Sounds of Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “Charlotte Clark,” continued the reverend, “was devoted to learning the secrets of the horrific scourge of addiction—addiction that robs the body, the mind, and the soul of so many poor helpless victims. Why would anyone take such a patron from the earth?”

  He makes her sound like Mother Theresa, thought Pamela. Where, she wondered suddenly, was Angie? She discreetly looked over her shoulder again and spied her daughter sitting next to Kent in a pew near the back of the chapel—where most of the graduate students were seated. As she secretly watched her daughter, she noticed Shoop fanning his gaze over the entire assembly—watching, it appeared, for any tell-tale responses to statements made during Charlotte’s memorial. As she stared at him, his glance fell on hers and their eyes met. “Behave yourself, Dr. Barnes,” they seemed to say. Pamela felt his scrutiny and turned back in her seat.

  “I should note,” the minister continued, ”that our University President (who could not be here today) has set up a Charlotte Clark Memorial Fund, the proceeds of which will go to a scholarship for a deserving graduate student in Psychology, Charlotte’s department. I hope you—Charlotte’s friends and colleagues—will give serious consideration to making a generous donation to this important scholarship fund.”

  Pamela leaned over to Rocky and whispered, “Ah, now I see, it all boils down to money, right?”

  “Doesn’t everything, Babe?” whispered Rocky.

  With that, the minister, opened the Bible on his lectern and offered a short prayer. When he was finished, he announced, “Several of Charlotte Clark’s colleagues and friends have expressed a desire to speak. First, I’d like to introduce, Dr. Mitchell Marks, Chair of the Psychology Department.” The minister backed down the raised lectern and Mitchell climbed up and adjusted the microphone.

  “Friends,” he said, gulping a bit, obviously somewhat nervous, “This is a truly sad occasion. Charlotte and I had our differences, but I always remained an admirer of her intelligence, talent, and initiative. She was, without doubt, the star of our department. I don’t think I’m stepping on any toes by saying that.” He looked out at the see of faces and chuckled a bit. “I know that because I know how much the Psychology Department benefited by having Charlotte as a member. She single-handedly remade our department. Through her funding efforts, we were able to build an amazing state-of-the-art computer lab that has allowed our faculty and graduate students to produce top-notch research. Her generosity was always present and she shared her good fortune with her colleagues. I truly don’t know what we’ll do without her. That’s all, I guess.” He coughed a few times and then stepped down carefully, looking somewhat bereft.

  “That’s it?” questioned Rocky. “He’s the head of your department?”

  “He is,” Pamela replied.

  “He’s not very good at giving eulogies, is he?”

  The minister then introduced Dr. Laura Delmondo. From her seat further back in the crowd, looking cautious and shy, Laura Delmondo passed Mitchell as she walked carefully forward and assumed the lectern. Mitchell nodded towards her sadly as they crossed paths.

  “Hello,” said Laura, looking more at her note cards than the congregation, “I asked Dr. Marks if I could speak today. I know you all know about Charlotte’s amazing academic successes and remarkable generosity. What you may not know is her more personal side.” She looked up and stared at the audience for a second and then quickly returned to her cards, “ I’d like to change that. I first met Charlotte Clark when I was an undergraduate student here at Grace many years ago. I planned to take a few Psychology classes, get a degree—it didn’t really matter in what, get some sort of job for a few years, and then get married and begin what I assumed would be my real life. Meeting Charlotte changed all that. She spoke in class and I suddenly realized that here was a woman with an amazing job—who apparently wasn’t married with a family. When I went in to her office one day to speak to her about my research paper, she suggested that I might find a career in Psychology interesting. She said she had read some of my earlier papers and thought I showed promise. The thought of having a career, any career, let alone one in Psychology, never entered my mind. After that, I visited her office frequently and she encouraged me. She helped me get accepted into a graduate program and she pushed me to go on for my doctorate. No one in my family had ever gone to college—let alone had a graduate degree. She changed my life. She opened a new world for me. Yes, along the way, we disagreed, but she was instrumental in me coming here to Grace University to work in the Psychology Department—a place I love and a job I adore. She was responsible for turning my life around. I can’t believe she’s gone—I can’t believe---“ She looked out at the crowd again, tears filling her eyes.

  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 stroller
s. 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? S
he’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?