A Man to Die for (13 page)

For a second the sergeant watched her, assessing. Rubbing unconsciously at his stomach, his forehead taut. “Look at that picture you brought me,” he finally said, his eyes suddenly sharp as flint. “See whose arm is around your suspect? My boss. I don’t need his arm around my neck, too, right now, because I suspect it would feel a lot different. So go home and forget about Dr. Jekyll there. He’s not your man, and we’re both just going to get into trouble if you keep pursuing this…and get her out of my books.”

“I told you!” Helen crowed just as Casey caught her by the arm. The book in her mother’s arms went flying and the rosary cascaded to the floor.

“We’re going home now,” Casey snapped as she picked up the lurid pink beads from the dark brown linoleum. Her voice quavered with the effort it took to control the tears. That was the problem with being emotional. Tears went with every emotion, and fury was no different. Except that men read them as a weakness, and she was going to be damned if she’d afford the good sergeant the satisfaction of reinforcing that particular stereotype.

“No,” Helen objected, going after the book. “I wanted to show you this.” The sergeant grabbed it before she did.

“Not now,” Casey commanded. Collecting both purses, she shoved Helen’s at her and spun for the door.

“One more thing,” she offered, turning to see Sgt. Scanlon holding the book to him like an injured child. “I hope you’re treating that ulcer with more than just Maalox.”

His eyebrow lifted yet again.

Casey flashed a sour smile. “You don’t keep an eye on ’em, ulcers can kill you.” Then she pulled Helen out the door.

The same three officers held down the steps downstairs, or maybe it was three different officers, interchangeable in their blue uniforms and superior attitudes. Casey barely noticed the wide-eyed surprise on their faces as she swept past them, Helen in tow. She didn’t see that the sun had broken clear of the morning cloud cover, or that it sparkled on the glass high-rises north and east. In her rush to get as far away from that condescending son of a bitch on the fourth floor, she almost dragged Helen right in front of a paddy wagon.

“Why did we leave?” Helen whined, still trying to pull away as they crossed Clark to get back to their car. “It’s, not polite, Catherine. I didn’t even get to say good-bye.”

Casey slung her purse out of the way and dug into her pockets for keys, her other hand still on Helen. “We had to go, Mom.”

“We did not. I still had a thing or two to say to that charlatan.”

“You didn’t have anything to say,” Casey snapped, the fury still bubbling too close. “God, no wonder he didn’t believe me with you rooting around in his things. I might as well have walked in with a joy buzzer and a big red nose.”

She was going to have to do it alone. She was going to have to find out about Hunsacker herself, because no one else was going to believe her. Not with Hunsacker in possession of that award-winning smile and Casey left with nothing more than supposition and enough eccentricity surrounding her to qualify her for a circus license.

It was a symptom of how cornered she felt that Casey forgot to restrain her tongue. “Come on,” she demanded, giving Helen another yank to keep them ahead of the traffic that was bearing down from the highway. “Let’s get you back to prayers and me back to reality.”

Still only three fourths of the way across the street, Helen pulled to a sudden halt. It happened so fast, Casey was almost pulled off her feet.

“Damn it,” she cried, whirling on the little women. “What do you think you’re doing? I said come on!”

“Getting your attention.”

Casey finally faced her mother. The two of them were ten feet from the curb, and traffic was bearing down on them fast. Horns sounded. Air brakes whined. But all Casey could see was Helen.

Helen was mad.

“How dare you?” she demanded, more fire in her eyes than Casey had seen in years. “Who do you think I am, a child? A dog to be dragged along on a leash?”

Casey barely heard the grind of gears as a truck closed in. She didn’t see the policemen on the steps turn her way, poised for intervention.

She only saw her mother. Leave it to Helen to wait until they were in the middle of a busy city street to surprise her.

“You think you can just tote me around to your rounds without explaining? Without asking my permission or warning me? That was a police station we were in, Catherine. A police station. But you didn’t tell me why we were going. You just expect me to sit quietly by like a child and wait till you’re finished and then trudge home without asking questions?”

Casey flushed with sudden shame. Helen was absolutely right. It had been getting so difficult lately to think of her mother as anything more than a weight. A chore. “I’m sorry,” she admitted, her voice hushed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I’m just…”

“Frustrated,” Helen finished, finally walking on toward the car and relieving the officers of their need to leave their cozy niche. “I know. I’m sorry he wouldn’t listen to you. Because you’re right.”

