Page 11 of So Silent

Faith’s brow furrowed. “When did you make that call?”

“In the bathroom.”

She made a face. "Sorry, I asked."

“Whatever. You poop too.”

"Thank you, Michael," she said drily. "I don't need to know anymore."

He shrugged and wolfed the rest of his banana bread into his mouth. Faith rolled her eyes. “Ellie must have a very strong stomach.” She looked at Turk. “What about you, boy? Are you ready to go?”

Turk looked up at her and dipped his head. She smiled down at her dog and felt a rush of gratitude for him. When they first met, he was closed off and almost indifferent to her, but by the time they came home from their first case, he was the closest companion she’d ever had. They’d been together for two and a half years, but it felt to Faith like she’d known him his whole life.

She really hoped West was lying about whatever plan he claimed to have. Turk was due to retire in a few months, and she really wanted him to be able to have a good and comfortable retirement. She would buy him from the Bureau and retire as a handler so she could focus on taking care of him at home and not replace him in the field. He could stay with David when she was away, and he could finally be a proper dog and chase squirrels instead of murderers.

“You two ready to go?” Michael asked.

She sighed. That day wasn’t today. “Yeah. We’re ready.”

She handed Turk the rest of her banana bread. He snapped it up with one bite and got to his feet, stretching luxuriously before following the two human agents from the shop.

“You shouldn’t feed him bread,” Michael said. “It gives them gas.”

“Ten bucks if you guess which of your farts smells worse,” Faith said drily.

“Ouch,” Michael said. “I was just offering friendly advice. You didn’t need to attack me like that.”

“Just stating facts.”

The drive to Bethel Records took just over twenty minutes. Unlike Rebecca’s modest studio, Bethel Records was a major concern, occupying the first six floors of a thirty-story office building in downtown. Faith had looked them up on the way and learned that several up-and-coming pop artists had recorded music here. EMI apparently liked to use Bethel to work with their big prospects to refine their sound and the recording techniques the label would use with them for the duration of their career. If Rebecca Wells had worked with some of the names on this list, then she had real connections. Or should have, anyway. What was she doing in that dinky little office?

The production manager was a surprisingly humble man of around forty who greeted the agents with a warm smile and introduced himself as Zeke. He offered them coffee, which Faith declined, and Michael—of course—accepted. He led them to an office that looked exactly like what a music producer's office should look like, with gold and platinum records framed on the walls and a brightly polished gramophone in a polycarbonate display case on one wall.

“I’m so sorry to hear about Rebecca,” he said, “I really hoped she would make it. She was a good kid.”

"Have you heard from her recently?" Faith asked.

“Not since she left, but then, she only left two months ago. I was going to reach out in another month to see if she’d had any luck or wanted some studio time. She really wanted to be a singer, but she was too hard on herself.”

“That happens a lot, I imagine,” Michael said.

Zeke sighed. “It does. Either you have big egos who don’t listen to anything you say, or you have big ids who notice everything that goes wrong. It didn’t help that Rebecca had the most perfect pitch of anyone I’ve ever met.”

Faith’s ears perked up. “Perfect pitch? That means she’s sensitive to sound, right?”

Zeke nodded. “Specifically, she can understand each individual note in a song and identify if it’s played in tune. Hers was on another level, though. She could tell you if it was played in tune, if the volume was correct, if the resonance was good, if the sound needed to be compressed more or if there was too much or too little reverb. Basically, she was a living recording software.”

“So she could hear every little imperfection in someone’s voice and fix it in production,” Michael said.

“Yep. And she could hear every little imperfection in her own voice and beat herself to death over it.” Zeke grimaced. “God, what a shitty way to say that. I’m sorry.”

“No need to apologize to us,” Faith said. “Did she seem different to you before she left?”

“She seemed hopeful. Honestly, for the first time since I met her, she seemed happy. I think she really thought she could make it.”

“Did you?”

He sighed. "She should have made it. She had a good voice. Maybe not a great one, but a good one. Good enough that with her talent at sound engineering, she could have made it sound great. I'm telling you… actually, I'm not telling you, and if you tell anyone I am, I'll deny it, but I can count on one hand the number of pop singers who have truly great voices. Half of them don't even have good voices. What they have that lets them make it is a unique voice and a charismatic presence. We make them sound good. And Rebecca made them sound fantastic.” His face darkened. “Most of them won’t even remember who she is. It’s a damned shame.”

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