by Crider, Bill
"I didn't really mean that you look awful," Miss Tanner said. "But your nose does look kind of funny, bleeding like that."
Burns was glad there wasn't a mirror handy. He didn't want to see his nose any more than he wanted to touch it.
"I hope I'm not scaring you," he said.
"Oh. No. It's just that . . . well, never mind. What happened to you?"
"I told you. Someone hit me."
"Who was it?"
"I don't know." Burns told her what had happened. "He must have hit me with the biggest book in this place. It felt like an unabridged dictionary. I'd have gotten him if he hadn't hit me first."
"I'm sure you would have. I wonder what he was doing here, and why he didn't answer us?"
Burns thought of something else. Though it pained him to mention it, he said, "We keep saying 'he.' It could have been a woman."
"A woman could have done that to you?" Miss Tanner's eyes were wide behind her glasses. They are certainly a nice shade of green, Burns thought irrelevantly.
"Why not?" he said. He wondered if she might be thinking about Boss Napier. Burns was sure that no woman could sneak up on Napier and clobber him like that.
"No reason. But why would anyone do that?"
Burns didn't know the answer to that one. He started toward her, kicking aside a book or two as he went. What the hell? he thought. He was sorry for the mess, and he was even sorrier that the books might be damaged, but if they could fall on him, he could kick them. He looked, but he didn't see any unabridged dictionaries.
"Where are you going?" Miss Tanner asked.
"To get those books of Street's," he said. "I think we should show them to Boss Napier." He didn't mention that he wouldn't have a sore nose and that the library wouldn't be in such a mess if she had gone to Napier in the first place.
"I suppose you're right," Miss Tanner said, slipping her feet into her shoes and following him. "I don't know how I'm going to explain this to President Miller, though."
"Tell him you were weeding the library," Burns suggested.
Naturally the copies of Street's books were gone.
They looked on the table where they thought they had left them, and then they looked on the nearby tables. They looked on the floor and even back in the stacks, but the books weren't there.
"They couldn't simply have disappeared," Miss Tanner said in frustration. "Did I take them with me when I went to see about the noises?"
"No," Burns said. "And I didn't take them either."
"Then where are they?"
"I think whoever hit me took them away with him."
"But why? They weren't valuable or anything. They were first editions, of course, but they had been read a number of times. The spines were worn, they had a library stamp on the endpapers, they—"
"I don't think they were taken by a book collector," Burns said, interrupting her.
"But who else would want them?"
"Whoever stained the pages," Burns said.
"Oh. But why?"
"Because . . . well, I don't know why. But I can't think of any better explanation. Besides, I don't think that some maniacal bibliophile would sneak up behind me and bash me in the face with an unabridged dictionary."
"True," Miss Tanner agreed. "Book collectors are usually much nicer people than that." She thought for a second. "But what are we going to do about Mr. Napier?"
Burns didn't like to hear her say the police chief's name, and he found that he didn't want her to be the one to talk to the man.
"I'll talk to him," he said. "He'll be pretty upset that we didn't tell him about the books sooner, and I'm used to him. He knows I'm not scared of him."
"But why would anyone be scared of him?"
Burns was tempted to tell her a few of the rumors about Napier, but he decided against it.
"I can think of a few reasons," he said. "But don't let that bother you. If he wants to see you, he will, after I get him calmed down."
He didn't know how he was going to get Napier calmed down, and he didn't particularly look forward to talking to him, but it seemed like the least he could do. He felt in some way vaguely responsible for what had happened in the library.
"You'd better have someone look at that nose first," Miss Tanner said.
"I will. What about you?"
"I thought I might stay here and try to clean up some of the mess," she said.
"I don't think that would be a good idea," Burns said. "What if our visitor comes back? What if he had something to do with Street's murder?"
Miss Tanner thought about that. "Maybe I'd better just go on home," she said. "It's just awful to think that a visitor to our own campus has been murdered."
"It certainly is," Burns agreed. "That kind of thing could give us a bad reputation."
"I didn't mean that the way it sounded," she said. She had another thought. "Why don't we call the police and let them come to investigate? If whoever did this is still here, they can catch him."
Burns knew that she was right about the call, though he didn't have much faith in the second idea.
"All right," he said. "We'll go down and you can make the call. I'll wait until someone comes, and then I'm going to the Emergency Room." He hoped that Napier would not come in person, but it was doubtful that the chief would be going out on routine calls.
"Maybe we should call Campus Security, too," Miss Tanner said.
"Campus Security" was an old man known to the students, and the faculty, too, as Dirty Harry. He carried a .357 magnum that he was just as likely to point at an innocent bystander as at a criminal.
"We'll call the police," Burns said. "Let's leave Dirty Harry out of it."
They went back to the elevator and let it shiver and shake its way to the first floor. They locked the front doors, just in case the vandal was still inside, which Burns seriously doubted, and then they went into Miss Tanner's office, which was located in the rear of the building down a short, dark hall.
While she made the call, he looked around her office. Her diploma was on the wall behind her desk and it confirmed the fact that her name was Elaine and informed him that she had a Master's degree in Library Science from Texas Tech University in Lubbock.
