Chapter 11 - The Warehouse Fire
Mom read the note twice before handing it to Arthur. Neither of them looked surprised, which frightened me more than if they had.
The warehouse fire had killed two workers and left a third with permanent injuries. The official report blamed faulty wiring. Mom's records suggested that a safety inspection had been falsified to keep a city contract from being delayed.
"Daniel didn't start the fire," Mom said. "But he knew the inspection had never happened. He signed the invoice anyway."
"And Lang helped bury it," Arthur added.
Investigator Brooks arranged a meeting with one of the surviving workers, a man named Raymond Ellis. He had been living quietly outside the city since the accident and had refused every request to talk to reporters.
Raymond joined us by secure video. His face was lined, and one hand rested stiffly on the table.
"I remember the alarms," he said. "They didn't work. We had reported them twice."
Mom leaned toward the screen. "Did you ever speak to Peter Lang?"
Raymond nodded. "He came to the hospital. Told me the company would cover my bills if I stopped talking about the inspection."
"Did you take the money?"
"I took help for my medical bills. I didn't sign anything saying the truth was different."
He sent the investigators a copy of a letter he had kept in a drawer for years. It showed a payment offered in exchange for a statement blaming the fire on a subcontractor who had never been on site.
Arthur studied the signature at the bottom.
"That's Daniel's."
Mom closed her eyes. "Then he knew they were buying silence."
Before the meeting ended, Raymond gave one more detail. The night before the fire, he had seen a man carrying a red ledger into the site office.
"He wasn't one of the crew," Raymond said. "He wore a city badge."
Investigator Brooks asked him to describe the man.
Raymond did.
May you like
Arthur's face changed.
The man was a senior inspector who had later been promoted to oversee the city's emergency contracts.
