A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  Well, if somebody did, it wasn't Betty.

  A tall, thin, nervous woman with more sincerity than brains, Betty was one of the myriad ex-wives of Dr. Fernandez the Obstetrician. Casey remembered Betty as coming away from her divorce confused and shaken. She didn't look as if six years had settled her in any. Now the focus of her distress was Evelyn.

  A memorial, she thought, would be lovely. Casey mapped out a quick idea that put most of the effort neatly in the hands of Izzy's staff and then settled down to the time-honored lunch dialogue—grapevine update. It didn't take much to get the subject around to the holes in the fourth-floor staff.

  "Poor Ev," Betty mourned, her salad almost untouched and her wine almost gone. "She loved nursing so much. It's like having a family member die."

  "Did you ever find out what happened that night between her and Hunsacker?" Casey asked, her salad gone and her wineglass full. "It still bothers me, thinking about how upset she was over her patient."

  Betty emptied her glass and looked vaguely around for more. Casey thought of trading hers for the empty one, but figured that would be a little too obvious.

  "I didn't sleep for three nights after the wake," Betty admitted. "You know, after you'd said that you'd talked to her and all." Betty's long forehead creased with hesitation a moment, and then she leaned in a little to share her confidence. "I even read through Mrs. Baldwin's chart. I didn't want to think that Ev had made a mistake, and I knew Dr. Hunsacker wouldn't."

  Casey leaned in a little on her side, clasping her hands at the edge of the table to keep them still. "I'd sure feel better knowing that Ev wasn't wrong. She called him, didn't she?"

  Eyes wide and moist, Betty nodded. "Five times. It's all in the chart. I think she and Dr. Hunsacker must have just misunderstood each other. They had a terrible argument. I've never seen him so upset. But he had Mrs. Baldwin in surgery within twenty minutes of showing up. Evelyn was just upset about Mrs. Baldwin, I'm sure. She never would have argued with somebody as nice as Dr. Hunsacker otherwise."

  Casey nodded in sympathy. "Did she chart what she told him on the phone?" She paused, the next question too important to lose. "Could she have really not told him how badly Mrs. Baldwin was bleeding?"

  This time Betty shook her head. "She just charted that she called him, and that he said he wasn't coming in. Poor thing. She must have been too upset..."

  Poor Evelyn, she must have been wrong. Casey fought down her anger, suddenly sure that the only mistake Evelyn had made that night had been not charting exactly what she'd said to Hunsacker. He must have threatened her in that silky, sneaky way of his to leave the matter alone, and she'd ignored him.

  Betty was actively dabbing at her eyes now. Casey didn't blame her. Evelyn's death was more tragic than anybody understood yet.

  "And Hunsacker stayed with Mrs. Baldwin the rest of the night?"

  Betty nodded. "His last note was at about one-fifteen, when she was in recovery."

  One-fifteen. Casey's hopes fell. The perfect alibi, in print, in a legal document. How could he have possibly reached the exact spot where Evelyn would become lost in fifteen minutes, when it took at least twenty just to make the Mississippi River? Casey had thought he must have followed Ev off the parking lot. The notes said that instead he'd returned to the floor.

  Casey had been running on instinct until now, sure somehow that Hunsacker had been angry enough to hurt Ev, smart enough to learn where she was going and follow, somehow rerouting her into the very place where if she were shot, no one would ever think to point an accusing finger back at an angry doctor twenty miles away. She knew he was smart enough to do it. Way deep inside her where her most primal instincts resided, she felt he was capable of it.

  Casey had just figured that once she got the proof that Hunsacker could have been physically tied to the murder, somebody else could come up with the specifics. She'd been outmaneuvered, though.

  It still didn't occur to Casey that he couldn't have done it.

  "We'll never know," she admitted out loud.

  "No," Betty agreed, still thinking of the question of Evelyn's culpability. "Poor thing. I still think of what she must have faced. She was so distraught she must have taken a wrong turn. And died like that. With a weapon that horrible."

  Casey looked up, remembering. "Didn't you know?" she asked. "It wasn't an AK47. It was a twenty-two. Saturday Night Special."

