Yan moved the furnace records into the clinic’s back room and laid them across the long table.
The evacuation orders went at one end. Route maps and signal notes filled the middle. At the far end he placed casualty lists, treatment records, and copies of the Registry bulletin. Each piece described the same day from a different angle. He wanted to see the full sequence at once, so the edited times could not stand alone.
He laid the bulletin beside the evacuation map. The report placed the route change after the column had already been exposed; the order in the refuge’s copy came earlier. A signal note supported that order, though its minute mark had been smudged. Yan traced the route with one finger, from the ridge to the southern crossing, and left a blank where the exact time belonged.
“That is the gap they filled in for us,” he said. “We can show the order. We still need someone to verify when the signal passed.”
Ning stopped beside a sheet with the names of two families. “Which of these witnesses agreed to public use?”
“They gave us statements for the inquiry.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Yan glanced at the page. One family had described the road where they waited. The other had given Qinghe a record of a child’s injury. “I don’t know.”
