Chapter 6 - The Voicemail
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"What mistake?" I asked, forcing myself to look away from the horrific crime scene photo.
"When I reopened Emily’s file two days ago," Mason explained, pulling a small digital audio recorder from his pocket, "I went through her phone records line by line. The original investigators missed something crucial because Margaret’s lawyers paid off the lead detective on the case."
He pressed the play button on the recorder.
A wave of static filled the quiet hospital room, followed by the sharp sound of a woman crying hysterically.
"If something happens to me, Ethan—" Emily’s voice trembled through the speaker, frantic and terrified.
In the background of the recording, a heavy wooden door slammed open with a terrifying thud.
Then came another voice. Sharp, venomous, and unmistakable.
"You ungrateful little bitch," Margaret’s voice snarled from the recording. "You think you can ruin my family?!"
The audio cut off into harsh, buzzing static.
I closed my eyes as a cold shiver ran straight down my spine despite the heavy hospital blankets.
"That voicemail was sent to Emily’s sister twenty minutes before she went over the railing," Mason revealed. "The sister tried to give it to the police four years ago, but the tape mysteriously disappeared from the evidence locker. I managed to recover a digital copy from an offsite cloud server yesterday."
"They murdered her," I whimpered. "Ethan and Margaret... they worked together to throw her off that ledge."
Before Mason could respond, the heavy latch of my hospital room door clicked open.
Ethan walked into the room.
He was carrying a massive bouquet of yellow roses, wearing an expensive tailored suit. He looked tired, but calm, completely unaware of what had transpired over the last thirty minutes.
He stopped dead in his tracks when he saw Detective Mason sitting by my bed, surrounded by the open manila folder and the old police photographs.
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The color drained from Ethan's face so fast he looked like a corpse.
"Where... where did you get those?" Ethan stammered, his vase of flowers shaking in his hands.
