A Man to Die for (25 page)

“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 Maxville 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.”

Casey didn’t remember getting to her feet. “You apologized for me without even asking me about it?” she demanded, leaning over his desk, hands flat on either side of the ball, her chest suddenly hot with surprise. “Without so much as asking me if it were true?”

Tom actually backed away a little. “Casey, sit down. You’re not helping yourself at all.”

Casey straightened, wheeled around on her heel, and paced the other five feet of the office, from Budweiser eagle to framed Musial uniform replica. It was all she could do to force the bile back down. She needed the job, she reminded herself like a mantra to calm her, she needed the job. And unless she somehow saw this through to the end, she wasn’t going to have one. Anywhere.

But Hunsacker had just managed to humiliate her again, and she was helpless to do anything about it. And this time, she hadn’t even had to be in the same room for him to do it. Maybe it wasn’t justice she wanted after all. Maybe it was just retribution for feeling like this.

Casey sat down. Barely.

Tom didn’t look any more comfortable. Casey had the fleeting impression he was preparing to ward off blows. It didn’t seem like such a bad idea there for a minute.

“You talked to the police on the premises without notifying supervisors,” he accused as sternly as he could. “You know that’s against policy. Your accusations caused great distress to Dr. Hunsacker
and
his patients
and
this hospital, and if he were a different person, he’d be well within his rights to ask for your dismissal.” Now Tom was on a roll, jabbing his desk with his finger to accentuate his points. “Hell, Casey, he could have your license. Is a little spite worth all that?”

“Spite.” She breathed carefully, rigid with fury. “You think this is all out of spite?”

“Well, isn’t it?”

“Tell me something, Tom,” she said, leaning just a little closer, almost satisfied to see him tense in reaction. “What if he did murder that woman? What if
I’m
the one who’s right here?”

Tom actually laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous. He can’t be a murderer. He’s been in Millicent Adams’ column, for God’s sake.”

“I mean it,” she warned. “Something’s really wrong with that man. He’s—” Casey stopped, desperate for the right words. Too close to telling the truth, when she knew damn well that one word about multiple homicides would land her own butt right in a padded bungalow over on Fantasy Island with no return ticket. She caught herself just shy of disaster. “Look at his eyes, Tom. Look at the way he acts. He’s just too sly. Too…slick. It’s like he has everybody under a spell.”

That brought Tom right to his feet. On an executive, it might have been a threatening move. A man in wirerims and a white pantsuit didn’t quite cut the same figure. “I don’t like ultimatums,” he advised her, fingers splayed over the desktop. “But I think it’s time for one. Mr. Nixon wanted me to suspend you. I managed to avoid it. But, Casey, this is an official verbal warning. You know the play. The next step is a written reprimand, and then dismissal. And much more talk like that’s going to usher you right out the door.”

Casey reached her own feet and faced him, trembling with fury. Not because Tom was wrong, but because he was telling the truth. She knew it; she’d been expecting it. This was a polite chat, a friendly warning. Next, the gloves came off. And she couldn’t stop it.

The staff had always claimed that the CEO of the hospital hadn’t been named Nixon for nothing. He wouldn’t stand for one of his nurses (he always thought of them as his) to step out of line. He especially couldn’t tolerate her threatening his profit margin. And Casey, with her good intentions and unproven suspicions, was doing just that.

“Can I go back to work now?” she asked in a deadly quiet voice. Her chest hurt with the frustration, burned way in behind her sternum. It made her wonder how many of these confrontations Scanlon had had to gestate his ulcer.

Tom faced her, his plain, thin face anxious and earnest. “I don’t know,” he asked. “Can you?”

It was an effort, but Casey nodded. I need the job, she repeated to herself again and again. I need the job.

“In that case,” he said, gaze back on his desk, as if reading a memo, “I know you’ll try and be a…a good team player. I don’t want to hear that you’re having any more problems with Dr. Hunsacker. I certainly don’t want to hear any more accusations like the ones you’ve been spreading around.”

His eyes came up, pleading. Tom really liked her, Casey knew. The last thing he wanted to do was fire her. She could see, though, that he couldn’t comprehend her actions. She bitched and moaned as much as the rest of them, threatening dire consequences, concocting elaborate revenges. But to actually betray a doctor like that. To fabricate such a lie. Because Tom really thought it was a lie.

