Dying Voices

by Crider, Bill

  It was too late in the afternoon to go home, so Burns decided to stay at school until after his evening class. He walked around to see if Bunni was still at her post. She was not there. There was a note on the desk saying that she did not feel like staying in the building alone and that she would not enter the hours on her pay form.

  Burns did not blame her for leaving. The old building got lonesome sometimes, and to sit there close to the room where a man had been killed the previous night was not easy to do. Burns wasn't especially looking forward to going back into his own office when the police finally decided to let him.

  He returned to the other hall and got a book out of one of the shelves that served as departmental mailboxes. Napier had let him remove the books he would need for teaching from the office, and that night he was going to discuss The Great Gatsby. He always liked to start his course in American novels with Hemingway and Fitzgerald and lull the students into a false sense of security, letting them think that all the books would be as easy to read as the first ones. Then he would hit them with Faulkner. The Sound and the Fury usually came as something of a shocker.

  He took the Fitzgerald book into Miss Darling's office and thumbed through it. He could hear the usual noises of the old building, but there was no longer the pitter-patter of tiny talons above his head. He wondered how many little pigeon carcasses there were up there, smoldering away like John Brown's body.

  Then he began thinking about a list he wanted to make, the ten worst movies made from the ten best books. He thought that the Robert Redford version of The Great Gatsby would make a good starting place. Sure, the yellow car was nice, and so were Redford's smile and his gorgeous rag of a pink suit, but that was about it. He really did not make a very good Gatsby, much less a great one. And Mia Farrow as Daisy? Who were they kidding?

  Too bad they didn't consult me about these things, Burns thought, taking another piece of Miss Darling's scratch paper. Before long he had added "The Sun Also Rises (the one with Tyrone Power)" to the list, along with "any Matt Helm movie with Dean Martin" and "Bill Murray's The Razor's Edge." Once you got started on something like that, you could think of plenty of titles. Before he knew it, it was time for class.

  Evening classes at HGC were supposed to run from six-thirty until nine-thirty. Everyone knew, however, that to keep the classes for three hours was unfair to everyone. Regular classes met for only fifty minutes a day Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, which equaled two and a half hours per week. So no one ever kept evening classes longer than nine o'clock, unless there was an unusually long break in the middle. Burns gave hardly any break at all, just enough time for everyone who wanted to get a drink to jog down the three flights, then jog back up. He usually put his book back on the shelf at nine o'clock on the dot.

  A plan had been taking shape in his mind most of the afternoon, a plan for getting a look at the books in Miller's office. He was convinced that the copies of Street's books had come from the library. They had to be the same ones. After all, Miller was the only one who hadn't asked Burns about his nose when he first saw him after the fight in the library. Burns was convinced that Miller hadn't said anything because he had known already that Burns had a broken nose. He had known because he was the one who had broken it.

  There was no way to get into Miller's office when school was in session. The secretary would not let him in there if Miller was out, and he certainly didn't want to do anything if Miller was there. It was obvious that he had to get into the office when no one was there at all. Say, in the evening.

  There were two obstacles to that plan. One was Dirty Harry, the campus security. That obstacle could be easily disregarded. Harry had a chair in the boiler room, and there he sat, winter and summer, all night long. If you blundered into him, you took the risk of getting shot, but there was not much chance that he was going to be checking the buildings as he was supposed to be doing.

  The other obstacle was the warehouse where the offices were located. Burns had to get inside it. Once inside it, he had to get into Miller's office, but he would worry about that if he got into the warehouse. He thought about calling Napier and getting police help, but that would complicate things no end. There were legalities like search warrants and things for which Napier would no doubt be a stickler, whereas those things didn't bother Burns at all. And besides, Burns hadn't mentioned to Napier his suspicion that the books might be in Miller's office. No need to go into all that now.

  Burns waited until his students had left Main, then started down the stairs. He thought he heard someone, so he stopped and waited. No one came along. He called out, but there was no answer. He wondered if the building had bats in the attic now. He waited for several minutes, but when no one came, he went on down and out the front door.

  His car was parked in the street, but he decided to walk. It would be easier to lose himself in the shadows. The car was too easily identified as his. How many 1967 Plymouth Furies were still roaming the streets, anyway?

  One of Pecan City's main streets ran in front of the warehouse, and there was a bright streetlight on the corner. But behind the building there was only a gravel road that trucks had used to get to the loading dock when the warehouse was still a warehouse, and there were no lights at all. That darkened area was where Burns was headed.

  He looked around when he reached the streetlight, but he didn't see anyone except for a dark figure near the library. That was probably just a student who had studied late and was leaving for home, no one for him to worry about.

  The side of the warehouse was in darkness. It faced the railroad tracks that Burns had often cursed when he was in a hurry only to find himself waiting for a train that seemed ten miles long. Now the tracks were helping him, since there were no houses nearby. He walked over the rough rocks beside the tracks, not going fast because he didn't want to fall. Soon he was behind the warehouse.

