Inside was a small cassette recorder.
Mara stared.
“Your dad gave me this.”
“What is it?”
“A conversation.”
“Between who?”
“Henry and Baines.”
Mara felt the room become smaller.
Ed handed it over.
“Your father wasn’t stupid. He knew something was coming.”
The tape was nearly twenty years old.
State technicians digitized it.
The sound crackled.
Then Henry’s voice filled a small interview room.
Mara had forgotten how calm he sounded.
Baines spoke first.
“You’re making this bigger than it is.”
Henry replied, “Evidence left secured custody.”
“It was old property.”
“It was evidence.”
“Cases were closed.”
“That doesn’t make it yours.”
“You think I’m selling drugs?”
“I think you’re moving them.”
Silence.
Then Baines laughed.
“To what end?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Then you have nothing.”
“I have seventeen numbers.”
Mara closed her eyes.
Seventeen.
The same number of cases highlighted in the anonymous envelope.
Baines continued.
“Henry, listen to yourself. You’re going to burn half this department because some paperwork doesn’t line up?”
Henry’s answer came immediately.
“If paperwork doesn’t matter, why did we build an evidence room?”
Another silence.
Then Baines’s voice changed.
“You have a daughter in law school.”
Mara opened her eyes.
Henry went quiet.
Baines continued.
“Expensive place.”
“Leave her out of this.”
“I’m saying you have a family.”
“Exactly.”
“So do I.”
“What does that have to do with missing property?”
“Everything has something to do with something.”
Henry’s voice hardened.
“Is that a threat?”
“No.”
“It sounded like one.”
“It’s advice.”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Then here’s information. If you make accusations you can’t prove, people will start looking at you.”
“Let them.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
The recording ended.
Mara sat alone afterward.
For years she had remembered her father at his weakest.
Pleading.
Defending himself.
Repeating, I didn’t do this.
Now she heard him before the collapse.
Certain.
Direct.
Unafraid enough to say let them look.
He had known the risk.
What he did not know was that his own daughter would become part of the punishment.
Baines had understood something about Henry.
Accusing him publicly would hurt.
Making Mara doubt him would break him.
At least partly.
That realization brought anger Mara had never felt before.
Not because Baines made her say those words.
He did not.