A Man to Die For Page 10

  Evelyn had bucked him and now she was dead. Did Hunsacker consider it just punishment? A sign from God that the doctor was still boss? Was he just oft-center enough to consider this a punctuation to the threat he'd delivered to Casey?

  "I heard about Evelyn," he admitted with just the right amount of solicitude. "You knew her?"

  Casey nodded, never taking her eyes from his. A fresh chill crawled up her back. He was going to try to skate clear of Evelyn's threats. He was going to smile in private at her death, as if it were a delicious punch line to her ineffectual challenge. Casey's sense of justice, her control on her world, shifted a little. She battled the rage of impotence at his confidence. She shuddered at the hubris that would provoke that attitude.

  "We used to work together," was all Casey said. "We were supposed to meet last night, but she had to stay late to get that lady to OR,"

  He was watching her, calculating. Casey knew it. She could swear she saw the wheels spinning beneath those bright blue eyes, heard the whine of an accelerating engine. It stoked her anger even higher. She wanted him to at least comprehend his culpability. Instead, he seemed to be savoring it.

  The asshole. She wanted him to hurt even a little.

  Letting his own gaze slip casually away, Hunsacker shook his head. "I know," he admitted, his voice heavy. "That was a bad situation. I actually called her supervisor to complain this morning before I found out about her. Now, of course..."

  That brought Casey to a dead stop. "Complain? About what?" Evelyn had been the one so desperate and angry that she'd sobbed on the phone.

  Hunsacker met Casey's eyes without faltering, the regret and compassion in his gaze sitting oddly on him. "I almost lost Mrs. Baldwin because of her. If I hadn't had a hunch and just gone on out..."

  "But she called you," Casey insisted, straightening. "She said that she called you four times."

  He smiled now, a smile of friends who knew better. "She was always calling me, Casey. If you knew Evelyn you knew that. She couldn't make any kind of decision on her own. When she called last night, she didn't say how bad her bleeding really was. If she had, don't you think I would have been right out there? The patient's husband is a lawyer, Casey,"

  I don't know, Casey wanted to say, stunned to silence by his words.

  Yes, she did know Evelyn. Yes, Evelyn was the kind of nurse who couldn't take initiative. It had been one of the reasons she'd foundered so badly in the emergency room. But Casey knew that Evelyn wouldn't have made that kind of mistake. She wouldn't have failed to tell Hunsacker just what was going on. And once convinced, she wouldn't have been dissuaded.

  But if her notes had borne her out, Hunsacker never could have complained. The proof would have been Evelyn's.

  Casey didn't know what to do. Suddenly she didn't know who to believe. Hunsacker was right. If he'd known, wouldn't he have been out there? After all, hungry lawyers circled that area of West County like restless buzzards, waiting for disaster. If medicine was big business, malpractice suits were its unhealthy and thriving offspring.

  Hunsacker might not be the best doctor, but he wasn't stupid. He wouldn't have been idiot enough to fly in the face of that most revered of medical dictums: Cover Your Ass. Displeasing a patient was one thing. Displeasing her lawyer husband was quite another. If Hunsacker had thought there'd be any chance of that happening, he would have been out at that hospital at light speed.

  "It won't reflect on Evelyn," Hunsacker assured Casey, obviously mistaking the distress on her face. This time when he settled a hand on her arm, she didn't back away. "I talked to the people out at St. Isidore's. Since Mrs. Baldwin is doing fine today, we thought the less said the better. Don't you think so?"

  Casey tried. She really tried to consider this calmly. Could she have been wrong? Could she be reading something into Hunsacker that merely reflected her own frustrations? And yet, she felt the old rage bubbling in her, that feeling of an animal caught in a trap, unable to get out. She felt cornered by just the touch of his hand, and couldn't explain it.

  Evelyn was her friend. She wanted Evelyn to have been right. She wanted to at least savor the sharp edge of self-righteous indignation at the thought that Hunsacker's selfish need for control had indirectly cost Evelyn her life.

  Looking hard at Hunsacker, she tried to objectively interpret his expression. Still, she thought she caught the hint of satisfaction in his eyes, the smug enjoyment of the victor. And she decided that she didn't want to give him even that much.

