Twenty-Nine

Small but very well equipped, Gustavo Suarez’s studio was set in the basement of a single-story house in Jefferson Park, South Los Angeles.

Gus had been an audio engineer for twenty-seven years, and with a perfect-pitch ear it took a single note from any instrument for him to immediately place it on a music scale. But his understanding of sounds went much beyond musical notes. He was fascinated by their vibrations and modulations, what created them and how they could be altered by location and the environment. Because of his knowledge, gifted ear and experience, Gus had been called upon by the LAPD on several occasions where some sort of sound, noise or audio recording played a critical part in an ongoing investigation.

Whitney Myers had met Gus for the first time through the FBI, while training to be a negotiator. Their paths crossed again soon after, when she became a detective for the LAPD. As a private investigator, Myers had required Gus’ expertize on only two other occasions.

Gus was forty-seven years old, with a shaved head and more tattoos than a Hell’s Angel. But despite the intimidating look, he was as docile as a puppy. He opened the door to Frank Cohen and was instantly disappointed.

‘Where’s Whitney?’ he asked, looking past Cohen’s shoulders.

‘Sorry, Gus, it’s only me. She’s tied up.’

‘Damn, man. I got my best shirt on.’ He ran his hands down the front of his freshly ironed dark blue shirt. ‘Even splashed on some cologne and all.’

‘Splashed?’ Cohen took a step back and covered his nose. ‘You smell like you bathed in the stuff. What the hell is it, Old Spice?’

Gus frowned. ‘I like Old Spice.’

‘Yeah, no shit. More than most by the smell of it.’

Gus disregarded his comment and guided him down to the basement and into his studio.

‘So how can I help you guys this time? Whitney didn’t tell me much over the phone.’ He took a seat in his engineer’s chair and wheeled himself closer to his sound desk.

Cohen handed him Myers’ digital recorder. ‘We got this from an answering machine.’

Gus brought the device closer to his right ear and pressed play. As the strange sound came through, he reached for the bowl of Skittles next to the recording console. Gus had a thing for Skittles, they helped him relax and concentrate.

‘We think there’s a voice, or a whisper, or something hidden in the middle of all that static,’ Cohen offered.

Gus swirled a bunch of Skittles from his right cheek to his left one. ‘It’s not hidden, it’s just there,’ he announced, playing the recording from the beginning again. ‘Definitely someone’s voice.’ He got up, walked over to a cabinet and retrieved a thin cable that looked like iPod headphones. ‘Let me hook this thing up so we can have a better listen.’

Through the studio speakers, the sound was louder, the out-of-breath whisper more evident, but not clearer.

‘Is he using a device to conceal his voice?’ Cohen asked, stepping closer.

Gus shook his head. ‘It doesn’t sound like it. This is pure static. Interference caused by another radio wave electronic device or a bad signal. Whoever made the call was probably standing next to something, or on a spot affected by a signal dip. I’d say the static noise was unintentional.’

‘Can you clean it up?’

‘Of course.’ Gus smiled smugly and turned on the computer monitor to his left. As the recording played again, audio lines vibrated animatedly on the screen. Gus had another handful of Skittles while watching them attentively.

‘OK, let’s tweak this baby a little.’ He clicked a few buttons and slid some faders on the digital equalizer inside the application on his screen. The static noise was reduced by at least 90 per cent. The out-of-breath whisper now came through much clearer. Gus reached for a pair of professional headphones and listened to the whole thing again. ‘OK, now this was deliberate.’

‘What was?’ Cohen craned his neck in Gus’ direction.

‘The forced whisper. Whoever’s voice this is, it isn’t naturally hoarse and whispering soft. And that is clever.’

‘In what way?’

‘Every human voice travels along certain frequencies that are part of one’s personal identity, as identifiable as fingerprints or the retina. They have certain high, low and medium tones that don’t vary, even if you try to disguise your voice by naturally altering it in any way, like a falsetto or baritone or whatever. With the right equipment, we can still identify those tones and match them to someone’s voice.’

‘You have that equipment, right?’

Gus looked offended. ‘Of course I’ve got that equipment. Look around. I’ve got whatever you need for voice identification.’

‘So what’s the problem?’

Gus leaned back in his chair and let out a long sigh. ‘I’ll show you. Place the tips of your fingers just below your Adam’s apple.’

‘What?’

‘Like this.’ Gus placed the tips of two of his fingers on his throat.

Cohen pulled a face.

‘Just do it.’

Reluctantly Cohen copied Gus’ movement.

‘Now, say something, anything, but try to disguise it in some way . . . high, low, gravel, child’s voice, it doesn’t matter. When you do, you’ll feel your vocal cords vibrate. Trust me.’

Cohen looked at Gus with a you’ve-gotta-be-kidding-me face.

‘Go on.’

He finally conceded and, putting on an extremely high-pitched voice, recited the opening three lines of Othello.

‘Wow, profound. I never took you for a Shakespeare fan,’ Gus said, suppressing a smile. ‘Did you feel them vibrate?’

Cohen nodded.

‘When we have any sort of vocal cord vibration, then we have those distinct frequencies I told you about. Now, do the same thing but go for a very soft whisper instead.’

Cohen repeated the same three lines in the most delicate whisper he could muster. His eyes narrowed as he looked back at Gus. ‘No vibration.’

‘Exactly,’ Gus confirmed. ‘That’s because the sounds aren’t being formed by your vocal cords, but by a combination of the air being exhaled from your lungs, and your mouth and tongue movements.’

‘Like whistling?’

‘Like whistling. No vibration, no identifiable frequencies.’

‘Smart motherfucker.’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘So this is the best we can do? We still don’t know what he’s saying.’

Gus smiled cynically. ‘You don’t pay me the big bucks just to give you back a tape with undecipherable whispering, do you? What I mean is that because he forced his own voice into a slow, dragging whisper, we won’t be able to clean it or alter it back to its original pitch. So even if you have a suspect, it will be very hard to get a voice match from this. And I’m pretty sure he knew that.’

‘But you’ll be able to alter it enough so we can understand what he’s saying, right?’

A confident smile came back from Gus. ‘Watch my magic.’ He went back to the digital equalizer, twisted a few more buttons and slid some more faders before loading a pitch shifter onto a separate screen. He placed a small section of the audio recording into a constant loop and worked on it for a few minutes. ‘Oh, hello,’ he said, frowning.

‘What? What?’

Gus automatically reached for the Skittles. ‘We’ve got something else. Some sort of faint hissing noise right in the background.’

‘Hissing?’

‘Yeah, something like a frying pan or maybe rain against a distant window.’ He listened to it again. His eyes went back to one of his monitors and he pulled a face. ‘Its frequency is very similar to the static noise. And that messes things up a little.’

‘Can’t you do something with all this?’ Cohen nodded at all the equipment in the studio.