A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  Scanlon's eyes were riveted on her actions. "I thought my stomach was strong."

  Casey smiled in commiseration. "Like the man says, there's worse things than dyin'. At least for the cleanup crew."

  Completely composed once more, Scanlon got to his feet and grabbed his jacket from where it was draped over one of the chairs. "Are you ready to go now?"

  Casey considered him. "You mean it. After all this time, suddenly I'm in danger? Why wasn't I in danger yesterday?"

  Scanlon's smile was grudging and knowing as he shrugged into the jacket. "Because I didn't have any way to prove you weren't a space cadet yesterday. Besides, I didn't know about Elizabeth Peebles yesterday."

  Casey couldn't quite get the pizza back up to her mouth. "The lady in the car?"

  Scanlon nodded. "Single car, ran into a tree and exploded. Nobody knows why. There aren't any skid marks or signs of another car. She was supposed to be on her way out to her country home. It's going to be a long night, Casey. I need you to tell me everything you can about Hunsacker before I get him in my interrogation room tomorrow."

  Casey's answering smile was grim. "If we can stop by my house, I have notes."

  Behind her, Marva breezed in with the bag containing her once-clean uniform in hand and scrubs in its place. "Why, hello," she greeted Scanlon with a suspiciously pleasant air. "You stuck it out after all. I was wondering."

  Scanlon didn't see fit to react past an enigmatic smile. He busied himself with pulling out car keys.

  "Marva," Casey obliged. "This is Sergeant Scanlon. Sergeant Scanlon, Marva Washington."

  Marva's eyebrow slid north. "Sergeant?" she demanded, swiveling on Casey.

  "Did I tell you I talked to the police?" Casey asked.

  "You did not tell me you talked to the police."

  Casey's smile was placid. "Well, now the police want to talk to me."

  Marva turned to Scanlon. "Make it hurt," she suggested equably, and then walked back out.

  * * *

  Frontenac was a far cry from where Jack Scanlon grew up. The oldest son of an Irish cop, Jack had been raised in Dogtown where Irish cops lived. In the city. He'd been raised on corkball and the fights and fish fries over at church during Lent. The house where his mother still lived was a two-story white frame that looked pretty much like every other house on the block, with a chain-link fence, yard and a porch, and the school playground two blocks away for recreation. He'd bought his first car with the money he'd saved from working at the Steak 'n' Shake, and his father had taken a second job to get Jack through St. Louis University High School.

  He hadn't had yard services and pools and preschools. He hadn't been given a car for his sixteenth birthday and another when he wrecked that one. He hadn't had skiing vacations and an allowance that would have supported his sister's family for a month. Jack had had a front porch and two rigid ethnic codes, Italian and Irish. He'd inherited his father's black Irish looks and his mother's Italian determination. He'd also inherited his city neighborhood's disdain for the upscale neighborhoods in the county.

  "I want to get a look at that book," he told Dawson as he turned off Conway Road back into one of the newer subdivisions built by all the medical money in the area.

  Rubbernecking at the half-million-dollar houses they passed, Dawson just shook her head. "You're gonna be lucky he doesn't file a harassment suit."

  "He's a doctor, not a lawyer."

  "I'll bet money he calls Murray Abrams before we take our fingers off the front doorbell."

  Murray Abrams was the "lawyer who counted" in the upper social circles of St. Louis. Jack refused to take the bet. Checking the address one more time, he turned into a driveway.

  Dawson whistled in appreciation. "Screw law and order," she decided. "I want to deliver babies."

  The house definitely made a statement, and that was: I have money and can spend it. Two-story stucco with more windows than an airport, it spread out over its acre lot like a modern art museum, white and sleek and classy.

  Jack decided it was pretentious. "It's all going to be in that notebook he carries around with him," he said, his gaze on the house. There was a black Porsche in the driveway with BBDOC on the license. "Every nasty little thing he's done, neat and orderly and exact."

  "You really think this guy's Dr. Jekyll, don't you?" Dawson squinted over at him. Dawson had sat in on Casey's interview the night before. The neatly wrapped brunette detective had received Casey's allegations without a shred of surprise. A male cop would have hooted for an hour. Which was why she was here.

