Voice Mail Murder

Chapter Twenty-Five





She was pondering Joan’s son and their brief meeting as she drove her little Civic home along Jackson, the main thoroughfare of Reardon. When Joan finally returned from class, Pamela was just heading out and her explanation of the encounter was brief. Joan was understandably confused and delighted. She’d be getting her apartment back, but she’d be losing the companionship of her son that Pamela knew she was enjoying—a mixed blessing. She and Joan would have much to discuss, she thought as she drove past the fringes of campus and headed out along the long stretch of road that led towards her house. It would probably call for one of their outings to Who-Who’s.

Nearing an intersection, she put her foot on her brake pedal and discovered to her dismay that her brakes were not responding. Strange. She gave the pedal a few short taps, trying to loosen what she figured must be a jammed pedal. No response. Looking ahead, she saw a white van stopped at the upcoming red light on Hilliard. If she couldn’t get her brakes to function quickly she was going to ram right into the rear of that van. Slamming furiously hard on her brakes, she quickly pulled her steering wheel rapidly to the right. Her Civic jutted suddenly at a right angle and slammed head-on into a metal lamp post on the side of the road. She was only going about twenty miles an hour, but even so, the strength of the collision slapped her backwards and then forwards. Her airbag exploded with a pop and smacked her in the face. The noise of the crash and the airbag expulsion were followed by total silence.

The only thing she could hear for what seemed like hours was the sound of her own breathing. Then, from a distance, a man’s voice called out:

“Lady, are you okay? Hey! Lady, are you okay in there?”

She twisted her head to the left which caused her a horrible throbbing sensation in her forehead. A man’s nose was pressed against her window, a look of alarm covering his face. She reached carefully to her left and pressed the unlock button. The man quickly opened the door.

“Are you okay?” he continued to ask her. He touched her face, examining her carefully and looking into her eyes. From his pocket he retrieved a cell phone and dialed a few digits. “Hey, yeah, 911? Yeah, there’s an accident at the corner of Jackson and Hilliard. Yeah. Yeah. No, just one vehicle. Slammed into a lamppost. No, just the driver. I’m here with her now. She appears to be conscious, but she’s pretty banged up. Me? I’m Jeremy Potter. I’m a tech for MacMillan Air Conditioning. I was right in front of her. I think she swerved to avoid hitting me in the rear. Okay. Will do.”

He slid the phone back into his pocket.

“Don’t worry. There’s an ambulance on the way . . .”

“No,” moaned Pamela. “I’m fine. Just a little shook up.” She put her hand to her forehead. She could feel a gash over her right eye. Liquid was dripping from the gash into her eye. She wiped it away and looked at her hand. It was red.

“You’re not fine,” declared the man. “Wait here a minute. I’m going to get my van out of traffic.” He disappeared. As she cautiously glanced over her left shoulder—a move which all of a sudden was very painful—she could see that he had driven his white van into the parking lot of a strip mall on the right side of the road. Several other cars that had slowed to gawk were now continuing on their way, obviously convinced that there were no serious injuries. Jeremy, the air conditioning specialist, returned to her open door and knelt down beside her.

“Hey, how ya doin’?” he asked, with an encouraging smile. “Hang in there.”

“I’m fine,” repeated Pamela, now looking around tenuously. She had to get out of her car, she thought. She tried to unbuckle her seat belt but couldn’t. Suddenly, a wave of nausea overwhelmed her and she froze. Maybe not.

“Now, lady,” said Jeremy, steadying her. “Let’s not try anything foolish. You just wait here until the paramedics check you out. I’d feel a lot better.”

Pamela obeyed the young man. Soon, she could hear sirens and almost immediately thereafter, a rotund, middle-aged police officer poked his head in and asked how she was doing. She reassured him. He collected her personal information and was on his intercom with his superiors when two paramedics appeared and nuzzled in front of him. One began examining her, looking in her eyes with a small light, feeling her neck, and listening to her heart with his stethoscope. Assured that her vitals were sound, the two medics carefully removed her seat belt and slid her out of the car and onto a waiting gurney.

“Really,” exclaimed Pamela, “I’m fine.”

“Lady,” said one of the men, “you might have a concussion. You should be checked out at the hospital.”

“I don’t have a concussion,” she declared. “I never blacked out. I just have a bump on my head. I’ll be fine.”

“If you refuse medical treatment,” he continued, “you’ll have to sign a release form.”

“Not a good idea, Dr. Barnes,” said a voice that she recognized from behind her. She turned abruptly—and waves of pain shot through her head. Shoop was standing behind the paramedics, arms folded, a look of disdain on his already scornful face. “I’d suggest you get yourself checked out by a physician—just like these gentlemen suggest.”

“What do they suggest?” asked another familiar voice. Behind Shoop she recognized—although he was disturbingly fuzzy—Rocky. “Pamela, honey, are you all right?” Her husband pushed in front of the men surrounding her and collected her in his arms.

“Rocky,” she asked, squinting. Why does everyone look so blurry? “Rocky, what are you doing here?”

“Your Detective Shoop called me,” he said.

“Yes, Dr. Barnes,” explained the tall detective, his overcoat hanging open by his sides. “I heard the call about the accident and when the officer called in your name and license number, I figured you might be up to something—and I called your husband.”

“Thankfully,” said Rocky to Shoop with a nod. “Just what did happen, Pamela?”

“I don’t know,” she said weakly. “I tried to stop at the intersection, but my brakes wouldn’t work. I pumped them hard. I tried everything, but nothing happened. So, I figured it would be better to pull to the right than to ram into a car ahead of me.”

“Unfortunately,” noted Shoop, “pulling to the right included a lamppost. Luckily you hit one of those new breakaway hollow aluminum poles. If it’d been an old steel job, you’d have been toast.”

“Thanks,” she said, cringing in remembrance.

“My God, Pamela,” said Rocky, now closer to his wife. “You’re bleeding!”

“I’ll be fine, Rocky,” she assured him, not all that certain. “It’s just a cut.”

“The medics say she should be checked out at the hospital,” said Shoop.

“I’ll take her,” he responded to the detective.

“Good,” agreed Shoop. “She’s in no condition to drive. Besides, no one’s going to be able to drive this thing for a while anyway.”

Pamela glanced cautiously back at her tiny blue car, now mangled and torn. It was her baby and it looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to its face. How in the world had this happened?

“Detective,” said Pamela to Shoop, as they both stared at her car. “I’ve never had brake problems with my Civic before. I was just driving along and all of a sudden my brakes just disappeared.”

“Yeah,” he grimaced, “I see. This isn’t a good sign, Dr. Barnes. Actually, I’m going to have your car impounded and have our technicians go over your brakes.” He gestured to one of the officers.

“You think someone cut her brakes?” asked Rocky.

“It’s a possibility,” said Shoop, as he strode slowly around the little car, looking underneath and popping the hood. “Just where has this car been today, Dr. Barnes?”

“Just sitting in the Blake Hall parking lot,” she replied.

“Where lots of other cars are parked,” he said, “Anyone could easily slip underneath a vehicle parked in one of those small campus lots and cut a brake line. If anyone saw the culprit, the person could always say they lost something under their car, or some other innocuous excuse.”

“Yeah,” said Rocky, “Pammie, you’ve gotten yourself into another mess with all this investigating. And now look what’s happened! When will you learn?”

She knew she was being chastised by her husband and she knew Shoop was trying to explain something about cars and brakes, but it all seemed so far in the distance—and getting farther and farther with each passing moment. Shoop was getting quieter and farther away. Rocky’s loud voice was softer and he was fading away into the distance too—far into the distance. Eventually they all went black.