Dying Voices

by Crider, Bill

  There was a new note from Rose taped to the side door of Main:

  Burns wondered who would have tried disposing of dead pigeons like that. Probably the Phantom. Burns trudged up the stairs to the small classroom he was using as his office.

  Melinda Land was waiting for him when he got there. She was sitting in one of the desks on the front row, and her legs were crossed. Burns had not noticed her legs before, probably because he had never seen her wearing such a short skirt.

  They were very nice legs.

  "You've certainly been busy this afternoon," she pouted at him. She did a very nice pout, too. It took a certain kind of woman to get away with looking like that, but she could do it.

  "Have you been looking for me?" he asked.

  "It's more like I've been following you," she said, uncrossing her legs.

  Burns noticed then that she was holding a notebook and a pen. "Have you been interviewing people?"

  "Yes," she said. "But they aren't proving extremely cooperative. Everyone keeps saying that Edward Street had written a book about Hartley Gorman College. They won't tell me what's in it, though, and they all insist that everything he said in it, whatever it was he said, was untrue."

  "It's beginning to look that way," Burns said. "Or at least extremely exaggerated. Street was that kind of man."

  "You mean there's nothing worth telling about this place?"

  "I wouldn't say that," Burns told her, thinking over some of his own experiences. "It's just that if you told the truth, it wouldn't be very sensational, and no one would believe it."

  She clicked the tip of her ball-point pen against her white, even teeth. "I think you're wrong. People will believe anything, especially if it involves a famous writer."

  "You may be right," Burns said. "Have you considered the possibility that there might not even be a book?"

  "What?" She dropped the pen and covered her confusion by bending to retrieve it.

  "That's right," Burns said. "One theory is that Street didn't even have a manuscript." He didn't mention whose theory it was. "It's possible that Street just told people that he'd written a book to see if he could get a rise from them, to make them feel insecure while making himself feel superior."

  "You've got to be kidding me," Melinda said. "Why would anyone kill him if he didn't really write the book?"

  "That's a good question," Burns said. "But I've got a better one. If he wrote it, where is it?"

  Melinda didn't say anything for a minute. She just stared at the stain on Burns's ceiling. "Maybe the killer took it," she said at last.

  "You may be right," Burns said. He hadn't really thought about that before. "But if the killer found the manuscript, why did he kill Duncan?"

  "You think Duncan had it?" Melinda's eyes lighted.

  "No. I think he was looking for it in here when he was killed."

  "I knew it!" Melinda said, leaning forward in the chair. Her tongue flicked out and licked her lips. "You have it, don't you?"

  It had been a while since Burns had been able to get a woman so excited. He hated to disappoint her.

  "No," he said. "I don't have it. Duncan may have thought I did, since I was the one who found Street's body."

  "I know you don't have it here at school." She sounded very sure. "But you have it at home, don't you?"

  "No, it's not there, either. I really don't have it. I almost wish I did."

  Melinda leaned back and some of the intensity went out of her gaze. "So do I," she said. "It could mean a lot to me."

  Burns remembered what she had said about publishing. He was glad once more that he wasn't at a school that demanded the production of articles every year. No matter how many arguments he heard about how English teachers should also be writers, he was not convinced that the world needed any more articles on Faulkner and Hemingway. How many times need the works of one man be reinterpreted, anyway? Too many articles began with what a friend of his had once called "the academic simper": "Certainly Professor______'s reading of 'A Rose for Emily' seems basically sound; however, . . ." Ah, those wonderful howevers. And since the Deconstructionists had come along, Burns was beginning to wonder if criticism had any value at all.

  "Are you still here?" Melinda said.

  "What? Oh. Sorry. Just woolgathering. I know how much finding that manuscript could mean to you. Promotion, tenure, all those good things."

  "Oh, well," she said. "Even if you don't find it, I think I'm getting together enough material here for a really interesting personality piece on Edward Street. It might not make PMLA, but People probably pays a lot better."

