Sounds of Murder (24 page)

Pamela started out of the office and decided
to take the central staircase to the second floor--not her usual
route. As she arrived at the first landing, she heard voices coming
from the floor below. Bob Goodman and Arliss had just entered the
stairwell from the animal wing and were intently involved in a
discussion. They didn’t notice her presence on the landing
above--or anyone else's presence it appeared, if anyone had been
there. Pamela couldn't make out exactly what they were saying; she
assumed it was about the animals, but as Bob and Arliss moved into
the small alcove under the staircase which afforded them some
privacy, she noted that their voices diminished somewhat, and some
other sounds--not of the talking variety--took over.

The sound of keys on Bob's key chain--the
ones to the animal cages, no doubt, caught her attention first.
They made a sort of clicking noise. Quickly and quietly, she
recorded the jangling keys. Bob was a genuine and sweet person.
Pamela couldn’t imagine him hurting anyone. However, he lived for
that animal lab of his and it was drowning in financial woes—no
thanks to Charlotte and her penchant for scattering her beneficence
on all of her colleagues except Bob and the animal psychology
program. Would he kill her for that? As Pamela listened to Bob’s
keys, other sounds caught her interest. This was flagrant
eavesdropping, she realized, and she remained frozen in place. She
felt terrible spying on Bob and Arliss like this, but couldn't help
herself. Her temptation to peek over the railing was overwhelming
and, as there appeared to be no one else around, she allowed
herself a quick look.

There she saw her good friend Arliss and Dr.
Bob Goodman standing very close together, leaning against the side
of the staircase. Bob had one arm around Arliss' back and his face
snuggled into her neck. Arliss did not look as if she minded this
one bit.

“You looked so pretty yesterday at the
chapel,” cooed Bob.

“Oh, Bob,” responded Arliss, in a sweet, soft
voice that Pamela would never have imagined coming from Arliss’s
lips.

My God, thought Pamela. Arliss, you devil.
And I thought I was the one with all the secrets. She quickly
pulled back from her hidden position before the couple below
noticed her on the staircase above. As soon as she’d tip-toed the
rest of the way up the stairs to the second floor, she quickly
added her vocal label for the sound of Bob’s keys—leaving out any
mention of the less metallic sounds of human smooching. Arliss had
kept her little romance completely quiet all this time. If she was
an accomplice to murder or even a murderer herself, would she be
able to keep that quiet too? It was obvious that Arliss had no love
for Charlotte and blamed her for the mess the animal lab was in.
Pamela was still trying to digest her new discovery as she walked
the slightly further distance to her office at the other end of the
second floor hallway.

As she rounded the corner, she saw Joan in
her office with a student. Pamela’s tape recorder was still on
record mode. Joan obviously had just arrived and was opening her
briefcase while the student waited patiently. Pamela heard the
briefcase click as it popped open. Now, she thought, there was a
loud click. But was it the click on my murder tape? Oh, my, she
thought. There’s no way that Joan Bentley could have killed
Charlotte. She may not have liked her any better than anyone else,
but Joan was no killer, of that, Pamela was certain. Why would Joan
kill Charlotte? Joan didn’t seem to have a jealous bone in her
body. Or did she? With Charlotte’s death, Joan was now the Chair of
the Tenure Committee, a very important position. Would she kill for
that? Joan didn’t even seem to be particularly annoyed by
Charlotte, when everyone else was. Was her behavior all just an
act? Of course not, Pamela was certain of that.

Just as she was certain that Arliss was not
having an affair with Dr. Bob Goodman. Right. Where had she been
all this time? Obviously, way too busy with her own concerns. She
needed to stop all this paranoia about the killer and the disk and
focus on what she was supposed to be doing. Her job. Her students.
Her classes. However, turning towards her hidden mike, “Joan
Bentley, briefcase,” she said for the recorder.

She’d just entered her office when she heard
another click-click sound. Something tapping the floor. This one
she thought she remembered and, sure enough, Dr. Willard Swinton
appeared momentarily in her door, leaning on his antique cane, its
silver handle gleaming.

"I heard you coming, Willard," she teased,
and unseen, clicked her recorder to stop, collecting both sound and
label.

