Dying Voices

by Crider, Bill

  Poor Harold? Burns wondered if his hearing was getting bad. "I thought you hated him," he said.

  "Not really. And I certainly didn't want him to die. It must have been terrible for you, though, all the questioning and trouble with the police. Do they know who shot him?"

  "Not yet," Burns said.

  "I assume it's connected to Edward Street's death, don't you?"

  "I guess so. I just can't think of any reason why someone would want to shoot Duncan."

  Melinda shivered, though the day was hot. "It's all so awful."

  "It should make an interesting article for you," Burns said.

  "Well, there is that to consider. I was going to talk to Miss Nelson again. I'm sure she knows more than she told me yesterday."

  "Good luck," Burns said.

  "Will I see you tonight?"

  "Uh, I have a class tonight."

  "Maybe tomorrow, then." She went on past him and into Main.

  Burns went on across the street to the business building, not dreading his talk with Hayes quite so much now, but his apprehension returned when a man came out of the building and got into an unmarked car.

  It was just as they said in the mystery novels Burns read—you could always spot a cop. The man getting into the car could be nothing else. He wore a cheap suit that looked a bit too small through the shoulders and a tie that seemed to choke him. The car was a nondescript Ford that looked exactly like every other city vehicle in town. Maybe the visit would have disturbed the seemingly imperturbable Hayes.

  It was getting on toward the middle of the afternoon now, and the Business Building was practically deserted. It was almost impossible to get students to register for afternoon classes, though Burns, like every other department head, was required to schedule them. What usually happened was that only five or six students would sign up for the classes, which meant that the classes could not be run. It would not be economically feasible.

  So Burns would have to go into the classroom on the first day and announce that there would be no class. The students who came were angry at the cancellation because they had carefully worked on their schedules to include the afternoon class; they would have taken it some other time if they could have. Burns was angry because the students were angry. The administrators were happy, however, because they could show the Board that afternoon classes had been scheduled, even if not enough students would take them.

  Because there were very few afternoon classes, most faculty members worked out their office hours so that they could leave the campus by two or three o'clock. Some of the administrators did not like that, and they were fond of saying that they could shoot a shotgun down the hallways of Main at four o'clock and not hit a soul. Burns's answer to that was that he could shoot a shotgun through the administrative offices at seven o'clock in the morning when he arrived on campus and not hit anyone then, either.

  The door to Hayes's office was open, but no one was in there. Burns stuck his head in the door and looked around. There were signs on the walls, all of them expressing Hayes's philosophy of life. One of them said, IF LIFE HANDS YOU A LEMON, MAKE LEMONADE! Another said, I AIN'T MUCH, BABY, BUT I'M ALL I'VE GOT! There was one with a giant smiley face:

  SMILE!

  GOD LOVES YOU!

  And there was one that sounded to Burns as if it might have come from some television evangelist, but which quoted without attribution: "Something GOOD is going to happen to YOU!"

  Burns had bought a sign a year or so back. It said, "A Dirty Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste." He had never had the nerve to put it on his office wall, but he decided that he would do it the next day.

  He went back out into the hallway, looking around. He didn't see anyone, but he heard something. There was an intermittent whipping or pounding noise coming from somewhere near the rear of the building.

  Burns walked in the direction of the pounding. It was coming from the men's rest room.

  Burns cautiously pushed the door open.

  There was no one in the open area, but there was a pair of brown wing tip shoes showing underneath the door of the stall. The shoes were facing the toilet.

  As Burns stood there he heard a long, loud grunt: "Unnnhhhhh!"

  The sound was punctuated by a loud whapping noise as something thrashed the toilet seat, which apparently bounced up and clicked back down.

  Then the sounds were repeated:

  "Unnnhhhhh!"

  "WHAP!"

  "Click."

  There was silence for a few seconds, and Burns could hear a harsh panting. Whoever was in there must have a hell of a digestive problem, Burns thought.

  The stall door opened and Dick Hayes stepped out, threading his belt through the loops on his dark blue pants. Hayes was short and completely bald, and he wore one of the worst toupees Burns had ever seen. It was some indeterminate shade between orange and brown and looked as if it might be made out of carpet remnants. Burns had once seen Hayes walking across the campus, and the toupee had been snagged by a very low-hanging limb. Hayes had not realized his hair was missing for several steps, and Burns thought a bird might nest in it if Hayes did not retrieve it.

  Hayes looked up and saw Burns watching him. He was very much taken aback. "Oh, uh, I didn't know there was, uh, anyone in here, Burns. What happened to your nose?"

  "Just happened to be passing by," Burns said, ignoring the remark about his nose. He was getting tired of hearing about his nose. "I thought someone might need help."

  Hayes buckled his belt and smiled broadly. "Nosirree, no help needed. That was just my way of lettin' off a little steam. Y'see, Burns, I don't let life get me down. And if it starts to, well, I just do something about it. Like now. I was gettin' a little bit tense and needed to unwind, so that's what I came in here to do. Now I feel great! You can't let things get you down."

  First it was Elaine and bubble-blowing, now it was Hayes with the belt. The signs had been bad enough.

