PART 2 — The Blue Bird
Warden Mitchell arrived less than five minutes later.
Gavin explained everything in a rush.
His late wife, Emily, had worked as a music teacher before she died in a car accident two years before Gavin’s arrest. She often recorded melodies and her daughter’s early words using a small voice recorder shaped like a blue bird.
Chloe had loved pressing its silver wing.
After Emily’s death, Gavin packed most of her belongings into boxes. He believed the recorder had been lost during a move.
But Chloe remembered something else.
On the night Martin Hale was killed, six-year-old Chloe had been staying with her grandmother. Gavin had stopped there earlier that evening to drop off boxes from his old house.
Among them was Emily’s sewing case.
Chloe had been playing with the recorder before Gavin left.
She remembered slipping it into the pocket of his work jacket.
Gavin had worn that same jacket to Martin Hale’s house.
“What happened to the jacket?” Mitchell asked.
