I stared at the big brown teddy bear. It smiled vacuously back at me with black, beady eyes. Dolls of any type have always made me feel somewhat uncomfortable, even back when I was a kid. I was more of a blocks and books kind of child.

“Is that thing one of those hidden nanny cams?” I asked, thinking there could be no other reason for Tara to have brought the toy into my office.

“Yep,” she replied happily, patting its head affectionately with her freshly manicured hand, “it sure is. This was given to Mr. Hunt two weeks before he died. It was a gift from his daughter, Evelyn. She was the only one that Angelica still allowed to visit. She’d basically run off all the other kids. They still called, but they never came by. Evelyn though, she’s the youngest. She was just seventeen when her Dad died, so Tara didn’t consider her a threat. Anyway, Evelyn gave her dad this nanny cam but didn’t tell him what it was. She wanted to see if their dad was being abused by Angelica. She suspected something was going on and wanted to figure out what it was, so she enlisted my help for a couple grand. After Mr. Hunt died, the camera went missing. Evelyn and I thought that it probably just got thrown away by accident with the rest of Mr. Hunt’s stuff. She never got to retrieve the footage. Anyway, I didn’t see it again until Marcus showed up.”

As Tara had been speaking, I’d been scribbling notes as fast as I could. My journalist shorthand was a bit out of practice, but it wasn’t bad. Nathan had very nice, elegant handwriting, I’d noticed, but he wrote extremely slowly. I could write a mile a minute, but it was all butt-ugly scrawled loops. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one who can even read my handwriting.

“Hold on,” I interjected, looking back down at my chicken scratch, “hold on a second. So, this was bought by Albert Hunt’s youngest daughter from his marriage right before Angelica? Does the daughter know anything beyond that it was lost a few years back?”

Tara shook her head. “No,” she replied, “I’m still getting to that part. Anyway, the teddy bear disappeared until Marcus showed up in January. Who knows where he got it. Maybe he went through the trash? I don’t know. But he showed up with it and had a video that showed Angelica killing Albert.”

“Do you have that video of Angelica?” I asked, feeling vaguely out of my body. The world briefly twisted in front of me like water going down a drain. I fought back the dizziness with a few deep breaths. The stupid teddy bear on my desk was a witness to murder? Nathan had said that Angelica was evil, but I had no idea how evil. The fact that I spent several days in Angelica’s almost exclusive company, always thinking she was mostly harmless, made me feel cold and unsettled.

“No,” Tara replied, “I don’t. Angelica’s the only one who had it. But I knew about it because I eventually figured out what was going on. That comes later in the story. Their relationship was so weird, but I didn’t really understand why until the unmanned launch a few weeks ago. Remember? When Marcus went missing?”

“I remember,” I confirmed with a nod. It was the day I seduced Nathan in his office. I’d never forget a second of that crazy, tumultuous, life-changing day.

“Well later that night, when Angelica and Marcus were just sitting there like weirdos at the house, I left my phone on the counter when I went out for a smoke, recording. I was suspicious you know? And I recorded this,” she said, pushing a button and holding up her phone. The recorded voices were somewhat muffled but still reasonably clear.

“Nothing has changed. You’re still going to take me to the launch on Friday,” a voice, likely Oleg’s, was saying menacingly, “then you never have to see me again.”

“Listen up Euro-trash,” snipped the unmistakably sharp soprano belonging to Angelica Hunt, “I can’t guarantee I’ll even be invited to the next one. Now that you hacked them, and they know it, Nate might not allow anyone to observe the next launch. They might cancel it for all I know!”

“He won’t cancel it,” replied Oleg scathingly. Now that I knew he was Russian, the accent was patently obvious. No wonder he didn’t speak much, because he didn’t sound remotely Portuguese. Or maybe he just didn’t mind letting it show to Angelica, “He’s got too much pride. Men like him think they can do whatever they want. They think they take anything from anyone. But there are other people like me who won’t stand for it. There have to be consequences. Eventually your mistakes will catch up to you too, Angelica. Remember that.”

“Ooooh so scary,” Angelica quipped, her voice dripping in sarcasm, “scary Russian with his scary threats. I’m so very intimidated. You’re awfully high and mighty for someone whose wife got herself locked up for being a slut—”

There was a pop on the recording that sounded very much like flesh hitting flesh. It was a slap. I winced, but Angelica just laughed. Oleg said something in Russian, probably an obscenity.

“And hitting me is your only reply,” she crowed. “You’re fucking pathetic! What a big man you are to slap a woman. Don’t act like you’re so much better than me. We’re the same you and me,” Angelica sounded like she found the entire conversation irritating but still amusing. “Just the same,” she repeated in quieter voice, just above a whisper. Oleg’s response was equally soft but much less amused:

“You’ll get me to that launch, or I’ll show everyone the video of you and what you did to your husband. Even if I drop dead, the video will be released by my friends. I’ve got a friend in Russia who will make sure this all goes off without a hitch. The end. I have all the control over this situation. No more conversation.”

