Dying Voices Read online

  DYING VOICES

  Bill Crider

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  Copyright 2012 /Bill Crider

  Copy-edited by: Anita Lorene Smith

  Cover design by: David Dodd

  Cover images used under terms of:

  Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.

  LICENSE NOTES

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Meet the Author

  BILL CRIDER is the author of more than fifty published novels and numerous short stories. He won the Anthony Award for best first mystery novel in 1987 for Too Late to Die and was nominated for the Shamus Award for best first private-eye novel for Dead on the Island. He won the Golden Duck award for “best juvenile science fiction novel” for Mike Gonzo and the UFO Terror. He and his wife, Judy, won the best short story Anthony in 2002 for their story “Chocolate Moose.” His story “Cranked” from Damn Near Dead (Busted Flush Press) was nominated for the Edgar award for best short story.

  Check out his homepage at: http:// www.billcrider.com—or take a look at his peculiar blog at http://billcrider.blogspot.com

  Book List

  Carl Burns Series

  One Dead Dean

  Dying Voices

  . . . A Dangerous Thing

  Dead Soldiers

  Truman Smith Series

  Dead on the Island

  Gator Kill

  When Old Men Die

  The Prairie Chicken Kill

  Murder Takes a Break

  Horror Novels

  (all published under the pseudonym "Jack MacLane")

  Keepers of the Beast

  Goodnight, Moom

  Blood Dreams

  Rest in Peace

  Just before Dark

  Sheriff Dan Rhodes Series

  Too Late to Die

  Shotgun Saturday Night

  Cursed to Death

  Death on the Move

  Evil at the Root

  Booked for a Hanging

  Murder Most Fowl

  Winning Can Be Murder

  Death by Accident

  A Ghost of a Chance

  A Romantic Way to Die

  Red, White, and Blue Murder

  A Mammoth Murder

  Murder Among the O.W.L.S.

  Of All Sad Words

  Murder in Four Parts

  Murder in the Air

  The Wild Hog Murders

  Murder of a Beauty Shop Queen

  Standalone Novels

  Blood Marks

  Houston Homicide (with Clyde Wilson)

  The Texas Capitol Murders

  Stanley Waters Series

  (co-authored with Willard Scott)

  Murder under Blue Skies

  Murder in the Mist

  Sally Good Series

  Murder Is an Art

  A Knife in the Back

  A Bond with Death

  Western Novels

  Ryan Rides Back

  Galveston Gunman

  A Time for Hanging

  Medicine Show

  Outrage at Blanco

  Texas Vigilante

  Stone: M.I.A. Hunter Series

  (All published under the pseudonym "Jack Buchanan.")

  Miami War Zone

  Desert Death Raid

  Back to 'Nam

  Short Story Collections

  The Nighttime is the Right Time

  DISCOVER CROSSROAD PRESS

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  DYING VOICES

  To Ruth Cavin

  the editor every mystery writer

  should be lucky enough to find

  Chapter 1

  Sometime over the summer, the pigeons had come back.

  Carl Burns sat at his desk waiting for class to begin on the first day of the fall semester, and he could hear them in the attic above his head, doing whatever it was that they did up there. It sounded to him as if they were scurrying around on the rafters, running up and down them, and he could almost hear the sound their little toes, or claws, or talons, or whatever the hell it was that birds had, made on the wood as they raced around madly in the musty dark.

  Now and then there would be a sudden flurry of wings as one of them took to the air, and because it was very dark up there, the fluttering might be followed by the soft sound they made when one of them collided with the beams that held up the roof.

  When that happened, at least if the bird hit hard enough to addle its inconsiderable brain, it would plummet down to the acoustical tile in the false ceiling and land with a thud that dislodged a sizable amount of dirt and dust, not to mention an occasional dab of what Burns was certain must be pigeon shit, though he would never have admitted that to Mal Tomlin, who often insisted that Burns would one day be buried under tons of that very material when the ceiling collapsed from its accumulated weight.

  Actually, there weren't tons of it up there, as Burns had discovered more or less by accident the previous fall, but there was enough to make things unpleasant, and some of it would come drifting down every time a pigeon fell. Everything about the situation contributed to a distinctly unpleasant odor on the third floor of Main.

  In fact—

  "It smells like you've got plumbing problems, kid." Mal Tomlin came through the door, smoking a Merit Menthol 100. "Here, take one of these. It'll cut the stink a little bit."

  He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a crumpled pack, tapped out a cigarette, and flipped it to Burns, who fumbled it and bent it a bit. He straightened it carefully and tossed it back.

  "I quit again over the summer," Burns said.

  Tomlin put the cigarette carefully back in the pack and inserted the pack in his pocket. Then he took a thoughtful drag on the Merit. "I give you two days," he said.

  "Two days for what?"

