Chapter 6: What Was on the Drive
Frank's contact arrived at nine that evening.
Her name was Agent Carla Voss.
She was around fifty, with short grey hair and the kind of stillness that made you feel she had heard everything and been surprised by very little.
She shook my hand, shook Diane's, and set a laptop on Frank's desk without preamble.
"The drive," she said.
Frank handed it over.
She plugged it in.
We waited.
The office was dark except for the desk lamp and the glow of the screen.
"There's a folder structure here," Voss said, scrolling.
"Documents.
Audio.
Video.
She organized this carefully."
"Teresa was always careful," I said.
I didn't know I was going to say it until it was out.
Voss opened the audio folder first.
"I'm going to play a portion of this.
Tell me if you recognize the voices."
She pressed play.
The recording was grainy, taken on a phone from some distance.
But the words were clear enough.
*She's not a problem anymore.
She understands the situation.*
A second voice.
Older.
Flat.
*She better.
Because if she surfaces, it's not just her that pays.
You make sure she knows that.*
*She knows, Dad.*
Voss paused the recording.
"Do you recognize either voice?"
My hands were pressed flat on my knees.
"The second one.
The older one.
I've heard it once.
At the inquest.
Roy Callahan read a statement.
I only heard him speak for about two minutes but —" I stopped.
"Yes.
I recognize it."
"The younger voice would be Marcus," Frank said.
"That's consistent with the file labeling," Voss said.
She opened the documents folder.
"This is more significant." She turned the laptop so we could see the screen.
"These are financial records.
Payments made from a Callahan Holdings subsidiary to a series of shell accounts over a period of nineteen years.
The amounts are irregular — not a salary.
More like periodic silencing payments." She looked at me.
"Do you know a woman named Sheila Greer?"
I shook my head.
"She was the lead search-and-rescue coordinator for the ravine search twenty years ago," Voss said.
"Her name appears in these records.
Eleven payments over fourteen years."
The room was very still.
"She was p*id to stop the search," I said.
It wasn't a question.
"That's what this suggests, yes."
I stood up.
I needed to stand up.
I walked to the window and looked out at the dark street below and thought about two weeks of searching.
Thought about the sheriff telling me the current had probably carried Teresa away.
Thought about the empty casket and the roses I'd planted in the spring.
"There's video too," Voss said behind me.
"I won't play all of it tonight.
But there's footage — phone footage, taken covertly — of Marcus Callahan meeting with a man in a parking garage approximately fourteen months ago.
The man hands him an envelope.
Teresa filmed it and she filmed the license plate.
The plate is registered to a private investigator with a known connection to Roy Callahan's legal team."
"They were still monitoring her," Frank said.
"Actively.
Fourteen months ago."
I turned from the window.
"She was still being watched fourteen months ago and she sent Diane to my house today." I looked at Diane.
"They could have followed you specifically because they knew Teresa was trying to make contact."
Diane's face had gone pale.
"I checked —"
"I know.
Once." I wasn't angry.
I was frightened.
"It's all right.
We're here now."
"The car outside your house," Frank said to me.
"Did you get a plate?"
"No."
Voss was already on her phone, stepping toward the corner of the office.
I heard her speaking quietly.
Requesting something.
A check on something.
Diane was looking at the second envelope.
The sealed one.
Still on the desk where she'd placed it.
*Only if I'm gone.*
"She's not gone," I said, mostly to myself.
"She can't be.
She wrote that letter eight months ago and she was alive then."
"People can disappear quickly," Frank said carefully.
"Don't." I looked at him.
"Not yet."
He nodded.
Voss came back.
"The plate on the sedan outside your house is registered to a company called Meridian Property Consulting.
That company shares a registered agent with two other entities, both of which appear in Teresa's financial documents as Callahan subsidiaries." She looked at me directly.
"They weren't watching Diane.
They were already watching you.
They've probably been watching you for some time, in case Teresa tried to make contact."
Twenty years.
They had been watching me, off and on, for twenty years.
Every birthday.
Every Christmas.
Every spring when prom season came and I stood in the doorway of Teresa's room.
Someone had been watching me grieve.
"I want Roy Callahan in a room," I said.
"I want to look at him."
"That's not how this works," Voss said.
"I know how it works," I said.
"I want it anyway."
Voss looked at me for a long moment.
"Let's find Teresa first," she said.
"Then we'll talk about Roy Callahan."
She turned back to the laptop.
And then her phone rang.
She glanced at the screen, and something in her expression changed.
Just slightly.
Just enough.
She stepped out of the office to take the call.
Frank and I looked at each other.
Diane picked up the sealed envelope and held it in both hands without opening it.
We waited.
May you like
When Voss came back, she stood in the doorway for a moment before she spoke.
"We may have a location," she said.
