For the formal record, you're here voluntarily. You're not a suspect in any investigation and you can stop the interview at any time. Are you comfortable proceeding? Yes. Then let's start with the phone call.
Last night, I described the call in detail. The controlled voice. The specific phrasing Daniel Bennett was a man who got involved in something that wasn't his business. The reference to a heart condition. The advice to stop digging.
Frell was writing while I talked. When I finished, she looked up. Did you recognize the voice? No. Any background sounds?
Traffic? Interior sounds? Nothing I could identify. It was clean, like he was in a quiet room or a car with good sound insulation. How long was the call total?
Under 90 seconds, maybe 75. She wrote that down. Then she asked me to describe in as much detail as I could recall. Everything I'd observed at the storage unit, the corkboard, the boxes, the notebook, the specific documents I'd photographed. She asked about the LLC names, the parcel number, the EPA correspondence letter, each one separately, each with follow-up questions I didn't always have answers to.
Then she opened the cardboard box in front of her and pulled out a photograph in a clear evidence sleeve. She slid it across the table to me. It was one of Daniel's corkboard photographs. The night photographed three men standing next to a tanker truck. Grainy long distance.
The one Clare and I had matched to the photograph in the buried metal box. You photographed this at the storage unit? Yes. That's the same image. We pulled your photographs from the cloud backup you mentioned to Agent Torres last night.
This image, the three men. Do any of them look familiar to you? I looked at the photograph carefully. Grainy as it was, the figures were distinct enough. One was broad- shouldered, standing slightly apart from the other two.
One was shorter, profile visible. The third was partially behind the truck door. No, I don't recognize any of them. Frell took the photograph back. She looked at it for a moment herself.
Then she said, "The broad shouldered individual on the left. As of last year, he was a sitting member of the county planning commission. The room was very quiet. The planning commission, I said, which would give him access to reszoning applications and to the environmental assessment process that would accompany a proposed land sale. Frell set the photograph face down on the table.