Voice Mail Murder

Chapter Seven





After her only afternoon class on Friday, she rushed back to her office in hopes of finding some time to listen to the CD Shoop had left. Luckily for her, Friday afternoon typically meant the start of the weekend and students and faculty began heading off campus shortly after their last class. She expected that a student or two might show up for her afternoon office hours, but she usually was able to accomplish a lot of work on Friday afternoons, when Blake Hall was most often abandoned.

Now she sat at her desk alone and slid the metal disk into her hard drive. Leaning back in her desk chair, she clicked on her audio player and hit the “Enter” button. A woman’s voice spoke:

“Hi, I’m really excited to see you. I’m here, just like you said. Can you come over?”

The sound of a mechanical click announced the end of the recorded message. She waited a few seconds and soon another message began:

“I forgot. Room 228.”

The same click announced the end of this even shorter message which again was followed by a few seconds of mechanical pausing. The next message sounded:

“Hello. I’ve arrived and I have on a very short, silk, black teddy—nothing else. Would you like to see for yourself? Why don’t you. I’m behind Door 360. See you soon.“ The speaker made a kissing sound and the message ended with the click. The next message played:

“I’m running late. Maybe a half hour? I’ll call.”

The next was even briefer:

“I’m here. 402.”

Click. Pause. Next message.

“I’m here, honey bunch. I have something new to show you. I’m in Room 117. Hurry! Hurry!” The clicking sound verified the end of this message and after the short pause, Pamela heard:

“Second floor. 211. Take the outside stairs.”

She heard the clicking sound, but no further messages played. She could see why the detective was frustrated with these messages. None of them provided any clues as to the identities of the speakers. The only concrete information was the different room numbers. She assumed that the police had backtracked and had checked out previous guests at the Shady Lane Motel to see who had stayed in these various rooms. But unfortunately, to Pamela, tracking down different women who had registered anonymously at the motel in these different rooms seemed a daunting and probably ultimately unrewarding task.

There did appear to be seven messages. It would be fairly simple, she thought, to determine if there were seven separate speakers, if all the messages were from one speaker, or some combination in between. Quickly, she loaded her acoustic software program which popped up on her monitor, showing a digital spectrograph. This consisted of a single line that fluctuated on a vertical axis as the voice (which was shown beneath the line) it tracked played. The line moved up and down in response to variations in the speaker’s voice—higher up the axis when the voice was at an increased intensity and lower when the intensity was less.

Pamela placed a clean sheet of paper on her clipboard and numbered down the left side of the paper from one to seven. Starting with Message Number One, she replayed the message on the CD. “Hi. I’m really excited to see you. I’m here. Just like you said. Can you come over?” She replayed the short message several times so that she was sure that she understood the words and the syntax. Then, she wrote the message on her paper for Message Number One and examined the message for content. Before she really looked at the sound of the speaker’s voice, she wanted to consider what the speaker was saying—or appeared to be saying. The message certainly seemed to be from a woman who was anxiously awaiting her lover. The woman appeared to have just arrived at the motel room and was calling her lover to let him know and to encourage him to get there quickly. She thought about the sound of the woman’s voice. She seemed youthful, but certainly not a teenager. She sounded cheerful, excited, maybe even a little shy, as was evidenced by her asking if her lover could come over rather than just telling him to come over.

Using her cursor, she clicked on the beginning of the message and highlighted the entire text, placing it in the evaluation box on her software analysis program. Then, she tapped a button that quickly ran a check of various features of the speaker’s voice. This showed Pamela on screen what she could already hear from several listenings to the brief message. The speaker had a definite melodic pattern, with a slight upward inflection at the ends of phrases, somewhat as if she were asking questions, even on statements. There were other unique characteristics of this woman’s voice—characteristics that would make her stand out from other female speakers—and would—to Pamela’s trained ear, at least, distinguish her from other speakers on the voice mail—if there were other speakers on the voice mail. She jotted down these features on her clipboard under #1.

Satisfied that she had a good understanding of Message Number One, Pamela moved on to Message Number Two—and wrote this title on her clipboard paper. She then clicked out of the text on her screen for the first message and played the CD so that the second message became visual on her spectrograph. Then using her cursor, she again highlighted the segment denoting the second message and placed it in her analysis software. This message was much shorter:

“I forgot. Room 228.”

