A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  Jack assumed that Poppi was the blond. Upscale, upper middle class, in the Webster uniform of designer imprints, she was seated cross-legged on the kitchen counter with a kind of feline watchfulness to her. Jack's instincts told him she was about as run-of-the-mill as her friend.

  She cemented her impression with her greeting. "Your vibes could use a little work."

  Now he recognized her. Alice in Wonderland after the tea party. Just about what he'd figure to find perched in this house. He was surprised at his own disappointment. He'd deliberately shown up now to exclude audiences. The commiseration, he suddenly realized, wasn't all supposed to be Casey's.

  "He's already met Helen," Casey greeted her friend with a scowl as Jack dropped his supplies on the table. "Too much local color can cause permanent brain damage."

  "Hey, I'm not the one dressed like Frank Sinatra in Guys and Dolls," she answered equably, then smiled at Jack. "Nice to meet you."

  Casey stole two beers from Jack's package and passed one to her friend on the counter. "Sgt. Jack Scanlon, St. Louis City Homicide," she introduced with a flourish of her unopened can. "Poppi Henderson..." The can drooped a moment as she evidently searched for an appropriate title.

  Poppi jumped right in. "Mother confessor and chronic accomplice," she offered with a pleased little dip of her head. "You have to be the mysterious priest Mrs. McDonough keeps wanting to unburden herself to. Great hat."

  Tonight Jack didn't feel so uncomfortable pulling his tie loose. He gave it a tug and unbuttoned the top button of his shirt to give him a little swallowing room. "Thanks."

  Funny, he hadn't really thought about that hat for years. It had just been a part of the job, like handcuffs and guns. But he'd thought about it today. He'd thought about that day he'd gone down to Levine's to order it, his official mark of rank. His rite of passage into homicide. Even after all the ritual he'd participated in over the years, it had still meant something to him. He guessed tradition never meant as much unless it was threatened.

  He palmed it off and set it down before pulling out a beer for himself. Then he walked the rest over to the refrigerator.

  "This looks like the cue to get down to work," Poppi decided, hopping off the counter. "Unless we're going back to the Rose, I doubt I'll be of much help."

  "Just paperwork," Jack assured her, thinking of his jacket again and pulling out a chair without doing anything about it.

  Poppi scowled as if he'd said self-immolation. "Thank you, I think I've served my penance for tonight. Besides, all this talk of the Captain Crunch murders depresses me."

  Jack settled into his chair, his attention ostensibly on the work he'd brought. He didn't miss the meaningful look that passed between the two women.

  "Then you'll be walking tomorrow," Poppi said, standing by the door, beer still in hand.

  Casey nodded, her smile too frustrated to be grateful. "Yeah, thanks again, Poppi. I'll talk to you."

  "Oh, yeah," Poppi answered, turning to go. "I'm sure you will."

  She almost made it all the way out. Casey had already made it over to her chair and pulled it out, rubbing at her temple with the can of beer. She didn't notice that Poppi paused as she opened the screen door. Jack did.

  "And, Casey," Poppi suddenly said, her gaze out to the night, her expression curiously amused. "Stop playing footsies with the bad guy. It isn't doing much for your vibes, either."

  The chair screeched at the convulsive movement. Casey whirled for a fight. Before she could say anything, her friend was out the door.

  Jack forgot his files. His gut had just caught fire again. Casey's friend had delivered that message deliberately, had thought enough of the problem that she'd wanted Jack to know about it. Maybe he'd been wrong about those surprises. There wasn't a damn thing that was innocuous about Casey McDonough.

  "Sounds like this is something I need to know about," he offered quietly, suppressing the urge just to shake her and be done with it.

  She faced off with him, her eyes much too brittle to be rebellious. Determined, daring, with just a hint of triumph that made Jack really nervous.

  "It all began with the affair I've been having with Hunsacker," she said blithely, plopping into her seat and popping the top on her beer. "And how jealous I've been since he dumped me. By the way, you should probably watch your back, too. If there's one thing I should have remembered, it's how much people like Hunsacker enjoy a good reputation bashing."