  "People wouldn't do you as much good with the tenure committee as Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, though," Burns said.

  "True," she admitted. "You are looking for the manuscript, aren't you?"

  "Only incidentally," Burns said. "I'm more interested in finding out who killed Street. That's sort of what I have to do instead of writing an article."

  She put on a pouty face again. "Does that mean you'll be too busy to see me tonight?"

  "Ah, . . . uh, no. No, it doesn't mean that. Of course I can see you, if you want me to."

  "Good. Could we have dinner again, maybe a little of that wine? I feel the need to let my hair down, have a good time."

  The image of that red hair being let down appealed to Burns more than he could say. "Ah, . . . great. Great. Shall I meet you in the club again?"

  "No," she said, rising from the chair. "Why don't you come by my room first? We'll have a drink and see what develops."

  "Ah, . . ." Burns couldn't seem to quit stammering. He hated himself for it. "That sounds good. Is seven all right?" He would have suggested six, or even five-thirty, but he didn't want to seem too eager.

  "That sounds fine. I'll be waiting." She left the classroom, and Burns found himself following her gently swaying behind with his eyes. Life was certainly getting interesting.

  "Just a minute," he called out before she got out the door.

  She turned. "Yes?"

  "What do you think of Boss Napier?"

  "Is that the chief of police?"

  "Yes," Burns said. "That's him."

  "He seems a little crude and insensitive, don't you think?" she said. "Not my type at all. I prefer more intellectual men. Why?"

  "Ah, . . . nothing," he said. "Just wondering."

  "See you this evening, then," she said.

  He watched until she had turned the corner at the end of the hall. She certainly appeared to be a better judge of character than Elaine Tanner. He was glad of that, at least.

  After Melinda was gone, Burns went downstairs and to the cafeteria. It was crowded and noisy, as usual, so he got in the sandwich line and left with a pimento cheese on whole wheat. He went back to Main, bought a Mr. Pibb, and climbed up to the third-floor classroom to work on the assignments for the rest of the week.

  Having left the Puritans behind in his American literature survey class, Burns was now mired in the "Age of Reason and Revolution," as the textbook called it. He would spend another day on Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, and then move on to the Romantics, an altogether more interesting and appealing group, and one of the highlights of the semester for Burns, if not for the students. Somehow they never quite seemed to share his enthusiasm for James Fenimore Cooper, or even Hawthorne for that matter. Poe was a little better, but things went seriously downhill with Thoreau and Emerson.

  And today even Burns was having trouble concentrating on his text. Reading about Franklin's plans for achieving moral perfection usually appealed to Burns, primarily because of Franklin's methodical, list-making approach. But even the account of how Franklin came to add "humility" to his list of virtues could not hold Burns's attention.

  Maybe it was because Burns had not yet talked to Miss Darling. He knew that he should have done it already, so he gulped the rest of the sandwich, swallowed the Mr. Pibb, and went to her office.

  She was there, grading papers in her meticulous sp
idery handwriting, the red marks somehow not nearly as insulting as they were when Burns made the same kind of corrections.

  He knocked on the doorframe.

  Miss Darling looked up, her porcelain-doll face quizzical above the frilly blouse that should have been worn by a much younger woman.

  "Oh, it's you, Dr. Burns. Can I help you?"

  "I wanted to talk to you about Edward Street if you have a couple of minutes," Burns said.

  "Of course. The poor man."

  "You knew him when he was here, didn't you?"

  Miss Darling nodded, her tight, dyed curls bobbing. "Oh yes. Yes, indeed. He was such an enthusiastic young man when he first arrived here. I always thought that he would be a success."

  "He never pried into your . . . your personal life?"

  "Why do you ask that?" Miss Darling's small mouth curved into a grimace of distaste.

  "It seems to have been a habit of his," Burns said.

  "And a thoroughly unpleasant habit it was, too," Miss Darling said. "But of course you know that. It's not one of the things about him that I like to think about."

