Sounds of Murder (23 page)

Arliss bent her head towards Joan and
whispered, “For God’s sake, she makes Charlotte sound like her
guardian angel.” Pamela could hear the annoyance in her voice.
Charlotte didn’t do any of those things because she cared about
Laura. Arliss continued, “She did everything she did for herself.
She helped Laura start her career so Laura could become her
disciple—her acolyte. So she could worship at the Charlotte Clark
shrine.”

Arliss stopped her anti-Charlotte commentary
when suddenly Laura cried out, “Oh, Charlotte, I’m so sorry!” and
burst out crying, running down the center aisle and out the front
of the chapel. Her husband quickly followed her out of the
chapel.

Pamela sat in stunned silence for a moment as
did the rest of the congregation. .

Quickly, the minister returned to the lectern
and concluded the service with a short prayer. The congregation
slowly rose and began exiting the chapel.

“Quite a tear jerker,” noted Willard as they
all exited.

“Should be good for a few bucks,” observed
Arliss, as she glanced around at the faces of the potential big
donors in the crowd.

“I thought it was a lovely tribute,” added
Joan.

“Why was that woman apologizing to
Charlotte?” whispered Rocky to Pamela. “Do you think she killed
her?”

“No, of course not.” At least, I don’t think
so, she thought.

Pamela navigated Rocky through the crowd and
outside of the chapel, where finally she felt she could breathe.
She wanted to go find Laura and talk to her, but she could feel
Shoop’s eyes on her back. There would be no more sleuthing for her
today.

Chapter 21

Pamela had spent most of the weekend—when she
wasn’t at the memorial or romancing her husband--listening to the
recording of the murder and the sounds of Charlotte choking. Oh,
she did manage to get the family laundry done and she attempted to
vacuum the living room rug (with “attempted” being the key word),
but her focus was on the recording of the murder. She felt certain
that Charlotte was not saying--or trying to say—the killer's name
or anything else. If she had been, that would really have been
unusual. Charlotte was just struggling to breathe. The sounds—or
rather, the noises--that were overlaid onto Charlotte's strangled
voice, however, were another story.

Pamela guessed that those sounds were
probably comprised mostly of Charlotte bumping and scraping things
on the computer desk, but she couldn't be sure. Even if she could
identify the sounds, what good did it do? Identifying the sounds
didn't tell her who the killer was. She felt totally stymied.

When Monday morning arrived, she headed to
campus feeling depressed and disappointed with her efforts. After
her morning classes, she worked some more on analyzing the
recording, but made little headway. Over and over again, she played
the recording--Charlotte's strangled choking, the myriad of bumps,
clicks, scrapes, and scratches that were probably made by Charlotte
fighting for her life. How was any of this helping her? Shoop was
right, she realized in frustration; this was a job for the
police.

She stopped briefly at noon and gobbled down
her regular lunch of sandwich and tea, clicking out of her acoustic
software program when anyone came within a few yards of her office
door. She kept the volume on her speakers low so the repeated
sounds of Charlotte choking were not audible to hallway strollers.
Anyone entering her office would assume she was working on her
research--which, in a way, she was.

Several students came in during the early
afternoon to discuss topics for their class papers and projects.
She was even happy for the interruption, because it was obvious
that she wasn't getting anywhere with identifying the noises on the
disk.

As the time neared three o'clock, students
started gathering outside the large lecture classroom next to her
office which was directly above the computer lab on the main floor,
waiting for Rex Tyson's Introduction to Psychology class. Pamela
usually tried to get out of her office before this time, because
Rex had two mass lectures back to back on Monday and the noise
usually got to be too much for her. Often, she’d go downstairs to
the lab and work in one of the carrels when it was clear that no
more students were going to show up for her office hours. She
always left a note on her door saying where she was just in case.
Why not, she thought. I have every reason to go down there and
work.

Grabbing the disk from the drawer in her
computer, she locked her office door and headed downstairs to the
lab. As she expected, Kent was at the check-in desk, signing in the
new participants for her study that he’d rescheduled from last
week.

