A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  She wondered what scars the marines had left him with, what guilt the church had deposited.

  "So, how does a person get from the marines to the priesthood to the precinct?" she asked.

  Scanlon smiled then, and Casey thought of martyrs. She thought of the history behind her own smiles and knew better why Scanlon understood so well.

  "Logic," he countered dryly. "The marines had none, the Jebbies too much. This is a nice compromise. Most of the mysteries in this job can be solved, but nobody minds much if they don't make sense."

  "Do you still believe?"

  He sipped at his coffee. "On occasion." But he didn't look very happy about it.

  "Then explain Hunsacker to me."

  He settled back in his chair and rested a knowing glance on her. "Well now, that is one nice thing being an ex-priest offers," he allowed. "I'm not troubled at all by the concept of evil."

  He did understand. Casey could see it in his expression, heard it in the simple explanation that every textbook of modern medicine and psychiatry would never have allowed. He had seen Hunsackers before, maybe in those jungles, maybe somewhere in a corner of himself, and didn't see the need to cloak the truth in technical jargon or social excuse.

  Casey felt the distance she had kept from him lessen just a little, too.

  "Do you believe?" Scanlon asked.

  "In what?" she asked. "Evil? You bet."

  "In God."

  A much tougher question. An answer no one who knew her had ever heard from her. "No," she allowed with some surprise that it should be a homicide detective she finally admitted it to. "My mother takes care of that for me."

  What surprised Casey even more was the fact that she felt so comfortable saying it. Scanlon merely nodded, his eyes considering, his posture easy. Accepting. Somewhere in that grab bag he called a history, he'd lost his distaste for nonbelievers.

  It was time to get to the summons that had brought her here. Otherwise she'd get too comfortable, admit too much. Begin to expect answers she had no business hearing. "Can you tell me about Hunsacker's interrogation?" she asked, instinctively straightening in the hard-backed chair.

  Scanlon punctuated their move into new territory with a sip of coffee. "Easy," he allowed, tilting his own chair back. "He's innocent, a pillar of the community, and a man targeted by a vindictive woman." Before Casey could say anything, his hand came up. "His words."

  "So he denied ever seeing Crystal?"

  Scanlon smiled now, and it was dark. "He said he'd been troubled enough when he arrived to seek out a prostitute once. Just divorced and all, new city, new position. He couldn't say which one, he wasn't getting references."

  Casey snorted. "He should have at least gotten medical certificates."

  "He admitted to having a fight with Evelyn the night she died, but said that it was a misunderstanding he regrets terribly, that there had been a communications problem with a patient. Admits he didn't get along with Wanda, but who did?"

  Casey's eyes widened. "You asked him about her?"

  "Under the umbrella of establishing an argumentative nature."

  Casey sipped at her coffee, thinking of her own pile of disorganized notes, her trouble with coming to grips with three separate—now four separate murders. And she didn't even have to worry about jurisdiction. "What are you going to do?"

  Scanlon righted his chair and spent a moment or two tapping at his papers, fingers wrapped in the handle of his mug, eyebrows gathered. He seemed to be coming to some decision.

  "Would you be willing to help me?"

  Casey was surprised by the question. "What can I do?"

  Scanlon tapped a little faster, then stopped. When he his eyes to her, they were dead serious. "Hospitals are as much a closed union as police stations. I need somebody with easy access to information."

  "Hearsay evidence?"

  He allowed a small grudging grin. "Direction finders. I also need somebody who knows how to pick apart medical records to find inconsistencies."

  "Well, if there's one thing I know, it's paperwork."

  "I'll warn you now, we're going to run into some tough obstacles."

  "I'm a trauma nurse," she retorted. "I live for trouble."

  "In this case," he suggested, "I'd rather you avoid it as much as possible. We have a unique opportunity with Hunsacker, but we also have some unique problems."

  "What do you mean?"

  Tap, tap, tap. "What do you know about serial killers?"

  Casey shrugged. "That they keep murdering until they're stopped, and that they have long second toes."

