Better Off Dead (26 page)

"Did you find what you were looking for?" he
asked.

"I don't know. Maybe. I got some papers out
of a drawer he seems to keep locked pretty securely."

The janitor took a step forward to get a
better look at me. "I've seen you around here, right?"

I nodded. "That's right. I was... I was
posing as a student for a little while."

He pointed a finger at me. "I remember now.
You were hanging out with that young fellow who's trying so hard to
look tough."

Aw. Luke deserved better than that. "He's a
good guy," I felt compelled to say. "Young. But a good guy."

"He put the moves on you, too?" he asked
me.

"Who? The young kid?" Had he recognized us
in the bushes after all? I flushed.

"No." He shifted impatiently at my
stupidity. "The elbow-patch fellow."

"Brookhouse?" There was a reason why the
janitor refused to learn his name, I realized. He hated the guy,
pure and simple. "No. He never put the moves on me." I hesitated.
"I'm not his type. I think he was a little afraid to. Or
something."

The guy laughed. It was not a happy sound.
"He would be. He always picks the mousy little girls. His kind
always does. Someone little to make him feel big."

We stood in silence for a moment and I was
about to say something smart ass like, "Well, it was nice chatting
with you"—thus ruining our rapport—when he saved me from
myself.

"I expect you're anxious to get home," he
said.

"That I am." I resisted the urge to
embellish.

"Follow me."

I followed.

We made our way down the stairs to the first
floor, where he headed for the front door. The foyer smelled like
pine disinfectant, a sharp, artificial odor that tickled my
nostrils and made me want to sneeze. How could he breathe it all
night? Our footsteps echoed against the marble floor.

Halfway there, he stopped and turned to face
me. Why was this guy crowding me? I stared over his shoulder at the
front door. Freedom beckoned. If he would just get out of the
way.

"You didn't see me tonight," he said.

"Deal. And you didn't see me."

I could smell his sweat in the darkness.
"Just for my own personal information," he said, "how did you get
in?"

"One of the basement doors. Just before you
bolted it."

"I thought I heard something down there." He
scratched his head. "I got to learn to follow my instincts
more."

"I think you do just fine." But his mention
of the basement reminded me. I grabbed his forearm. Muscles leaped
beneath my touch. He was built like a tank.

"About that basement," I began. His muscles
stiffened and I removed my hand from his arm.

"What about it?"

Uh-oh. "Did you... did you ever know about
anything bad happening down there?" I asked. I was thinking about
the woman who had called the hotline, the one who said she had been
raped in the basement. I wondered if she had been telling the whole
truth.

A silence lengthened between us. Outside, a
horn honked.

Inside, a clock ticked on a nearby wall. My
stomach growled. I was hungry.

He waited so long to answer, I knew he had
seen something. A prickle of excitement crept up the back of my
neck. "You saw her, didn't you?" I guessed. "You saw a woman who
had been raped?"

He still took a moment to think it over
before answering. "I promised her I would never tell no one. She
wanted it that way."

"I think she's dead," I said.

I could feel his dismay.

"I'm sorry. I thought you knew. I think she
was the lady who got killed a couple nights ago. Did you know her
well?"

He shook his head. "I saw her here a few
times. I think she had something to do with the office. You know.
Alumni or fundraising or something."

"Her husband works for the university."

He was silent for a moment. "So, there you
have it. It's why she wanted me to keep it quiet. She didn't want
her husband to know."

"Did you find her?" I asked. "Were you the
one?”

"I found her. I found her lying on the floor
downstairs." His voice was indefinably sad, as if he had seen many
terrible things in his life and finding a broken woman on the floor
of a basement was just one more of them. "She was tore up pretty
bad. She was propped against one of the soda pop machines down
there."

A chill ran through me. He'd found her in
the exact same spot where I had chosen to hide.

"Whoever done it ripped off her clothes.
Down here. You know?" He indicated the area below his waist. "She
still had on her blouse."

"She was badly hurt?" I asked.