Tara paused the recording and stared at me expectantly. My brain was slow to catch up.

“Pennsylvania is a two-party surveillance state,” was all I could stutter out, “recording that was illegal.”

Tara rolled her eyes. “Yeah clearly, I’m the bad one here, aren’t I?” She asked me sardonically. I smirked at her and shook my head. This was going to be front page news from coast to coast.

“Where did you get the bear?” I asked her, still trying to figure out how it factored into anything else about her story.

“I swiped it before I quit,” Tara said, shrugging, “Angelica had thrown it away again, so I took it out of the trash. Once I got out of jail on Friday night, I went and got all my stuff from Angelica’s. That’s when I saw the bear and took it. Marcus gave it to her a while ago, and I thought it looked familiar but honestly the last time I saw it was three years ago. I’d forgotten about it. When Angelica came home with it, I thought it was just a lover’s gift. Maybe it will be useful? The memory card has been wiped, I checked. It’s still evidence though, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, pushing away from my desk with both hands and trying to assess this situation with some degree of professionalism and detachment. I couldn’t. I felt a slow smile spread over my face. Angelica was going to go down.

“Ok, walk me through the timeline again. When exactly did you learn about the murder?”

“Monday night,” she said. “I was sort of afraid of Angelica after that. And Marcus. I didn’t even have to act anymore.”

“That’s understandable,” I replied, “knowing your employer had killed someone while you were in the house would have been really creepy. Why didn’t you quit? Why didn’t you take your recording to the police right then?”

“At first it was because I wasn’t even sure what I was hearing. You wouldn’t believe all the weird shit I’ve seen and heard working for Angelica. I mean, the way Marcus said it, ‘what you did to your husband’? It could have meant something else. Maybe he had a video of her blowing his old, shriveled dick. Gross right? That would still totally work for blackmail purposes though. Later, when I figured out what Angelica had been talking about with Marcus, and googled Nathan Breyer, and remembered the bear… I didn’t have any proof except for my recording, and it seemed like it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t know Marcus was trying to actually hurt Mr. Breyer. Who would believe me over Angelica anyway? I had no idea what to do for a while. I had to work it out all by myself that Oleg wanted to kill Nathan over screwing his wife who later died, and why Angelica was being blackmailed. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about things these last few weeks. I want to try and set things right.”

“We still have no proof that Angelica murdered Albert,” I argued, “all we really know is that Oleg blackmailed Angelica.”

“Unless you can get something off the bear,” Tara replied, “and still, isn’t proving that she lied about everything probably cause to get the police to investigate her for murder? Once this is out there, her family can’t cover it up.”

Tara was right. The pieces of a believable, verifiable story were coming together. I still had my share of doubts, but I also had a ton of new leads. The bear was the most promising. There were ways to get deleted files off memory cards. I didn’t know how to do it, but I knew someone who probably did—Nathan’s computer guru, Victor. I needed to talk to Nathan ASAP. If we could get the video off the bear, it would be the icing on the cake. Or the nail in Angelica’s coffin, more likely.

“What about the daughter that gave Mr. Hunt the bear in the first place, Evelyn Hunt? Will she give us a statement confirming that this was the bear she gave her Dad?” I asked. Having this story confirmed, even in part, was essential.

Tara shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s been three years since I spoke to Evelyn. She’s in community college now somewhere in upstate New York. Her mom and sister got screwed out of any money in the divorce, but they were still being supported by Albert. They went from super wealthy to super poor the second Albert died. They live the quiet life now. I’d think she’d do whatever she could to bring down Angelica though. Evelyn should be the Hunt petroleum heiress, not Angelica.”

“You’re still charged with criminal trespassing,” I told Tara seriously, “this won’t change that.”

Tara shrugged. “I really don’t care. I talked to a lawyer and it’s just a misdemeanor. Basically, a glorified parking ticket. What bothers me is that I was inadvertently helping Angelica help Oleg try to kill someone. If the rocket had exploded a lot of people could have died. That’s really messed up. I’m not a perfect person or anything, but I’m not a murderer. I just want Angelica to pay.”

I looked down at my mess of notes, the teddy bear sitting on my desk, and Tara sitting in front of me. This was not at all how I expected this day to go. I thought I would be getting reacquainted with the paper, not running with a huge story. Nathan was in for an earful of news from me when I got home from work today. God, it felt good to be back.

I reached out a hand to press the intercom on my desk out to my new assistant.

“Hi, Janice? Can you please send in whoever is covering the local crime desk in the metro section right now? I also need a tape recorder, a white board, some dry erase markers, coffee, and for you to get with someone resourceful in the bull pen and figure out how to get in touch with a woman named Evelyn Hunt.”

“Yes ma’am!” Janice replied promptly, and then a short second later her sheepish voice came through the line again, “um, could you please repeat all that for me again? I didn’t have a pen ready.”