  "Two days before you either die of the smell or you start smoking in self-defense. What the hell is that, anyway?" He eased his compact form into the chair that students used when they came in for conferences about their papers and started looking around for an ashtray.

  There wasn't one. Burns had made sure of that, to put temptation out of his way. However, Burns had just finished drinking his breakfast Mr. Pibb, so he fished the can out of the trash and gave it to Tomlin.

  "You of all people should know what that smell is," Burns said after Tomlin had carefully tapped ashes through the opening in the can.

  "Me?" Tomlin ran one hand through his thinning ginger-colored hair. He appeared genuinely puzzled. "Is that some kind of a crack, right here on the first day of the semester?"

  "It's no crack. Listen."

  They sat there in silence. From the attic came the sounds of scurrying, fluttering, and now, cooing.

  "Oh my God," Tomlin said. "Pigeons."

  "That would be my guess, all right," Burns said.

  "Who knows what kind of disease the little bastards are carrying," Tomlin said, "Polio, probably, or something like that. What's that stuff you get from parrots in Mexico? Shit-acosis?" Tomlin was chairman of the Education Department, but big words were not his specialty.

  "Psittacosis," Burns told him. "It's some kind of virus, I think."

  "Well, I bet
you get it from shit, then," Tomlin said. "The dry stuff's one thing. It's been up there forever. But with those new birds flying around and stirring things up, you never can tell what might happen. And naturally all the new stuff, wet and nasty like it is, will just add to the problem." He gave a significant glance upward at the already darkly stained acoustical tile above them.

  As if to justify that gloomy forecast, two of the birds apparently got into some kind of territorial dispute in the darkness. There were a couple of loud calls and a great deal of wing beating. One of them flew into a beam and came crashing down right overhead.

  Dirt rained down on Burns's desk, followed by a lone feather that wafted gently after.

  "Shit-a-cosis!" Tomlin yelped, scrambling to his feet, and getting as far from the desk as he could. He dropped his cigarette into the soft drink can and fled. "I'll talk to you later, maybe," he called as he passed through the door. "But not here!"

  Burns had not seen Tomlin much over the summer, but he was not sad about his leaving. There were a few things Burns still had to do before class got started, including finding copies of his course syllabus and his list of rules and regulations relating to attendance and tardiness. He had typed them and had them duplicated the previous spring, and he found them in the filing cabinet after taking time to brush off his desk.

  The administration at Hartley Gorman College was fond of informing the faculty members that they were to keep the students in class for the full time at all meetings, including the first one, not an easy task when the students had not bought a textbook, much less read anything in it. Still, Burns felt the obligation, thanks to numerous reminders, that "The students are paying for credit hours."

  What he liked to do was spend the time explaining the rules and telling the students what they could expect. Since his first class was a sophomore survey of American literature, they could expect a lot of reading, beginning with the Puritans (though Burns got over that section of the book pretty quickly) and finishing with a few contemporary writers (another section that Burns tended to give short shrift). They could also expect a term paper of about ten pages, two major essay quizzes (mid-semester and final) and daily quizzes on the reading. Anyone missing class fifteen times would be dropped with an F and there would be no make-ups on the daily quizzes.

  That was all there was to it, and Burns was hard pressed to stretch it to fifty minutes. Sometimes he was able to go for forty-five, though. He was glad it wasn't a Tuesday/Thursday class.

  Once he had his materials in hand, he was ready to go, but there were still thirty minutes until class. Burns always got to school at least an hour before classes began, which on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, meant that he arrived at seven A.M.

  He decided to devote the extra time to working on his list of the things that could go wrong the next weekend.

  The list and the Pilot Razor Point pen he liked to write with were in the thin drawer in the middle of his desk. While he was rummaging around looking for it, he found a list from last year, one he had never completed, listing the things he hated most. High on the list were the words "Dean Elmore." After the dean's untimely demise—untimely in that it had not occurred several years earlier, Burns thought—the list had lain uncompleted. Burns had never had the heart to go back to it.

  He looked at it briefly, then crossed off Elmore's name. He didn't hate the man any more, though he had to admit that he did not have any fond memories of him.

  He tossed the paper back into the drawer and found the piece he was looking for. It was headed "Things that Can Go Wrong with the Edward Street Seminar." It was a list that had haunted him for most of the summer, and he had begun compiling it only one day after HGC's new president had called him in near the end of the spring semester.

  Franklin Miller, the new president, was a fairly young man for the job, not more than forty, Burns thought. He had little experience in college administration, but a great deal of expertise in raising money. As such, he was ideal for HGC, a school that needed money at least as much as it needed leadership.

  The former president had been possessed of little talent in either area, and because of other flaws in his character, discovered mainly by Burns, he was now residing in an expensive psychiatric facility, which really wasn't bad considering that the other option was a much less comfortable residence in the Texas Department of Corrections.

