Better Off Dead (24 page)

"Look, I saw the way he was staring at us
when I came over to that house," Luke protested. "He was sitting in
his wheelchair at the far end of the hall when you kissed me. And
he didn't look like he cared a bit."

"Burly knows how to handle me," I explained,
pissed I had not noticed Burly behind us when I'd pulled that
kissing stunt in front of Helen's mother. "He knows not to hem me
in."

"If you were mine, I'd never let anyone else
get inside your head. You'd belong to me—and only me—and you would
want it that way."

"Well, then, we have a difference of opinion
right there," I said. "Because I don't belong to anyone. Not even
to myself." I had no idea what I'd meant by that last remark, but
it sounded good.

Luke thought so, too. He responded by
grabbing me and kissing me hard on the mouth, trying to force his
pure intentions on mine—with the use of good tongue work,
apparently.

I couldn't help myself. The kid could kiss.
I licked the icing from the corners of his mouth and that led to
one thing, and then to another. Before I knew it, I was right in
the middle of trying to kid myself that a little making out never
hurt anyone when the unmistakable sound of a window being raised
interrupted us.

"Hey! You kids can't do that in my bushes,"
an indignant voice called out.

I peered up and saw a black guy hanging out
a second-story window. He had a bottle of cleaning fluid in one
hand and was waving it at us like a club.

"Go do that nonsense in your dorm rooms," he
ordered us, his face outraged: the portrait of a janitor on the
warpath. "You trampled my pansies and don't you know the whole
building can see you in there? You kids today got no shame. No
sense of decorum."

The guy had a point: I realized we were on
display for the entire second floor; the opening in the bushes
formed a perfect stage for our shenanigans, at least for anyone
sitting in the balcony area.

"Go," I said to Luke. "We'll solve this
another day. Right now, I need your help. I need you to give
Brookhouse a cover story to explain why I'm not interviewing the
drug study subjects tonight."

"Only if you agree to meet me later," he
insisted.

"Luke, that's blackmail." My voice was
deadly, but one look at his face and I knew he would not budge.
"Okay," I finally agreed. "Meet me at my apartment later
tonight."

"What time?" he asked as he wrote down my
address on his open palm with a ballpoint pen. His smile was
spectacular—and triumphant.

"Late. Midnight." I didn't want to say more.
"I have some things I need to do first."

"Midnight?" He sounded hopeful. Too
hopeful.

"Only to talk," I said sternly, not sure who
I was kidding more—me or him. "Only to talk."

"Do I have to come down and chase you away
with my broom?" the janitor yelled at us from above.

Luke and I started to laugh.

"You'd better go," I said. "More classes
start on the half hour." I told him what I needed for him to tell
Brookhouse. All he had to do was say I had called him in the middle
of the night on the way to Florida with my boyfriend and asked him
to tell Brookhouse I wouldn't be back. I'd call later with an
address where he could send my paycheck, I added, just to make the
story sound more believable. Just in case.

"A boyfriend in Florida? That's easy," Luke
said. "It's what you told me in the first place."

"I did?" The kid remembered a hell of a lot
more about me than I did about him. But then, I was an ancient old
crone of thirty-six and my memory was clearly failing me. "If
Brookhouse knows who I am," I explained, "you could be in danger.
So don't ever let on that you know anything else about me but the
cover story."

"What else am I going to learn about you?"
he asked hopefully.

"Don't get cocky on me," I warned him. "I
can always change my mind."

"What if you can't get away?" He looked
slightly panicked. "What are you doing until then?"

"I'll be there," I promised. "But late.
Midnight, okay?"

He kissed me again, then poked his head out
of the bushes and began walking toward the building. The janitor
had reached the front steps and was pretending to shake out a mop.
He had clearly seen Luke do his gopher act. He watched closely as
Luke bounded up the steps like a colt who's approaching the
starting gate of his first Preakness.

That janitor was no fool. He lingered on the
steps, pretending to mop them, eyeing the bushes for what seemed
like a good ten minutes before he finally gave up and went inside,
leaving the coast clear for me to escape.

