Better Off Dead (10 page)

"I know!" Fanny said triumphantly. "You can
be a jock! My son once had a girlfriend who was as big as a house.
She was a field hockey player. Wore these mannish shorts and
football jerseys. I saw her toss my son over the couch as easily as
I pick up a potato chip." She demonstrated this by reclaiming a bag
of chips from Bobby and eating a few.

Fanny ate Lay's as if she
were tasting
foie gras
on crackers: she held each chip between two fingers and
extended her pinkie straight up in the air, then nibbled the edges
down daintily before popping the rest into her mouth. This was
vastly different than Bobby's technique, which was to cram as many
chips in at one time as possible. But damn if she didn't somehow
manage to match him chip for chip anyway.

Her comment about manhandling had piqued
Bobby's interest. "No shit," he said. "Your son liked that rough
stuff?"

Fanny gave him a look that ended the
discussion. I thought her suggestion over. "I don't think so," I
finally said. "I'd stick out too much. The Duke dyke look is too
conspicuous and I don't want to have to deal with moronic guys
giving me shit about how they could change my mind in a
heartbeat."

"Change your mind about what?" Fanny asked
innocently. Helen, who caught my drift, started to choke on her
iced tea and Weasel leaped to his feet, pounding her gallantly on
her back until she gestured for mercy.

"Well, we have to do something," Fanny said
when no one answered her question. "You can't go like that." She
waved at my current outfit. I was wearing a hot pink sweater topped
with a black leather vest and a short, fringed matching miniskirt
over tights and cowboy boots. It was a sort of a punk Patsy Cline
homage. Nether Weasel nor Burly had complained.

"I guess not," I admitted, acknowledging to
myself that the Duke campus was probably the largest area in the
entire state certified cowboy boot-free. Then I had an idea. "I'll
call my fashion consultant," I told them.

I had Marcus on the phone within minutes and
he was all too happy to help. In fact, I found his laughter a
little insulting.

"I don't find it all that funny," I said
stiffly.

"You want to pass for twenty-one?" Marcus
laughed even harder.

"I'll get back to you," I decided.

"No, no," he protested, "I have the perfect
solution. Collegiate goth."

"Collegiate goth?"

"Sure. There's enough Duke students going
that route so you won't stick out, and the pale foundation and
black eye makeup will disguise your scars and all those wrinkles
you're starting to get around your eyes because you refuse to
follow a skin care regime like the one I've been desperately urging
you to follow before it's too late."

"How tactful of you to put it that way," I
said. "What the fuck is collegiate goth?"

"It's a modified form of punk mixed with
horror and a pinch of sci-fi," Marcus explained. “Toned down a bit,
but with basic core elements and punk accouterments."

"I feel like I'm being dressed by Margaret
Mead. Next you'll be poking into my mating rituals."

"Wouldn't that be a full-time job?" he said
coolly. "I am sorry the look is not more original but, as you know,
there is nothing new under the sun. Except perhaps for those fresh
wrinkles of yours."

"You bitch," I said, but agreed to be his
guinea pig later that evening. He, in turn, promised to stop by
with some sample wardrobes and makeup tips.

"This should be good," Weasel proclaimed
when I announced that I was going goth. "I can't wait to see
it."

"Get out of here now," I warned him.

He just smiled and shook his head.

"Just don't pierce anything, dear," Fanny
recommended.

Too late, I thought, but I smiled at her in
reply. "Maybe just a tattoo or two," I promised.

By late evening, the case had been launched
in style. The day's revelry had wound to a close, with Helen left
looking happily exhausted and full of Fanny's chicken and pastry by
bedtime.

Phone calls had been made and bribes
elicited. My name was being placed on the computerized class
registration file for Abnormal Psychology 152, giving me a chance
to keep an eye on Brookhouse and, maybe, spot his next victim if he
was culling them from his classes. Burly was close to finding the
current addresses of the past rape victims and cracking all the
past and present class lists for Brookhouse. I'd examine them for
possible matches.

