Stump Speech Murder (22 page)

“What?” he asked.

“We are assuming that just because the voice on the 911 recording is that of Stacy Grant, that that means that Stacy Grant made that call to 911.”

“What are you getting at, my dear?” asked Willard, his round brown face, childlike in eager anticipation.

“Could it be possible that the voice on the 911 recording is Stacy, but that she didn’t make the call?”

“I don’t see how . . . .” replied Willard, befuddled, his bow tie wobbling up and down as he contemplated the possibilities.

“I’m speculating here, so please go with me,” she said to him, running a hand through her hair, her frustration evident.

“I’m with you, my dear,” he agreed, “wherever you go.  You say it’s her voice, but she didn’t make the call.  Are you suggesting she was coerced?”

“No,” said Pamela, “I don’t think so, because I think that would register in her voice.  Let’s listen again.  What are you hearing?  I know you’ve been thinking there is something strange about it, right?”

They played the recording several more times, listening more carefully to minute changes in the pitch, intensity, and tempo of the speaking woman’s vocal patterns.

“There is a strange quality to her vocal patterns,” said Willard, “but I can’t say it sounds like duress.  Or at least, it doesn’t sound like the duress that a person would experience if they were scared because someone was breaking into their home.”

“I agree,” said Pamela.  “There’s something else.”

“Do you think she’s afraid?” he asked.  “Is that what you’re hearing?”

They played the recording again.

“There’s a disjointed quality to it,” noted Pamela.  “Listen.”

“Yes,” agreed Willard, a furrow forming between his eyes as he listened intently to the sound of Stacy Grant saying, “My husband  . . . outside . . . trying to break in . . . please help!” 

“It’s disjointed,” said Pamela again.

“But isn’t that because she’s scared?” asked Willard.  “Fear will make people speak faster and in a more clipped fashion.

“It’s different,” argued Pamela.  “It doesn’t sound like fear.”

“You don’t think she sounds afraid?” asked Willard.

“No,” said Pamela, looking directly at her colleague, her mouth dropping open suddenly.  “Actually, she doesn’t sound at all afraid.  Now that I think about it.  Her voice sounds quite calm.  Look here at the frequency level–it’s quite low for someone with her pitch range.  If she were scared, her pitch level should be much higher.  But it’s actually remarkably low.”

“My dear, you’re right!” he exclaimed.  “I think that may be the reason I’ve been thinking it sounded so unusual.  Because, except for the disjointed, broken phrasing, she sounds remarkably calm for someone calling 911.”

“And listen to her say, ‘please help,’” said Pamela.  “It sounds like she’s saying “Please help yourself to some more potatoes.”

“Yes!” agreed Willard.  “Surely, if you feared for your life so much that you were forced to call 911, you’d be more excited sounding than this woman is.  She sounds much more the way she sounds giving one of her speeches in those courtroom speeches.”

“That’s it!” cried Pamela.  “Willard, you’ve got it!”

“What?” he asked. 

“She sounds exactly like she does in her courtroom speeches,” said Pamela.  “I know what we have to do next.”

“What, my dear?” he queried, his eyes wide with delight.

“We need to go through every single courtroom recording we have–or can find–of Stacy Grant and search for these exact phrases that appear in her 911 call.”

“Oh, my, yes!” he said forlornly.  “I see where you’re going. But can we get any more audio of Stacy Grant speaking?  The small sample we have doesn’t include the phrases we need.”

“I don’t know.  I believe Ginger Cooper indicated that WRER had quite a bit of b-roll footage of Stacy.  All I originally asked for was enough so we could verify that the voice on the 911 recording was her.”

“And it is,” he agreed.

“I’ll just have to contact Ginger and see if we can get more b-roll of Stacy.”

“With Mrs. Grant working for the prosecutor’s office, my dear, the television station is liable to have quite a bit of footage of her speaking–to juries, to the press–who knows what.”

“I know,” said Pamela, with a rising sense of depression.  “This could prove to be a massively time-consuming project.”

“But, looking on the bright side,” he noted, “it’s labor intensive and something the entire team can help with.  Once we have the audio recordings and some recorders, we can all sit over at headquarters with headphones and each listen to different recordings until we come up with Stacy saying these exact four phrases.”

“Do you think Martin will go for that?” she asked.

“Of course, my dear.  Martin is a dear friend.  He’ll do anything to help James.”

“Then so can we,” she confirmed, holding out her hand which Willard took.  The two shook grimly. 

What if we can’t find these phrases?” he asked.  “I mean, what if Stacy Grant never used any of these phrases in her courtroom speeches–or at least those speeches that were recorded for posterity?”

“Oh, I think we’ll find them,” said Pamela confidently.  “I think we’ll find them, because I think Stacy Grant’s murderer found them.”

“Oh,” replied Willard, his entire body responding with a quiver to her words. 

Joan appeared at Willard’s door, breathless.

“Pamela, come quickly!  Arliss’s water just broke!”

Chapter Twenty-Five

The two professors ran back to Pamela’s office, the sound of their heels clicking rapidly on the linoleum floor.  Once inside her office, Pamela immediately saw the petrified Arliss standing beside her desk chair, clutching her belly, a puddle of something wet beneath her feet.

“It just happened, Pam,” she moaned.  “I’m sorry!”

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Arliss!” said Pamela, quickly moving to her friend.  “There’s nothing to be sorry about.  Sit down.”  She forced Arliss back into the desk chair.  “Did you call your OB?”

“No!”  replied the pregnant woman, whining.  “I didn’t even think about him!”

