He stopped her there.

“You didn’t need to protect me from your brother’s death,” he said.

“You needed to tell me you were scared.”

“I know.”

The words sounded practiced, but Daniel was too tired to argue with them.

Jessica explained that in January a woman claiming to represent the families of the Saint Alden victims had called her from a blocked number.

The caller said new testimony might be available and invited her to a private meeting.

Jessica had agreed because the caller mentioned the chain visible in the second photograph.

A few days later she received the cream envelope.

At the private dining room of the Fairmont Hotel, she found a dozen people seated around a long table, but almost none of them were relatives she recognized.

There was a man introduced as a retired fire investigator and a woman who said she had been a volunteer at the center.

Richard Hale arrived late, apologized for the secrecy, and said a quiet settlement review was underway.

Jessica had never met him before.

He knew Peter’s name, the date he died, and the nickname their mother had used for him.

“He asked me if the photographs still existed,” she said.

Daniel looked down at his hands.

A thin cut crossed his thumb from a piece of sheet metal at work.

He had washed it at lunch and forgotten it until that moment.

“And you answered him.”

“I told him I might have something.”

Richard invited Jessica to meet separately at a coffee shop, saying the other families were reluctant to speak in front of one another.

He described a potential restitution fund and a project to preserve the history of the center.

A week later he offered her an interview at Hale Meridian.

It was a better position than her previous job, with health insurance and enough money that she no longer needed to work weekends.

“You told me the offer was a miracle,” Daniel said.

“I thought it was.”

The promotion came within three months.

So did the private dinners, the late-night calls, the increasing insistence that she could trust Richard more than anyone else.

He warned her that Daniel would become angry if he learned she was reopening Peter’s death.

When she hesitated, Richard produced details that made him seem uniquely informed, including the hour the alarm had supposedly failed and the names of two residents who had been awake.

“At some point he stopped talking about Peter,” Jessica said.