Chapter 19 - Andrew Sullivan’s Last Recording
Detective Bennett replayed Andrew’s cassette several times.
A sound near the end caught her attention.
Three soft knocks.
Andrew stopped speaking for nearly ten seconds. When he continued, his voice sounded strained.
“I have to leave.”
The recording should have ended there.
Instead, a faint conversation followed because Andrew had forgotten to switch off the device.
A second man entered the workshop.
“You contacted the Mercers without me,” the stranger said.
Andrew answered, “Leah is my daughter. You don’t control her.”
“You signed an agreement.”
“An agreement based on fraudulent records.”
The stranger laughed.
“Fraud is difficult to prove when the original documents no longer exist.”
Jake recognized the voice.
Martin Voss.
Andrew accused Martin of using the reunification project to identify vulnerable families and extract money from both biological and adoptive parents.
Martin denied nothing.
Instead, he reminded Andrew that Lorraine had signed the original transfer document.
“If this becomes public,” Martin said, “your wife will be accused of selling her own child.”
“She was medicated and deceived.”
“A jury will see her signature.”
The tape captured a chair scraping across the floor.
Andrew’s final clear words were:
“I copied everything.”
Then the recording stopped.
Detective Bennett searched the cassette case again. One corner of the foam lining appeared thicker than the others.
Beneath it was a small brass key marked 214.
Jake initially assumed it belonged to a safe-deposit box.
A bank search found no match.
Emma studied the key and recognized the shape from her work at a property-management company.
“It’s not from a bank,” she said. “It belongs to an old railway-station locker.”
Chicago’s central station had replaced its lockers years earlier, but records showed that items from unclaimed compartments had been transferred to a municipal warehouse.
Locker 214 had been registered to Andrew Sullivan.
Its contents were still sealed.
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The warehouse inventory listed only one object.
A red suitcase belonging to a female child.
