A Man to Die For

by Eileen Dreyer

  Casey shook her head. "I knew Wanda. She loved you, Buddy. She wouldn't have taken off like that without a word." Maybe it was trite. Maybe it wasn't even true. It was all Casey could offer.

  Buddy's eyes filled with unshed tears, and Casey battled against her own. God, she hated this. She wanted to get back into her rut, where she was safe and anesthetized against this kind of pain.

  "I need a favor, Buddy," she hurried on, trying her best to control her voice. "I don't think the police know what to look for in investigating her murder."

  He tried his best to focus on her words. His eyes rolled a little and straightened, settling on a spot on her left cheek. "Pussies," he snarled. He'd obviously been spending a lot of time with Clyde lately.

  "Buddy," she said, leaning closer, peering through the haze. "I'm working with another policeman on another murder. A murder I think is related to Wanda's. And, well, if I could find something more solid than they have now..."

  "But they looked already," he said, his attention inward again. "Rummaged through our place for a coupla hours."

  "The cops didn't know Wanda. They don't know hospitals. I do. I might spot something important they wouldn't recognize. Could I look? At her stuff, her hospital stuff." She didn't mention that the police wouldn't have known they were looking for blackmail material. Casey wasn't sure how he'd react to a concept like that. She wasn't even sure he could comprehend it right now. The simple route seemed the best.

  It worked. It took him a minute for her words to worm their way past all the alcohol. When they finally did, Buddy came right to his feet with a nod. Then he turned for the door without waiting to see if she'd follow.

  "I'm gonna drive Buddy home, Clyde," Casey announced, her beer left forgotten with Buddy's. Clyde just nodded, too.

  The Trigel trailer had never been that much to speak of. It was less now. Buddy hadn't spent a lot of time cleaning since Wanda's disappearance. Empty TV dinners spilled out over trash can and sink. Beer cans and cigarette butts littered every available surface. Clothes huddled in rumpled piles over the furniture, and the place reeked of smoke.

  Buddy had obviously been sleeping on the couch. The bedroom was dusty and neat, closed off and silent. Casey figured he hadn't gone in since Wanda had disappeared. It made her search easier, but spookier. After pointing out the correct door, Buddy grabbed himself a refill from the fridge and sprawled into a chair in the living room without moving any of the previous occupants, and then just waited.

  The contents of Wanda's locker were still stuffed into the cardboard box that sat on the dresser. Just what Casey had heard, five or six pictures of Elvis from puberty to pantsuits, a stash of unfiltered Marlboros, and a cache of cheap, brassy earrings. No diaries, no messages, no surprises. Casey turned away to check the rest of the room.

  She found stuffed animals, a shadowbox with tiny turtles, and a lot of jeans. More Elvis and enough makeup to stage a Broadway show. And, tossed in the corner, right behind a chair, a lab coat and white shoes.

  Casey hesitated a moment, superstitious and uncertain. Wanda had probably dropped the clothes here after her last night of work, careless with the certainty that they'd still be there the next day to pick up. That she'd be there the next day to do it.

  But she hadn't. Casey had the feeling she was the first person to touch them since Wanda had tossed them over the chair and missed, that the police hadn't even seen the little puddle of white back in the corner.

  She gingerly reached past a couple of cobwebs and caught the lab coat by the collar. It smelled like cigarettes, too. A name tag was still over the pocket, W. Trigel CNA, Labor and Delivery. Casey went right for the bulging pockets.

  Wanda had been a typical hospital pack rat, stuffing her lab coat with things like tape and alcohol swabs just in case she'd need them. Casey stacked those on the dresser along with three pens, scissors, an opened pack of cigarettes, a stash of rubber bands, paper clips, and a tape measure.

  And one other thing.

  Casey almost tossed it right atop the small pile she'd been building on the dresser. It was just a patient label, the kind the computer made up by the hundreds to tag everything from tests to charges on a patient. A white tag with a peelable sticky back with patient name, address, date of birth, and doctor. Casey dropped them in her pockets all the time, grabbing more than enough for what she needed, pulling an extra to remind her to check back on the patient later or update paperwork.