I had just enough time to stop by the
anthropology department for a word with the ubiquitous Candle
Goodnight, feminist professor. If she'd given me up and tattled on
me to Lyman Carroll, I wanted to know it.

I waited outside her department building for
a while without luck. Where the hell was she? I could have sworn
she taught her sole afternoon class at this time.

I finally wandered inside, made my way
through musty halls to a sleepy-looking office and was told she had
the day off.

Clearly, I should have gone into
academia.

I trudged back to my car, drove to her
depressing brick house and knocked. No one answered the door.

I guess it was possible she had a life. Just
because I didn't have a life outside of work didn't mean the whole
world was as equally pathetic. Maybe she was having an early dinner
out, doing her laundry, enjoying an afternoon delight with Lyman
Carroll. Maybe she was even getting her nails done.

But her house looked so quiet and dark. No
lights on inside. At all. Outside, the porch light glowed, as if
someone had forgotten to turn it off that morning.

I had a very bad feeling about that porch
light.

I should have gone back to Helen's, but that
would have meant facing Burly and, even though I had no intention
of sleeping with Luke, I still felt guilty about agreeing to meet
him alone. Plus I would have had to face Bobby D., who would have
instantly smelled something far worse on me: rebellion.

I was a coward and called instead. I learned
that Helen was deep in conversation with a well-dressed lawyer not
only willing, but anxious, to take on her civil countersuit. It
seems this lawyer had a daughter in college at Duke and was not
keen on her taking any psychology classes as long as David
Brookhouse walked the campus. Plus, like many Durham lawyers, he
had stopped by the rape trial and been outraged by what
Brookhouse's Atlanta lawyer had gotten away with. He was genuinely
anxious to repair a miscarriage of justice. It sounded good to
me.

I also learned that Burly had not yet met
with success in tracking down the biker club that had attempted to
terrify us. The pierced heart logo may not have been the club's
symbol after all, he explained, but Weasel was looking into it. He
added that Weasel's current relationship was apparently going well:
his new girlfriend had invited him to scrape the rust off her
trailer and help her paint it. She had even offered to let Weasel
pick the color. That's a sure sign of domestic bliss in some
circles. As an aside, I learned that Hugo was still on the front
porch, shotgun across his lap, and was thought to have slept there
all night. I could only surmise he enjoyed watching his handiwork
in the front yard grow—or was fulfilling some manly vow of his own
to serve and protect Helen.

All this information I gleaned from Burly. I
declined to talk to Bobby D. "I've got to go now," I hedged. "Some
people have agreed to talk to me about Brookhouse. Some of his
colleagues. I'll see you later on."

"Sure," Burly said. "Do you want us to save
you some dinner?" That was his roundabout way of asking when I
would be home.

"No," I said, feeling more than vaguely
guilty. "I'll get something to eat on my own. I won't be back until
really late."

Not wanting to contemplate the hidden
meaning of that particular statement, I hung up quickly and checked
my watch. Right about now, the drug trial volunteers would be
showing up for their Monday evening appointments. I wondered who
had been drafted to interview them. Would Brookhouse do it himself
or drag Lyman Carroll back into the process?

From what I could tell, most of the drug
trial volunteers were showing up for their interviews, staying
about twenty minutes each before exiting with looks of relief. No
one looked all that damn happy, I noted, and wondered if this was
because they felt the new demand to report twice a week from now on
was a real pain in the ass—or if this new happy drug was turning
out to be not so happy after all.

I had opted to hide behind a large magnolia
tree instead of in the bushes. After all, you can't go back to
Paris again. Besides, it was getting dark early these days.
November nights in Carolina are mean and stingy. They always seem
to leap on you without warning—a far cry from the full
harvest-mooned kindness of October. Worse, the temperature had
dropped dramatically with the arrival of twilight, a reminder of
the winter to come. I was as cold as shit, despite my jacket.

