“I can probably arrange for you to hear the tapes and get a copy of the statement,” he told me.
“No, thanks,” I said.
For a long time afterwards, I’d wanted to give Renee credit for being smarter than either Jim or me. That she was brilliant for seeing how badly things might turn out. Just lately, however, I’ve had a change of heart on the matter. One day it struck me that voice recordings and hidden evidence had Jim’s signature all over it, that he must have known he was being recorded, that these recordings were a testament to him, an insurance policy to make sure he got credit one way or the other, alive or dead.
But who knows anything, really? Did Jim know Renee was making those tapes? Was it Jim’s idea in the first place? These days the only looking behind me I do is in the rearview mirror. I try not to look too far ahead either.