Nothing unusual in that.
What was unusual was the trophy shelf on one wall. It had probably not been intended as a trophy shelf, Burns thought. More likely it had been intended to hold books, but that was not what it was holding now. It was covered with trophies.
Burns walked over to inspect them as Miss Tanner spoke to one of Pecan City's finest on the phone, trying to explain to him that she meant the college library, not the local public library. It seemed the police were having a hard time grasping the distinction.
Burns looked at the trophies. It was a mind-boggling array. In fact, it seemed that Miss Tanner had everything but a Super Bowl ring, and Burns would not have been surprised to see one of those.
There were tennis trophies, track trophies, volleyball trophies, bowling trophies, and even an archery trophy—among others. Some were small, not more than six inches tall, while others were enormous. There was one on the top shelf that must have towered eighteen inches tall. The number 85, in gold, stood between two red and gold pillars that supported a marble crosspiece. On the crosspiece there was another red and gold pillar surmounted by a gold figure of Winged Victory. On the marble base, the wording engraved on a gold plaque told Burns that the trophy had been awarded at the "KTTP Invitational, 1985."
Nothing else on the shelf was quite so impressive, but there were one or two curiosities, such as the fact that one of the bowling trophies had been awarded in 1956. Looking at Miss Tanner, Burns found it difficult to believe that she had been old enough to bowl in 1956. In fact, he was sure that she had not been.
She hung up the phone and turned to him. "They'll be here as soon as they can—if they can find the place," she said. She noticed his interest in the trophies. "How do you like them?"
"They're, uh, pretty i
mpressive," Burns said. "I didn't know you were so talented."
Miss Tanner laughed throatily. Burns found himself wanting to make her laugh again, though he wasn't sure why she was laughing this time.
"They're all mine, too," she said.
"I see that there's one here that's, uh, well, pretty old," Burns said.
She laughed again. Burns was beginning to feel quite witty.
"I said they were mine. I didn't say how I got them."
Burns thought about that for a second. Since he'd already brought it up, he thought he might as well keep on with it. "How did you get them, then?"
"I bought them," she said.
"Bought them?"
"At garage sales, junk stores, places like that. People like those things when they win them, but after they've gathered dust a few years they get tossed out or sold. So I buy them."
"Why?" Burns said. He was genuinely curious.
"They make me feel good. Whenever something bad happens, or if I ever start feeling depressed, I just go out and buy myself a trophy. Then I feel good about myself."
For some reason, Burns found himself thinking about the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz.
"I usually don't tell people that," Miss Tanner said. "Most people don't look at them very closely, so I just let them think they're mine."
"Your secret is safe with me," Burns said.
"Thank you," Miss Tanner said, stepping closer to him and putting a hand on the sleeve of his jacket.
Burns's heart started beating a little faster and he started to say something just as someone began pounding on the glass doors in front of the building.
"I imagine that's the police," Miss Tanner said. "They certainly did get here in a hurry, didn't they?"
Burns, who imagined that in a real emergency the police might have taken hours to arrive, said, "They certainly did."
Miss Tanner looked at him again with those green eyes, and then she went to let the police inside.
Chapter 8
Burns did not like hospitals, but his nose was really hurting by the time the young patrolwoman had given the library a thorough search and finished questioning him and Miss Tanner. He drove to Pecan City Regional Hospital and parked as close as he could to the Emergency Room doors, which swooshed open as he approached them. He always thought of Ben Casey when he went through doors like that.
There was a tall blonde man wearing a pharmacist's white coat walking down the hall, and he directed Burns to the Emergency Room itself. Burns stood at the desk and filled out the insurance forms and tried to ignore what was going on around him, though it wasn't easy.
Some young man had brought in his small daughter to have a gash in her chin sewed up, and the girl clearly was not pleased to be there. She was sniffling and crying and trying to pull away from him.
Worse, there was a young man sitting near the wall with what appeared to be a broken arm. His left arm was twisted at an awkward angle, and he was trying hard not to cry.
His parents were sitting next to him, trying to comfort him. His mother was crying and the father looked disgusted.
"Tried to slam-dunk a basketball," the father said. "He's not but five feet tall, and he tried to slam-dunk a basketball. I've told him a hundred times not to try stuff like that."
"I've done it before," the boy said, sniffling. "I got a real good vertical leap." He stood up. "I bet I can jump four feet straight up. You wanna see me?"
"Uh, no," Burns said. He didn't want to get involved in a family argument.
The boy bent his knees, crouching as if to soar ceiling-ward, but the man clapped a hand on the boy's shoulder. "You better get some sense in you, boy," he said. "You want to get another broke arm?"
"No," the boy said, sniffling louder.
"Sit down, then," the man said.
Burns had to wait about an hour, but finally the boy got his arm put into some sort of soft cast, after a great deal of unruly behavior and a little yelling. Then Burns got his turn.
"Hummmm," the doctor said as he examined Burns's nose.
Burns hated it when doctors said "hummmm." It never meant anything good.