“One more thing,” he managed, tapping his notes again. “You will not talk to police while on the premises unless it is authorized. Is that clear?”

Casey nodded one more time. She wondered yet again whether she should have ever set foot in that police station. She would have known. She would have seen Hunsacker weave his deadly web and been unable to stop it. But she would have been safe. She would have been anonymous and secure.

But she’d done that once. She’d been a coward and crawled away, and she just couldn’t do that anymore. She had to at least try. If not for justice, at least for self-respect.

HE MUST HAVE
sensed her humiliation. No more than half an hour after Casey left Tom’s office, Hunsacker walked onto the work lane. His reception was enthusiastic and supportive. Millie danced around him and Barb rubbed against him like a cat in heat.

Casey made it a point to stay at the other end of the hall. It wasn’t difficult to look busy, and Casey had more than enough reason to stay close to her patients. One was losing a baby and another had already lost her mind. Casey could hear her moaning, the eerie keening haunting and dark.

She tried not even to look down the hall. The excited babble was easy enough to hear, and on occasion laughter broke out. Casey remained bent over her charts, taut with a hundred different resentments.

“Baby, you look like thunder.”

Casey acknowledged Marva’s arrival with a nod as she scribbled notes.

“Casey, I need a CBC and Type and Crossmatch on room twelve,” Dr. Filmont called from where she leaned out the door.

Casey nodded to her, too, and picked up the phone to call the lab. Filmont disappeared back into the room.

“There’s something I think you need to know,” Marva said in a suspiciously flat tone.

Casey was finally forced to look up. Marva’s gaze wasn’t on her, but on Hunsacker where he stood with his arm around Barb’s shoulder. Casey didn’t have anything on the thunder in Marva’s eyes.

“Laboratory. Janice.”

Casey delivered the message and hung up. Getting to her feet, she reached for requisitions, “I already have a verbal counseling on my record,” she warned Marva on the way by. “If this is going to make me mad, maybe you’d better save it.”

Marva followed right behind her. “It’ll maybe help you understand why the attitude’s so bad down here.”

Casey knew just by the direction of Marva’s gaze what she was referring to.

“Well, since he’s obviously Jesus Christ, I must be Judas.”

Marva almost cracked a smile. Casey slid Mrs. Trenory’s name plate into the stamping machine.

“Wrong analogy,” Marva suggested. “Try Samson and Delilah. Or, if the Bible ain’t your thing, how ’bout
Fatal Attraction?
”

Casey had a requisition positioned to stamp. All she had to do was slam the machine into place. She stood with her hand on top of it. “What?”

Marva wasn’t smiling. “ ‘Hell hath no fury’?”

Now Casey wasn’t even breathing. She could hear Hunsacker’s voice, honey slick and seductive, the master instrument of insinuation and innuendo. She thought of how her friends should have known her better.

Her reaction was deathly quiet. “They think I’ve been sleeping with him?”

Marva turned to her, her eyes uncompromising. Demanding Casey’s sensibility. “They think you were.”

For a moment movement hung suspended. The babble of the work lane tumbled about them. The air-conditioning clicked on again, fanning their ankles. Outside the picture window at the end of the hall the world stretched away in a sepia wash.

Casey pushed. The stamper slammed hard enough to echo all the way to the picture window. “You couldn’t have told me some other time than when Hunsacker’s standing twenty feet away?”

Marva refused to flinch from the ferocity of Casey’s actions or the frustration in her eyes. “I couldn’t tell you before I found out. My theory is that Barb ain’t gettin’ any, and she’s jus’ pure jealous. She felt a need to gloat that you had it and lost it.”

Casey nodded blindly as she slid in another requisition. At any other time the accusation would have been funny. Casey couldn’t care less about what people thought of her, even less what they imagined her sexual escapades to be. Considering what her escapades did amount to, even a rumor would have been more fun than she was having.

But not now. Not with Hunsacker. Not when it would shatter any credibility she had.

Just the thought provoked a new disquiet, a sudden unexplained sense of unbalance. It was as if she’d just been brushed by the gauzy edge of an old dream, unable to recapture it whole. Only emotion remained, the nagging of familiarity.

Slam! What she felt now was uneasiness, and she couldn’t remember why. “Where’d she hear it?”

The requisition was not only stamped with a name, but chewed right through. Casey tossed it in the trash and tried again. Marva watched with carefully passive eyes. “All she said was that everybody knew it. If it’s true, it explains some of the…undercurrent about this.”