  "I don't know," she finally admitted, facing him. "I don't know that we should let it go at all."

  * * *

  Poppi evidently wasn't going to give Casey the opportunity to turn down help. When Casey pulled into her driveway at midnight, the bright red MG waited for her. All the lights were still on in the house, too, which meant that Poppi wasn't the only one ready to offer condolences. Casey gave brief thought to turning around and trying for one of those Sauget clubs herself. In the end she killed the engine in her import and opened the door to the muggy night.

  The cats were once again lined up in the front yard, serenading like a class of second-grade Suzuki students, but Poppi didn't seem to notice.

  "I brought some pretty good shit," Poppi offered quietly from where she leaned against her car door, her long, flowered skirt shifting in the sultry wind. For a minute Casey could almost imagine it was 1975 again, and that Poppi had shown up to dissect dates and the latest concert down at the River Festival.

  "No, thanks," Casey waved her off. "That dims the outrage, and I want mine nice and shiny tonight. Besides," she added with a nod to the lights, "the convent frowns on that kind of thing. Don't step on any of the cats. I don't think they're here to dance."

  Without further greeting the two walked back along the driveway to the kitchen door. The front door was for guests, for Girl Scouts selling cookies and the Jehovah's Witnesses selling salvation. The only time Casey walked in or out the front door was to sit in the glider on the wide wooden porch. If she could get past her mother, tonight would be one of those nights.

  "Oh, Catherine," her mother greeted her even before the back door was fully opened. The little woman had been sitting at the kitchen table sipping at coffee and picking at her fingernails. The bandanna was firmly in place, even with her robe and slippers on. "Come sit down. Come talk."

  Trapped again, pulled between her mother's suffocating concern and Hunsacker's smooth remonstrances, Casey fought down the almost physical urge to yank herself away.

  "I've been praying," Helen said with a quick little nod of her head, as if this would settle it all. "Praying for poor Evelyn's soul in purgatory. But the virgin promises me that Evelyn will be in heaven soon, don't you worry. With your father."

  Evelyn doesn't want to be with my father, Casey thought, still not answering, walking to the refrigerator instead and pulling out two beers. She wants to be with her husband. Besides, there wasn't any guarantee that Casey's father was in heaven. Flipping a can to Poppi, Casey leaned back against the cool, sterile white of the wall.

  "I know, Mom," she said, desperate to be away from those pleading eyes. "I'm sure your prayers helped."

  Helen smiled, her posture still anxious, like a small dog seeking to please. Casey didn't know what else to say. Rage and frustration were not emotions you brought into Helen McDonough's house, but that was all she could manage right now.

  She wanted so badly to tell Poppi about her confrontation with Hunsacker. She desperately wished for the words that could convey the sense of menace Hunsacker had projected, the stale taste of avariciousness he left behind. She wanted Poppi to be able to see the unseen.

  "It was Hunsacker's fault," was all she could end up saying as she took a sip of beer. "Evelyn only went to Sauget because she had to stay late to stabilize one of Hunsacker's mistakes. It's his fault she's dead."

  Poppi tilted her head just a little, her voice carefully passive. "She might have wanted to go there anyway."

  "He got he
r so worked up she couldn't go home, and it was too late by the time she got out to go anyplace close. That son of a bitch killed her as sure as if he pulled the gun himself."

  "It was a senseless crime," Poppi countered. "She was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Do you really think blaming Hunsacker for Ev's bad sense of direction is going to help?"

  Casey glared at her friend, wishing she could explain away the guilt and frustration and fear Evelyn's death left behind. Wishing Hunsacker didn't unnerve her so much that she felt it necessary to blame him for what amounted to no more than a random tragedy.

  Casey was an emergency-room nurse. She knew all about random tragedies. She was the world's leading expert, after caring for tornado victims and fire victims and drive-by shooting victims. Shit happens, and she saw it every day.

  But for some reason, this felt different. This act of random violence stuck in her craw when she'd long since learned to shrug all the others off. She wanted retribution for it, balance. And she had nobody but Hunsacker available to make payment.