  "Yessir, I just come in here to the old rest room and take off my belt and whale the tar out of that old commode in there," Hayes went on. "Doesn't hurt the commode, y'see, and it's a lot better than hittin' a person, don't you think?"

  "Sure," Burns said. "Especially if the person's a cop."

  Hayes's smile collapsed. His fingers twitched in the direction of his belt buckle. "Who told you there was a cop in here?"

  "I saw him," Burns said.

  "Oh," Hayes said. "Well, naturally they wanted to talk to me about old Ed Street. Speed, we used to call him. He liked that. I couldn't help them any, though." He looked around the rest room. "Why don't we get out of here, Burns? If you came by to visit, we can do that in my office."

  Burns started to say that he found the atmosphere more congenial in the rest room, but he thought better of it. They left the rest room and returned to Hayes's office.

  Hayes settled himself into the executive chair behind his desk, and Burns sat in the visitor's chair.

  "Now what's this about you dropping by?" Hayes said, his hand smoothing his toupee. His smile was back in place. "You don't make a habit of visiting the business department very often."

  "I was wondering if you told the cop about your call from Street," Burns said.

  The smile disappeared again. "He already knew about it. How did you find out?"

  "I heard," Burns said vaguely. "Did he happen to ask you anything about the rumor concerning your late wife?"

  "Now just a minute, Burns," Hayes said, standing up to his full height, which wasn't much over five-six. "What gives you the right to come in here and say things like that?"

  "President Miller asked me to look into things. He said I could be assured of the full cooperation of the faculty. Do you want to call him and check it out?" Burns knew Hayes wouldn't call. Everyone at HGC was deathly afraid of losing his job; no one would question the president.

  Hayes forced the smile back into place. "No, no. Of course not. If President Miller wants cooperation, he can always count on me. You can tell him th
at, Burns."

  "I will," Burns lied. "Now about that rumor. . . ."

  "That was a vicious lie," Hayes said. He was sweating now, and Burns saw a trickle of moisture running out from under the toupee. "I didn't mention it because it was nothing more than slander. I never knew that Street started the rumor, either, if that's what you're implying."

  "But you thought he did," Burns said. "Exactly how did your first wife die, anyway?"

  "Cancer," Hayes said. "It was terrible, Burns, terrible. If it hadn't been for Traci, I would never have been able to survive the ordeal." Traci was the student Hayes had married. "I know it sounds phony, but I deeply loved my wife, and I deeply love Traci. We never even so much as held hands until months after my wife died."

  "And Street had his eye on Traci, too."

  "Yes. She was in one of his classes. But he had his eye on all the girls. I shudder to think of the co-eds he might have ruined if he'd been teaching at a state university."

  It was an article of faith among HGC teachers that state universities were hotbeds of sin and corruption, and no matter what happened at HGC to demonstrate that the same things that happened at larger state schools also happened at the smaller private ones, still, no one at HGC would admit it.

  "Did you happen to talk to that reporter who was killed?"

  "I did. I told the police all about it. They wanted to know about a letter and a phone call I got, too. I told them that."

  "What was the call about?"

  "It was just Street telling me about the book he was working on. Things like that." Hayes suddenly reached up and pulled off his toupee with his left hand. He pulled a tissue from a box on his desk and ran it across the top of his sweating head.

  "Did he mention anything that was going to be in the book?"

  "A couple of things." Hayes settled the toupee back into place.

  "What things?"

  The smile faded. Burns had never seen Hayes look so gloomy. "Things he shouldn't be putting in there, things about his affair with Mary Winsor, about Abner Swan's affair with the choir director of his church—"

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute," Burns said, holding up a hand. He couldn't believe what he was hearing. "You're saying that Abner Swan and Mary Winsor each had affairs?"

  "I'm not saying it. Street said it."

  Mary certainly hadn't mentioned anything about an affair with Street. "What about you and your first wife?"

  "That was going to be in there, too."

  Good grief, Burns thought. "Is there anyone he missed?"

  "Not that I know of." Hayes tried valiantly to get his smile back. "None of it was true, as far as I know. He was just being himself."

  "And you talked to the reporter who got killed last night?"

  "Just for a little while." Hayes's attempted smile was gone. "He tricked me."

  "How?" Burns said.

  "Told me about the letter he got. Made me think it was the same as mine."

  "You mean he knew about the book Street was writing?"

  "I guess he did. I told him."

  Well, Burns thought, score another point for Boss Napier.

  Chapter 14

  Burns could not get any more information out of Hayes, who spent nearly twenty minutes explaining that his first wife had been under constant medical observation for the last four months of her life, and had in fact been confined to the local hospital. There was no way Hayes could have had anything to do with her death.

  "So what does Street say about it in the book?"

  "Well, you know how people have a way of twisting things."

  "No," Burns said, feeling hard and ruthless, like he imagined Philip Marlowe must have felt on occasion. "Why don't you tell me?"

  "He hinted that he was going to say that I—the character in the novel, I mean, not really me—that I slipped into the hospital and injected an air bubble into her vein."

  "But that never occurred to you," Burns said.

  "Of course not. I love life." Hayes looked around at his signs. "I would never deprive anyone of his or her chance at it, even someone in pain. Street was a crazy man. I don't know how he ever came up with anything like that."