“Why should she?” added Joan, on the other side of the chair.  “After all, he’s a man!  What good are they?”

“Call him,” ordered Pamela to Arliss, lifting the receiver from her desk phone and handing it to Arliss.  Arliss complied and a brief conversation between Arliss and what appeared to be her OB’s secretary on the other end, indicated that Arliss would soon be on her way to the hospital.

“I’m supposed to go straight to the hospital.  I can’t even go home to get my bag,” cried Arliss as she hung up with her doctor’s office.  “I have all my things ready to go at home!” she wailed.

“Where’s Bob?” asked Pamela, gathering her purse and keys.

“In class,” said Arliss. 

“We should wait for him to get out of class,” said Joan to Pamela.

“No time,” replied Pamela, now helping Arliss to stand up. 

“I’ll go get him,” said Joan and turned to the door.

“Stop, Joan!” ordered Pamela.  “Forget Bob for now!  You help me get Arliss in my car and to the hospital.”

She escorted Arliss, who was very wobbly now, out her office door and down the hallway.  Willard was standing in his doorway watching them depart.

“Good luck, Arliss!” he called to the mother-to-be.  “I’ll call Martin about those recordings, Pamela!”

“Thanks, Willard,” Pamela yelled back at him as she and Joan helped Arliss through the stairwell doors and down the stairs to the main floor.  Once there, they carefully guided her out the side entrance to Blake Hall and into the parking lot.  Luckily, Pamela had parked her Civic near the side entrance.  First, because she had a two-door, she had Joan climb into the back seat–with much complaining and griping from Joan.  Then, she helped Arliss into the front passenger seat and carefully buckled her in.

“Joan, while I’m driving, you call Jane Marie and have her have Bob meet us at the hospital.  Oh, which hospital, Arliss?”

“Reardon General,” replied Arliss with a death grip on her stomach. “The emergency room entrance they said.”

“Did you get that, Joan?” asked Pamela to her friend in the back seat.

“I got it.  Good lord, Pamela,” sneered Joan, “look at the mess in your back seat.  Do you ever clean back here?”

“Would you rather stay here, Joan?” snipped Pamela, a quick turn of her head. 

“No, no! Just get going!”  Pamela pulled out of the parking lot and sped as quickly as the posted limit would allow.  Luckily, Reardon General was a main hospital and near campus. 

“Call Jane Marie, Joan,” yelled Pamela. Joan pulled out her cell phone from a side compartment of her purse and tapped in several numbers.  She was soon embroiled in conversation with Jane Marie who, Pamela gathered, from just hearing Joan’s end of the conversation, would see to it that Bob Goodman would get to the hospital the minute he was out of his class.

“Oh, no!” yelled Arliss, a look of terror on her face, grabbing Pamela’s shoulder, almost causing Pamela to ram into a streetlight on the roadside.  She squeezed it like she was kneading bread.

“What?” asked Pamela cringing but still solicitously to her passenger.

“A cramp!” replied Arliss.

“Right!” noted Pamela to Arliss, “it’s called labor. Hang in there, sweetie.”

“It hurts!” moaned Arliss. 

“That’s the result of hanky-panky, Missy . . . .” said Joan, leaning over and speaking into Arliss’s ear.

“Joan!” cried Pamela.  “Enough!”  Joan leaned back into the car seat.

It was a short drive and they arrived in minutes even though it seemed like hours.  Pamela pulled into the emergency entrance and stopped.  She extracted Arliss from the front seat.  Then, Joan walked Arliss into the hospital while Pamela quickly found a parking space and then joined them.  As she entered the hospital, she could see a nurse leading Joan and Arliss, now seated in a wheel chair, through a set of double doors.  She quickly caught up to them.

“Mrs. Goodman,” the nurse was saying.  “Doctor Doolittle called to tell us that you were on the way.  We’re all ready for you.”  She smiled down at Arliss, who chose that moment to have another contraction.

“Dr. Doolittle?” asked Joan to Pamela as they walked behind.  “A great name for an OB, right?”

“And for two animal lovers.  Probably means he’s very hands-off,” offered Pamela with a grin.

“So he won’t give her any drugs?” asked Joan.

“Who knows,” replied Pamela.

“Maybe he won’t even show up,” suggested Joan.

“Whatever he does,” noted Pamela, “he’s sure to send a huge bill.”  They laughed together with a mixture of joy, excitement, and trepidation.

The nurse led the trio through a maze of windowless hallways, pushing Arliss in the wheelchair while Joan and Pamela followed behind.  Eventually, after a long trip on an elevator, they arrived at what was apparently the maternity ward.  The nurse rolled the wheelchair into an empty patient room.

“Ladies,” she said to Joan and Pamela, “you’ll have to wait outside for a while.  But you’ll be able to come back in as soon as your friend is settled.”

“Wonderful,” said Pamela.

“Great,” added Joan. 

“Has the husband been informed?” asked the nurse.

“Yes,” replied Pamela.  “He teaches at Grace and he’s in the middle of class.  We left a message for him to get here as soon as he’s done with class.”

“Good,” said the nurse and she hurried into Arliss’s room, shutting the door as she entered.

“Maybe while we’re waiting, you’ll want to go down and clean out your car,” suggested Joan.

“Joan!” cried Pamela, aghast.  “My back seat isn’t that dirty!”

“I didn’t mean your back seat,” whispered Joan.  “I meant the front seat–where Arliss was sitting.  It’s not pretty.  She soaked through on your seat.”

“Don’t worry about it,” replied Pamela.  “There are worse things.  We’re going to stay here and support Arliss.  My car upholstery is the least of my worries.”