  Miller was a wonderful representative of the school. He had a firm handshake, a beautiful singing voice, which he used to advantage in the church choirs when he was on fundraising expeditions for the small denominational school, a number of dark blue suits and ties, just the right amount of gray in his hair, and a smile that could have lit up about fifty percent of the houses in Pecan City any night of the year. Besides, he was happily married, had two daughters, and looked like the former track star he was. If he didn't exist, the Chamber of Commerce would have had to invent him.

  He had a proposition for Burns.

  "You've heard of Edward Street, of course," Miller said when he had made sure that Burns was comfortably seated in one of the red leather chairs that furnished his office.

  "Yes," Burns said, trying to get off his backbone. The chair was much too soft for sitting, and Burns was afraid he might disappear between the cushion and the back. He made it up and edged to the front of the seat. "He's the school's most famous former teacher, I guess, but he was gone before I came."

  Though Mal Tomlin was fond of saying that no one had ever made less money by leaving HGC, Edward Street was the one former instructor who had really succeeded, thanks to a book of poetry, of all things, that Street wrote while on a year's sabbatical from teaching.

  It was titled, Dying Voices, and it was composed of a series of dramatic monologues supposedly spoken by twenty-five great writers as they lay dying. Burns could not remember all the voices, but he recalled Keats, Byron, Shelley, Faulkner, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Wolfe, Melville, Hawthorne, and Twain, among others. The fact that several of the men who spoke in Street's book had died quite suddenly and with very little time for final utterances made no difference either to Street or to the critics, who loved the book, which somehow, through an inexplicable fluke of divine providence, also caught on with the public like no book of poetry since the heyday of Rod McKuen, wound up on the best-seller lists, and was made into a highly-rated television mini-series.

  Street followed up that unlikely success with the novel of high adventure that Burns suspected all poets really wanted to write. Titled We All Die Today!, it was the story of a young, idealistic graduate student (of English, of course) who was recruited by a Cuban friend to help him smuggle his family into the United States. The two went on their way, blithely unaware that the U.S. Government was about to launch something that became known as the Bay of Pigs at the very same time, and of course the two plans collided with the predictably terrible results. The U.S. covered itself in shame, the Cuban family did not survive, except for one small girl, and the graduate student died in an incredibly noble and selfless manner. His final speech, as he lay bleeding on the beach from the multiple bullet wounds he had suffered from both Cuban and American weapons, was as moving as anything in Dying Voices, and when the book was translated to the silver screen, there wasn't a dry eye in the house at the climax.

  Street became a millionaire with that one, and he never returned to teaching. Since that time he had been involved in any number of projects, including movies and television, and his name was quite familiar to Burns, who had seen it many times on screen.

  Sometimes Burns wondered if he envied Street, and he had decided that he probably did.

  "So what I think we should do is this," Franklin Miller said. He had been speaking all through Burns's reverie about Street, and now he was about to come to the point. "I think we should honor the man, concentrate on Dying Voices, naturally, since that's the thing that has the most, ah . . . academic appeal. We'll have a few visiting scholars in, let them present papers on the book, that sort of thin
g. We can get national publicity on this if we do it right, Burns."

  Burns had been around long enough to realize that the two we's in that last sentence, though they were the same word, did not mean the same thing at all. The first "we" meant Franklin Miller, and possibly HGC; the second "we" meant Carl Burns.

  But that didn't necessarily bother Burns. He knew that someone had to do the work and someone had to get the credit. And that the two someones were hardly ever the same.

  He also suspected that publicity was not the only thing involved here. Anyone with a big bankroll, and Street certainly fit that category, was fair game for Miller's fundraising activities, especially if that person had ties to HGC.

  That didn't bother Burns, either. The more money the school had, the better his chances for a raise. If Street could be flattered into parting with a decent sum, Burns's chances were improved with every dollar.

  So of course he had said, "It sounds like a great idea to me."

  "Excellent," Miller said. "Excellent. My secretary will get in touch with Street, find out when he's available, and we'll leave it to you to make all the other arrangements. We'll call it something like 'The Edward Street Seminar.' Have a banquet in his honor, that sort of thing."

  They had shaken hands and Burns had gone back to his office to start making lists and worrying.

  Now, after a little more than three months, everything was as ready as it would ever be. Four fairly reputable scholars were coming in to read papers. The news media had been alerted. Miller had handled that part. A big banquet of welcome for the former teacher had been planned, invitations issued, a menu arranged.

  What could possibly go wrong?

  Nothing, probably, but that was where Burns's list came in. He was a habitual worrier, and a habitual list maker, so the two habits fit together well. He was able to write down all the potential problems that he could think of and then eliminate them before they arose.