  "I think he's connected with Crystal Johnson's death," Jack corrected her as he reached to open his door. "Until we see how this goes, that's all."

  Dawson opened her own door and followed Jack out into the sun. "Thanks for inviting me along, Scanlon. I wouldn't have missed meeting him for the world."

  The two of them instinctively matched strides as they walked up the flower-lined walk. Pulling out his identification, Jack leaned on the doorbell. The door opened immediately. They had been watched.

  "Yes?"

  Jack flashed the badge. "Dr. Dale Hunsacker?"

  His suspect leaned an arm against the door frame and smiled. "That's me. Can I help you?"

  No surprise. No agitation. He looked as if he were enjoying himself.

  "Doctor, I'm Sgt. Scanlon, St. Louis City Homicide. This is Sgt. Dawson." He waited for Dawson to lift her badge. The doctor made a show of looking. "We'd like to ask you to come with us. There are some questions we need to ask."

  He was blond and handsome and suntanned. A real poster boy for the good life. Beyond him Jack could see that the house was decorated in sleek, modern furniture. A lot of white with accents in black and red. Spare, striking, precise. Jack thought it looked dead.

  There was something else. Nothing notable in any other house. In fact one hung on the wall in his mother's house right inside the kitchen where she could use it when the grandkids came over. Here, in this museum, it stuck out like a sore thumb and made Jack itch like hell for a search warrant.

  There on the hall table sat a brand-new Dustbuster.

  "Questions," the doctor echoed, leaning a little more, smiling a little harder. "Well, sure, come on in."

  "We'd rather not. If you don't mind, we'd rather conduct the interview downtown."

  All they got was a pleasant shrug. "Sure. Come on in while I get my wallet."

  That was when Jack knew that Casey McDonough was right. Dr. Hunsacker hadn't been surprised. He hadn't been upset. And he hadn't asked the first question any sane man would ask when confronted by police. Why?

  * * *

  Casey heard the results of the interview on the news.

  She'd spent the entire night down in one of those claustrophobic little interview rooms at the back of the city homicide offices answering Scanlon's questions. She'd talked about every incident she could remember involving Hunsacker, every funny look or leading statement. She'd given him Ed's statistics, and information on the other murders that he didn't want to hear about. She'd shared bad coffee, worse hamburgers, and abysmal humor.

  Scanlon had driven her home sometime close to dawn, and gone back to start his own shift. He was planning on picking Hunsacker up at eight, hoping to find him still at home on his day off. Casey spent the hours after he left watching the clock, too wired to sleep, too tired to read. She paced in the kitchen while Helen prattled on about miracles and faith, and waited for Scanlon to call.

  She wondered if Scanlon had ever found a connection between Hunsacker and Mrs. Peebles. A rich recluse who preferred her own five acres in Ladue to the tony set, Mrs. Peebles had cultivated few tastes that would have caused her to cross Hunsacker's path. She'd been fifty-five, a grandmother, and a patient of Fernandez.

  On the surface, Hunsacker had no reason to want her dead. All the same, she was a crispy critter, and he'd been crowing about it. Casey was beginning to believe that if anybody could find out why, it would be Jack Scanlon.
/>   "Aren't you going to help me clean Benny's room?" Helen asked when she saw Casey dressed for work.

  Her eye still on the silent phone, Casey just went on stuffing lab coat and stethoscope into her bag. "I'm going to work," she said, wondering why she should have to say anything. She was in a uniform. It was usually a dead giveaway.

  "But, Catherine," Helen objected, fingers plucking at Casey's sleeve, her voice high and anxious, "everything's different now, isn't it? I thought we could prepare. I mean, what if we're not ready? What if we lose our chance?"

  "What chance?" Casey demanded, too tired and stressed for Helen's catechism games, wanting only to pull away from her mother's grasping fingers.

  "Our second chance," Helen insisted. "Don't you see? We have a second chance, and we can't waste it. That's why Benny's coming home. It's why we have to be ready, Catherine. You and I, because it's our responsibility."

