could I be reporting something that’s going on outside in the elements right before my very eyes?”
This goes on until she lets him know the police are on their way, and she asks the caller’s name.
“You don’t need my name, lady, what you need is to pay attention to their names. You hear me?”
“I need a name so the police can find you—”
“Don’t try that shit with me. I know what you’re doing. You’re going to cover this up just like you do everything about the damn government, and it’s time for the intolerance and fascism to end …”
The vileness goes on for almost a minute total, and it’s difficult to hear such awful things about me. My anger spikes. I take off the headset, returning it to Benton.
“It would seem this individual has a personal problem with me for some reason.” I’m shaken and incensed, and it’s the only thing I can think to say.
“Is the voice familiar?” Benton’s eyes don’t leave mine.
“No it’s not. What time was the call made?”
“Twelve minutes past six.” His stare doesn’t waver as the meaning hits me.
June twelfth or six-twelve is my date of birth. Usually I would assume this is nothing more than a coincidental overlap with my personal life except for a not-so-minor problem. Six-twelve P.M. is also the exact time Tailend Charlie has been e-mailing his recorded threats to me since September 1.
“So it was almost an hour and a half after the fact.” I reach for my water glass. “Bryce and I were talking in front of The Coop at closer to four forty-five. Are we sure there’s no way the time could be faked?”
“I don’t see how, Kay. The time stamp is on the nine-one-one recording.”
“Then the call was definitely made after I’d left the Square. At six-twelve I’m certain I was walking through the Yard. That’s also in the ballpark of when Marino reached me on my cell phone.”
“Can you check?” Benton indicates my phone on the table.
I pick it up and look at the incoming calls. “He tried me first at six-eighteen,” I reply. “I remember what building I was walking past when my phone vibrated, and it was him.”
“What this suggests is he must have been contacted the instant the police got the complaint about you,” Benton says, and I don’t know if he’s asking or telling.
“Don’t forget Rosie’s always been a little sweet on him. They dated a few times. She probably didn’t waste a minute getting hold of him.”
“Rosie?”
“The dispatcher,” I remind him. “I recognized her voice. Her name is actually Rosemary but Marino calls her Rosie.”
“Which brings me back to the same question. Was there anything familiar, anything you noticed about the voice you just listened to in the nine-one-one call? Anything that struck you?” Benton looks down at his phone, but the screen has gone to sleep and there’s nothing to see but a glassy black rectangle.
He unlocks it and the displayed video file reappears with its frozen PLAY arrow.
“Beyond how arrogant and hateful the person sounded?” I’m thinking hard. “Nothing struck me, not really.”
“It sounds like you’re not sure.”
I look up at the plaster ceiling and replay the 911 audio clip in my head. “No,” I decide. “It’s unfamiliar, just a normal pleasant voice. I’m not sure what else to say about it.”
“And you’re equivocal again.” Benton’s not going to tell me why he thinks that.
It’s not his style to lead the witness even if the witness is his wife, and I take another drink of water as I think for a moment. He’s right. I’m uncertain, and then it occurs to me why.
“It’s too uniform, too homogenous,” I explain what I’ve been picking up on but couldn’t identify. “There aren’t the variations I might expect. There’s something stilted and unnatural about it.”
“In other words it sounds artificial or canned. Fake, in other words,” he says, and I wonder if this came from Lucy. “We can’t tell if it’s synthetized.” He answers my unspoken question about my niece. “But Lucy agrees that it’s strangely consistent from one comment to the next. She says that if it’s been enhanced or altered—”
“Wait a minute. If you got the audio file from the police, then how could it have been altered?”
“Lucy introduced the idea of a voice changer similar to what gamers are into. There are a lot of these apps on the market, although not the quality of whatever this person used. The typical voice disguised by software tends to sound obviously fake like a poor animation. It’s within the realm of possibility the caller has proprietary highly sophisticated software that changes your voice as you speak into the phone—”
“And it sounds different from your usual voice but normal to whoever’s on the other end.” I finish his thought because I already know what’s next.
Benton asks if I think it’s possible that my cyber-stalker Tailend Charlie is the one who called 911 and lied about me.
“Indicating this individual is stepping things up,” my husband adds. “Escalating whatever his game is, and we know without question that Tailend Charlie is technically sophisticated.”
“Let’s hope that’s not who placed the nine-one-one call because it would suggest he was in close proximity to me today,” I reply. “And I’ve been hoping whoever the cyber-bully is he’s not in Cambridge. Preferably he’s on the other side of the planet.”
“It strikes me as a little too coincidental that you began getting the e-mailed threats only a week ago, all of them altered audio clips. And now this,” Benton says.
“So tell me, Mr. Profiler.” I press my leg against his, and the fabric of his suit is smooth and cool against my bare skin. “What do you have to say about someone who calls nine-one-one to report your wife for being a C-U-Next-Tuesday?”
“Male. And not old. But not young,” Benton says. “I doubt it’s a student unless we’re talking about a mature one.”
“As in a graduate student?”
“Don’t know, forties at least,” he replies. “Older but not so old as to preclude this person from moving about freely in all sorts of weather. More like someone from the homeless population around the Square but that doesn’t mean it’s what we’re dealing with. He’s educated but could be self-educated.
“He probably lives alone, probably has a psychiatric history. And he’s intelligent, way above the norm. He’s antigovernment, which means anti-authority, and yes, I’d say there’s genuine hostility toward you.