“Hi, Kent,” she greeted him, “I’m just going
to do some work in the computer databases.” And I’d really like to
know, she thought, if you plan to be romancing my 18-year-old
daughter or were the events of last week all my imagination? No.
She determined to keep her concerns about Angela to herself.

"Sure, thing, Dr. B," he responded, and went
back to the line of subjects signing in. None of them seemed to be
particularly upset by being in a lab where a murder had recently
taken place.

Pamela went to the first row of computers.
She went to Carrel #3, immediately next to the infamous Carrel # 4.
Pulling out the wheeled desk chair, she sat down, as close to the
spot where Charlotte Clark had lost her life as she could be and
still be able to use the terminal, seeing as how all the equipment
in Carrel #4 was still missing.

She looked around. What could Charlotte see
from here? As she looked around her, she imagined what she would or
wouldn't notice if she were Charlotte and were totally involved in
her computer research. Charlotte was looking at Culver’s
dissertation in the subscription database for something--she
wondered what. Did she hear the killer enter?

Pamela noticed the sounds of Kent talking to
the students at the check-in desk. The acoustic panels in the
carrel did an excellent job of muffling the sound. Oh, she realized
that people were talking, but she thought it would be quite
possible that a person working intently at this computer wouldn’t
notice someone entering the lab and quietly closing the door. They
probably wouldn't even notice the sound of someone walking up
behind them. Indeed, the student participants walking to their
stations in the second through fourth rows were almost inaudible to
her as she sat surrounded by the carrel walls.

Placing the disk in its slot and putting on
headphones to muffle the sounds of Charlotte’s murder from the
students in the lab, she hit play. Would she ever get used to
Charlotte's tortured cry? As each noise appeared, she tried to
imagine exactly what might have caused it--experimenting with
knocking her elbow against the carrel wall to recreate the bumping
noise on the tape, dragging her fingernails down the acoustic wall
panels to recreate the scraping sounds. She tried many different
defensive behaviors within the booth that she guessed Charlotte
might have tried that would have resulted in the sounds that she
heard on the tape. In all, she believed she’d been able to recreate
reasonable facsimiles of all the sounds and thus, account for all
the sounds, with the exception of one.

One sound still seemed to have no apparent
source within the booth--no source that Pamela felt could possibly
have been made by Charlotte as she fought for her life. It was that
strange double clicking noise. Click-click. Then a long pause. Then
click-click again. Whatever it was, the two clicks seemed to belong
together. Whatever prompted one click, also produced the second
click.

Possibly, she hypothesized, the clicking
noise was not created by something Charlotte did to protect
herself. What if, just if, the clicking noise was created by the
killer? Maybe not intentionally, but could it possibly be some
noise the killer made inadvertently while he/she was in the midst
of killing Charlotte Clark? If so, what might it be? What sound
would a person make while killing someone? It was obviously
mechanical, not human.

Pamela closed her eyes and imagined the
killer coming up behind her. She envisioned the killer's hands on
her neck, wrapping the power cord of the headphones around her neck
and pulling it tight. She’d fight, she was sure. She’d struggle. At
this point, Pamela tried to emulate the behavior that she thought
Charlotte would have exhibited. Then, she imagined the killer
struggling back, maybe pushing Charlotte down, maybe pulling her
upwards. Their bodies might be in close proximity. What if? What if
something on the killer's body made that noise--accidentally--when
the killer pushed or pulled Charlotte against him or her while
strangling her? Whatever the something was--could it have made such
a clicking noise? Surely, the killer wouldn't stop strangling
Charlotte to intentionally click this thing. Whatever it was, the
clicking noise must have been produced accidentally. But what was
it? She felt she was on the right track, but she just didn't know
where to go next.

Believing she had exhausted all the
possibilities of her laboratory mini-experiment, she popped out the
disk and left the lab, waving good-bye to Kent. All of a sudden,
she had another experiment in mind that she intended to
try--tomorrow. With a few preparations at home, she’d be ready.
Yes, tomorrow it was.

