Chapter 9 - UNIT 317
Police reached the storage facility before Margaret.
Barely.
Her car was stopped less than a mile away.
She was detained.
Lena obtained emergency authorization to secure Unit 317 while a warrant was processed.
Jason and I waited outside.
The wedding was officially over.
Guests had gone home.
Flowers still covered the chapel.
Dinner sat untouched.
My burned dress remained inside the bridal suite.
None of it mattered anymore.
At 8:43 that evening, Lena called.
“Come to the station.”
Jason and I arrived twenty minutes later.
Richard was already there.
Charles sat in another interview room.
Lena placed a plastic evidence bag on the table.
Inside was an old cassette tape.
Jason stared at it.
“What is that?”
“It was inside the storage unit.”
Along with Daniel's clothes.
School notebooks.
His red guitar.
And a metal box.
The box contained copies of the financial records Daniel had planned to expose.
But the cassette was different.
Daniel had recorded himself.
Teenagers did that in the nineties.
Music.
Jokes.
Thoughts.
Apparently Daniel used a handheld recorder like a diary.
Lena inserted a digitized copy into the computer.
A boy's voice filled the room.
Jason stopped breathing.
“That's him.”
Richard covered his face.
Daniel sounded alive.
Young.
Annoyed.
Funny.
He complained about school.
Talked about a girl named Rebecca.
Made fun of Jason for stealing his sneakers.
Jason laughed through tears.
Then Lena skipped forward.
Daniel's voice changed.
“If anything happens to me, Uncle Charles is stealing from Dad's company.”
Richard's eyes closed.
“I found the transfers.”
Daniel continued.
“Mom knows.”
Nobody moved.
“She says she's fixing it.”
Jason stared at the speaker.
“But I don't think she's fixing anything.”
A pause.
“I think she's protecting him.”
Richard whispered,
“Oh, God.”
Then came the final recording.
Dated the night Daniel died.
His voice was shaky.
“I'm taking everything to Mr. Harris.”
The reporter.
“If Mom follows me again, I'm calling the police.”
Jason grabbed my hand.
Then another voice appeared faintly in the background.
A child's voice.
Jason.
“Can I come?”
Daniel laughed.
“No.”
“Please?”
“No, squirt.”
“I want ice cream.”
Jason began crying.
The recording continued.
“Fine.”
Daniel sighed.
“Get in the back.”
Then the tape ended.
For several seconds, nobody spoke.
Lena looked at Richard.
“This proves Daniel knew about the fraud.”
“But not how he died.”
Richard nodded.
“No.”
Lena hesitated.
“There was something else.”
She placed a second evidence bag on the table.
Inside was a damaged disposable camera.
“The film was never developed.”
Jason stared at it.
“Can you recover it?”
“We already did.”
She opened a folder.
The first photographs showed teenagers.
A lake.
A school parking lot.
Daniel making faces at the camera.
Then came the final photograph.
Blurry.
Dark.
Taken through a windshield.
May you like
But visible in the rearview mirror was a car behind them.
And behind the wheel was Margaret Wilson.
