Better Off Dead (35 page)

I knew I'd get a phone call from Ferrar
soon.

After that, Marcus had told Ferrar that he
had run a computer check of some of the names of people
participating in Brookhouse's drug study against the files of the
open investigations. Ferrar asked where the names had come from in
the first place and Marcus lied, saying they arrived in an envelope
addressed to the department as a whole and it had been routed to
him.

The results of Marcus's search: one of the
rape victims in a case Marcus had withheld from me because Ferrar
had been reviewing the paper file had indeed been a volunteer in
the study. Two other rape victims had been roommates of different
participants in the study—roommates whose names appeared in the
official files because detectives had interviewed them as part of
the rape investigations. One other victim had worked in the
psychopathology department at one time, then left for another
school shortly before she was raped. Four hits. With half the list
of volunteers to go. That was no coincidence, either, not in my
eyes or in Ferrar's.

Detectives had been sent out to talk to the
victims again, Marcus reported, this time focusing their questions
on any connection the victims might have to the drug trial. Marcus
did not yet know what had happened during those interviews. Some of
the women had moved out of state. I didn't blame them.

But Marcus did know that Ferrar had started
publicly investigating both men as a pressure tactic, triggering
their suspension from Duke. Lyman Carroll was thought to be an
ancillary character, at best, by most of the detectives working the
case. Marcus was not so sure Carroll was that innocent, but now
that he had given them a new direction to go in, the investigative
team had taken to ignoring Marcus again. After all, he was only a
clerk.

A clerk who knew every move they made. As
promised, Marcus reported that Ferrar had assigned detectives to
watch Brookhouse around the clock. This was an easy assignment.
Since his suspension from the university, Brookhouse was apparently
holed up in his home and going nowhere. Or at least not going
anywhere without someone secretly following.

I thought this news would make me feel
better. It didn't. Lyman Carroll was still free. And if Brookhouse
found out about the surveillance, he'd never make a move. We'd
never catch him.

But the cops might catch someone else. Like
one of my friends trying to kill Brookhouse.

"There's one more thing, Casey," Marcus
reported. "Neither Brookhouse nor Carroll has a head wound. And you
said one of the men who attacked you in the Gardens fell and hit
his head on the rocks."

"He did," I insisted. "At least, I thought
that's what I heard."

Marcus promised to call back with any more
news.

I thanked him, hung up and marched into the
living room. We were back to a wait-and-see mode. Burly, Bobby and
Fanny were playing cards with Helen. Hugo and his friends were
still guarding the front porch, though a couple of the guys were
snoring in one of the spare bedrooms. Even Miranda was back to her
perch on the couch in the television room, sipping Mai Tais,
watching old movies and attacking Deborah Kerr's hairstyle. What
else was there to do but continue to live life as normally as our
abnormal commune would let us?

"Marcus called," I told them. "The cops are
watching Brookhouse. Both men have been suspended from Duke and are
holed up at their homes."

The news made Helen and Fanny happy. They
saw it as a sign that, finally, the police were taking Brookhouse
seriously as a suspect. The news did not make Burly and Bobby
happy. The look they exchanged told me that something had been
planned. Something that was now to be called off.

Burly wheeled away to make a phone call. I
took his place at cards. Bobby would not meet my eyes.

I had done the right thing, I told myself as
I discarded the queen of hearts. I had done the right
thing. 

The day before Thanksgiving, the state's
major newspapers all carried front-page stories announcing that
Helen Pugh had filed a counter civil suit against Professor David
Brookhouse of Duke University for emotional distress, loss of
income and several other charges. On a slow news day, Brookhouse's
affiliation with Duke, Helen's decision to take her side of the
story public and the history between the two of them all conspired
to make the story major news. I was pretty sure the television
anchors would be reporting on it by evening as well.

I grabbed one of the morning newspapers off
the kitchen table and retreated to my bedroom to read in solitude.
Burly had been up before me and had already scanned the news. When
he saw me heading back to bed with the paper, he quickly wheeled
out of the room. It didn't take me long to figure out why.