By the time eight o'clock rolled around,
eighteen volunteers had reported for their interviews. Not a bad
turnout. There were twelve more to go, unfortunately, and the
warmth of my car was clear across campus. I could not afford for my
Porsche to be spotted near the department, too many people had seen
it. It was blocks away, parked near the hospital and Duke Gardens.
In prime stalking territory, in fact, but that could not be helped.
I was well-armed, just in case.

The building had pretty much emptied out by
six o'clock, when the last of the clock-punching academic and
office staff straggled out, anxious to get home and hunker down
against the sudden cold. For the next few hours, more dedicated
professors and grad students left sporadically. Lyman Carroll
hurried out, alone, just before seven, his round face wearing the
slightly perplexed look that gave him such a benign air. Head down,
he had not noticed me lurking behind the magnolia, but by then I
was frozen stiff as a board so perhaps he thought I was part of the
trunk. He seemed preoccupied, in a hurry and clearly worried.

So who was staying late to get the
interviewing done? Brookhouse? An unlucky grad student? From past
experience I knew a few obsessive graduate students would remain
hard at work until close to eleven o'clock, when the building was
officially locked. Whoever it was needed to leave—because I needed
to break into the drug study files.

I got my answer about nine o'clock when,
after a lull of more than half an hour without any new drug trial
volunteers showing up, David Brookhouse emerged into the night air
dressed in a designer trench coat. He surprised me by stopping to
light a cigarette on the front steps of the building. I had not
realized he indulged in anything stronger than a pipe. He stood on
the top steps, illuminated by the glare of a recently installed
security light, looking like an actor loath to leave the spotlight.
He stared up at the beam as if it were the Holy Grail, dragging in
lungful’s of smoke, contemplating some unknown thought.

I didn't get it. Brookhouse looked like such
a nice guy. He was handsome, accomplished and, apparently,
completely empty inside. What did he really see when he looked in
the mirror? Who was it that stared back at him and compelled him to
plow through coeds while, possibly, committing far worse crimes
against women? What secrets was that man carrying around in his
soul? And what made him think he could get away with it
forever?

Maybe because he was.

After another minute or so, he took one last
drag, then ground the cigarette with a decisive twist of his foot.
He danced lightly down the steps, happier than Fred Astaire leading
into the grand finale. No inner worries for this man. Whatever his
colleague Lyman Carroll was carrying around in his soul did not
plague David Brookhouse. He was whistling as he passed by my hiding
spot. As he reached the tree, I imagined that the cold night air
grew even colder, that some sort of vacuum from inside him tugged
at my guts, sucking me toward him. I wanted to say a prayer. Images
of demons from long-forgotten Sunday school texts rose in my mind.
But they never look like that in real life, do they? No horns, no
hooves, no snouts, no fire-filled eyes. Instead, they always look
just like you and me.

Why the hell was Brookhouse so happy?
Whatever professional facade he maintained was slowly crumbling
around him, that was easy enough for any observer to see. His
colleagues were warning him about his actions. He still had the
past rape trial hanging over his head. He'd never get tenure at
Duke, not with that stigma surrounding him. Yet here he was,
perpetuating the issue with his mean-spirited civil suit against
Helen. On a more practical level, I had supposedly fled to Florida
with my boyfriend, leaving him with the scut work.

So why the hell was he so happy?

He disappeared down the brick walkway, the
picture of academic respectability, a successful professor heading
for a well-deserved armchair and maybe a little nighttime reading
with a snifter of brandy by his side. I waited until he had turned
the corner, then took off for my apartment. The coast was clear. It
was time to put Plan B into action.

Lights were on in some of the other
apartments of my building, and I was in no mood to answer questions
about where I had been for the past few weeks. I crept quietly into
my place and retrieved what I needed. First up was a warmer outfit.
I unearthed my thermal underwear and put it on beneath my black
jeans and black tee-shirt. We're talking functional, not stylish.
Long underwear is not sexy, it never has been, I am convinced, not
even in pioneer times. For one thing, it always looks slightly
dingy, even when it is new. For another, those little thermal
pockets scream retained sweat. But I wasn't heading out on a date.
I was heading out to break the law.