  Betty's face puckered. "Well, they're not the same at all, are they?"

  Which just proved that she was a postpartum nurse and not a trauma nurse.

  "No," Casey allowed evenly. "They're not." She refrained from saying that both could get the job done. That was something you said to other trauma nurses, who would nod and commiserate. Postpartum nurses were spoiled with their easy compassion.

  "How could he make a mistake like that, I wonder," Betty asked. "He knows so much about guns."

  That got Casey's attention. "Who?"

  Betty lifted perplexed eyes. "Dr. Hunsacker. I remember he was the one who told us, because he was talking about how the gun was a favorite gang weapon."

  Casey flirted with elation, but it did her no good. Why would Hunsacker make a mistake like that? It served no purpose.

  "Reports like that always get confused," she simply said. It seemed to satisfy Betty.

  Casey shook off her frustration and returned to her purpose. "Dr. Hunsacker really likes you guys up at Izzy's. He was telling me the other day."

  Betty fidgeted a little more, reminding Casey suddenly of Helen. "I don't know," she admitted. "He hasn't been bringing his patients up to Izzy's as much in the last couple of weeks. I miss him."

  Casey admitted her surprise. "He hasn't? How come?"

  Betty shrugged and went after her water glass, her eyes still moist and uncertain, her distress over Evelyn permeating the atmosphere around their little table. "We don't know. We were afraid it was, you know, the Evelyn thing." Another shrug, this more uncomfortable. "It might be Peter, though. Sometimes he can be difficult, you know."

  Peter. Dr. "Wanna Be My Wife?" Fernandez. A rat on the domestic scene, but the kind of administrator who demanded the best from his crew and usually got it. A well-respected bastard.

  And Betty thought Hunsacker was having trouble with him. At last Casey was getting somewhere.

  "I can't imagine Dr. Hunsacker having trouble with anyone," Casey said. She finally had to lift her wineglass on that one, just to grease the words past her protesting throat.

  "Medical egos, I guess. Although the hall gossip is that Dr. Hunsacker had been seeing Peter's latest mistress." Finally something besides distress. Casey caught a definite glint of self-righteous satisfaction on the woman's features. Betty had been Peter's second wife, an upgrade from the waitress who'd worked him through med school. Betty had lasted until Peter had discovered the younger, more passive model.

  "That'd explain it," Casey admitted with a grin.

  She was gratified to see Betty allow herself to grin back. But grins didn't seem to last long on Betty. Suddenly her forehead crumbled into distress again.

  "Of course, I'm sure he's not seeing her anymore. I mean, why would he?"

  Casey wasn't exactly sure how to answer. Betty seemed so intent on her message. "I don't know, Betty."

  Picking up her fork once again, Betty shook her head with some resolve. "I just wouldn't want you to, you know, get the wrong impression."

  Casey wasn't sure why she needed to reassure Betty, but she did. "Of course not."

  Lunch lasted another half hour, during which time they covered old gossip, new gossip, and the vagaries of hospital politics.

  Casey learned that nothing more had been heard from Wanda, and that the hospital had waited a total of forty-eight hours after her disappearance to advertise for a replacement. When cleaned out, her locker had given up a number of Elvis pictures, four cartons of cigarettes, and a Tupperware container full of earrings for the four holes she'd punched in each ear. Buddy had wanted to leav
e her things where they were, sure she was coming back. The hospital administration had insisted, and he'd walked away with her small cache, head bowed so no one saw his tears.

  Betty misted up all over again for poor Buddy, sure Wanda was white trash for walking out on her husband that way. Casey kept her silence. She hoped Clyde and the folks down at the Rose had begun their search.

  Casey left Betty with promises to get together again over the memorial project and walked back through the mall alone. She was still thinking about Evelyn, about how there should be some way to sit down and figure a way for a white doctor from West County to travel twenty miles in about ten minutes, murder a lone white woman on a corner in East St. Louis, and escape unseen.

  Her head was down, her purse swinging in lazy rhythm with her stride. Mall walkers passed her at a fast clip, and the elderly coagulated in slumped knots along benches and planters, which was the closest anybody could get to watching the world go by anymore. Casey smiled at a couple and received courteous nods. She sidestepped a stroller with twins and stopped at a pet-store window to watch puppies.

