Better Off Dead (8 page)

"Exactly." Marcus took an actual bite of
pizza in celebration. “They are too different and each one is just
a tad too distinctive for my tastes."

"They're staged," I realized. "That's why
the department is tracking computer access to the files. You guys
are afraid it's one of your own, someone who has access to rape
profile information."

"Detective Ferrar was the one to point out
that possibility," Marcus admitted. "So it wasn't my idea. We had a
meeting late this afternoon. It looks like he'll head up the task
force." Marcus coughed modestly. "I was, of course, the one who
originally suggested we run the M.O. of each attack through the
national crime system. It was the first thing Detective Ferrar
asked us about, and I was able to give him a thorough answer.
That's what led to his theory."

"Good for you," I said, knowing Marcus's
department victories were few and far between. "What happened when
you ran the searches? Any matches?"

Marcus nodded. "Absolutely. Perfect matches
in every case."

"So, you had a main suspect in each case?" I
said, knowing the purpose of the exercise had been to identify
known rapists whose typical crime elements matched those of each
Duke incident. Coming up with a name was the entire point of the
computer search.

But Marcus shook his head. "Actually, no.
Not really. The system came up with names right away, but in each
case the main suspect was behind bars and had been behind bars for
something like a minimum of twelve years."

"Damn," I said. "Someone is messing with our
heads."

I kept reading, then thought of the file I
didn't have: the newly murdered girl's. "Detective Ferrar is
Homicide, right?" I asked Marcus.

He nodded.

"So is this task force being formed to
investigate the girl's killing or the rapes?"

"Both. And Detective Ferrar has experience
in both areas, let me tell you. The man is sort of a super cop,
from what I hear tell." Marcus sighed. "He is certainly super in my
book. But he thinks the rapes have to be related to the murder.
Like you, he doesn't believe it's possible for five or six
different monsters to be preying on Duke co-eds in a two-year
period."

"Fraternities notwithstanding?" I asked.

Marcus wagged a finger at me. "These women
were sober when they were raped. It doesn't point to any frat
boys."

I thought it over some more. "So what about
unsolved murders? Have you looked into those? Maybe some of the
murder victims were raped first?"

Marcus shook his head. "Until this week,
there hadn't been a random, stranger murder in Durham for nearly a
year. When the good people of Durham kill, it appears they kill
those they know best. Their drug dealers, their drug customers or
their families."

"The beauty of small-town life," I muttered.
I stared at the files. "When do I get the dead girl's file?"

"Never," Marcus said abruptly. "No way. It's
active. No way."

I knew he was right. "Assuming the same man
is committing all these rapes, why would he kill this last girl and
not the others?"

"He didn't mean to?" Marcus suggested.
"Perhaps it got out of hand? Or she got a good look at him?"

I nodded, agreeing. "Maybe a better question
is why he didn't murder the other rape victims," I said,
"especially since he tortured them. It's not like he's afraid of
violence."

Marcus shook his head. "That I cannot tell
you."

"I think I know," I decided. "It's because
he believes he is better than a common murderer. More in control. I
think you're right. This last attack, the one where the girl died,
it was a mistake."

"Of course, that's assuming that we're
talking about the same man," Marcus pointed out, stifling a
yawn.

"True." I yawned with him. It was well past
midnight. "But if it's not the same guy, god help us all."

I slept late the next day, telling myself
that since I had no need to drive the thirty miles to my office in
Raleigh, I might as well enjoy the extra time. As this theory was
the only silver lining in the flooding fiasco, I planned to use it
often in the weeks ahead. When I finally dragged my sorry ass from
bed, another perfect October day was streaming in my kitchen
windows, spotlighting the dust bunnies and counter stains. I
contemplated doing some very belated spring cleaning, then decided
a breakfast at Elmo's Diner was a much better idea.

The moment I walked in the door, the
headlines on the newspapers scattered around the waiting benches
told me that the murder of the young Duke coed had been made public
with a vengeance. I grabbed a couple of sections and headed for an
empty table, scanning the news while I fueled up on coffee and
waited for my favorite waitress, Francine, to bring me my
order.

