Better Off Dead (29 page)

"She's talking with the cops," Bobby said
glumly.

"The cops? What did Fanny do?"

"She's just trying to help them find the
kid's parents. She's the only one who seems to remember his
father's name and where he works. They're also trying to get
through to the Duke registrar. Casey, what the hell was he doing
in—"

"I don't want to talk about it right now," I
interrupted.

"What the hell were you doing in the—"

"I'll tell you later," I said as Detective
Ferrar entered the examining room.

"Need a lawyer?" Bobby asked, rising to his
feet. He automatically averts his face from all cops. I wondered,
as I always did, where that habit of his had come from. I knew so
little about Bobby's past.

"Not yet," I said hopefully.

Ferrar stared at me.

"But I might later."

Bobby squeezed out past Ferrar with an
anxious glance and trundled down the hospital hallway toward the
waiting room.

"Friend of yours?" Ferrar asked. He turned
Bobby's chair around and sat in it backward, resting his arms on
the plastic back and staring at me intently.

"My partner," I explained. I could not meet
his eyes.

"Better tell me what happened."

I told him. As best I could. I left out the
breaking and entering part. In fact, I sort of skipped over the
entire episode at the psychopathology department. But that was all
I left out. Naturally, he noticed what I had not said more than
what I did say.

"What were you doing on campus?" he
asked.

"I was following Brookhouse," I
improvised.

"Who's the kid?"

"Someone in one of Brookhouse's classes," I
explained. "He was helping me out by keeping an eye on
Brookhouse."

"He might die," Ferrar interrupted. "He
might die because of you."

"Not because of me," I shot back. Now it was
my turn to be angry. Yes, it was partially my fault. And no, I
would never forgive myself. But I was in charge of my conscience,
not this man. I did not then, nor had I ever, needed help accepting
moral responsibility for what I did. My grandfather had taught me
better than that. And I damn sure didn't need Ferrar's help in
feeling bad about what happened to Luke. "I'm not the one who shot
him."

"Then who did?" Ferrar asked. I could tell
he believed me, which made me wonder if they had found the
shotgun.

"Look," I explained. "I wish I knew. I swear
I would help you if I did. I was just walking through campus after
some surveillance."

"Pretty stupid," he remarked. "Did you have
a sign on your back that said 'Rape me'?"

I glared at him. "I had no choice. Someone
had my car towed and I couldn't find a phone."

He made a note on his pad. "We'll take care
of following that up," he said. "You are to back off.
Understand?"

I nodded. "Luke started following me," I
explained again. "I freaked out. I thought he might be... the
one."

"That's why you cut through the
Gardens?"

"I didn't have much choice. But someone else
was following me. Two men. Luke was just trying to warn me. I think
he got shot trying to protect me." I stared down at the tiled
floor. The cleaning crew had missed a few drops of blood that led
from the edge of the examining table to Ferrar's chair. Someone
else's mistake, I thought. And what a small one compared to
mine.

Ferrar ran a hand through his hair. "This is
so bad," he said in a low voice. "So very bad. If this kid dies...
I don't know what I'm going to do. This town has really had enough
of whoever this is. And so have I. He could have been my kid. He is
someone's kid."

I didn't know what to say back.

"Can you give me anything else at all that
might help?" he said. "Voices? Height? Anything? How close did you
get to them?"

I went back and told him again about the
struggle near the rocks. I tried to remember everything. I closed
my eyes and visualized. He asked me all sorts of questions. What
had the men smelled like? Where had their hands wrapped around me?
When I kicked back, where had I hit the man in the leg? Did I
recognize the awful laugh?

By the time it was over, I had given him
almost everything I had, except for my burglary of the drug trial
papers. He had given me nothing. I had no clue if he considered
Brookhouse a suspect in Luke's attack or not. Nor did I know if he
intended to follow-up on the idea. By then, I didn't care. I just
wanted to go home.

