Better Off Dead (12 page)

"Where are we going?" I asked as Burly
wheeled down a hard-packed path.

"You'll see," he promised.

The path led to a narrow road that snaked
back between the trees. "Someone's been working on this road," I
said, examining the newly graded surface.

"Hugo," Burly said. "He wanted me to be able
to get down to the pond. He brought in a backhoe and smoothed it
out, then ran over it about a hundred times in his truck."

"That Hugo's a good fellow," I decided.

"Just wait," Burly said.

The path led back into a patch of pine scrub
forest that gave way to hardwood trees. The shaded darkness ended
abruptly a few hundred feet down the road in a sudden clearing that
was flooded with the liquid light of sunset.

"Oh, my god," I said.

I had expected a muddy pond rimmed by
overgrown kudzu and dried cattails. Instead, a small lake glittered
in the scarlet of the sun's last rays, one-third of its shore lined
with pure white sand that curved gracefully in an unexpected
crescent around the pristine waters. The beach was dotted with
thriving banana palms. "How the hell did he do this?"

Burly laughed at my surprise. "He said it
took thirty-two truckloads of sand and the banana palms are a
special hybrid they've been developing over at N.C. State. That
Hugo is no slouch. He knows his stuff. He's growing the damn things
as part of an experiment over at State, so they gave them to him
for free. Look at those suckers. There's freakin' bananas hanging
off them."

Burly could go no closer, as there wasn't a
wheelchair in the world built for sand. But I wandered across the
fine-grained beach in wonder, touching the tiny bananas that
dangled in clusters from the palm fronds.

"Why?" I asked. "This must be so much
work."

"Helen likes the beach," Burly explained.
"Hugo has this plan. He thinks if he can make the pond perfect,
Helen might leave the house long enough to visit it."

"This is so weird," I admitted. "So weird
and so wonderful and so..."

"Inspiring?" Burly suggested. He patted his
lap. "Come here, darlin'. There's a reason I passed up that trip to
the topless bars."

"Oh yeah?" I asked. "And that reason would
be?"

"I can get my own private lap dances at
home."

"You bet your ass you can," I promised,
climbing aboard to prove my point. I settled in, facing him, the
sun setting to our right. "This place seems a million miles away
from the rest of the world, doesn't it?"

"Our little slice of paradise," Burly
promised.

I caught a break in the case early the next
week. Monday morning, the hotline phone rang just as I was starting
on a pile of homemade waffles courtesy of Burly. Fanny was still in
Texas, so I hurried to answer it. No one returned my "hello," but I
heard rapid breathing.

"You don't have to give me your name," I
said into the silence. "Just tell me what happened. Are you calling
about the sexual harassment flyer?"

"Yes." It was a woman, her voice faint.

"Have you been harassed by a professor at
Duke?" I prompted.

"No."

"No? Then why are you—"

"I've been raped by one."

Before I could say anything more, the caller
hung up.

"What was that about?" Burly asked when I
returned to the kitchen.

"I don't know. She hung up before I could
ask. But she says she was raped by a professor at Duke." I noticed
that my plate was cleaner than a soul on All Saints' Day. "What
happened to my waffles?"

Burly stared at the empty plate,
dumbfounded.

"Bobby's not back, so someone else ate
them," I accused him. The faintest of burps floated up from beneath
the kitchen table. I lifted one corner of the tablecloth and peeked
beneath it. Our dog Killer was stretched out lazily in the
darkness, his long flanks heaving up and down with each happy
breath. "I've located the suspect," I said.

As I probed his belly, Killer opened one
lazy eye and regarded me with disinterest. I came bearing no food.
What use was I to him? His stomach felt remarkably firm, but Helen
had been slipping him tidbits for days. They were co-conspirators
out to stuff the greedy little pig until he could no longer
walk.

"I never saw him move," Burly said,
astonished. "I swear, I turned my back for seconds. I didn't even
know he could move that fast."

"It was him all right," I declared, wiping
my fingers on a napkin. "The little bastard has sticky lips."