Casey stared. “What do you mean I’m right?”

Helen just took a considering look at the flat gray sky and smiled. “I wonder if I could have seen the sun dance at Fatima.”

Book closed, cognizance vanished. She’d done it again. Left Casey standing out in the street in stunned silence, wondering just how much Helen heard and understood. Wondering what the hell she’d been talking about, whether she’d really comprehended the situation or just had a message from one of her saints. Or the sun. Whichever danced better.

But Casey didn’t have time to worry about it. A semi was headed straight for her, and Helen waited by the car door to be let in.

More importantly, Hunsacker had to be stopped. And Casey was the only one around to do it. The sergeant had been a test, and she’d failed it. If he didn’t believe her, nobody would. And it was obvious that he didn’t believe her. Not only that, he didn’t care. Casey was going to go into this fight all alone.

Dodging the last lane of traffic, Casey unlocked her car and let Helen in for the ride back home.

“And if he isn’t a priest,” Helen challenged without warning, “why did they call him the Bishop?” Then she retreated to her beads.

The sun washed the street, and a breeze lifted the litter in a dance. The day promised to be a real beauty. Casey cursed all the way home.

The fourth floor was quiet. The guys in juvy had headed off to lunch, and Brackman and Davis were off in search of a warrant. Down the hall Scanlon could hear the drone of a radio from the lieutenant’s office, and farther along the stutter of computer keys from burglary, but for all intents and purposes, he was alone.

He had the field team’s reports on the Washington murders to go. over. He had to try to track down the chain of ownership on a gun used in a homicide six months earlier that had just turned up in a drug raid. He had to clean off all that crap on his desk as punishment for refusing to close three unpopular cases. Instead he sat at Dawson’s desk with a newspaper clipping in his hand.

The steady tap-tap of his pen accompanied his observation. His gut was nagging him. Not the fire that had taken up residence just behind his rib cage in the last few months, his police gut. The one that got him so many arrests. The one that got him into so much trouble.

Crystal Johnson’s file was back on his desk waiting for the autopsy report to come in, but he didn’t turn for it. He stared at the grainy likenesses of the two men in tuxes. He thought of the absurdity of Casey McDonough’s allegations. He tried his damnedest to do the smart thing and toss the clipping in the trash.

The fire burned higher in his chest. All he wanted to do was lay his head down on the desk and catch twenty or thirty years of sleep. Better yet, get in his car and not stop driving until he could sleep on a beach. Instead he pushed back his chair and climbed to his feet again. He began rubbing, as if it would ease the pain, wishing on an empty lamp for relief. It was time for lunch.

Scanlon had been brown-bagging it for a few weeks now, preferring his own company to the crowd down at Crown Candy since he couldn’t eat the chili there anyway. His lunch waited in the pocket of his jacket where it hung on the coatrack.

He didn’t even bother checking the hallway. One hand still full of clipping, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a can of Busch. He needed a cigarette, too, but he’d managed to give those up after the divorce.

Scanlon popped the can one-handed. Then, his attention still on those two smiling faces, he finished half the contents of the can in one long pull. He didn’t even notice the immediate flare underneath the can as he rubbed absently at his midsection. He was too involved with concepts like futility and common sense and survival. The futility of bucking the system, the common sense of not trying, the survival of those who don’t. And, conversely, the constant trouble for those, like Scanlon, who could never seem to learn those fine lessons. Because he was about to put his feet right in it again.

“Shit,” he complained in a mournful voice, his forehead tight again, his eyes on his mayor. “Shit.”

He did check the hall this time. It was still empty, the eighty-year-old linoleum neatly telegraphing visitors. Setting the can on his desk, he bent to his drawer and opened it. Still watching for witnesses, he rifled around beneath his phone books and procedure manuals and dragged out a bottle of Maalox.

Scanlon didn’t bother with measurements anymore. He simply lifted the bottle and slugged until he felt the cool fall of chalk soothe the frayed edges of his stomach. Then capping the bottle again, he slipped it back into its hiding place.

He took a moment to weigh his options, taking his lunch back in one hand and the mayor in the other. He thought of the alimony check, the hope for a quiet career left to his own devices in homicide, and the chances he’d end up pulling dawn patrol up in Little Beirut instead. He thought of how tired he was already.

Tipping his head back, he finished lunch. Scanlon scowled at it, scowled at the crumpled paper in his grasp. Scowled at his unfortunate sense of right and wrong.

