Chapter Four – A Voice from the Past

 The newsroom was still dark when Janet slid into her desk the next morning. She hadn’t slept much — the dream of St. Peter at the gates still clung to her — but the coffee steadied her hand as she opened her laptop.

The scammer’s words wouldn’t let her go. She wired another three thousand on top of the five she’d already lost.

Somewhere behind that line was a real woman. A grandmother who had answered the phone and believed a lie. Janet needed to know her name.

Her father’s voice from the night before echoed in her head. Cross-check every word. Weigh testimony against evidence.

So she began.

The first thread came from the scammer herself. She had bragged about “a bank customer who came in every month when her statements arrived.” Too specific to be invention. Janet called an old contact — a mid-level manager she’d profiled years earlier. He remembered a widow in Edmonton, always anxious about her account, forever convinced the bank had miscalculated.

“Lonely woman,” he said. “Talked too much. I think she passed years back.”

No name, but enough to keep the trail alive.

By afternoon, Janet had filed a quiet request with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Hours later, combing through PDFs, her heart leapt. One report, dated 2010: Elderly female, Edmonton. Two separate transfers totaling $8,000. Outcome: unresolved. Note: complainant deceased. File closed.

Janet swore softly under her breath. She had her outline, but still no face, no voice.

That evening, her father was waiting in his chair, a legal pad balanced on his knee. He looked at her over the rim of his glasses.

“You’ll never get peace if you don’t put a name to it.”

“I’ve tried,” she muttered, sinking onto the sofa.

He tapped the pad once. “Then let me try. Old files have a way of lingering.”

A week later, Edward handed her an envelope stamped with the courthouse seal. Inside, a single page: Evelyn Shaw.

Janet whispered the name as though it might vanish.

Evelyn Shaw had died three years earlier of natural causes, but her trail wasn’t entirely gone. Janet tracked down her son, Robert, an accountant in Calgary. When he answered the phone, his voice was wary, as if she might be another telemarketer.

“Mr. Shaw, my name is Janet Brown. I’m a reporter with The Globe and Mail. I’m calling about your mother.”

The line went silent. Then he sighed, long and heavy. “This about the scam?”

Janet’s pen froze over her notepad. “Yes.”

His voice cracked as he spoke. “She was never the same after that. Eight thousand dollars. That was everything to her — not just money. It broke her pride. She stopped trusting herself. Every phone call after that, she’d freeze up, sometimes let it ring until it stopped. She told me she felt like a fool. And she wasn’t. She was sharp, careful. But that… it took something out of her. She carried it right to the end.”

Janet swallowed hard, pressing the tip of her pen into the paper until it tore.

Robert’s voice faltered. “You know, she even stopped calling me as much. Said she didn’t want to bother me. But I knew it was because she didn’t trust her own judgment anymore.”

When the call ended, Janet closed her notebook with trembling hands. She walked to the balcony, lit a cigarette, and let the smoke burn her throat.

For the first time, Evelyn Shaw had a name, a family, a son who still carried her shame.

Janet whispered into the wind, “You’re not invisible anymore, Evelyn.”

And in that moment, she knew she wasn’t just chasing a story. She was chasing justice for voices that could no longer speak.