"I'm afraid it's broken," the doctor said cheerfully. "We'll fix it up good as new, or nearly as good. You can tell everyone it's an old football injury."
The doctor laughed heartily. Burns did not join in.
When the doctor was finished, Burns looked like Geraldo Rivera had looked after the skinheads, or whoever it was, had pounded him, except that he lacked Geraldo's swashbuckling flair. Or maybe it was the sleaze factor he lacked. Anyway, he thought, what he really looked like was a wimp English teacher with a broken nose. The bandage sloped down the sides, making a sort of pyramid, and he wondered what Miss Tanner would think of it.
He also wondered what Boss Napier was thinking about now. He had probably been informed about the incident at the library, about which Burns had to admit that he and Miss Tanner had not told the whole truth to the patrolwoman. Well, they had told the whole truth as far as it went. They had answered all the woman's questions openly and honestly. They just hadn't volunteered any information, such as the name of the person who had last checked the books out.
Napier had told Burns not to get involved in the case, but Burns was certainly involved.
Napier wasn't going to be happy.
Burns decided to go on home and forget about it. When he got to his house he noticed the stringless basketball hoop that the original owner of the house had attached to the roof over the garage door. Burns thought about shooting a few baskets, but then he thought better of it. He already had a broken nose; no use trying for a broken arm. Besides, he didn't have a basketball.
Burns parked the Plymouth in the garage, went inside, and tried to relax. He put a couple of Merle Haggard albums on his turntable and sat down with a pen and paper to make a list of the ten best country songs of all time. After he had worked for a quarter of an hour, he had only five songs listed, and three of them were by George Jones. That hardly seemed fair, though "She Thinks I Still Care," "The Window up Above," and "He Stopped Loving Her Today," certainly qualified. The trouble was, he couldn't decide which one to put first.
The other two songs were by Haggard, and that didn't seem fair either. Burns was worried that he might be influenced by what he was listening to. After all, the idea of a list of great country songs without one by Hank Williams in the top ten was ludicrous.
He wadded up the list and threw it at the trash can across the room. It rimmed the can and went in, but even that didn't make Burns feel better. He tried starting the list over, but that didn't work, either.
He knew what was bothering him. He could even make a list.
Street's murder.
The missing books.
Whether Napier had learned anything from questioning the people that morning after the seminar.
Burns got up and turned off the record player. He knew he wasn't being smart, but he also knew he was going to have to talk to Napier before his curiosity drove him crazy.
He called the police station, but he was informed that Chief Napier was off duty.
"Where can I reach him?" Burns asked. "I'd like to talk to him about a case he's working on."
"The Chief don't work cases personally."
"He's working on this one. It's a murder case."
"Oh, yeah. That writer at the motel. He's workin' on that one, all right. You say you got some information about the murder?"
That wasn't what Burns had said, but he decided to play along. "That's correct."
"Hang on a second, then. Maybe I can put you through to him."
There was a series of clicks, dead silence, and then a ringing noise. The ringing went on for quite a while, and Burns was just about to hang up when a voice said, "Napier here."
"This is Carl Burns, Chief. I was wondering if—"
"Look, Burns, I know what you're wondering. You're wondering if I'm gonna bust your ass for getting involved in Stream's murder like I t
old you not to, that's what you're wondering."
"Well, that's not exactly how I would have phrased it," Burns said. "I was hoping—"
"You was hoping I wouldn't break your wimpy English teacher body in about a thousand pieces, that's what you was hoping."
"No, not that, either," Burns said. "I thought maybe—"
"You thought maybe you could suck up to me and get me to lay off you, but it won't work. I warned you, Burns, and now you're gonna be sorry."
"Look," Burns said, sounding as tough as he knew how, "are you going to listen to what I have to say or not?"
There was a moment of silence at the other end of the line. Then Napier said, "All right. I'll listen. But make it good."
"I want to talk to you about the murder," Burns said.
"I told you not to get involved in that," Napier said.
"I didn't intend to," Burns said. "It just sort of happened."
"You remember what 'sort of happened' to you the last time, don't you?"
Burns remembered, all right.
"Well, then," Napier said, "what makes you think this time'll be any different?"
"It probably won't be," Burns admitted. "I've already got a broken nose."
"A broken nose, huh?" Napier did not sound sympathetic. "That's what you get when you stick it where you ought not to." He paused. "I heard you got in a little tussle."
"Tussle" wasn't exactly the word Burns would have used, but he didn't argue the point. "I want to talk to you about that," Burns said.
"It's Saturday," Napier pointed out. "I spent all morning interviewing people about a murder. Then I had to go over the evidence and talk to the doctor about the autopsy. Then I get a call telling me that you and Miss Spanner—"
"Tanner," Burns said.
"—that you and Miss Tanner were assaulted in the library and that some books are missing, books, it just so happens, written by the deceased guy in the Holiday Inn."
Actually, he wrote them when he was alive, Burns thought. He didn't say it, however. Napier didn't seem like the type who would enjoy discussing the finer points of grammar.