“Damn it to hell,” he snarled, throwing the empty can into the trashbasket with a resounding clang. “Wouldn’t it be just my luck if she were right?”

SO, HOW EXACTLY
did one go about proving that a person was a murderer? Casey was sure if she were a cop she’d have some kind of game plan. They probably had a checklist, just like the one the hospital used for pre-op patients to assure that everything had been done in the right order. Consent form signed, check; pre-op medication given, check; false teeth out and catheter in, check. Evidence collected from scene, check; witnesses interviewed, check; body to morgue, check; no comment given to press, check.

Casey wasn’t even good at the organizational patterns needed for nursing. It was why she was so perfect for the ER. Since she had no routine, surprises didn’t bother her. Her sense of order was an instinctive thing, her approach to disease and trauma almost like rearranging a badly laid-out puzzle, rather than solving an algebra problem.

She had a feeling, though, that murder was more algebra than geometry. So, how was she supposed to go about collecting the facts she needed to nail Hunsacker? How would she even get enough to impress just one set of police involved? Did she talk to people about Wanda first, or Evelyn, or Crystal? And how did she do it and keep a low profile, so she didn’t tip her hand?

Her answer came to her like a gift the next night about ten. She’d just inherited a couple of bikers from a fight in Jefferson County. Both arrived on their stomachs, hands cuffed behind their backs, and leather and chains setting up a racket like a cattle drive.

Evidently there had been a disagreement involving a woman. Billy and Vern had settled it in the time-honored fashion, broken beer bottles and pool cues. They’d also put the bartender in intensive care, which brought out the Jefferson County detectives.

Billy had just expressed a singularly unkind opinion of Casey, which seemed to include a goodly amount of spittle and bad aim. Fully dressed in protective gear to wallow around Billy’s blood, Casey took hold of what was left of Billy’s hair and held his head very still against her cart.

“Don’t fuck with me, boy,” she growled, goggle to rheumy eye, knowing from long experience just what it took to get a mean drunk’s attention. “You’re tied down and I’m not. Besides, nobody likes you here. They’re not going to say anything if I sew your lips to the cart.”

“That’s a fact, Billy,” a voice drawled from the doorway.

Startled, Casey looked up. She’d been joined by a gentleman in white shirt and brown polyester slacks that needed either a tighter belt, less stomach, or more butt. He didn’t need a badge to be identified.

“Cooperate, you pile of lard,” he advised, setting his clipboard down by the sink to give Casey a hand, “or I’ll have to ask the lady to step out and we’ll discuss your manners in private.”

For a blinding moment, her hand still entwined in greasy, bloody hair and her face close enough to be able to enjoy Billy’s exotic scent, Casey completely forgot him. Her mind was back in that office downtown, with that smug bastard talking jurisdictions. Well, maybe Jefferson County wasn’t part of his jurisdiction, but it was sure part of hers.

“When we’re finished here,” she offered to the detective with a bright smile, “allow me to buy you a cup of coffee.”

“Wild Woman?” Detective Jarvis Franklin echoed, directing a stream of smoke at the ceiling and shaking his head. “Nope. Not a word. You know her?”

Doing her best to appear nonchalant, Casey propped her feet on a table and settled back to take a sip of her coffee. Billy was in the process of entertaining the X-ray staff with his sparkling personality, but the rest of the work lane was in chaos. Casey should have been out helping. But she couldn’t pass up a golden opportunity like this.

“I worked up at St. Isidore’s before coming here,” she acknowledged. “Wild Woman was legend. I had the privilege of doing the town with her once.”

Detective Franklin proffered a grin. “Yeah, she’s a good ole girl. Too bad for Buddy.”

Casey made it a point to shake her head. “I can’t believe Wanda didn’t even drop him a note. She really seemed to love Buddy.”

That provoked a rather indifferent shrug. “That’s what Buddy keeps sayin’. Ya ask me? He was probably a little free with his hand, and she decided to do somethin’ about it.”

“Buddy’s still bothering you, huh?”

Another shrug, another long pull from his cigarette. “Down to the station at least twice a week. Won’t do any good. All Buddy’s gonna get back from this is that car.”

Casey straightened a little. “You found her car?” It was a black Firebird, souped up and mean, Wanda’s pride and joy. Casey couldn’t imagine her leaving it behind, even if it had been Elvis who’d walked in that door to the Ramblin’ Rose.

