…A Dangerous Thing (5 page)

Or those were some of the things they were
supposed
to do.
 
Burns was not sure just how many of them were actually accomplished, or accomplished with any degree of efficiency.

One reason for his doubts was that he received calls semester after semester asking the same question:
 
"Can students take British literature before American literature, or does it make any difference?"

It wasn't the question itself that bothered him.
 
What bothered him was that the same counselor called him to ask it over and over.
 
Maybe even that wouldn't have been so bad if the answer to the question were not printed in the catalog for anyone to see and read.
 
The counselors were supposed to be the college's experts on the catalog, weren't they?
 
Burns could not avoid the nagging worry that if they were, then the college was in big trouble.

When he entered the office, he was greeted by Dawn
Melling
, the very one who could never seem to get the course sequences straight.
 
She was a statuesque young woman with a large bust, a small waist, and long red fingernails.
 
She had a huge beehive of dark black hair that Burns was certain was a wig, though why anyone would choose such a wig he wasn't quite sure.
 
She looked a little like Elvira, except that her dress wasn't as revealing as those usually chosen by the Mistress of the Dark.

"Why Dr. Burns," she said.
 
"What brings you here?"
 
She was from Georgia and had a pronounced Southern drawl, though she had not lived in Georgia since she had come to HGC as a student ten years previously.

"I, uh, want to look at some catalogs," Burns said.
 

Being around Dawn always disturbed him.
 
Her overtly sexy appearance had something to do with it, but she was by all accounts happily married to Walt
Melling
, the school's chief recruiter, and Burns was sure she would never dream of straying.
 
What disturbed him was a certain vagueness in her character, a certain
je ne sais
quois
that kept Burns off balance in every conversation they ever had.

In other words, he was never quite sure what she was talking about.
 
Once he had seen her in the parking lot, getting out of a brand new Ford Taurus, and he asked her how she liked the new car.

She reached into the car and retrieved her briefcase, then turned to Burns.
 
"Drives like a glove," she said.

Burns never had figured out just what she meant, though it wasn't for want of trying.
 
Sometimes he would wake up from a deep sleep and think, "Drives like a glove?"

"Which catalogs are you looking for?" she asked now.

"College catalogs," Burns said, so she wouldn't give him the latest from J. C. Penney.
 
"From
other
colleges," he added, so that she wouldn't give him a handful of HGC catalogs and shoo him out.

"Of course you do," she said.
 
"Right this way."
 

She turned and led him into a small cubbyhole beside the main office.
 
On one wall there was a shelf filled with paperbound catalogs of all shapes and sizes.

"Were you looking for anything in particular?" Dawn asked. She sounded like a salesclerk in the clothing department at Sears.

"I think I can find it," Burns said.
 
He didn't want anyone looking over his shoulder while he searched.

"Just call me if you need any help," Dawn said.
 
"I know all about these things."
 
She waved a red-tipped hand at the crammed shelves.

"Thanks," Burns said, convinced that she knew absolutely nothing at all about the contents of the catalogs.

He waited until she had left the room before he looked for the catalog he wanted.
 
Since they were arranged more or less in alphabetical order, he found it easily and pulled it from the shelf.

The spine was royal blue, as was most of the front cover, and the words CATALOGUE OF AUSTAMONT COLLEGE were printed on it in white.
 
The name was printed on the cover as well, along with the fancy spelling of
catalog
, and the academic year for which the catalog was valid was printed below the name.

Burns sat in the student desk that was the only piece of furniture in the room and opened the catalog to the back.
 
He wasn't interested in the course descriptions.
 
He was interested in the list of faculty members.
 
Austamont
College was one of HGC's sister denominational institutions, located in Missouri.
 
It was the school where Gwendolyn Partridge had been before her recent move, and hers was the first name Burns looked for.

It was there, all right:

PARTRIDGE, GWENDOLYN E.
 
Professor of English.
 
Chair,

Division of Language and Literature.
 
B.A., M.A., Ph.D., Texas

Tech University.
 
1977.

The italicized year was the date that Dr. Partridge had joined the faculty at
Austamont
, and it was probably also the year she had received her final degree.
 
She had become a division chair at
Austamont
, and the next step up the ladder was a deanship, which had apparently not become available to her at that school, for whatever reason.
 
So she had applied for the one at HGC.

Burns then scanned the list of faculty members for the name of someone he might know, either from graduate school or professional meetings.
 

There was only one name that was even slightly familiar, that of Barry Towson.
 
Burns had talked to him about paperback mystery fiction at a meeting of the Popular Culture Association in San Antonio the previous year.
 
They had agreed on a fondness for writers not generally much remembered by the general public, writers like J. M. Flynn, Bob McKnight, and Milton K. Ozaki.
 
Towson would probably remember him, Burns thought.

Burns flipped back to the beginning of the catalog and copied down the school's area code and phone number.

Then he replaced the
Austamont
Catalogue and took down the one from
Claireson
University, where Holt had taught before arriving at HGC.
 