  "Work," Casey snapped, prying her mother's fingers loose. "That's what my responsibility is, and if I don't get in on time I don't get a second chance."

  Helen's eyes swelled with tears and Casey felt like a heel.

  "Don't you understand?" her mother whispered, wringing her hands.

  Casey fought to comprehend the frail, trembling woman. She tried to understand her distress. But with Helen, everything was cause for either distress or holy ecstasy. Casey just couldn't keep up anymore.

  "Mom," she said, dropping a quick kiss to assuage her guilt. "I'm going to work. Like I do every day. I'll see you in the morning, and we'll do Benny's room then."

  Then, because she couldn't stand to look at those frightened, tear-filled eyes any longer, Casey walked out the door.

  She hoped for a busy shift. She didn't get it. The hours stretched there, too, with few patients and nothing more than busy work to occupy the staff. Casey went from exhilaration to frustration to fury, somehow knowing that the longer she went without hearing from Scanlon the worse the news would be.

  She found out just how bad when she and Marva and Janice were sitting in the lounge eating dinner.

  "Who was that guy here last night?" Janice asked as she picked at her prepackaged diet dinner. "Was he your brother?"

  Casey almost choked on her tuna salad. "God, no. Benny's as bald as Abe. Except that Benny does it on purpose—at least he did the last time I saw him."

  Casey ached she was so tired. She'd tried without luck three times to lie down, and now her eyes felt like misshapen lumps of sandpaper. Her head hurt and she felt as if gravity were sucking her straight through the floor. And she was still jumping every time the phone rang or the door opened. She kept hoping for Scanlon and expecting Hunsacker.

  "That was her date," Marva announced from where she was stretched out on the couch, hands folded on her stomach, contemplating the snakebite chart they'd taped to the ceiling. On the wall where the snakebite chart had been was a Peanuts poster with Lucy proclaiming, "I love mankind. It's people I can't stand."

  "Had a late night of it, too, didn't you, girl?" Marva asked, her gaze never straying from cottonmouths and copperheads.

  Casey obliged them all with a heartfelt yawn. "A late night," she agreed.

  "We could have a Japanese dinner where you have to take your shoes off," Marva offered with a straight face.

  Casey refused to encourage her.

  The news was on. Casey vacillated between wanting to throw everybody out and turn the sound up, and putting her fingers in her ears so she didn't have to find out. She was afraid she'd hear something, and afraid she wouldn't. It had been all day, after all, with no word from Scanlon. Had he learned anything? Had he made any strides, or been caught by bureaucracy? What had he thought of Hunsacker when he'd finally gotten hold of him?

  "And in a bizarre twist to a murder case today," the anchor announced only a few minutes later, "a prominent West County physician was questioned by police in the May tenth murder of South Side prostitute Crystal Jean Johnson."

  Casey froze. Marva bolted upright just in time to catch the video of Hunsacker down at headquarters.

  "Oh, my God," Janice breathed, her fork clattering to the table.

  "Officials refused to comment except to say that all leads were being followed in an attempt to solve the murder. Ms. Johnson was found beaten to death in her apartment on Ohio Avenue. No arrests have been made."

  Another clip followed, Hunsacker walking back out into the afternoon sunshine, suit coat over his arm, lawyer at his elbow.

  "A case of mistaken identity," he assured the smiling blond female reporter with a look of confused weariness that evoked harsh lights and rubber hoses. His shirt was spotless and crisp, his tie deftly knotted, and yet he still somehow looked rumpled and mussed. He shook his head and shrugged, like a disaster survivor trying to comprehend his situation. "I can't imagine..."

  And then Casey was sure he looked right at her. Pinned her with her culpability, his attitude of the persecuted innocent somehow threatening. She stopped breathing, the tuna salad caught somewhere around her second rib, her stomach declining more.

  He would be in here tonight, she just knew it. He would walk straight up to her and gloat, sipping the wine of her humiliation, and there wouldn't be a damn thing she could do about it. She felt so suddenly sick.

  "My God," Janice repeated, her tone almost reverential. "Dale. How could they think he'd be involved in something like that?"

  She obviously didn't see Marva and Casey exchange glances.