Franklin nodded. “Right where we expected it, the parking lot of the Ramblin’ Rose. They remember her bein’ in there that night, but can’t say as to who she left with. They do remember she was going through her paycheck pretty fast with some lounge lizard, and that she told him she was leavin’ the trailer life behind—quite a few times.”

“A lounge lizard?”

“One of the regulars. Guy named Bobby Lee who swears up and down he left Wanda at the door singing’ ‘Love Me Tender.’”

For a moment Casey satisfied herself with listening to the chatter of the paging system, the trundling of the portable X-ray machine down toward room one where they had a new chest pain. She took a deliberate sip of her coffee, trying to time her question with an eye toward offhand consideration, afraid of the step she was taking. She was at work, after all. Anyone could find out what she was doing. Anyone could innocently carry her odd questions back to Hunsacker.

She must have been thinking too loudly. Casey had no sooner looked up to check the door yet again, willing it to stay shut, when it swung open. She jumped, sloshing coffee onto her lap. Her heart skidded. She was sure that she was obvious, that Wanda’s name would trigger some kind of instinctive understanding in whoever came in that door. That it would be Hunsacker himself.

It was Barb.

“Having fun?” she asked, an eyebrow arched as she took in the elevated feet and the steaming cup of coffee.

“I’m having a cigarette,” Casey said with a smile, turning Barb’s frequent excuse against her. She was going to hyperventilate, she just knew it. Barb had been listening in. She had to have been. She’d tell Hunsacker how Casey had asked about Wanda, and he’d figure a way to get Casey fired. Casey just wasn’t cut out for this stuff.

Barb scowled. “Have you seen Miller?”

Intent on finishing her coffee, Casey shook her head. “Nope.”

Go away. Leave me alone to finish finding out about Wanda. Let me get this over, and I promise I’ll never conduct clandestine affairs at work again.

“By the way,” Barb announced as an afterthought. “Dr. Hunsacker’s coming down for room ten.”

Casey nodded. Her cup almost slid out of suddenly sweaty palms. Her chest ached from the effort to stay calm. She felt like a woman entertaining her lover and hearing her husband’s key in the front door. Who said this kind of stuff was exciting, anyway?

Barb was out the door by seconds before Casey turned back to Franklin where he was busy aiming smoke rings for the smoke alarm.

“Tell me something,” she said, trying her best to sound dispassionate, his answers already beginning to set up a dance of new questions in her. “What if Buddy’s right? What if Wanda didn’t run off?”

Franklin shrugged again, evidently his expression for all occasions. “Then I’d have to let Buddy call me an idiot.” He shot Casey a wry smile that allowed for understanding between two professionals who saw much more of the world than civilians. “But I don’t see that happenin’.”

“What do you mean I’m overdressed?”

Her attention on the road ahead, Casey offered a scowl. “We’re going to the Ramblin’ Rose, Poppi. Not high tea at the Savoy.”

Poppi took a second to consider the tea-length, flowered dress and fringed scarf she wore. “You said we were going for a drink,” she protested. “You didn’t say anything about needing a tattoo and a muscle shirt. And why do I have to come along anyway?”

Casey hit the blinker and slowed into the right-hand lane. “You think I want to go in this place alone?”

Poppi looked around her as even the road deteriorated into potholes and dust and the scenery toward river scrub. The houses were clapboard or mobile lifted on pilings, the preponderance of stores dealing in liquor and guns.

“Heavy,” she breathed, the same way she did on a bad trip. “You also didn’t tell my why we’re doing this.”

“Because the police won’t.”

“And they have guns,” Poppi countered evenly.

The Ramblin’ Rose was popular even in the afternoon, the gravel lot in front of the shingled ex-VFW post sprinkled with pickup trucks and dented American-made cars. Casey saw more than one HUNGRY? EAT YOUR IMPORT bumper sticker, and was glad she’d thought to drive the old Ford her mother kept in the garage. Swinging in behind a couple of four-bys, she cut the ignition and considered her next step.

“It seemed a good idea at the time,” Poppi offered laconically.

Casey had to grin. “Something like that. Ready?”

“For what? Love on a pool table? I’m not sure.”

“Finding Wanda’s murderer.”

