FM for Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “Sure,” said Mitchell, reaching for the CD, “let’s crank ‘er up.” She handed him the CD. He removed it from its sleeve and inserted it into his hard drive. Then, he pressed “play.” The now familiar sound of Ted Ballard’s voice filled his office:

  “Oh, hi! Come on in! I’m Theodore Ballard—Black Vulture to my fans. You a fan of alternative rock? What the? That’s a gun! What do you need a gun for? Why are you pointing it at me? Wha--? No! No!”

  At that point, the gunshot exploded from Mitchell’s monitor and then the sound stopped.

  “That’s it?” he asked.

  “That’s it,” she answered.

  Mitchell replayed the final moments of the recording several times so he could hear the gunshot.

  “Obviously,” he said, finally, “it’s a hand gun—not a rifle. But beyond that, there’s not much I can say just from listening to the sound. To tell the truth, Pamela, if you asked me to identify this gun by looking at corresponding bullets or bullet holes in animal carcasses—or almost anything like that, I’d be able to do the job for you.”

  “No, don’t apologize, Mitchell,” she said, “if you’re sure it’s a handgun and not a rifle, believe me, that’s more than I can determine from it. And, of course, Shoop will probably be able to pin it down more when he gets the autopsy results. I was just curious. It helps me try to picture what was happening. Now, I can envision the killer, maybe with a handgun in his pocket—which makes sense. It would be much harder to disguise or hide a rifle.”

  “I wish I could tell you more about the gun,” said Mitchell, “but I can’t just with a few times through. Maybe if I could continue to listen to it and think about it…”

  “I don’t see any reason why…”

  “A copy?” he asked.

  “I gave Willard a copy so he could help me. If you want a copy, I don’t see a problem. After all, any one listening to KRDN Saturday with a recorder running might have a copy of the murder too.”

  “Here,” said Mitchell, opening a lower left-hand drawer in his large desk, “I’ll make it myself.” He re-inserted the CD along with a blank disc from his desk and clicked “duplicate.” Soon, the computer spit out both discs. Mitchell replaced the original CD in its sleeve and returned it to Pamela. “I’ll listen to it again. Maybe I can find something. After all, why should you be the only member of the Psychology Department to solve all the crimes?” He smiled warmly and she smirked.

  “It’s no great honor,” she said.

  “Gives me something to do now that there’s no longer anything exciting happening in our department.”

  “There is the wedding,” she said, then immediately regretted her cavalier dispersion of Arliss’s private issues.

  “Wedding?” he asked, “What wedding?”

  “Oh, god, I shouldn’t have said anything,” she moaned, head bowed.

  “Cat’s out of the bag now, Pamela,” he scowled, arms folded, “Who in—let me think---in our department?”

  She nodded, lips squeezed together.

  “Willard and Joan? Hmm, no, unlikely. Phin is married. Laura is married. You’re married. I know it’s not me because I’m married. Must be—by process of elimination—Bob and Arliss.” He announced the names and looked at her triumphantly.

  “You knew already,” she said. “I just found out today.”

  “A good department head knows everything about the members of his faculty,” he said, slyly, blue eyes twinkling.

  “Please don’t tell Arliss I said anything.” She stood and grabbed her purse and jacket to leave.

  “Fear not,” he answered, escorting her to the door, “I’m the soul of discretion.”

  Pamela beamed at him as he opened the door and stood there as she exited. Then he closed the door and she found herself alone in the secretary’s alcove.

  “Dr. Barnes,” whispered Jane Marie, stopping her flying fingers from her keyboard. “That was some secret meeting.”

  “Indeed,” she said to the friendly secretary, “Mitchell is always a surprise.”

  “He is, isn’t he?” agreed Jane Marie, a candy cane posed between her teeth.

  “Jane Marie,” said Pamela, “did you hear about the disc jockey that was shot?”

  “Of course, Dr. Barnes,” she replied, “it was awful! Some of the students even heard it themselves. They were listening to the radio when he was shot!”

  “My daughter was one of them,” admitted Pamela to her friend.

  “The poor girl,” said Jane Marie, “It must have been almost like seeing it happen, don’t you think?”

  “Not quite,” said Pamela, “Not quite.”

  “Have a candy cane, Dr. Barnes,” said Jane Marie, holding up a mug of little red and white sticks. Grabbing a Christmas candy, Pamela waved farewell to Jane Marie and headed out of the main office and down the hallway to the side entrance to the parking lot.

  As she walked towards her car, she tightened her jacket around her and put her hands in her pockets. A cold December day in Reardon. She glanced around and felt the leaves whip against her legs as she reached her car door. As she unlocked her door and crawled into the driver’s seat, her cell phone rang. Now what? She thought.

  “Yes,” she answered. Only a few people had her cell phone number, and she didn’t recognize the number on the caller ID.

  “Dr. Barnes?” the voice asked.

  “Yes,” she answered. She knew the caller.

  “Detective Shoop here, Dr. Barnes,” he said. How did he get her cell phone number? “Dr. Barnes, you’ve had that CD of the murder for at least three hours now. Have you identified the killer yet?”