  But it had to get worse. The news crew had to interview the detective who was good enough to hand them the juiciest story of the month.

  "Date?" Janice suddenly echoed, seeing Scanlon fending off questions with stone-faced determination. "You just happen to be dating a homicide detective?"

  "Imagine that," Marva commented, lying back down. "An ER nurse dating a cop. You'd only be the—what—sixth one down here, wouldn't you, Case?"

  Casey knew better than to think they were going to get away with it. Janice already had that look of betrayal in her eyes. It wouldn't have mattered if Casey really had been dating Scanlon, if they'd met at the bowling alley and shared a passion for tropical fish and Chinese food; Janice had already branded Casey a traitor. Hunsacker was being persecuted by the police, and Casey had been seen in the company of the same police no more than twenty-four hours before. It was too much of a coincidence.

  Which, of course, it was. Casey knew that her secret was out. No matter what turn the whole sordid situation took from here, she would always be found wanting in the eyes of her friends. She'd betrayed a member of her own profession, and that wasn't easily forgiven.

  "How could you do that to him?" Janice demanded, chocolate-brown eyes suddenly sore and distant. "He might have seen a prostitute once. He wasn't proud of it. But it's not murder. Do you hate him that much that you'd betray him to the police?"

  Casey wished there were some way she could make Janice understand. But the truth was, she'd never understand. She would never hear the real story. Her loyalties, just like everyone else's down here, had long since been cast. Casey's words wouldn't change her perceptions of Hunsacker. Casey's charges wouldn't make any sense.

  Janice sat stiff and unyielding and waited for Casey's answer. Casey faced her across the table, her hands clenched into fists on either side of her dinner. She had no answers for her friend.

  For the first time in the twelve years she'd walked hospital halls, Casey felt the first chill of alienation. These people had always been her family, her support when she'd bucked the odds and the superiors. They had buffered her and strengthened her and formed the cadre of her universe. They had had her unconditional trust, and she'd had theirs.

  Until now. She'd taken a step away, chosen against her little world of medicine. And because she couldn't explain, at least not yet, they couldn't know why. Casey saw it in Janice's eyes, and knew that it wouldn't be long before she saw it in others.

  "How?" Janice repeated. "How could you do that to him? How could you betr
ay a confidence like that?"

  In the end, Casey didn't answer at all. "I didn't do anything to anybody," she said, and made an effort to return to her tuna.

  "You've helped ruin a man's reputation," Janice accused and stalked out.

  Marva watched as the door slammed in Janice's wake. "Betray what confidence?"

  Casey considered her sandwich without relish and set it back down unfinished. "Knowing that he liked hookers, I guess." Casey pushed her food away. "God, I was really hoping nobody'd know for a while."

  Marva just stretched back out again. "You need to talk to that date of yours."

  Casey couldn't even manage the energy to throw something at her. And then, of course, the phone finally rang, and it was the right call.

  "I'm sorry I couldn't call sooner," Scanlon apologized.

  Casey gave in to the temptation to lay her head in her arms. She didn't even want to face Marva anymore. "It didn't do any good," she accused. "Did it?"

  "I don't remember promising that it would. We did what we could, and his lawyer did what he could, and now we go on from there."

  "What about the witness?"

  "Couldn't really positively ID Hunsacker when she saw him. Says he looks different from when he visited Crystal. She wasn't sure he was there the night of the murder anyway."

  "What did he say he was doing?"

  There was a pause. "He says he had an emergency at Mother Mary that night, and then went home alone. Believe it or not, we even got the patient record, and he's right there, signed in not more than twenty minutes before Crystal died."

  "He's lying," Casey instinctively objected. Suddenly her words sank in and her head came up. "Oh, God, of course."

  "What?"

  "The time. He always puts the times on his notes—when he gets there, when he leaves. And, of course, once it's in print it's a legal fact. But who says he's telling the truth?" Casey was talking about Crystal, but she was thinking of Evelyn. It would explain the time dilemma, how he could have gotten twenty miles in twelve minutes. He'd just lied on his notes.

  "All well and good, but unless you can find somebody who can swear differently, those notes are an airtight alibi."