  "I saw him tonight, Poppi. And I'll tell you something. I had the most unnerving feeling that he was actually glad Ev was dead. Like she was paying some kind of cosmic-price for bucking him. Like he still won in the end, and that was all that mattered."

  "Casey—"

  "There has to be something I can do, damn it. Some way to prove that Ev was right."

  Casey didn't even hear her mother get to her feet. She didn't hear the sly whisper of slippers on the Formica floor or see her mother's quick scuttle. Suddenly there was another hand on her arm, the fingers urgent and impassioned. Looking up, Casey realized that she'd walked right into a sermon.

  "When your father died," Helen said, her voice breathy and trembling, "what did I say?"

  Casey knew her role by heart. It wouldn't do any good to try and avoid it. "Why."

  Helen nodded. "I said why, why my dear husband, why Mick McDonough, the finest man who walked the earth. I demanded answers. But I couldn't find them, could I?"

  "No, Mom. You couldn't." For a Catholic, her mother would have made a great revival tent preacher. Instead of fire and brimstone, Helen's favorite topic was death. How to ignore it, how to deny it, how to wash away the guilt of it in fantasy and ritual so it couldn't chase you in the night. Helen felt strongly about death.

  Another nod, another point made. "And how did I finally find peace?"

  Peace? Casey wanted to demand. You call this peace, creeping around this mausoleum like an uncomfortable ghost, spending the last twenty years beating your breast and muttering mea culpas?

  "How?" Helen insisted, digging her fingers in for emphasis.

  "You offered your pain to God," she answered, the rote more ingrained than the Baltimore Catechism. "You surrendered to Him and let Him make your decisions for you." You became the ultimate passive-aggressive.

  Helen usually smiled at this point. Tonight that must have seemed frivolous. "And for the first time in my life, I was content. I surrendered myself to God and let Him take charge. It's the only way we can manage, Catherine. God had a plan for Evelyn. He had a reason for taking her home, just as He did your father. And only He knows what that was. Our asking is presumptuous. We must simply have faith. Faith and submission. Only then will we have peace in our hearts."

  Evidently, that was what Helen had been waiting up to say, because at the end of her speech, she simply nodded one final time and turned away for bed. She pushed open the swinging door just in time to hear a particularly plaintive cry from the direction of her room.

  "Listen to my pussy sing," she said, smiling. "How Our Lord must love her music."

  Casey didn't acknowledge the choking noises behind her as Helen walked on through into the dining room.

  "I don't think it's God she's trying to raise," Poppi finally managed.

  * * *

  But Casey didn't leave Evelyn to God. Casey hadn't left anything to God since she'd been eight. Three nights later at Evelyn's wake, Casey made it a point to approach some of the postpartum nurse's co-workers from Izzy's.

  She had to know. Once and for all, she needed proof that Evelyn hadn't been at fault that night, that Hunsacker had fabricated his story and shirked his own guilt. She needed to lay Evelyn to rest in her own way.

  "I hear it was an AK47," Betty Fernandez was saying to Marianne Wade with a sad shake of the head. "Damn, when is somebody going to do something about the weapons out on the street?"

  Casey sidled up and exchanged greetings. "Do they have anything else?" she asked.

  Betty and Marianne both shook their heads, one tall and thin, the other almost as round as Evelyn.

  "I was the one who invited her over to Sauget," Betty admitted, tears glittering in her soft gray eyes. "I waited and waited... I just figured she decided not to come. I should have figured she'd get lost."

  It had obviously been said before. Marianne settled a plump hand on Betty's arm and Betty shook her head.

  "She was a big girl," Casey said, understanding. "You can't be responsible for her, Betty."

  It wouldn't really help; the three of them nodded anyway.

  "I was talking to her that night," Casey offered, praying she didn't betray her anxiety. "Before you guys left. She said she still had to send that patient of Hunsacker's to OR."

  "Oh, that." Betty's expression was indecipherable. "God, to have a night like that be your last."

  Casey came close to holding her breath. "Did you hear any of her phone calls to him?"