  "I can see why. But did he ever practice that habit with you?"

  Miss Darling looked down at her papers. "He tried," she said.

  Now they were getting somewhere. "What did he do, exactly?"

  Miss Darling did not look up. "He spied on me."

  "He what?" Burns could not imagine anyone spying on Miss Darling, for any reason. "Why?"

  "It's a judgment on me," Miss Darling said. "Now all the pigeons are dying, and it's a judgment on me."

  "The pigeons?"

  "Yes. I killed a bird, and now the pigeons are dying."

  Burns wasn't sure he was getting the gist of the conversation. He thought about Miss Darling trying to check her gradebook into the library.

  "You think the pigeons are dying because you killed one?" he said.

  "Of course not. It's because I killed that bird, and Edward Street saw me. Now Edward is dead, and the pigeons are dying."

  Now Burns was sure. He wasn't getting it. "Why don't you start at the beginning and tell me the whole story," he said.

  "It started with the bird that I killed," she said.

  "I'm not too clear about the bird," Burns told her.

  "It was a mockingbird, you see. It's a sin to kill a mockingbird. It's also a crime. The mockingbird is our state bird, after all."

  "You killed a mockingbird. And Street saw you."

  "That's what I said."

  Not exactly, Burns thought. Then he said, "How did you kill the bird?"

  "It was entirely an accident, I assure you."

  "I'm sure it was. How did it happen?"

  "You know how the windows sometimes get opened when the air conditioner doesn't seem to be working and birds get in the building?"

  "Yes. It happens all the time."

  "Well, when Edward was here, the building wasn't even air conditioned. So the windows were open all the time. Birds came swooping around the classrooms on a regular basis."

  "Must have been distracting," Burns said.

  "It was. But the mockingbird got in one afternoon when there was no one but me around, or so I thought. I got a broom out of the ladies' room and tried to shoo it out the window, but I swung too hard. I caught the bird up against the wall and slapped it with the broom. That's how I killed it."

  "What about Street?"

  "Oh, it turned out that he was here all the time. Standing and watching me and laughing. I was concentrating on the bird and didn't even hear him until it was dead. I picked it up off the floor—it was just a little lump of feathers, really. It didn't seem to weigh a thing. And there Edward was, laughing."

  Street was some kind of guy, Burns thought. He might have taken the rap for Fairly, but that was the only time he'd ever shown a spark of decency.

  "He stopped laughing when he saw me looking at him, and he said, 'It's a sin to kill a mockingbird, Miss Darling.' I told him I knew that and that it wasn't nice to sneak around spying on people, either. He told me that he was going to report me to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission for killing the state bird if I got smart with him, so I didn't say anything else. I didn't want to go to prison."

  "I don't really think they'd send you to prison for killing a bird," Burns said. "Make you pay a small fine, maybe. Maybe not even that."

  "Still, it was a terrible thing. I should have been more careful. I've felt bad about it ever since."

  "What did you do with the bird?" Burns asked.

  "I took it home and buried it. I didn't know what else to do."

  Better than putting it in the trash cans, Burns thought. "Did Street ever mention the bird again?"

  "Only now and then. But he did call me after he got here for the symposium. He reminded me that he remembered about the bird and that there was no statute of limitations on murder."

  "What did you tell him?"

  "I told him he could go straight to hell," Miss Darling said, her curls jiggling violently.

  "Good for you," Burns said.

  "I didn't expect to be taken quite so literally, however," Miss Darling said. "And now the pigeons are dying. It's all some kind of a judgment on me for being so violent."

  "No it's not," Burns said. He explained to her about the pigeons. "And I'm sure you didn't have anything to do with Street's death, either."

  "If I didn't, then who did?"

  "I don't know," Burns said. "But I'm sure trying to find out."

  Chapter 18

  Burns went next door to talk to Clem, but she was no longer in her office. There really wasn't much more he could find out from her, anyway, since she was reluctant to "gossip." He went on back to the classroom and sat at the desk.

