Bruce played it for me. The man’s voice was already weak, hurried.

“Mr. Hall — the signatures on those bank accounts, they were copied directly off old paperwork. Traced, or lifted digitally, I can show the markers. And the transfers — they were authorized by an accountant named Gary Salgado. Salgado moved the money. It’s all—”

The message ended in a sound I have tried since to forget, a sudden heavy crunch of metal, and then nothing. I had to sit down.

But that recording, however terrible, was a thread, and Bruce pulled it. He took the audio straight to the district attorney’s office along with everything else we had — Mabel’s footage, the medical examiner’s photographs, the signed statements, the timeline.

It was not enough, on its own, to arrest Agatha. She was too careful and too insulated for that.

But it was enough to shift the ground.