it?”

“Things are getting just a little tense,” Casey snapped, slamming the spoon back into the chili.

“Got the hots for the nice policeman?”

“Don’t be crass. I told you. I don’t date.”

“And he’s not even a doctor.”

“Which, is why I let him in my house at all.” Casey wasn’t sure whether the tears were because of the alcohol or in spite of it. She just knew they were coagulating in her throat, and she hated it. She’d actually thought she was going to feel better that afternoon, and now it was gone. It was worse.

“So, if it isn’t a broken heart, what is it?”

“Well, let’s see,” she mused, taking another sip of what tasted to her like cough medicine. “We’ll do it in no particular order. Jack called. He’s being sued and a week away from the street, and he lost his best witness this afternoon. I can’t get any sleep because I keep getting these lovely phone calls all night, Helen is having visions of Mick who wants me to quit. Today she said that Mick thinks Hunsacker is stealing my soul. And…oh, yes, I was suspended today from work. My license is now in jeopardy.”

“And?”

Casey swung on her friend. “That’s not enough?”

Poppi tilted her head a little. “I don’t think so.”

Casey deserted the chili for her drink and a little walking space. She should never have hooked up with Poppi. Her friend saw too damn much. “I had to tell Jack. I had to…prove the kind of man Hunsacker was, and I couldn’t think of another way to do it.” That brought the tears closer. Casey forced them back with another long drink. The cold fire bit sweetly. It tasted so much better than the humiliation that had resurfaced.

Casey couldn’t tell Poppi what had happened. She couldn’t tell it all, because she couldn’t explain it, she couldn’t define the sick sinking in her stomach at the memory of it.

It had been Jack. It had even been Tom. And then, worse, it had been her own mind sabotaging her sanity.

When she’d arrived home from the hospital, she’d taken her frustration up to her room, beaten, exhausted, dispirited. The only thing left for it, she decided, was to just sleep through it. Especially since she wasn’t going to get any sleep that night, either.

Helen had been in the chapel, talking to Jesus about Mick, droning on and on about what a good man he’d been, good breadwinner, good father, good Knight of Columbus. Casey had fallen asleep with the familiar monotone intruding, and carried it into her dream.

The apartment. White on black. Or black on white, she couldn’t remember, but the afghan was there, a slash of red that terrified, and her mother’s voice just beyond the door. Rising, falling, rising, pleading, like she always did. And Casey frozen, frightened, the tears running down her face, the afghan warm against her little fingers, the only warmth in the dream, in the big, cold room.

This time, though, she cried out. “No, don’t!” “Don’t! Just let me out!” But instead of being let out, she had to fight. The shadows came, crawling from under the couch, just like her bed, huge shadows that smelled sickly sweet and frightened her, and she fought them, gouging, kicking, screaming. Sobbing.

She’d awakened with a start to find Helen’s hand on her arm and her own face wet, her hands clenched around her blanket.

“Jack didn’t understand?”

Casey started, submerged back in the shadow world. “He was a perfect goddamn gentleman,” she retorted, turning for the sink. The hanging impatiens needed water. She watered them. Then she looked for something else to do.

“It must have taken some guts to share that with a stranger.”

“He’s not a stranger. He’s just…”

“A man.”

Casey swung back on her friend to find her still leaning against the white counter. Poppi waited passively, years of shared understanding softening her features. For a minute Casey hated her, too. Hated anybody who could face this so easily because she hadn’t been through it.

“That’s why I hate Hunsacker so much,” she insisted. “Because he’s so much like Frank, and he’s getting away with it, too.”

Poppi smiled. “You hate Hunsacker because he reminds you of Frank at all. You haven’t had to do that in years.”

“I didn’t need to.” Another litany, another rite of salvation. She was strong now. She didn’t need to look back into that abyss and pull truth from it. What truths could you pull from miasma? There was nothing there but poison, and she wanted no more of it. Once this was over, she’d just pack the dream away like the other souvenirs of her life and shove it up to collect dust in the back of her closet.

“Do you know what’s the worst part of this?” Casey demanded, walking back to face her friend. “Hunsacker might get away. I let Frank get away with it. I exchanged my freedom for silence and probably sentenced some other poor slob to the same kind of hell. But this time I scraped up the guts to go after this guy, and it probably won’t do me any good.” She shrugged. “I should give him Frank’s number out in LA. He’ll probably move out there when this is finished and start over, too.”

Poppi shook her head. “I don’t believe it,” she argued. “Not with your sergeant friend. I don’t think he’s going to let go of this until he’s good and finished. Eventually he’ll come up with something.”

Casey shook her head. “And in the meantime we have to wait for Hunsacker to ash some other stupid woman. He’s going to, ya know.”

“How many has he so far?”

“It started with Wanda, and we’re up to five.”