I could not find a connection between the
dead girl and Duke's psychopathology department, but the
information on her background was still sketchy at best. The
details they did have on the girl's life—as well as her violent
death— depressed me. Seeing her parents had made her real. The
thought of her sprawled across a stone wall in a remote corner of
the campus, neck broken and body battered, enraged me. Who had
discarded her as carelessly as an unwanted rag doll? If, as I
suspected, it was the same man who had attacked Helen Pugh, I
wanted to do more than bring him down.

Before I lost my appetite thinking about it,
I tossed the papers aside and concentrated on a big plate of cheese
grits with sausage bits crumbled on top. I savored every calorie,
not giving a shit if it landed on my thighs the next day or not.
Some mornings you just have to gorge. As I ate, I wondered how I
should approach the other rape victims.

I could not do it directly. Chances were too
great that people would trace my inquiries back to Helen. She had
suffered enough intrusions into her life as it was. Plus, the
victims' names were technically confidential. If I went right to
them, Marcus would be busted as my informant for sure.

I decided that the best strategy was to
print up an anonymous flyer saying I had been sexually harassed by
a Duke professor and wanted to hear from any students who'd had
similar experiences to discuss possible legal action. Then I would
distribute the flyers around the neighborhoods where the rape
victims lived and hope that they called me. I might as well target
women who had been in David Brookhouse's classes while I was at it.
That way, I would not be pointing the finger directly at
Brookhouse, but I would be leaving the door open to anyone who'd
had problems with him. If he'd had an affair with Helen, a graduate
student at the time, he had probably crossed that line before and
since. Maybe some of his jilted honeys could give more insight into
his character—or lack of it.

It would be easy enough to track down his
class lists and the current addresses of the rape victims. At least
it would be if I had a computer. Unfortunately, mine was bobbing
along in the flood waters over in Raleigh, so I was technologically
unarmed. And this was not the sort of search that could be
conducted privately at Kinko's, as it was a stone's throw from the
campus and likely filled with dozens of people who knew David
Brookhouse in one way or another.

I stopped by my apartment and called Burly
to see if he'd be willing to let me use his special edition iMac
for the job. Burly liked spending his money on high-tech toys and
had been taking a few computer classes over at Durham Tech to
justify his continual lust to upgrade. It was better than sitting
in front of the television set, drinking beer and provoking Duke
students, so I encouraged his hobby. Besides, I was not without
insight when it came to Burly: the Internet was a world where he
could move instantly from place to place, exploring with a speed
that the real world no longer offered him.

I reached Burly just as he and Weasel
Walters were about to take apart Weasel's Harley in search of the
cause of chronic sputtering. Weasel was a friend of Burly's from
the old, pre-wheelchair days—one of the few I actually liked. He
had a face like a rat and a heart like a lion. But he kept Burly
relatively sober with his own AA devotion, and there were times
when I felt I would not be able to handle my boyfriend's occasional
journeys into darkness without Weasel's help.

"How is good old Weasel?" I asked Burly when
I got him on the phone.

"Pootin' in tall cotton," Burly said. "He's
got a new girlfriend."

"Another one?" I hoped this one lasted
longer than the previous five. Fat chance, as Weasel seemed to pick
them up at the exit door of the mental ward.

"Who knows?" Burly answered cryptically,
which told me that already they were having problems.

When I asked him about using his computer,
Burly sprung a trap on me so quickly that I suspected he'd been
planning it for months.

"Sure," he agreed. "But let me do the
searching for you. I'm just sitting around on my ass."

Who could argue with that when it was a
paraplegic talking?

"I don't know, Burly. I don't like mixing
business with pleasure." The exception being good-looking police
detectives, of course.

