Better Off Dead (15 page)

There was no need to prompt her. Once I laid
out my cover story—that a young student had been sexually harassed
by him and her parents had hired me to investigate—her tale of woe
involving Brookhouse tumbled forth like a waterfall of
condemnation. He was on her shit list, but big time.

"Don't you know about his trial?" she asked
incredulously. "He was accused of rape. A brutal rape."

"Sure, I do," I said. "That's one reason why
my client hired me. As you can imagine, they're not anxious to have
a suspected rapist sniffing around their daughter."

"Well, that makes them about the only ones
in this entire state to think he might be guilty," she said
angrily.

I pretended to scrutinize her face. "Hey," I
said. "I remember seeing some photos of press conferences during
that trial. You were in some of them, weren't you? But you were on
his side, right? Or am I thinking of someone else?"

She stared at her bare feet, the light gone
from her eyes. "That was me," she admitted.

"So you thought he was innocent, too," I
said.

"At the time."

"What made you change your mind?"

She stabbed the ground with a trowel,
slicing a beetle in half. "He used me," she explained. "I was
nothing more than a prop during his trial. A respectful fellow
professor, one known for her feminist anthropological outlook, no
less. He dropped me like a used condom when the trial was
over."

"What?" I asked, appalled.

"I had just gotten a divorce when I met
David," she explained. "I didn't know it at the time, but the
police were already questioning him about that woman's rape when he
first asked me out."

I didn't tell her that "that woman" was
actually my client, but I felt a pang of guilt at concealing
it.

"He was the perfect romantic," she said. "He
brought me books I'd been looking for, rare volumes that must have
taken him a long time to track down. And flowers and—" She stopped,
mouth hard. "All that shit women fall for. And I fell for it, too.
By the time he was charged and brought to trial, I was already
hooked on him. God, I was an idiot."

She stared up at the clouds, no doubt
wishing she could roll back the months as easily as the hands on a
clock. Like we all do when a relationship turns sour.

"I was furious that he'd been accused like
that," she said. "I knew Helen Mclnnes slightly, and he used what I
knew about her to turn me against her. He painted her as a
vindictive, dumped girlfriend, one who was insanely jealous of me.
I'm sure she hates me now. But now I know that she was right. It
was him all along."

"How can you know that?"

She looked down, unable to meet my eyes.
"There were times during the trial when... details were discussed.
Of the attack, you know?"

I nodded and waited for her to continue. She
was silent.

"What about those details?" I asked.

She did not answer.

"They excited him?" I guessed.

She nodded, ashamed. "At the time, I didn't
pick up on it. Looking back, I realized that whenever the day's
testimony had been especially graphic, David was really turned on.
He had to have me. And because he was out on bail the whole time,
he could have me."

Man, I wondered how many showers she'd taken
since those days, hoping to wash the scum of David Brookhouse off
her body.

"Did he ever say anything concrete that made
you think he'd done it?"

She shook her head. "He was way too smart
for that. In fact, I think he was feeding me lies the whole time.
Lies about Helen. Lies about other people who might be suspects. He
was hoping I might leak the information, that word would get out
and someone else's reputation would be tainted."

"Did you leak any of the information he fed
you?" I thought of the character assassination Helen Pugh had
endured.

"No," she answered emphatically. "I kept it
all to myself. I don't accuse people without proof. But in David's
case, I now know what he's like and what he is capable of and I
know that the thought of getting away with it is almost as good for
him as the original attack."

God, if she wasn't a feminist before her
experience, she'd have turned into a card-carrying one
afterward.

"I'm a coward," she said suddenly. "I've
never called Helen to apologize. And she never did anything to
deserve any of this. Except to have been the only woman Brookhouse
ever saw who walked away from their relationship first. That's
probably what she's paying for."

"It's not too late," I reminded her. "Isn't
he suing her for defamation of character? You could testily at her
trial."

