Blackmail File, The

This audiobook is narrated by a digital voice. Detective Rachel Martinez had seen enough crime scenes to know that the most dangerous secrets were often hidden in plain sight, tucked away in filing cabinets and safety deposit boxes where ordinary people stored their most precious possessions. The apartment on Maple Street looked unremarkable from the outside—a modest two-bedroom unit in a building that had seen better decades—but the contents discovered after Harold Whitman's apparent suicide would expose a web of corruption that stretched into the highest levels of Riverside's political and business establishment. The landlord had called police after neighbors complained about a persistent odor seeping through the walls. What they found was Harold Whitman, seventy-three years old, slumped over his kitchen table with an empty bottle of sleeping pills beside a handwritten note that simply read: "I can't live with what I've done. The files will explain everything." The note was signed in shaky handwriting that matched samples from Whitman's pension paperwork, and the medical examiner's preliminary assessment suggested death by voluntary overdose. Rachel had been working homicide for eight years, long enough to develop an instinct for cases that weren't quite what they appeared to be. Something about the scene felt staged, though she couldn't immediately identify what triggered her suspicion. Perhaps it was the way Whitman's body was positioned, too neatly arranged for someone who had consumed a lethal dose of medication. Or maybe it was the spotless condition of the apartment, as if someone had cleaned thoroughly before calling in the death.