I called Owen, who said he would come with me.
He arrived in his battered pickup wearing a work jacket that smelled faintly of sawdust.
When I explained the call, he looked toward the blue file on my passenger seat.
He said the arena had possessed two service gates, but only one appeared on the evacuation diagram.
I asked why he had never mentioned the other.
He said he had not known it mattered until I described the jacket.
I wanted to accuse him of holding back information, but his expression stopped me.
He was frightened of remembering something he had spent years trying to forget.
The laundromat was nearly empty when we arrived.
A woman in a green cardigan sat beside a dryer that was not running.
She stood when she saw Owen.
Her name was Celia Moreno, and her younger brother, Tomas, had worked temporary shifts at the arena that summer.
She carried a grocery bag containing a folded red jacket with a torn sleeve.
The jacket was faded, but a small stitched number remained near the collar.
Celia said Tomas had been instructed to wear it while directing visitors through the north entrance.
He had disappeared from the arena before the official evacuation began.
He returned home that night with bruises and refused to explain them.
Three months later, he left Westbridge without telling his family where he was going.
I asked whether Tomas was alive.
Celia said she had spoken to him the previous Christmas.
He lived in another state and worked nights repairing commercial ovens.
She had not called him about the display because he hated hearing the arena mentioned.
Then she pulled a photograph from the grocery bag.
It showed a narrow steel gate behind the maintenance rooms.
A heavy chain hung across the bars.
On the wall beside it, someone had painted a white arrow toward an exit that could not open.
Celia said Tomas had taken the photograph on a disposable camera two days after the accident.
I asked why he had kept it hidden.
She said he had been told that showing it would cost his father his job at the municipal garage.
Owen took the photograph and studied the concrete beneath the gate.
He recognized the maintenance corridor.
He said the chain was not part of the original building design.
It had been installed during the carnival to keep visitors from entering a loading area.
I asked who had authorized it.
Celia shook her head.
She said Tomas remembered two men carrying the chain, but neither had worn a name badge.
She would not let me keep the photograph.
She did agree to let me make a copy at the shop next door.
Before we left, she caught my sleeve.
She said Tomas had not been the only teenager blamed for what happened that night.
