Dead Soldiers (23 page)

“If we’re going by the salary that I’m paid, I’m more like a third-rate English teacher,“ Burns said.

“Whatever you’re getting, it’s more than you deserve.“

Things had gone bad fast, Burns thought. Maybe it was just a case of instant mutual dislike, or maybe Cody was guilty of something. Whatever the case, Burns wasn’t going to find out anything at this rate. Time to change tactics and get back to being the real Carl Burns instead of some disrespectful imposter.

“I’m sorry if I’ve offended you,“ he said, trying to sound contrite. “I seem to have implied something that’s not true, and I don’t blame you for being upset.“

“Upset?“ Rex said. “Am I upset? Do I look upset, Suzie?“

He looked like a man about to have an apoplexy, Burns thought, but Suzanne said, “Not at all, Rex. You look very calm to me.“

If that was true, Burns didn’t want to see him when he was actually upset.

“At any rate,“ Burns said. “I’ve gotten off on the wrong foot with you. When I told you that Dr. Partridge thinks you might have stolen her soldiers, I was exaggerating. I should have said that you and your wife were among the only people who were in her house on the day they disappeared. Dr. Partridge hoped that you might have seen or heard something that would help us find out who took them.“

“It sure didn’t sound that way to me,“ Rex said, and Suzanne said, “Me neither.“

“I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m sorry about that.“

“You damn well should be. I’ve a good mind to have
your
ass fired.“

He could do it, too, but at the moment Burns didn’t even care. He was just sorry he’d ever let Partridge talk him into this. Partridge and Napier. It was all their fault.

“You’re pretty defensive,“ he said, feeling the imposter slipping out again. “Is it because you’re guilty?“

“Hell no, I’m not guilty. If I wanted any toy soldiers, I’d buy them myself.“ Rex waved a hand to indicate his house and grounds. “Do I look like someone who needs to steal some crummy toy soldiers?“

“No,“ Burns said. “You certainly don’t.“

“And I didn’t, either.“ Rex stood up. “So you can leave now.“

Burns sat right where he was. “I have another question for you.“

Rex picked up his golf club and ran his left hand down the shaft.

“I’m wondering if you or Mrs. Cody saw anybody else with an undue interest in the soldiers. Anybody who might have lingered in the room to be alone with them.“

“There was no chance of that,“ Suzanne said.

Rex continued to finger the shaft of his golf club. Burns wondered if Rex knew the Freudian implications of that action. Probably not.

“There were students there,“ Suzanne said. “Bustling around, telling us that we’d come in the wrong way, showing us out. We weren’t in there long enough to have taken anything, and neither was anyone else.“

“What about Matthew Hart?“ Burns asked. “How well did you know him?“

“What the hell does he have to do with anything?“ Rex said.

“I was just wondering.“

“Hart was a bastard,“ Rex said. “But that doesn’t mean I didn’t like him. We played bridge with him and his wife now and then. You, on the other hand, I don’t like much at all.“

“I’m not much of a bridge player,“ Burns said.

“Probably not much of anything. Now why don’t you take a hike.“

Burns didn’t think he was going to get anything more out of the
Codys
. He stood up and said, “Thanks for taking the time to talk to me.“

“You shouldn’t barge in on people,“ Rex said, fondling the club. “They don’t like it.“

“I apologize,“ Burns said. “But when the dean speaks, I obey.“

“Maybe you’re not all bad, then,“ Rex said, but Burns could tell he didn’t really mean it.

A
s Burns drove around the curving drive, he reflected that he could see most of Pecan City from the
Codys
’ lot. It wasn’t a bad little town, he thought. He could see the college, the Main Building standing out from the others by virtue of being the only one with more than two
storeys
. He could also see the downtown area and Neal Bruce’s bank, which stood out for the same reason Main did. Burns wondered if Bruce and Mason would ever really get married or if Bruce was just another in a long line of her conquests.

Looking in the direction of the baseball field, Burns noted that he could see it quite well, and the metal building where the shooter had been positioned sparkled in the sun. It wouldn’t have been all that tricky for Cody to fire the shot that hit Don Elliott and then get back home, if he had the stamina to walk up Thrill Hill. He looked in rotten shape to Burns, who thought climbing the stairs in Main had conditioned him enough so that he could get up the hill on foot if he’d wanted to try it, which he didn’t. Better to think that he could do it than to be disillusioned by the reality.

Thrill Hill, which was quite steep, had been named by high school students of generations long past. When there had been nothing more than a dirt road to the top, they had driven up there in their jalopies, turned around, and driven back down as fast as they could go. When the road leveled out at the bottom, it ran straight for a quarter of a mile after its junction with the main road, and so there was plenty of time to slow down, assuming there was no one coming along to get in the way and prevent the crossing.

As he pulled out of the
Codys
’ drive, Burns wondered if Rex Cody had always been an asshole or if he’d become one only after he got rich in the oil business. Burns remembered what F. Scott Fitzgerald had said about the very rich: “They are different from you and me.“ Hemingway hadn’t thought much of that idea. He believed the only difference was that the rich had more money. Burns wasn’t sure who was right, but Rex Cody was different from Burns, and if it was money that had made him that way, Burns wanted no part of it.

But, Burns told himself, he’d never become like Cody. If he had money, he’d be kind and generous and beloved by the community. He’d use his wealth for the benefit of all. No question about it.

Burns stared down the hill, his head filled with all the wonderful things he would do, not to mention all the civic awards he’d receive, so that at first he didn’t notice the car that was coming up the hill. When he did notice, he saw that it was coming straight for him.

The road was paved, and there was plenty of room for both cars. But the driver of the car headed up was taking his half of the road right out of the middle.

