The interview room Luz chose had no windows and smelled faintly of bleach and burnt coffee. The fluorescent light hummed overhead, flattening everything—her brown skin, my bitten nails, the gray metal table—into the same washed-out tone.
The microcassette recorder sat between us, upgraded from the school’s relic to a department-issue digitizer with a little green light. Juliet’s voice—If this goes wrong, at least someone will hear—still buzzed in my skull from the first listen at the library. My fingers twitched toward my phone, but I tucked it deeper into my bag and wrapped both hands around a Styrofoam cup instead. The coffee had burned an hour ago; I gulped it anyway, needing something bitter that wasn’t memory.
“Ready for the full run?” Luz asked.
“I’ve been ready for twenty-eight years,” I said.
She pressed PLAY. The tape’s hiss blossomed into low music, the same muddy 90s beat, all bass and no treble. The sound scraped over my nerves. I grabbed the legal pad she’d pushed to me and wrote TIME: 00:00 - MUSIC, OUTDOORS? in block letters that chewed through the paper.
Drunken laughter spilled out, layered and overlapping. A boy tried to hit a high note and cracked. Someone hooted. Wind swelled, but dulled, like it fought with walls or pilings before reaching the tiny mic.
“Don’t write every ‘woo,’” Luz said quietly. “We need anchors. Words, names, anything clear.”
“Bossy,” I muttered, but my pen hovered, waiting.
A male voice pushed through the noise, close enough to fuzz the tape. “Jules, you recording your own Behind the Music?” he drawled.
The accent hit me first. Crescent Bay rich kid—lazy vowels, consonants softened by private sailing lessons and country club summers. I scribbled: BOY 1: “Jules” / smirky.
Juliet’s laugh followed, thinner than I wanted it to be. “Insurance,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll cut the boring parts.”
My throat clenched at the word cut. I pressed my pen harder until the tip squealed.
Luz tapped the table with one finger. “Pause,” she said.
She rewound a few seconds and played it again. “Hear that?” she asked. “Right before he says ‘Jules.’”
I listened. Between the music and the voices, a hollow, metallic knock echoed. Then a splash, close and contained, like something dropped into a bucket instead of open sea.
“What am I listening for?” I asked.
“We’ll come back to it,” she said. “Keep going.”
She let the tape roll.
New footsteps clonked over what I identified, from years of dock loitering in high school, as wood planks. Rope creaked. A gull shrieked once, loud and echoing, then faded. The sound painted Harrow Island better than any aerial shot—service dock tucked beneath shining decks, water slapping pilings instead of crashing against the treacherous rock shelf below the cliffs.
“You recording me too?” another male voice said. This one rougher, consonants harder. “Do I get royalties, Reeves?”
I jolted. “That’s Noah,” I said. “It has to be.”
Luz’s pencil scratched on her own pad. She didn’t look up. “Describe what you’re hearing, not what you want it to be,” she said. “Tone, pitch, that stuff.”
“It’s him,” I insisted. “Listen to the ‘too.’ He does that thing where he drags the vowel. He did it in Mr. Cooke’s class whenever he said ‘blue.’”
Luz rewound, played it again. The voice repeated: You recording me too? The word too stretched into a small joke.
“Okay,” she said slowly. “I’ll mark it as probable Noah. We can cross-check with that home video your mom has.”
“You’re not hearing this for the first time,” I said.
“I’m hearing it differently,” she said. “Cop brain.”
The tape continued. There was a muffled sound—someone covering the mic, then pulling away. Juliet’s voice came back, closer now, tinged with effort.
“Say hi to my future talk-show audience,” she said. “They’re all in therapy because of this.”
Laughter erupted. Someone shouted, “Hi, Oprah!” Another voice slurred “Jerry Springer!”
I wrote: JULIET - jokes about future audience / therapy.
Then, out of the chaos, a new male voice cut in. Cooler. Sharper. Not loud, but it sliced through.
“Turn that off,” he said.
