I threw myself into the investigation. Dad and I both suspected Adam’s friend Kent knew more than he was telling us. Was he perhaps relieving his conscience by opening up to other people? If so, was he careless enough to do it over the telephone? With my friend Alex, I drove to Long Beach, where Kent lived. After a little snooping at a nearby apartment complex, I found what I needed: a phone line not currently wired to the phone of any customer. One call to the local CO was all it took to get a tech to "punch down" a connection from Kent’s line to the unused phone line, turning it, in effect, into a secret extension of his phone. Alex and I set up a voice-activated tape recorder inside the phone company’s terminal box to capture every word spoken on both ends of Kent’s calls.