Better Off Dead (41 page)

The question just sort of slipped out.

"Look," he said, "why do these things ever
happen? You and I tried and that's good enough." His voice was
kind. Too kind. I felt a couple of tears coming on and was
determined that he not see them. I pretended to wipe my nose and
rubbed them away.

"There must be a reason," I insisted. "I
know you love me.”

"But you don't need me," Burly explained.
"Helen does. How many women need, truly need, a man stuck in a
wheelchair like me? I'm her knight in shining armor. That's what
she calls me. My wheelchair is my armor. I'm her knight. We have a
lot in common. We're both bound... bound to other people and to
certain places."

"And I'm not?" I asked.

He actually laughed. "Casey, you are not
bound to anyone or anything. You make me feel free. You make me
feel like my life extends way beyond this chair. But Helen makes me
feel like it's okay to be me. I don't know how else to explain
it."

"Geeze," I said, letting out a long breath.
"First the dog, then you."

"I'm sorry," he said again.

"Does Hugo know about this?" I tried to make
a joke. It was a bad one. If Hugo really was in love with Helen, it
was nothing to joke about. He'd be feeling as bad as me.

"I talked to Hugo," Burly said.

Before you talked to me, a voice inside me
noted.

"He's cool. He always knew he was way too
young for her, anyway. He knew she'd never even think of returning
his feelings."

Touché, I thought. My thing with Luke had
bothered him after all.

"I'm sorry," he said again, when I did not
answer.

"So am I," I admitted as I opened my car
door. I was afraid he would keep apologizing and I didn't want to
hear more.

I hopped in my car and drove home.

A little over a week later, Detective Ferrar
showed up on my doorstep early one morning, before I left for work.
I was back to punching the time clock at our offices in Raleigh,
back to being single, back to tailing cheating spouses and tracking
down sons who had run off with granny's money. I was bored already.
But not bored enough to welcome Ferrar's appearance as a positive
development.

"It's you," I managed to say. Not my most
enthusiastic of greetings.

"Is that any way to show a stranger how
Southern hospitality works?" Ferrar asked. Then he actually
smiled.

"Sorry." I opened the door. "Come in. Watch
your step. A clothes bomb seems to have exploded in my living room.
I can't guarantee you a seat."

"Actually, I was hoping you might come with
me." This time his smile did not seem quite so friendly.

I groaned. "Again? Listen, I told you
everything I know. I was completely straight with you. I really
don't see how—" I stopped, suddenly aware that I was whining, a
trait I loathe in other people.

"I'm done questioning you," he said. "This
is for something else."

"Something else? I know nothing else that
could possibly be of use." I noticed that he had dark circles under
his eyes. "You working another case?"

He nodded. "Caught it last night. There's
plenty of work for me here, I'm afraid. Even with Brookhouse
gone."

"And Carroll, too," I added. "Why does
everyone keep forgetting him?"

"Americans have gotten spoiled by movies and
television," he said. "They like their villains to be just as tall,
dark and handsome as their heroes. Carroll didn't make the cut. His
time in the sun faded quickly."

"Speak for yourself," I told him, then
grabbed my coat and followed. I could not afford to make an enemy
out of the Durham Police Department, not in my line of work.
Besides, I owed him.

"Where are we going?" I asked when I spotted
the patrol car waiting for us.

"Downtown," he said.

I looked up at him. "You said you were
through—"

"I just want you to look at something. Tell
me if you recognize it."

On the way, Ferrar told me they had made a
little more progress putting the pieces of the puzzle together.
Phone records showed that a call had been placed to Helen's house
from Lyman Carroll's the night the two men were killed, and we both
agreed it was one of them posing as a hospital aide, luring me away
from the farmhouse long enough for them to snatch Helen. And it had
been Brookhouse who'd called my car in to have it towed the night
they shot Luke in Duke Gardens. Hearing this, I was forced to
acknowledge that the two men might have been watching me watch them
the entire night I thought I was alone. And Luke, I figured, had
come to my apartment early to wait for our midnight meeting. He'd
seen me come home for my breaking-and-entering tools, then followed
me back to campus and spotted the two men following me.