  He had thought he was getting somewhere, but he wasn't. Sure, he had talked to a lot of people, and all of them had heard from Street. They admitted that much. But that was all they admitted. As far as they were concerned, Street's book could not have hurt them, since they were not really guilty of anything, or if they were, they weren't guilty of what Street said they had done.

  Street could have made them seem guilty in the book easily enough, but that would not have made any difference in the long run. The book—if there was a book, Burns reminded himself—would have been a novel, and you couldn't use a novel to convict anyone. Not in court, at least. A novel, after all, was fiction. The HGC rumor mill had been known, of course, to convict on less. but the people involved in Street's book had survived that rumor mill years before and hung on to their jobs, so what was at stake now?

  For Abner Swan, the revelations could be embarrassing but no more than that. For Dick Hayes, too. But for the others even embarrassment seemed unlikely. No one else had motive enough to kill, not that Burns could see.

  There had to be another way to look at it. Napier might have been able to provide the information, but Burns was not about to call that Casanova. He wondered if the police chief had finished his bogus questioning of Elaine yet.

  Even as he thought that, Burns realized his hypocrisy. It wasn't as if he and Elaine had any kind of understanding. They had never had a date, for God's sake. They were going to the football game on Saturday, but that was all there was to it. While he himself, on the other hand, was carrying on with Melinda Land in a big way. Well, a big way for him. And he was hoping to carry on in an even bigger way later. So why was he bothered by Elaine's apparent approval of Boss Napier?

  He couldn't answer the question, and he turned his thoughts back to the murder. Or the murders, because Duncan had been killed, too. He hadn't really paid enough attention to the killing of Duncan, hadn't even asked anyone about it. If he were a real detective, he wouldn't have let everyone off so easily. He would have asked whether Duncan had questioned them, whether they knew what he was up to, whether they had seen him in the building—all kinds of things like that.

  He was not as good at this as Miller thought he was. Tomorrow, he would tell Miller that he couldn't find
the killer and that the police would have to do the job. If they could.

  Tonight, he was going to tell Melinda Land the same thing and ask her about job vacancies at her university. Maybe he could start writing articles. "Avatar and Archetype: Symbol and Image in The Heart of Darkness." Something like that, something that had a colon in it. You had to have the colon.

  Writing an article! Jesus Christ! Burns suddenly sat straight up, shooting upright so abruptly that he banged his knee on the underside of the desk. When his knee stopped throbbing, he thought some more, and the more he thought, the more convinced he became that he might be onto something.

  After a while he got up. He needed to use a telephone, but his own office was still under police seal, not that there was any reason for it to be. So far as he could see, no one had been there since the morning of the murder.

  He thought briefly of calling Napier first, filling him in on everything, and letting him take it from there; but he decided against it. Napier was probably still in the library anyway, and even if he wasn't, Burns didn't have anything solid to go on. Napier would probably just laugh at him. Burns decided he could call the police later.

  He went around to the other wing of the floor, where Larry and the Darryls had their offices. Bunni was sitting at the desk in the hallway, reading a history text.

  She looked up when Burns came in. "Hi," she said. "Everyone's gone except for me."

  "I didn't want to see anyone," Burns told her. "I just wanted to use the telephone."

  "Oh. Do you want me to leave?"

  "As a matter of fact, that might be a good idea, Bunni. Why don't you go downstairs and get something to drink?"

  "I don't have any change," Bunni said.

  "I do," Burns said, reaching into his pocket and bringing out two quarters. "Have one on me."

  Bunni got up and took the coins. "Thanks Dr. Burns. I think I'll get a Diet Coke."

  "Good choice. And then why don't you go on back to the dorm, Bunni. You've put in enough hours for today."

  "But it's only two-thirty," Bunni protested.

  "That's all right. You can claim the hours on your worksheet. It's not your fault that I'm asking you to leave. I'll take care of it."