  Chapter 14

  Previous week--Friday, December 14

  Daniel had just finished speaking with Fredericks at the plant. He was relieved to hear that all the looms were functioning properly and he wouldn’t have to return and perform another single-handed rescue at the factory today. He had far more important fish to fry, he thought. Luckily, most of the time, the plant ran itself and he handled executive business and management decisions from the main office. Even doing his own work and his father’s too, he still had time to slip out in the afternoon (and many evenings) to see Amy. And, he thought with warm delight, seeing her was what made each day special. Oh, he enjoyed managing the business and he certainly liked providing employment for his workers—he liked being perceived of as a benevolent boss. But Amy made him glow—she made him feel like what he was doing had a purpose. And now that his father was in such grave condition, his attention was focused on trying to track down David.

  He had always hoped that David would return on his own and that his father and David would reconcile naturally. He just assumed that David would get tired of maintaining this distance and that he would eventually want to return home and that things would be as they were before—if he would just wait. Now, he realized that he couldn’t wait. His father might die at any moment and David hadn’t come back. For all he knew, David didn’t even know that Father was ill. How could he? He might be anywhere—overseas—in the jungle, or a desert. Who knew? Who knew if David was keeping in touch with sources that would inform him of Father’s condition? No, he couldn’t take the chance. He would have to find David himself and bring him home. He owed it to Father. Father needed to see David before he died and David needed to see Father. They both needed to reconcile. Daniel had to make it happen—it was his top priority.

  As Daniel was pondering his options, his intercom buzzed and Bernice informed him that Sylvester Jax was in the outer office and wished to see him.

  “Send him in, Bernice,” said Daniel. The office door immediately opened and the small, erect man entered quickly and headed directly to Daniel’s desk where he deposited his briefcase and opened it, displaying a pile of documents.

  “Mr. Jax,” said Daniel to Jax, “don’t tell me you’ve located David?”

  “I have, Mr. Bridgewater,” replied Jax, his proud smile and snake-like lids gleaming. “If I may…” He
removed several documents from the briefcase. Daniel seated himself at his desk and prepared for what appeared to be—a show.

  “It was difficult to pin him down at first,” Jax began, “but once we found what he had done, it was easy as blueberry pie.” A tasty metaphor, thought Daniel. It reminded him of Amy and he wondered what she was doing at this moment.

  “How so?” he asked. Jax remained standing and held up each item from his case as if he were conducting a college lecture, complete with grandiose gestures.

  “First,” he said, his left hand sweeping over the document in his right hand, “we had to find out where he went when he left here in 1997. We contacted Dexter Academy to determine if they had ever received any requests for transcripts for him—and they hadn’t—none.”

  “And that would mean?”

  “To me, if a student’s high school never gets requests for transcripts, it can mean one of several things—the student doesn’t intend to go to college, the student doesn’t intend to get a job where the employer would require transcripts, the student has died—unlikely I believed—or, the student has changed identities.”

  “And?”

  “It was my assumption, Mr. Bridgewater, for a variety of reasons,” said Jax, his smile beaming with pride, “that David changed identities. Possibly not right after Dexter Academy. It’s possible that he worked at some menial jobs for a while—I’d be inclined to think he did, until he got on his feet and had acquired some money—but then, seeing as how he never contacted Dexter, I began to believe that if he proceeded at all with higher education, he must have done it under an assumed name.” Daniel leaned back, listening to this tale almost as if he were at the movies.

  “And you think he went on for a college degree?”

  “Definitely,” replied Jax, “from everything you told me about David, I felt certain that ultimately he would return to school. Changing one’s identity isn’t difficult at all—many people do it every day. The problem arises in avoiding any connection to the previous identity. If David wanted to continue his education at most four year institutions, he would need to produce a high school diploma. He could not do so in his new identity.”

  “So what do you suppose he did?” asked Daniel, now thoroughly engrossed in the little investigator’s hypothesis.

  “Once he established his new identity,” said Jax, continuing his scholarly lecture by pacing in front of Daniel’s desk, “it would not be difficult to take a course or two at a small community college—even without a high school diploma, particularly if he had an employment record. From there, he probably built up a transcript at one—or more—local community or junior colleges and then ultimately transferred those credits to a four-year college where he could have completed his degree in his new name.”

  “That’s a lot of trouble to go through just to keep from being connected to us,” said Daniel, his brow furrowing and a note of sorrow in his voice.

  “Mr. Bridgewater,” said Jax, placing the documents on the desk and sitting down in a leather chair in front of Daniel, “connected to you—or being contacted by you, I don’t know, but he did not want to be found. I’m not sure how he will react when—if—you contact him.” He paused and allowed Daniel a moment to process his words.

  “Please, please, Mr. Jax,” said Daniel, eventually, “Please continue, where is David?”

  “Actually, he’s not that far away,” said Jax, “we were able to use some remarkable new facial recognition software to connect him to a photograph of a graduate student at a nearby university. We have a database of student photographs from university yearbooks from all over the United States. Obviously, if David were not enrolled in school, this procedure would not have worked, but I suspected, given what you told me about the conflict between David and your father, that we might find him still studying officially somewhere—and we did.”