"No surprise visits for me, I guess," he
responded jauntily. "I hope you had a relaxing weekend, Pamela. It
was a lovely memorial service, wasn’t it? Hopefully, we’ll all be
able to put the horrors of last week behind us and get back to
business. I’d like to chat with you about your new study when you
have time."

"Agreed," she nodded.

"Just call me, if you need anything," he
confided, stepping into her office a bit.

"Thank you, Willard," she responded, putting
her books and papers on her desk. He headed off down the hall
towards his office, the metal tip of his cane, clicking and
clacking on the floor. How could she even for a moment contemplate
Willard as a murderer? He could barely get around, let alone
strangle someone. But he was large, she noted. Maybe he was
stronger than he looked. His only obvious difficulty was walking.
As far as she knew, his arms worked just fine, maybe fine enough to
strangle Charlotte.

She could hear Rex Tyson in the lecture hall
next door, practicing. Leaving her office, she strolled into the
large room. Rex was standing at the lectern in the front of the
room. Inside the lectern, she knew, was a locked cabinet where the
controls for the overhead projector were housed. She had watched
Rex lecture several times; he always used pre-programmed
computerized slides. He would walk around the classroom like a talk
show host, changing the screen image as he went. She remembered
now, seeing him change the slides with a remote control device.

“Dr. Barnes,” he called out, as he noticed
her watching him at the back of the room. “Here to watch me
practice?”

“I don’t know, Rex,” she laughed, “Do you
need to test some new jokes?”

“A few juicy ones, actually,” he winked.

“Truth be told,” she said, coming closer, “I
was interested in that overhead projector. I might need it for my
graduate seminar next week. Is it hard to use?”

“Nah,” he responded, “Easy as pie. You just
slip your slides in the tray under the lectern and you can run the
whole thing with the remote from anywhere in the room.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” he said, drawing a small gray
rectangular object from his shirt pocket. “Just one click for
forward and two clicks for reverse.” He demonstrated the device—and
its sound--for her. Quietly, her finger pressed the correct button
on the recorder in her pocket.

“That’s great,” she replied, “I’ll see if I
can gather enough slides to make it worth my while. Thanks, Rex.”
She clicked off her hidden recorder, turned, and started to
leave.

“Any time, Pam,” he sang out and went back to
his practice session.

She went back to her office, closed her door,
and dialed the main office extension on her the phone. Jane Marie
answered at once.

"Psychology Department," she said
sweetly.

"Jane Marie," said Pamela, "Who all in our
department teaches in the large lecture class next to my
office?"

"Let's see," said Jane Marie, thinking, "Dr.
Tyson on Monday and, I don't think anyone else in our department on
a regular basis. Sometimes faculty members take their classes there
to use the projector from time to time—it’s really great. I know
Anthropology uses it too. Did you want to use that room, Dr.
Barnes?"

"No," she responded quickly. "Jane Marie, who
would have access to the projector remote control device for that
room?"

"The remote is supposed to stay in the main
office, Dr. Barnes. But, Dr. Tyson uses it the most often," she
laughed, "so he usually carries it around with him—in his shirt
pocket. If someone wanted to use it, they'd have to pluck it from
his cold dead fingers. Oh, sorry, Dr. Barnes—bad joke."

“Don’t be sorry,” she chuckled, “I was just
wondering. Bye.” So, she thought, Rex could have strangled
Charlotte, but why? Of the three candidates up for tenure, he
seemed most likely to get it. Maybe he antagonized Charlotte with
his pranks and grandstanding. She always liked to be the center of
attention. It didn’t seem likely, but at this point she was willing
to entertain any idea.

Pamela scrounged in her side drawer until she
found a connector cord so she could upload the data from the
mini-recorder in her pocket, directly to her computer. She hooked
the small device to her office mainframe. Bringing up both her
acoustic program and the new data from her mini-recorder, she sat
back in her desk chair and took a deep breath.