"Seemed that way to me. There was blood. In
the wrong places." He hesitated, then went on. "Blood on her legs,
you know? And on her head."

"Did she say who did it to her?"

"She didn't say nothing to me. Except to beg
me not to tell anyone," he explained. His voice broke. "The second
I found her, she grabbed my shirt and started in on begging me not
to tell anyone. That was all she would say. Even after I promised
I'd keep quiet, she kept on begging me, like she didn't believe I'd
keep my word. He knew she'd be that way, too."

"Who knew?"

"The man who did that to her," he said. "He
could have killed her just as easily as leave her there. From what
I saw that he did to her body, he could kill in a heartbeat. But he
wanted her to live. He wanted her to know that he had done it.
Because he knew she wouldn't tell. He knew she'd beg whoever found
her not to say a word. That's my opinion, anyway. I've been around
people like that. I know what they're like."

I felt a little sick to my stomach. "What
did you do with her?"

"She wouldn't let me call the police, but I
had to do something. I used to be a medic and I knew she was hurt
bad. So I carried her over to the hospital."

"You carried her?" I asked, incredulous.
"It's eight blocks away."

"I don't have a car," he explained. "I
couldn't take her on the bus, now could I? Or leave her here. So I
carried her to the emergency room. To the front desk."

"Jesus," I said. "What next?"

"I put her down in a chair by the counter.
She was crying by then. And then I ran like hell. Right out the
doors. And back here. Where I kept on working."

He didn't have to tell me why he had run. I
was pretty sure he had a record. Why else would a man of his
intelligence be swabbing floors? And I knew what it was like to
have a record following you around. And while I didn't know what it
was like to be a black man, I could guess at part of it. At least
enough to know that toting around a raped white woman was taking a
big risk.

"You're a good man," I said.

"Sometimes. I've done bad things in my life.
Real bad things."

"Well, you did a good thing tonight."

We walked to the front door together. He
unlocked it without a word. As I started to leave, he gripped my
arm. His fingers were like iron clamps. "You have to hit me over
the head first," he said.

"What?" I was inches away from him and could
see the sheen of sweat coating his face. Honest sweat. He'd been
working hard all night, with no one even there to see it. He was
probably the only one in the entire fucking department who worked
for work's sake, who wasn't jockeying, plotting, moving up the
ladder or moving on to greener pastures.

"You got to hit me over the head," he
repeated. He held up the metal rod in his hand—it was a piece of
rebar. "With this."

"I can't do that." I was appalled.

"I'll lose my job," he explained.

"Oh, Jesus." I shook my head. "How
hard?"

"Hard enough to make a bruise," he said.
"I'll fake the rest."

"Oh, god. How hard is that?" I held the
rebar in my hand. Now I felt more than a little sick to my
stomach.

"'Bout as hard as you'd swing an ax when the
split is already started and you just want to finish off the log,"
he explained.

"How did you know I'd understand that?"

"You're a farm girl. I can tell."

I hoisted the bar and resisted the urge to
shut my eyes. If I missed, I could do real damage.

"Where?" I asked, poised to strike.

"Near the front. To the side of the temporal
lobe. Less chance of permanent damage that way."

"How do you know that?"

"Miss, I'm a janitor. I'm not a moron. I can
read."

"It's your head," I said. And swung.

It made a soft thwack, like I'd just thumped
a melon with a nightstick. He crumpled to the floor.

"Oh, goddamn," I said, crouching over him.
"I've killed you."

"Not yet," he replied, holding his hands to
his head. "But you must be a hell of a wood splitter. It's a good
cut. It'll do. Now get on out of here."

I pushed through the front door and took off
down the steps at top speed. I'd had enough action for one
night.

Which reminded me. Luke was waiting at my
apartment to talk to me. I ran even faster.

