Dead Soldiers (5 page)

“You don’t have to worry about me,“ Burns assured Napier. “I don’t want to have anything to do with this. I’ve got problems of my own.“

“You sure do,“ Napier said. “You’re playing in a ball game on Saturday, aren’t you?“

Burns said that he was.

“I thought so. I’ll probably see you there.“

“Great,“ Burns said with as much enthusiasm as he could muster, which wasn’t a lot.

Murder was bad enough, certainly, but Burns had never known Matthew Hart very well. Hart had left teaching before Burns had ever come to HGC.

The ball game was different. Burns was going to have to play second base.

That made it personal.

T
he news about Matthew Hart was all over campus by the time Burns got to the boiler room, the only place left to sneak a cigarette since Dean Partridge had been instrumental in declaring HGC a “nonsmoking campus.“

“You’re late,“ Mal Tomlin said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke.

Tomlin, the chair of HGC’s Education Department, had sandy hair and a freckled face. He looked a little like Huck Finn might if he’d gone into academia.

“I was talking to Boss Napier,“ Burns said. “Give me a cigarette.“

“You quit, remember?“ Earl Fox said.

Fox was the clean-cut chair of the History Department, Tom Sawyer to Tomlin’s Huck. If Fox hadn’t insisted on buying all his clothes at garage sales, he might have passed as an Ivy-leaguer. As it was, he looked like an Ivy-leaguer who’d been dressed by a wino.

“That’s right,“ Burns said. “I quit. Now I’m starting again. What are we smoking today?“

“Harley-Davidsons,“ Tomlin said, getting the pack out of his pocket and extending it to Burns.

Burns took the pack and looked at the Harley-Davidson logo. He wasn’t sure just what motorcycles had to do with cigarettes, but there must have been a connection.

“We don’t have to get tattoos to smoke these, do we?“ he asked.

“Not if you don’t want one,“ Tomlin said. “Need a light?“

“Of course he needs a light,“ Fox said. “A guy who doesn’t smoke wouldn’t be carrying around a lighter, would he?“

“Guess not,“ Tomlin said, lighting
Burns’s
cigarette with a red plastic butane lighter.

Burns inhaled and felt the harsh burn of the tobacco, the tar, the nicotine, and God only knew what else. Maybe motorcycle oil. He remembered then why he had quit smoking in the first place. He took another puff. It was exactly the same, so he tossed the cigarette to the concrete floor and mashed it out with his foot.

“Son of a bitch!“ Tomlin said. “Do you know how much one of those things costs these days?“

“I’ll give you a quarter the next time I have one,“ Burns said, sitting in one of the rickety folding chairs near Fox. “Have you two heard about Matthew Hart?“

Tomlin blew a smoke ring. “That’s what Napier wanted with you, huh?
 
Professional advice from HGC’s greatest sleuth.“

“He didn’t want advice,“ Burns said. “Just the opposite. What have you heard?“

“I heard Hart was shot dead.“
 
Tomlin inhaled, breathed out smoke. “Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.“

“You didn’t like him?“

“Nobody liked him,“ Fox said, as ash drifted down onto the rayon shirt he was wearing. At least Burns thought it was rayon. It might have been nylon. Something synthetic, anyway. It had probably cost Fox all of twenty-five cents. “Did you like him?“

Burns admitted that Hart hadn’t been one of his favorite people.

“The students all called him ’Hard-hart,’“ Tomlin said. “He had a reputation.“

“Don’t we all?“ Fox asked.

