There was a bed, and a nightstand, and a dresser, and a desk. The only pictures in the entire room were on top of the dresser: three photographs in standing frames. The first showed a much younger Dani, eight or nine years old, smiling with two friends, probably somewhere in L.A. The second photo was more recent, but still at least a couple years old: Dani with the same two friends at a public aquarium.

In the third picture Dani looked exactly the way she did now, down to the haircut. She was standing arm in arm with a girl her age, on the lawn in front of this very house. The other girl could only be Lauren, the friend who’d moved away last week. She had blond hair and green eyes. Both girls were smiling in the photo, but the expressions were half smiles at best. In contrast with the carefree happiness in the other two pictures, Dani’s and Lauren’s smiles looked almost forced. Their eyes seemed to say, Who the hell are we kidding?

Dani went to the desk. Sitting atop it were a microcassette recorder and the yellow legal pad Sam had already seen. It was open to the last partly filled page, and there was a date written for a new entry: yesterday’s date. But Dani hadn’t written anything there yet.

“Here, have a seat,” Dani said.

Sam sat in the chair in front of the desk. Dani picked up the recorder; through the machine’s plastic window, Sam could see she’d already rewound the tape.

“You’ll hear two men talking,” Dani said. “One has a really deep voice, and the other’s just normal. The normal voice is my dad. The deep voice is some guy named Trent. He’s someone pretty high up—one of the people in charge, I guess. I’ve heard him four or five times before, on these tapes. You saw his name in some of my notes yesterday.”

Sam nodded. The name was familiar.

“Okay,” Dani said. “I won’t say anything else. Just see what you think.”

She pressed PLAY.

Sam stared at the recorder and listened carefully.

At first there was only silence, except for the low hum of the tape deck running. Whatever sound had triggered the machine to begin recording, yesterday in Dani’s father’s office—a spoken word, a closing door—it had ended by the time the machine kicked on.

Five seconds passed. Then a man cleared his throat, and spoke, his voice deep and slow—Trent, obviously.

Trent: “I need to talk to you about this thing with Coleman.”

Dani’s father: “The problem.”

Trent: “The problem.”

Dani’s father: “Is there news?”

Wooden chair legs scraped on a floor. Sam pictured someone sitting down.