The first fire had occurred on the night Daniel disappeared. The second had been reported six years later, after a young evidence technician requested access to boxes from the original case. Mara knew the dates because she had kept newspaper clippings long after friends told her to stop. She had never put the two incidents together.
She visited Ruth Alvarez, a retired courthouse clerk who had once quietly helped her request Daniel's personnel file. Ruth lived in a narrow house crowded with houseplants and folding tables. She listened while Caleb sat at the kitchen counter drawing the bus stop from memory.
"Daniel didn't take the money," Ruth said before Mara reached the end. "Everyone who touched those records knew it. We just couldn't prove which signature was forged."
Ruth brought out a ledger she had salvaged when the courthouse replaced its archive system. Several records listed supposedly destroyed evidence as transferred to a private storage company, Crescent Holdings. The approving official was listed as Captain Henry Vale, who had risen to deputy commissioner after Daniel's death. The notation was strange: Vale had been on medical leave when one of the transfers was approved.
Mara photographed the pages. Ruth warned that copies were useful only if someone could authenticate the underlying records. She also admitted an ugly truth: her silence had helped the false account harden into public memory. She'd been frightened for her pension, her family, and the future she had worked to build. Mara did not forgive her immediately. She asked what Ruth was willing to do now.
"Testify," Ruth answered. "If there's somewhere honest left to testify."
Ruth made tea they barely drank. She described how official numbers acquired an authority of their own: once a forged inventory was copied into another form, people treated the repetition as confirmation. Daniel had understood that danger. He made marginal notes, asking questions that irritated supervisors and slowed down easy approvals. Mara remembered teasing him about bringing work home, and the memory embarrassed her now. She had wanted an ordinary marriage. He had wanted one too, Ruth said, but he could not accept that the convenience of an office mattered more than people whose lives depended on an accurate line in a ledger.
Caleb looked up from his drawing. He had drawn the bus shelter, the bench, and the ambulance. But he'd added a second figure in a dark coat standing across the road, watching Ward collapse. When Mara asked why, Caleb said he'd seen the man before the ambulance came. The man had spoken into a phone and walked away. Ruth leaned over the drawing, and her expression changed. "That coat," she said. "I saw it at the courthouse fire."