Flipping to the faculty listing, Burns noted that Holt's degrees were from North Texas State University (now for some reason known as The University of North Texas).

That was funny, Burns thought.
 
Mal Tomlin was about Holt's age, and Tomlin's degrees were from North Texas.
 
Yet Tomlin had never mentioned having encountered Holt there, as far as Burns knew.
 
Of course, in the '70s there had probably been a large number of students in pursuit of graduate degrees in English there, and Tomlin was in another department entirely, so there was nothing unusual in the fact that their paths had never crossed.

Burns looked through the faculty listing for other names he recognized, but this time he came up with none.
 
Well, he could ask Tomlin to call a few of his friends from graduate school to see if they had known Holt, and there was always Tom Henderson, who thought Holt looked familiar.

Burns returned the catalog to the shelf and left the cubbyhole.

"Did you find what you were looking for?" Dawn
Melling
asked as he emerged.

"Yes," Burns said.
 
"Thanks, Dawn."

She smiled, revealing startlingly white teeth.
 
"Anytime.
 
Come back and let us service you again."

Pondering the implications of that last statement, Burns left the Counseling Office and headed for the stairs.

T
om Henderson's office was on the second floor of Main, on the opposite side of the building from Earl Fox's.
 
The location was a matter of the building's structure and was not a deliberate gesture on the part of Fox, though the truth of the matter was that Henderson was a burr under Fox's saddle, a more or less constant source of irritation.
 
Burns did not wish Fox any ill, but at the same time he was glad Henderson taught social studies and not English.

Henderson was a scrawny scarecrow of a man, the ninety-eight-pound weakling grown middle-aged.
 
He was the type who felt threatened by anyone who dared question his absolute authority in the classroom, or even by anyone who merely
appeared
to question that authority.

Let a student wonder why he had received an 86 on a quiz while someone with the identical answers had received an 87, and Henderson was likely to burst into a rage that purpled his leathery face and bulged his eyes.

And in this case, it was correct to use the masculine pronoun to refer to the student, because it was extremely rare for a female student in one of Henderson's classes to get anything but an excellent grade.

Burns had once overheard two women talking in the hall about Henderson's classes.
 
One was recommending introductory psych to the other.

"Just be sure to wear a short skirt, sit on the front row, and cross your legs," the first one said.
 
"You won't get any less than a B, I promise you."

Burns knew that Fox dealt with a number of complaints every semester from students, generally males, who felt that Henderson had persecuted, teased, or tormented them, but that so far there had been no complaints of sexual harassment.
 
So far.
 
Burns thought that maybe Henderson was one faculty member who could profit from a little political correctness.

Burns walked to the door of the men's room (and how politically correct was that appellation? he wondered), turned left and went down the corridor to Henderson's office.

The door was closed, and
Burns's
first thought was that Henderson was in class.
 
Then he heard muffled voices from behind the door and changed his mind.

He raised his hand to knock and almost hit a student in the forehead as the door was jerked open and she rushed out of the office.

She threw Burns a look and then swept by, but not before he saw the traces of tears on her cheeks.

He looked into the office.
 
Henderson was standing by a window, hands in his pockets, looking out at the campus as if nothing untoward had occurred.

Maybe nothing had.
 
Maybe the student had merely been upset by a homework assignment or a bad grade.
 
It had happened before, even to Burns, who hoped that was all there was to it.

He tapped on the door facing, and Henderson turned from the window.

"Hello, Burns," he said.
 
He seemed perfectly calm.
 
"Nice day, isn't it."

"Too nice for anyone to be crying," Burns said.

Henderson smiled grimly.
 
"Oh, that was nothing.
 
She was just angry because she read the wrong assignment and therefore made a failing grade on one of my pop tests."

"Oh," Burns said.
 
Incidents like that weren't uncommon.
 
He thought about mentioning it to Fox later, however, just in case.
 
"It happens."

"Too often," Henderson said.
 
He sat behind his desk.
 
It was much neater than
Burns's
own desk.
 
There was nothing to be seen except a desk calendar and a bust of Sigmund Freud.
 

"Have a chair, Burns," Henderson said.
 
"What can I do for you?"

Burns sat down and looked at Henderson, who was wearing a tan cardigan over an open-necked white shirt.
 
There was a ruff of chest hair sticking out like the straw from a scarecrow's shirt.
 
Burns wondered if Henderson let it show like that to compensate for the fact that he was a victim of male pattern baldness.
 
Burns was reasonably sure that incipient baldness was the reason for Henderson's unfashionably long sideburns and the swirl of hair that hung over his collar in the back.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into things
, Burns thought.
 
Sit in an office with a bust of Freud, and there was no telling what strange thoughts would occur to you.

"I was wondering about Eric Holt," Burns said.
 
"Earl says you mentioned something about his looking familiar."

Henderson opened the middle drawer of his desk and pulled out a pipe.
 
He put the pipe in his mouth, but he didn't light it.
 
"Getting ready for the smoke-free environment," he said by way of explanation.
 
He gave the pipe a couple of dry puffs.
 
"Not very satisfactory, though."