Chapter 9 - The Voice From the Road

June Alvarez kept a vegetable garden behind her modest house and still wore her old dispatch badge on a chain. She invited them into her kitchen, closed the curtains, and put a yellow legal pad on the table.

“I was warned not to talk about this case,” she said.

“By whom?” Mateo asked.

“A man who said he represented the Whitcomb family. He knew where my kids went to school.”

“I never sent anyone.”

“I believe that now.”

June opened a notebook she had kept after leaving dispatch. She'd made a handwritten copy of the unusual call details because someone altered the electronic record during her shift.

“The caller was a woman,” she said. “She whispered that the driver wasn't breathing. In the background I heard a man say, 'Take the bag first.' Then the woman hung up.”

“Was it Lydia?” Nora asked.

“I can't say. The caller gave no name. But she said something strange.”

June read from the pad: “There's a baby. She isn't in the car. Tell them the baby isn't in the car.”

Nora covered her mouth. Lydia had been trying to protect Ivy even then.

“Can you identify the woman?” Mateo asked.

“I might recognize the voice, but I won't swear to it from memory.”

Gideon showed her a photograph of Celeste. June shook her head.

“I never saw the caller.”

June had something else: the name of an ambulance driver who arrived before the police, Benjamin Cole. He'd filed a report stating that he saw a second car leaving the shoulder. That report disappeared from the official file.

“Is he alive?” Nora asked.

“He moved to Pennsylvania. Last I heard, he repaired boat engines.”

Gideon had just called Ortiz to report the surveillance when Amina rang. Her forensic document examiner had inspected Lydia's alleged letter.

“The signature was copied from another page,” Amina said. “I found the original.”

“What's on it?” Gideon asked.

“A sworn complaint. Lydia accused Northbridge Services of stealing scholarship funds.”

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Nora gripped the table.

Amina's voice dropped. “The complaint wasn't missing. It was buried in your foundation's records with a note that says, 'Destroy after audit.'”