I didn't offer this theory to Ferrar,
either. And when I asked him if Candace Goodnight had been found
yet, he just shook his head no. I offered the hope that maybe she
had fled the country and was living with some primitive
civilization, fearful Brookhouse might come after her. Ferrar
looked at me like I was daft.

After that, we rode in silence to police
headquarters and Ferrar took me up to his tiny office. It was
barely big enough for a desk, two chairs and a file drawer—but it
had a door and walls that actually went all the way up to the
ceiling, and that was an increasing luxury in all offices these
days.

"Wait here," he told me. "I'll be back in a
minute."

I waited, looking around his office. There
was a photo of Ferrar with a drop-dead gorgeous Latina and two
small children. His wife looked younger than him by at least ten
years. She had long black hair, huge dark eyes, a round face and
flawless skin. The kids were perfectly matched: one pretty little
girl with a pixie face and a taller boy with somber eyes and
freckles sprinkled across his nose. Both had dark hair and looked
like their mother, although, if you picked up the photo and looked
closer, you could definitely see traces of Ferrar's high cheekbones
lurking beneath their baby fat.

"My family," Ferrar explained as he
reentered his office. He held a plastic evidence envelope and a
long leather bag. A shotgun case.

"Your family is beautiful," I said
obediently as I carefully restored the photo to its place of honor.
"Do you get to see them much?"

"I make sure that I do," he answered,
touching his wife's face with the tip of a finger. She was his good
luck talisman, his antidote against the hate he saw in all its
dying color each day, I realized. I envied them their
contentment.

"Take a look at this," Ferrar said, taking a
handgun from an evidence bag. "Ever see this before?"

"If you're asking me if I have ever seen a
Colt Python, the answer is yes," I admitted. "But this one? Not to
my knowledge." This last remark was a patent lie. I had seen that
particular gun plenty of times, though not when I was searching the
bottom of the pond at Duke Gardens for it. Chalk one up for the
good guys. They had found my gun. I'd need a new one eventually.
Maybe. If I ever decided to carry one again. I still washed my
hands ten times a day, imagining Luke's blood on them.

"Okay," Ferrar said, seemingly unconcerned.
"It's this I'm most interested in." He placed the leather shotgun
case on his desk.

"What's that?" I asked.

“This is the key to the entire puzzle,"
Ferrar said. I knew instantly what puzzle he meant. He unzipped the
case and removed a shotgun from inside it. He laid the gun across
his desk, facing me, the handle displayed so that I could easily
inspect the intricate carving of flowers that decorated an ivory
inlay panel placed in the center of the triangular stock. The part
that had been hidden by Carroll's body in death.

I was stunned to see it. The buzzing of a
thousand bees started in my ears. I turned away so he could not see
my face.

"It's the shotgun we found on Carroll,"
Ferrar explained. He paused. "Recognize it?"

I shook my head. I knew he was staring at
me, but I couldn't stop myself from tracing the lilies carved into
the ivory. I remembered them so well from my days as a young girl,
playing on my grandfather's porch. He would carefully unload the
shotgun, double-checking it for safety, then let me play with it
for the afternoon. I'd pretend to be a hunter, or Davy Crockett, or
Daniel Boone, or anyone who was allowed to lift the long barrel to
eye level and sight. I had loved my grandfather's shotgun.

And now it was gone forever, thanks to
me.

"Do you know that gun?" Ferrar asked.

I shook my head. "No. But it's a beautiful
piece. An Ithaca. From the thirties, it looks like. Will it ever be
put up for auction?"

"No way. This case will stay open. Forever,
if it has to. And this shotgun will stay with it, as evidence."

