Very polite.
Asked how long people had lived on the street, whether the neighborhood had changed much." She paused.
"Why?
Is something wrong?"
"Did he ask about me specifically?"
A beat of silence.
"He did ask if the woman at your number had lived there long.
I said yes, years.
I hope that was all right."
"It's fine, Patricia.
Thank you."
I hung up.
April.
Eight months after Carter Welles's father d*ed.
I called Diane next.
"I need to see what my daughter left with you."
She came that afternoon, while my grandson was still at school.
She brought a shoebox held shut with a rubber band.
Inside: a USB drive, a folded printout of a text conversation, a handwritten timeline on notebook paper, and a small digital recorder, the old kind, the size of a thumb.
"The voice message is on the recorder," Diane said.
"She transferred it herself.
She was very careful about it."
I pressed play.
A man's voice.
Measured.
Almost pleasant, which made it worse.
*You need to think very carefully about what you're doing.
My family has been in this city for sixty years.
You're a teenager with no money and no leverage.
If you push this, I will make sure every door closes.
You won't finish school.
You won't find work.
And if there is a child, that child will grow up knowing their mother made very bad decisions.
Think about that.*
I set the recorder down on the table.
Diane was watching me.
"She was seventeen years old," I said.
