Chapter 6 - THE OLDER RECORDING IS OPENEDThe police did not play the old recording for us immediately.
They first copied the device.
Established metadata as well as possible.
Checked purchase history.
Luke produced the receipt from a used-electronics store in Omaha.
The recorder had been sold to the shop approximately six weeks earlier.
The store’s intake record contained a name.
Monica Ellis.
Not Dana.
Detective Rachel Nguyen searched.
Monica Ellis was a former employer of Dana Sloan.
That was when Dana’s reaction began to make sense.
The recorder had once belonged to a woman whose children Dana had cared for.
By accident, Luke bought the same device weeks later.
Not fate.
Used electronics inventory.
Omaha was not a huge city.
Still improbable enough to feel fictional.
Detective Nguyen refused to romanticize it.
“Coincidences happen. Evidence still has to authenticate.”
Monica Ellis was contacted.
She confirmed the recorder model.
Confirmed selling it after it stopped syncing properly.
Confirmed she had used it in her kitchen to dictate grocery lists and work reminders.
Then investigators asked whether Dana Sloan had ever been recorded on it.
Monica became quiet.
“Yes.”
There.
“What kind of recording?”
“I don’t know if it still exists.”
“What was it?”
May you like
Monica answered:
“The reason I fired her.”
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