More important, Marcus had arrived with his
makeup kit, Clairol and wardrobe tips in tow. The zeal with which
he dyed my hair platinum and cut it in a sort of modified dandelion
do, made me suspect that Marcus considered me a living, breathing
Barbie doll put here on the Earth for his sole entertainment. When
he was done, I looked like a cross between early Deborah Harry and
late Courtney Love, with a pinch of Elvira, Mistress of the Dark,
thrown in.

"You want me to wear conservative gold
earrings with this?" I asked dubiously, surveying one of the
recommended outfits he had demanded I model: a loose black jumper
worn over a tight silver T-shirt and torn black fishnets. At least
I could wear my hiking boots with it.

"Trust me," Marcus said, not for the first
time. "I know what makes those frat boys horny."

We locked eyes in the mirror. "That was not
the purpose of this exercise," I reminded him.

"It makes me horny," Burly offered as he
wheeled into the room.

"Really?" I took a second look at the
ensemble. "Maybe it isn't so bad after all."

Over the next week, our lives settled into a
routine so well-ordered it seemed preordained. As so often happens
with large groups of people, our lives centered on eating. The
smell of sausage coaxed people from their beds in the mornings
while the odor of popcorn marked their return. In between, we ate
our way through Helen's pantry with Thanksgiving-like abandon. We
devoured chicken and pastry, Calabash-style fried shrimp, turnip
salad, stewed green beans, candied yams, Brunswick stew,
chicken-fried steak and hush puppies galore. And that was just on
Monday.

Burly and Fanny shared chef's honors, while
Hugo made runs to the Food Lion down the road. I'd never lived in a
group before, not exactly being the sorority type, and so I found
myself, for the first time, caught up in the rhythm, the noise, the
ebb and flow of human routine en masse. It was fascinating, as was
the glimpse into the secret shadows of people I thought I knew.

Bobby D., to my great surprise, proved to be
a meticulous dishwasher, treating the utensils of eating as
lovingly as he treated the food. He'd wipe each plate carefully
before placing it in the dishwasher, then don sterilized gloves to
place the freshly washed china back on the shelves.

Helen let the activity swirl around her,
sometimes part of it and sometimes lost in her own private Idaho.
She would help out here and there, but spent much of her time
huddled with Hugo. They were planning the layouts of her winter
gardens so she would be able to see them from her windows.

Miranda, caught in her world of lost dreams,
would descend the steps every morning in full makeup to lounge on
the sofa and watch old movies. She sipped Fanny's loaded Mai Tais
methodically through each scene, muttering endlessly about how she
could have done a much better job. What a peculiar form of
self-torture that was.

And me, well, I spent most mornings with
Burly, dogging David Brookhouse through cyberspace, examining his
career under an Internet microscope, hoping to find some sort of
clue in his past to indicate whether he was a monster. The guy
changed jobs a lot for an academic, but otherwise he seemed squeaky
clean. I knew one reason he had been hired at Duke was that he was
an enthusiastic writer of original articles on abnormal psychology,
meaning he was managing quite effectively to ride the public's
seemingly endless appetite for the criminal mind. This same
fascination had probably saved him from getting the ax after his
rape trial. Well, that and Duke's fear that he would turn around
and sue the school if they dismissed him before his contract was
up, especially since he had been found legally innocent.

In the afternoons, I attended my class with
Brookhouse or staked out the homes of the rape victims who had
remained in Durham. I could not afford to contact them outright,
not with Marcus Dupree's cover at stake, but I told myself that if
I could just get a look at their faces, I'd gain some clue to their
character and know whether it was safe to approach them for a
talk.

On the third day of watching, I realized
that I was not alone in my scrutiny. Angel Ferrar, the detective in
charge of the new task force, was apparently visiting each rape
victim in turn. I watched him with envy, wishing for the power of
his official status. As it was, I had to be content with an
occasional glimpse of their faces through the windows. All of the
women were white, and in their twenties or thirties. One had a
jagged scar on her cheek.

