She had spent months locating the carbon copy and checking the voices on the tape.
Maren said Isabel did not want attention.
She wanted the parents of Jonah Reed to know why help had been late.
She also wanted Luis Moreno to stop living as though telling the truth would destroy everyone he loved.
The detective asked about Lorraine.
Maren said Lorraine had known Isabel since their volunteer ambulance days.
Warren Kessler had told his wife about the recording shortly before his death.
He had been ashamed that he had done nothing with it while he was alive.
Lorraine promised to finish what he began.
Then Paul came home.
Maren did not know exactly when he arrived, but Isabel grew frightened after hearing from him.
She told her sister that Paul was working for Harborline Facilities, a company that maintained property owned by Graham Voss.
One day Paul visited Isabel and said the old tape would be useless in court without the original machine.
The next day he asked whether Lorraine still had Warren’s portable recorder.
Isabel refused to answer.
Maren believed that was the beginning of the threats.
Munroe told us investigators were working on several leads and asked us not to approach Paul or Voss.
He then asked whether Isabel had mentioned a place she might go if she felt endangered.
Maren said Isabel had kept a small cabin near Lake Mercer when her husband was alive.
She sold it years earlier.
The current owners were strangers.
The detective took the address and sent an officer to check.
After the interview, I sat with Maren in the station lobby.
She asked why Lorraine had chosen to attack me.
I told her I had been asking myself that question all day.
Maren studied my bruised cheek.
Perhaps she needed the police to be present, Maren said.
She could have called them, I answered.
Not if someone was listening to her phone, Maren replied.
Not if the person she needed to stop was watching from across the street.
We watched two officers pass through the lobby carrying coffee.
I pictured the white delivery van and the man with the badge.
Lorraine had hit me only after its passenger door opened.
She had blown a whistle twice.
The driver had left when police were called.
She had made herself impossible to ignore.
What if her assault was not intended to silence me?
What if it was a signal that the people watching her had lost control of the situation?