  Casey was going to toss it onto the growing pile of debris on the dresser. A familiar object amid more familiar objects. Then she read the information on it, and everything changed. Marilyn Peebles, age 24, address Rolling Rock Lane in Ladue. Doctor, Dale Hunsacker.

  Peebles, the same last name as the woman who had been ashed out in O'Fallon. The name they couldn't connect with Hunsacker. But they could now. Casey slipped the label into her own pocket, refilled the lab coat with its cache, and then carefully draped it over the chair where Buddy would find it when he was finally able to open the room on his own. And then she shut the door and tried her best to help Buddy.

  * * *

  The call came at three, just as Casey was trying to fall asleep. She picked up the receiver, torn between wanting it to be Hunsacker and wishing Jack would finally call her back.

  Silence.

  She almost smiled. You killed her, she thought, straightening in the desk chair. You somehow stuffed a gun in Janice's mouth and blew out her brains, and I know it.

  I'm after you, you son of a bitch.

  She heard him breathing this time, as if he'd been running. As if he were excited. Well, she was excited, too. She finally had something on him. All she had to do was talk to Marilyn Peebles tomorrow to find out just what it was.

  It was all Casey could do to keep her silence, too, to leave her messages implied and secret. It was all she could do to keep from railing at him, demanding an explanation, a reason when she knew darn well the only one she might get was that he enjoyed it.

  But she waited. The house creaked and settled around her, listening in, and a breeze fluttered through the curtains at her window. Pussy mewled a floor below and Helen murmured in response. And watching the pearl-gray landscape outside her window, Casey waited.

  In the end, she heard the soft click. She didn't wait for the dial tone this time to hang up. Reaching over, she pulled the chain to her desk lamp and consigned her room to moonlight. And when she climbed into bed, she slept better than she had since that first phone call.

  * * *

  Casey made her call the next morning from the same phone so that Helen couldn't overhear. Casey had thought of showing up at the medical examiner's digs up in Maryland Heights, but the fact of the matter was that after twelve years of calling in every emergency-room death she handled, she felt more comfortable dealing with the MEs over the phone. She didn't think she could pick one of them out of a crowd unless he opened his mouth.

  It was Pat Martin she ended up talking to, the voice belonging in Casey's mind to a big, brusque Irishman with curly red hair, like hers. She knew he had six kids and a boat he took out on the river, and that he liked a good dirty joke even better than she. She also knew that he asked more questions than a census when he was on, and had a store of unbelievably arcane information on methods of death and destruction. The word was that he also kept a headlight on his desk from his first case, a pileup with four people reduced to road pizza and a car that ended its own life the size of a lunchbox.

  "Pat, I hear you got Janice," Casey started in, already rubbing at her temple.

  "Yeah," Pat answered, his voice deep and gravelly. "Tough one."

  "No question? She really did kill herself?"

  "You never think it's going to happen to friends."

  Casey scowled. "Don't get all therapeutic on me, Pat. I have a reason for asking."

  "She sure as shit wasn't brushing her teeth with that thing," he retorted.

  "I thought women didn't eat guns."

  "So did I,"
he admitted. "But she sure made a believer out of me. If she were a thirty-year-old male, I wouldn't have even asked for a note. I'm afraid that fun little conversation you all had about suicide methodology was a little more intense for Janice."

  "The note," Casey nudged. "Can you tell me what it said?"

  "She didn't mention you, if that's what you mean.'"

  "Pat..."

  "Okay. All it said was, 'Aaron'—the husband, right?—'I have no right to do this to you. I'm sorry.' Then she signed it and dotted her I's."

  I have no right to do this to you. Janice hadn't said I can't live anymore, or I have nothing left to live for. She didn't mention lost love or depression. She said she couldn't do something to Aaron. What?

  "Did you find out anything about the other guy she was seeing?"

  "She was a tidy character," Pat said. "No letters, no diaries, no last-minute confessions."

  "Just the note."

  "Exactly."

  "Which doesn't exactly say she killed herself."