  One of Jack's better traits as a Jesuit had been his ability to see right through a person's most elaborate defenses. It hadn't hurt him any as a cop, either, but it had sure made the job harder to leave at the office.

  Casey's defenses weren't in the least complicated. She'd constructed a shell, a tough-kid facade over the little girl who still peeked out on occasion. The problem was, of course, as deftly as she'd crafted her defenses, when they slipped, the view inside was heartbreaking.

  Jack wondered what that other man had been like. He didn't have to imagine what the guy had done to her. He saw it every day in his job; he heard it as sharp as shattered glass every time Casey tried to bluster by it. What had made Jack such a lousy Jesuit was that he would have loved the chance to have that son of a bitch on his knees with a gun shoved in his mouth to see just how he liked it.

  This was all getting too complicated. He caught himself wanting to reach over to her and do something about the raw disillusionment in her eyes, and he knew damn well just what that would do for him. The job was the job and relationships were something else he'd walked away from. It didn't deaden the fire any.

  "I take it everybody believed him," he said instead, pulling a pen from his pocket rather than rub at the new gnawing under his ribs.

  She made taking a sip of beer seem a value judgment. "Nothing sells like a hot rumor." She allowed just a little bitter amazement in her expression. "Funny thing is, it's the vindictive bitch story all over again. You'd think that people could at least come up with something unique."

  "I'm afraid it still works."

  "Oldest rumor in the world, huh?" she countered with a flash of humor. "You're right. Adam probably said Eve fed him the apple because he wasn't paying enough attention to her." And that quickly her expression changed, and the triumph was back, the tentative defiance. It was obvious she didn't figure Jack would be thrilled with her next news. He didn't even notice himself lean back into interrogation position.

  "Anyway," she continued, casting for her thoughts in the vicinity of her beer can. "Just about the same time I found out about the rumor business, who should show up on the work lane himself, but Hunsacker. He walked right up to me and forgave me for hurting him."

  "Well," Jack said evenly, "you didn't stab him with a scalpel. I would have known by now."

  She grinned, the triumph clear.

  "I shook his hand," she said. "It was the weirdest thing. Everybody thought he was being great and I was being humble. But the two of us really knew what was going on. He was trying to torture me, and I wouldn't let him." That brought her right back to her feet, rigid and righteous. "I wouldn't let him."

  And Jack had thought he couldn't feel worse. She'd taken this whole thing to a different level. They didn't just have cops and robbers anymore, good guys and bad guys. They had failure and success. Sacrifice and redemption. They had penance for two different sets of sins.

  "I'm hungry," Casey announced, whipping around for the refrigerator. "Want something?"

  Maalox, he thought. "No, thanks."

  There was a pile of information to wade through and a new shift to start in less than seven hours. There was an unhappy mayor and a livid captain to deal with, and an avaricious news community to skirt. There was a psychopath out there murdering women just because they annoyed him, and the biggest annoyance was standing across from Jack perusing the contents of her refrigerator. And she'd just dug her nails in deeper. She'd dared Hunsacker to stop her.

  This deserved another beer.

  Casey was probably deliber
ately ignoring the scrape of Jack's chair across the floor as he got to his feet. He made sure she wouldn't ignore his message when he reached past her into the refrigerator.

  "Let's forget the data we have on the other murders," he suggested.

  She refused to turn from her consideration of the refrigerator. "Why?"

  Pulling out a beer, Jack afforded Casey a consideration of his own. "If we hurry, we can record all your suspicions so that when you're murdered, we won't have any choice but call out the Major Case Squad. It'll solve all our problems."

  Jack didn't wait for an answer. Battling a flush of angry frustration, he popped the can and wandered on over to where the window looked out on the heavy black night.

  "I told you," she challenged behind him. "Without me there wouldn't be a game."

  He refused to face her. "Without you there wouldn't be a thorn in my side. Or Jefferson County's or East St. Louis's or O'Falion's. Even a psychopath knows when the game isn't worth it anymore."

  Jack hoped he'd hit the target. The last thing he needed on his battered conscience was the life of a pain-in-the-ass trauma nurse. The last thing his schedule needed was babysitting a feisty redhead with a knack for trouble and, evidently, no sense of caution. The last thing his ulcer needed was the realization that he was becoming too damn fond of those sharp, sad blue eyes to let some psychopath turn them into rat bait.

