Read Stump Speech Murder Online
Authors: Patricia Rockwell
Tags: #Fiction, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths
“He does not get volatile,” she exclaimed. “He’s merely concerned about my welfare.”
“And rightly so, if I may add,” said Shoop. “I have great admiration for your long-suffering mate, Dr. Barnes.”
“You make it sound as if it’s a chore being married to me,” she smirked.
“If you say so, Dr. Barnes,” he answered.
“Whatever,” she huffed. “Anyway, I just wanted to report that call. Good bye.”
“Good bye, Dr. Barnes,” he said sweetly and hung up.
“The gall of that man,” she said to herself with fury. He was always incredibly polite when he wanted something, but when she was asking him for a favor, he used it as an opportunity to grind salt into her wounds. Like he had some macho bond with Rocky, both of them commiserating together over having to deal with her foolhardy, misguided crime-fighting adventures.
How demoralizing this day had become. She didn’t feel she was getting anywhere in helping James Grant, but somebody evidently did. Somebody must believe she was getting close enough to something that they felt the need to threaten her to stay away from James and Martin. Does that mean they are threatened by her calling Martin? She wondered. Or just showing up at the jail? That was probably where she was observed by the caller. She needed to contact Martin and tell him about the call—not because she was frightened–but because it was a sign that they were on the right track. She lifted her phone again, but just then, her computer mail message beeped. Checking her inbox, she discovered that she had a message with an attachment from WRER. Could it be that Ginger Cooper’s assistant had found some b-roll audio of Stacy Grant this soon? She clicked on the message which cryptically noted “per your request” and was signed “Eric Lundmyer—Assistant to Ms. Cooper.” She opened the attachment and discovered that it was an audio file which she uploaded immediately into her acoustic analysis program so she could examine the sound visually as well as hear it. The file was quite short—maybe twenty or thirty seconds. Not a lot to go on, but certainly better than nothing.
She hit the “play” button and the pleasant voice of a woman said, “Your Honor, the District Attorney’s office intends to show that the defendant, Potter Fitts Incorporated, has systematically discriminated against minorities in their hiring policies—resulting in over three hundred qualified applicants being denied employment. This unlawful discrimination has gone on at the Potter Fitts plant for over ten years. The prosecution alleges that the company’s owner and founder, Potter Fitts, established these policies and maintains them today despite requests and demands from the EEOC. We ask that relief and appropriate compensation be provided to all applicants at Potter Fitts included in this suit who were not hired. We also ask that Potter Fitts define and establish a new hiring policy to be implemented within the next five months and that said policy be first approved by Your Honor.” The audio ended here. If there was any additional vocal input for Stacy Grant, it was not on the attachment she had received from Ginger Cooper’s assistant. It actually didn’t matter, because this audio segment was more than sufficient for what she had in mind. She played the snippet several more times, attempting to get a good sense of Stacy Grant’s voice. She realized, of course, that how a person might speak in a formal situation, such as a courtroom, might vary dramatically from how they might sound in a tense, life-threatening situation such as a potential home invasion. Even so, Stacy Grant should still sound like Stacy Grant in both instances.
Leaving the acoustic segment from Stacy Grant’s courtroom presentation open on her computer software program’s visual output line, she dragged her cursor down her files until she came to the file of Stacy’s 911 call that Willard had given her the other day. She clicked on this file and pasted it into the second line of her software program, directly below the courtroom line. She then clicked on the 911 call line to refresh her mind about the sound of Stacy’s voice in that instance. Here again she heard, “My husband . . . outside . . . trying to . . . break in. Please help!” The two voices certainly sounded alike. She focused on the second line—the one from the 911 call first, only because she had fewer vowels to choose from in that line. She selected the “ai” sound in the second syllable of “outside.” Using her software to expand the vowel so she could see how Stacy produced all of the formants in that sound, she also selected a comparable vowel from the courtroom speech, in this case the “ai” sound in the second syllable of “denied.” After a few seconds of working her magic, she was able to visually superimpose one vowel sound over the other. There was no question—the vowels were the same. That is, they were produced by the same speaker. If Stacy Grant had given that courtroom speech—and there was no reason to believe she hadn’t—then it was clear that she had also been the one whose voice was on the 911 call made shortly before her murder.
Pamela was relieved but also disappointed. A small part of her had hoped that possibly it was not Stacy Grant who had called 911. She didn’t know how that would have been possible, but apparently, the voice on the 911 tape was the genuine Stacy Grant. She must have called 911 because somehow she was scared that her husband—her husband who had admitted having a horrific fight with her just the night before—was trying to break into their house. Had she locked him out because of their fight? Was she that frightened? Had she told him not to come home? According to James, she had called him and begged him to come home. Or was James lying about that call? The second acoustic line on her computer screen indicated that Stacy Grant was frightened enough of her husband trying to get into their house that she called 911. What else could it possibly be?
Pamela rushed out of her office and next door to Willard Swinton’s office. His door was open but Willard was not in. She knew that Willard would not leave his office unlocked (none of the faculty did) for long. She walked to the end of the second floor hallway and looked around. At that moment, Willard appeared from the men’s restroom at the far end, leaning on his cane, heading back in her direction. She stood smiling at him until he finally looked up and noticed her waiting for him at the end of the hall.
“Pamela,” he greeted her, his round forehead gleaming, “a man can’t even zip to the bathroom without all the women chasing him down?”
“Willard,” she said, shaking her head and laughing, “I need your input now! I’ve got a recording of Stacy Grant speaking in court and I’m trying to compare it to her 911 recording that you gave me the other day.”
