FM for Murder

by Patricia Rockwell

  “Oh, Rocky,” she cried, turning to him and grabbing his neck, “I couldn’t sleep at all with you out there in the living room. Don’t ever do that again.”

  “I’m a jerk,” he agreed, sitting beside her on the bed. “I couldn’t sleep either. Of course, the couch isn’t very comfortable. Could be part of it.” She punched him playfully in the arm, sniffling.

  “I know I should have called you the minute Shoop came into my office and asked me to listen to the tape of the murder,” she said, in a rush to explain her behavior of the last day. “Everything just seemed to snowball and pretty soon it had just gotten out of hand.”

  “How is it out of hand?” he asked, looking worried. “Is someone threatening you?”

  “Oh, no,” she assured him, and gave him another hug, “Nothing like that. There are quite a few people, actually, working on the tape.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes,” she explained. “Truly, anyone who listened to Ballard’s show on Saturday night could—hypothetically—have a recording of the murder. It’s not like it’s a secret. Lot’s of people have heard it.”

  “So you reason that the more people who know about it, the safer you are,” he asked, brows lifted, expecting an answer.

  “I wasn’t thinking about safety…”

  “That’s a given, Speed Racer,” he said, and then quickly replaced his sullen face with a fake smile.

  “I’m thinking more about identifying the killer—as Snoop requested. I reason the more people working on the problem the quicker it will be solved.”

  “And who—may I ask—is working on it—besides you?”

  “Willard, of course,” she responded, “I mean, he’s an expert on dialect. He determined right away that the killer was probably Southern.”

  “I thought the killer didn’t say anything.”

  “We think he does—briefly,” she said, “and we think from our analysis that it is a he.”

  “A southern man?” questioned Rocky, shrugging. “That could be anyone.”

  “I know,” she agreed, “so now I also have Mitchell working on it too. He knows a lot about guns so I thought he might be able to figure out something from the gunshot. Also, my graduate acoustics class. I sort of turned it into a class project and they’re all working on it too.”

  “Maybe you should put an ad in the newspaper—calling all detectives. Help Pamela Barnes decipher the mysterious recording and solve a murder.”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary….” He was making fun of her to cover his concern.

  “I was kidding,” he said, shaking his head and leaning back on the headboard. “I hate to tell you, but it’s after seven.”

  “Oh, my God,” she replied, “I’ll be late if I don’t get going.”

  “I’m going to go make you breakfast,” he said to her, protruding his lower lip, “It’s my penance for last night.”

  “Oh, I’ll think of a much better penance for you tonight,” she smiled at him.

  “Good, I deserve punishment,” he responded, then looking closely at her in the increasingly lighter room, “Your eyes are all bloodshot. Now, I really feel terrible. I’m going to go make you that breakfast.”

  “Okay,” she said lightly, then touching his arm as he rose to leave, “if you really want to help, Rocky, you could ask around in your department about Ballard. You know, find out if anyone knows anything about him—if he had any enemies. All I know about him is what Trudi told us on Sunday.”

  “Yes, Inspector,” he said, saluting, “But don’t push your luck.”

  She quickly got ready, noticing what Rocky had already seen. Her eyes were horribly red. This was what happened when she was awake half the night and spent most of it crying. But it couldn’t be helped. She had to get to work. She tried to cover her eyes with extra eye shadow and more foundation under her lower lids, but nothing seemed to help. Her students would just have to see what she looked like after an “all-nighter” as they would say. As she stared at her reflection, she realized that it wasn’t half-bad—except of course for the red eyes. She had a head of shiny, shoulder length natural blond hair, clear skin, virtually perfect teeth, and her figure was ample. Nothing would get her to say “fat.” She envisioned herself as one of those nudes in a Boticelli painting, lying around in a group eating grapes, their folds of cellulite exposed with pride. She dressed quickly in a stylish skirt and sweater outfit and put in a pair of her favorite earrings. After a brief but enjoyable breakfast with her delightfully contrite husband, she was on her way.

  As she entered the main office, otherwise known these days as Christmas Central, to greet Jane Marie (and check on any new gossip) and pick up her mail, she discovered that Mitchell Marks had just arrived himself and was asking her to stop in his office for a moment. As she still had a half hour before her first class, she entered the “trophy” room as she often thought of Mitchell’s office and took up a seat before his large desk. Mitchell scurried around to his side of the desk and sat.

  “I’m glad I caught you, Pamela,” he said. “I’ve been listening to the recording and I think I may have a possibility for you.”

  “Oh?” she said. “Wonderful. What?”

  “Here again,” he explained, his blue eyes focused intently on hers, “My God, Pamela, what happened to your eyes? Did you have an allergic reaction to something?”

  “No,” she said, thinking that her efforts at cover-up had been for naught, “just difficulty sleeping last night.”

  “Oh,” he said, then continued with his original thought, “Anyway, I’m thinking there is something strange about the gunshot on the recording.”

  “How so?”

  “I tried to picture how this murder occurred, you see. Listening to the recording, the killer appears to enter a door. The victim is at the microphone. The killer shoots the victim from a certain distance—I’m not certain what…”

  “About ten feet,” she interjected. “I took measurements in the studio the other day.”

