Chapter 11 - The Voice on the Tape
"Play it again," Alisa whispered.
Ortiz looked at her gently. "You don't have to hear it twice."
"He was my father. Please."
The tape hissed. Walter's voice emerged, frightened but steady. He asked why the loading gate had been chained. There was a bang in the background, then Gideon ordering someone to leave it shut until the books were gone.
"Gideon," Walter said, "Alisa will find out."
The recording ended with the clang of metal and a scream far away from the microphone.
Alisa bent forward as if she'd been punched. Adrian caught her before she fell. For thirty-one years she'd laid flowers at a grave and thanked her husband for holding the family together. Now she knew why he always stayed in the car when she visited.
"Could the tape be fake?" Adrian asked, hating himself for needing to know.
"We will authenticate it," Ortiz said. "A recording alone isn't a verdict. We have to establish where it came from, who made it, and whether it was altered."
Gideon sat perfectly still in an armchair. His attorney had arrived and advised him not to answer. For once, the man who controlled every room had nothing to say.
Tessa approached Alisa. "I am so sorry."
"Don't apologize for telling the truth," Alisa replied. "I have spent half my life apologizing for asking questions."
Ortiz's phone rang. She listened, then turned to Gideon. "We found a payment from your business account to Silas Rook two weeks ago. The description reads 'special appearance.'"
Adrian felt the last familiar shape of his father breaking apart. "You paid the man who stole my bride?"
Gideon looked at him with tired, furious eyes.
"I paid him to frighten Tessa into dropping her investigation," he said. "I never told him to put on her dress."
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Then Ortiz received a second message, this one from the officers watching the abandoned mill. Silas had called them himself.
"He wants to surrender," she said. "But only if Alisa comes to hear his confession."
