Sounds of Murder

Chapter 23

Rex continued to remain silent. She couldn't tell if he was going to speak or do anything. She waited.

"How?'" he finally muttered, trance-like.

"I don't really think how is the important question, Rex," she responded, "I think the more important question is why."

Rex slowly began to sense his surroundings. He glanced at Pamela, then at the door, and then around the room. Ever so slowly, he took a few steps towards her, raised his hand, reached behind him, and gently and quietly, closed her office door. Pamela was braced for this; she suspected he would not respond with remorse.

"Why?" he repeated her words in a husky whisper, as he moved carefully closer to her desk. "Why? I'll tell you, Miss Busybody. Because your buddy Charlotte Clark couldn't mind her own damn business, just like you. There was no reason for her to demand that we include our dissertations in our tenure portfolios. She just did that to ruin me. I knew it as soon as she made that requirement. It was evident that she wanted that Delmondo chick tenured over me--she's always been her pet. And when word got out that the Dean was only allowing two candidates to have tenure--I knew she was out to get me."

"But, Rex," said Pamela, her eyes never leaving his for a moment, "you were in an excellent position for tenure. Your publication record is stellar and actually far superior to Laura's."

He chuckled. "Well, not exactly. Let's just say that Phineas is a major part of my publication record," he noted mockingly.

"You mean you haven't contributed much to your articles with Phin?" she guessed.

"I am," he mused, continuing his slow progress forward, "shall we say--the front man. A position Phin used to appreciate, but hasn't seemed to value as much as he should--lately."

"The two of you must have been fighting because he doesn't feel it's fair for you to keep on being rewarded for his work. In other words, you shouldn't have ever gotten first author billing on any of your articles, right?"

"That little chump has the gall to think I should remove my name from consideration for tenure," he sneered.

So that was it, she thought, Phineas wasn't asking about the possibility of removing his name from consideration for tenure, he was asking about the possibility of removing Rex's name.

She said, "And I suppose Charlotte somehow figured out that the two of you were arguing about this, and she managed to put two and two together and determined that your credentials were-shall we say-less than sterling."

"Your precious Charlotte," he scowled, "just had to go and start digging around in places where she didn't belong, thanks to that damn subscription database."

"Just what did she discover?" asked Pamela, cautiously.

He shrugged, his eyes still in line with Pamela's. Suddenly, it all became clear-the Culver dissertation, the secret notebook.

"You--you plagiarized your dissertation, didn't you?" she exclaimed.

"Whatever," he scoffed, "It didn't matter. She would've made something up if she hadn't found what I'd pulled from Culver's dissertation. She wanted her precious Laura to get tenure. She always had to get her own way. When she came into my office Tuesday afternoon and told me exactly what she was going to do, what she suspected, and how she was going to track it down, jeez, it was like she was asking me to kill her." He spoke as if he believed Charlotte's murder was justified.

"And you were happy to oblige," responded Pamela.

"Of course," he smiled, getting closer to the desk and side-stepping his way around it towards Pamela, saying, "I'm always happy to oblige a lady." With that, he reached out towards her and grabbed her neck. Pamela pushed him back hard with both hands while at the same time screaming at the top of her lungs.

"You bitch!" he snarled, but he didn't let go. He struggled to gain a tighter hold as she pushed back hard and screamed again.

"Shut up!" he growled, shoving her backwards against her wall. Pamela frantically tried to extricate her neck from his grasp. Their struggle knocked over her desk chair. Pamela was becoming tired.

"Stop it!" he threatened. "I should've run you into a ditch Friday night and finished you off then!" He slammed her against the wall, pushing on her neck and upper body as hard as he could.

She was now unable to get her hands between his hands and her neck. Her cries were stopped by the pressure his large hands were placing on her throat.

When she believed she couldn't last one more second without air, she heard footsteps in the hallway, people calling her name, and the sound of her office door rattling.