Soon, on the screen appeared her acoustic
analysis program along with both the original data—that of
Charlotte’s murder--and now, this new data she had just made of the
sounds she had surreptitiously recorded throughout the department.
She marked the unique double-click sound from the murder recording
clearly on the spectrograph with her cursor. Then, she played the
new sounds she’d just recorded this morning in the second analysis
line. As each clicking sound played, she froze its visual acoustic
image on her screen for comparison with the double-click sound from
the murder recording.

Thus, she listened to and visually compared
the sounds. Some of the sounds were similar to, but none of them
was a direct match—visually and auditorially—for the double-click
sound on the murder recording she now knew so well. That is, not
until she reached one particular sound.

That sound was—and it didn’t even require her
professional eye and ear to make this determination—a perfect
match. The sounds were identical in audio features—pitch,
intensity, and duration. The acoustic images were visually
identical—two short, peaked waves. The enormity of her discovery
overwhelmed her. Removing her hands from her keyboard, she leaned
back in her desk chair, thinking. This was what she’d been looking
for. The mysterious clicking noise on the murder disk. She now knew
what caused it—and she knew who caused it. She knew who had killed
Charlotte Clark. Now what? She sat there for several minutes frozen
with uncertainty.

Then, with slow, but cold determination she
lifted the receiver to her desk phone and dialed.

Chapter 23

The next afternoon, as Pamela was checking
out for the day, she found herself standing in the main office by
the mail boxes, where several faculty members were gathered
chatting.

“Would you mind coming to my office for a
minute?” she asked one of them. “I have a research problem I’d like
to ask you about."

"Sure," was the response, "Just let me drop
this stuff off at my office and I’ll be right there."

"Great," she answered and quickly headed for
her office up the central staircase.

Now, just minutes later, as she stood behind
her desk waiting, her heart beating loudly, she thought over and
over how frightened she was at this important moment--possibly, the
most important moment in her life.

“Dr. Barnes?” Willard Swinton entered her
office a few steps. “I thought you’d left for the day.”

“Uh, Willard, yes. I…had to return…because I
forgot something I needed at home.”

“I hate it when that happens,” he confided.
“With my cane, it takes me forever to get from one location to the
other. If I have to backtrack, it’s really demoralizing.”

“Yes, well, I’ve got what I needed,” she
said, standing motionless behind her desk.

“Good,” he smiled. “Well, have a lovely
evening, Pamela.”

“You too.” He turned and headed back to his
office. Pamela stood at her desk, riveted. She looked down and took
a deep breath. Too close. Simply too close.

Rex Tyson appeared at her door, leaning
jauntily on the doorframe.

"So?" he spoke in a friendly manner, "What's
up?"

She jerked her head up and gripped her desk
tightly with both hands.

"About the overhead remote...."

"The remote again," he smiled. “That’s your
research problem?”

"Could I see how it works?" she asked
sweetly. He pulled the device out of his shirt pocket and handed it
to her. She examined the device and pressed it. Two clicks. Yes,
the sound was identical.

"Actually,” she said, “this is my research
problem. Listen, will you?"

As she knew exactly where the cursor button
was, she clicked it with her mouse without even looking down at her
computer and the sound she now knew so well emerged at full volume
from her speakers. Charlotte's choking voice unmistakable, her
bumps, scrapes, scratches--and then, the double clicking noise that
had revealed to her Rex's obvious involvement. Click-click. Pause.
Then click-click again. She watched his reaction as she
listened.

Rex's face turned white--as if the blood in
his entire body had suddenly drained into a vessel beneath him—the
instant he heard Charlotte's voice. It was obvious to Pamela that
he’d heard this horrifying sound before—because, of course, he had.
He said nothing, just stared at her, not moving even the slightest.
When the recording stopped, Pamela spoke.

"I didn't know how to connect any of the
sounds I was hearing to the killer. For all I knew, Charlotte made
all those sounds herself in trying to get away. Then, I realized
that the clicking noise was probably not a sound that came from
Charlotte--in her effort to save herself from the killer. The
clicking noise was probably made by the killer—probably
inadvertently. So I started to look for that sound. I remembered
seeing you use that remote for the projector and I thought it might
be the noise on this tape. When Jane Marie informed me that you
were the only faculty member who regularly uses the remote and that
you carry it with you in your shirt pocket, I knew I’d found
Charlotte’s killer."