Mara refused to let Caleb become a witness without protection, but she also refused to erase what he'd seen. She arranged an interview with a child advocacy specialist recommended by Ruth. The specialist, Dr. Helen Price, explained that memory could be distorted by leading questions. She spoke with Caleb alone in a bright room furnished with crayons, asking him to describe the weather, the bus stop, and what had drawn his attention.
Caleb said the stranger had a silver ring with a dark green stone. He remembered it because the man had raised his hand to shield a phone from the rain. He also remembered a limp. He had not mentioned either detail to Mara. Dr. Price recorded the account without suggesting an identity.
While the interview continued, Mara received a voicemail from an unknown number. A muffled voice told her to stop visiting the hospital and leave town. The caller mentioned the blue star in Caleb's scarf. Her fear sharpened into anger: the people watching them knew details that had not appeared in the news.
Ruth returned with an older photograph from a departmental retirement dinner. Captain Vale stood beside a contractor named Simon Keene, whose left knee was braced beneath his trousers. Keene wore a green stone ring. Mara asked Ruth whether this was enough to make an accusation. Ruth shook her head. A photograph could explain why they were afraid, but it could not prove what Keene had done at the bus stop.
They took the voicemail and copies of the ledger to an independent attorney, Naomi Ellis, whose office was two floors above a busy grocery store. Ellis listened without interruption. She advised Mara to preserve original recordings, avoid confronting suspects, and prepare for a process that might move painfully slowly.
After the interview Caleb sat with Dr. Price while she explained why adults might ask the same question in different ways. He said he would try not to guess just to make them happy. The specialist praised that answer rather than the details he had remembered. Outside, Naomi showed Mara how to preserve a copy of the threatening voicemail without altering the original file. The task felt painfully mundane: write the date, save the number, record who handled it. Yet Mara began to see that boring procedures could be a form of protection when powerful people depended on confusion.
Caleb remembered every word.
When Ellis examined the ledger, she noticed a handwritten delivery code on the reverse of one page. It matched an old municipal locker number. There was no address, only a tiny drawing of a crooked star. Caleb reached toward the paper. "My dad makes that star," he said. "He put it everywhere."