  He saw the black outline of the loading dock and approached it cautiously. There was a sliding metal door there, but it was closed and presumably locked. That wasn't where he hoped to enter. It seemed to him, however, that he had seen a couple of windows the other day when he went to Miller's office and was looking around the warehouse. One of them had a broken pane that was covered with nothing sturdier than cardboard. If he could remove the cardboard and unlatch the window, he could raise it and go inside.

  There was a problem, though. The loading dock, not much wider than the back of a delivery truck, did not run beneath the windows, which was probably why no one had really bothered to replace the glass. Had Burns been standing on the dock, he could have reached the windows; as it was, although he could reach the window and even move the cardboard aside, he couldn't reach the latch.

  He looked around for something to stand on.

  There wasn't anything.

  He looked across the gravel road. There was an unkempt field there, badly in need of mowing. Beyond the field the railroad track circled back on the town, and beyond the track were houses. No one in the houses would be looking in Burns's direction, and if they were, they couldn't see him. He crossed the road and started walking down the shallow ditch that ran beside it, hoping that someone had thrown away something useful there.

  He hadn't walked far before he found a bucket that had once held roofing tar, probably tossed there a year or so before when the warehouse roof had been repaired. Silently thanking the workman who had not been conscientious about cleaning up, he carried the bucket back to the windows.

  Standing on the bucket and straining mightily, he got his arm inside all the way up to the shoulder. His fingers barely reached the latch. For a second he thought he might not be able to free it, but he did. Then he pushed the window up. It was as easy as that.

  Getting inside was a little trickier, but he hoisted himself up over the window ledge and then he was inside the warehouse.

  It was pitch dark. The only light came from the window, and that was almost no light at all. Burns thought he had read somewhere that you should
leave a light on in buildings at night to discourage burglars. Maybe he would bring that up at the next faculty meeting.

  Then again, maybe he wouldn't.

  He started moving across the warehouse, trying not to bump into things. What things, he couldn't really say. There were riding lawn mowers, leaf blowers, wooden pallets stacked high with paper to be used in copiers and by the instructional services area, tools of all kinds. He had seen that much on his former visits to the place in daylight. In the dark, however, everything looked pretty much alike, nothing more than bulky outlines of darkness.

  He finally got to Miller's office, having stubbed his toe only once and disgusted because he hadn't brought a flashlight. Once in Miller's office, with the door safely closed, he would turn on the lights.

  Getting in the office was not hard. The old credit card worked fine, just the way it did for the private eyes in books. One reason it did was that the doorknobs on many of the doors at HGC had been put on wrong. Someone had once explained to Burns that if the smooth side of the key faced up when you inserted it into the lock, there had been a mistake made. Burns didn't know what difference it made, except that the doors were easier to open with a credit card.

  In Miller's outer office, he closed the door behind him and turned on the light. He stood there for a few seconds, blinking, and then he went on into the inner sanctum, which thoughtfully had been left open for him.

  He turned on the light in there and looked at the bookshelves. Street's books were right there where he had seen them, and he walked over and pulled them off the shelves. He opened Dying Voices and saw the red-stained pages. He looked at them more closely than he had in the library and ran his fingers over the stains. Now that he had time to inspect them, he would have sworn that they were not blood at all—not that he had ever thought they were—but some kind of paint.

  So why had Miller taken the books? Had he painted the pages as some sort of protest against Street, then lost the courage of his convictions? Or had he killed Street and then been afraid that the books would lead directly to him, having forgotten until too late that the library would have a record of who checked the books out?

  It didn't matter. Finding that out was Napier's job. Burns would deliver the books to the police chief and let him have all the glory of solving the case.

  Or maybe not. he didn't want to do anything too hastily. First, he would confront Miller and see if the president had an explanation. Then he would go to Napier.

  He turned off the light and went into the outer office. He looked around, but he had left nothing behind to show he had been there. After he had turned that light off as well, he stood for a while, trying to let his eyes adjust to the darkness. He could have been deep in a cave for all the light there was. He would be able to see at least the outlines of the things in the warehouse and avoid falling over them.

  He had just started to open the door when he heard a noise in the warehouse.

  Chapter 15

  Burns's hand froze to the doorknob. He had heard a dull thud, followed by the sound of metal scraping on the concrete floor of the warehouse. Or that was what he thought he had heard. It was hard to be sure. The sound had been muffled by the door, and he was already nervous about being alone in the building. Maybe he hadn't heard anything at all.

  He stood as still as he could, listening. He realized that he was sweating. He felt a drop run out of one of his sideburns and onto his cheek. Just the heat in the building, he told himself. No air conditioning at night, so naturally it was hot in there. That was all. It wasn't that he was scared.

  He waited for what seemed like forever, and then he found himself counting off the seconds. He discovered that a minute could be a very long time under certain circumstances.

  He wondered what he should do. He couldn't stay in the office forever. It would be pretty hard to explain to the secretary what he was doing there when she came in the next morning.

  "Oh, good morning, Miss Reeves. I just thought I'd drop by to say hello. Heh-heh. What? The books. Oh, I was just going to return them to the library for Dr. Miller. I'll be going now."