Helen's lawyer had a different aim from the
rest of us: his goal was to force Brookhouse to drop his original
civil suit. He had leaked a judicious amount of false and real
evidence to the press, hoping to put the pressure on for that to
happen. There was new evidence, the papers reported, that linked
Brookhouse to the original attack on Helen—as well as other
assaults over the past two years. Helen's memory had recovered with
time, the articles implied, and other witnesses had come forward
with supporting evidence, prompting the countersuit. Reference was
made to an "inside source" who reported that a recent assault in
the Durham area had yielded an eyewitness who was prepared to
testify against David Brookhouse on Helen's behalf.

Whose idea had that factoid been? I knew it
wasn't true. And it seemed dangerous. It might push Brookhouse to
leave his home on a witness hunt, but it would also place someone
in danger.

With a start, I realized that this someone
was probably me. Who else could it be? The woman from last week was
dead. Luke was incommunicado in a hospital bed.

That left me.

Burly and Bobby had planned to use me as
bait. Jesus. And when I disagreed with their plan to take out
Brookhouse, they'd simply gone ahead without me—and fed the lawyer
false info.

Only now, Ferrar's surveillance was going to
interfere with their plan to take Brookhouse down. But Brookhouse
didn't know that. What would he do when he read about a possible
new witness?

The article ended with Helen's lawyer saying
that his client welcomed the opportunity to return to court. No one
mentioned that Helen was still too terrified to stand on her own
front porch, much less leave the house for a courtroom.

Wow. If Brookhouse didn't back down or get
arrested for the other assaults first, this was going to be an even
bigger deal than the first trial. The papers were milking it more
than a farmer who was down to one cow. No way Brookhouse was going
to hold on to his job or the drug study now. The stench was too
much.

I savored his probable panic. I pictured him
in his living room, enraged, holding it in, that perfect,
well-mannered facade of his masking what had to be a volcano of
frustration and indignation at the thought of anyone even dreaming
they could get the best of him.

I knew something had to give.

I paged through the rest of the Durham
Herald and was amazed to see that Luke's stepmother had been busy
inserting herself into the social news while her husband held vigil
at his son's bed. She was shown at a benefit luncheon hosted by a
prominent local family, looking ultra-concerned for the fate of a
coastal island that was being threatened by developers. Had the
developers been home-grown, no one would have cared, but they'd had
the audacity to carpetbag it down from Maryland, and so the local
gentry were up in arms.

Where was this woman's concern for Luke? And
how come people like her never got shot, raped or ruined?

For the millionth time that month, it
occurred to me that life wasn't fair.

"Casey," Burly demanded as he wheeled into
the room. "We need you to cast the deciding vote."

I put the newspaper down and stared at him.
"About what?" I asked, wondering when I would bring up the topic of
me as Brookhouse bait.

"Do we put those gross synthetic French
fried onion ring things on top of the green bean casserole or not?
Bobby says yes and I say hell no."

I threw the paper at him, but he ducked.

The worst that could happen finally did. It
began that night at dusk, when the rest of Durham was at home
contemplating the lazy holiday stretching before them. The main
phone line rang at Helen's house, startling us all. When Fanny
answered it, she listened for a moment, her eyes widening, then
handed it to me.

The man on the end of the line first
confirmed that it was me, then announced that he was a nurse's aide
on Luke's floor. "I thought you might want to know this," he said.
"Even though the cops told us not to say a word to anyone about
it." He told me that a man wearing a black ski mask had attacked
Luke in his hospital room while his father was out having dinner.
Luke's private nurse had been hit over the head with a blunt
object, the caller explained, and had pulled a table over with her
when she fell. Luke, now conscious, had screamed and pressed a call
button. An orderly heard the commotion and investigated. He, too,
had been injured, his hand cut by a knife—but not before he scared
the intruder away.

And now Luke was calling for me.

"He sounds pretty hysterical," my caller
confided. "I don't think he's going to calm down until he gets a
chance to see you."

