Warren’s recording suggested he had been alive in an ambulance after the fire department cleared the first floor.

Munroe asked why this mattered.

Lorraine said Strake had been responsible for inspecting the complex’s alarms and had warned the property manager that a control panel was being shut down during a renovation.

A statement from Strake could establish who ordered the shutdown.

Instead the records showed he died before he could speak to an investigator.

The point was not that he had secretly survived.

The question was why a living witness had been transported away from the emergency and why his final movements were absent from the record.

I felt the story settle into a darker shape.

A child had died while help was delayed.

A worker had possibly been taken from the scene while he was still alive.

And the people responsible for recording the response had rewritten the route.

Lorraine said Voss later bought an equipment subcontractor that worked on the city’s new dispatch building.

His company had access to the terminal from which the attempted forged safety approval originated.

She did not know whether Voss personally ordered that forgery.

Her lawyers had told her not to assume more than she could establish.

I asked how Paul fit into everything.

Lorraine lowered her eyes.

He had once been proud of his father’s work.

After Warren died, Paul was angry that the family had little money and that Warren had wasted years worrying about what other people did.

Paul accepted a job servicing emergency equipment through a contractor connected to Voss.

Lorraine believed he began by trying to recover the radio for legitimate reasons.

Then he discovered that the right recording could be valuable to the wrong people.

He stopped visiting her except when he needed something.

A month before the assault, he came to the house with a man from Westbrook Emergency Transport.

They asked for the whistle.

They knew Warren had built a compartment inside it for a memory card.

Lorraine told them it was lost.

Paul looked at her for a long time and said she was making a mistake.

Afterward Isabel helped Lorraine copy the surviving material and prepare the blue folder.

They agreed to give the folder to me because the library equipment inventory connected the new contract to the old recording.

The whistle was supposed to go to the police.

I asked whether Lorraine had ever considered telling me the truth before attacking me.