  Burns had a pretty good idea. He knew a little something about the way writers worked, which was just the same way anyone worked if he had a story to tell. They left out the boring things, intensified the interesting things, and made up a lot of things out of thin air.

  Burns left Hayes in the office looking at his signs for comfort. For some reason, Burns was feeling even more depressed than he had been when he entered. Smile, he told himself. Something good is going to happen to YOU!

  Nothing good did, however. He went by the library, where Elaine was supervising the clean-up of the stacks. She didn't have time to talk to him, and he wasn't even bothered. He found himself thinking of Melinda Land and wishing that he didn't have an evening class.

  He went to talk to Mary Winsor and point out that she had not been completely frank with him, but she was not in her office. A student-secretary told Burns that she had been called home because of an emergency. Her cat had somehow gotten trapped in the neighbor's dryer vent. Burns might not have believed that had it been anyone except Mary.

  He was about to leave when the phone rang. The student answered it and said, "He's right here." He handed the telephone to Burns. "It's your office," he said.

  Burns could not imagine who would be calling from his office, but it was Bunni. "I thought I saw you walking across the street," she said. She spent a lot of time looking out the window of the third floor when she was supposed to be performing her secretarial duties. The truth was that there were not that many duties to perform. "Dr. Elliott is looking for you. I told him to wait in your office."

  "I'll be right there," Burns said. He needed to talk to Elliott anyway. His name was on the list.

  "Ah," Elliott said when Burns got to the third floor. "I've been hoping to talk to you. I couldn't get in your office, however."

  "We can use Miss Darling's office," Burns said. He opened the door with the pass key and they went in. Burns sat behind Miss Darling's desk. "What's the problem?"

  "No problem," Elliott said. "May I close the door?"

  "Of course," Burns said. Elliott always wanted to close the door when he had something confidential to say, no matter how trivial.

  After he had shut the door, Elliott sat back down. "Two things, Burns." He always enumerated the number of his points. "First, I want you to know I enjoyed the seminar very much."

  Elliott was something of a brown-noser, though not nearly in the same class as Abner Swan.

  "Thank you," Burns said. "I'm afraid our guest of honor didn't."

  "No, and I'm quite sorry about that, Burns. In fact, that's what I really wanted to discuss with you."

  Burns had suspected as much. Elliott was not merely a brown-noser; he was adept at covering his own ass when trouble loomed.

  "Go on," Burns said.

  "I suppose you may have heard about the book Street was purported to have been writing."

  "I've heard."

  "Then you may also have heard that it involves some of the people who are currently teaching here at HGC."

  "I've heard that, too."

  "Have you by any chance heard what's in it?"

  "Some things."

  "What things?" There was a definite quaver in Elliott's usually self-assured tones.

  "I'd rather not say," Burns told him. "Some of them weren't exactly flattering to people who teach here."

  "Yes," Elliott said. "I know. It may surprise you, Burns, to know that I am one of those people."

  "Not really," Burns said.

  Elliott looked at him suspiciously. "I know that you're working for President Miller on this," he said. "What did he tell you about me?"

  "Nothing," Burns said. He was always amazed at how fast the news got around at HGC. It was almost as if the offices were bugged, or that some of the faculty members were psychic.

  "Com
e on, Burns," Elliott said. "He must have said something."

  "Nothing. Why don't you enlighten me?"

  Elliott looked around as if to make sure the door was tightly shut. Satisfied, he turned back to Burns. "Street called me the other night, after the dinner. He hinted that he had used a character based on me in an unfinished book and that the character was going to be somewhat unflattering. He was going to make him—the character, I mean—a toady of the administration, someone who informed on others for his own benefit."

  "No!" Burns said. He was convinced that Elliott was not above such practices and that the man had gotten his current position, supervisor of one of the men's dorms—a position which included both room and board in addition to his teaching salary—as a payoff for delivering the goods in the hiring of a certain dean. If a man would do that, he would certainly inform.

  Elliott nodded. "I know it's inconceivable, but that's what he said. He said the book would show me in the worst possible light."

  "And you're worried about that?"

  "No. Of course not. Everyone would know at once that it was a total fabrication. I'm worried about what he might have said about everyone else."

  "I see," Burns said, though he wasn't sure he did. If Elliott was telling the truth, he was getting off much lighter than anyone else Burns had heard about. "So you're concerned only with the effect of the book on others."

  "That is correct. Naturally it could have no effect on me. And I was thinking that if you happened to run across the manuscript, it might be best if you simply destroyed it. You could save many good people a great deal of anguish."

  Not the least of whom would be you, Burns thought. It was obvious that despite his protestations to the contrary, Elliott did not want the book to be seen. If it were, then everyone would have his suspicions confirmed about him, not that there was any doubt. Seeing it in print was more convincing than merely believing in your heart, however.

  Elliott talked for a few minutes longer, then left. It was clear to Burns that people were beginning to get the wind up over the missing manuscript, and Elliott seemed to think that Burns might have found it, or might find it later. And if Elliott felt that way, Duncan may well have reached the same conclusion.