Chapter 9 - A Voice Under Water
Charlene stopped fighting. For the first time I saw something beneath her anger that looked like fear.
"Your father promised me," she said.
"Promised you what?" I asked.
"That he wouldn't let another child die because of your need to be right."
The words hit their mark. I folded Dad's letter into my pocket before I said something I could never take back.
The facility manager asked everyone to step away from the belongings. We photographed the recorder where it lay and called the investigators already handling my threat report. An agent came, logged its condition, and took custody. She explained that extracting audio might take time, especially if the batteries had leaked.
"No one plays it here," she said. "If it matters, we'll preserve it properly."
I respected that. I hated it too.
Outside, Brody admitted Dad had told him about the recorder a year before his death. He hadn't opened the bag.
"He said it would make me choose between the truth and Mom," Brody told me.
"You already chose. Every day you didn't speak."
He nodded. "I know."
Leah waited beside her car, Caleb asleep in the back seat. When I told her what we'd found, she gripped the door frame.
"I want to hear my husband's voice," she whispered. "But I want to hear it for the right reason. Not because someone turned his death into a weapon."
A black SUV eased past the storage gate. It slowed when it reached us. Behind the tinted window, a phone camera caught the group standing together.
"Mercer?" Brody asked.
"Maybe," I said. "Don't chase it. Get the plate."
Dwayne did. The vehicle accelerated onto the service road.
Then the agent's phone rang. She listened, her face changing.
"Major Lennox," she said, "we have an emergency at the post records annex. The secure room that held the original incident packet has been broken into."
"What's missing?"
May you like
She covered the phone for a moment, then looked straight at Brody.
"Your stepbrother's signed statement."
