Better Off Dead (4 page)

She was silent.

"Are you afraid the cops would want you to
come downtown?" I asked. She glanced at me briefly and nodded. "And
that they wouldn't believe you?" She nodded again.

Abruptly, she walked to the base of the
steps that led to the second floor. "David Brookhouse has filed a
two-million-dollar civil suit against me," she said. "That's a lot
of motives to make up these letters and threats, don't you
think?"

"I believe it's him," I told her. "I always
have."

Without warning, she yelled up the steps in
a voice so loud I was astonished: "Mother," she bellowed. "It's
almost twelve fucking o'clock. How long do you plan to stay in
bed?"

An answering crash told us that, while
Mother was out of bed, she was still clearly in the throes of
waking up.

"Your mother lives with you?" I asked,
remembering what Helen's cleaning lady had told me when she visited
my apartment. She'd called the old lady "evil."

"Yes." Helen turned abruptly and marched
back into the kitchen. I got the feeling she spent a lot of her
time pacing from room to room. Who wouldn't? I'd implode if I had
to stay in one place all day, all night, never going outdoors, no
fresh air, no... god, I was getting claustrophobic just thinking
about it. I stared out the window in longing.

Helen was drinking more water at the kitchen
sink.

"I'll find out who's doing this," I told
her. "And a friend of mine is going to stay with you while I'm
gone."

She looked up at me, surprised.

"Helen," I said firmly. "You can't go on
living like this. This is not living at all."

She put her head down on the sterile counter
and began to weep.

"I gotta bodyguard who?" Bobby asked. His
feet were propped up on a trash can filled with bilge water from a
leak in the ceiling above. Each time a new drop landed in the
bucket, it splashed between his legs with a satisfying plop.

"Helen Mclnnes. Remember? The Durham rape
trial?"

"That's who that Turkish dame was working
for? I should never have sent her to your apartment." A wilted leaf
of lettuce trailed from Bobby's mouth like a mouse tail, bobbing
when he spoke. He had recently taken to eating BLTs by the
truckload, the catch being that he was in Raleigh and would only
eat BLTs made by American Hero in Durham—which made me the delivery
boy. This obsession with bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches was
proving handy, however. I suddenly had a very effective hold on him
when it came to cooperation.

"Give me another section," he mumbled,
wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his blue leisure suit and
reaching for the other half of the sandwich.

"Uh, uh, uh, uh." I held the BLT just out of
his reach. He growled, like a disgruntled lion who wants his
meat.

"I will only continue to waste half my life
ordering and delivering these babies to you if you agree to guard
Helen Mclnnes while I find out who is harassing her."

"Why can't you guard her?" he whined.

"I need to take a closer look at the
professor she suspects of having raped her. I can't be at her house
the whole time. But I'll be spending the night there."

"It's in the middle of nowhere," Bobby
complained, drumming his sausage fingers on the desk as he eyed the
sandwich half. I moved it to the right; his head swiveled toward
it. I held it up; he turned his nose to the ceiling, following the
scent. Amazing, he was just like a dog drooling over a dried liver
treat.

"You can stay there overnight, too," I told
him. "Move in for a while. She's agreed. There are plenty of
bedrooms. The place is an old farmhouse that was converted into a
rest home at one time."

"You're kidding."

"Nope. She inherited it from her
father."

"You want me to go to a rest home?" Bobby
asked incredulously.

"No, you moron." I tossed the sandwich on
his desk, defeated. Unless Bobby was eating, his brain cells
clearly did not work. "It's a private home now. Will you or won't
you?"

"Fanny's coming to visit," he complained.
"What am I supposed to do with her?" Fanny was Bobby's rotund
girlfriend, a jolly, gray-haired woman whose heart was as big as
her considerable bank account, though only half as large as her
legendary bosom. The two of them together were like a horny version
of Tweedledee and Tweedledum. They cooed over each other even more
than they oohed and aahed over the meals they loved to share. But
Fanny did keep Bobby in line. It was not such a bad idea to invite
her along.

"Bring her with you," I suggested. "She'll
enjoy the excitement."