"Babe," he said in his wheedling voice, the
one that usually ended up with my being naked and him being busy.
"You're wasting my talents. I could be your greatest resource.
Think of all the stuff you could do while I'm at the computer,
doing all that boring shit for you. I am starting to know the Web
like the inside of your thighs. I know places you have never
dreamed of. I can find out where those women live now, along with
everything from the balance of their bank accounts to their
favorite stores."

"That's really reassuring," I said. "God
knows what's on there about me."

"Come on, it makes sense to let me
help."

I thought about it. "You live too far away
for me to check in every day," I complained. "I'd waste a couple of
hours a day driving to and from your place."

"I can set my system up at your place.
Weasel will help me.”

Now, I love my boyfriend. But there's a
reason why I live alone—and that's so I can be by myself whenever I
damn well feel like it. Besides, I wasn't even going to be home for
the foreseeable future, and there was no way I was leaving Burly
alone in my apartment to poke through my private life. I had an
entire drawerful of objects with uses so specific that there was no
way I could come up with a cover story for why I had them, no
matter how far ahead I tried to think of one.

I confessed to Burly that I was staying at
my client's house, along with Bobby D, Fanny and the scariest
mother since Joan Crawford picked up a coat hanger.

"Cool," Burly said. "I want in on it. We'll
make it Crime Central."

"We will?"

"Sure. I'll get Weasel to help me bring my
stuff over and we can work on the case twenty-four hours a day.
I'll dig up stuff on that professor you would not believe. I'm
telling you—it's scary what you can find if you know where to
look."

I wondered briefly if Helen Pugh had
envisioned this when she gave me the go-ahead to "do what I had to
do" to get the job done.

I agreed dubiously, then remembered the
front steps. "You're not going to be able to get inside the
house."

"I'll crawl up the steps if I have to," he
proclaimed confidently. "And once I get there, I'm not going
anywhere."

Weasel, who was eavesdropping in the
background, interjected loudly to point out that he had carried his
pal many a time when Burly was too drunk to wheel himself to his
van. I knew then that I was outnumbered, so I gave them Helen's
address and hung up.

It wasn't a bad idea, just a half-bad idea.
If Burly could do even a fraction of the things he claimed, he'd be
able to cut down on my computer time considerably, leaving me free
to get out there and do some old-fashioned dogging of the
professor. By the time I drove out to Helen Pugh's house, I had a
plan in mind.

It would all hinge on Fanny.

Whatever worries I'd had about so many
people descending on Helen Pugh's house evaporated when I saw my
client. She was sitting at a table playing cards with Fanny and
Bobby, her face more animated than I had seen yet. After greeting
me happily, she resumed concentrating on her game.

"What are you guys playing?" I asked.

"Hearts," Helen explained, dropping a six of
hearts onto the top of the pile and laughing as Bobby grumbled and
raked in the hand.

I had never heard Helen laugh before. It was
a contagious trip up and down the scale so unlike anything I had
heard from her before that I stopped short in surprise. If this was
what the rape had robbed her of, she had paid a high price
indeed.

This good mood was apparently
contagious—though it was late morning, Helen's mother was lounging
on the sofa in the room next door, dressed in a floor-length silk
gown. She was watching an old Deborah Kerr movie and muttering at
the television screen. Smoke filled the air and cigarette butts
filled the ashtray, their scarlet-stained tips explaining why
Miranda's industrial-strength lipstick had worn off in the middle,
leaving a small O of withered lip to anchor the center of her
overstretched face.

I did not bother to bid her good morning
since she did not bother to acknowledge my presence. I simply
opened a window to let fresh air into the house before we all
asphyxiated.

Helen's gardener, Hugo, was in the side
yard, spreading peanuts on a slab of wood near a sycamore. If I
didn't know any better, I'd think he was actually feeding the
squirrels. This suspicion was confirmed when a bushy tail twitched
into view on the far side of the tree trunk. A small gray head
popped out on the opposite side, then the squirrel lifted its nose,
sniffing at the air. It scampered down the bark and crept toward
Hugo, standing on its hind legs to accept an offering. It held the
peanut between two paws and regarded Hugo with dark eyes as it
munched.