Better Off Dead (25 page)

I had recently started storing my burglar
tools in a metal chest hidden beneath the floorboard in my closet,
next to my Colt Python. Call me paranoid. I've had my place tossed
enough times to have long since reconciled what I was willing to
lose with that which could not easily be replaced. I've also
learned the hard way not to carry my gun and tools on me unless
absolutely necessary. My conspicuously red Porsche invites traffic
stops by Durham's finest. My gun is illegal. Hell, I'm illegal.
Best not to take chances.

Tonight I needed all the help I could get. I
checked the Colt to make sure it was loaded, put it in the outer
pocket of my knapsack, then located everything else I would need.
Remembering the glass on the office doors, I added a roll of
masking tape at the last minute.

Just before eleven, I was back on watch
behind my magnolia tree, waiting for the final grad students to be
shooed home. They left right on schedule, pale figures hunched
against the cold, heads down, anxious for a sliver of real life
before their academic grind began again in the morning. What
happens to people like that when they finally graduate? I wondered.
Do they disappear into libraries across America? Or finally get
suntans and blend in with the rest of us?

At last it was showtime.

I was contemplating scooting inside the
front door before anyone could lock it when the janitor I had seen
earlier in the afternoon poked his head out into the night. He
looked pretty happy, as he should. By my calculations, he was
earning time and half by now. Like Brookhouse, he emerged to stand
on the front steps and enjoy a cigarette. He took his time about
it, too, unbothered by the cold or the dark. When he was done, he
carefully stubbed out the butt, then pocketed it. He even leaned
over to retrieve the butt that Brookhouse had left behind. The
front steps once again immaculate, the man disappeared back inside
the front door. Stopping, I was sure, to bolt it.

I'd have to find another way in.

It was a race against routine. I ducked into
the shadows along the side of the building and reached a side door
just as it slammed shut. I could hear the click-click of bolts
being drawn and tested. Double damn. I scurried around the building
to the other side, where it was dark and masked from the view of
passersby. A back entrance was hidden by a row of Dumpsters. This
time I beat the old coot to it, I was sure of it. But would I have
time to get inside before he locked the safety bolts? I scrambled
down a few concrete steps onto a dark entrance well. Looking around
at the shadows surrounding me, I got to work. I knew these doors
led into the basement hallway.

The basement where the hotline caller had
been raped.

It was locked, of course, with a half-assed
spring lock, but it would only take me a minute or two to slip it.
I had my jamb card ready in my back pocket, and worked the metal
carefully between the double doors until the lock sprang back. I
was inside and heading for the shelter of a lab doorway when I
heard the clang of the stairwell door. Damn. For an old man, he was
fast.

A pair of soft drink machines had been
placed in a spare alcove. I had just enough time to squeeze behind
one of them, concealed by the dark, when the janitor came whistling
by. This was one man who enjoyed his job. He pulled a heavy ring of
keys from a drooping back pocket and double-locked the back door,
testing it twice to make sure the deadbolts held. They held all
right. Fort Knox had nothing on that set of doors.

It occurred to me that, if this was how all
the doors locked, I had no way to get back outside again. God,
spending the night in a psych lab basement with a bunch of
scurrying mice was not my idea of fun.

I held my breath as the janitor passed me,
but he seemed fixated on his work ahead. More doors to lock, no
doubt. More ways to trap me inside.

The minute he headed back upstairs, I
hightailed it out of my hiding spot and followed. He had at least
two or three more exits to secure, I was sure. And I needed to use
that time to get my ass to the second floor where the
psychopathology department offices were located. The old man's
footsteps echoed on the steps above me as I waited, holding the
stairwell door open, mindful of the noise it could make. As soon as
I heard him push through the doors to the first floor, I hauled my
ass up the stairs as fast as possible.