Killer sighed happily at this pronouncement,
closed his eyes again and began to snore.

"It's a dog's life," I said, deciding to
make do with the waffles left on Burly's plate. Luckily, with him
being across the room and in a wheelchair and all, I was out the
door before he could catch me.

I returned to the bedroom office and checked
the notebook that listed the calls we had received on the hotline
up until then. Fanny had logged each one in her flowery girls’
school hand, the details meticulously recounted, no matter how
ludicrous: "The caller said that her sociology professor was
staring at her like she had no clothes on and it was making her
uncomfortable," one entry read. Welcome to the real world, honey, I
thought, and continued reading. There had been thirty-three calls
in all, and over fifty hang-ups. No caller had yet mentioned rape.
Had the woman called before? Was this the first time she'd found
the courage to hang on?

She phoned again just before lunch.

"I called earlier," she whispered into the
phone when I picked up the line.

"Yes," I said. "You did. Who raped you?"

"I can't tell you."

"Why not?"

"Because if he finds out that I know it was
him, he'll kill me.”

The simplicity of her statement chilled me
to my toes.

"Was he wearing a disguise?" I asked. "Is
that why he thinks he's safe?"

"Yes. A mask. But I could tell it was him.
It... it smelled like him."

"You knew him, then?"

"Yes." She did not offer any details.

"When did this happen?"

“Two months ago."

Near the start of the semester, I
calculated. Was she a student?

"Just tell me where it happened," I begged
her. "So I can keep it from happening to someone else."

"In the basement of the psychopathology
department."

She hung up.

A wave of adrenaline surged through me. It
had to be connected to Helen's rape. It had to be. I sat on the
edge of the bed, staring at the receiver. This was not a victim
from the police department files. The details were too different.
This was someone new.

"Same woman as before?" Burly asked. He had
joined me and was rapidly punching in a code on his keyboard,
trying to crack the Internet firewalls protecting a network
sponsored by a small community college where David Brookhouse had
once taught early in his career.

"Yes. She says she was raped in the basement
of the psychopathology department."

Burly did not react as I had hoped. "Kind of
convenient, don't you think?"

"What do you mean?"

"Would a rapist be so stupid as to rape in
his own backyard?"

I thought about it. "Maybe it's not
something he can control," I said. "Maybe it was part of the thrill
for him. He was wearing a mask. So there he was, a couple feet away
from his real life, yet completely concealed."

Burly shook his head. "Maybe. But I want to
find out more about Brookhouse before I decide. He's skipped around
a lot when it comes to jobs. I think that's kind of unusual for a
professor. They usually stay put to try for tenure."

"Maybe he was moving on before the heat came
down?" I suggested. "Can you dig up any info on sexual assaults in
those towns?"

"With enough time I can," he said. "But I
can't crack the rinky-dink network at this last place. Some student
did a real job with the security on this one. Hope they gave him an
A. It's gonna take me days to get through."

Days? I thought of the wait involved in
cracking site after site. There was no way in hell I would be able
to dredge up enough patience to sit through the painstaking process
again and again. So I made a decision right then and there. And
like a lot of my decisions, it was a hasty one. But the one thing I
cannot abide in life is indecisiveness.

"Burly, all this waiting is driving me
crazy. That woman calling the hotline is a sign. I'm going in the
right direction and I need to push things a little. I need to get
in even deeper over there."

His face was dark with worry. "I just hope
you're not being set up, Casey. What are you going to do?"

"Apply for the lab assistant's job," I said.
"So I can get closer to Brookhouse."

He stared at me for a long time, then
returned to his computer screen. "You're as stubborn as a mule,"
was all he said.

Luke, the baby punk who followed me around
like a lost puppy dog, knew what he was talking about when it came
to Brookhouse's lab assistant routine. By mid-week, the brunette I
had spotted flirting with Brookhouse was nowhere to be seen. The
notice on the hall bulletin board advertising an open lab assistant
position was back in place. I wondered why they ever bothered to
take it down. I also wondered why the work-study folks didn't
notice the revolving door of student employees that paraded through
Brookhouse's world, but that question was answered when I saw a
line on the bottom of the flyer explaining that the salary would be
paid out of a private grant every two weeks.