“Not for being assholes,“ Tomlin said. “At least
I
don’t. You know what I’m talking about. Hart was the kind of guy who wouldn’t cut anybody any slack.“ He looked at Fox. “You remember that kid who was in the car wreck?“

Fox took a deep drag on his cigarette. “The one who broke his neck?“

Tomlin nodded. “That’s the one.“

“Hart flunked him because he missed an exam,“ Fox said to Burns. “It was before you came here. The fact that the kid was flat on his back in the hospital didn’t make any difference to Hart.“

Burns liked for students to take tests on time, but a broken neck seemed like a legitimate excuse. Students in
Burns’s
classes occasionally failed because of excessive absences, but the absences never involved a broken neck. More often than not, there was no real reason for the absences. The students simply had things they’d rather do than attend class: sleep, work, or just goof off playing pool in the student center.

“Didn’t the student with the broken neck appeal to the dean?“ Burns asked.

But Burns already knew the answer to that one. Students appealed to the dean all the time, and for reasons much less compelling than a broken neck. Burns had even had one student in a night class complain to the dean because Burns expected him to do just as much work as the other students. The student’s argument had been that he had a full-time job, and it wasn’t fair for Burns to expect someone with that burden to do any reading or writing outside of class. The dean hadn’t been sympathetic.

“Sure there was a complaint,“ Tomlin said. “The kid won, too. That just pissed Hart off.“

“He’s also the one who gave a class the wrong test one time,“ Fox said. “Or so everyone in the class claimed. He wouldn’t admit it, and nearly everyone failed. I think the highest grade in that class that semester was a ’C.’“

“He was in your department,“ Burns said. “Did you get calls?“

Burns already knew the answer to that one, too. Everybody got calls when students made below a “B.“
 
And sometimes when they made a “B.“ These days, students always wanted “A’s,“ no matter what kind of work they did.

Fox flicked his cigarette. Ash scattered on the floor. “Yep, I got calls. I caught hell from parents for months afterward. From the students, too.“

Burns was well aware that he should shut up. He’d just been warned not to meddle into the murder, after all. He also knew that Napier hadn’t been kidding, or hadn’t seemed to be. But Burns couldn’t help himself.

“Who do you think might want to kill him?“ he asked.

Fox clamped the cigarette in his teeth and squinted his eyes through the smoke that rose around his face.

“You mean aside from all those parents who called me?
 
And besides every student he ever had?“

“Not to mention the staff members who had to deal with him,“ Tomlin added.

“And most of the faculty members who were here then,“ Fox said. “And then there’s me, of course. I had plenty of trouble with him.“

“And just think about everybody he’s screwed in his insurance business,“ Tomlin said. He tossed his cigarette to the floor and lit another one. “There must be plenty of those.“

Burns looked around the boiler room. The boiler itself was huge. It looked a little like some kind of alien spaceship that had been trapped in a brick barn. It was wrapped in some kind of material that Burns strongly suspected had a large asbestos component.

“I wonder who found the body,“ he said.

“I haven’t heard,“ Tomlin said. “You, Earl?“

Fox shook his head. “Could have been his wife. He was at home when they found him. Why do you want to know, Carl?
 
You aren’t involved in this, I hope.“

“I’m not involved,“ Burns said.

“That’s good,“ Tomlin said. “Because we don’t want you to be distracted, do we Earl?“

“No,“ Earl said. “We need you at your best for the big game.“

The ball game again. Burns didn’t want to talk about it.

Tomlin did. “There’s going to be a pretty good crowd. I think we can win, don’t you?“

Burns didn’t think so, not with him on the team. He didn’t know how he’d ever gotten himself into this mess in the first place. It had started out innocently enough, just a suggestion that there be some sort of faculty baseball team, and Burns had never expected anything to come of it. But something had, and now he was going to be playing second base.

It could have been worse, however. The original idea had been baseball, but even Mal Tomlin, who was athletically inclined, had seen that real baseball took a lot more skill than nearly anyone on the faculty, except possibly some of the coaches and maybe Mal himself, could muster. So they had settled on softball, slow-pitch softball.

Even slow-pitch softball, however, required quite a bit of eye/hand coordination and stamina, both of which Burns had in very short supply.