  Scanlon chose not to take her bait. "They're usually caught by accident," he said, leaning on his desk like a lecturing professor. "Random killings are the most difficult to solve. Serial killers want to get caught, but at the same time, they take great pleasure in taunting the authorities with their omnipotence. They're not notorious for being sloppy about self-incrimination."

  Casey took a deep breath. "Then you'd classify Hunsacker as a serial killer."

  "Do you think he's going to stop?" Scanlon asked.

  Casey shook her head. "Not after seeing the look in his eyes the other night."

  "Then I'd call him a serial killer. The advantage we have here is that usually we have to work back from a number of murders and find the common link. You came to us with the link before we knew about the murders. Of course, the problem is making other people believe that he's actually committing all these murders. If he did kill those four women, he's played it perfectly. Different MO, different jurisdiction, no physical evidence. If you hadn't come along, nobody'd put his name to these."

  "How are you going to get him?"

  This time it was Scanlon who looked as if he wanted to pace. He shifted in his chair, considered the folders on his desk, picked up his coffee and put it back down again. "The easiest route would be to involve the Major Case Squad. If I could get a concrete link between Hunsacker and more than one murder, I could call them in, and we'd have a better chance of coordinating information on all the murders. Right now, though, nobody has a murder they can't explain by their own turf rules. No surprises, no mysteries. And outside jurisdictions don't like to call out the big boys unless there's a chance of a press nightmare."

  He shook his head, obviously well acquainted with the dilemma. Casey wondered whether he'd tried to get his chief to call them out on Crystal already and been slapped down. Picking up his pen again, he fingered it, the sleek silver almost lost in his hand. He had long, spatulate fingers with oversize knuckles. Homely, practical hands. A workman's hands on an ex-priest. On an ex-marine. Casey thought he must have been a logical marine and a passionate Jesuit, which would have doomed him to both. Marines demanded passion and Jesuits logic.

  "That book of his," he finally allowed, looking back up, the fire of conviction settled deep in the flat gray of his eyes. He'd been thinking a lot, too. "That notebook where he keeps all his information. That's another common trait among serial killers. A lot of them are obsessive-compulsive. It's not unheard of for them to keep perfect records of what they've done. Keep souvenirs of their kills, maybe pictures. I need to get enough on him to get a search warrant. I've been in touch with the other jurisdictions, suggesting they check his alibis and possibly IDing him on the scene. Of course, you'd think he'd stand out in either East St. Louis or Arnold, but nobody remembers him."

  For some reason Casey thought of the man she'd spotted at the mall, the one who had looked like Hunsacker. The one who had seemed like him, but somehow... different. Almost recognizable. The thought disappeared into Scanlon's continued dissertation.

  "I'm also going to get some information from Boston on him, background stuff, information on any funny unsolved murders that might have happened back there before he showed up here."

  "Check on his ex-wife," Casey suggested. "After what he said, I wouldn't be surprised if she's in a meat locker somewhere."

  Scanlon made a note. It made Casey think how many obsessive-compu
lsives there were. They made good nurses, good cops, and good serial killers. There was probably a paper in that somewhere.

  "Can you get his medical records?" she asked.

  Scanlon looked up.

  Casey smiled. "If he's a registered psychopath, he's probably got the triad from his childhood. Bedwetting, fire starting, and animal abuse. See if he hurt any other kids when he got to adolescence."

  Now Scanlon was smiling. "You have been doing your reading."

  Casey toyed with enthusiasm. "I'm actually beginning to believe we can pull this off."

  Scanlon immediately lost his smile. "Don't. We haven't begun to feel the backlash yet. In another couple of weeks, this investigation is going to be about as popular as the McCarthy hearings. He's a well-connected man, and he might be able to stop us in our tracks just long enough to get away."

  Casey wanted to argue. She knew it wouldn't do any good. She'd spent enough time butting her head against the wall over the years to know the size of that headache. From the way Scanlon's hand still strayed to his stomach, she had a feeling he did, too. It was just that for the first time since this had all begun, she felt as if she were going forward.

