Chapter 18 - JUNE CONFESSION
June called me two days later from a motel outside the county.
Her voice sounded brittle.
"I know you think I betrayed you."
"You entered my house without permission," I said.
"You took things and helped people frighten my family."
She did not deny it.
She said she had infiltrated Helen's office years earlier to reach Thomas's papers.
She believed the ledger contained evidence that Vale had caused the warehouse fire to destroy records.
But after Thomas died, Greg discovered her search and threatened to accuse her of burglary unless she fed him information.
"You had choices," I told her.
"Every time."
"I know."
June admitted taking the concert photograph and Thomas's watch.
She claimed she had been trying to reconstruct the fake hospital picture before Greg used it to intimidate me.
That explanation did not make much sense, and I said so.
She sighed.
"I told myself I was gathering proof. I was also doing what he demanded."
She offered to surrender the watch and her correspondence with Greg.
Michael arranged for her to speak through counsel rather than meet me alone.
When investigators recovered her files, they found messages referring to a warehouse security tape.
The cassette from Thomas's radio was the first possible match.
It was sent to a qualified examiner for safe playback and preservation.
The audio revealed raised voices, equipment alarms, and a man shouting about a locked exit.
The words were fragmentary.
No one could identify the voices conclusively by listening alone.
But a faint time signal matched the night of the fire.
A few seconds before the tape ended, one man said, "Tell Vale the door is secured."
Then another voice replied, "And what about the guard?"
The first man answered with a sentence so cold I could barely breathe.
May you like
"He isn't part of the calculation."