  "I'll be careful," she promised, as if her mother had just told her not to climb a tree. Jack couldn't help but offer a cynical smile out to the darkness where no one would see. Well, that made it all better.

  "Stay away from him," he demanded to her vague reflection in the window.

  The ghost scowled back at him. "You sound like a jealous husband."

  Jack's answering smile was wry. "Jealousy is probably the one thing I was never accused of."

  It took her a moment to respond. "You have had a busy life. Sorry."

  Jack shrugged. "Not everyone finds me charming and understanding."

  "Imagine that."

  Their gazes met in the glass, hazy and indistinct as if neither were quite real. Jack saw frustration, felt the same. He saw confusion, anger, vulnerability, and hoped he was better at hiding his own. He took another slug of beer and wished fervently he'd just thrown that damn newspaper clipping back into the trash can without thinking about it. Now it was too late. That vague set of blue eyes glaring back at him from the window had managed to steal whatever peace of mind he'd had left. And he knew damn well what kind of chance he had of getting it back.

  "Let's get down to details," he suggested, turning around to find her munching on an apple. She tossed the one in her other hand to Jack.

  "You could use a little weight," was all she said. "Ya know, I haven't found out about your day at school yet. It must have been a beaut."

  Jack couldn't think of anything less appetizing than apples and beer. He juggled the one and drank the other. Better than throwing both, which was what he was tempted to do. "Why do you say that?"

  She offered a grin and a vague gesture. "You have that 'God, I want to rub my stomach' look on your face again."

  Jack refrained from grinning back, capitulating. For the moment. "Nobody's supposed to see that."

  "Every ulcer patient I see has it," she informed him. "Don't forget, I usually don't get them until they've waited too long."

  Jack held up the hand with the apple. "Thanks. The visual aids were graphic enough." He tossed the apple again, its flight short and graceless. "Actually, my threat was less personal. The mayor got a call, so my chief got a call, so my captain got a call."

  Casey nodded. "Who said, 'Don't be absurd. He can't be a murderer. He was in Millicent Adams' column, for God's sake.'"

  Jack shook his head. "No. He's seen murderers there before. But the mayor is up for reelection, and the idea of one of his police persecuting a prominent physician doesn't sit well with him right now."

  "Especially when that physician has friends who help contribute to his campaign."

  Jack stopped just as he reached his chair. "You ever been a cop?"

  She scowled and began mimicking again. "'You can't accuse her of stealing equipment to use for doing drugs. The hospital's new wing is named after her mother.' The world is not so mysterious after all."

  Before he sat down to business, Jack shrugged out of his jacket and hung it over the chair. He never noticed the hand that strayed back to his stomach.

  * * *

  An hour later Casey scraped her chair back. "I still don't see this," she objected, frustrated all over again. "He killed four women, but we're just going to ignore a couple of them."

  Jack sighed and leaned back. They'd been over this. "For now. Don't forget, Casey. I'm one person. One fairly unpopular person who has to conduct most of this investigation on his own time. And I'm up against a man who commits the most violent murders, and then tidies up like he was expecting company."

  She knew it. She really did. But Casey was a trauma nurse. Her training and experience didn't inure her to waiting or ambiguities. She wanted action now. Any action. She wanted people to know that Mrs. Peebles was as much a victim as Crystal was, even though the O'Fallon police couldn't come up with anything more than unwitnessed suspicious death. Casey wanted someone to ask how Evelyn could have died without witnesses or evidence.

  "I'm trying." She rubbed again at the steady ache in her left temple. Her eyes were getting grainy, and all the typewritten words she'd read were beginning to blur. "So we turf Evelyn and Mrs. Peebles for the moment because of lack of evidence."

  "Let's call it concentrating on Wanda and Crystal instead," he suggested.

  Casey nodded. "Wanda had a fight with Hunsacker. That very night she is seen bragging to Bobby Lee the Lizard that she'll ditch the trailer life right after she has this meeting with some guy outside the Rose at nine-thirty."