  And then she saw him.

  Her steady pace faltered. The man behind her bumped into her and excused himself. Casey apologized. When she turned back, she couldn't find him again.

  It had been Hunsacker, hadn't it? There, at the edge of the lane where the shoe store was having a sidewalk sale. Only he hadn't been looking at shoes, he'd been looking at her.

  She thought.

  It had looked like him—at least she thought it did. Same height, same coloring. And he'd definitely had his eyes on her. But she wasn't sure. It was like a dream, where you could see something but not know what it was, the parts just a little rearranged or vague, and no matter what you did your vision wouldn't clear.

  Or maybe it wasn't him and she'd just collected the sum of her suspicions into a recognizable pattern, when all she'd seen had been a nice-looking Yuppie man in a mall.

  Even so, she felt unsettled. She wasn't sure suddenly that she wanted to go on, afraid that she'd turn a corner to find him there, waiting for her. Smiling.

  Casey shook her head. Maybe Marva was right. Maybe she was getting a bit obsessive. Hunsackers following her everywhere, listening in on her conversations, playing cat and mouse with her in shopping malls. Wouldn't he get off just knowing that he'd upset her so much she'd fabricated him in crowds.

  She wasn't surprised at all when she reached the intersection with the shoe store to find no one waiting around the corner. Even so, she slowed a little before reaching it, her palms just the slightest bit sweaty. He'd found out about Ed. He'd killed people, probably in a fit of anger, and covered his tracks somehow. He wasn't a harmless crank. Still, he had other things to do with his day than torment her.

  Casey gave her head one last shake and then set back off in search of the uniform store. She'd be seeing Hunsacker soon enough. She didn't need to be inventing him to fill in the lonely hours apart.

  * * *

  Casey didn't get to talk to Janice that night, nor the night after. Neither one of them walked off the halls before three AM. Casey wished she felt more upset about it, but the fact was she still dreaded wading through Janice's problems. Janice was getting quieter every day, more brittle. Casey could see it. She could certainly sympathize, especially if Janice suspected her husband of fooling around. But she wasn't sure she wanted to dig up her own past.

  She ended up having to deal with Ed anyway.

  The more she thought about it, the more she realized that she had to tell Ed about Hunsacker's knowledge. It was only fair. Ed had let her keep the car after the divorce, the least she could do was let him keep his privacy. She called his office and made an appointment to see him.

  Nestled deep in one of the classier medical buildings along Ballas Road, Ed's office reflected his success. He'd built a nice practice for himself specializing in eating disorders and addictive personalities. They were problems not too closely related to his own so that he didn't really have to face himself. His clients were rich, attractive, and grateful. His decor was sleek southwestern with authentic Indian artifacts under recessed lighting and expressionist weavings hanging from his walls. Ed was as happy as Ed got. Casey did her best to be happy for him.

  She was surprised every time she saw him that she'd actually been married to him. He was such a passive person. Pale and thin and bespectacled, the kind of kid you liked to hit in school and the kind of man who only inspired confidence as a confidant. A smooth, cultured man to his clientele, he had a bad knack of whining around Casey. To her own eternal mortification, she remembered when that had endeared him to her. But then, her judgment hadn't exactly been award-winning along about that period in her life.

  "I'm surprised," he greeted her, walking around his desk to drop a quick kiss on her cheek. He'd affected new horn-rims. They made him look older, more assertive. Of course the image suffered a little when you considered what he looked like in heels.

  "I'm sorry to bother you, Ed," Casey answered, doing her best to contain the remnants of disdain her divorce had left her with. "Your practice looks good."

  Both of them settled into the beige sectional chairs, civilized and proper, as if they hadn't screamed and battled at each other. Actually, Casey had done the screaming. Ed had ducked every breakable object in the house.

  Crossing his leg, he recreased his pants leg and offered Casey his attention.

  "You're troubled," he offered in that professional voice of his.