She shook her head. “Testify to what?
Besides, I'm still a coward." She glanced at me. "My reputation
barely survived that trial. The people who thought David was guilty
thought I was crazy. My colleagues who thought he was innocent
still believed I should have distanced myself from him. I'm lucky
it didn't ruin my career. I can tell you it hurt it. My guest
lecture requests have pretty much dried up. Word gets around."

"But that's over. Now you would be righting
a wrong," I pointed out. "That would show great courage."

"That would be admitting that I was stupid
enough to support a brutal rapist, a misogynist of the worst kind,"
she said angrily. "And I am supposed to be one of the leading
feminist voices in anthropology. Think of it: expert on the
societies where females held all the power becomes a helpless,
gullible simpering fool just because some charming man brings her
flowers. It would set me and probably other women in my field back
about three generations. It's bad enough he was seeing so many
other women at the same time I thought he was in love with me."

"You knew he saw other women?" I asked.

"I knew he'd seen other women right before
me," she said. "I just didn't know he was banging one coed after
another until the trial was over, until I had successfully played
my part as dutiful girlfriend and let my reputation be sacrificed
to protect someone who is, I am convinced, a predator of the
highest order."

"You mean that?" I asked. "You really think
Brookhouse was guilty?"

"I think David Brookhouse is a user. I think
he has nothing but contempt for women. I think he is a liar and a
rapist and a killer and the devil incarnate. He dropped me one week
after he was found innocent. One week." Her laugh was bitter.
"You'd think he'd have at least waited until the press coverage was
over."

"When did you find out about the coeds?"

She took a gulp of ice tea. "Someone sent me
an anonymous e-mail about a month after the trial. It said
something like, 'Don't despair. You're better off without him. Did
you know David Brookhouse was having sex with a string of students
the whole time he was seeing you? You deserve better.'"

"So whoever sent the letter knew Brookhouse
had broken up with you," I said, curious as to who it could be.
"Even though you kept it quiet. And they knew he was sleeping with
his students."

"Sure he knew," she said matter-of-factly.
"The person who sent the letter works with Brookhouse. In fact,
he's my new boyfriend. I answered that e-mail and we started
corresponding. He's helped me get through a lot. He's not really my
type, but I need someone to pay attention to me."

"You're seeing someone else in Brookhouse's
department?" I asked, though of course I knew the answer full
well.

She nodded. "Lyman Carroll. We have a lot in
common." She gave me a wary smile. "We both hate David Brookhouse
more than any other person on the face of the earth."

"Lyman Carroll?" I pretended to barely know
the name. "Isn't he Brookhouse's rival?"

She nodded. "That's putting it mildly. Lyman
hates him."

"Because Brookhouse stole some drug trial
from him, right?" I asked, as if groping for the facts.

She nodded again. "They're testing some new
drug for a firm in the Triangle. Lyman had the contract but someone
leaked that the confidentiality of the study had been compromised.
They took it away from Lyman and gave it to David instead. Lyman
was devastated that his reputation had been called into question.
He's accused David of lying to ruin his career and it's going
through all the official channels right now. Once it's all over,
only one of them will still be at Duke. I'm convinced of that."

"And you think it will be Lyman Carroll?" I
asked.

"You would think that, wouldn't you? I mean,
David was accused of rape. You would think Duke would jump on the
chance to get rid of him for cause." She spit an ice cube out on
the grass. "But I think it will be David who lands on his feet."
She shook her head. "I hate that bastard. But he's slick and he's
smart and even I have to admit that he's a hell of a better teacher
than Lyman. Plus, he has so much more control. If it ends up in
front of the ethics committee, David will keep his cool. Lyman will
lose it. They'll go with David."

"You think Brookhouse is a better teacher
than your own boyfriend?" I asked.

She shrugged. "Look, I go out with Lyman and
he's nice enough. He doesn't have all that much on the ball,
though. I'm just killing time."

