Dying Voices

by Crider, Bill

  Burns walked to the house, however, figuring that the extra block would help to clear his head, which had developed a peculiar buzzing noise as he walked.

  There were still lights on in the house, and Burns made his way up the walk, pushing aside a tricycle and a red Radio Flyer as he went. Miller was older than Burns, mid-forties probably, but he had two young children. Burns couldn't recall their ages, but he thought they were about three and five. Burns had long ago decided that if he ever got married, he would not have children. He was sure he had gotten too old to tolerate tricycles on the sidewalk. He wondered briefly what Elaine or Melinda thought about children, but by then he was on the porch and ringing the doorbell.

  Mrs. Miller came to the door. She looked stressed. Her hair was a mess, and she was wearing a purple chenille robe belted around the middle.

  "Yes?" she said, clearly not recognizing Burns. He had met her only once, at the annual fall picnic.

  He told her who he was and said that he wanted to talk to her husband.

  "We're trying to get the boys to bed," she told him. "Come in."

  Burns went inside. The hardwood floors gleamed, and the stairway to the upper floors was polished to a high shine. One of the benefits of being president was that you got maid service, and free help from the maintenance crew whenever anything went wrong.

  "I'll go up and tell him you're here," Mrs. Miller said, starting up the stairs.

  After a few minutes there was a loud yell from above. "But I want Daddy to tell the story!"

  Burns, and some of the other faculty members had wondered why Miller had not hosted an open house to introduce his family to the faculty. Now Burns was beginning to understand. He had somehow thought that college presidents led lives that were different from those of ordinary men. He should have known better.

  Miller came down the stairs. He was wearing navy blue pajamas and a navy robe. He looked tired, but he perked up when he saw the books in Burns's hands.

  "Where did you get those?" he demanded.

  "Is there somewhere that we can talk?" Burns asked, not wanting to answer the question.

  "This way," Miller said, leading Burns through a doorway and into a room that looked like a study. There was a desk, and the walls were lined with bookshelves, most of them empty. There were throw rugs on the floor.

  "I asked you where you got those books," Miller said, turning to confront Burns.

  Burns went on the offensive. "A better question might be where did you get them?"

  Miller turned his face away. "I . . . ah, I got them from, ah, . . ." He turned back. "Oh, what the hel—heck. I'm sorry about your nose, Burns."

  "So am I. Why did you do it?"

  "I was in a state of shock. When I found out Street had been killed, I realized that someone might find out what had happened to the books and misinterpret it. I had to get them back. I never intended to return them to the library, but I put them down in the outer office and Miss Reeves thought I meant for her to check them in. I was going to replace them, you see."

  "Replace them?"

  "Well of course," Miller said. "Can't you see they're damaged?"

  "I can see that, all right," Burns said. "What I wanted to know is why you did it."

  "I didn't do it," Miller said. There was the thin edge of a whine in his voice. "That's why I knew I had to get them back. I followed you and Miss Tanner to the library, and when I saw that you were looking at the books, I panicked. I didn't want to hit you. It was just something that happened."

  "If you didn't do it, who did?" Burns asked.

  Miller looked at the ceiling of the room. "They did."

  "They?"

  "The boys," Miller sighed. "Don't you know finger-paint when you see it? I checked the books out to read before the seminar, and I left them in here on the desk. The boys found them one day and decided to decorate them. They used finger-paint."

  "Oh," Burns said. "Finger-paint."

  "That's right. Nothing sinister. No one was trying to send a message to Street. It was just two playful boys. But you can see how it might be misinterpreted."

  Burns could see, all right.

  "You aren't going to make a big thing of this, are you, Burns?"

  "No, I don't guess I will," Burns said.

  "Good." Miller's voice toughened. "Then explain where you got the books."

  "In your office."

  "What? You entered my office without permission?"

  "That's right," Burns said. "And someone tried to kill me."

