The Last Voicemail

[SFX: Rain on a windshield. A car idles.]

MARA: The first thing I should tell you is that my sister has been dead for ten years.

[SFX: Voicemail beep.]

ELISE, VOICEMAIL: Mara. Do not call the police. Do you understand me? Do not call them. There is a key under the angel. You have until Friday night. If he knows I called you, he will move me again. I am sorry I let you think I was gone.

[SFX: Message cuts.]

MARA: I listened to it seventeen times before sunrise.

[SFX: Old phone video, laughter.]

ELISE, VIDEO: To my future self: if you are watching this, you are probably wildly successful and emotionally available. And if Mara is watching this, stop organizing my life. I love you. You're annoying.

[SFX: Video stops.]

MARA: The voice was the same.

[SFX: Phone ringing. Click.]

PRICE: This is Price.

MARA: It's Mara Vale. I got a voicemail.

PRICE: What kind?

MARA: From Elise.

[Pause]

PRICE: Where are you?

MARA: Home.

PRICE: Stay there. Do not forward it. Do not upload it. Do not put it in the cloud.

MARA: You believe me?

PRICE: No.

MARA: Then why are you coming over?

PRICE: Because I believed you ten years ago, and it got me retired early.

[SFX: Call ends.]

MARA: Price arrived forty minutes later in a dark blue truck with a cracked windshield. He looked older, but not softer. He did not hug me. I was grateful.

PRICE: Play it.

[SFX: Voicemail repeats.]

ELISE: Mara. Do not call the police. There is a key under the angel. You have until Friday night. If he knows I called you, he will move me again.

PRICE: Again.

MARA: I've already listened to it seventeen times.

PRICE: Then eighteen won't kill you.

MARA: He closed his eyes like a mechanic listening to an engine.

PRICE: There is background noise.

MARA: Air conditioning.

PRICE: Under that.

[SFX: Last three seconds repeat. Faint metallic clink.]

PRICE: Hear it?

MARA: Pipes?

PRICE: Chains.

MARA: You can't know that.

PRICE: No. But I can remember it.

MARA: There are things police do not put in press conferences.

PRICE: We found a piece near the driver's side tire. Four inches. Steel. Recently cut.

MARA: You never told us that.

PRICE: I was told not to.

MARA: By who?

PRICE: My captain.

MARA: Why?

PRICE: Because two days after Elise disappeared, another woman was found outside Salem with similar marks around her wrists.

MARA: Found alive?

PRICE: No.

MARA: I had spent ten years memorizing every fact of my sister's case, and somehow I knew almost nothing.

MARA: What does "under the angel" mean?

PRICE: You tell me.

MARA: There was an angel statue at our mother's old house.

PRICE: Was?

MARA: She sold the house after the third year.

PRICE: To who?

MARA: I don't know.

PRICE: Find out.

[SFX: Laptop keys.]

MARA: My mother's old house sat on Aster Lane, a dead-end street lined with cedar trees.

PRICE: Print that.

MARA: Why?

PRICE: Because companies like that disappear when people start searching them.

MARA: Where do you know it from?

PRICE: From a list I was told to lose.

[SFX: Printer wakes.]

MARA: At 9:06, I printed the property record.

PRICE: Do not answer.

MARA: It could be her.

PRICE: It could be the person standing next to her.

MARA: It rang seven times. Then stopped. Then the voicemail notification appeared.

[SFX: Voicemail beep.]

UNKNOWN CALLER: You were always the smart one, Mara. So be smart now. Leave the angel alone.

MARA: Price placed a scratched digital recorder on my kitchen table.

PRICE: Elise gave me this two weeks before she disappeared.

MARA: You had something from my sister for ten years?

PRICE: I had evidence from an open case.

MARA: That is not an answer.

PRICE: No. It is not.

[SFX: Button click. Hiss.]

ELISE, RECORDING: Mara, if you're hearing this, I'm sorry. I found the place where they keep the girls.

[MUSIC: Cut.]