Fanny, Bobby and I all rode to the hospital
together. I did not trust myself to drive. We left Burly behind
with Helen—along with the growing crowd of armed Mexicans planted
on Helen's front porch.

We reached the hospital just as darkness
fell. Ferrar had gotten there before me. He was angry again. He was
always angry, it seemed, and usually with me. An armed officer was
guarding Luke's door. Talk about closing the barn door after the
horses have escaped. Ferrar would not let me in the room.

"No one goes inside," he
explained simply. He was holding a copy of that morning's
News & Observer.
Great. He'd probably assumed that I had been the one to feed
Helen's lawyer the fake witness evidence. My fault again, of
course.

"I didn't have anything to do with that," I
said, pointing to the newspaper.

"No one goes inside," Ferrar repeated. He
glanced at the armed guard, who nodded. "And you're going nowhere
but downtown with me. We're having another one of our special
talks."

"But Luke's asking for me," I protested.
"Maybe he remembers something."

"That kid hasn't been asking for anyone,"
Ferrar snapped back. "The breathing tube was ripped from his mouth
and he went into cardiac arrest. He hasn't said a word to anyone
and we're lucky he's still alive."

"That's not true—" I started to argue. Then
I stopped and thought about it.

Oh, Jesus god, what an idiot I had been.

"Give me your car keys," I demanded of
Bobby. He and Fanny were huddled with a couple of officers,
suggesting restaurants where Luke's father might be.

"What?" Bobby asked, slow on the uptake.

"Give me your car keys."

"Hey," he protested. "Every time I lend you
my car, you end up—"

I reached into his pants pocket and grabbed
them for myself.

"What the hell do you—" Bobby yelled after
me, but it was too late. I was already sprinting down the hall.

"Send someone out to Helen's house," I
shouted at Ferrar as I ran past. "He's going for her, I know he
is." Bobby would have to fill him in on the rest. I had to get back
to the farmhouse quick. Forget the elevator. I took the stairs.
Voices and shouting and chaos echoed behind me.

Bobby always drove land boats—huge
American-made luxury vehicles that looked like hearses and had
engines the size of small houses. His current car was no exception.
I floored that sucker as I rocketed toward Helen's house. There was
only one reason that anyone would have bothered to draw me away
from Helen's. I had to get back to her fast.

Despite breaking every traffic law on the
books, I arrived too late.

Later, Hugo and Burly told me what happened:
A few moments after I drove away with Bobby and Fanny in response
to the call about Luke—just as the dusk was deepening into
twilight—the men on Helen's front porch heard a drone in the
distance, a persistent whine that grew louder and louder. By the
time they realized it was the sound of a dozen motorcycle engines,
the bikers were on them. They roared up the narrow blacktop in a
disciplined formation, curved into Helen's front yard, ripping over
the flower beds and gouging deep lines in the lawn. They circled
past the porch, staying to the edges of the lengthening shadows,
shouting curses and taunting the men on the porch. Then they
wheeled away again, heading back in the direction from which they
had come—straight to nowhere but open countryside. The final man in
the line of bikers had slowed, pulled out a gun and taken aim at
Helen's front windows, firing three or four shots in rapid
succession. Before Hugo and his friends could react or return fire,
he gunned his engine and was gone.

Their reaction was unanimous. Men poured off
the porch like a swarm of locusts descending on a wheat field. They
ran, shouting for their cars, shaking their fists, spewing curses
in Spanish, firing their guns into the air and even taking a few
useless potshots after the rapidly disappearing motorcycle gang. By
the time Burly had wheeled to the front door to investigate, Hugo
and his friends were pulling out of the driveway, piled into a
convoy of clunkers and beaten-down sedans not seen since the sequel
to Mad Max. Men were hanging out of windows, aiming guns at
nothing, honking their horns, screaming threats of murder. No one
stopped to think. Like hounds that have seen a rabbit flash past,
the men kicked into overdrive and chased.