Free A Man to Die for by Eileen Dreyer Page A

“Oh, no,” he finally said with another of those sudden smiles. “I’ve been forced to schedule her for a section. Then I have to go see that lady in at Izzy’s. I guess it’s going to be a busy evening for me, too.”
    Casey just shook her head and walked past. “I told you you shouldn’t have said that word.”
    The rest of the code team was filtering out. Casey carried her paperwork to join them.
    “I’ll tell you something,” Steve was saying to no one in particular as he sat down to fill in the medical examiner’s information. “The cops have the right idea. You want results, you gotta bite down on the barrel. Anything else is just second best.”
    “I heard you were offering an in-service on effective suicide techniques,” Marva offered from where she finished gathering personal effects. “Speaking of which, McDonough, we’ll discuss that crack about my chest later.”
    Casey didn’t need to answer.
    “It’d sure save us some time,” Steve groused. “I mean, that was a forty-five he used. Shit, he should have taken off his head and his next-door neighbor’s head with that thing.”
    “Bite it, huh?” Janice asked dryly.
    Steve nodded. “In far enough to get a good grip on it with your teeth. Like a real cold hot dog.”
    “Uh huh.” She nodded. “Don’t let me forget to write that down someplace so I won’t screw up and disappoint you when my time comes.”
    Hunsacker hadn’t moved, arms crossed, head tilted in consideration, eyes watchful. Casey dropped her charts next to Steve and pulled up a chair, still wishing she could say something about what she’d just seen, and then wondering just what it was she had seen.
    “Now if I’d done it,” Steve kept on, “I wouldn’t have wasted my time with a forty-five. A thirty-eight gets the job done without all that mess, and no chance of taking out the bus driver down the street. Weapon of choice, ya know?”
    “Well,” Casey allowed, bent to her work in an effort to avoid Hunsacker’s gaze. “You should know.”
    Steve lifted a cherubic face her way. “Did I tell you I got that Luger? The Krieghoff?”
    “Oh, Steve,” Casey teased. “Now you can die a happy boy.”
    “You just don’t appreciate fine weaponry.” He scowled.
    “Me?” she retorted, hand to chest. “How can you say that? Guns are getting really close to motorcycles as top contributors for job security around here.”
    “A Krieghoff Luger?”
    Casey started. Hunsacker was right behind her. Steve turned to him, lighting up like a kid talking about trains.
    “An early thirty-six,” he boasted. “Dated with plastic grips. I got it for under four thousand.”
    Hunsacker matched his expression delight for delight. “You really mean it. Do you collect extensively?”
    “Only enough to supply the IRA into the twenty-first century,” Marva offered as she walked by with an armload of equipment.
    Hunsacker and Steve all but shivered with discovery. “I’m more of a modern aficionado than antiques,” Hunsacker admitted. “I’m fascinated by the modern police and military firepower.”
    For a few moments Casey wondered whether Hunsacker was feeding Steve a line, but his jargon was too accurate. He and Steve tossed around ballistics figures and prices like arms merchants.
    “If he wore yours,” Janice said suddenly in her other ear, “whose did you wear?”
    Startled, Casey laughed. Neither Steve nor Hunsacker had heard. “I wore mine, too,” she admitted. “I tell you, I was to silk panties what Imelda Marcos was to high heels.”
    Arms ladened with trays to be sterilized, Janice leaned against the wall and grinned, her expression still betraying astonishment. “Well, just think, though. Now they’re all yours. You could just about entertain the entire medical staff and not be seen in the same outfit twice.”
    “Are you kidding?” Casey demanded. “When we split, I got the silver. He got the underwear. I’m back to cotton briefs and socks.”
    Janice