  Betty glanced over at the casket, as if afraid she'd be overheard. "What do you mean?"

  Casey dipped her own eyes, doing her best to still her suddenly nervous hands. "I saw Hunsacker the day after. He almost reported Evelyn for not telling him how bad Mrs. Baldwin was."

  She was answered with stricken silence. Betty looked at Marianne who took her own look over at the casket where Evelyn's husband stood at lone attention.

  "No," Betty admitted, frustrated. "I know she called him. She was so worried, and she couldn't get him to answer or listen to her... at least, that's what she said. I kept saying that wasn't like Dr. Hunsacker, but Evelyn seemed so upset."

  "And you guys left after Mrs. Baldwin went to surgery?"

  Betty shook her head. "We left after she got out. Ev wanted to make sure she was all right."

  Casey's hands went still. Her heart stumbled. "After she was out? Did Ev talk to Hunsacker again?"

  Both women consulted. It was Betty who shrugged a qualified yes.

  "Not around us. I think she might have run into him down by the parking lot. I heard one of the other nurses say later that she heard the two of them really having it out. But I don't know what they said."

  Casey could just imagine. It didn't take much to resurrect that whisper, that deadly glare that accompanied his best threats. She wondered whether he'd warned her against reporting him, whether he'd told her that he could make life miserable for her.

  She wondered what Evelyn would have said back. Evelyn who cared more passionately for her patients than any other nurse Casey knew. Evelyn who would offer up her free time, her boundless compassion, her own money, if necessary.

  If the argument had been anything like Casey's, Evelyn would have been shaking when she got into her car. She would have been upset and distracted. She wouldn't have been paying attention as she drove off the lot or onto the highway until she found herself in unfamiliar streets surrounded by boarded-up buildings.

  And Hunsacker had shown up the next day smiling.

  "Well," Marianne allowed in a soft voice, "at least Ron has some finality. He can bury her and get on with his life. Buddy's still waiting."

  Casey's head snapped up. "Buddy?"

  Marianne nodded, her expression folded into concern. "Not a word from Wanda. The police still say she's run off, but I don't know. I think something happened to her."

  Casey couldn't quite get a breath. Wanda. God, oh, God, she'd forgotten.

  As quickly as the sus
picion rose, she shoved it away. It was too ridiculous, too outlandish. But if Wanda hadn't just disappeared, would she have paid a cosmic price for arguing with Hunsacker, too?

  "I heard she was having trouble with Hunsacker, too,"

  Casey ventured gently, wondering why she asked. Wondering what she wanted to hear.

  "God, yes," Marianne said. "If it hadn't been for the fact that I don't think she'd just leave Buddy like that, I would have said she quit because of Hunsacker."

  "Why?"

  She sighed. "Because of the fight they had the last day she worked."

  Casey could do no more than wait. She didn't want to find a pattern. She didn't want to hear what she already knew was coming.

  "I wouldn't have known about it except that I wandered into the lounge at the wrong time. He was standing really close to her, his voice so low I could hardly hear it. But Wanda was as red as a beet, and told him he could... well, it was anatomically improbable. She was furious, but she never said anything else about it. She just left."

  Casey knew. And she didn't have to imagine what Hunsacker had said. She'd imagined it already. She'd heard it.

  It was absurd. It was nothing more than a terrible coincidence. Anything more would be intolerable.

  Still, she had to know. No matter what she wanted to do, she was going to end up picking at this like a sore, needing to prove that Hunsacker wasn't the golden boy everybody thought he was. He was a control freak, a smooth, manipulative, amoral narcissist who couldn't abide not having his way. At best, he was gloating over the impotence of women who had challenged him, and he'd damn well do it again to Casey. At worst... Casey couldn't even think the worst. She wouldn't. She'd just find out a little more in order to clip his wings a little and get her own control back.

  Because that, she realized, was her Achilles' heel. She couldn't offer control to anyone else, not God, not Hunsacker, not anybody. It had been why she'd ended up with Ed, and why she'd consigned herself after that to living alone. It was why she had to work ER, because nurses had the most independence there, and why she chafed so badly beneath the weight of frivolous administration and arbitrary physicians.