I went rigid in my chair. My cup rattled against the table.
“Pause,” I said.
Luz hit the button. The static froze.
“Did you hear—”
“Yes,” she said.
“Play it again.”
She did. Turn that off. Same line, same tone: annoyance threaded with control, like he expected to be obeyed.
Heat prickled under my collar. “That’s him,” I said. “That’s Elliot. Younger, but—”
“Careful,” Luz said.
“You can’t tell me you don’t hear it,” I said, voice climbing. “The cadence. He still does that clipped command thing on the school board livestreams. ‘Let’s move on.’ ‘That’s off-topic.’”
Luz rewound, then played another clip from later in the tape we hadn’t heard yet—him speaking, then rewound again. We let the phrase bounce between us three times, the consonants crisping with each pass.
“It’s consistent with his speech patterns,” she said finally. “I’ll give you that.”
“Then say it,” I said. “Say it’s him.”
“I’m not an audio expert,” she said. “And I can’t build a case on ‘my friend says this sounds like the guy she hates.’ We note it. We get a specialist. Meanwhile, we listen to the rest.”
“It’s not ‘the guy I hate,’” I said, fingers digging into the Styrofoam, bending the rim. “It’s the guy whose family owns the island where Juliet died.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “I know, Mara. Hit me with that part where she says ‘If this goes wrong’ again.”
We let that section roll back, replayed Juliet’s hoarse warning, then rolled forward into new territory. The music shifted; someone had flipped the tape in whatever boom box they used. A pop song kicked in, bass vibrating the tiny mic, lyrics chewed into mush by the recorder.
Juliet spoke over it, breathless. “I’m not going to be your secret anymore,” she said. “I’m done.”
My pen faltered. I had heard that line before, faint and distorted on the prom-night mixtape Sadie found. Hearing it here, cleaner, tore away any lingering hope that the mixtape had been doctored. This was Juliet’s refrain, echoing across devices like she’d been chanting it all night.
“She said that on the tape,” I whispered. “The other tape.”
“I know,” Luz said. “Keep writing.”
Another boy laughed, the sound dark. “You like the attention, Jules,” he said. “You love it. That little freshman worshipping you? Those guys at the docks staring? You’d die if nobody watched.”
My jaw clenched. I recognized the manipulative lilt, the way he turned accusation into a compliment. I’d dated that type in college. Orleans Street, not Harrow Island, but the same script.
“That’s Voice One again,” I said. “The ‘Jules, you recording’ guy.”
“Label him V1,” Luz said. “Elliot as V2 for now, Noah V3. Juliet J.”
I wrote the code in the margin, my stomach knotting.
The arguing escalated. Chairs scraped. Someone shouted, “We’re not doing this here.” In the background, low bass from the waterfront parties rolled across the water like distant thunder. I pictured the yacht club decks glowing above the bay, parents in cocktail dresses and polo shirts toasting scholarships while down below, their kids made choices nobody wanted on record.
Luz stopped the tape with a sharp click. “Listen to the ambient,” she said.
“The what?” I asked.
“Background,” she said. “Sound of the place.” She rewound and let it play in a loop, holding one hand up so I wouldn’t talk.
Under the shouting, a constant rhythmic slosh tapped in. Water against wood. Not the open roar from the cliff overlook, where waves pounded the exposed rock shelf and threw spray high enough to soak prom curls. This was closer, more contained. You could hear droplets hit hull, hollow thunks against something fiberglass.
“That’s a slip,” Luz said. “Boat slip. Hear the echo? Clap back from pilings.”
“The cliffs have water too,” I argued, though my body already knew the difference. I’d heard both hundreds of times—one soundtrack for stupid dares at the fenced overlook, another for nights watching regatta fireworks from the cheap part of the marina.
“The cliffs sound wide open,” Luz said. “No bounce. Just wind and carry. This sounds boxed in. Dock or service inlet.”
