…A Dangerous Thing (14 page)

He wondered if a man like that wouldn't be capable of throwing Tom Henderson from a window and decided that he probably would.

S
afely in his office, Burns opened the center drawer of his desk and pulled out a piece of paper and an old Parker T-Ball Jotter that he liked.
 
He started making a little list, trying to get his thoughts organized.
 
The list was headed by Tom Henderson's name, and beneath the name Burns wrote what he knew.

1.
 
Eric Holt wasn't around the building the night Tom Henderson died.
 
Or if he was, no one seems to have seen him.

2.
 
Melling
says that Holt threatened Tom because Tom was asking questions about Holt.
 
(
Melling
didn't use Holt's name, but that's who he meant.)

Burns stopped writing and looked out his office window.
 
There was a lizard sunning itself on the cracked stone window sill outside.
 
Burns wasn't particularly interested in the lizard.
 
He was interested in what questions Henderson had been asking about Holt.
 
And whom he had been asking.
 
Burns would see if he could find out.
 
He looked down at his list and began writing again.

3.
 
Walt
Melling
was clearly infuriated with Tom for making remarks about Dawn.
 
He's still upset about it.

4.
 
There had been a complaint against Henderson made by a female student.

Burns stopped writing again and clicked the Jotter a couple of times.
 
He was going to have to talk to Earl Fox about that student.
 
Fox hadn't revealed the student's name, which was the proper and professional thing, of course, but the fact that Henderson had definitely been murdered changed the picture.
 
As far as questioning the student went, rightly or wrongly, Burns considered himself a little more sensitive than Boss Napier.
 
Better for Burns to talk to her than for Napier to find out about her first.
 
Burns would talk to Fox later and get the name.

5.
 
Henderson thought he might know Holt, but couldn't remember where he might have met or seen him.

That one went along with number 2, and Burns drew an arrow connecting the two entries.

6.
 
People suspect that there might be some tie between Dean Partridge and Holt.
 
Why else would Holt have come to HGC?

Burns stared down at the list.
 
Was that all?
 
It didn't seem like much to go on, but he would do what he could with it.
 
There was something else that was bothering him, something that someone had said or done, but he couldn't pull it out of his memory.
 
Maybe it would come to him later.

He put the list in his desk drawer along with the pen and started grading some papers from his developmental students.
 
He used a green pen for that.

Some of the students had actually improved over the course of the semester.
 
Burns wasn't sure whether the improvement was due to his teaching skills or whether the students had finally managed to absorb something through some mysterious process of osmosis.
 
After all, it seemed nearly impossible that they could have sat in classrooms for nearly thirteen years now without learning anything about how a sentence was put together.

After a few minutes of grading, he decided to discard the osmosis theory.
 
If anything good had happened, he was going to take credit for it himself.

B
y early that afternoon, Burns was feeling good.
 
He had put Henderson's murder out of his mind and had graded all his papers; some of the students had even made A's.
 
Burns leaned back in his desk chair and told himself that he was a pretty fair teacher even if he did say so himself, which he had to do, since no one else at HGC was going to say it for him.
 
So far, Dean Partridge hadn't been one to lavish praise on the faculty.

And while he hadn't solved Henderson's murder, he was making progress, wasn't he?
 
He had made a list, and he was convinced that getting his thoughts down was an orderly first step, necessary in the investigative process.

He looked out the window.
 
The sun had moved, and so had the lizard, probably having slithered away down a convenient crack in the wall.
 
Burns thought it was just about time to go home.

But then George (the Ghost)
Kaspar
came moping through
Burns's
office door.

"What's the trouble, George?" Burns asked, struck by the young man's gloom.
 
George had never been the despondent type before, not even in the depths of a losing football season.

"It's
Bunni
," George said.
 
"And it's all your fault, Dr. Burns."

That didn't sound promising.
 
Burns wondered where the lizard had gone and whether it needed any company in its crack in the wall.
 
Probably not.

"Sit down, George," he said trying to sound cheerful for George's benefit.
 
"Tell me what I've done."

George sat heavily.
 
"You made us read that poem last year," he said.

That cleared things up, all right.

"What poem?" Burns asked.
 
He had assigned quite a few poems in the class George had taken, dozens probably.

George was looking at the floor, his hands clasped between his knees.
 
He was the very picture of dejection.
 
"The one about the woman."

Burns wasn't catching on.
 
There were lots of poems about women.
 
"What woman, George?
 
Remember what I said in class about being specific?"

George did not admit remembering.
 
"You know which woman.
 
The one who walked in beauty.
 
Like the night."

"Oh," Burns said.
 
"That poem."

George looked up.
 
"I really liked that poem, Dr. Burns.
 