  It took a while for Burns to tell the story, but it was clear that Miller hadn't had anything to do with the shooting.

  "I started trying to get those little bas—devils to bed two hours ago," he told Burns. "You can ask my wife."

  Burns didn't think that would be necessary, but he still couldn't figure out why someone had tried to kill him. He would have to discuss it with Napier.

  "Look, Burns," Miller said, "I can see why you were suspicious when you saw the books in my office, but you should certainly have asked me about them instead of creeping around like a common thief. Now that you know what happened, I insist that you keep my name out of this if you talk to the police."

  "I'll try," Burns said. "Some of it will have to come out. Boss Napier will want to know what I was doing in your office, just like you did."

  Miller groaned. "Well, at least keep it out of the newspapers."

  "I can promise that, I think," Burns said.

  Burns didn't know much about Napier's hours, but he figured that on a Tuesday night the chief might get home fairly early. Sure enough, there were lights on in Napier's home just as there had been in Miller's.

  Napier came to the door. "Damn, Burns. I would've thought you'd be in bed by now."

  "I have to talk to you," Burns said.

  "Come on in, then. I was doing a little painting."

  They went to the table, which was laid out with figures, paint, and brushes like before.

  "You bring any tacos?" Napier asked.

  "Not this time. Just these books." Burns went on and told the whole story while Napier rolled a figure of a cowboy around in his fingers.

  "For an English teacher, you sure do get in a lot of trouble," Napier said when Burns had finished. "Lemme see the books."

  Burns gave them to him, and Napier looked them over. "The slug's still in there," he said. "That's good. We can compare it with the one we dug out of Street."

  "A .22, right?"

  "Not necessarily," Napier said. "We don't do our own ballistics work, and that was just a guess. Could've been a .32. Something small, anyway. We should know in a day or two. I'll keep these books."

  That was all right with Burns.

  "You got anything else you want to tell me?" Napier said.

  "I don't think so. Your men have been ahead of me everywhere I go."

  "Yeah, but people don't like to talk to them much." Napier got up and went to his refrigerator. He opened it and took out a two-liter bottle of Diet Coke. "You want a drink?"

  Burns hated diet drinks. "Sure," he said.

  Napier poured Coke into two glasses that he must have gotten in some kind of deal at a fast food outlet. The glasses had pictures of Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck on them.

  "I've been thinking," Burns said, taking a sip and trying not to make a face at the taste.

  "Glad to hear it," Napier said. "What about?"

  "About what I'm trying to find out. I'd nearly forgotten one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "Who wrote that letter to Duncan. I've been assuming that whoever wrote the letter must have defaced the books, but Miller's little boys surely didn't write it. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that whoever wrote the letter didn't necessarily kill Street."

  Napier finished off his Diet Coke and put the glass in the sink."You're doin' good, Burns. People who write letters usually just write letters. They don't go killin' anybody. Usually they're sneaky assholes who wouldn't dare do anything they might g
et caught at."

  "You didn't say anything about that before," Burns said.

  "You didn't ask me. If you're gonna play Junior G-Man, you'll have to find out things for yourself."

  "Thanks," Burns said, taking another small swallow of the drink. "At least we've solved one mystery, though. We know who broke my nose. Anything else you haven't told me?"

  "Yeah. Take care of yourself. You might get shot if you're not careful."

  "Thanks," Burns said. "I appreciate your concern."

  "Don't mention it," Napier said. "I sure do wish you'd brought some tacos, though."

  Chapter 16

  When Burns got out of his early class the next morning he went immediately to the History lounge to talk to Fox and Tomlin. He wasn't going to tell them about his little adventure the night before unless they asked about the murders, and as it turned out there was no danger of that. They had other things on their minds. Tomlin was smoking, and Fox was staring glumly at the altered "No Smoking" sign on the wall.

  "We're going to get in big trouble about that sign," Fox said. "You can mark my words."

