report on the Hammer of Eden tape.”
“I’m off the case,” Judy said.
“I know, but I thought you’d still be interested. The voices on the tape don’t match any in our acoustic files, unfortunately.”
“No names, then.”
“No, but lots of other interesting stuff.”
Judy’s interest was piqued. “You said ‘voices.’ I only heard one.”
“No, there are two.” Simon looked around and saw Bo’s radio-cassette on the kitchen counter. It was normally used to play
“I’d love you to, but it’s Marvin Hayes’s case now.”
“I’d like your opinion anyway.”
Judy shook her head stubbornly. “You should talk to Marvin first.”
“I know what you’re saying. But Marvin is a fucking idiot. Do you know how long it is since he put a bad guy in jail?”
“Simon, if you’re trying to get me to work on this case behind Kincaid’s back, forget it!”
“Hear me out, okay? It can’t do any harm.” Simon turned up the volume control and started the tape.
Judy sighed. She was desperately keen to know what Simon had found out about the Hammer of Eden. But if Kincaid learned that Simon had talked to her before Marvin, there would be hell to pay.
The voice of the woman said: “This is the Hammer of Eden with a message for Governor Mike Robson.”
Simon stopped the tape and looked at Bo. “What did you visualize when you first heard that?”
Bo grinned. “I pictured a large woman, about fifty, with a big smile. Kind of sexy. I remember I thought I’d like to”—he glanced at Judy and finished—“meet her.”
Simon nodded. “Your instincts are reliable. Untrained people can tell a lot about a speaker just by hearing them. You almost always know if you’re listening to a woman or a man, of course. But you can also tell how old they are, and you can generally estimate their height and build pretty accurately. Sometimes you can even guess at their state of health.”
“You’re right,” Judy said. She was intrigued despite herself. “Whenever I hear a voice on the phone, I picture the person, even if I’m listening to a taped announcement.”
“It’s because the sound of the voice comes from the body. Pitch, loudness, resonance, huskiness, all vocal characteristics have physical causes. Tall people have a longer vocal tract, old people have stiff tissues and creaky cartilage, sick people have inflamed throats.”
“That makes sense,” Judy said. “I just never really thought about it before.”
“My computer picks up the same cues as people do, and is more accurate.” Simon took a typed report out of the envelope he had been carrying. “This woman is between forty-seven and fifty-two. She’s tall, within an inch of six feet. She’s overweight, but not obese: probably just kind of generously built. She’s a drinker and a smoker, but healthy despite that.”
Judy felt anxious but excited. Although she wished she had not let Simon get started, it was fascinating to learn something about the mystery woman behind the voice.
Simon looked at Bo. “And you’re right about the big smile. She has a large mouth cavity, and her speech is underlabialized — she doesn’t purse her lips.”
“I like this woman,” Bo said. “Does the computer say if she’s good in bed?”
Simon smiled. “The reason you think she’s sexy is that her voice has a whispery quality. This can be a sign of sexual arousal. But when it’s a permanent feature, it doesn’t necessarily indicate sexiness.”
“I think you’re wrong,” Bo said. “Sexy women have sexy voices.”
“So do heavy smokers.”
“Okay, that’s true.”
Simon wound the tape back to the beginning. “Now listen to her accent.”
Judy protested. “Simon, I don’t think we should—”
“Just listen. Please!”
“Okay, okay.”
This time he played the first two sentences. “This is the Hammer of Eden with a message for Governor Mike Robson. Shit, I didn’t expect to be talking to a tape recorder.”
He stopped the tape. “It’s a Northern California accent, of course. But did you notice anything else?”
Bo said: “She’s middle class.”
Judy frowned. “She sounded upper class to me.”
“You’re both right,” Simon said. “Her accent changes between the first sentence and the second.”
“Is that unusual?” said Judy.
“No. Most of us get our basic accent from the social group we grew up with, then modify it later in life. Usually, people try to upgrade: blue-collar people try to make themselves sound more affluent, and the nouveau riche try to talk like old money. Occasionally it goes the other way: a politician from a patrician family might make his accent more down-home, to seem like a man of the people, yuh know what I’m sayin’?”
Judy smiled. “You betcher ass.”
“The learned accent is used in formal situations,” Simon said as he rewound the tape. “It comes into play when the speaker is poised. But we revert to our childhood speech patterns when we’re under stress. Okay so far?”
Bo said: “Sure.”
“This woman has downgraded her speech. She makes herself sound more blue-collar than she really is.”
Judy was fascinated. “You think she’s a kind of Patty Hearst figure?”
“In that area, yes. She begins with a rehearsed formal sentence, spoken in her average-person voice. Now, in American speech, the more high class you are, the more you pronounce the letter ‘r.’ With that in mind, listen to the way she says the word ‘governor’ now.”
Judy was going to stop him, but she was too interested. The woman on the tape said: “This is the Hammer of Eden with a message for Governor Mike Robson.”
“Hear the way she says ‘Guvnuh Mike’? This is street talk. But listen to the next bit. The voice mail announcement has put her off guard, and she speaks naturally.”
“Shit, I didn’t expect to be talking to a tape recorder.”
“Although she says ‘shit,’ she pronounces the word ‘recorder’ very correctly. A blue-collar type would say ‘recawduh,’ pronouncing only the first r. The average college graduate says ‘recorduh,’ pronouncing the second r distinctly. Only very superior people say ‘recorder’ the way she does, carefully pronouncing all three r’s.”
Bo said: “Who’d have thought you could find out so much from two sentences?”
Simon smiled, looking pleased. “But did you notice anything about the vocabulary?”
Bo shook his head. “Nothing I can put my finger on.”
“What’s a tape recorder?”
Bo laughed. “A machine the size of a small suitcase, with two reels on top. I had one in Vietnam — a Grundig.”
Judy saw what Simon was getting at. The term “tape recorder” was out of date. The machine they were using today was a cassette deck. Voice mail was recorded on the hard disk of a computer. “She’s living in a time warp,” Judy said. “It makes me think Patty Hearst again. What happened to her, anyway?”
Bo said: “She served her time, came out of jail, wrote a book, and appeared on
Judy stood up. “This has been fascinating, Simon, but I don’t feel comfortable with it. I think you should take your report to Marvin now.”
“One more thing I want to show you,” he said. He touched the fast-forward button.
“Really—”
“Just listen to this.”
The woman’s voice said: “It happened in Owens Valley a little after two o’clock, you can check it out.” There was a faint background noise, and she hesitated.
