Bernard stared at the date on the third recording until the numbers blurred.
The night Emily died.
Rachel stood on the opposite side of the kitchen table with one hand resting beside the recorder. Neither of them reached for the play button. In the den, Caleb laughed at something Maria had said, and the normal sound felt almost obscene beside the small black device containing the final hours of Emily’s life.
“We should give this to Wilkes,” Rachel said.
“We will.”
“Before listening.”
Bernard looked at her.
Rachel held his gaze for a moment, then sighed. “I knew you were going to make that face.”
“What face?”
“The one where every reasonable legal suggestion becomes a personal insult.”
“This came addressed to Emily and me.”
“It came addressed to Emily with instructions to deliver it to Bernard Dawson if she couldn’t receive it.”
“That sounds close enough.”
Rachel folded her arms. “If this recording contains evidence, chain of custody matters.”
Bernard’s fingers hovered above the recorder.
“If I give it to police now, they may not let me hear it for days.”
“That is possible.”
“I waited twenty-two years to hear her voice.”
Rachel’s expression softened.
Then she took out her phone.
“I’m calling Wilkes. We listen with him present.”
He arrived twenty minutes later, irritated, unshaven and carrying an evidence bag.
“You people understand that I have an office?” he asked.
Bernard pointed toward the recorder. “Press play.”
Wilkes ignored him.
He photographed the package, the label, the recorder, the masking tape and the file menu. Then he put on gloves and connected the device to a laptop.
“There are timestamps embedded in the files,” he said. “The third recording started at 10:41 p.m.”
Bernard remembered the fire report.
The first emergency call had been made shortly after midnight.
Wilkes copied the files without altering the originals.
Then he nodded.
Bernard pressed play.
For eleven seconds, there was nothing but fabric rubbing against a microphone.
Then Emily’s voice.
“You shouldn’t be here.”
A man answered.
Bernard recognized him immediately.
Charles Mercer.
Rachel looked at Wilkes.
Wilkes said nothing.
On the recording, Mercer’s voice sounded closer than it had in the security footage.
“I came to settle this.”
“There’s nothing left to settle.”
“You made this larger than it needed to be.”
Emily laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“You took my father. You took Bernard. You rewrote my childhood. How much smaller did you want it?”
Bernard gripped the table.
Mercer answered calmly.
“I gave you a home.”
“You bought a judge.”
The room around Bernard seemed to contract.
Rachel inhaled sharply.
Mercer’s voice hardened.
“Be careful.”
“No. I’m done being careful.”
A scraping sound followed, perhaps a chair moving.
Emily continued.
“I have copies of everything. Bank transfers. Lorraine’s statement. The reports she was paid to file against Dad. The correspondence with Regional Placement. And the letter where you ordered them to separate me from Bernard.”
Bernard stopped breathing.
Rachel’s eyes moved to him.
The recording continued.
Mercer said, “You have no idea what those documents mean.”
“They mean you stole twenty-two years.”
“You were a child. Adults made decisions.”
“You made them.”
A silence.
Then Mercer spoke in a voice so quiet Bernard had to lean closer.
“Where are the copies?”
Emily did not answer.
“Where?”
“You’ll never find all of them.”
Something struck a hard surface.
Rachel flinched.
Bernard stood.
Wilkes raised one hand.
“Keep listening.”
Mercer said, “Do not test me.”
Emily’s breathing came faster.
“You already lost.”
“Did I?”
Another sound.
A door opening.
Then footsteps.
Bernard expected the recording to end.
It did not.
Emily whispered something.
At first he thought she was speaking to herself.
Wilkes increased the volume.
“Leo,” Emily whispered.
Bernard’s stomach dropped.
A child’s voice responded somewhere far from the microphone.
“Mom?”
Emily spoke quickly.
“Go upstairs.”
“Who’s here?”
“Go upstairs now.”
Footsteps retreated.
Mercer said something too muffled to understand.
Then Emily’s voice sharpened.
“You stay away from my children.”
The front door slammed.
For several seconds only Emily’s breathing remained.
Bernard began to relax.
Then the recording captured another sound.
A telephone vibrating.
Emily answered.
“Hello?”
A woman spoke.
Bernard did not recognize the voice.
“Is he gone?”
Emily’s breathing stopped.