She played it several times. Common sense told her that this message was a companion to the first. She realized that the speaker in the first message had neglected to indicate the room number and must have called back shortly after the first message to indicate it. She tapped the analysis button and her computer whirred. Almost instantly, a series of graphs indicated frequency levels, intensity amounts, variations in tempo, and other subtle vocal changes. As Pamela glanced at the acoustic print-out, she realized that her screen was telling her exactly what her ears were telling her as she listened to Message Number One and Message Number Two—and what her mind told her as she compared the texts in the two messages. The speaker of the first two messages was the same person. Good, she thought, that limits the number of suspects from a possible seven to at least six.

She turned back to her screen and brought up the third message. She remembered that this was the longest message:

“Hello. I’ve arrived and I have on a very short silk black teddy—nothing else. Would you like to see for yourself? Why don’t you. I’m behind Door 360. See you soon.“

She smiled, realizing that this speaker seemed much more confident than the speaker of the first two messages—and much more comfortable in her sexuality. She also had a sense of humor. Pamela’s ears told her that this speaker was definitely a different woman than the first. Even so, she uploaded the text of the message into her software and again ran the acoustic checks, which reaffirmed her own judgment. This woman sounded older than the first, calmer, more sophisticated. Pamela wondered if this was her only message or if she would hear her voice in any of the remaining messages.

She moved on to Message Number Four:

“I’m running late. Maybe a half hour? I’ll call.”

She played the fifth message:

“I’m here. 402”

Her instinct told her that messages four and five came from the same speaker, but she wished the woman had said more. Darn it, thought Pamela. Why couldn’t you be more talkative like Message Number Three? She felt this was a different person than the previous speaker, but the texts of these messages were so short, she feared her acoustic program wouldn’t be able to provide much information. Even so, she placed each message in its slot and hit the button. The computer did its thing and, even with this small amount of data, the program spit out information about the speaker’s frequency, intensity, tempo, and other vocal features. Pamela stared at the output. She replayed the short messages over—and then over again. She realized instantly that Messages Four and Five were a match—that is, were produced by the same person. Then, she listened to Four and Five and compared them to the three previous messages, looking for similarities in the pronunciation or vowel formation with the other two speakers.

No, she thought. This is simply not the same voice as the other two women. This is a third woman. Oh, dear. She wished she were wrong. She knew that this finding would complicate the investigation and that Shoop was probably hoping that she would discover that only one person left all seven messages. Unfortunately, it was not the case. This woman’s voice was dramatically different and it was noticeable even by listening to these two short messages. For instance, in the fifth message, this speaker produced the “I” sound in “I’m” much more broadly than the other two. She curtailed the “r” sound in “here” and did a similar thing to the “r” in the “four” of “402.” This speaker appeared to be very curt, self-assured, prim, and not very demonstrative—not the type of woman Pamela assumed would be having an afternoon romp with a football coach. Even so, her voice was different—uniquely different and she was not one of the other two women. Three suspects—three women.

With a heavy heart and a sigh, she moved on to Voice Number Six:

“I’m here, honey bunch. I have something new to show you. I’m in Room 117. Hurry! Hurry!”

She smiled. This one, she was sure, was a repeat. She recognized the syntax, the vocabulary—and the lilting, girlish tone. She set up her analysis quickly and it showed her what she expected. Message Number Six was actually Message Number One and Two. That same youthful quality and charm.

Feeling a bit encouraged, she plunged on to the final message—Message Number Seven:

“Second floor. 211. Take the outside stairs.”

Hmm, she pondered. Could it be? Very short, curt. She repeated the message. Placing it in her analysis slot, she ran her acoustic program. The output produced a similar display as it had for Voice Number Five. Just what Pamela had anticipated. She listened again, comparing Messages Number Five and Number Seven. Yes, this was the same woman. She was sure. And that was the end of the messages. No more suspects.

She realized that she had accomplished something that would probably be very helpful to Shoop’s investigation. If he and the Reardon Police were floundering because they at present had no idea how many different women were actually speaking on this recording, she could answer that question. Unfortunately, she couldn’t provide him with much more information. She could give him a personality profile—after much more study—for each woman, but that would probably not be much help. She realized that she might be able to add more information but it would take more analysis—at a much more microscopic level. But for the moment, she grabbed her telephone receiver and called Shoop, using the number on the business card of his that she still had tucked in her desk blotter.

“Detective,” she said cheerfully when the man answered his private line, “I don’t know if you’ll be happy to know this or not . . . .”

“Dr. Barnes,” he interrupted, “any information you supply will make me a very happy man, I am sure.”

“Then,” she commenced, “be prepared to be overjoyed. I can tell you conclusively that there are three women speaking on your tape.”

“Three?” he queried. “That’s a bummer.”