  "I thought the gray matter on the wall and the powder burns on her upper palate did that."

  "Pat, bear with me a minute," Casey begged. "I have a theory for you. A... hypothetical situation."

  "I live for hypothetical situations."

  "Well, here it is. Janice was having lots of trouble in her marriage. She talked to me about it. Evidently Aaron was dabbling with XY chromosome bonding."

  "It'd be enough to put me in a snit."

  "But Janice also said she was seeing somebody else. Somebody she'd considered running away with. It might be someone who would inspire her to write a note like that to Aaron. She would have been sorry. She didn't want to hurt him, no matter what he'd done."

  "And you think this mysterious significant other blew out her lights." Pat also had a great intuition.

  "With all my heart."

  This silence Casey recognized. This was a "how do I placate her?" silence.

  "He'd have to know just how to do it so it would look just like a suicide," Pat finally offered. "Amateurs don't understand physiology enough to do that."

  "He's a doctor."

  "He's not a coroner. We're talking blood patterns and stippling and finger placement. She was sitting up when she died, on the side of her bed, unbound and mobile. Hard to make somebody eat a gun without restraints."

  "He could. If you have questions, talk to Sgt. Scanlon of the city homicide department. He's looking into some other handiwork of this guy's."

  The silence that met this statement was the one of stupefaction. Casey heard the sharp hiss of breath, the creak of a chair.

  "You talking about that guy Hunsacker? The one on the news?" Pat couldn't have sounded more surprised if she'd accused the pope.

  "Just think about it," she begged, not certain suddenly what she'd wanted from this conversation. Clarity, certainty. Had she meant to go this far? Had she wanted to spill the story onto the grapevine?

  "You said Janice was a neat character," she prodded. "I bet the only thing out of place in that room was the back of her skull."

  "Her bookshelf was alphabetized."

  Casey instinctively nodded, her eyes down on the doodle she'd drawn of a wave and the words in Janice's note. "You never got to see her at work. Pat, I've never seen another human being who could keep a white uniform spotless for up to twelve-hour stretches down here. I mean spotless. She carried a nail file and a bottle of hydrogen peroxide in her uniform just in case she needed them. Now, you're the medical examiner. Do you really think that a broken marriage is enough to overcome that kind of compulsion?"

  "Weirder things have happened."

  And he'd be happy to tell her about them. Casey didn't give him a chance. "Just promise me you'll keep an open mind. And a shut mouth. I'm in trouble enough as it is for helping with this."

  "I'll bet."

  "Please?"

  He sighed, an expansive sound of concession. "You take care of me, I'll take care of you. What have I always told you? That when you bought the big one you'd be first in line for the saw. Okay, Casey. I'll relook my stuff. Don't expect any miraculous revelations, though. I think you're wrong."

  "That's okay, Pat," she admitted. "It's happened before. If I hear anything else, I'll call."

  * * *

  Still no Jack. Casey dialed again, and again he was out. She left another message and headed down for her trip to Ladue.

  Casey hadn't anticipated Helen. When Casey let herself out of the house her mother was waiting for her, sitting on the front porch swing, her legs demurely folded at the ankle, clutching both missal and rosary in her lap.

  "It's eleven, Mom," Casey protested. "Nothing's scheduled for eleven."

  "I want to go with you."

  Car keys in hand, purse over her shoulder, jeans already too heavy in the stale morning air, Casey came to a dead stop.

  "Go with me?" she demanded, squinting over as if it would help pull her mother into better focus. "Why?"

  Helen smiled and fluttered a little. "Because I'm worried about you."

  Casey didn't know what to say. She took a minute to look out over the neighborhood where trees hesitated in the still air and the lawns wilted for want of water. The sky was a faded blue, the color of Buddy Trigel's eyes, and it didn't seem alive, either. It made Casey suddenly irritated and impatient.

  "You feel badly about that girl," Helen went on, her attention on the writhing silver Jesus trapped between her fingers and the cross. "But that's up to God. God and his tender mother. We can't judge, and we can't forgive. It's a sad thing that she's consigned herself to the fiery eternity of hell—"

  "Don't," Casey abruptly interrupted, much too familiar with this line of thought. "She didn't kill herself."