I nearly burst into tears again when Ferrar
finally let me go and I saw that both Fanny and Bobby were still
waiting for me in the anteroom. Morose clusters of the injured
waited around them, faces averted from one another, hands wrapped
around injured fingers, clutching swollen ankles, pressing head
wounds. Everyone looked drunk at this hour of the night. Everyone
probably was drunk at this hour of the night. Emergency rooms are
like that.

"Where's Burly?" I asked, both scared and
disappointed he wasn't there.

"He was afraid to leave Helen alone with her
mother," Bobby explained. "He's still at the house with her. Hugo
is out rounding up some of his friends to start a twenty-four-hour
watch. We all think he's coming after Helen next."

"Good thinking," I said. But I didn't
believe him about why Burly wasn't here. Burly would figure it out,
I was sure. He would know I was involved with Luke on some level. I
would have to face him about it sooner or later. "Can we go back
there now?" I asked. "I need to talk to Burly."

Fanny looked up for the first time. Her face
was streaked with tears. "I can't leave him," she said, sniffing
into a lace-trimmed handkerchief. "He has no one. He's such a boy,
and he's lying up there on that operating room table all alone. His
parents are in the middle of an ocean somewhere. No one they can
reach right now even remembers what cruise line. I can't leave him.
He has no one."

As she began to cry harder, Bobby patted her
back gently. He didn't know what else to do.

"Then we'll all wait here together," I
decided. I looked at my watch. "It'll be daylight in a couple of
hours anyway."

The sun was just starting to streak the sky
with golden wisps when medics brought in the janitor from the
psychopathology building. I recognized him by his clothing. His
head was swathed in a huge bandage that was way bigger than I had
expected. I hadn't hit him that damn hard.

"What happened?" I asked, rising to my feet.
I couldn't stop myself. I had to get a closer look. No way I had
hit him hard enough to keep him unconscious all night. No way.

"You know this man?" one of the medics
asked. She exchanged a glance with her partner.

I crept closer to the gurney. "He's the
janitor at the psychopathology building on campus. He's a really
nice man. What happened to him?"

"Someone bashed his head in, that's what
happened to him."

I felt sick. "What do you mean?"

"A student found him in the foyer about
twenty minutes ago. Someone smashed his head in," the first medic
explained impatiently. She waved me aside. "Unless you know his
name or family, please get out of the way."

I watched in horror as they wheeled him
through a set of double doors into the treatment area.

"What is it?" Bobby asked. He had wandered
over, sensing that something was up.

"Oh, Bobby," I said. "This is even worse
than I thought."

By early morning, Luke was out of surgery
and in a recovery room. I knew foot traffic would start across the
Gardens soon. I had to get my gun and knapsack while I could. "I'll
be back," I said. "Give me the keys to your car."

Bobby handed them over without comment. He
was methodically feeding Fanny peanut butter crackers from a
vending machine. She was praying for Luke in between bites.

Suddenly, just being around her made me feel
like pond scum in addition to smelling like it. I hurried out into
a cold morning. Everything looked so different in the daylight, so
benign and clean and impossibly safe. Had Luke really been shot so
close to this place of haven?

Yellow police tape blocked off parts of the
Gardens, but the area where my knapsack was hidden was still
accessible. God knew where my gun was. If they had searched the
whole Gardens or dragged the pond, I was sunk. It was tough for me
to replace guns. I had a felony conviction and had to buy them on
the black market from the kind of person I usually spent my time
trying to bring down.

I stopped, thinking of what I had been about
to do. Ten hours ago, I had almost killed a friend with my gun. Now
I was hurrying to find it—so that I could shoot it at someone
else.

I thought of Luke's blood pouring from his
chest, the smell of it on my hands, the sounds of his breath
gurgling in his chest.

Maybe I wouldn't replace my gun after
all.

I watched as a cluster of students headed
toward the taped-off area. I hurried to catch up with them, then
fell into step right behind them, as close as I dared. We passed a
cop guarding the scene. He looked familiar, but I couldn't dredge
up the name. I turned my head away. He didn't seem to notice me,
just waved us away from the edge of the tape. He was watching a
brunette coed in a tight sweater instead.

