Chapter 23
The next afternoon, as Pamela was checking out for the day, she found herself standing in the main office by the mail boxes, where several faculty members were gathered chatting.
"Would you mind coming to my office for a minute?" she asked one of them. "I have a research problem I'd like to ask you about."
"Sure," was the response, "Just let me drop this stuff off at my office and I'll be right there."
"Great," she answered and quickly headed for her office up the central staircase.
Now, just minutes later, as she stood behind her desk waiting, her heart beating loudly, she thought over and over how frightened she was at this important moment--possibly, the most important moment in her life.
"Dr. Barnes?" Willard Swinton entered her office a few steps. "I thought you'd left for the day."
"Uh, Willard, yes. I...had to return...because I forgot something I needed at home."
"I hate it when that happens," he confided. "With my cane, it takes me forever to get from one location to the other. If I have to backtrack, it's really demoralizing."
"Yes, well, I've got what I needed," she said, standing motionless behind her desk.
"Good," he smiled. "Well, have a lovely evening, Pamela."
"You too." He turned and headed back to his office. Pamela stood at her desk, riveted. She looked down and took a deep breath. Too close. Simply too close.
Rex Tyson appeared at her door, leaning jauntily on the doorframe.
"So?" he spoke in a friendly manner, "What's up?"
She jerked her head up and gripped her desk tightly with both hands.
"About the overhead remote...."
"The remote again," he smiled. "That's your research problem?"
"Could I see how it works?" she asked sweetly. He pulled the device out of his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She examined the device and pressed it. Two clicks. Yes, the sound was identical.
"Actually," she said, "this is my research problem. Listen, will you?"
As she knew exactly where the cursor button was, she clicked it with her mouse without even looking down at her computer and the sound she now knew so well emerged at full volume from her speakers. Charlotte's choking voice unmistakable, her bumps, scrapes, scratches--and then, the double clicking noise that had revealed to her Rex's obvious involvement. Click-click. Pause. Then click-click again. She watched his reaction as she listened.
Rex's face turned white--as if the blood in his entire body had suddenly drained into a vessel beneath him-the instant he heard Charlotte's voice. It was obvious to Pamela that he'd heard this horrifying sound before-because, of course, he had. He said nothing, just stared at her, not moving even the slightest. When the recording stopped, Pamela spoke.
"I didn't know how to connect any of the sounds I was hearing to the killer. For all I knew, Charlotte made all those sounds herself in trying to get away. Then, I realized that the clicking noise was probably not a sound that came from Charlotte--in her effort to save herself from the killer. The clicking noise was probably made by the killer-probably inadvertently. So I started to look for that sound. I remembered seeing you use that remote for the projector and I thought it might be the noise on this tape. When Jane Marie informed me that you were the only faculty member who regularly uses the remote and that you carry it with you in your shirt pocket, I knew I'd found Charlotte's killer."
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.