  "Exactly nine-thirty," Jack emphasized, pointing out an area on the clandestine copy of Bobby's interview he'd brought along. "She emphasized that."

  Casey nodded. "Pointing right to Hunsacker. The only other people who are that interested in exact time are the White Rabbit and Iranian terrorists. Wanda walks outside into the rain and is never seen again. Her car is left on the parking lot, and her body is found no more than half a mile away. Buddy doesn't know anything about any of this. He's been over the road in his eighteen-wheeler and gets home to find Wanda gone and his brothers-in-law suggesting he find new comfort." What they'd actually said was pussy, but Casey was still too Catholic to say that even to an ex-priest. Thank God Frank Millard hadn't used the c word.

  "What does it tell you?" Jack asked.

  "Tells me she was expecting a windfall from this meeting. I think she was squeezing Hunsacker."

  Jack lifted an eyebrow. "Squeezing?"

  Casey grinned. "She must have found out something she figured he'd pay to hear."

  "She'd do that?"

  "In a minute. Wanda was a great tech. Good with women. She hated men, though. Especially authority figures. She was a walking encyclopedia of childhood abuses, and it sometimes spilled over. I can sure see Hunsacker setting her off." She sat a moment, considering the sketchy information, thinking of Wanda. "I wonder what she did with whatever it was she had on him."

  "Or if Hunsacker got ahold of it."

  Casey looked up to see the homicide officer in Jack demanding pragmatism from her. "Or if Hunsacker got it," she conceded.

  He didn't go so far as to nod. But she knew he was judging her in his way. Asking for something from her only he recognized and making his next decisions based on it.

  He took another quick look at the paperwork, as if fortifying himself with it. "Is there anybody who might know?"

  Casey thought about it a moment. A terrible realization occurred to her. A truth that would have seemed nothing more than expedient no more than a few weeks ago. For a moment she resented Jack for expecting this of her. "Well," she offered as she fingered the grainy photocopies. "He's
been dating a good half-dozen people in at least two hospitals. There's bound to be at least one nurse who's mad at him."

  It took her some courage to face Jack.

  "A vindictive woman?" he asked with a suspiciously crooked eyebrow.

  Casey bristled. "Desperate measures," she allowed stiffly. "I'll start nosing around tomorrow and see if I pick up any interesting rumors."

  Jack just nodded and scribbled something in his own notebook. Not as nice as Hunsacker's, this one was dog-eared and small, with cryptic messages and even more cryptic drawings crammed into pages that had been curled and creased from fitting into various pockets. Casey wondered briefly what the notations connected with her own name looked like. Probably something along the line of pain in the ass and delusional.

  "So," she said, fingering the papers in front of her. "If Hunsacker did pick her up, what did he drive? He has a Porsche. Somebody at the Rose would have said something about it." Or thrown something at it.

  "Something rented. Something stolen. Franklin's still checking on it."

  Casey allowed herself a smile. "I'd really love to be along when he shows up to interview all the A list who were supposed to be at the fund-raiser with Hunsacker the night Wanda disappeared."

  Jack never looked up from his scribbling. "You're looking forward to it more than Franklin is." He stabbed his pen at the other file, the fatter one. "Okay, let's take another look at that chart copy from Mother Mary," he suggested, changing tack as quickly as he checked his watch. "I want to know if there's any chance to break his alibi for Crystal."

  There was another question Casey had about Wanda, a curiosity about what Franklin had found among her personal effects when he'd searched. He'd only noted that he hadn't found anything suspicious. Suspicious to a cop might be different from suspicious to a nurse. But Jack had already switched gears. Besides, what Casey was considering wouldn't be something he should know.

  Casey pulled the pages back to her again. She didn't need to check her watch to know it was late. She'd been dragging since walking back in this house. And Jack didn't look much better. He'd at least gotten comfortable enough to ditch the formal attire. His sleeves were rolled up and his tie slung over his jacket. He didn't look as if he felt much better, though. There were dark circles beneath his eyes, and the hollows along his cheeks seemed deeper, the creases in his forehead sharper. Captains must hang even more heavily over the head than nursing supervisors.