  “Good,” he continued, “But, as I said, I’m a gun collector and hunter—not a ballistics expert, but the sound of the gunshot—oh, I know it’s a hand gun—not a rifle, but even so, there’s something strange about it. I can’t quite put my finger on it but you might want to listen to it yourself. You are the acoustics expert.”

  “But not a ballistics expert,” she noted, sighing.

  “Even so,” he said, with excitement, “there is definitely something strange about the gun shot. Take it from someone who shoots a lot of guns. That’s about all I can tell you, but I’m going to continue listening to it and see if I can’t come up with something more specific.”

  “Good,” replied Pamela, nodding. “Thanks, Mitchell, for your efforts. Wouldn’t it be amazing if our department could solve this case?”

  “We’d have to give up teaching psychology,” he said, with a laugh, “and go into forensics.” With that, she rose and left Mitchell Marks to his work. She passed Jane Marie coming in with a stack of papers as she was leaving.

  “So, Dr. Barnes,” said Jane Marie, softly, to the accompaniment of “The Little Drummer Boy,” “did you break the case yet?”

  “Not yet,” Pamela replied to the young secretary, “but I’m working on it.” She left the office, this time avoiding the temptation of all of Jane Marie’s Christmas sweets, almost skipping. She had a new clue—or at least a new line of questioning. Rocky had promised he would look into Ballard over at the English Department, and she had two colleagues and an entire class also working on the mystery tape. Boy, did she know how to delegate.

  Pamela hurried up to her office and made it to her morning classes with time to spare. After lecturing for several hours and enjoying an especially nice lunch that Rocky had packed (he obviously was feeling tremendously guilty because not only had breakfast been fantastic, lunch was the best ever), she leaned back on her couch, slipped out of her heels which were just a pinch too tight about this time every day, and put her stock
ing covered feet up on the sofa to sip her licorice tea.

  She wondered if she would see Joan and Arliss today, but if they didn’t show, she’d see them tonight, because they had planned one of their girl outings to check out the Blue Poppy in downtown Reardon. Maybe there, she would actually find someone who knew Ted Ballard—or who knew about him. Up until now, the murder victim remained a mystery. Okay, she said to herself, enough loafing. Get busy, girl. She slipped her shoes back on and wandered over to her desk, thermos of tea in hand. She sat down in her rolling chair and powered up her sound analysis program—loading the CD recording of Ted Ballard’s murder into her hard drive.

  Almost instantly, the spectrographic output of the disc jockey’s final words appeared on the screen. She set the cursor to the left hand side where the sound began and hit the play button. The short segment that ended in the gunshot emitted from her desktop speakers. Focusing in on Mitchell’s suspicion that there was “something strange” about the gunshot, she highlighted the gunshot and a second or two before and after it, and played it over and over a number of times, listening for anything that might seem out of place. Unfortunately, knowing nothing about guns and ballistics, this procedure eventually proved a waste of her time. She returned to the beginning of the short recording and played it many times so that she could focus on the brief vocalization that she believed was the voice of the killer. She wanted to see how the killer’s only produced sound fit in with what Ballard was saying. She played the recording and closed her eyes. She tried to envision the little station that she had just visited the other day. She remembered sitting in the disc jockey’s chair—where Ballard was sitting when he was killed. She envisioned the glass door that the killer must have entered when he came into the small radio station. She envisioned these two men (she felt in her heart that they were both men) as they stood there. She pictured them as she played the tape. She tried to envision what Ballard was doing when he was talking—what the killer was doing at the same time. She realized the exact point in the recording when the killer must have revealed the gun. It was almost the same time as when the killer made the vocal sound—something like a gasp, but more of a vowel sound. It was almost at the same time as when Ballard said “What the?” He must have thought that the killer was kidding when he brought out the gun.

  She wondered as her class had wondered the other night why Ballard never indicated anything that would identify his killer. He managed to say quite a bit between the time the killer entered and he was shot. She thought, that’s probably more to do with him being a disc jockey—he’s probably used to spewing out his thoughts on air. He was just giving a running account of what was happening. He didn’t identify the killer, she reasoned, because he didn’t know the killer. Or did he? Was there anything in this recording to indicate that Ballard had any idea who the killer was?

  She also wondered about the way the recording ended. Her class had noted that. Had someone turned off the microphone? She remembered the microphone on the disc jockey’s desk. It had a very noticeable on/off switch. Did someone turn it off? If so, it couldn’t have been Ballard—he was dead. Unless, she thought, unless he accidentally bumped the on/off switch as he slumped to the floor—like Charlotte Clark did when she was struggling against her killer in the computer lab last year. Maybe the recording just sounded like it was turned off and wasn’t really turned off until the police and the station manager, Mr. Gallagher, arrived at least a half hour later. She didn’t know. If the killer turned off the microphone, she wondered, why? Why would the killer do that? Why wouldn’t the killer just leave?