“Lorraine?”
Wilkes leaned forward.
Rachel whispered, “That’s her.”
The woman on the recording sounded frightened.
“You need to leave the house.”
“What happened?”
“Charles called me.”
“When?”
“Five minutes ago.”
“What did he say?”
“He asked if I had ever shown you how to disable the cameras.”
Emily said nothing.
Lorraine’s next words came faster.
“Emily, listen to me. He knows you kept the originals.”
“He doesn’t know where.”
“He knows enough.”
“I sent copies.”
“That may not matter.”
“Why?”
A long pause.
Then Lorraine whispered, “Because the records aren’t the only thing he’s afraid of.”
Emily’s voice changed.
“What else is there?”
Lorraine was crying now.
“There was another child.”
Bernard looked at Rachel.
Neither understood.
Emily said, “What child?”
“I didn’t know until tonight.”
“Lorraine.”
“Charles told me years ago there were four children in that foster placement. He lied.”
Bernard’s skin went cold.
Emily said nothing.
Lorraine continued.
“There were five.”
Bernard’s chair scraped backward.
Rachel stared at him.
He shook his head once.
No.
He remembered four.
Himself. Emily. Marcus. Tasha.
Four.
There had not been five.
On the recording, Emily asked, “Who?”
Lorraine said, “I don’t have the name yet.”
“What happened to them?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why would Charles care?”
“Because whatever happened to that child is connected to why he forced the placement apart.”
Wilkes paused the recording.
Bernard turned on him.
“Why did you stop it?”
“Because you look like you’re about to pass out.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re white.”
“Play it.”
Wilkes resumed.
Emily said, “I’m taking the kids and leaving.”
“Good.”
“Where are you?”
“Driving.”
“To me?”
“No.”
“Why?”
Lorraine hesitated.
“Because someone’s following me.”
A sound burst through the speaker.
A horn.
Tires.
Then Lorraine screamed.
The call disconnected.
Emily shouted her name.
No response.
The recording filled with movement.
Drawers opening.
Children’s voices.
Emily called, “Leo! Mia! Shoes on. Now.”
Bernard could hear panic spreading through the house.
Then another voice.
Not Mercer.
A woman.
Close.
Very close.
“Emily?”
The sound seemed to come from inside the house.
Bernard felt every hair on his arms lift.
Emily stopped moving.
“Who are you?”
The woman replied, “You know who I am.”
Rachel looked at Wilkes.
He was already writing.
Emily’s voice dropped.
“No.”
The woman said, “Charles should have left you alone.”
“Get out of my house.”
“I came to help.”
“You broke in.”
“I came because he sent someone else.”
“Who?”
A faint click sounded.
Then the woman whispered, “The man who started the fire.”
The recording dissolved into noise.
Furniture scraped.
Emily shouted.
A child screamed.
Then the file ended.
Bernard stared at the laptop.
“That’s it?”
Wilkes checked.
“Yes.”
“What happened next?”
“We don’t know.”
“The fire starts after that?”
“About an hour later.”
Bernard turned away.
He walked to the sink and gripped the edge with both hands.
Five children.
There had supposedly been five children in that placement.
One erased even from his memory.
Or erased from the records so thoroughly that he had never been told.
Rachel spoke behind him.
“Memory at seven isn’t perfect.”
“I would remember another child.”
“Maybe the fifth child wasn’t there as long.”
“I would remember.”
Wilkes closed the laptop.
“We need Lorraine Beck.”
“You said you were locating her.”
“We are.”
“She was in danger weeks ago.”
“We don’t know that the call happened live.”
Bernard turned.
“What?”
“The recording could contain audio from a speakerphone conversation, but we need the metadata. The file timestamp tells us when the recorder was active, not necessarily when every event occurred.”
“Emily recorded Mercer and Lorraine the same night.”
“That seems likely.”
“Then where is Lorraine?”
Wilkes did not answer.
His phone rang.
He looked at the screen and stepped away.
Bernard heard only fragments.
“When?”
“Confirmed?”
“Which hospital?”
Wilkes ended the call.
His expression had changed.
Rachel stood.
“What?”
“Lorraine Beck was found.”
Bernard waited.
Wilkes looked at him.
“She’s alive.”
Relief hit first.
Then Wilkes continued.