Funny thing about those women, not many
seemed to go out much. And none but Helen lived in a house.
Apartments seemed safer, I guess.

None of them had responded to my phony
sexual harassment flier. A special phone number that could not be
traced back to Helen had been installed among one of her many
lines. Fanny had offered to answer when I was not there, as we all
believed a woman's voice would be more reassuring than a man's. We
got some calls, but none of interest to the case. So far, I had
determined that there was a custodian in the athletic department
who stole the panties of the female basketball players while they
showered, and that there was a professor in governmental policy
following an eminent domain policy with his coeds. But no one had
called in about Brookhouse or any of his colleagues.

Three times a week, I donned my goth attire
and hightailed it over to campus to get a firsthand look at my
quarry. Venturing onto the campus of Duke University was like
migrating to another planet. Fall had been kind and the lawns were
still lush, with marigolds and pansies blooming in tidy beds
arranged around trees crowned with heavy foliage just beginning to
turn color in the warm October air. No one seemed in a hurry. I
could not imagine such a life. Students lounged on low stone walls,
or sprawled across lawns, or lingered in noisy groups along the
sidewalks, debating topics so unimportant to my reality that they
seemed an exotic and forbidden luxury. I envied them their
innocence and age. My knapsack held my .357 Colt Python. Theirs
held books. They were seeking knowledge. I was seeking a killer.
They could afford to argue long and loud about ideas. I was trying
to repair a life.

My sole college experience until then had
consisted of a year at the University of Miami, the year I met my
ex-husband and left any other dreams I might have had behind. So it
was impossible for me to feel as if I fit in. I entered
Brookhouse's auditorium classroom each day feeling like an
impostor, then listened to each word of his lectures as if he were
offering up a confession.

I was pretty sure my age would not give me
away; the makeup hid a lot of flaws. But my attitude surely set me
apart. I was wary, uneasy and determined. The other students were,
to a person, in that all-too-fleeting state of suspended animation
known as college. They could afford to be bored and distracted. How
badly I wanted to be them.

Was I being a complete idiot? What did I
hope to gain by being there? All I had to go on was Helen's belief
that her attacker had sounded and handled her like Brookhouse.

He certainly did not look like a rapist. Not
that they come with warning stickers or anything.

David Brookhouse was a lanky, attractive man
in his late thirties with short sandy hair and small gold-rimmed
glasses. His face was benign and narrow—maybe even kindly-looking.
He had a habit of blinking both eyes, like an owl. He frequently
ran his fingers through his hair, leaving small furrows in their
wake.

He dressed in attire befitting a professor
at a prestigious university. His tweed jacket actually had leather
patches at the elbow, while his pants were narrow-ribbed corduroy
immaculately creased down the middle of each leg. Sometimes his
voice would trail off as he sought to clarify a point, and his eyes
would fix on a place far beyond the room's one row of windows. At
those times, his face took on a sadly searching look, making it
impossible not to at least sympathize with him.

It was easy to see why so many supporters
had rallied to his side.

On the other hand, whether or not he was a
rapist, his was indisputably the face of a man who would file a
multimillion dollar countersuit against a woman whose life and body
had been randomly destroyed. I reminded myself that I did not know
him, not really. I only knew what he looked like on the
outside.

Each day, I lingered behind in the hall
after class, hoping to see who approached Brookhouse. I wanted to
get an idea of how close he was to his students. This was not as
easy as it sounds. I did not want to initiate direct contact with
him, at least not yet. So I had to wait outside, peeking in the
room every now and then, trying to keep all the students apart. At
the end of each class, at least three or four would stay behind,
probably to argue an assignment or grade.

On my third day of watching and listening, I
decided that one particular brunette coed was definitely batting
her eyelashes the good professor's way. She had lingered behind two
class days in a row. How many college students are that
conscientious about their work? I peered around the doorway,
watching her sashay toward Brookhouse. She waited until the other
students had left, then stepped toward him with a smile. She stood
too close and leaned in too far. Something was going on between
them.