Chapter Eighteen: Tomas Remembers the Music
Tomas Moreno was forty-four years old and wore a gray mechanic’s uniform with his name sewn above the pocket.
He sat in a booth facing the entrance.
When I introduced myself, he looked at my hands before meeting my eyes.
He said Daniel had possessed the same nervous habit of folding a paper napkin into squares.
I had never noticed myself doing it.
I placed the photograph on the table.
Tomas said he had taken it because he wanted proof that the gate had been chained.
He had expected somebody to ask why the exit was closed.
Nobody did.
He told me that on the night of the accident he had been assigned to guide families toward the north corridor.
A carnival organizer had told him the loading entrance was closed and the main gate was the only usable exit.
When the partition began moving unexpectedly, Tomas heard metal scrape against concrete.
He ran toward the control room, but the operator was already trying to stop the mechanism.
The emergency switch did not respond.
I asked where Daniel had been.
Tomas said my brother was helping younger skaters collect their shoes.
When the first scream came, Daniel ran toward the corridor instead of the control room.
He reached the chained gate before Tomas did.
Together they tried to lift the chain over its post.
The chain had been secured with a padlock.
Daniel sent Tomas to find a tool while he turned back toward the crowd.
Tomas found a bolt cutter in a maintenance cabinet, but a supervisor took it from him.
The supervisor said nobody was authorized to cut the chain.
I stared at him.
I asked whether he was certain.
Tomas said he remembered the man’s exact words because he had heard them in his dreams for years.
He said the supervisor had been afraid of damaging company property.
I asked for the man’s name.
Tomas told me it was Raymond Pike.
I recognized the name from an old carnival program.
Pike had been the equipment coordinator, not a city employee.
He had died eight years earlier.
Tomas said he had pushed past Pike and returned to the corridor without the cutters.
By then Daniel had found a loose metal bar and was using it to pry the gate away from its frame.
Several children were trapped between the gate and the advancing crowd.
Daniel pulled a little girl through a gap near the floor.
The girl was Lucia.
Tomas remembered her bright yellow shoes.
He remembered Daniel telling him to take her outside.
He obeyed because Daniel sounded certain he knew what to do.
When Tomas returned, the partition had struck the wall beside the corridor.
The gate had twisted on its hinges.
Daniel was on the ground helping another child stand.