  "Just tell me what to do so we can make the most of the time we have. I want him caught."

  That didn't seem to make Scanlon any happier. He caught his hand midway to betraying him and set it back down on the desk. "Be careful," he warned. "I don't want you thinking this is a game. If Hunsacker is the man we think, he's more dangerous than anything you've ever come across. Don't ever underestimate him."

  Casey shook her head. "I think I'm safe," she admitted with some amazement. "I'm part of the game for him." She set down her cup, thinking, remembering, comprehending. "I've been thinking about it a lot, and I think this all somehow comes down to control for him. Control over women. It's part of his reason for being a GYN. I frustrate him because I haven't bowed yet to seduction or threat, so he's tormenting me with the knowledge that I can't stop him. I think he really gets off on that."

  It was so much more complicated, she knew. So intricately woven in Hunsacker's mind that probably no one could ever unravel it successfully. But Casey had seen it in his prancing the other night, the display of power. He didn't consider her a threat. She was his rapt audience, unable to turn away, but unable to bring the play to a close. He performed for her as much as he did for himself.

  After all, control wasn't any good if nobody realized you had it. It was a lesson she'd learned a long time ago.

  "Sometimes," she admitted softly, "I get the feeling that he's not really after these women. I get the feeling he's after me." She looked up at Scanlon. "You were a Jesuit. You know about the St. Louis exorcism. It's said that Satan wasn't really after his victim, but the priest who exorcised him. Satan didn't want his life. He wanted his soul. Is that something you can say about a serial killer? He doesn't want me dead. He wants me shattered."

  Scanlon held her gaze rock steady, and Casey knew that he understood her perfectly. That he respected her fears and intuition. For just a brief moment Casey felt as if he were going to reach out to her, to bridge the distance between them in support.

  "I'm not going to let him get away with murdering those women," she vowed, offering a wry smile to lighten her conviction. Then she dropped her gaze, suddenly uncomfortable with the secrets she'd given Scanlon.

  "Face it now," he demanded. "We may never convict him for what he did to your friends. He may just be too smart for us."

  Casey's reaction was instinctive. "Don't be ridiculous," she objected, stiffening. "He can't just get off scot-free for what he's done."

  Scanlon's smile was understanding and weary at the same time. He never expended the energy to move. "You expect justice," he accused gently. "If there's one thing I learned in all those jungles, it's that justice is usually the last thing you get."

  * * *

  If Casey needed any object lessons in the truth of Scanlon's statement, she got them the minute she returned to work. Casey had never felt uncomfortable walking into the lounge before. The hall had always been her arena, her sphere of influence. She had never halted a conversation or provoked silent remonstrances.

  The lounge was full when she walked in. Voices faltered. Some dropped dead right on the spot. For a black woman, Marva was unaccountably flushed. Across from her, Barb was so rigid she should have hummed like a tuning fork.

  "Hello, fellow babies," Casey greeted them all, although her eyes sought only Marva's stoic support. "It's good to see you all so... pink-cheeked."

  The conversations stumbled back into gear and a couple of people walked out onto the work lane. Casey dropped her bag into the corner and checked the board.

  It went on this way for four days, each day more strained than the one preceding it. Each shift salted with references to back-stabbing and revenge and petty jealousy. Not everyone was against her, but everyone was involved. Everyone watched Hunsacker on the news the second night when he did his portrayal of the wounded innocent, splendid in his lab coat and monogrammed shirt, stethoscope draped around his neck, his office comfortably disordered behind him.

  "A desire to discredit me," he said with weary dignity in answer to the anchor's assertion that the police had not dropped him from the investigation. "I don't know what else to charge it to. I'm only afraid that irresponsible accusations like this will injure my patients."

  Everyone wondered just why Casey would go all the way into the city just to get back at Hunsacker. And Casey could give them no answer.