My car was gone. I could not believe it.
Unwilling to park as far away as I had earlier—after all, everyone
had gone home and I was in no danger of being seen—I'd left it
hidden behind a payloader in a parking lot under construction a
block away. Where the hell was it? I examined the patterns of
tracks that vehicles had left in the heavy red dirt. I was no
Sherlock Holmes, god knows, but it appeared that my beloved car had
been towed.

Someone had called it in, I was sure. A
campus cop would never have noticed it on his regular rounds.

I checked my watch. I would have to wait
until morning to track it down. It had been dragged in ignominy
from campus before—and I knew the rap on getting it back. They
busted your balls every step of the way. And I'd need a phone and
cold hard cash to begin the ransom procedures.

Screw it. I had better things to do. And
only fifteen minutes to get home, shower and dress before Luke
arrived for our little chat.

I started hightailing it through campus,
pissed that on this, the coldest night of the year so far, I was
hiking more miles than a bunch of Swiss tourists hitting the
Alps.

The campus was deserted, as only an early
cold night in the South can cause. No one was prepared for the
chill. No one wanted to face it. Winter was coming. Let's all
huddle indoors. Except for that schmucky blond broad racing against
the wind in the middle of campus. Must be some fool Northerner from
New England who doesn't know any better.

Must be me.

A car passed by, in a hurry. I could see the
lights of Duke Medical Center through the bare trees. It is a
massive complex, with acres of buildings filled with floors and
floors of the dying and desperate. Sometimes it made me sad to
think of so many faces, pressed against their hospital-issued
pillows, suffering, hoping, despairing inside the granite and brick
structures that looked so much like prisons. People came from all
over the world to seek miracles at Duke. It was the Lourdes of
modern medical science. And so many, I was sure, returned home
disappointed, to die.

I heard a car approaching behind me, fast.
Too fast. I turned, but it was already gone. It had swung quickly
into a side street and disappeared down a hill. A compact, maybe.
Glowing taillights. That was it.

I was jumpier than a cat on a hot
griddle.

Duke is a well-lit campus. In spots. Some
sections are not meant for cross-country treks. I'd need to cut
through three dark areas or I'd add another half hour to my already
way too long walk. One of the worst sections was just ahead: a
thick patch of fir trees that could easily obscure anyone hiding
inside. I wasn't stupid. I knew there was a rapist/murderer on the
prowl. I knew I was getting close to him. I knew he could well have
been the one who called my car in and had it towed.

I knew he could be behind me right now.

The thought made me stop in my tracks. Maybe
I should have found a pay phone and called Burley or Bobby D. for a
lift. But then they'd each find out what I was up to.

And then I would not be able to meet Luke
and settle things once and for all.

See what happens when you start to lie? The
lies just grow and grow and grow, eventually weaving a spider web
that will surely trap you.

God, I was being morbid tonight

I jogged through the pine forest, shoving
the overhanging branches aside. Sharp Douglas fir needles pricked
my face. The softer pines brushed against my skin, an eerie caress
that inspired me to run faster.

I emerged on the other side, panting but
safe, two blocks closer to the bright lights of downtown Durham
where my cozy apartment waited.

I still had at least two miles to go. I
followed a winding sidewalk around a section of buildings, then cut
across the campus in front of Duke Chapel. Its single spire rose in
silent glory into the night sky. I stopped and stared, transfixed.
The cold air was thin and the stars blazed through, bright
pinpoints of fire scattered behind the slender shadow of the
chapel's cross. It looked like a Christmas card of Bethlehem. Peace
on earth. I wished.

I rested, staring at the beauty of the
chapel, my head bent as I gulped in the cool air, my hands resting
on my knees. A couple of cars passed by a block away, cruising
around a traffic circle that whirls cars off its axis like a
pinwheel during the daylight hours, sending visitors and students
in all directions. It was the heart of west campus. I had a long
damn way to go.

I was near Duke Gardens, I realized, and
very near where Helen had been attacked a year and a half ago.

The lawn felt soft beneath my feet, soggy
from recent rain, and the open expanse of grass stretching before
me was crisscrossed with shadows from nearby trees.