She grabbed a pen and sketched a quick diagram: rough shoreline, jutting cliffs, sheltered harbor. She circled a small notch near Harrow Island’s underside, where the service dock hid from yacht-club cameras.
“Right here,” she said. “Where deliveries come in. Where kitchen staff smoke. Where no chaperone at the prom would wander without a reason.”
My chest tightened. The official story said Juliet had left Noah in a fight, stormed off toward the cliffs above Crescent Bay High, and gone over near the overlook. The town had turned that fence into a cautionary prop—extra chains, new signs about dangerous rock shelf below, PTA mothers pushing for more floodlights while their names glowed on the school board plaques.
“If she’s at the dock on the tape,” I said slowly, “she’s not at the cliffs.”
“Not at that moment,” Luz said. “We don’t know how much time passes between this and her body being found. But this blows a hole in the straight-line story.”
Straight-line story. I repeated the phrase silently. Straight line from gym doors to cliff fence to tragic accident, neat and containable. This tape bent that line into a knot.
We let the recording run into its last minute, both of us leaning closer, breathing shallow. The argument sharpened.
“You don’t get to decide what I say,” Juliet snapped. “You don’t get to write this.”
“You’re drunk,” V2 said—Elliot, my brain insisted. “You have no idea what you’re starting.”
“I’m starting the truth,” she said. “You’re the one who’s scared of it.”
“You’ll ruin people,” he shot back. “You’ll ruin families.”
My pen dropped. The word families ricocheted in my head, layered over Elliot’s calm voice from last week’s morning show, talking about “protecting families from reckless speculation.” Same vowel length. Same sanctimonious weight.
“That’s him,” I whispered. “Listen to how he hangs on ‘families.’ He loves that word.”
Luz’s mouth pressed into a line. “It’s strong,” she admitted. “Combined with the island location, his ownership, the photo that just aired of him kissing her… it lines up. But I still need that expert.”
The tape crackled. V3—Noah—cut in, sounding stressed. “Babe, can we go? You’re freezing. This isn’t—”
His words cut off in a rustle of fabric. Juliet’s breathing climbed, high and fast. Something metal clanged, like a cleat hit by a knee or shoe. A rope whined tight under strain.
“Let go of me,” Juliet said. “Let go.”
There was no laugh in it now, no performative edge. Just fear scraping off layers of bravado.
My limbs went hollow. I realized I was gripping the table hard enough to buzz my fingertips.
On the tape, voices overlapped.
“Calm down,” V2 said. “You’re overreacting.”
“She’s gonna fall,” someone muttered.
“Grab her—”
Then a sharp, piercing scream tore out of the tiny speaker and into the fluorescent air. It ended not in dead air but in a sickening splash, very near the mic. Water exploded, close-range, then a choked cry that cut off mid-note.
I flinched so hard my chair jerked. Coffee sloshed over my knuckles, scalding. I didn’t wipe it away.
The tape kept going for a few seconds more: chaotic shouts, one voice yelling “Shut it off!” followed by fumbling. Then the recording stopped with a mechanical thunk, leaving us in the buzz of the lights and the faint hum of the station vent.
I stared at the recorder. My pulse pounded in my throat.
“That splash wasn’t fifty feet down a cliff,” I said. “That was right there. Same level. Body and recorder close.”
“Agreed,” Luz said. Her own hand trembled slightly before she curled it into a fist. “She went into water near the mic. That suggests dock or low platform, not an overlook fence.”
“So either the whole town got the location wrong,” I said, “or someone moved her.”
The word moved sat heavy between us. My mind filled the gap: a boat, a current, hands under wet limbs, a narrative rearranged to protect surnames on plaques and police rosters.
“We don’t speculate in the transcript,” Luz said, though her voice had rough edges. “We note what we can prove: island dock soundscape, presence of multiple male voices, argument about ‘ruining families,’ splash at close range.”
“You’re going to put ‘ruining families’ in a report?” I asked.