  "Not me," Tomlin said. "I didn't do it." His face wore a mask of innocence. It was an easy mask for him to assume, and Burns didn't trust him for an instant.

  "Well, I certainly didn't do it," Fox said. He was never quite sure how to take Tomlin.

  "The Phantom did it," Burns said.

  "That's probably who's killing the pigeons, too," Tomlin said. "I found a couple on the way in this morning. We can blame it on the Phantom."

  Fox wasn't buying it. "You two can joke about it all you want to, but that won't help us when we get called to the president's office to explain things."

  "We just won't go, then," Tomlin said, breathing out a plume of smoke. "Come on, Earl. Don't be such a worry wart. Have a smoke." He offered Fox his pack.

  Fox waved the pack away. "No thanks," he said. "I've got my own." He didn't take them out, however.

  "He's worried because of the latest dictum," Tomlin said, looking at the smoke wreathing the light fixture.

  Burns didn't know what they were talking about. "What dictum?" he said.

  "You didn't look in your mailbox?" Fox said. "No wonder you never know what's going on."

  "I still can't use my office," Burns said. "I sat in a classroom and read the paper this morning until eight, so I didn't go by the mailboxes."

  "Well, show him your dictum, Earl," Tomlin said. "I threw mine away already."

  Fox pulled a piece of folded paper out of his shirt pocket. The shirt was green with pink flamingoes on it. He handed Burns the paper.

  Burns unfolded it and read it. It was a memo from Miller, reminding every faculty member to have office hours posted on office doors and commanding everyone to have at least one afternoon office hour a day.

  "What brought this on?" Burns asked.

  "I heard a rumor that one of the board members saw a faculty member downtown having coffee in a cafe at ten in the morning," Tomlin said.

  "What's wrong with that?" Burns asked.

  "We're supposed to be tied to the office," Tomlin said. He ground out his cigarette butt in the ashtray and lit another. "Wouldn't do to give the public the idea that we aren't working."

  "Does the public see us when we're teaching night classes?" Burns asked. "Does the public see us when we take home a stack of term papers to grade at night or on the weekend?"

  "The public doesn't care doodly-squat about that," Fox said. "They just don't want us going for coffee at ten o'clock."

  "All right, I won't," Burns said. He gave the memo back to Fox.

  "And it doesn't look good for the rest of us if you keep finding dead people," Tomlin said. "I'm surprised they haven't gotten around to writing a memo about that."

  "They will," Fox predicted. "You hide and watch. They will."

  "Probably," Tomlin said. "Aren't you going to smoke today?"

  "Damn right I am," Fox said. He got a pack of Alpines from the pocket that had held the memo. "Generic price," he explained as he lit up. "Better-looking package than those Cost Cutters, too."

  "Absolutely," Tomlin agreed.

  As much as he hated to leave such cheerful companions, Burns wanted to talk to Mary Winsor and Abner Swan. Particularly Swan. When Napier had mentioned sneaky individuals, Swan had popped into Burns's mind at once. Though Swan was outwardly an asskisser from the word go, Burns had always pegged the man as a sneak, just the type to write poison-pen letters.

  Some years previously there had been a young chemistry teacher named Bentley who had fallen in love with one of his students. He had begun dating her quite openly. There was nothing wrong with that, neither of them being married to anyone else, but Swan objected. It was too blatant, and if Dick Hayes had once done the same thing, at least he had kept it hidden.

  Swan, however, never said anything to the young man. He voiced his objections only to other faculty members he believed might be sympathetic to Bentley and his lover, and Burns knew of the whole thing only because someone had told him.

  Burns found out what happened next, though, because Bentley confided in him.

  "Somebody's calling me," Bentley said. "At pretty odd hours. Midnight, two-thirty in the morning, like that. It's beginning to get to me."

  "What are they calling about?" Burns asked.

  They were in Burns's office, a relatively safe spot, but just as Don Elliott always did, Bentley got up and closed the door. "About Sara."