  “So, he’s in school?” asked Daniel.

  “Yes,” said Jax, handing him several documents, “graduate school. As we’ve traced his school records back—back under his assumed name you understand—he’s switched majors a number of times—music, art, literature, but always in the humanities or fine arts.”

  “Yes,” said Daniel, “that would be David, the sensitive artist. Never was interested in business, much to Father’s dismay. They came to blows because of it many times.”

  “They would not be the first,” said Jax, shaking his head sympathetically. “Let me show you,” he said, pulling out a map, opening it, and spreading it out on the top of Daniel’s desk. “Here you see Compton, where you are,” he said, pointing to the small town where Bridgewater Carpets was located. “And here,” he said, raising his finger slightly off the map and moving it a few inches to the west, “is where David is.”

  “So close?” asked Daniel, “I can’t believe he’s been there all this time.”

  “Not all this time,” said Jax. “He’s changed institutions a number of times—possibly to throw you off track if you’d been looking for him, but he’s been here for a number of years. We’ve been able to trace him back through yearbook photos—not those individual ones—he never sat for those—but we did find him in a number of group shots where each person was identified. Also, we found some photos of him from the town’s local press. Here they are. Take a look. Seems he’s a minor local celebrity.”

  “Really?” asked Daniel, looking at the grainy photographs. “What type of celebrity is he?”

  “He’s a disc jockey. Goes by the name of Black Vulture—but that’s his radio name, of course. His actual name—or rather his new name—the one he assumed when he dropped David—is Ted Ballard.”

  Chapter 15

  Present time—Monday, late afternoon, December 17

  “Detective,” said Pamela into her cell phone, not quite believing that the policeman was actually contacting her so soon after handing over the CD for analysis. “I really haven’t had much time to listen to the recording.”

  “But, you have listened?” he asked.

  “Yes, a few times,” she responded, shivering, as she continued to put her key in her ignition and prepared to leave the Blake Hall parking lot. “I’m going to need more information, however, before I can do a truly thorough acoustic analysis.” She turned on her heater and jacked the thermostat up as high as it would go.

  “What do you need?” he asked.

  “I’d need to talk to someone who knew Ballard, if possible,” she replied. “Also, I’d really need to actually see the studio—probably take some measurements, if possible.”

  “We could do that,” he said slowly, snuffling, “in fact, why not now?”

  “Now?” The heater was starting to warm her car’s interior and her shivering began to subside.

  “I’ll contact the station manager and have him meet us there. I’ll bring a measuring tape—I assume you don’t carry one around with you?”

  “No,” she hesitated, “but I was just on my way home.”

  “If it’s out of your way, Dr. Barnes….”

  “Actually,” she sighed, thinking aloud, “it’s not all that far. At least it’s in the direction I’m headed,” she concluded. “How long do you think this would take?”

  “You’re the one who needs to see the studio—you tell me.”

  “All right. I’ll meet you there. It shouldn’t take too long,” she agreed, “I’ll call my husband and tell him I’ll be a bit late.”

  “I’m sure he’s used to that,” said Shoop, a humorless chuckle in his voice. “You know how to get to KRDN? On Highway 27?”

  “Yes, I’ve been by there—it’s a little building—next to that big transmitting tower, right? Out in the boonies.”

  “I’m on my way,” said Shoop as he hung up.

  She took her transmission out of “park” and headed out of the lot. The campus showed all the signs of winter—never really what she would call December. The wind was swirling leaves on the street and the campus grounds. Students walking on the sidewalks we
re bundled in warm jackets and scarves—a few with gloves, heads bent against the force of the wind. Virtually no one this far south owned a real winter coat, although today they could probably use one. As Pamela wound around the narrow, tree-lined campus streets, she contemplated just what she might find at the KRDN station. At the moment, there really wasn’t any need for measurements, but she knew that if she could see the station where the murder had actually taken place she would be able to get a better sense of what had happened and possibly be better able to make sense of any clues that might be lurking on the CD. The measurements were really overkill. She needed to know about the microphone Ballard was using and how far he was seated from it. She needed to know where the door to the studio was located and how far it was from Ballard. That is—she needed to know how far the killer was from Ballard when he entered the studio. If the small brief segment of sound that she believed to be the killer’s voice actually was, then knowing exactly where it was in relation to Ballard would be helpful in determining other identifying features about the killer.

  As she exited the campus grounds and turned onto Jackson Drive, the main thoroughfare of Reardon, she also began to realize that meeting Shoop at the radio station would be an opportunity for her to grill him about evidence the police had uncovered—if any. If Shoop expected her to provide him with clues to the killer—he’d better provide her with whatever he had found so far. She continued to drive—easily because it was only around four o’clock, and Reardon traffic wouldn’t pick up dramatically for another hour or so. She could probably avoid calling Rocky. If the meeting at the station was short, she’d be home with plenty of time to spare and she wouldn’t even need to mention her latest activities to her spouse. Lord knows, she thought, the minute he found out that she was again embroiled in another murder investigation, he’d hit the ceiling. They had fought continually about her involvement with Charlotte’s murder. No, she concluded. I’d just better not mention it to him. At least not yet. The less he knows the better.