  She repeated the tape again—and then again. She went back again to the gunshot. Mitchell thought it was strange, but it didn’t seem strange to her—it just seemed loud. Maybe she should learn something about ballistics. No time like the present, she thought. Luckily, no students seemed to be visiting her today during office hours. That was typical. Some days it was busy, and some days, like today, it was a tomb. She Googled “ballistics” and “hand guns” and various other terms in an effort to understand the acoustics of gunshots. My goodness, she thought, there was so much to it. Much different than the acoustics of human voices.

  Her phone ringing drew her from her intense concentration. It was Shoop.

  “Dr. Barnes,” he greeted her. “How are you coming on that analysis?”

  “Detective,” she replied, “Am I your only lead? You called my house last night and told my husband about this.”

  “My, oh my,” replied Shoop, “Did I cause trouble in paradise?” He laughed.

  “No,” she said, bristling, “you did not. But, I would prefer to inform my husband myself about my crime-fighting activities. I’d rather he not hear about them from you.”

  “Fair enough,” answered Shoop, “Anyway, the reason I called was that I’ve received the updated autopsy report on Ballard and although it’s fairly standard and contains nothing much that would affect your part in this investigation, there is one unusual item that I’m thinking might be of interest to you.”

  “And that would be?”

  “The entry angle of the bullet,” he replied. “You seemed so concerned at the radio station about measuring distances—from the microphone to the door and so forth, that I thought you might like to know that the coroner found that the bullet that killed Ballard entered from below. That is, the bullet entered near Ballard’s nose and lodged in his brain. This would suggest that the killer was sitting, kneeling, or was very short and or that Ballard was standing.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” she replied, “I don’t know what to make of this information. Do you?”

  “Nope,” said the Detective, “I don’t have a clue. The killer couldn’t have been sitting as there were no chairs by the door and I see no reason for him to kneel. From the recording, it doesn’t sound like Ballard stands up—does it?”

  “No,” she agreed, “there would be a noticeable change in the volume level if he did.”

  “So, I guess it means our killer was a midget.”

  “Oh, Detective, do you know if the police officers or the station manager turned off the microphone when they arrived?”

  “No,” replied Shoop, checking his notes, “It was already turned off. Gallagher checked that immediately. He didn’t want his discussions with the police going out over the air waves. ”

  They chatted pleasantly for a few more minutes and then hung up. Pamela, thinking about the new information, returned to the online ballistics information sites. What in the world? Why would the bullet come in from such a low angle? There was no reason for it. None that she could see. She started to read the ballistics sites more carefully—particularly the explanation of how gunshots were displayed acoustically. Now here was something that looked relatively familiar. When a gunshot was recorded and displayed on a spectrograph, a fairly traditional profile was created. Ballistics experts could determine a huge array of information about a gun or a bullet merely by examining the acoustic display of a certain gunshot. One thing they could determine, she learned, was distance. The gunshot created an acoustically unique profile that indicated in great detail the exact distance of the gun to the target as compared to the recording device. She studied the material, reading over and over, the explanation of how the distance was determined from the gun to the target. Primarily, she realized that the initial explosion from the gun created the longest (or tallest) output on the acoustic display. This very noticeable spike was a fair indication of the location of the gun to the recording device or microphone. The closer the gun to the microphone, the closer the spike to the beginning of the acoustic output. In Ballard’s case, the distance was short—only ten feet, but Ballard was sitting immediately in front of the mic and the killer was much further away. The display should have begun, then there should have been a brief momentary delay and then the spike should have occurred on the display about the same time as the bullet hit Ballard and the CD should have recorded the bullet hitting Ballard—after all, Bal
lard and the mic were in virtually the same position. This is not what happened. On her visual display, as she listened to the recording, the spike from the initial explosion of the gun, occurred immediately—as if the person shooting the gun was holding it directly in front of the microphone. She listened for a sound after that to indicate the bullet had hit Ballard. It should be loud. She could hear no such sound. What did that mean?

  Chapter 22

  Previous week--December 15, Saturday afternoon

  When Daniel returned to David’s apartment at five o’clock—exactly at five o’clock as he had promised—he was excited. The first meeting with his brother had gone better than he had expected. Yes, David was belligerent but he’d expected that. At least, he was willing to talk to him and that gave Daniel hope. After he’d left David’s apartment earlier in the day, he’d been busy. He’d found a nice, nearby hotel and checked in, grabbed a quick sandwich in the hotel’s small restaurant, and then gone to his room to rest and call Harold Vickers to check on his father’s condition and to report on his progress. Vickers had informed him that his father was holding his own—no change—for good or bad. That was all Daniel felt he could hope for at least for now. Vickers was delighted to hear from Daniel that he’d found David in good shape and at least willing to talk. He wished him luck at dinner and then Daniel had taken a quick nap. He didn’t want to call Amy in the middle of the day when he knew she was at work and would not appreciate being disturbed. They were trying to keep their relationship secret and so far, had done a good job of that.

  Now he stood at his brother’s rickety screen door again and knocked for the second time. This time, David opened it immediately. Smiling, he led Daniel inside.

  “Hey,” said Daniel, noticing a change, “you shaved. Hope that isn’t for me.”

  “Nah,” replied David, “I was getting kind of scraggly. Maybe you inspired me to clean up my act.”