And keeping up with what Brookhouse is
doing, I thought. You can't hate someone that much unless you're
still tied to them with every emotional string you've got.

"Besides, Lyman is never going to get tenure
at Duke," she explained. "He's like a scared rabbit. He worries too
much about what other people think. He's always afraid I'll make a
scene or embarrass him. The guy just isn't in the same league with
David. Believe me, David will win in the end."

Hoo boy, I thought. With a girlfriend like
that, what does Lyman Carroll need with enemies?

"You know what I'd do if I were you?" she
said suddenly.

I was startled, forgetting for a moment that
she had no idea who I really was.

"What?" I asked.

"I'd tell your clients to pull their
daughter out of Duke and send her far, far away. UC Berkeley sounds
good. Somewhere where David Brookhouse can never set either his
eyes or his hands on their daughter again."

She spit out another ice cube. It sailed
across the lawn and landed in a freshly dug mound of black
earth.

"If I had my way, he'd be dead," she
added.

Helen cried when I told her that Candace
Goodnight now believed she had been telling the truth about
Brookhouse. But I didn't tell Helen that Candace had made it plain
she would not testify at a civil trial. What good could her
testimony have done Helen anyway, since she had only a gut feeling
and no proof?

Which was the problem with the entire case:
no proof and way too many gut feelings.

When Helen kept crying, I caught on that
something else was the matter. She showed me a stack of letters
that had come that week. Each one was postmarked Durham, each one
was frightening in the extreme. "I will come at you when you
sleep," one read. "Close your eyes and I will be standing over
you." The rest were equally scary, designed to touch some
psychological chord of terror in Helen. Whoever it was knew her
well. The letter writer was looking for a way to worm inside her
head. Brookhouse, I thought. Master of the mind, playing mind
games. It had to be him.

"Why didn't you tell me these had started
coming again?" I asked her, wondering about the timing. We'd had a
break of several weeks with no letters. Why had they started again
this week? Had Brookhouse been busy with his coeds? Or was it even
him?

"I just wanted to ignore them," Helen said.
"It's so stupid of me to be afraid when the house is full of other
people."

Laughter floated in from the living room
where Fanny and Bobby were playing cards with Burly. "You need to
take these to the police," I urged her.

"No police," she said angrily.

I let the subject drop.

On Monday afternoon, I donned my student
drag and showed up for class once again. Brookhouse spent the hour
and a half filling the class in on sexual deviance. This topic
perked most of the students right up. I'd never seen so much
enthusiastic note-taking before.

I'd love to report that Brookhouse's eyes
glittered like a weasel's, or that he kept licking his lips while
he talked about bondage, or that he revealed details of the campus
rapes that only the attacker would know—but the truth was that he
seemed a bit bored as he led us through a litany of strange
obsessions, none of them pertinent to the case. One thing was for
sure: Brookhouse knew his stuff. By the time he got done detailing
the sundry ways humans satisfy their sexual drive, I was ready to
join a nunnery.

I changed my mind about the nunnery when I
emerged into the hallway and saw Luke waiting for me. For once, he
had not parked himself beside me in class. At first I didn't
recognize him. He had dyed his hair. Gone was the magenta Mohawk,
replaced by jet black spikes. Even his eyebrows had been dyed. The
transformation was amazing. He was suddenly very exotic-looking, he
looked older, more manly— with a strong dose of unpredictability
and brooding added in. Just my type. Except for the fact that he
still looked twelve years old.

"Wow, you look different." I stared at his
hair.

"You like it," he guessed, his attempt at
looking fierce spoiled by what was indisputably a beautiful smile.
His eyes dropped to my ankles. Satisfied I was still wearing his
bracelet, tie gave me another smile. "You didn't take it off
yet"

"They'll have to pry it off my cold, dead
foot," I promised. "Where were you today?"

"Back of the room. I came in late. I had to
do something first."

"Like dye your hair?" I teased him.

"Something like that. Want to go get
coffee?"