As he was thinking it over, an acoustic tile
in the ceiling ripped from the weight of the water backed up above
it. A cascade of brownish liquid showered Bobby's desk, soaking his
sandwich.

We stared at the soggy mess.

"Unless, of course, you want to stay here,"
I said.

"Give me the address," he decided, opening a
desk drawer and examining his gun collection. He selected several
for their stopping power and caught me staring. "If I'm going to do
this, Case," he told me, "I'm going to do it right."

With Bobby on his way to hold down the fort,
I could concentrate on business. I hadn't discussed a fee with
Helen Mclnnes yet, but I wasn't worried. We could settle up later.
It was about time someone cut the lady some slack. Besides, we sure
as hell weren't paying rent for the office until the roof was
fixed, and for the first time in years, Bobby and I had extra money
in the bank, courtesy of a few months' worth of corporate security
work we'd done for a software firm in the Research Triangle Park.
Or, rather, work I'd done. Bobby had mailed the bill.

I considered where to begin. If I was going
to protect Helen Mclnnes, I had to find out who was sending her the
letters. And if the letters were connected to the rape, as they
almost certainly were, that meant I had to look into her rape. And
looking into the rape meant finding out more about the man who many
thought had gotten away with it: David Brookhouse. If he was guilty
after all, the letters could be coming from him. If he was
innocent, the letters could still be coming from him in
retaliation—or from one of his close supporters.

It was like following a long and winding
maze and discovering a rat cornered at the end of it. Only this rat
was a big one, a respected Duke University professor who had been
hired with a great deal of fanfare, thanks to his groundbreaking
work in a new field, and had then had his reputation besmirched,
thanks to an unstable scorned female—at least according to some
people. I was not going to get much cooperation from strangers on
this one. I'd have to do most of it alone, I realized, and much of
it undercover.

And I'd have to do it well. A lot was riding
on this case, more than I was used to. Finding out the identity of
her harasser might, quite literally, set Helen Mclnnes free and
allow her to step outside her home again, while proving that David
Brookhouse had, in fact, been the rapist would pretty much torpedo
the civil suit he had filed against Helen.

I wasn't exactly in over my head, but I was
in it up to my thunder thighs.

The phone at my office wouldn't work. Must
not have been waterproof. I tried to call my contact in the Durham
Police Department, a clerk named Marcus Dupree, but got nothing but
static. The flood waters in my office, which were beginning to soak
my high-tops, were taking a toll. When the overhead lights
flickered, it occurred to me that we were being idiots to mix
electricity and water. I'm all for tingles, but only when they are
one hundred percent manmade. I decided to abandon ship. I flipped
all the circuits, unplugged the phones, locked the door and walked
away. It was time to take this show on the road.

Contrary to popular belief in some quarters,
I do not make a habit of hanging out in men's rooms. But when I
need to get in touch with Marcus Dupree, without being seen, I have
no other choice. Which I hope explains why I was sitting on the can
in the third-floor bathroom of the Durham Police Department
headquarters, stall door firmly locked, blue slacks around my
ankles and heavy boots on my feet. I was pretending to be a
patrolman in gastric distress. For the sake of authenticity, I had
a magazine which I paged through loudly whenever the door opened
and someone clomped into the room. Unlike a ladies' room, not a lot
of socializing was done in the men's bathroom. Men walked in, did
their business, shook it off, and walked out. I waited, confident
Marcus would be arriving soon. He cannot get through an hour
without an illicit cigarette, and this was the only room in the
entire building without a smoke alarm, an oversight Marcus
treasured. He'd show up sooner or later.

Just when I was actually bored enough to
start reading an article on Jell-0 molds, Marcus arrived. I knew
him at once because he is so willowy that his step is much lighter
than the heavy thuds of the doughnut-stuffed, barrel-shaped men in
blue. I climbed up on the toilet seat so my feet were hidden from
view and waited while Marcus checked the room for occupants. He
then slipped into the stall next to mine. I heard the click of his
lighter. The pungent smell of burning tobacco soon followed.

"You're under arrest," I shouted, popping my
head above the stall and smiling down at him. He was crouched over
in shock, hiding his cigarette behind his back, desperately fanning
the air around him.