The second floor was as dark as a mausoleum.
And, like all college buildings, it smelled faintly of dust. Like a
tomb. Combine that with all the skeletons rattling around in the
closets around here and, well, you had a real uplifting theme
going. It was creepy. Very creepy. It was also impossible not to
think about the nut jobs Brookhouse discussed in his class all
day—the sociopaths, the sexual deviants, the men who fantasized
about sex with sheep or liked to spy on their sisters. Their ghosts
seemed to linger in the hallways, watching. This was where they
lived in perpetuity, I realized. This was where their fame
flourished.

I shook it off and headed down the hallway
toward the main offices. The locked doors were no match for my
skills. I was inside and at the receptionist's desk within minutes.
She was Brookhouse's designated lackey, the secretary who always
got stuck doing favors for him without any additional pay, I was
sure. It took a good ten minutes to rifle through her desk drawers.
I found the usual paperwork, stamps and office supplies, a box of
incontinence pads—what was she, forty-five at most? Yikes, was this
what the future held for me?—plus a bottle of gin, maybe that was
the source of her bladder problem, and, bingo, a fuzzy photograph
of the secretary posing with David Brookhouse at some Christmas
party. Brookhouse was wearing a red-and-white Santa hat that
drooped over his right eye. I'm sure it had seemed like a good idea
at the time. The photo looked worn and well-caressed. God, how
pathetic. I hated these glimpses into people's souls. No wonder she
did so many favors for him. I pocketed the photo and kept going. No
phone number lists for anyone. Not even the department faculty. And
especially not the drug study volunteers.

I'd have to break into his office.

If I'd paid more attention to the janitor's
routine, I'd at least have had a decent idea of where he cleaned at
night. But, in the grand tradition of the human caste system, I had
never even noticed him before that day. He could be sneaking up on
me at any moment. I didn't like that feeling at all.

Brookhouse had an office at the far end of
the second-floor hallway. I held my breath and moved slowly toward
it, pausing every few steps to listen. A faint clanging echoed up
from the first floor. A metal pail, perhaps? Was he mopping the
foyer? That would give me a little more time upstairs.

Dang. Brookhouse had no easy spring lock on
his office door. The bastard had a deadbolt in place. It's awful
how untrusting some people are. I ended up having to tape the glass
on his door window and tap out a hole big enough to put my hand
through. It broke with a crack of my flashlight handle but the
shards held, clinging to the adhesive. I peeled away an opening and
carefully worked a hand inside. If the bolt required a key on both
sides, I was sunk. But no, it clicked open with a twist of my
wrist.

I was inside.

Of course, I still had the metal-encased
file cabinet to conquer. And this was not something that could be
done in the dark.

I propped my flashlight up on a pile of
books and aimed it at the file cabinet. Light patterns danced
across the wall behind the metal case, and the fronds of the
office's oversized plant swayed every time I brushed past it,
casting a shadow that looked like a giant hand quivering toward me.
Nothing like an overactive imagination to calm the mind.

God, but I hated paranoid people. Brookhouse
had some nerve. I'd have to pry the heavy metal bands encircling
the file cabinet apart enough to get the drawer open before I even
thought about picking the drawer lock. Fortunately, I had watched
Brookhouse retrieve the drug trial information pretty closely and I
at least knew that I was aiming for the middle drawer. I took a
crowbar from my knapsack and jimmied it in place, between the metal
band and the lower drawer. I knew the thin walls of the file
cabinet would buckle first, and I did not want to inadvertently jam
the second drawer shut. I balanced the crowbar, lifted my right leg
up, placed my foot against the rod and started to push as hard as I
could, my back pressed against a wall for leverage. After a moment,
the pressure started to buckle the lower half of the file cabinet,
bending it inward and changing the angle of the entire case enough
to give me a few inches' clearance between the middle drawer and
the heavy metal bands. I positioned the crowbar a little bit higher
and repeated my technique. This time, the bottom of the middle
drawer crumpled in a few inches. I hoped to god it would still
open. I switched sides and applied pressure to the other metal
band. By then, the file cabinet looked like it had been hit by a
truck. But I had a good chance at prying the middle drawer open at
least six or seven inches. It might be enough to pull out the files
I needed.