  The weather still hadn't broken by the fifth day. It hung heavy and sour, the sky a dirty gray and the early summer green dingy. Helen had demanded a morning in the yard, so that by the time Casey made it in to work, she was tired and hot and short-tempered. It galled her that she was beginning to dread the one place on earth she'd always belonged. Work had been wearing badly on her, but not the people. Not her friends. And now Hunsacker had taken those from her, too.

  She'd no more than made it in the lounge door when Tom popped his head in the door behind her.

  "My office?" was all he said.

  Casey heard Barb's self-righteous snort behind her. She ignored it, instead slipping her stethoscope around her neck and sliding her filled pocket protector into her lab coat before heading back out.

  When Casey walked into Tom's office, he was balancing his World Series ball in his hands. Casey refrained from groaning. The ball was a bad sign. One of Tom's most cherished themes was teamwork, his favorite speech the one about how the great Cardinal teams of the sixties had been founded on teamwork. How a good ER crew was the same way, able to execute a triple play without dropping the ball (Casey always had a picture of them tossing patients back and forth).

  "Casey, there are some things going on I think we need to address," Tom said without looking away from Bob Gibson's signature.

  Not really thinking that that needed an answer, Casey just took up her customary position in the facing chair.

  Tom rubbed away a little at Julio Javier and Dal Mawille before lifting his gaze back to her.

  "I think you know what it's about."

  Casey wasn't going to give him any help on this one. She just watched him impassively.

  Tom finally managed a sigh. "Casey, correct me if I'm wrong. You had something to do with Dr. Hunsacker's being hauled into the city police station?"

  "You make it sound like they threw a net over him and beat him with a rubber truncheon," Casey said equably, even though the anticipation of disaster was already building in her chest. "They asked him some questions."

  "They've continued to harass him to the point where he's been frequently mentioned on the news, which has distressed his patients—and this hospital—greatly."

  "I didn't call out the minicams, if that's what you're asking."

  Tom set the ball back into its holder and steepled his fingers over it again. Absurdly, Casey felt as if she were in The Babe Ruth Story.

  "Casey," Tom said
with a sigh that carried the weight of his disappointment. "I know you have a problem being a team player sometimes. And usually I put up with it, because you have the hands of Ozzie Smith. But I just can't understand what would make you want to turn on a teammate like that."

  "He's no teammate of mine," she instinctively retorted, and then regretted it. He was, of course. In the traditional medical parlance. You watch out for the doctors and they watch out for the doctors. You scratch their backs and they'll expect it again.

  Casey wanted to get back out of the room. Her vitriol was showing, and that wasn't the way to conduct this conversation.

  "What would you like me to do?" she asked. "I was afraid someone was involved in a crime. A bad crime. I've always been taught to go to the police."

  Tom shook his head as if he were counseling a kid who'd spray-painted the school gym. "I'm disappointed that you didn't feel you could come to me first. If there were any question about Dr. Hunsacker, don't you think his organization should have the first chance to address it? Didn't Bart Giamatti demand the right to deal with Pete Rose?"

  "Pete Rose didn't murder somebody."

  "Neither did Dr. Hunsacker." Tom reverted his eyes to the ball, stroking it with his fingers, as if it were crystal instead of horsehide. His voice, when he continued, was patient. A parent dealing with an adolescent. "I know you've had your... problems with Dr. Hunsacker. He's told me."

  Casey stiffened, willing Tom to face her, her eyes drilling holes into his never-ending forehead as he continued to address his desk.

  "And you know"—he shrugged uncomfortably—"that that information is always confidential. I would never betray him or you."

  "Exactly what did he say?" she asked, her hands clasped together in her lap, her shoulders aching with the strain of patience. Something had suddenly shifted in the equation, and she couldn't put a finger on it. Something intangible and disconcerting.

  Tom dipped his head with discomfort. "That you'd had a... well, a little falling out. He begged me to be patient with you." He must have anticipated her reaction, because he finally brought his head and his hand up at the same time. "When I found out that you'd been instrumental in his being investigated, I had to apologize. After all, the manager's responsible for his team. I have to say, he was quite gracious about it."