That was exactly why Casey believed her. It made such perfect sense after hearing the snide comments about jealousy and the like. It fit in with Tom’s stiff comments about a falling out between Casey and Hunsacker. He’d evidently been privy to the gossip as well.

Casey found herself watching Hunsacker as he laughed with Steve. All the time he was jotting something in that ubiquitous little notebook of his. The one Scanlon wanted so badly. The one that would hold all his secrets.

“Do you know that a lot of serial killers are obsessive-compulsive?” she asked, her rote actions once again stilled.

Marva’s attention had already been drawn in the same direction. “Is that a fact?”

Not turning away, Casey nodded. “It’s a fact. Scanlon says that a lot of them keep records of everything they’ve done.”

Marva’s head swung around, her eyes not so passive anymore. “You think he’s got an Angel of Death wish list in there?”

It was so visible, so easily accessible. Casey knew that if she could look in that book she’d find out just how careful Hunsacker was, so thorough that he would be able to wipe all trace of himself away from four murders. So thorough he would anticipate anything.

Suddenly an image popped free. Betty, concerned, anxious, trying so hard to communicate something that Casey hadn’t understood. Intent that Casey believe that Hunsacker wasn’t boffing Dr. Fernandez’s mistress anymore.

Because she thought he was boffing Casey.

Betty had heard the same rumor, except mutated just a little. Just enough to serve some purpose. Casey’s breath hissed out. Her hand froze atop the stamper where the requisition waited forgotten. Her gaze leveled on Hunsacker. Hunsacker who would never have left his accuser to chance, who would have used his most potent weapon against her. And suddenly Casey knew where all the rumors had been born.

She should have understood sooner. She should have remembered the minute the innuendos began to circulate. Growing isolation, confusion, misunderstandings, friends who suddenly turned away and never called again. Pain and shame and frustration, because she hadn’t understood then what had happened.

The memory was a revelation; a shock. It was like having once had an abscess you thought had long since been cured. Drawn, lanced, squeezed dry, only to realize it wasn’t gone at all. She’d just felt a sting, deep inside her, and looked down to see fresh pus, yellow and thick and rancid.

It must have been what Hunsacker smelled on her. Not the fresh humiliation, but the memory, the old decay that jackals like him preyed upon.

“Casey?”

Casey didn’t hear Marva. She was listening to old voices, long since locked tightly away in the past when she’d vowed to only look ahead as her cure. She was living a memory suddenly more vivid than even the horror she’d stumbled across.

Even as she watched him, it was as if Hunsacker heard those voices, too. He heard the pain in her head and instinctively turned to sniff it out. Casey didn’t move. She didn’t look away. She didn’t smile. She just met his gaze with the knowledge in her own.

She didn’t hear the group around him go still. She didn’t see them turn first to him, and then to her, a few settling their righteous anticipation around them like blue-black feathers.

Hunsacker’s hand stilled. He held the book between them like a taunt. His eyes shifted, deep inside where the feral fires lived. More than greeting, more even than challenge. He fed on the sight of her, knowing that she’d been isolated and still thinking she didn’t know why. He tasted her impotence and smiled.

Casey knew that he would come to her. All around her the work lane stilled like the streets of Dodge City as the sheriff stepped out to face the Clanton boys. Except that this time, only Casey and Marva knew that she was the sheriff.

She could have closed her eyes and known he was approaching. The air prickled around her with his gathering power, his sense of delicious omnipotence. And only Casey felt it. Only she saw the alien in his eyes.

He stopped right in front of her and made it a point to carefully pocket his book. “I’m glad I ran into you tonight,” he greeted her. “I wanted to let you know that there are no hard feelings.”

No hard feelings, Casey. I know you were just confused. Come on back to me and everything will be all right. I’ll take care of you, just like before. Just like before
.

“Really?” she asked, her own voices echoing his too easily, their poison spilling through her. Even so, she kept her expression neutral, her posture passive. If nothing else, she knew how to play the scene.

Hunsacker smiled and, nodded, his eyes terrifyingly compassionate. Public eyes, purposeful eyes so the world could see him as he wanted. “I know you only thought you were doing what was best.”

Casey went cold. I know you, she thought, daring him. I know what you are and what you’re doing.

“I appreciate that,” she said, her voice as concerned as his, her eyes as sincere. “I hope everything’s all right.”