  Casey immediately bristled. It had been another problem. Every time she'd tried to confront him, he'd disappeared behind all the catch phrases. "Expand on that. I'd like to hear it. How do you feel about that?" Until she'd shown him how she felt about that. With the breakables.

  Today she just wanted to get through this without too much trauma. Crossing her own legs, she worried at the edge of her skirt with nervous fingers.

  "Ed, something came up I thought you might need to know about."

  He inclined his head just the proper distance. "Go on."

  Casey almost smiled. "There's a new doc on staff down at Mother Mary who knows you," she said, her hand stilling as she faced him. "He knows... about you. And he made it a point of telling me."

  Ed snapped to attention like a sail in a storm. "He what?" Already his voice was beginning to lift. His legs uncrossed, as if he were preparing to bolt. Probably envisioning those artifacts out front disappearing one by one, like his patients.

  Casey did her best to wave off the threat. "His name's Hunsacker. He—"

  It was Casey's turn for a surprise. "Dale?" Ed retorted with a delighted smile. "Well, why didn't you say so? God, Casey, you scared me. I thought you'd been bad-mouthing me all over town or something."

  Casey closed her mouth just in time to keep from gaping like an idiot.

  "You told him?" she demanded, rigid within the folds of her chair.

  Ed wasn't nearly upset enough. Not after what Casey had gone through the other night.

  "We're golf partners," he assured her, settling back into his chair. "He's a new member of the club."

  "You haven't told any of your other golf buddies that you prefer Maidenform to Fruit of the Loom."

  Ed wrinkled his nose a little, as if it were Casey, not he, with the unique taste. "Alternative choice doesn't intimidate Dale."

  Casey almost burst out laughing. Well, that was certainly one way of putting it. She wondered if Ed had any concept just what kind of alternate choice old Dale was into.

  "In fact," Ed said with a new smile, suspiciously smug. "Dale's pretty open about his own tastes. And his idiosyncracies." The smile grew wider, as if he were talking golf stories instead of sexual inclinations.

  "He likes teddies, too?" The funny thing was, Ed knew that it hadn't been the attire Casey had revolted against. It was who he'd shared it with.

  "Schedules." He grinned. "I thought I was compulsive. He's got a notebook with every minute of the day accounted for. He jokes ab
out the fact that he always makes love to a woman the same time every day."

  "I guess it's easier to keep all those different girlfriends in order."

  "He even had a hooker with a bigger notebook than he does."

  "A what?"

  Ed waved off his admission. He'd never kept a secret around her, divulging patient stories and problems, bouncing ideas off her. He'd always known she'd keep her silence. He didn't realize this time that she couldn't.

  "You won't say anything," he assured himself. "He was experimenting, you know how it is. Decided to try her out for a while. She'd actually yell at him if he didn't keep as tight a schedule as she did."

  Casey couldn't believe it. Here was a practicing psychiatrist with a seven-figure income, and he was chortling over Hunsacker like a Peck's bad boy. Ed had absolutely no idea what Hunsacker was about. No wonder Casey had ended up healing herself.

  Was Hunsacker Ed's new repository of trust? Did Ed tell him all those embarrassing little stories that could so hurt someone if they fell into the wrong hands? Confidences no psychiatrist should divulge to anyone? If Ed had fallen beneath the Hunsacker spell, it would make sense. And if Hunsacker was privy to Ed's secrets, Casey shuddered to think what he could do to the people involved.

  Especially her.

  "When did you start playing golf with him?" she asked, suddenly afraid of the answer.

  "Oh, I don't know. It's been about six weeks or so, I guess. Good handicapper."

  "And you talked about me?"

  There wasn't any discomfort in Ed's shrug. "We traded ex-wife stories, sure."

  Casey's throat closed a little tighter. She didn't even want to think about what Hunsacker had learned about her.

  "Funny," she countered quietly, still instinctively wishing after all these years that Ed would show more insight than he did. "He's been a real regular visitor out to M and M the last couple of months. Until the other night, he hasn't said a word about you."

  What did she tell Ed? How did she warn him? Ed was just smug enough to carry her warnings right back to Hunsacker as more ex-wife fodder. But he was just vulnerable enough for Hunsacker to shoot him down in flames as an example to her.