“Can we isolate it?” I asked.
My dad stroked his chin. “Digital recordings are done on channels. Kind of like layers in PhotoShop. So, certain softwares can dismantle the recording by allowing you to isolate the original channels. But I don’t know if a raw analog recording can be isolated. But let’s try.”
“Great,” I said with a grin.
He messed around with some contraption for a few minutes and played around with the settings. Then he unhooked the headphones, and a moment later, we heard it.
It was low volume, but it was clear.
“What do you mean you’re not going to L.A?” Allison yelled. “We’ve been planning this for months.”
“Well, plans change,” Jerry shot back.
“Plans change?” she screamed. “That’s it? Just … like that.”
“Alli, baby, I don’t expect you to understand, but it has to do with the funding.”
“The funding, the funding,” she shrieked. “I fucking swear, if I hear that one more time … ”
“What do you know?” Jerry snarled. “You’ve never had to finance a film before. You don’t know the pressure it takes to do what it is I do.”
“I do know the pressure,” she shouted, “because you whine about it twenty four fucking seven!”
“No, I don’t,” he yelled back. “You don’t know half of what I deal with, Allison. You think you do, but you don’t. My life is not that simple. I can’t just jump in a car with you and run off to L.A. I’m an adult, from back when they made real ones. I face tough choices. Tough ones. With things you can’t even begin to imagine. You have no idea the sacrifices I have made to be where I am. You don’t know what I had to do for this. I can’t just run off.”
“Then tell me!” she screeched. “How could I know, Jerry, when you’re this … closed book … you don’t tell me anything! It’s always ‘oh you don’t know.’ And then it’s the end of the argument.”
The voices lowered to a muffle and then rose again with Allison screaming.
“I can’t believe I’ve wasted all of this time with you. All of the things I did for you--”
“Oh, please,” Jerry spat. “It was never about me. You did it for you.”
“I did it for us,” she insisted.
“There was never an ‘us,’ and you know it,” he snapped. “All you wanted was a big career. You never wanted to be with me.”
“And was I wrong? Did you ever really want to be with me?”
“You’re whiny, selfish, entitled, and slutty as fuck,” he snarled back at her.
“Excuse me?” she yelled.
“You heard me,” he growled. “I know all about you and your little Ken doll. You think I’d move with you to L.A. even if I could? You spread your legs for whatever will get you what you want.”
Allison screamed in rage, and there were crashing sounds. Then it was muffled for several minutes.
“Don’t kill me,” Jerry begged as the audio became louder again. “Allison, don’t do it, please. I beg you. Please. Think of Thad. Please.”
There was more muffled sound and then silence.
“What was the date on this tape?” I asked.
Vicki glanced at the label. “It was two days before he died.”
Chapter 19
Vicki, AJ, and I, along with my dad, sat in the main room of our office. The rest of the volunteers kept working, oblivious to the find we’d just made.
“Okay,” AJ asked. “What exactly have we found?”
“Well,” I began, “based on all of the evidence we have combined, I would say Jerry backed out from taking Allison to L.A. because of Allen, and broke up with her because of Ken. And then she tried to kill him.”
My dad stood with his hands in his pockets and a wide grin on his face.
“Awww, man,” he shook his head, “this is insane. Is this what you guys get to do all the time?”
“Pretty much,” I chuckled.
“That and go on the occasional tiger hunt,” Vicki added with a wink.
“I just do the paperwork.” AJ shrugged.
My dad shook his head again. “Man, I should have gone to law school.”
“Eh,” I grinned, “the textbooks alone would have sucked the soul right out of you.”
“You’re probably right,” he laughed.
“And to be fair,” I added, “just because we’ve got her on attempted murder two days prior to the incident, does not prove she killed him later. It just takes our client out of the prime suspect category.”
“Right,” Vicki nodded, “the police will have to hold off on charging Alfred and fully investigate Allison. And even at that, the defense could argue there’s no real evidence of attempted murder on the tape. They could say that under duress, Jerry might have exaggerated the danger, and we don’t actually know what happened in that encounter.”
“But,” I said, “given our deal with the prosecution, this is all we need for them to actually do their job. They’ll go back through all the interviews we’ve done and find out the truth.”
“This is nuts,” my dad whistled. “This is nuts. I can’t believe this. This is like one of those crime shows, but in real life.”
I laughed. “Well, the next thing we need to do is get this over to the cops. Can you make a digital copy of that analog audio?”
“Yeah, we’re already set up for it,” he replied. “Just a couple of buttons, and we’ve got it.”
“I like the sound of that,” I chuckled. “I think we’re done with the volunteers then, right?”
“Unless they’ve found anything else,” Vicki said.
“That’s not really our problem,” I shrugged, “we found what we needed to find. SPD can find their own guys.”
Everyone laughed, and I just rolled my eyes.
“Thanks for coming through, Dad,” I added as I cast him a