The drawer lock was easy to pick. Soon, I
had my hand inside. I was able to reach back about halfway before
my arm got stuck in the narrow opening. Damn, I thought, not quite
far enough—until I realized I could simply empty the front of the
drawer first, then slide the back hanging files forward to where I
could reach them. I did this as quickly as possible, using a ruler
from his desk to fish the heavy back files forward. At last I had
what I needed and wrestled the folder out of the narrow
opening.

Oh, yeah, this was it: pay dirt. Names and
phone numbers of drug trial volunteers results of interviews,
correspondence between Brookhouse and the drug company. It was all
there. Now I could start running a cross-match against the women
who were attacked and see if they could all be connected somehow,
though I knew it would not be that easy.

I stuffed the folder in my knapsack,
repacked my tools and headed out the shattered office door. There
would be no covering of my tracks tonight. I'd declared open war.
But at least I was wearing gloves. And I didn't think the Durham PD
would give a probable rapist much support in tracking down whoever
had burgled his office. Except for the reaming I'd get from Bobby
D., I'd be okay. And I would simply remind Bobby that it had been
his idea, not mine, to put on the pressure. The fact that I had
gotten away with it would make all the difference.

Except that I didn't get away with it. At
all.

As I headed out the door, knapsack on my
back, I nearly collided with the janitor. I was surprised. He
wasn't. He had been lying in wait for me.

"Step back, miss," he said in a deep voice
so filled with authority I automatically obeyed. "Stand against the
opposite wall where I can see you. I want at least six feet between
us while we talk. And don't move your hands until I tell you
to.

Jesus. He knew the rap better than a cop.
And he wasn't as old as he had looked from far away. He flicked on
a hallway light and I could see that he was actually only around
fifty. He was built like a farmhand, with biceps that bulged
beneath his blue tee-shirt and a neck the size of a sequoia stump.
His complexion was so dark I could hardly see his features—he had
stepped back into the shadows, leaving me exposed in the light. But
I could see enough to know he wasn't smiling. I could also see that
he held a metal rod of some kind in one hand, with a casual
readiness that made me very sure he knew how to use it.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I'm a private investigator. I have some ID
in my pocket."

"And you just broke into that office?"

"That's right." Hell, what else could I say?
He'd caught me with my hand in the cookie jar.

"That's the office for the tall guy, right?
The fellow with those elbow patches on his jackets?"

"That's right," I said again. "His name is
David Brookhouse."

"He's the professor got accused of rape, am
I right?"

I wished I knew where this was going.
"You're right." My voice came out a little clearer than before, at
least it no longer sounded like a squeaky toy was lodged in my
throat.

"Rape of that woman named Miss Mclnnes?"

"She's the one. She goes by the name of Pugh
now. Her husband left her. You knew her?"

He nodded. "I knew her. She was a nice lady.
But one day, she just sort of disappeared. Mid-term."

"She's not able to leave her house these
days," I explained. "She's too afraid."

"Understandable," the man answered. "He got
off."

"He did indeed. In more ways than one."

"Why?" he asked.

"Why what?"

"Why are you breaking into his office?" He
waited, casually thumping the metal rod against a palm, a gesture
that inspired anything but casualness in me.

I wondered whether to tell him the truth.
This seemed like a damn good time to be straight up about it. "He's
filed a lawsuit against Helen Pugh. I'm trying to find out if he
might be guilty after all."

"He raped Miss Pugh. And now he's dragging
her back to court?" the janitor asked, displaying no ambivalence
about whether he thought Brookhouse was guilty.

"That's right." Now was not the time to
initiate a discussion about legal guilt vs. innocence.

"After all she went through?" he asked.

"Yes."

"I see him in the hallways a lot, you
know."

"I can imagine. I can imagine most people
don't notice you when you're around."

He didn't say anything. The guy didn't give
a damn about my political correctness. He was too busy thinking the
situation over.