Poppi nodded for a few moments, her eyes distant and contemplative. Casey figured her for a goner and returned to her chili. “All I know,” she said, picking the spoon back out of the thick sauce and beginning to stir with one hand and sip with the other, “is that I’m living for the moment that maggot-ridden, lice-infested bastard is nailed. Fried. Socketed and switched.” She sipped again, tamping down the flames a little, because she could hear the clamor of desperate conviction in her own voice. “I will then be a happy woman,” she concluded.

Poppi never took her eyes from the stratosphere. “Your problem is your constraint within linear logic,” she announced.

Casey looked around, not certain exactly what had brought that on, or what linear logic had to do with fifty thousand volts and a set of metal bracelets. Poppi smiled benignly and turned her vision on Casey.

“How do you know he’s only killed five women?” she asked.

Casey reeled her own emotions back in and refocused. “I’ve been watching,” she said. “I’ve read the papers, and those are the only ones I could come up with.”

Poppi’s smile grew, placid and ethereal. Dealing with Poppi was like living one giant flashback. “How do you know Wanda was the first?”

Just then the screen door slammed open and Helen scuttled in, a picnic basket over her arm like Dorothy on the way to OZ. “Oh, Poppi dear,” she greeted the blond with a bright, albeit slightly out of focus, smile. “Are we having chili again?”

The smell of onions and beans actually outweighed the incense tonight. Casey kept to the kitchen once Poppi left, too unsettled to return to her room and too impatient to deal with Helen. The alcohol hadn’t helped. She knew it wouldn’t. Still, she had nothing else to take the edge off the panic that dream had provoked. And Poppi, rather than salving Casey’s sore subconscious, seemed bent on irritating it.

The house was so quiet Casey could hear the clustered popping of suds around her forearms as she washed the dishes. She could count cadence by the clock on the living-room mantel and locate her mother within two inches by how the house creaked around her. Even Pussy was quiet tonight, floating on little cat’s feet and skirting contact for privacy. Casey wished she could be as quiet as Pussy, as invisible when she wanted. It would certainly ease up on some of the humiliation. Well, she thought, there was a good side to her suspension. At least she didn’t have to work with Hunsacker for a while.

Casey slid her wrists in under the hot water and let it run until they were splotchy and red. Hot water, now there was a good sedative. She bent her head and closed her eyes, listening to the rush of water, the tinkling of the bubbles, the brush of wind against the trees outside.

She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to be afraid, or outraged, or humiliated anymore. She just wanted to get by. She wanted to talk to Jack about baseball or movies instead of murder. She wanted to do her job and come home and feel safe in her room again.

She wanted the ghosts to go away.

But Jack was still coming by tonight. He’d pull out
his
notebook and go over things just one more time, asking questions Casey had answered five times already in the hopes she’d remember something else, setting up probabilities and shooting them down. Watching her with those somnolent eyes of his when she was so vulnerable and raw, when she didn’t want anyone to be able to see inside her, especially him.

Why?

Damn the alcohol. Damn her for being so weak she’d felt she’d needed it. It only broke down barriers.

Why had she let Frank do it? Why hadn’t she even had the courage to stand upon her feet and walk away? She’d crawled. She’d begged. She’d pleaded. Just like she’d wanted so badly to do again this afternoon.

Casey’s stomach lurched. The chili she’d only tasted set small brushfires behind her sternum. Because she was the only one who knew. She was the only one who could never ignore the truth, the truth she’d never told another living soul.

When she’d begged, she’d begged him not to go.

She’d begged for more.

The doorbell rang, but Casey didn’t hear it. She was bent over the kitchen sink biting back the sudden, hot nausea. Sweat broke out on her face. She pressed a hot hand against her mouth, willing the sickness away. Forcing the memory back.

She was different now. That couldn’t affect her anymore.

But dear God, how she wanted Hunsacker to pay for, what he was doing to her. She wanted to see him hurt, to see him begging for once, his hands fluttering, helpless to stem the agony someone else inflicted.

She squeezed her eyes shut and breathed deeply and entertained one of the most violent fantasies she’d ever allowed, even about Frank. Even at its worst. She saw herself hitting Hunsacker, stabbing Hunsacker. Shooting Hunsacker, his body jerking like a puppet before the spray from a vicious weapon. An AK47, his favorite gun, the gun gangs were so fond of. And it made her feel better.

Suddenly Casey stiffened. Her eyes opened, but she didn’t see the heavy branches that swayed before the kitchen window. She saw Hunsacker in the work lane talking to Steve. She heard his voice, and the answer came to her. The memory she’d been trying to pry loose. The reason the mention of an AK47 had so bothered her before.

“Oh, my God,” she breathed to her astonished reflection in the window, an entire jigsaw puzzle falling into place to form an unbelievable picture. “I know how he did it.”

The doorbell rang again, two quick jabs, as if the caller were loosing patience or courage. Casey spun around, not wanting Jack to turn away. Her hands still dripped. Wiping them against the sides of her shorts, she trotted into the living room and hit the foyer light. She could see a silhouette through the door, tall, thin, just a little stooped. He probably had more beer, she thought with a sudden grin. We can toast my brilliant mind and then talk about anything besides murder.