A Man to Die for (20 page)

Jack wasn’t a statistics man. He didn’t close files just to clean up the city’s numbers. He worried at a case until he was satisfied with it, and that wasn’t the way to play the game. City elections were coming up soon, and the captain was the mayor’s man. And Jack refused to help the mayor improve his crime stats.

The captain’s note made a decent airplane, but it sank fast. Jack turned back to the task at hand.

The ME’s shots taunted him. Spread like playing cards, both color and black and white of the crime scene, Crystal’s blood dark in both shots, her skin as gray as her floor. Taunting his well-ordered logic.

She’d been a striking woman, tall and commanding, with an athlete’s strong features. In the pictures they were misshapen and asymmetrical, like a deflating basketball. Blood matted in her blond hair and spattered the linoleum floor.

It hadn’t been a quick death. Whoever had killed her had been in a rare fury. He’d used hands and feet and fingers, battering her until she wasn’t recognizable as one of the prettier hookers on the stroll.

And then, after he’d beaten her to death, he’d cleaned everything, including the skin beneath her fingernails.

Scanlon was just turning back to Reeva’s interview when the phone rang. His eyes on his work, he palmed the receiver.

“Sgt. Scanlon.”

“Jarvis Franklin from Arnold,” his caller informed him with a drawl. “Returning your call. What can I do for you now, Sarge?”

Jack started tapping. “Yeah, Franklin, thanks for calling back. I hear you found Wanda this morning.”

Franklin snorted. “Coupla boys found what was left. After you and I talked about her car, can’t say as I was real surprised. Funny how sometimes you don’t pay attention to the nose on your face, ain’t it?”

“Well, from the sounds of her, your guess was as good as mine.” Scanlon tapped a little faster, not even hearing it anymore. “Tell me something, would you? Did you find anything on the car?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, it’s funny. Buddy refused to get in that thing after he got it back. Said it’d be bad luck. So we got it in a pretty pristine state. And there was nothin’.”

“No latents?”

“No nothing’. It was clean as a soul on Sunday morning. I have a feeling that it was a blind alley. Ole Wanda had that thing over to the car wash every damn week. She musta had it there that day and vacuumed the shit out of it and then just left it at the Rose. And it rained that night. Big storm. Nothin’ left of interest on the outside.”

The tapping slowed. Scanlon didn’t see Barb Dawson look up from her desk and watch. “What about Wanda?” he asked. “Anything?”

That got a real snort, the kind that implied he should have known better. Scanlon could’ just imagine. Just because he was in the city didn’t mean he didn’t see his share of decomposed bodies. Jarvis Franklin might have foxes and coyotes, but Scanlon had rats. Rats and heat can do a hell of a job in no time at all.

“Anything that struck you,” he amended.

“Why?” Franklin asked. “Got somethin’ for me?”

“Nope.” Franklin would just love the story of the homicidal obstetrician. Scanlon laid down the pen and took up rubbing. “Just trying to appease that friend of mine that gave me the car idea.”

“Only funny thing is her earrings.”

“Her earrings.”

“Yeah. She wore more earrings than Mr. T. Four on each side. Only one side was missing. All four of ’em. Other than that, she got hit with a big rock and died. We’re still lookin’ for Bobby Lee Martin, if you see him.”

“I got the notice. We’ll keep an eye out. Thanks.”

He’d barely hung up before Dawson swung his way. “You don’t have any friends, Bishop,” she prodded, curious.

His fingers closing around his pen again, Scanlon looked over to where the paper airplane stuck ass end out of his trash can. Then he turned to consider the wry light in Dawson’s sharp eyes. “Dawson,” he said, leaning back and lacing his fingers behind his head, “tell me about pelvics.”

There were some benefits to going in to work. It was really difficult to find the energy to weigh the merit of existential existence when you were hip deep in gomers. Control and submission didn’t mean squat to a kid with a bean up his nose. When the shift was short three nurses and cursed with Ahmed as one of the docs, the most involved one could realistically get with personal problems was how long your deodorant would last.

Casey didn’t get to dinner until almost nine. By then her only coherent thought was how she could get Ahmed deported.

And there, right on top of her bag, was a gift. There was no name attached, but Casey recognized Marva’s handwriting. Casey picked up the packet of papers and pulled up a chair.

