The door opened on a room of stale air. There was no window. She flipped the light switch, and the ceiling fixture, a naked bulb, lit for a moment, then flickered and popped. This office hadn’t been used in quite some time.
A desk was empty but for a leatherette desk set; a bookshelf held a few empty three-ring binders, some standing on edge, others lying on their sides; and wall prints featured pale watercolors, which had probably been hanging on the wall when the former occupant moved in.
It looked, appropriately, like the office of a guy playing out his days until retirement. Odessa left the door open for light and moved to the desk, coated by a neat, even patina of soft gray dust. The drawers were mostly empty: paper clips, a tape roll, a letter opener. A nameplate that might have once adorned a similar desk or office door: EARL SOLOMON.
She found old receipts for travel expenses. Lunch in Lawrence, Kansas, in 1994. Dinner in Saskatchewan, 1988. An electronics shop for “tape recorder repair,” 2009.
The bottom drawer on the right side was locked. She could tell at a glance that none of the keys in the tray were the correct size for opening it.
Still drafting off confidence from picking the door lock, she assailed the tiny keyhole with her paper clip, but to no avail. A few more tugs on the handle showed her the drawer was tightly secured. She looked again at the desk blotter; the letter opener blade looked thin enough to fit between the top of the drawer and its frame.
She gave it a moment’s thought, knowing she would leave a visible trace of forced entry. Then with a glance at the open door to the hallway, she hammered the opener blade in over the top of the drawer with the heel of her hand and gave it a firm sideways wrench.
The interior clasp snapped. The drawer was loose. She at least hoped it was good booze.
The drawer rolled open to reveal a reel-to-reel tape recorder. She lifted it out, placing it on the blotter. Heavy construction, not pure plastic. Beige in color; Sony-branded, though the letters were widely spaced—S O N Y—in a compressed, dated typeface; and sporting an old, two-pronged electric plug. The case promised “high-fidelity.” The twin spindles were empty. She found a handful of seven-inch tape reels in the back of the drawer and piled them on the desk next to the tape deck. She had a vague memory of her grandfather spooling up tape. She was curious enough to try.
She set one reel on the left spindle, then reversed it, unspooling tape and feeding it through the reader part. The brown tape was brittle; she had to be careful not to snap it. She curled it around an empty reel on the receiving end and figured out how to crimp it in a slot near the bindle so it would not unspool. She wound it a few feet by hand, then plugged the deck into the wall, the prongs connecting to the electric current with a cranky blue spark.
She switched the deck on and then turned the dial to PLAY. It worked! Or seemed to—no sound came out of it at first. She turned the dial again and the tape fast-forwarded with scary speed. She turned it back to PLAY.
The sound of a microphone being bumped startled her. “Testing, testing.”
She turned the volume down on a baritone voice, clear but for the scratchiness of the aged Mylar tape.
There was then a radio recording that started up mid-song, also scratchy and distant, then some bumps as the recording microphone was moved closer:
Here come the stars tumbling around me…
There’s the sky where the sea should be…
Almost marching music. She got out her phone and thumbed through to her Shazam app.
This improbable method of audio detection—the aged warbling of an ancient device decoded by the algorithmic genius of a modern device—worked. It was “What Now My Love” by Shirley Bassey, featuring Nelson Riddle and His Orchestra. Shazam put the release date at 1962.
The orchestration and vocal performance built to a frenzy and then ended suddenly. A snippet of patter from an old-school disk jockey started but was quickly shut off.
Then—white noise.
And then nothing.
She zipped forward, afraid the tape would snap. But the rest was blank.
Someone testing the machine? In 1962?
She examined the deck, eventually lifting it up. On the underside, burned into the plastic chassis with some kind of hot tool, were the initials ES.
Earl Solomon. That anticlimactic revelation—that the tape deck apparently belonged to the FBI agent whose office desk she found it inside—seemed to end her investigation.
He probably stuck it in the bottom drawer and forgot all about it.
Odessa returned to the office manager. “What am I supposed to do with the agent’s belongings?” she asked.
The office manager shrugged. “Any personal items should be returned, I guess? We need the office. Let me see if I have an address…”
Odessa found an empty carton in the printing/burn room and put everything inside.
Odessa cabbed over to Flushing and lugged the carton into NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital. She bounced from visitors desk to visitors desk trying to locate Earl Solomon. She was tempted to use her badge but it didn’t feel right, being on desk duty. Eventually she learned that he was out of intensive care, and Odessa made her way to the patient care unit.
The door was open. It was not a private room, but the first bed was empty. She stepped quietly around the half-drawn curtain. A black man lay sleeping, looking all of his eighty-six years. Tubes ran from the back of his hand and his forearm to pumps and monitors working in a hushed symphony. His breathing was shallow, his hair mostly silver, curly, and short.
Odessa set the carton down on the wooden arms of a chair. She had hoped there’d be family members holding a vigil, which would give her an opportunity to explain herself, hand off the possessions from his desk, and politely exit in a matter of minutes. She felt like a trespasser now. She didn’t dare wake him. Maybe he was sedated. She might have to use her badge anyway, in order to get information from the nurses’ desk, or else wait for the attending to come by on his or her rounds.
A small, flat television played in the high corner of the room. Once Odessa realized what she was watching, her chest went cold. It was a report on the funeral of Cary Peters’s wife and children. His own funeral was being held separately. She saw footage of the line of automobiles at the cemetery, a massive outpouring of sympathy and remembrance for the victims. They showed photographs sourced from social media, Mrs. Peters and the children at a water park, at a petting zoo, at a New York Rangers hockey game. Then a familiar photo of just Peters from his days working for the governor. A photograph of their house in Montclair, taken that night, lit starkly by emergency reds and blues of the first responders. And then, without context due to the muted volume, the photo of a young woman with shoulder-length brown hair, wearing a jacket over a white blouse, smiling proudly. Odessa let out an audible gasp when she recognized her own photograph on television: her official FBI identification headshot.
And then back to the news anchor. It wasn’t even a local station, it was CNN. Nationwide. Odessa didn’t know what they were saying about her…and yet, she did.
“You from personnel?”
The voice startled her. Odessa whipped around, expecting it to be somebody at the door.
It was Earl Solomon. He was awake, if he’d ever been asleep. His eyes squinted at her, then widened. Warm and a little yellow.