Luke caught me staring at the job
posting—which was no surprise. He followed me everywhere but the
ladies' room and even then I bolted the door just in case.

I was pretending not to notice.

He had been sitting next to me in class ever
since we first spoke, alternating between staring at my legs,
writing me notes about Brookhouse and drawing weirdly beautiful
sketches in the margins of his notebook. He had a flair for drawing
breasts, probably from long practice, and he had clearly been
weaned on comic book art. One of his favorite motifs was a punkish
female heroine with giant gozongas, platinum hair and a face that
looked suspiciously like mine. Of course, Luke had thoughtfully
airbrushed out all of my imperfections. God bless the dewy eyes of
youth. But the figure on that babe... well, let's just say I'd have
to sacrifice a whole rack of ribs to fit into the black rubber
costumes he designed for his fantasy girl. It was kind of sweet,
though. I'd had guys fall in love with my tits before, but no one
had ever institutionalized them.

"You're not thinking about taking that job,
are you?" he asked, nodding toward the job posting. "He'll put the
moves on you if you do."

"I can handle him," I promised. "And I
really need the money. My bastard of an ex-boyfriend left me with a
big debt to some not very nice people."

Luke made a face. "Drugs are stupid."

"I couldn't agree more." So Nancy Reagan had
made a difference after all. "But my ex is a believer and he ran up
quite a tab before he took off."

"And he's left you holding the bag?"

"You got it." I shrugged. "I need the money
and how hard could the lab assistant work be?"

"It's not the work that's hard," Luke said
angrily, unaware that he had just made a very bad pun. "The guy is
a sleaze." He reached into his jacket pocket and produced a small
wad of tissue, then thrust it at me almost fiercely, as if warding
off evil with a talisman. "Here. I made you a present."

Praying it was nothing that required
piercing another part of my body, I unwrapped the gift. It was a
thin cord of black leather, marked by intricate knots along its
length. Small silver beads flanked each knot. It was beautiful and
primitive at the same time, like something a Bedouin prince would
give to his favorite whore. "It's great," I said. "Is it a
bracelet?"

"Ankle bracelet," Luke explained. "I made it
myself on Ninth Street. Want me to help you put it on?"

Without thinking, I handed him the cord. He
knelt at my feet, like a knight paying homage, and carefully wound
the bracelet around my ankle, tying it off with a matching knot.
"This is for good luck," he explained. "The combination of leather
and silver means something like the protection of friendship
surrounds you. I forget exactly. The lady at the store explained
it, but I was trying to get the knots right and wasn't really
listening."

"What kind of knot is that?" I asked.

He shrugged. "I can't remember the name. My
dad taught it to me once when he took me fishing. We only went that
one time." He touched one of the silver beads. "I thought with you
having that bad experience in Mexico with your ex and all, you
might need some good luck." He ran a finger along the cord. "That
looks beautiful against your skin."

I froze, staring down at his bent head,
reminding myself that he was just a kid. His ears were pink and
scrubbed. The magenta tips of his Mohawk only highlighted the
wholesomeness of his blond buzz cut. His hair was growing in and
looked soft and feathery, like duck's down. God, but he was still a
baby.

His hand still lay against my leg, not
moving, just resting gently on the curve of my ankle. "Wow," he
said. "You sure have great feet."

This was a preposterous compliment. My size
nine clodhoppers, far from delicate, were firmly encased in clunky
black shoes. But his declaration, while short on being suave, was
uttered so sincerely that the touch of his fingers against my skin
took flame, sending a small river of warmth up my leg. He felt my
shiver and glanced up at me, his dark eyes large and solemn.

"I'm going to have to ask you to drop the
foot and back away slowly," I said.

He was too young to get the joke.