Serial, Mass, and Sensational Murders, a Profile
. Casey laughed out loud. Leave it to Marva. Like the detective fairies, leaving little clues around to help the amateur investigator solve his case. She should probably run right home and check her closet to make sure somebody hadn’t left handcuffs in her shoes.

Marva couldn’t afford to be involved, and Casey understood. But Marva believed her, and that was all that counted right now. Especially since there were, times when she didn’t believe herself.

Absently picking mushrooms off her pizza and popping them in her mouth, Casey opened the report and began to scan.

“Serial murders are the murders of separate victims with time breaks as minimal as two days between victims.”

Casey felt a chill of prescience snake down her back. She had an uncomfortable feeling about this. First line of the report, and she was already labeling Hunsacker.

A serial killer. Nah. Bundy was a serial killer, Gacy, Son of Sam. The kind of people who hustled strays and then chopped them for firewood. Hunsacker wasn’t like that.

The report divided serial murders into two categories, organized and disorganized. Disorganized killers included the folks who heard voices, saw visions, and thought their cats were possessed. Psychotics.

After twelve years on the halls, Casey was well acquainted with that particular species. She’d had people who thought they were everything from Mary Mother of God to Larry the Cockroach. And, of course, St. Paul. The only thing keeping St. Paul from ending up on some DA’s list was the fact that he thought Mother Mary’s ER was the Temple of Salvation. If the Temple had had a Kmart sign over the door, some redheaded checkout clerk would have been short one head.

Disorganized killers struck when the voices spoke, which, as any visionary knows, is not a predictable thing. Their urge to kill disappeared with locked doors and regular doses of antipsychotics.

Organized killers, on the other hand, usually fell beyond the range of treatment. Organized killers were usually calm, logical, bright, and charming. They enticed their victims to their deaths just for the sport of doing it.

The human shark, the psychopath. Void of soul, bereft of conscience, hopeless of rehabilitation. Ted Bundy. Handsome, charismatic, manipulative, deadly.

Casey read on, her pizza getting cold on the table, her stomach churning, her trepidation mounting. She didn’t even hear the door open.

“What you readin’, child?”

Casey jumped and almost knocked over her soda. “Marva, don’t do that to me.”

Marva’s smile was broad and unapologetic. “Good readin’, huh? All you ever wanted to know about people who go bump in the night.”

Casey shook her head. “They keep talking about Bundy’s eyes.”

Marva leaned over and grabbed a piece of pizza, then settled herself onto the edge of the table. “Do they?”

Sections of the piece were underlined. Marva knew all about Bundy’s eyes. “It’s, one of the things that first bothered me about Hunsacker,” Casey admitted. “His eyes never seemed…right.”

Marva chewed on her pizza. “Dead,” was all she said. Casey nodded. “I wonder what his feet look like.” Marva almost choked. “You mean about that toe thing?”

“It’s a statistic,” Casey insisted, needing the levity all of a sudden. “A disproportionate number of serial killers have longer second toes than great toes. Now, the question is, how do we find out?”

Marva grinned. “Tackle him and pull off his shoes.”

“Dump a urinal on his Dock-Sides. He doesn’t wear socks.”

Marva shook her head. “Too obvious.”

“And tackling him isn’t?”

“All right, we’ll have Barb tackle him. She wouldn’t mind, and he wouldn’t be surprised. Get her to distract him, and we can sneak up while he’s not watching.”

“I’m not joining a ménage á trois just to play with his toes. That’s not my kink.”

“Honey, don’t tell me what you kink ain’t. You’ horns gettin’ so high, you could just as well start sashayin’ up to Abe.”

Casey gave a gentle grimace. “Thanks all the same. Some natural wonders are meant to be enjoyed from afar.”

Casey didn’t think to hide her reading when the door opened again.

“Casey, are you busy?” Steve asked, leaning in. He looked a little bemused, which was an alien expression for him.

“I still have about ten minutes to eat,” she said. “Why?”

On the other hand, maybe she should have put the report up. The minute Steve spotted the picture of Ted Bundy on the open page of her report, Casey remembered that he was in the middle of an Abnormal Psych rotation.

“What’s that?” he asked, walking on in. “Bundy? Boy, would I have loved to have interviewed him. You don’t get a chance to put a serial killer under the microscope every day.”

