by Crider, Bill
"Come in," Rogers's secretary called.
Burns opened the door and went in, startled as usual by the secretary's upswept glasses, which seemed doubly incongruous because of her gray hair. "I'd like to see Dr. Rogers," he said.
"Just a moment," the secretary said. "I'll see if he's free." She stepped around a partition that extended across most of the back of the room. It wasn't a private office, exactly, but it would do in a pinch.
This office wasn't furnished very well, no overstuffed chairs, no pictures on the walls, no carpet on the floor. Just a worn desk and chair, probably scavenged from some old office furniture that had been in storage for years.
The secretary returned. "Dr. Rogers will see you now," she said.
Burns went around the partition. Rogers was seated at another worn desk. There was a straight-backed wooden chair for visitors. Rogers shook hands with Burns and asked him to be seated. "Terrible thing about young Elmore," he said. "Your role in the whole affair speaks well for you, however, and I want you to know that you're high on my list of candidates to replace the late Dean Elmore. Very high on my list."
"No, thanks," Burns said. "I don't think so."
"What, tied to the classroom?" Rogers asked. "I felt that way myself, years ago, when I first moved into administration. But you might be surprised if you gave it a try."
"That's not it, not really," Burns said. "It's just that I don't think you're going to be appointing anyone."
"What?" Rogers's usually pleasantly ruddy face seemed to pale slightly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean I think I know what happened in Elmore's office when he was killed. I think I know who killed him."
"Well, of course. Of course. The police . . . young Elmore . . . the arrest . . ." Blustering didn't become Rogers, and he ran down quickly.
"I don't mean Wayne Elmore," Burns said. "Oh, he burned the Administration Building, no doubt about that. And he tried to burn Main. But he didn't kill his own father. I'm not sure he knows who did, but I think he burned the building to retaliate against the school. He blames all of us for his father's death, and he wanted to strike back somehow. That's why he tried for Main first. The loss of that old building would really have hurt, and it would have hurt us all. But I happened to stop him. So then he went for the second-oldest building. That time he got it."
"But I thought he confessed," Rogers said.
"No. He hasn't made any statement. When he does, I expect that the police will turn up here. Napier may be slow, but he's not as slow as I am. I should have known immediately."
Rogers was toying with a letter opener. It was shiny and new, probably a promotional item that he'd gotten to furnish his new office. "Known what?"
"That you killed Elmore."
Rogers put the letter opener down. "Don't be ridiculous."
"Oh, it's not ridiculous. You must have hated him for years, what with the way he blackmailed himself into the dean's job."
"How . . .?"
"Don Elliott gave me a strong hint. Wayne told me why."
Rogers leaned back as if deflated. "It wasn't what you think," he said.
"It doesn't matter what I think," Burns said. "It's what Wayne and his father thought. It's that you asked Elliott to assure Elmore's appointment as dean."
"I had to," Rogers said. "He would have ruined me."
"I guess it was the degree mill business that did it," Burns said.
"That and the attack on the sports program," Rogers said. There was no more pretense. "I simply went to his office to talk to him, to ask him to moderate his views, reconsider his ideas. He . . . he talked to me as if I were scum, as if I were nothing. He called me an old fool." Rogers's face sagged. "I suppose he was right."
"So you hit him."
"So I hit him. There was a big glass paper-clip holder right there on the desk. I picked it up and hit him. I didn't mean to kill him. I suppose it was God's will."
Burns couldn't believe his ears. "God's will? Was it God's will that you let Coach Thomas sit in jail for what you'd done? Were you going to let Wayne Elmore take the blame for you?"
Rogers put his hands on the desk and steepled the fingers piously. "I told the Lord that if Coach Thomas was not released I would confess," he said. "I made the same statement with regard to young Elmore."
"I can't believe this," Burns said. "The president of a school like this one, striking bargains with God."
"There is ample precedent," Rogers said.
"Not in my book," Burns said, rising to his feet.
Rogers's hand dropped to the desk and rose with the letter opener. Its sharp tip pointed at Burns's stomach.
"Don't be a fool," Burns said.