“Word for word,” she said. “And I’m going to log the chain of custody, send a copy to the state lab, and CC a prosecutor who doesn’t play golf with retired Chief Calder.”
The idea of Calder’s circle hearing this tape sent a different chill through me. The Harrows had funded half the waterfront. Regattas, charity balls, the Prom Throwback where adults paraded around in replicas of the very dresses Juliet’s classmates had worn the night she disappeared—every glossy event had their money stamped on the invitation.
“You know what they’ll do, right?” I asked. “If this gets out?”
“They’ll try to discredit it,” she said. “Say teens prank-called the recorder. Say the tape’s misdated. Attack Juliet’s character. Yours. Mine.”
I pictured the morning show set: wide couch, soft lighting, my face in B-roll while a host framed me as both necessary and dangerous. The same treatment could swallow this tape whole, slicing out the inconvenient parts until it fit a narrative about tragic accidents and unstable girls.
“I can’t just drop this on the podcast,” I said. “Not raw. They’ll say I manipulated it for downloads. That I contaminated evidence.”
“Correct,” Luz said. “You air this now, we’re dead in court.”
The word dead hit me harder than it should. I rubbed the coffee off my skin with a napkin, fingers shaking.
“But if we keep it quiet,” I said, “Juliet’s voice stays trapped in another cabinet. She asked to be heard.”
Luz looked at the recorder, jaw working. “We make sure the right people hear her first,” she said. “Investigators who aren’t in anyone’s pocket. A judge. A DA.”
“And Elliot,” I said.
She met my eyes. “Elliot last,” she said. “When we’re ready.”
The room vibrated lightly from some distant bass line outside—the waterfront’s eternal soundtrack, bleeding through concrete. Somewhere down by the water, kids were probably already pre-gaming for the next party, hair stiff with spray, salt crusting on their shoes from the cliffs where they weren’t supposed to go.
I looked at the little machine between us, at the reels that had spun Juliet’s last fight into our air.
“I built an entire show on the idea that telling the story helps,” I said. “But every time I push something out there, somebody gets hurt. Mr. Cooke. Theo. That teacher Reddit decided was a predator.”
“This tape is different,” Luz said. “This isn’t a theory. It’s a piece of a crime we can actually use.”
I nodded slowly. The horror of hearing Juliet’s panic sat heavy in my chest, but under it, a sharper feeling took root: purpose, honed down to a point. This wasn’t just content. This was leverage.
I pulled the legal pad closer and underlined four phrases in the rough transcript until the paper tore: HARROW ISLAND. DOCK NOISE. RUINING FAMILIES. SPLASH NEAR MIC.
“Okay,” I said. “We treat it like a weapon, not a trailer.”
Luz exhaled, some tension leaving her shoulders. She reached for the recorder and pressed STOP one more time, even though the tape had already ended, like she needed to mark the moment.
“I’ll get this logged,” she said. “Then I want you to go home, check on Theo, and not mention this to anyone who might post it anywhere. Especially not Sadie.”
“You know she’s going to know something changed,” I said. “She reads my breathing in the Discord timestamps.”
“Then lie,” Luz said bluntly. “For once. Lie to protect a victim instead of a suspect.”
The word victim wrapped around Juliet in a way I’d never quite allowed before. In my head, she was the prom queen, the ghost, the case. Now she was also a girl on a dock, arguing for her right to tell the truth, and then a scream cut short by water.
I slid my bag strap over my shoulder, legs a little unsteady when I stood. At the door, I paused.
“She said, ‘If this goes wrong, at least someone will hear,’” I said. “Right now, that someone is just you and me.”
“For the moment,” Luz said. “The question is who else deserves to be on that list—and who’s going to try to rip it out of our hands once they realize the Harrows don’t own every story told on their island.”
The light hummed on. The little green digitizer LED blinked steadily, waiting. I stepped into the hallway with Juliet’s voice echoing in my ears and the distinct, cold knowledge that the next person who heard that scream might be the man who caused it—and that he would not let the tape, or me, exist unanswered.