A Voice in the Crime – Chapter 22
The Last Chapter of Blood on the Viscount’s Cravat
Felix finished the audiobook on a Thursday afternoon.
He had been recording for six hours straight, his voice hoarse, his throat raw, his mind drifting in and out of the fictional world of viscounts and cravats and murders in English manor houses. The final chapter was a long one—a deathbed confession, a surprise heir, a twist that Felix had seen coming from the first chapter but had dutifully narrated with appropriate astonishment.
“And so,” Felix read into the microphone, “Lord Whitmore closed his eyes for the last time, the weight of his secrets finally lifted from his shoulders. The cravat, that damned cravat, lay in a pool of blood on the Persian rug. But the truth—ah, the truth—was finally free.”
He stopped. He listened to the silence in the recording booth. The foam-lined walls absorbed every sound, leaving nothing but the hum of his computer and the beating of his own heart.
He had narrated hundreds of endings. Happy endings, sad endings, ambiguous endings, endings that made him want to throw the book across the room. But this one felt different. Because it wasn’t just the end of a story. It was the end of something else. Something he couldn’t name.
He saved the file. He backed it up to the cloud. He sent an email to Carolyn: “Chapter Twelve is done. The whole book is done. I’m done.”
Carolyn wrote back thirty seconds later: “Done done, or ‘I need a vacation’ done?”
Felix typed: “Both.”
Carolyn: “Take a week. Then we’ll talk about the next book. You’re getting a bonus. For the whole… you know.”
Felix: “I know.”
He closed his laptop. He sat in the recording booth, surrounded by foam and microphones and the ghosts of a hundred books. He thought about the pendant. About Margaret Chen. About the chicken bone and the note and the woman who had waited twenty years for someone to tell her story.
He thought about what came next.
The phone rang at 7:00 PM.
Felix was on his couch, eating takeout from the Thai place downstairs—not the borderline kind, but fresh, because he had decided that he deserved fresh food for the first time in weeks. He looked at the caller ID. Detective Rivas.
He answered. “Detective.”
“Mr. Greer. I have news.” Rivas’s voice was tired, but there was something underneath it. Something that sounded like relief. “We found Margaret Chen.”
Felix’s heart stopped. “Where?”
“She turned herself in. Two hours ago. Walked into the FBI field office in San Francisco and asked to speak to someone about a stolen pendant. She’s in custody now. They’re transporting her back here tomorrow.”
Felix set down his takeout. “She turned herself in?”
“She said she was tired of running. Said she had done what she needed to do, and now it was time to face the consequences. She’s been cooperating. Giving statements. Naming names. She’s not trying to hide anymore.”
Felix thought about the postcard. Don’t look for me. The story isn’t over, but the search is. She had sent that postcard from San Francisco—probably the same day she turned herself in. She had wanted him to know that she was safe, that she had made a choice, that she was not a victim of circumstance but an agent of her own fate.
“She asked to see you,” Rivas said.
Felix blinked. “Me?”
“She said you were the only person she wanted to talk to. Besides her lawyer. She said you would understand.”
“Understand what?”
“I don’t know. She didn’t say. She just said you would understand.” Rivas paused. “You don’t have to go. She’s not your responsibility. You’ve done more than enough.”
Felix looked at the water stain on the ceiling. It looked back at him.
“When can I see her?” he asked.
“Tomorrow. After she’s processed. I’ll send a car.”
“I’ll be there.”
Rivas hung up. Felix sat in the dark, his takeout growing cold, his mind spinning.
Margaret Chen had turned herself in. She had asked for him. She wanted him to understand something—something she hadn’t put in the postcard, something she hadn’t said in the alley, something that had been waiting twenty years to be spoken.
He pulled out his phone and started a voice memo.
“Chapter Twenty-Two,” he said. “Margaret Chen turned herself in. She’s in custody. She’s coming back here. And she asked to see me.”
“I don’t know why,” he continued. “I don’t know what she wants to say. But I know I have to go. Because she trusted me. Because I promised to tell her story. Because—”
He stopped. He looked at the phone. At the blinking red light of the recording.
“Because I need to understand,” he said. “Not just her—myself. Why I followed the clues. Why I couldn’t let go. Why I’m still here, talking into a phone, recording a story that no one else will ever hear.”
“Tomorrow, I’ll see her. Tomorrow, I’ll ask her the questions I’ve been carrying for three weeks. And tomorrow, maybe, I’ll finally get some answers.”
He put down the phone. He looked at the water stain. He thought about endings, and beginnings, and everything in between.
“Tomorrow,” he said, to no one in particular. “Tomorrow, the story continues.”