Suddenly, her mother was close, so close that the blurring could no longer conceal what the Traveling Man had done to her. When she spoke again, she sounded almost human.
 
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 CLASSIFIED
 
 UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
 
 File Number:REDACTED
 
 Requesting Official(s):REDACTED
 
 Task Numbers and Date Completed:1000210, Work Request Number 1000210, 3/11/24
 
 Source File Information/Name of Audio File:031124_0638_pm BERN_Phone_Call.wav
 
 VERBATIM TRANSCRIPTION
 
 Participants:Aldo Bern B
 
 Devin Vaughn V
 
 Abbreviations:Unintelligible UI
 
 031124_0638_pm BERN_Phone_Call.wav
 
 BERN:The Mexican didn’t make his medical appointment.
 
 VAUGHN:Maybe he had second thoughts about the treatment.
 
 B:For lung cancer?
 
 V:He had a hard road ahead.
 
 B:And went to a lot of trouble to be able to afford to walk it.
 
 V:If I were him, I’d want to take a few days to enjoy myself before they started poisoning me. Once they got going, I might not have the chance again for a long time, or not ever.
 
 B:I never met him, but from what I hear, he wasn’t that kind of guy.
 
 V:I never met him either, but you hear the clock ticking and you become that guy. Have you tried calling him?
 
 B:It goes straight to the machine. He doesn’t own a cell phone. He’s old.
 
 V:The fuck does that have to do with it? Your mother’s old, and she has a phone.
 
 B:He’s real old, like his stock.
 
 V:If something happened to him, how would we know?
 
 B:Maybe it would make the papers, and maybe it wouldn’t. Depends.
 
 V:On what?
 
 B:On what happened.
 
 V:We have someone we can ask?
 
 B:You mean to knock on his door? No, we keep our distance. Right now, nothing links him to you, but if I go asking people to ask other people, that changes.