Rogers dropped the letter opener and stood up, walking around his desk. "Join me in prayer," he said. "Let's get down right here and pray for guidance." He stooped to his knees.
"You pray," Burns said. "I have a phone call to make."
As he rounded the partition, he could hear Rogers's voice, calling on the Lord and asking for guidance and forgiveness. Rogers's secretary was looking at Burns with a mixture of fear and disgust.
"Don't blame me," Burns said as he went out. "He should have gotten to assembly on time." His footsteps echoed hollowly as he walked through the empty warehouse.
Fox was wearing a garish plaid sport coat and white shoes. He was tipped back comfortably in one of the rickety chairs in the history lounge, smoking a non-filtered Lucky Strike. "I figured, 'What the hell,'" he said, offering one to Burns. "If you're gonna smoke, you might as well smoke. Live dangerously. Devil may care."
Burns took the cigarette. "Don't tell me," he said. "Let me guess. Abner Swan had a garage sale."
"Damn," Fox said. "You really are a pretty good detective. How'd you know that?"
"Never mind," Burns said. "It's too complicated a chain of deduction to explain." He lit the Lucky, took a deep drag, and nearly choked to death on the spot. "Good grief," he coughed. "These things are potent."
"What's potent?" Mal Tomlin asked, coming in the door.
"Luckies," Fox said. "Want one?"
"No, thanks," Tomlin said. "I've got my own."
Burns tried another drag, shallower this time. He made it without choking. Then he noticed the big change in the lounge's decor. "You bought a real ashtray," he said.
"That's right," Fox said proudly. In the center of the dilapidated card table there was a greenish ceramic alligator with a long depression in its back. "I couldn't resist it. Picked it up at a little garage sale for just a quarter. It was a steal."
"I always sort of liked the aluminum cans," Burns said.
"You'll get used to it," Tomlin said.
"I wonder if we could get us a new president at a garage sale?" Fox said.
"Burns would probably just get something on him and put him away," Tomlin said. "More bad publicity for the school."
Rogers's arrest had stirred up considerable media interest, especially combined with Wayne Elmore's story. HGC was getting more air time than the president of the United States, as well as a good bit of ink in the major metropolitan newspapers. The trials promised to be quite sensational.
"You going to open up a detective agency?" Fox asked.
"Hardly," Burns said. "If Bunni hadn't come by the office to talk, I might never have thought of Rogers as a killer. He had plenty of motive, but I really thought Wayne had done it. The way his father treated him, he seemed like the logical choice. Especially after I found out the reason Elmore got to be our dean."
"I bet you could get a lot of business if you did, though," Fox said. "You looked pretty good on TV the other night."
"Yeah," Tomlin said, "but you would have looked even better if Earl had let you borrow his sport jacket."
"You like this, huh? Bet you'd never guess where I got it."
"Well, let's see," Tomlin said. "Ten to one, Abner Swan had a garage sale recently."
Fox looked hurt and surprised. "Burns told you," he said.
"No,
he didn't," Tomlin said. "I have detective instincts, too."
Burns stubbed out his Lucky in the alligator's back. "I think I'll go down and see The Rat," he said.
"I think I'll go with you," Tomlin said. "There's something I want to check on."
"Me, too," Fox said.
They all trooped down to the men's room.
When they got inside, Burns understood why they had come. The Rat was slipping down farther and farther. About half of him was visible, now. The combination of the poison and the dry air of Pecan City had dried him out so completely that his body was practically flat.
"I think it's time," Tomlin said.
"Not for me," Fox said. "No way in the world I'm touching that thing."
Burns walked over to the towel dispenser and pulled down the handle three or four times, then ripped off the length of brownish paper towel that extended downward. "Allow me," he said. He put the towel around one of The Rat's paws and pulled. The dead rodent slipped easily from its place behind the board.
"Maybe we ought to give it to Rose," Fox said.
"Don't be a wise guy or I'll throw it on you," Burns said, carrying it to the trash can and laying it carefully inside. Then he covered it with the paper towel. "One less rat," he said. "Three less," Tomlin said. "Let's go."
"Come on down and have another Lucky when you're done," Fox said. "It's the least I can do for you."
Burns smiled. "I'll be there," he said.