“She’s been in a long-term rehabilitation hospital under a different name for three weeks.”
“Why?”
“Car accident.”
Bernard looked at the recorder.
“The horn.”
Wilkes nodded.
“She was found off Route 19 the night Emily died.”
Rachel went still.
“Was it treated as an accident?”
“Yes.”
“And now?”
Wilkes picked up his coat.
“Now I want to know who put her car through a guardrail.”
The hospital lay ninety minutes away.
Bernard was not permitted to accompany Wilkes.
This time he did not argue.
He had five children upstairs.
At seven that evening, Mia refused dinner because the pasta sauce contained visible onions.
At seven twelve, Caleb spilled milk.
At seven thirty, Emma asked whether fires could come through locked doors.
Bernard turned off the stove.
The question silenced the entire table.
Leo looked at his plate.
Mia stopped picking onions out of the sauce.
Bernard sat.
“Fire can happen in houses,” he said. “But we have smoke alarms. We have extinguishers. We have a plan. And if anything dangerous happens, our job is to get outside.”
Emma squeezed Captain.
“Mom didn’t get outside.”
No one moved.
Bernard hated every answer available to him.
“No,” he said. “She didn’t.”
“Why?”
“We’re still trying to understand.”
Leo’s chair moved sharply.
“She went back.”
Bernard turned.
“What?”
Leo’s face had gone pale.
“She got us out.”
The room became still.
Bernard leaned forward.
“Tell me.”
Leo stared at the table.
“We were sleeping downstairs.”
“Why downstairs?”
“Mom told us to.”
The recording.
Shoes on. Now.
Emily had begun evacuating them before the fire.
Leo continued.
“She put Noah in the stroller. Mia carried Emma’s blanket. We went out the back.”
“Was the house burning?”
“No.”
Bernard’s heart accelerated.
“What happened?”
“Mom told us to hide by the trees.”
“What did she do?”
“She went back inside.”
“Why?”
Leo began to cry.
Not loudly.
Tears simply fell onto his plate.
“She said she forgot something.”
Bernard moved to him.
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
Leo wiped his face with his sleeve.
“Then there was smoke.”
Bernard knelt beside the chair.
“Did you see anyone else?”
Leo’s eyes lifted.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
“The lady.”
“The woman from school?”
Leo nodded.
“Brown hair?”
“Yes.”
“What did she do?”
“She came from the house.”
“Before the fire?”
“After the smoke.”
“Did she have anything?”
Leo squeezed his eyes shut.
Bernard waited.
“A box.”
“What kind?”
“Metal.”
Bernard’s pulse stopped for one beat.
“Like my old cashbox?”
Leo opened his eyes.
“Bigger.”
“What happened to her?”
“She ran.”
“Where?”
“To a red car.”
The woman who had watched the children.
The woman Emily had told Mercer to stop sending.
The woman who had possibly entered Bernard’s workshop.
Madeline drove a red car.
But Madeline had said she only met Emily two months earlier.
And Leo seemed to recognize her from school.
Bernard stood slowly.
“Leo, when you saw Madeline at the police station today—”
“I didn’t.”
Of course.
Leo had stayed home.
Bernard took out his phone.
He found a photograph from Madeline’s public profile.
He did not hand it to Leo.
“Do you know this woman?”
Leo looked.
His face changed immediately.
“That’s her.”
Bernard’s stomach sank.
Madeline had lied.
He called Wilkes.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
On the third attempt, Wilkes picked up.
“I’m at the hospital.”
“Madeline was at Emily’s house the night of the fire.”
Silence.
“How do you know?”
“Leo saw her come out carrying a metal box.”
Wilkes swore.
Bernard continued.
“She drove away in a red car.”
Another silence.
Then Wilkes said, “Bernard, lock your doors.”
“They’re already locked.”
“Check them.”
“What happened?”
“Lorraine woke up long enough to speak.”
Bernard gripped the phone.
“What did she say?”
Wilkes’s voice dropped.
“She said Madeline was working for Charles.”
Click here to continue reading: PART 10: Madeline’s story collapsed under Leo’s memory, but her confession revealed the person Charles had spent decades trying hardest to erase
Five children were about to be divided among strangers, and Bernard Vance had nine days to prove one man could become their home
Part 9 of 15