Maybe you couldn't tell in class, but I really did."

"It's a very fine poem," Burns said.
 
He didn't know what else to say.

"It reminded me of
Bunni
."

Burns just sat there.
 
He couldn't tell where this was leading, and he couldn't think of a response.

"Did you ever memorize a poem?" George asked.

Burns had memorized many poems in his youth.
 
Some of them because he was required to and others because he liked them.
 
Not many people did that these days.

"Yes," he said.
 
"I've memorized a poem or two."

"Well, I hadn't.
 
Never, not even in grade school.
 
But I memorized that one."

"I'm glad to hear it.
 
You should be proud of yourself, not depressed."

"I'm not depressed because I memorized the poem.
 
I'm depressed because it got me in trouble with
Bunni
."

"How?" Burns asked.
 
He really didn't see how memorizing a poem could get anyone into trouble.

"She says I'm oppressing her."

Uh-oh, Burns thought.
 
"Didn't we decide earlier in the semester that you weren't oppressing her?
 
You were oppressing other people, but not her."

"Yeah, but that was then.
 
Now
she's
feeling oppressed.
 
And all because of that poem."

"I don't think I see the connection," Burns said.

"Well, the reason I memorized that poem was because it reminded me of
Bunni
, so I said it for her.
 
'She walks in beauty like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies.'
 
Bunni's
like that, Dr. Burns."

Bunni
was a little too young for
Burns's
tastes, but he could see how a young man like George might be affected that way, though he was a little surprised at George's sensitivity.
 
He hadn't thought the boy had it in him.

 
Burns himself, when he was very much younger, had once recited a few lines of the same poem to a young woman of his acquaintance, and the effect had been quite satisfactory.
 
But that had been in another country; he didn't know what had happened to the wench (and what a politically incorrect term
that
was), but he certainly hoped that she wasn't dead.

"
Bunni
didn't appreciate your recitation?" he said.

"She sure didn't.
 
She said all I thought about was the way she looked and that I didn't care anything about her 'inner beauty.'"

This didn't look good.
 
Burns asked if George had affirmed
Bunni's
inner beauty.

George gave a glum nod.
 
"I told her I thought she was sweet."

Burns felt a little sorry for George, who was probably a lot more at home on the football field than in trying to deal with a young woman who has suddenly discovered sexism.

"Sweet probably wasn't the right word to pick," he said.

"No," George said.
 
"It sure wasn't.
 
"It just made her madder."

He sighed and stared at the worn carpet.
 
Burns couldn't think of anything comforting to say, so he didn't say anything at all.
 
After a minute or so of gloomy silence, George looked up.

"She's going to bring charges against me," he said.

"Charges?"
 
Burns found that hard to believe.
 
"Did you do something stupid, George?
 
Besides reciting the poem, I mean."

But George hadn't done anything stupid.
 
"Not charges like the police arrest you for.
 
She's taking me to the student court for '
lookism
,' whatever
that
is."

Burns groaned inwardly.
 
"
Lookism
" had been the subject of one of Dean Partridge's memos, in which she had discussed the evils of basing an opinion of a person on that person's appearance.
 
Most frequently,
lookism
took the form of liking a person for his or her personal beauty.

"But I don't see anything wrong with that," George said after Burns had explained it to him.
 
"How else are you going to get an opinion of someone you don't know?
 
You kind of like their looks, don't you?
 
That's what makes you want to get to know them better."

"I suppose it works that way sometimes," Burns said, thinking of Elaine Tanner.
 
He had wanted to get to know her better as soon as he saw her.
 
Boss Napier had wanted to get to know her better, too, but Burns wasn't going to dwell on that topic.

"Then later on you find out stuff about them," George said.
 
"Maybe you find out they're selfish or something like that and you don't ask them out again.
 
But that's not the way it worked with
Bunni
."

"You found out she was sweet."

"Sure.
 
But that just made me like her even more.
 
I don't get it, Dr. Burns.
 
What's wrong with being pretty and sweet?"

"Nothing," Burns said, but he wasn't sure that he was right.

The world he was living in wasn't at all like the world he had grown up in and grown more or less familiar with.
 
Women these days didn't seem to want to be pretty and sweet.
 
They wanted to be autonomous and tough.
 
Or maybe not.
 
Burns was clearly out of his depth.
 
He felt the way a semi-intelligent dinosaur might have felt while studying the first mammals.

"Are you sure
Bunni's
going to bring this up before the student court?" he asked.

"Yes.
 
Just like I was caught cheating on a test or something.
 
I've never cheated at anything in my life, Dr. Burns."

"I'm sure you haven't.
 
Maybe we could get someone to talk to
Bunni
about this.
 
I think you're willing to try to understand her point of view, aren't you?"