I hope you die. Screaming, begging, stripped naked of all your masquerades so that everyone can see the slug that hides beneath that pretty shell.

He inclined his head and smiled, the picture of concession. “It might be a while. Once the press gets the bit between their teeth, they don’t let go.”

I know you. And I won’t turn away anymore.

They were simple words, an innocuous thought. Casey was stunned by their impact. So shattering it should have rocked her. So revealing Hunsacker should have recognized it. She’d been so afraid of him, scuttling around the shadows to conspire against him and shaking in his presence. She’d had the courage to find out about him, but she hadn’t had the courage to confront him. Suddenly that changed.

She recognized him, now, the bogeyman who had lived beneath her bed all these years. The purulence she had to drain once and for all.

I’m going to win, she thought. This time, I refuse to cower or crawl away. I refuse to succumb to innuendo and malice when I know I’m right. I will beat you, and you’ll know I’m doing it, because that’s the only way to keep the control I’ve finally managed to wrestle over my life. I will have the courage to fight you face-to-face.

Her chest caught fire. Her heart thundered in her ears. She stood close enough to this madman to feel the power shimmer from him and knew that he was her second chance. She’d just stopped running and turned to fight. And it wasn’t even Hunsacker she was fighting.

Almost as if he’d heard her thoughts, Hunsacker held out his hand and smiled. “Friends?”

Casey smiled back. She knew that everyone else would see relief. Hunsacker would see the challenge. He would see the impotence die in her and know that his adversary had just, changed faces.

She grasped his hand. “Friends.”

And she knew that he saw. His hand closed tight around hers. She answered. Her eyes never faltered, never strayed before the cold gleam in his. She never flinched before the shock of comprehension that joined them.

Beyond Hunsacker’s shoulder, there were murmurs of surprise, some of disdain. Casey ignored them. She gave Hunsacker his message and fought against betraying her triumph. She savored the tart thrill of terror that tasted so different on an aggressive tongue.

His own smile widened. The gauntlet had just been picked up. When Casey finally took her hand back and watched Hunsacker walk on out the door, she hugged her exhilaration to her like a warm afghan. A bright red afghan the color of fresh blood. She was finally going to walk out that door and never look back again.

“Why am I here?” Poppi asked seven hours later.

Casey grinned like a pirate. “Because I needed somebody to talk to. Somebody who’d understand.”

Leaning against the triage desk, Poppi lifted an eyebrow. “Saw
Magical Mystery Tour
again, huh?”

Casey swung her bag up over her shoulder and grimaced. “No. More like
Return of the Swamp Creature
. We’ll talk about it in the car.”

The evening staff was beginning to filter past. Most still cold-shouldered Casey, but she didn’t mind as much now. She was righteous, and they would know it. Janice walked out alone, her features drawn and silent, her gate uneven. That hurt. Ever since Janice had confronted Casey, she’d shut down, pulled into herself, accepting support from no one. She’d begun to stretch like a fraying rope, until Casey worried about her. Casey wanted to talk to her, to ask how she was doing. Janice still wouldn’t even look at her.

“Well, if it ain’t Lucy in the Sky,” Marva greeted them, sauntering up with her raincoat on. Rain was nowhere in the forecast, but Marva believed in positive thought. “What are you doin’ here?”

Poppi waved an offhand greeting. “Signing up farsighted investors. Interested?”

Marva slowed to a halt, her face a study in skepticism. “Is this another one of those Toss the Yuppie games?”

“Better.” There was no question that Poppi got involved with her projects. Her eyes lit like a cat’s on the way to a rabbit dinner. “Nirvana. The game of reincarnation.”

Marva set a hand on her hip. “Girl, you been sniffin’ that silver polish again, haven’t you? Why don’t you just stick to jewelry like you’re supposed to?”

Poppi wasn’t in the least intimidated. “Jewelry is my job. Games are my calling. A hundred dollars, Marva. Think about it. A janitor invested that much in Trivial Pursuit, and now Donald Trump calls him sir.”

Marva snorted. “What the heck? You’re just nuts enough to do it.”

“Come on,” Casey nudged Poppi, impatient to get going. “We can hold a partnership meeting later.”

Throwing off a shrug, Poppi tipped her head so she looked as though she were peering at Marva over glasses. “She calls me at eleven o’clock to say that she wants to walk to work tomorrow, would I drive her home. And they say I’m flighty.”