Casey choked back the urge to enlighten him. Why was it the psych majors didn’t see the psychopath under their noses?

“Somebody left this in here,” she said, letting him pick it up. “Spooky reading. By the way, how long is your second toe?”

Steve chuckled. “Long enough to pick my nose with. Wanna see my collection of hunting knives?”

Casey actually shivered. “Not funny.”

Steve’s attention was still on the article he was flipping through. “I’ll give you funny. Know what I found out last week? One out of ten serial killers is in the medical profession.” Setting down the article, he gave Casey his best psychotic-on-the-loose look. “
Now
you want to see my hunting knives?”

Casey waved him off. “Next incarnation, thanks.”

He was already heading back out the door when he remembered why he’d come in in the first place. “Uh, Case. If you’re about finished, you got a personal request out there.”

Casey closed the article and slipped it back into its envelope. She’d lost her appetite for pizza. “Request for what?” she demanded. “There isn’t anybody out there I want to dance with, and I can’t do ‘Born to Run’ without a backup band.”

“Dr. Hunsacker.”

Steve unwittingly knew just how to get his audience’s undivided attention. Casey and Marva both stopped dead and stared.

Steve shrugged. “He’s got a lady back in twenty with belly pain. He says he wants you to help him.”

Casey exchanged looks with Marva. Then she turned back to Steve. “You’re kidding.”

“Only about my toes.” Now he looked uncomfortable. “He says he’ll complain to Jordan if he has to work with anybody but you. It sounded like a joke.”

It sounded like it, but Steve wasn’t sure. Casey couldn’t formulate a decent reaction. She desperately wanted to tell Hunsacker to go to hell. She wanted to crawl under the microwave cart and become invisible. She also very much wanted to know what Hunsacker was up to.

“Tell him I expect a pizza for this,” she finally answered.

Relieved, Steve ducked back out. Left behind, Casey and Marva refused to look at each other.

“One out of ten,” Casey echoed, her eyes on the door, her head shaking slowly.

Marva didn’t move at all. Her gaze was focused in the same direction, as if both of them could divine meaning through the barrier. “Makes sense,” she acknowledged.

“Yeah,” Casey admitted with dreadful fatalism. “It does, doesn’t it?”

Her first thought when she saw him was that he was doing coke. He was high, talking a lot and unable to sit still. When Casey walked onto the hall he was regaling Steve and Janice with tales of a stag party he’d attended the night before. The minute he spotted Casey he grinned with triumph.

“Great.” He spun toward her, hands out in welcome. “I was hoping you’d be on tonight. You’re always so good to my patients.”

Casey slowed on approach, afraid of getting too close, of somehow being sucked into that energy field of his. She was unnerved by the way he looked as if he were enjoying some kind of victory. Both Janice and Steve observed as if they were watching a foreign movie without subtitles.

“You want me to set her up?” Casey asked carefully, not bothering to reach for the chart.

“That would be fine,” he said, his smile gluttonous. Casey quelled a shiver and walked by to get his patient ready. When it seemed he was going to touch her in passing, she shied like a skittish horse. He laughed.

“Casey here,” he announced to Ms. Sydney Frazier a few minutes later as he gently tapped the inside of her thigh to get her to relax against his hand, “is my conscience. She doesn’t let me forget anything. Do you, Casey?”

She was close enough now to smell the bourbon. He’d tried to hide it under mouthwash, but bourbon doesn’t surrender easily. He’d been drinking, was that it? He’d gotten ripped and then decided it would be great blood-sport to come in and terrorize Casey?

“And in return, I always try and keep Casey on her toes,” he went on, screwing the speculum into place and bending for a better look. “I want her to pay close attention to everything, because that’s the only way she’s going to learn.”

Casey couldn’t take her eyes off the back of his head. Something about his words lodged in her chest, close behind her sternum where she stored her anxiety. And along her neck. Right down at the base, where those little flags of instinctive survival resided. They were stirring again. Something was terribly wrong, and she didn’t know what it was.

Hunsacker dropped the speculum back on the tray without Ms. Frazier ever once yelping. He’d completed the pelvic with gentle dispatch. As he flipped the sheet back down, he turned to make sure Casey had taken note of it. She felt sick.