Before Poppi could object, Casey opened her door and climbed out of the car. She’d made it a point to dress for the occasion. Jeans, boots, and T-shirt. Simple and unassuming. She hoped she could get what she’d come for and no more. She’d never been to the Ramblin’ Rose without Wanda before, and that had been quite a while ago. And now she was here with Annie Hall.

The inside of the Rose was decorated in early Formica, with about six tables, a pool table, and a big-screen TV that was tuned to wrestling. The bar was left over from the VFW, drab and functional in pressboard, the walls gray and hung in bar mirrors, and the shelves lined in beer cans of the world. Casey remembered the menu as being whiskey or beer, with a hamburger or hot dog chaser, and peanuts for hors d’oeuvres. She remembered the clientele as rough. Nothing, it seemed, had changed.

When the bartender caught sight of the two women walking in, he looked behind them for an explanation. When they took up seats at his bar, he cleared his throat.

“Hi,” Casey greeted him, remembering him from the time she’d been here with Wanda. The owner, she thought, a pasty, underweight chronic lunger who had been especially enamored of Wanda. “Could we get a couple o’ drafts?”

Poppi settled herself on the stool alongside, and wisely kept her silence.

Casey took a look in the mirror to see that several of the players behind her were nudging and leering. She saw two women, neither of whom boasted a full set of teeth or a bra, but she didn’t feel any assistance there. She was definitely an outsider. A glaring outsider amid people who didn’t care much for the breed.

She did her best to ignore the hollow uneasiness in her stomach. “I’ve met you before,” she said to the bartender as he handed over her drinks. “Charlie, right?”

“Clyde.”

She grinned. “Yeah, well, my memory for names is shit. I’m Casey. I came in with Wanda Trigel a couple of times. I used to work with her—well, kind of. In the same hospital.”

The bartender immediately unearthed a kind of smile that involved one eyebrow and the middle of his upper lip. “You know Wanda?”

Casey nodded. “She taught me how to tie a cherry stem into a knot with my tongue.”

Poppi’s eyes widened noticeably, and her first taste of beer was a large one. Still, she kept quiet.

The bartender was grinning with what was left of his own teeth. “That’s Wanda all right. You heard from her lately?”

Casey’s smile was wistful, even though her heart was galloping again. She felt as if she’d just gone over the top on a Ferris wheel. Maybe this stuff wasn’t so bad after all. She took a pull from her own drink before answering, and wiped the side of her mouth with her hand.

“I was kinda hopin’ I’d catch up with her here. I heard she left Buddy.”

Elbows on the bar, the bartender leaned much too close. It was his way of expressing sincerity. “We haven’t heard from her, either. You know Buddy?”

Casey shrugged a little, wishing she could escape the man’s breath. “Met him. He seemed nice enough.”

She got a nod for an answer. “He is. He’s real broke up over this.”

“Cop told me that he thought Buddy hit her. What do you think?”

Clyde considered that pretty funny. “Sure he hit her. But after growing up a Millard, she knew how to take a punch.”

Casey just nodded. Not much to say about that.

“I don’t know,” she mused, sipping at her beer and shaking her head. “It just doesn’t figure for me, somehow. That’s kinda why I came looking to talk to Wanda.”

“What don’t figure?”

Casey leaned a little herself. “Do you really think Wanda’d just take off like that?”

Clyde straightened a little, looked at Casey as if she were a couple bricks shy. “Sure.”

Bad tack to take. Casey waved him off and redirected her question. “No, that’s not what I meant. Do you think she’d do it and not at least let Buddy know why?”

“Well, she is impulsive. High-strung, ya know. And she was sayin’ something about leaving the trailer. You know how much she wanted a real big house and a garage for her car.”

Another arguable point. But Casey had the trump card that nobody seemed to have thought to play. She played it. “Yeah, but would she leave her Firebird behind?”

That brought Clyde straight upright. He looked up to the ceiling, obviously stretching for some thought processes. Maybe it was the gender, Casey thought, stifling her excitement as she remembered Scanlon watching the station ceiling much the same way. They had to look for their ideas. Or maybe they just had to lift their brains a little ways to get them to work.

Without a word, Clyde turned and drew himself a beer. Then he finished it in one long gulp and turned back to Casey, astonished.

“Not,” he assured her, “if Elvis himself offered her a ride in his limousine.”

“Clyde,” Casey said, forcing herself to lean close again. “I’ve heard Buddy’s been hassling the police to find her. I hear he thinks something’s happened to her. What if he’s right?”