  "She did," Helen argued gently, reaching out a hand she knew wouldn't reach her child. "He told me."

  "God told you?" Casey retorted, furious that she'd been dragged back into this kind of conversation.

  But Helen shook her head. "No, Mick. He told me that you were only hurting yourself by pursuing this, Casey. And I trust him."

  "Just when did Daddy appear to you?" Casey demanded.

  Helen's eyes teared up. Casey was getting tired of all the crying lately. She wanted a good laugh or two. "He just doesn't want me to feel badly. He wants me to be forgiven, and I don't know if I can do it. But he worries about you, too."

  "That's nice of him," Casey said, patting Helen on the shoulder and fighting the urge to run down the steps. "You tell him I'm fine."

  "He thinks... he thinks you're obsessed by this thing because that man reminds you so much of... of Frank."

  Casey stiffened. Her mother hadn't mentioned Frank's name since Casey had walked back in the house. It had been like a pact between them, a twisted little vow of silence, and she'd just broken it.

  "He's exactly like Frank," Casey admitted, crouching down at her mother's level. "Only worse. And that's why I'm going to get him."

  The tears welled over and slid down parchment cheeks. Helen didn't even seem to notice them anymore. Casey was surprised she didn't have grooves in her cheeks like the fabled statue of St. Peter, whose weeping for his cowardice had etched itself all the way into stone.

  "Your father was a good man," Helen whispered, hand now finding Casey's arm and clawing it like a last hope. "Don't do this to him."

  But Casey could only shake her head, the frustration splintering into rage. She wanted to tell her mother it wasn't her fault she didn't listen to the advice of dead men. She wanted to tell her just what was involved in this game, and why gods and ghosts didn't matter a damn. But she surrendered to the frightened anguish in her mother's eyes.

  Patting Helen's trembling hand, Casey regained her feet. "It has nothing to do with Daddy," she assured her. "It has to do with a brutal, evil man who has to be stopped."

  She thought that would take care of it, but when she turned to go, Helen scrambled right to her feet behind her and followed.

  Perched on the second p
orch step, Casey sighed. "You'll stay in the car," she warned.

  "Of course, sweetheart."

  And the two of them went off to catch a murderer.

  * * *

  Jack found the phone message under a stack of new orders. He'd spent the last two days in court testifying on one of his old cases, and the evenings doing some unofficial liaising with the East St. Louis police department in a bar in Sauget. The message was dated yesterday. Taking a good yank on his tie, he checked his watch and decided to try her at work.

  It took a good three or four minutes to get him connected.

  "This is Casey McDonough," she answered in a brisk, no-nonsense voice that anticipated both confidence and trouble.

  Jack settled into his chair and grabbed for the coffee he'd made. "Scanlon," he greeted her. "You called?"

  "Three times," she informed him, her voice easing into familiarity. "I was beginning to think you'd run away from home."

  "Participating in the antiquated rituals of the court system," he assured her, taking a sip. "And before you accuse me, yes, I am an expert on antiquated rituals."

  "Well, Scanlon," she admitted, "you caught me at lunch. A good thing, because it'll give me time to weave a story about suicide, redemption, and murder."

  "Suicide."

  "My mother still insists that suicide victims secure themselves a ticket to the Gehenna Express. Being fairly conversant with suicide in all its myriad forms, I tend to disagree with her. But the point this time is that it wasn't suicide."

  Jack heard the news in her voice even before she delivered it. "What wasn't suicide?" he asked, pulling his scratch pad over and uncapping his pen. His stomach had been almost quiet the last two days. It looked like the reprieve was over.

  "Janice Feldman. You ran into her when you were here, a tall brunette with great bone structure and a spotless uniform."

  "She killed herself?"

  "My point exactly. She was found four days ago in her bedroom with a gunshot wound through the mouth. She'd been having husband and boyfriend troubles, and the theory was she was despondent and got drunk enough to wipe out her obsession for neatness."