Although the trick angered me initially I understood the desperation behind his choice because fear makes people do things they would normally avoid. Daniel then handed me a small flash drive containing voicemail recordings left by Grant for his mother during that distant summer, and one of those messages revealed that Grant had discovered evidence of judicial corruption connected to Cynthia’s father who once served as a powerful judge in Illinois.
Grant mentioned that he planned to report the documents to authorities because the evidence showed the judge accepting bribes from a pharmaceutical corporation during a wrongful death lawsuit involving a young patient who died during a medical procedure.
The message ended with Grant explaining that he had hidden copies of the evidence inside an abandoned fishing cabin along the north shore where he worked during college, and he even provided geographic coordinates along with instructions about a stone fireplace where the documents were concealed. Realizing that the lake had not killed my son filled me with a fierce determination to uncover the truth he had tried to expose before his death.