…A Dangerous Thing (16 page)

The door to Henderson's office fit the frame a little more tightly than Burns had expected, but he had it open in less than a minute.
 
He replaced his plastic, ducked under the ribbon, and went inside, pulling the door shut behind him.

The office was darker than it would normally have been because the window through which Henderson had crashed was now covered with cardboard held in place with silver duct tape.
 
There was another window, over Henderson's desk, and Burns could see outside without standing too close to it.
 
If anyone happened to look up, Burns wouldn't be seen.

Or if he were seen, he would appear as nothing more than a shadow, the same kind of shadow that Burns had noticed the evening of Henderson's fall.

The Frolic was in full swing down below, and Burns could hear the cheering of the first year students as well as the faculty.

Burns risked a peek.

The students were winning the Mud Tug easily, with the faculty forces being drawn inexorably toward the mire.
 
In only a matter of seconds, it would be all over.
 
Fox and Tomlin were near the end of the rope, so they would be the last ones in the mud, but they would be in it nevertheless.
 
Burns smiled to himself.

And then he saw that Elaine Tanner was on the rope.

He stopped smiling.

He suddenly wished he were down there with everyone else, and a brief but entertaining fantasy of mud-wrestling with the librarian raced through his brain.

He shook his head to clear it.
 
If that wasn't sexism, nothing was.
 
Next he would be snorting and oinking and rooting for acorns.

He knew that he hadn't really come to Henderson's office to watch the Frolic and the Mud Tug, anyway.
 
He had come to look around.

He didn't know exactly what he was looking for, true, but whatever it was, it wouldn't be outside.
 
It would be in there with him.

He tore his gaze from the outside, thinking of his visit to Henderson earlier in the semester, trying to remember how the office had looked and what had been in it.

It was just an ordinary office, with bookshelves, two chairs (one for the professor, one for visitors), a desk, and a typing table on which there was an old IBM electric.
 
Most of HGC's faculty hadn't entered the computer era as yet.
 
There was a gray plastic dust cover on the typewriter.

Burns lifted the dust cover.
 
There was nothing rolled into the typewriter.
 
No suicide note that the police had overlooked, no forgotten assignment sheet.
 
Burns hadn't really expected that there would be.

He looked at the bookshelves.
 
Plenty of out-of-date psychology textbooks, some biographies, some books of theory.
 
There was even a book on suicide, but Burns was pretty sure that meant nothing.

Burns turned toward the desk.
 
He had saved it for last because he remembered it best.
 
If there were any clues to be found, they would be there on the desk.
 
He had already noticed several obvious differences in its appearance.

The desk calendar was still there, though the page hadn't been turned for today, and there was also an old college yearbook from Henderson's alma mater lying out in plain sight.
 
That had certainly not been there on
Burns's
last visit.
 
He picked it up and flipped through the pages, looking at the photos.

He paused when he came to a very young Thomas E. Henderson.
 
There was no sign of the baldness that had begun to afflict Henderson in later life.
 
The young man's hair was long and shaggy, hanging down over his ears.
 
His face was, if anything, thinner than it had been in later life.

Burns wondered whether Henderson had simply been engaged in nostalgia for his lost youth or whether he had been looking at the yearbook for some other reason.
 
A sudden nostalgia attack seemed unlikely, and Burns began to pay close attention to the photos of the other students.

There were a lot of pictures, though they represented only a fraction of the student body.
 
Most people didn't bother to have photos made.

A loud cheer from outside made Burns look through the window again.
 
The Mud Tug was over, and now the general frolicking had begun.
 
First year students were shoving sophomores into the mud, while upperclassmen (or
upperclasspersons
, or whatever they were supposed to be called now—Burns couldn't quite remember) were pushing one another toward the gooey area lately wallowed in by the faculty.

Burns couldn't see Elaine, which was probably just as well.
 
He hoped that she had gone inside.

But now he had to hurry.
 
Everyone would be staying outside for a few more minutes, and then many of them would be going to get cleaned up.
 
Some of them, however, like Clem and Miss Darling, would be coming back into the buildings.

Burns looked back at the yearbook.
 
There was no one in there whose photo looked familiar.
 
He ran his finger along under the pictures.
 
A lot of young, earnest faces.
 
Maybe Henderson had known them, but Burns didn't.

His finger continued to move.
 
It went past one photo, stopped, slid back.

Henry (Hank)
Mitchum
.
 
A clean-shaven young man with wide eyes, well-groomed hair, a weak chin.

Burns had never heard of him, but there was something about him that looked familiar.
 
Something about the eyes.

They looked like Eric Holt's eyes.

Burns closed the yearbook and looked back at the desk.
 
There was something else there that hadn't been there before.

An HGC recruiting brochure.

Burns stuck the yearbook under his left arm and reached for the brochure with is right hand.

Just as he touched it, someone rattled the doorknob.

Burns jerked his hand back, thinking of being caught by the police inside an office where he wasn't supposed to be.
 