"Smoking in a public building is a
misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina," I reminded him. "Up
against the wall and spread 'em."

"Casey," he gasped in his precise voice.
"Please don't go shouting things like 'up against the wall and
spread 'em' within hearing distance of the men I have to work with.
I have enough problems as it is."

Poor Marcus did. His effeminate nature was
nothing out of the ordinary for most Southerners. Almost every big
family had its flamers, but the macho-crotcho guys of the Durham PD
were less accepting than your average elderly Southern aunt. Marcus
took a lot of crap from the men he worked with, and I admired him
for never letting them beat him down. He made a good salary and
wasn't about to give it up, not with a handful of brothers and
sisters still depending on him for college tuition, never mind the
seven he'd already bankrolled through school.

"We've got to stop meeting like this," I
said cheerfully.

"Why didn't you call first?" Marcus
demanded, casting a nervous glance toward his stall door. He relit
the cigarette and inhaled deeply.

"No phone. We've been flooded out."

"So? You never heard of pay phones? Or why
can't you buy a cellular phone like the rest of the world?"

"They give you brain cancer. Besides, it's
more fun this way," I admitted.

He blew a smoke ring, then poked the tip of
his cigarette through it. "What do you want from old Marcus this
time?"

"Why do I have to want something?" I asked
innocently.

"So you just dropped by to chat?" He raised
a nicely shaped eyebrow at me and rolled his eyes.

"Not exactly." I glanced toward the front
door. "Can we lock it?"

"No." He ground out his cigarette. "Is it
that important?"

"Maybe the most important thing I've ever
done."

"Then meet me outside in half an hour," he
said. Marcus always took me at my word. It was why I loved him. "By
the stadium. I'll take a late lunch."

I was about to thank him when the front door
of the bathroom opened. Panicked, we plopped back down on our
toilet seats and held our breath. A man entered singing a slow
mamba song. I peered out the crack in the stall door—it was the
plainclothes Hispanic detective I'd seen the night before outside
my apartment. He looked even cuter in the daytime. His dark hair
was brushed back and he wore a very nicely tailored blue suit.

Cute or not, I'd have a lot of explaining to
do if he went for the stalls. And so would Marcus. I held my breath
as he walked past the mirrors—he got two points for not glancing at
himself—then headed for the urinals. I briefly considered the skank
quotient of what I was about to do, then stared out the crack of
the stall door. I had a perfect view of the detective. Nice
technique. When he turned to go, he got two more points from me for
washing his hands, then strode from the bathroom, still
singing.

Marcus was hyperventilating next door. I
popped my head back over the partition like a demented gopher and
grinned. "Who was that?" I asked innocently.

"Keep your hands off him, Casey," Marcus
ordered me. "That's Detective Ferrar. He's some new guy, moved up
from Florida. He's been riding shotgun, touring the different
departments, getting the lay of the land for the past couple of
weeks. He's headed for a permanent spot in Homicide. Supposedly he
was a big deal down in Florida solving drug murders. Which means we
sure as hell could use him here."

"What's his first name?" I asked, though I
already knew it.

"Angel. So don't go getting any ideas."

I grinned wickedly. "I had a good view," I
admitted.

"No!" Marcus sounded shocked, but quickly
dropped the pretense. "What's the verdict?"

"Detective Ferrar walks softly and carries a
big stick."

Marcus nodded sagely. "Still, he's a married
man and has pictures of his wife and kids all over his desk, so
don't you be messing with his head. Promise me."

This time I pretended to be shocked. "Moi?
Would I risk the bad karma involved in seducing a married man.
Never." I might, however, let one seduce me.

Marcus began rearranging his perfectly
curled hair in preparation for his return to the squad room.
"Casey, you and I both know that there are three kinds of people in
the world. Those that loved Ashley Wilkes and his nobility, those
that thought he was the biggest pussy who ever set foot in Georgia,
and those people—like you—who couldn't wait to rip his clothes off
and corrupt him. Say what you will. I know the truth. You, my dear,
are an Ashley Wilkes fucker."