CHAPTER 11 The Voice Inside the Teddy Bear
The cassette lay in my palm like it weighed a hundred pounds.
It looked ordinary.
Transparent plastic.
A faded white label.
No date.
No title.
Just one word written in blue crayon.
Cait.
Not Caitlyn.
Cait.
Only one person had ever called me that.
My father.
Detective Brooks didn't let anyone touch it without gloves.
"If this has fingerprints..."
"I don't want to lose them."
The tape was sealed in an evidence bag and rushed to the crime lab.
An hour later, a technician called.
"There are prints."
My heart skipped.
"My father's?"
"Yes."
"And one smaller set."
"Probably yours."
"What about anyone else?"
The technician hesitated.
"One partial print."
"Not enough for identification."
Always one step short.
Always.
The lab no longer owned a working cassette player.
One had to be borrowed from a local museum.
By evening, the tape had been digitized.
Brooks gathered the same group as before.
Me.
Officer Daniel.
The assistant district attorney.
The lights dimmed.
The speakers crackled.
Then...
A little girl's voice.
Mine.
I couldn't have been older than seven.
"I'm recording because Daddy said stories are important."
I froze.
I didn't remember making this.
My younger self giggled.
"I hid the recorder."
"So Mommy can't throw it away."
Everyone in the room exchanged glances.
The tape continued.
"I don't like when Mommy locks my door."
Silence.
"I get scared."
"My teddy isn't scared."
"So I tell him everything."
The room became painfully quiet.
No one wrote notes anymore.
No one moved.
Then another voice entered the recording.
A door opening.
Footsteps.
Jessica.
She sounded older.
Maybe ten or eleven.
"Cait?"
"What are you doing?"
"I'm telling Teddy secrets."
Jessica laughed softly.
"Mom says secrets are lies."
"They're not."
"They're hiding places."
The innocence in my own voice shattered something inside me.
The recording continued for another minute.
Then...
My mother's voice echoed faintly from somewhere downstairs.
"Jessica!"
"Coming!"
Jessica whispered one last sentence before leaving.
"Hurry."
"If Mom finds the recorder..."
"She'll be mad."
The tape clicked.
Stopped.
That was it.
I looked at Brooks.
"That's all?"
She shook her head.
"No."
The technician leaned forward.
"The recording doesn't end there."
He rewound the digital waveform.
"There are another eighteen seconds."
"But they're almost inaudible."
He enhanced the audio.
Filtered the background noise.
Increased the volume.
Static.
Breathing.
Then...
Two adult voices.
One belonged to my mother.
The other...
Richard.
"She'll remember too much," my mother whispered.
Richard answered quietly.
"She's only a child."
"Children talk."
"They forget."
My mother's voice became cold.
"Not this one."
A pause.
Then the sentence that made everyone in the room stop breathing.
"If she ever tells anyone..."
"We'll make sure nobody believes her."
The recording ended.
No dramatic music.
No shouting.
Just silence.
A promise made almost twenty years earlier.
And somehow...
Kept.
The assistant district attorney stood first.
"This changes everything."
Brooks nodded.
"We now have evidence of planning."
"Premeditation."
"Long-term psychological manipulation."
The legal language barely reached me.
I was still hearing my own tiny voice talking to a teddy bear because it felt safer than talking to adults.
That night I couldn't sleep.
Around midnight, my phone buzzed.
Unknown number.
Again.
This time...
A text.
Did you enjoy the tape?
My blood turned to ice.
No one outside the investigation knew we'd listened to it.
No one.
I called Brooks immediately.
She answered before the first ring finished.
"I got it too."
"You did?"
"So did Daniel."
Someone wasn't just leaking information anymore.
Someone knew what happened inside confidential police meetings.
By sunrise, Internal Affairs had seized every computer used on the case.
Every detective.
Every prosecutor.
Every evidence technician.
No one was above suspicion.
Late that afternoon, Daniel knocked on the safe house door.
He looked angrier than I'd ever seen him.
"They found the leak."
My pulse jumped.
"Who?"
"It wasn't a detective."
"It wasn't an officer."
"It was an automated backup server."
I blinked.
"What?"
Daniel took a deep breath.
"Every case file was automatically syncing to an off-site archive."
"So?"
"The archive used software maintained by..."
He stopped.
"...Nathan Monroe."
I stared at him.
"My father said Nathan only recovered files once."
"I know."
Daniel nodded.
"But he also maintained the police backup system for six years."
"So he had access?"
"Potentially."
Brooks arrived moments later, carrying a laptop.
"We questioned Nathan again."
"And?"
"He admitted something."
She opened a video recording of the interview.
Nathan looked exhausted.
"I never gave Deborah access to police files."
Brooks asked,
"But someone did."
Nathan nodded slowly.
"They stole my administrator credentials."
"When?"
"About eight months ago."
"Did you report it?"
"I thought it was just a password reset."
He looked down at the table.
"I didn't realize..."
"...someone had copied my digital identity."
A stolen identity.
Just like Detective Ellison's credentials.
The same pattern.
The same method.
Whoever was orchestrating this had been collecting identities for months.
Maybe years.
As Brooks closed the laptop, her own phone rang.
She listened for less than ten seconds.
Then every trace of color vanished from her face.
"What happened?" Daniel asked.
She looked directly at me.
"They found Richard."
Alive?
Dead?
I couldn't tell.
Brooks answered before I could ask.
"He turned himself in."
She paused.
"But..."
"He refuses to speak to anyone."
May you like
"Except you."
End of Chapter 11