He looked for a place to hide, but of course there wasn't any such place, unless he ducked into the kneehole of the desk.
 
That might hide him for about two seconds.

The doorknob rattled again, harder this time, and Burns realized that the police wouldn't rattle the knob.
 
They would simply use the key and unlock the door.
 
Whoever was trying to get in had no more right to be there than Burns did.

Panic turned to curiosity.
 
Burns decided to help out by whoever was trying to get in by opening the door, but as he reached for the knob the yearbook slid from under his arm.
 
It struck the carpeted floor with a dull thump.

There was a moment of silence.
 
Then Burns heard footsteps thudding down the hallway outside the door.

He jerked open the door and charged out, ripping away the police ribbon in the process.
 
He wondered what Boss Napier would do to him for that.
 
Probably nothing, since Burns made an instantaneous decision not to tell the police chief who had done it.
 
He pulled the ribbon away from his waist and threw it to the floor as he ran down the hallway.

The person who had rattled the doorknob was no longer in sight, having turned the corner at the end of the hall.
 
Burns was no track star, but he thought he might be able to catch up.

When he reached the head of the stairs, he could hear footsteps on the bare first floor.
 
He was going to have to hurry to get even a glimpse.

He might have made it had he not hooked a toe in the frayed carpeting and pitched head first down the stairs.

He hit the stairs halfway down, had the presence of mind to tuck his head, and did a complete flip, touching down this time on his tailbone and bouncing forward over the last two steps to the landing where the stairway turned to go on down to the first floor.

Burns sat very still for a while, trying to decide which was hurting worse, his tailbone or his pride.
 
Other parts of him hurt as well.
 
His shoulders, his neck, and his back.

He was sure he must have been quite a sight during his pratfall, at least as funny as the Mud
Tuggers
and maybe even funnier.
 
He was extremely thankful that there had been no one there to see him take the plunge, though whoever had rattled the doorknob had probably heard him
whumpty-whumping
down the stairway.

After a minute or so, Burns tried to get up.
 
It wasn't easy, but by bracing himself on the wall and pushing with his hands, he was able to stand.
 
He didn't feel any better in that position, and rather than risk walking he simply stood there for another minute.

There was still no one in the building.
 
There was that to be grateful for.
 
He wondered if he had broken any important bones.
 
It was bad enough that he had recently broken his nose and had to go around looking like the Masked Avenger.
 
This would be even worse.

He took a few deep breaths and decided it was about time to try going back upstairs.

The first step was the hardest.
 
After that, he just kept going.
 
It wasn't so bad.
 
A little like having a spear jabbed into your lower backbone with every step.
 
He thought about what it was going to be like to sit down.
 
It wasn't a very pleasant thought.

On the positive side, there didn't seem to be any bones grinding together in ways that they shouldn't have.
 
Maybe nothing was broken.

It took Burns several minutes to get back to Henderson's office.
 
He wasn't going to bother replacing the police ribbon, but he was going to pick up the yearbook and the recruiting brochure, both of which he wanted to think about a little longer.

Neither was proof of anything, but the brochure was suggestive.
 
It was the kind of thing that Walt
Melling
might have been carrying, might even have dropped in the office.
 
If the police had seen it on the floor, they might have assumed that it was knocked off the desk and replaced it there.

The yearbook was suggestive too.
 
There was nothing out of the ordinary about a yearbook in a professor's office.
 
Burns had several yearbooks in his own office, both from his student days and his more recent years at HGC.
 
But he didn't look at them often, and he was sure that Henderson had gotten this one out and looked at it for a good reason.
 
Henry
Mitchum's
photo would bear closer examination.

And there was one other thing.

Something that
wasn't
there.

It was a little like the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story, the dog that didn't bark.

The bust of Freud was missing.

Chapter Eleven

B
y the time he went home that afternoon,
Burns's
tailbone wasn't hurting quite as much as it had been.
 
He was even able to sit in his car without shrieking aloud when he touched the seat.
 
It wasn't very pleasant to hit even the smallest of Pecan City's chuck holes as he drove along, however.

He spent some of his time at home debating about whether to call Elaine Tanner and ask her to visit Samantha Henderson with him.
 
He finally decided that she wouldn't hold his association with George (the Ghost)
Kaspar
against him and punched in the librarian's number on his phone.

"I don't think I know her," she said, when he told her what he wanted.

He'd been afraid she might say something like that.
 
She hadn't been at HGC long enough to meet everyone.

"I don't like to go alone," he told her.
 
"I never know what to say."

"All right, then.
 
I'll go."

She didn't sound enthusiastic about it, but Burns didn't care.
 
He was just glad to have company for the visit, especially Elaine's company.

"Thanks," he said.
 
He paused.
 
"I saw you at the Mud Tug this afternoon."

"I didn't see you.
 
Earl and Mal told me you thought you were too good to roll in the mud."

"It's not that."
 
He thought about his sore tailbone.
 
"It's just that I have an injury."