“You haven’t looked too sharp in the workouts,“ Tomlin said to Burns. “I thought you said you’d played before.“

“It’s been a long time,“ Burns said.

It had been since Burns played his one season of Little League ball, in fact, but he didn’t see the need of mentioning that minor point. Maybe if he’d said something earlier, it would have been all right, but now it was too late. Macho guys like ballplayers, even slow-pitch softball players, didn’t back down from a challenge.

“It would be pretty embarrassing if the student team beat the faculty team,“ Fox said. “It might give them the idea that they’re somehow superior to us.“

“They
are
superior to us,“ Burns pointed out. “They’re younger, faster, and in a lot better shape.“

“Speak for yourself,“ Tomlin said. “Personally, I’m in great shape.“

He breathed out a great cloud of white smoke and then began to cough violently. Burns, thinking Tomlin might strangle, got up and started to pound him on the back.

Tomlin began to yell and cough at the same time, not an easy trick. The yelling was incomprehensible, but Burns got the idea that Tomlin wanted him to stop hitting him. So he stopped.

“Jesus Christ,“ Tomlin gasped when he’d gotten his breath back. “You didn’t have to do that. I was fine. Just a little tickle in my throat.“

His face was red as a Martian sunset, and he was making wet wheezing noises after every third word.

“I can see that you’re fine,“ Burns said. “You could probably go out and run five miles right now.“

“I could. Faster than you could, that’s for sure.“

Burns didn’t doubt that. Speed wasn’t one of
Burns’s
natural attributes. Even if Tomlin had to crawl, he’d be faster than Burns was.

“I don’t know,“ Fox said. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and contemplated it. “Maybe we’d better slow down on these things until after the game.“

“They are supposed to cut your wind,“ Tomlin admitted.

“Not to mention cause heart failure, cancer, and a few other assorted problems,“ Burns added.

“I can read the Surgeon General’s warning,“ Tomlin said. “I went to graduate school, you know.“

“Sorry,“ Burns said.

“Is Elaine coming to the game?“ Fox asked, changing the subject.

“I’m afraid so,“ Burns said.

Humiliation was bad enough, but being humiliated in front of Elaine was going to be even worse.

“I guess she’ll be cheering you on,“ Fox said.

“Either that, or she can give him a ride to the hospital after he pulls a hernia trying to turn a double play,“ Tomlin said.

Burns didn’t laugh. The possibility was too real and too frightening to be funny.

O
n his way back to his office, Burns went by for a visit with Elaine Tanner. He tried to get by to see her at least once a day, and sometimes more often than that. He entered the library through the E. R. Memorial doors, went past the check-out desk with a nod to the circulation librarian, and walked to the back of the building.

Elaine was in, but she was no longer surrounded with the many trophies that had formerly filled the room. She told Burns that she’d decided they were no longer necessary to her self-esteem.

It wasn’t as if she had actually earned the trophies herself, after all. She had bought them at the same places that Earl Fox bought his clothes: garage sales. At some feel-good seminar or other, she’d heard that trophies and awards could make a person feel better about herself, no matter where the trophies came from. So she’d surrounded herself with awards for baton twirling, cake baking, good citizenship—even calf roping. The office looked a little bare without them.

But as far as Burns was concerned, Elaine was decoration enough. She had red hair, a low voice, and big round glasses that gave her a scholarly air.

“Well, well,“ she said. “If it isn’t Jeff Kent.“

Burns hadn’t kept up with baseball since his card-collecting days, and that had been when he was in grade school. But he did know that Jeff Kent was the second baseman for the Houston Astros. He also knew that Jeff Bagwell was the first baseman for the same team. After that, he was pretty much at a loss.

“R. M. came by to see me this morning,“ Elaine went on. “He’s lost a little weight, and he looks very trim.“

Burns didn’t like to hear that Napier had been by to see Elaine. He didn’t like it that she referred to him as R. M. He didn’t like it that she’d noticed Napier’s weight loss.