Chapter 22

The next day, Tuesday morning, when Pamela
entered the building, she carried a mini-tape recorder in her
jacket pocket. When she encountered a suspicious sound, she
intended to record it secretly and then label it when she had a
chance, in her own voice--giving the name and source of the sound
she’d just captured. At least, that was the plan.

As she opened the side door of Blake Hall
near the parking lot, she clicked the record button on her unseen
recorder in order to capture the sound of the door hinges
squeaking. It was really just a test of her secret recording skill;
she didn’t actually think the entrance door was the clicking sound
on the disk.

“Blake Hall, front door hinges,” she
whispered into the lavaliere microphone she had pinned underneath
her jacket lapel. Her unseen hand in her pocket switched the off
button as she headed down the hallway towards the main office. As
she passed people swarming around, she listened for sounds.

Laura Delmondo was coming towards her from
the office, balancing delicately on a pair of torturously high
heels which made a metallic clicking on the linoleum floor. Pamela
pushed the record button in her pocket as Laura’s heels tapped
against the floor. Was this sound a match to the clicks on her
disk? She couldn’t tell. Could the mysterious double-click noise be
the sound of someone's shoes hitting the floor? It didn’t make
sense, she reflected, but she made the recording of Laura’s shoes
and her unseen finger pressed the record button off right after she
added her whispered vocal label “Delmondo, shoes” into her
shoulder. Laura passed by her with a quick greeting. She didn’t
really suspect her, but Laura did admit herself to having a fight
with Charlotte shortly before her murder and she did have that
emotional break-down during the memorial on Sunday. Charlotte
wanted Laura to concentrate on research and Laura wanted to work on
starting a family. Was that sufficient motivation to kill
someone?

Entering the main office, Pamela bumped into
Phineas Ottenback getting his mail.

“Dr. Barnes," he mumbled, softly. "So sorry,
didn't see you." He pulled a ballpoint pen out of his shirt pocket
and began repeatedly pushing the clicker, she noticed, almost like
a tic, all the while smiling constantly. As usual, strands of
greasy hair dangled over his forehead.

A pen clicking, she thought. Now, that would
work. A pen could click even if it were in his pocket if something
(like a body) were pushed against it. She quickly pressed her
hidden record button. Was this the clicking sound? She’d never paid
much attention to Phineas, but he did seem to be full of nervous
mannerisms. Maybe he killed Charlotte and then quickly picked up
his pen and started punching it because he was so upset. Or
possibly, the pen was in his shirt pocket and clicked when he
pressed Charlotte to his chest while strangling her. Hmm.

“Good morning, Phin,” she greeted him and
grabbed her own mail from her box, at the same time ending the
recording of his clicking pen. Her greeting would serve as her
label, she decided. She had no reason to suspect Phineas of
Charlotte’s murder, but he was the only faculty member she had
actually seen in the building on the night of the murder. Also, he
was up for tenure and from his conversation with Pamela that night,
he appeared to be concerned about tenure. If he believed that
Charlotte would not support his candidacy, maybe he killed her to
further his career.

Peeking around the corner into Jane Marie's
office, she saw that the secretary was busily typing away, but she
stopped momentarily to wave a greeting to Pamela then returned to
her super fast typing. Click-clack. Her fingers sped over the keys.
Now there's a clicking noise, thought Pamela. Oh, what’s the matter
with me? She stopped abruptly. Oh, sure. Jane Marie strangled
Charlotte to death and then blithely started typing away on the
computer keyboard. Or if she pressed Charlotte forward as she was
strangling her, Charlotte’s body could have pushed on the computer
keyboard and pressed several keys, causing the double-click noise.
Surely, that was crazy. She was losing it. Even so, just to be
thorough, she made a brief recording of her secretary typing, along
with a quick vocal label. She’d better get to her office and start
on something constructive before she was declared a basket case. As
far as she knew, Jane Marie had no motive to hurt Charlotte. She
was terribly protective of Mitchell and might do something drastic
to protect her boss—but murder?