It all made sense to me now. My grandfather
was supposed to come up for Thanksgiving; Burly must have told him
everything when they first talked by phone. And whether or not my
grandfather had been part of the plan to kill Brookhouse and
Carroll from the start or simply arrived at the right time, he had
showed up at Helen's the night before Thanksgiving, right after I
had been there and found her missing. Burly had ridden with my
grandfather as they chased after me, first to Carroll's house where
my grandfather had found the note and been glimpsed by the
neighbor, and later on to the psychopathology building. Only when
they'd had a good enough head start had Burly really called the
cops and sent them to Carroll's house.

But my grandfather would never break the
law.

Unless my life was in danger, I realized.
And it had been. Plus, he had heard Brookhouse and Carroll laughing
about their deeds while I sat bound and gagged, the men bragging of
how they would get away with it all.

That would be enough, I knew; that would be
enough to cause my grandfather to kill.

I could have asked Helen’s mother if my
grandfather had been to the farmhouse—but Miranda was dead. Only
Burly knew. And I had a feeling he would never tell.

My mind refused to let it alone. Would my
grandfather have killed two men like that? To save me: yes. Could
he have done it? Without a doubt. He could shoot through a plate of
glass and bring a man down with his eyes closed. He could do it
confidently, even with me standing right beside the victim. And
he'd have been strong enough to carry Helen to safety.

But why take Helen back to the house and not
to a hospital?

I knew the answer to that one, too. I
remembered once, when I was a girl of about twelve, finding an
injured fawn. It was lying on the edge of a clearing with one of
its legs dangling at an odd angle from the knee. I picked it up and
carried it home, begging my grandfather to help. He knelt beside
the creature, stroking its body to calm it, examining the broken
leg. He was shaking his head the entire time, half at the
probability the fawn would never survive, and half at the naive
optimism of a twelve-year-old girl.

"Creatures of the forest belong in the
forest," he explained to me. "I can bind the leg to help the fawn
walk again. But we can't keep him here with us, or he'll never fit
in with his own kind again. He belongs in the woods. It's cruel to
take living things away from where they feel safe. Do you
understand what I mean?"

I had nodded my solemn assent; I'd have
agreed to anything as long as my grandfather helped the deer. He
whittled two splints to fit the tiny leg and bound them in place
with strips of an old pillowcase until the leg was sturdy and
well-protected.

"He'll have to learn how to stand back up on
his feet all by himself," he warned me. "There's only so much you
can do for another living thing. We all have things we have to
learn to do on our own. Standing up for ourselves is one of
them."

He had gathered the fawn in his arms. It
didn't struggle like it had when I carried it; my grandfather
always had a calming effect on animals. We marched through the
woods, back to the clearing where I had first found the poor thing.
We placed him carefully near the boulder where I had discovered
him. That was probably where he tumbled and injured his leg in the
first place. I petted the creature while my grandfather carefully
inspected the woods around us. The fawn had fur as soft as velvet,
though fleas scurried across the brown pelt.

"The mother is nearby," my grandfather
announced, indicating a patch of fallen leaves that had been
flattened by a body lying in slumber. "The best thing to do is
leave the fawn here. We've brought it back home. That's
enough."

And so we left the deer in the woods. I
never saw it again. I often wondered if it had survived. I think
that maybe it did.

I like to imagine it did.

"What are you thinking about?" Ferrar asked,
interrupting my memories. "You recognize the shotgun, don't
you?"

"No," I said firmly, shaking my head. "It's
just a beautifully made weapon is all. Look at the care someone has
put into it. The handle has been sanded and oiled, the barrel's
immaculate. Someone must have loved it very much."

"I know two guys who probably wouldn't
appreciate its beauty. If they were still alive, that is."

I stared at Ferrar. "You really think this
world would be a better place if Carroll and Brookhouse were still
alive?"

He shook his head. "No. But I do think the
world would be a better place if people would just let the system
do what it's supposed to do. More often than not, it works."

I shook my head. I
couldn't agree. I didn't believe in playing god, but I also knew it
wasn't true that the system usually came through. Not anymore, it
didn't. If the system
worked the way it
was supposed to, I'd know it. Because I'd be out of
business.