Nolan placed the tape on the table. Silas stared at it, then nodded in recognition. "Elias carried a pocket recorder," he said. "I bought it for him years before he disappeared because he couldn't keep notes while riding between interviews. He liked things he could repair and things he could verify."
Reyes disappeared into a back room and returned with an old cassette player. He set it between the mugs and waited while Cord checked that the mechanism worked. Nobody seemed surprised that Reyes had kept the machine. In this place, older things were rarely discarded while they still had a purpose.
Nolan held the cassette for several seconds. He had wanted to hear his father's voice since learning the man's name, but wanting and being prepared were not the same. He imagined Elias speaking carelessly, laughing at a joke or calling a dog from the porch. The recording in his hand had probably been made under circumstances in which laughter was impossible. Nolan slid the cassette into the player and pressed the button. A hiss of tape followed, then the sound of wind against a small microphone and a man's breathing.
"My name is Elias Vance," the voice said. "I'm sergeant-at-arms of the Iron Ravens Motorcycle Club. If anybody is listening to this, it means something went wrong after I decided to leave, and I want the account to be complete."
The voice was low and deliberate, not theatrical, the voice of a man who knew that a sentence might have to stand in for his presence. Nolan gripped the edge of the table. He had never heard it before, yet something in its measured cadence was painfully familiar. Carla had occasionally used that same cadence when telling him a hard truth without raising her voice.
The tape continued through a brief rustle of fabric. "I've spent seven months gathering records concerning Warren Pike and the companies he controls. I've seen the contracts and heard the families describe what happened to them."
"Land passed out of their names through agreements they could not reasonably understand, and the people acquiring it knew changes in the county's plans before the families did. The papers are with someone outside the club. I'm not saying who. The person who keeps them safe matters more than the satisfaction of proving I have them."
Silas lowered his eyes. Elias described approaching Pike, then telling Silas, then discovering that somebody had warned Pike before the evidence could be delivered. His voice became harder when he described the missing fundraiser money. "I did not steal from the Ravens."
"Somebody made it look as though I did, and whoever did it understood our books well enough to know what people would believe. If they can make my own brothers doubt me, they can make anybody doubt me. I can spend months fighting that lie, and my son will spend those months exposed. I will not let that happen."