As the students chatted and speculated about
whatever latest horror had hit the campus, I matched them stride
for stride. Just one of the gang. We neared the network of docks
and I began searching for the cluster of rocks where my gun had
slipped from my hand. No footprints. It was probably still there in
the shallows. The damn ducks saw us coming and came squawking over.
Where was my gun when I really needed it? I wanted to strangle some
of the loudest birds for betraying me last night and I searched the
flock for anyone looking particularly self-satisfied. But the ducks
turned and left when they saw we had no bread. I took a quick peek
into the shallows: no gun was visible. God, what if someone else
had already discovered it? Someone besides the police?

That didn't make me feel too good,
either.

I hurried to rejoin the group of students.
They passed the bench where I had hidden my knapsack and I sat down
as if to rest. The students walked on, and the cop was eyeing a new
cluster of the curious. The sun shone brightly overhead, taking the
chill from the November air.

Seeing me on the beach, the goddamn ducks
started quacking their way toward me yet again, ready to harass me
for food as if they had never seen me before. These were not genius
ducks, that was for sure.

I fished around with my left leg, located my
knapsack and gently dragged it to my side. I'd forget my gun for
now. Waiting until a new group of students passed by, I stood and
shouldered the knapsack, joining the kids in a final trip out of
the Gardens. Maybe I'd never go back. The beauty seemed spoiled
forever.

By noon, even Fanny was dozing off in the
antiseptic waiting room. My knapsack was safely stashed in Bobby
D.'s trunk, the illicit gains of my breaking and entering the night
before still intact. My stomach felt sour from too much black
coffee. And Bobby was snoring so loudly that the nurses at the
reception desk were starting to glare.

I elbowed him awake.

"Knock it off," I said. "The paint is
peeling from the walls."

"Any news?" he asked gruffly, flaring his
nostrils. "Maybe I ought to get me some of those sleep strips."

"Maybe you ought to lose two hundred
pounds?"

It was a much nastier remark than I was apt
to make. Something inside me felt coiled, mean and ready to strike.
Guilt looking for a victim. Bobby understood. He ignored my
remark.

A doctor approached us, staring at Fanny.
Sensing his gaze, she opened her eyes, looked flustered, and
automatically patted a few of her curls back in place.

"Mrs. Broadhurst?" the doctor said
tentatively. He was the epitome of distinguished medical
achievement, tall and trim with silver hair and expensive
metal-rimmed glasses. "I thought I recognized you."

It was more likely he recognized her
pocketbook. Fanny had pretty much built a goodly portion of the
medical center with donations from her family trust.

"What are you doing here?" he asked in a
professionally concerned voice. He glanced around the waiting room
as if it were a bus station in Calcutta.

Fanny explained that a young man of her
acquaintance had been shot and his parents could not be found and
it was sad and blah, blah, blah. She sowed the seeds. The doctor
provided the sunshine.

He trotted off, anxious to help protect
future donations.

Twenty minutes later, we heard the news.

It was not good. But it could have been
worse.

Luke was alive. He was in a coma. He had
been moved into the critical care unit and if Fanny wished to wait,
considering the special circumstances, she might be able to see him
in a few hours.

Fanny cared to wait. She had taken to
calling him "that poor Yankee boy," as if we were sitting around
following the massacre at Bull Run, praying for someone else's
child to pull through just in case, up North in the land of the
infidels, another mother was doing the same for our son.

"That poor Yankee boy," Fanny muttered. "His
parents just taking off like that."

"Jesus," I said, in no mood to be tactful.
"How much money do you have anyway? These people are practically
genuflecting in front of you."

Fanny did not smile. "Money is of absolutely
no use in situations like this, Casey," she scolded me. "Not
really. We can see him because of my money. He'll get good care
because of my money. But my money is not going to help him pull out
of his coma. If I were you, I'd join me in prayer."

It was the closest she had ever come to a
rebuke. I joined her in prayer. All I could remember was a bunch of
dire entreaties ingrained into me by snake-handling aunts and
alcoholic uncles who delighted in the gibberish of speaking in
tongues. Frankly it had all started to sound like gibberish long
before I was ten. But somehow a few prayers had stuck. I dredged
them up and prayed.