Mara looked older than she had at the beginning of the month.
She told Daniel the evidence now supported questions serious enough for independent investigators and perhaps surviving families to seek renewed review, but it did not let them declare that Richard caused the fire.
Daniel agreed.
The distinction was frustrating, necessary, and strangely reassuring.
For the first time he could imagine truth emerging from something other than Richard’s mouth.
Paul Benton was living in a retirement community outside Burlington under the name Paul Beckett.
He had changed his surname after marrying his second wife, not to disappear, and had left the maintenance trade after developing a severe tremor.
Mara reached him through a representative who verified his identity.
He agreed to talk only after consulting a lawyer, and he insisted that his wife be present.
Daniel was surprised to feel grateful for each condition.
Witnesses who guarded their own lives were less likely to tell strangers what they wanted to hear.
Paul remembered Saint Alden as a place with two conflicting purposes.
Its brochures promised education, counseling, and second chances to teenagers whose families needed help.
Its administrators feared bad publicity and donor displeasure.
Staff shortages turned the basement recreation rooms into informal holding areas when there were too few supervisors upstairs.
Paul had complained that the lower level was never designed for unattended children.
Managers assured him the arrangement would be temporary, then made it routine.
“The fire alarm worked when we tested it,” Paul said.
“The problem was that the lower doors needed a different release.
The emergency bell told someone upstairs to come with the key.”
Mara asked who approved that arrangement.
Paul said the center director had implemented it, but the trust’s safety committee knew about the arrangement because Paul sent quarterly reports.
He no longer had proof of every report reaching every recipient.
He had kept carbon copies until a flood destroyed much of his basement storage years later.
Daniel showed him the scanned maintenance warning.
Paul became quiet.
He touched the date and said he had written it after finding chemical containers beside the emergency bell cable.
The containers were cleaning concentrates supplied by an outside contractor and stored temporarily during work on the roof.
Paul believed somebody moved them to make the donor inspection appear orderly.
He did not know whether the containers contributed to the fire.
He knew only that one spilled near electrical equipment days before the alarm incident and that his warning went unresolved.