The sun dazzled off the car’s windshield, and Burns couldn’t see who was driving or whether he was even looking in
Burns’s
direction.

Probably some jerk talking on a cell phone, Burns thought and honked the Camry’s horn. The result was disappointing. Say what you might about the old gas-guzzler that
Burns’s
ancient Plymouth had been, it had a real horn on it. It had honked with
gravitas
and authority. It had moved people out of the way with its stentorian tones.

The horn on the Camry didn’t have anything like the same resonance or force, and it sounded to Burns about as authoritative as the little squeeze-bulb horn that had been on the Huffy bike he’d gotten when he was five years old.

If the driver in the other car heard it at all, he gave no sign. The voice on his cell phone was no doubt louder than the horn.

Burns glanced to his right for some way to escape. There was really no place for him to go. There were no houses on the hill other than the Cody mansion, so there were no driveways or yards that offered a convenient turn-in. There was just a slight drop-off onto the rough and rocky shoulder in which only a few weeds grew, and the shoulder itself was narrow, no more than a couple of feet wide. A drainage ditch ran along beside it, and beyond that some scrawny mesquite bushes and a few runty oaks stuck up behind the barbed wire fence that went all the way down the hill.

Even worse, right ahead there was culvert underneath the road, and on each side of the road there was a large concrete abutment. Burns had literally nowhere to turn.

Burns slowed down. The other driver didn’t, and he seemed to have no intention of moving out of the middle of the road.

As a teenager, Burns had heard about the game of
chicken
. He hadn’t thought about it in years, however, and he’d certainly never taken part in it.

Well, he thought, he hadn’t taken part in, but he was taking part in it now, and it didn’t take him long to decide that when it came to being chicken, he had few peers. Better to try to miss the abutment than to hit the other car head on. As the driver barreled closer, Burns threw on the brakes and turned off the road.

The Camry dropped off the pavement and slid toward the abutment. Burns hoped he could stop before he hit it. The anti-lock brakes helped, but Burns still found himself in a skid that he couldn’t control, heading straight for tons of solid concrete.

Burns wrenched the steering wheel, and he could almost feel the tires turning underneath the Camry. But there was no traction on the loose soil and rocks. The car was still going straight.

Bootlegger’s turn, Burns thought, having heard the term somewhere or read it in a book. He stepped on the emergency brake.

That worked, if you could call it working. The car turned sharply sideways, and now the side instead of the hood was headed for the abutment.

Burns reached down, smacking his head on the wheel, and released the parking brake, mashing the accelerator at the same time. Somehow the back tires grabbed hold, and the Camry shot past the abutment with about an inch to spare. Burns didn’t know how close he actually was because he had closed his eyes.

The car bottomed out in the ditch, and Burns bounced straight up. His eyes came open as the Camry slid up the side of the ditch and into the barbed wire strands of the fence. The wires twanged apart, but Burns didn’t hear the music they made as the car rocked from side to side and tried to flip itself over.

It stayed upright, slid past a mesquite bush whose thorns screeched down its side, and came to a stop in front of a scraggly oak.

For several seconds Burns did nothing more than sit there and breathe. The car’s engine was still running, and the air-conditioner was pumping cool air, but Burns was sweating. After a while he managed to pry his fingers loose from the steering wheel and assess the damage to himself.

There was none, as far as he could tell, glad for once that he always buckled his seat belt. He unbuckled it with shaking fingers and got out of the car, finding that his legs would hold him up just fine even though his knees were a bit watery.

There were long scratches down the side of the Camry, and the barbed wire had scored the hood, but there didn’t seem to be any other damage. Burns had insurance, and he could have the car repainted, but it wouldn’t seem new anymore.

He looked up the hill, but of course there was no sign of the car that had forced him off the road. He hadn’t expected that there would be. The road went on past the
Codys
’ house and along the crest of the hill before it curved around and down toward a little town named Butler, about ten miles away. Along the way to Butler, there were plenty of little county roads that a driver could take if he wanted to return to Pecan City. Burns figured the driver who had forced him off the road was cruising happily along one of them, jabbering away on his cell phone about the mesquite bushes, or maybe only asking for directions.

Burns wiped sweat off his forehead and turned to have a look at the path he had taken from the road. He supposed he could turn around and drive back that way. Might as well give it a try.

Navigating the ditch wasn’t any fun, even driving very slowly, but Burns managed it without incident and got back onto the road. The car seemed to be running just fine, and there weren’t even any new rattles.

Burns thought for a second about going up the hill to let Cody know that his fence was down, but Cody would probably want Burns to pay for the damage. Burns wasn’t in any mood for that, and since he hadn’t seen any cattle that might wander out onto the road, he didn’t think there was any danger to drivers, not that there was any traffic to speak of. He decided to wait until he got back to town and make an anonymous call from a pay phone at some convenience store.

Burns turned on the radio, hoping to find some soothing music. He turned to the country station, where Kerry Newcomb was singing his latest hit, something about a
ramblin
’ man named Poudre River Pete and his “amorous, three-legged, beer-swilling cur.“

Not exactly soothing, Burns thought as he punched a button. He got a news story about another soldier dying in a riot in Iraq, which was even less soothing, and so he punched another button, this one for an oldies station out of Dallas. Buddy Holly was doing “Words of Love,“ which was just right, and Burns was momentarily soothed.

Then he thought about what Boss Napier would say when he told him about the near-miss on Thrill Hill.

“Details, Burns. Didn’t we talk about that? You have to get the details. What was the
make
of car? How about the year? Or the color? What was the license number?“

Burns couldn’t answer any of those questions, but then he’d been more intent on getting off the road in one piece than in taking an inventory of the approaching car’s vital statistics.