“Let’s take a look!” he said gleefully. They walked slowly because Willard’s movements were curtailed by his use of the cane. She understood that he had had hip surgery several years ago and had never quite recovered. Even with obvious pain when he walked, she had never heard him complain. When they got to Pamela’s office, she steered him to a chair beside her computer where he sat with some difficulty.
“Listen,” she said to him, sliding into her desk chair, as she played the top line. “That’s the court speech. Now, here’s the 911 call.” She played that.
“Very similar,” he said nodding.
“I did a comparison of the “ai” vowel in both selections. You can see it here.” She pointed to two graphics of similar looking shaded squares.
“Identical,” agreed Willard. “I don’t see any problem, my dear. It appears that the 911 call is truly from Stacy Grant. But did you think otherwise?”
“I was hoping that maybe it was a setup,” she explained. “You know, maybe Stacy didn’t make the call and somebody else faked her voice.”
“But why?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said, “but it seems all too pat that James arrived and discovered her body just at almost the same moment the police arrived. And that wouldn’t have happened if not for the 911 call.”
“I know,” he replied, “but this surely indicates that she called 911 because James was there. That 911 call seems to show that she was scared of him.”
“That’s what it appears,” said Pamela. “But what if that wasn’t what happened?”
“How?” asked Willard. “You just proved yourself that the voice on the 911 recording is the real Stacy Grant, so obviously she made the call which confirms that she was scared of her husband.”
“Yes, Willard,” replied Pamela, looking to her friend. His eyebrows were squeezed together with an almost ferocious intensity. It was obvious that he was as mystified as she. “But when I visited James in jail the other day, he told me that his wife—Stacy—called him and begged him to come home. That would have been about the same time as this 911 call, maybe a bit before. He and Stacy had had a fight the night before, and James had spent the night in his office, so when she called him, sounding agitated, he rushed home right away.”
“Do you have a recording of that call, Pamela?” asked Willard with sudden glee.
“Unfortunately, no,” she replied, despondent. “He didn’t save it. He had no reason to. He was totally focused on getting home to her.”
“So, of course,” noted Willard in his rational manner, “the police believe that he’s lying about this call.”
“Yes,” replied Pamela, “but my instinct tells me he’s telling the truth. He seems as totally confused about everything that happened as we are.”
“Yes,” said Willard, nodding, and grabbing the mouse from Pamela so he could examine the acoustic output himself. “It doesn’t really make any sense for him to do what he did. He seemed to have everything going for him. And then to just throw it all away?”
Willard clicked on the top line and played a short segment of the court room speech and then jumped to the 911 speech and replayed it. He reviewed segments of both of Stacy Grant’s vocal examples, listening to one—then the other. Pamela listened with him, trying to be observant of any small detail that she might have missed.
“Hmm,” he said to himself, continuing to nod. Pamela wondered what he was thinking, but she remained quiet, allowing him to formulate whatever hypothesis he could. Eventually, he asked her, “Is it possible to get any more of the court sample, do you think?”
“Can you tell me what you’re looking for?” she asked.
“I’m not sure, my dear,” he replied. “There is something strange about the 911 recording and I know we can’t get any more of it—obviously. I was thinking that if we could get more samples of Stacy Grant’s voice—possibly in other contexts?”
“I got this from WRER,” noted Pamela, “I’ll just call back and tell them I need more examples of Stacy Grant speaking. This is her speaking in court. I’m guessing if the station has this, they surely have her in other contexts. TV stations virtually never throw away b-roll. They never know when it’ll come in handy sometime in the future.”
“Wonderful,” said Willard. “Let me know when you have it, my dear. In the mean time, I’m going to look into some ideas I have and I’ll get back to you.”
“What are you thinking, Willard?”
“I’d rather not say right now,” he replied. “It’s rather far-fetched.” With that, he lifted his large body with his ivory-handled cane and bid her
adieu
with a saucy salute and then headed out of her office and the few steps down the hallway to his own.
“What could you be thinking, Willard?” she mused to herself. “I don’t know, but I’ve got enough to concentrate on.”
Chapter Seventeen
She listened to both recordings many more times before giving up and heading home for the day. She wondered what Willard thought he noticed in the recordings that she evidently wasn’t picking up. The incontrovertible truth was that Stacy Grant appeared to be the speaker on both tapes. She had done as Willard had requested and called Ginger Cooper to ask for additional b-roll of Stacy Grant. The reporter had not been in her office, so Pamela had left a message and she didn’t anticipate receiving a reply until at least tomorrow.
With a sigh, she gathered her belongings, locked her office door, and headed out into the hallway. She passed several students on their way to class and she greeted them. Both Joan and Willard were not in their offices. Stopping by the main office before heading out to her car in the parking lot (she had arrived early enough today to get a good spot), she looked in her cubby hole which was empty. Jane Marie was still stationed at her desk and the cheerful secretary waved her a greeting.
“Have you been to visit the baby chinchillas, Dr. Barnes?” she asked. “They’re much cuter today than they were the other day.”
“No, Jane Marie,” she replied. “I’ve unfortunately been much too busy to check on the Green Acres gang.” Jane Marie giggled. “Are you still trying to help James Grant get out of jail, Dr. Barnes?”
“A number of us are,” she said. “Dr. Bentley was involved in his campaign and James’s law partner and lawyer, Martin Dobbs, asked us both to assist where we could. Dr. Swinton has his fingers in this too. So it’s not just me.”