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“Humor us,” Michael replied.
He frowned and said, “Well, they conspired to defraud me out of the judgment I was owed for Dr. Ames’s mismanagement of my workplace injury, resulting in severe exacerbation of the complications and ensuring that I would never recover feeling or movement in my legs again.”
His voice took on a tone of righteous anger as he spoke, and his jaw jutted out pridefully.
“Could you elaborate on that?” Faith asked.
“Certainly,” he said, pleased at a chance to tell someone else how unfairly he had been treated. “I was injured in a workplace accident this past December. I worked for the Parks and Recreation Department for the City of Houston. On December eighth, I fell from a tree in Bayou Park and fractured three vertebrae in my lower back. I also suffered a dislocated hip and a dislocated vertebra in my neck. Marvin Prescott was among the first responders who took me to the hospital. I want to mention that he performed his job as a paramedic in an exemplary fashion.”
He delivered this judgment with the air of a king bestowing a favor on a commoner, and Faith wondered if he was usually this pompous or if he thought it helped his case to seem dignified.
“They took me to Houston Regional, which wasn’t the nearest hospital but the one with whom they were contracted. I mentioned that to my lawyer, as well as my congressman. I find it reprehensible that our healthcare in this country should be managed by a greedy private sector with little oversight.”
“What happened after you reached the hospital?” Faith asked.
He took a deep breath and continued, “I was seen by Dr. Barbara Ames. As soon as I met her, I was immediately struck by the utter lack of sensitivity and compassion she showed. I understand that doctors see many patients in the course of their work, but that does not give them the right to treat a patient like a simple number. I was in great pain and great fear, and she showed no concern at all for my well-being, either mental or physical.”
“So you don’t feel you were provided adequate care?”
“Of course not,” he replied. “That was the nature of my legal complaint against Dr. Ames.”
He spoke with an imperious tone, but behind his grandiosity, Faith could still detect a hint of fear. “Why do you feel you lost the case?”
“That lawyer,” he said. His face twisted up, and for the first time, Faith saw a sign of real hate in his eyes. “That snake Hucksley. He lied about me. He lied about my medical history and claimed that I was attempting to defraud the insurance company.”
“What lies did he tell?” Michael asked.
Instead of answering, Hunt lifted his pant legs up, revealing pale, severely atrophied calves. “Look at these! Do these look fake to you?”
The injury was real. Very real. Certainly Hunt wasn’t lifting any bodies himself. If he didn’t continue to flick his eyes right and left between the two agents and Faith couldn’t detect the fear in his eyes, she would dismiss him as a suspect, but he was clearly guilty of something.
That brought Faith back to the thought that more than one person was working together to murder these victims. Hunt had experience as a funeral home director working with these cemeteries. He could have been the mastermind and had help with the legwork.
She wasn’t ready to commit to that suspicion yet, but she decided to pursue that line of questioning. “Mr. Hunt, you ran the Bellaire Funeral Home and Mortuary for…” she made a show of checking her notes, “…nineteen years. Is that correct?”
“Twenty-three,” he said. “I worked there for twenty-five, and after two years, I was basically running the place. Jack officially handed me the keys after six years, but I ran the show for years before that.”
“What made you decide to leave the funeral home and work for the Parks and Recreation Department?”
His eyes took on a faraway look, and Faith couldn’t tell if it was forced or not. “One can only see so much death, Special Agent.”
I wonder,she thought.
“You take a lot of pride in your work,” Michael said.
Hunt drew himself up as much as he could. “I do. The measure of a man is the amount of work he can accomplish, and I take a great deal of pride in the work I was able to accomplish.”
“It must have hurt you terribly when your injury prevented you from working.”
“Of course it hurt me!” Hunt exclaimed. “Look at me! Sitting around in a trailer, living off of government funds. That’s no life.” He shook his head. “No life at all.”
“I can only imagine how angry you must have felt toward William Hucksley and Dr. Ames,” Faith said. “What I don’t understand is why you were angry at Marvin Prescott.”
His lips turned down in a frown. “I don’t know if I’m angry at Marvin Prescott,” he said. “But he testified against me as a witness. He claimed that the nature of my injury was such that it was untreatable, and the results I wanted weren’t achievable.”
“What results did you want?”
“What do you think?” he said, snarling at Michael. “I want to walk again! I want to stand on my own two feet!”