  Sara was the student Bentley was dating.

  "What about her?"

  "They say things like, 'If you don't quit living in sin with that slut, you'll burn in hell.' Things like that."

  "Good grief," Burns said. "Are you living in sin?"

  "Not as much as I'd like to," Bentley said.

  "Did you recognize the voice?"

  "No. It's not always the same person. Sometimes it's a woman, and sometimes it's a man. That's all I can tell."

  Burns was not a betting man, but he would have given odds that Abner Swan and his pursy-mouthed wife were the culprits. It was just the kind of thing they would do. Disguise their voices a bit, never say very much, and they would never get caught.

  The only advice Burns had for Bentley was to change his phone number to an unlisted one, which the young man did, but nothing helped. The phantom callers got the new number somehow and started their campaign of harassment all over again.

  Bentley left the school at the end of the semester and no one ever heard from him again. Swan never admitted anything, but he seemed especially pleased with himself for days after Bentley's resignation was announced.

  Swan's office door was open when Burns arrived, so Burns walked right in.

  Swan sat behind a mahogany desk. He was dressed in a navy blue suit with a TV blue shirt and dark blue tie. His hair was carefully styled and waved. Burns wouldn't have wanted to pay the man's mousse bill.

  The desk was decorated with a life-size sculpture of the Praying Hands, and the walls were hung with enlarged photos that Swan himself had taken while on a tour of the Holy Land many years before. There was a shot of the Wailing Wall, one of the Jordan River, one of the Mount of Olives and several others. Burns had to admit that they weren't bad.

  "Good morning, Burns," Swan boomed. "Lovely day, isn't it?"

  It was, to tell the truth, sunny and a bit cooler than the day before—a lovely day indeed, but Burns knew that it wouldn't have mattered to Swan if it were hailing iceballs the size of grapefruit. He always said it was a lovely day, just in case God was listening in. Swan didn't like to take any chances.

  "I understand that you're working on these terrible crimes for President Miller," Swan said. "An excellent move on the president's part, I must say. You've got a real talent for investigation, Burns."

  "You might say that," Burns said, tired already of the man's gushing. "For one thing, I've found out something about you that I didn't know."

  Swan looked a bit taken aback. "You've learned so
mething about me?"

  "You, and a certain choir director," Burns said.

  "My God," Swan said. He got up and walked around Burns, closing the office door. It seemed that being around Burns created a need for privacy in people. "Where did you ever hear such a thing?"

  "Around," Burns said. "It's common knowledge. Street knew it, too."

  Swan sat back at his desk and buried his head in his hands. Burns didn't say anything. He was going to wait Swan out.

  After a few minutes, Swan looked up. His eyes were red, which Burns thought was a neat trick.

  "You want to talk about it, Abner?" Burns asked.

  "It was more than thirty years ago," Swan said. "I wasn't married at the time."

  "How about the choir director?"

  "Her husband didn't understand her," Swan said.

  Oh brother, Burns thought.

  "I was giving her counseling. We met after choir practice on Wednesday evenings. We grew close. One thing led to another. You understand."

  Burns understood, all right. Swan probably thought he was telling a story that was unique in human history, whereas it sounded like a thousand stories Burns had heard and read before. He wondered how Swan could admit it and still have the gall to be one of the most self-righteous, holier-than-thou Puritans Burns had ever met.

  "I don't understand one thing," Burns said. "I don't understand how Street found out about it."

  Swan's face took on a hangdog look. "The man deceived me. He seemed to be genuinely interested in people, and he was a good listener. But all the time he was just gathering material for his books. Even when he was told things in confidence."

  "I'd think you'd know better than to tell something like that," Burns said.

  "I was young, inexperienced in the ways of the world. How was I to know he would threaten to expose me? So many years had passed. And then you—" Swan pointed his finger accusingly—"you had to bring the man to our campus, long after he should have been forgotten."