  He knew it would never work. He was going to have to get out of there.

  He turned the knob slowly, slowly. When it had gone as far as it could go, he began to open the door, even more slowly than he had turned the knob.

  He opened it only far enough so that he could squeeze through the crack, and he didn't bother to close it behind him. He had gotten only a step away, however, when it began to swing shut, sounding to Burns as if a banshee had been unleashed in the building. He reached back and grabbed the edge of the door, nearly dropping the books.

  He shut the door as slowly as he could, and there was no more screeching. Clutching the books to his chest, he started across the warehouse in the direction of the window, which he could see as a dim square of lighter darkness. The only comfort he had was the fact that if there was someone in there with him, of which he wasn't really sure, then whoever it was—unless one of his close relatives was a cat—couldn't see any better than Burns could.

  He was moving along with some success, not having kicked a stack of paper or fallen over a lawn mower. He thought he could make it to the window easily.

  Then his foot hit something. He was never sure what it was, though it was something low and close to the floor, something like the end of one of the pallets that the paper rested on. It didn't hurt, but he did emit a small grunt.

  That was when the light hit him in the face. It was coming from a level about three feet higher than his head, as if someone were lying on top of one of the stacks of paper. It was quite a bright light, and Burns was momentarily blinded.

  It was just as well that he was. That way, he didn't know that he was going to be shot until he heard the gun. There was a flash of flame and then something slammed into Burns's chest, knocking him backward into a riding lawn mower. It was a huge Snapper, almost as big as a Daihatsu. Burns crashed into it, dropping the books he had been holding and cracking his head on the driver's seat.

  As he lay there, barely conscious, he could hear something scrambling across the top of the boxes.

  It's Fairly, he thought. Coming to finish me off.

  There was a sharp pain in his chest, and he tried to reach it with his hand, but he found it too difficult to move even that much.

  Someone was shining the light on the floor nearby, but Burns couldn't see who it was. His eyes were barely open.

  He thought he was probably dying, but he really didn't care.

  There was a scraping sound as someone moved a book, and Burns heard an exclamation of disgust, though not enough of one to identify the voice.

  There was a thud as the book was tossed back to the floor, and that was the last Burns knew for a while. His head lolled to the side, his eyes closed, and he lost consciousness completely.

  When Burns woke up again, he thought at first that he was having a heart attack. His head hurt, but his chest hurt even more. It was death, he thought, sitting on my chest. Death had a snout like a hyena, and he could smell the stinking bastard's breath—

  He shook himself out of "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" and opened his eyes. It was still pitch dark in the warehouse, and he was alive. Whoever had shot him was gone.

  His hand went out and touched one of the books. He felt around and found the other one. He had been shot for nothing.

  Or maybe he hadn't been shot. He didn't seem to be bleeding or anything. He tried to touch his chest, and this time he was successful. There was no blood.

  He took one of the books. Sure enough, there was a hole in it. There was a hole in the other one, too. Burns was silently thankful that We All Die Today! was nearly six hundred pages long and printed on thick, quality paper with good board wrappers. Dying Voices alone would never have saved him.

  He tried to sit up and found he could do so without his head falling off. He took the books and stood. He was a little wobbly, but otherwise in pretty good shape.

 
He started for the window. It seemed like a long way, but he finally made it.

  Climbing out was a bit harder. He dropped the books outside, then stepped through, turning and holding onto the window ledge.

  The bucket was still there. He balanced on it and closed the window, but he did not try to lock it. He doubted that anyone would ever notice that it had been opened. He wasn't sure whether he had locked the door to Miller's office, but that didn't matter. The secretary would think she had left it unlocked. The only one who would know that something was wrong was Miller, when he saw that the books were gone.

  Burns looked at his watch, but it was too dark for him to make out the hands. He would have to wait until he got to the streetlight.

  He stood for a minute, trying to decide what to do. He was sure someone had tried to kill him, but who? And why?

  His first thought had been Fairly, because he knew Fairly had a gun and because he associated Fairly with the warehouse, but maybe it hadn't been Fairly. Maybe it had been Miller. But wouldn't Miller have taken the books? Whoever had shot him definitely had not wanted the books.

  And what was he going to do with the books? The bullet that had shot him—nearly shot him, he corrected himself—might be lodged in one of them. The books were evidence of attempted murder. Should he take them to Napier and tell him what happened as he had first thought, before he was shot at, or should he confront Miller?

  All the thinking was making his head hurt worse. He plodded around the building and into the light. Glancing again at his watch, he saw that it was only ten o'clock. Miller would still be awake, and his house was not far away. Burns decided to go there first.

  The President's Mansion wasn't really much of a mansion, but it was one of the oldest homes in Pecan City, having been built early in the century by a wealthy citizen who wanted to show off his good taste. It was more or less in the style of an antebellum Southern home, three stories tall, with columns and large pecan trees in the front yard. It was only a block from Main, so the president could walk to campus every day. Not that Miller ever did.