Read Online Better Off Dead by Katy Munger - Free Book Online

names,
workplaces and addresses. I wondered how many of the women still
lived the same lives they had led before their rapes. I know I
would have started over somewhere else. I noted the details of each
attack, searching for similarities. Because three of the violent
rapes had taken place near a shopping center in North Durham, far
from the campus, and had stopped abruptly when the main suspect was
jailed on an unrelated charge, I set those aside to concentrate on
the rapes that had occurred on or near the Duke campus.
    Marcus had been right. There were no
similarities between the campus attacks whatsoever. Besides being
amazed at the creative brutality of man, I was dismayed that there
were no apparent connections. Helen had been bound and gagged while
walking. Another woman had been carjacked and raped in a parking
lot, still another knocked out while reading on a bench in broad
daylight, and a fourth had been overpowered in a hospital elevator
at the Duke Medical Center in the middle of the night, then dragged
outside for the finale. The next victim had apparently been drugged
while attending a campus reception. She could remember nothing of
leaving the event or what happened afterward. Only severe bruising,
a few murky flashbacks and internal injuries bore witness to the
reality of her experience. Jesus, I thought, these women had all
done everything right from a personal safety standpoint, yet all
had been brutally attacked. Was it really as random as it
seemed?
    For a moment, I thought I had found a
connection: three of the women, including Helen, either worked in
the building that housed the psychopathology department's offices
and labs, or they took classes in the department. But two of the
women did not fit that profile. They were taking classes nearby the
same building, but that was little help. Of course they would all
link to classes in the area; they had apparently been stalked
precisely because of that.
    "They do any decoying?" I asked Marcus.
    He nodded. "Nothing happened except some of
our lady officers got hit on by some hunky college men."
    "Really?" I asked hopefully. "They need any
more volunteers?"
    Marcus looked at me from over a tabloid he
had discovered under my couch. I didn't have the heart to tell him
it was over a year old. It wouldn't have mattered anyway. The
stories were all the same.
    "What?" I asked defensively.
    "The men of Duke campus are not ready for
you, my dear," he said cryptically, then went back to gathering
gossip.
    Smug bastard. I kept reading, hoping for
enlightenment. It didn't look good. None of the women could
describe their attacker physically, other than three of them being
sure he was white and taller than average. Two believed their
rapist had been of average height and indeterminate race. The lack
of detail was not surprising given the premeditated, ritualistic
nature of the attacks. Some of the women had lost consciousness,
others claimed the man wore a mask or other disguise. One woman
believed there had been a second man present, though she had seen
or heard nothing to back up this feeling. Still another insisted
during her initial hospital interview that she had been raped by
Ronald Reagan. Later, a rubber Halloween mask with the former
President's face on it had been found in a campus trash can,
proving she had not been as out of it as was first thought.
    Still, nothing substantive among the cases
matched. I spent over three hours searching and came up with
zippo.
    "I don't get it," I mumbled. "There's not a
single distinguishing factor to link these." I thought of
something. "What about the professor, David Brookhouse?" I asked
Marcus. "Did they look into his whereabouts during the times of all
the rapes, or just the one of Helen Mclnnes?"
    Marcus sounded offended. "Of course they
did. He's not considered a suspect. There was no evidence to
suggest he was involved. And with the details of the other rapes
being so different compared to the Mclnnes attack he