He looked up at me, his arrogant sneer faltering for the very first time.
“Excuse me, officer,” Sterling snapped, though his voice lacked its usual commanding boom. “You’re in my way.”
Chapter 3: The Burn Ward
“Excuse me, officer,” Sterling snapped, though his voice lacked its usual commanding boom. “You’re in my way.”
I didn’t move a single muscle. The automatic sliding glass doors hissed softly behind me, the motion sensors confused by my absolute stillness. A wave of stifling, humid Sunday afternoon air washed over my back, mingling with the harsh, sterile chill of the emergency room air conditioning. I could feel the burn in my lungs with every breath I took, a lingering souvenir from the toxic black clouds that had entirely consumed his top floor. My hands, heavily wrapped in fresh white medical gauze, throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache, but I kept my arms planted firmly at my sides.
“I said move,” Sterling repeated, taking a half-step forward. He puffed out his chest, trying to use his height and his expensive Italian suit to physically intimidate me. He reeked of expensive cologne, a sharp, citrusy scent that completely clashed with the heavy stench of melted plastic and charred drywall radiating off my ruined uniform.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Mr. Sterling,” I said, my voice low and raspy from the smoke inhalation. I stared directly into his eyes, watching the sudden flicker of genuine panic dance behind his arrogant glare. “The fire marshal isn’t finished with his preliminary investigation. You need to stay right here.”
Sterling’s face flushed a deep, ugly shade of magenta. The vein in his temple, which had started throbbing the moment he saw the fire debris, was now pulsing visibly against his skin. He instinctively brought his right arm up, resting his hand protectively over the heavy, bulging pocket of his suit coat. The sheer weight of the soot-covered padlock he had just stolen from the evidence bin was pulling the fine fabric completely out of shape, making the right side of his jacket droop awkwardly toward his knee.
“I don’t need to stay anywhere,” Sterling hissed, glancing nervously over his shoulder toward the pediatric hallway. He was checking to see if Captain Barnes was coming back. “I am a private citizen. I own that building, and I have fully cooperated with the authorities. Now step aside, or I will have your badge for harassment.”
“You haven’t cooperated,” I corrected him, taking a slow, deliberate step forward, forcing him to take a step back into the hospital lobby. The automatic doors finally hissed shut behind me, sealing us inside the quiet, brightly lit waiting room. “You just committed a felony right in front of me.”
Sterling let out a loud, theatrical scoff, throwing his free hand up in the air. “A felony? You’re delusional! The smoke must have fried your brain, officer. I haven’t done anything except come down here to check on my tenants. Tenants, I might add, who just destroyed a half-million-dollar piece of prime real estate!”
His voice was carrying now. The emergency room wasn’t entirely full, but the sheer volume of his outburst caught the attention of everyone present. A young mother holding a crying toddler stopped pacing near the vending machines. Two elderly men in wheelchairs turned their heads. Even the triage nurse, who had just finished wrapping my burned hands minutes earlier, stood up behind her plexiglass window, her hand hovering cautiously over the security button on her desk.
“You really want to do this right now?” I asked quietly, keeping my eyes locked on his right pocket. “You want to make a scene in the middle of a hospital where two kids are fighting for their lives because of your negligence?”
“My negligence?!” Sterling roared, completely abandoning any pretense of keeping a low profile. He pointed a diamond-ringed finger squarely at my chest, stepping directly into my personal space. “Don’t you dare try to pin this on me, you glorified security guard! I know how you beat cops operate. You want a scapegoat. You want a front-page story. Well, you’re not getting one at my expense! That delinquent teenager was probably smoking meth in his bedroom. He was cooking drugs, he knocked over a hot plate, and he nearly killed his own sister to cover it up! That’s the story, and that’s what my insurance will hear!”
“That’s a very detailed theory for a man who claimed he wasn’t anywhere near the building when the fire started,” a deep, booming voice echoed from the far end of the hallway.
Sterling froze, the color draining rapidly from his face.
Captain Barnes, the head investigator for the city fire marshal’s office, was walking slowly down the sterile white corridor. He still had his heavy yellow fire suspenders slung over his broad shoulders, his boots squeaking against the polished linoleum. In his right hand, he held a sleek, silver tablet. His expression was completely unreadable, but his dark eyes were locked entirely on Sterling.
“I… I was just making a logical deduction,” Sterling stammered, stepping away from me and hastily attempting to smooth down his lapels. He kept his right hand clamped firmly over his bulging pocket, trying desperately to hide the obvious weight dragging down his jacket. “Given the neighborhood. Given the demographic of the tenants. It’s the only logical explanation for a sudden, massive blaze on the top floor.”
“Is that right?” Barnes asked, stopping a few feet away. He looked down at the plastic evidence bin sitting on the plastic waiting room chair. The top of the debris pile was now completely flat. The heavy, charred padlock with its broken chain was completely gone.
Barnes looked back up, his jaw set. “Miller. Where’s the lock?”
“In his right coat pocket, Captain,” I said, pointing directly at Sterling. “I watched him pull it out of the bin the second you turned your back. He’s trying to walk out of the hospital with it.”
“That is an absolute lie!” Sterling shrieked, his voice cracking an octave higher in pure panic. He backed up until his shoulder blades hit the heavy brick wall next to the triage desk. “This officer has been harassing me since the moment I arrived on the scene! He drew his weapon on that teenager! He completely mishandled the situation, and now he’s trying to frame me to cover his own incompetence!”
“I never drew my weapon,” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “I drew my flashlight. The flashlight that illuminated the fact that the kid was taking a thousand degrees of heat to his own spine to protect his sister. While you were screaming at me to shoot him.”
Barnes stepped forward, his massive frame completely eclipsing the panicked landlord. “Mr. Sterling, you are currently interfering with a state-level arson investigation. You are tampering with physical evidence pulled directly from a structural collapse. I’m going to ask you to empty your pockets right now.”
“I will do no such thing!” Sterling yelled, though his bravado was visibly crumbling. Sweat was actively beading on his forehead, rolling down into his designer collar. He looked frantically around the emergency room, searching for an escape route, but I was blocking the exit, and Barnes was blocking the hallway. “I demand to speak to your precinct captain! I demand to call my lawyer! I have friends on the city council who will see both of your pensions stripped by Monday morning!”
Right on cue, the heavy double doors leading to the hospital cafeteria swung open, and Gary, the insurance adjuster, walked out holding two steaming cups of coffee in cardboard carriers. He stopped dead in his tracks, blinking at the tense, three-way standoff happening in the middle of the lobby.
“Uh… Mr. Sterling?” Gary asked nervously, taking a hesitant step forward. “Is everything okay? Did we get the preliminary report?”
“Gary, call my legal team immediately!” Sterling ordered, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and sheer terror. “These thugs are trying to illegally search me! They’re trying to pin a tenant’s drug fire on the building management!”
Gary looked from Sterling’s sweating, panicked face to my burned, soot-stained uniform, and then to the massive, imposing figure of the fire marshal. Gary wasn’t a fool. He looked down at the heavy, unnatural bulge sagging in his boss’s right suit pocket, and his eyes widened in sudden realization.