Chapter 2 - The Fire That Chose One Room
The alarm did not frighten me.
Its timing did.
Red lights strobed along the corridor as nurses moved patients toward the exits. Somewhere below us, a man shouted that smoke was pouring from the pharmacy archive. Robert ran toward the stairwell, but I caught his sleeve.
"The records room," I said.
"Eleanor, if there is a fire—"
"It started after that transmitter sent a signal."
He understood.
We pushed against the flow of people and reached the records room. Robert entered a code. The lock refused it. He tried again.
ACCESS DENIED.
Smoke slid beneath the fire door at the far end of the hall.
"Who can change your code?" I asked.
"Hospital administration. Information security. Pharmacy compliance."
"And Arthur?"
"He sits on the hospital foundation board."
Of course he did.
Arthur had spent years making himself useful to every institution that surrounded Audrey. He donated to the hospital. He chaired a campaign. He knew which executives needed favors and which nurses needed scholarships. Whenever Audrey complained that he followed her, he smiled and said he merely cared.
Robert kicked the lower panel of the door. "The physical key is in my office."
"We don't have time."
I removed a long steel hairpin from beneath my veil. My husband, Thomas, had taught me to open old cabinet locks when we restored the lake house. The electronic lock controlled the handle, but the emergency cylinder beneath it was mechanical.
My hands shook once.
Then they became steady.
The pin turned. The door opened.
Inside, the air was cool and clean. Rows of sealed cabinets lined the walls. Robert hurried to the terminal while I closed the door behind us.
"Audrey's chart was flagged six months ago," he said as he typed. "Restricted access. I assumed psychiatry had done it."
"Who accessed it last?"
He pulled up the log.
For weeks, the same badge number appeared almost every night between 2:00 and 3:00 a.m.
The account belonged to Dr. Leonard Pike, a psychiatrist Audrey had never mentioned.
Robert clicked deeper. Pike had ordered changes to Audrey's prescriptions, including a powerful sedative and a heart medication that could become dangerous when combined with her existing treatment.
"She didn't need either of these," Robert said. "I rejected the first order."
"Yet she took them."
"Someone re-entered the orders under my credentials."
The smoke thickened outside.
Robert downloaded the access log, the prescription history, and scans of Audrey's blood tests. Then he froze.
"What?"
"The final toxicology panel."
I leaned toward the screen.
Two days before Audrey died, her blood contained a concentration of sedative nearly four times the therapeutic limit. The hospital record showed Robert had reviewed the result and marked it expected.
"I never saw this," he said.
A dull boom sounded below us.
The lights flickered.
"Download everything."
He did. Then the terminal went black.
We left through a service stairwell as smoke swallowed the floor. Outside, ambulances and fire engines crowded the rear drive. Staff wrapped blankets around evacuated patients. Detective Mara Quinn stepped from an unmarked sedan, her dark coat open over a gray suit.
Mara was fifty-one, compact, severe, and incapable of pretending not to notice a lie. She listened while Robert explained the transmitter, the fire, and the altered records.
"Where's the flash drive?" she asked.
"In my purse," I said.
"Give it to me."
"No."
Her eyebrows lifted.
"It is the only copy I control. You can have a forensic copy in front of witnesses."
"Eleanor, this is a homicide investigation now."
"It becomes one when someone with authority agrees not to lose the evidence."
Mara did not take offense. "Fair."
A fire captain approached. "The blaze was contained to the pharmacy archive and adjacent server room. Suppression system failed in that section."
"What caused it?" Mara asked.
"Too early to know."
A young officer hurried over carrying a clear evidence bag. Inside was a scorched plastic bottle.
"Found near the ignition point," he said. "Accelerant."
Mara looked at me. "He moved fast."
"Arthur always does."
My phone buzzed with a message from him.
You should be careful who you trust while you're grieving.
Attached was a photograph.
It showed Robert and me inside his office moments earlier, standing over the speaker. The angle came from the transmitter under the desk. Arthur had not merely heard us. He had watched us.
A second message arrived.
Audrey trusted Dr. Hayes too. Look where that got her.
Robert read it over my shoulder. "He's trying to turn you against me."
"Is there a reason he might succeed?"
The pain on Robert's face was immediate.
"Yes," he said. "There is something I never told you."
Mara moved us away from the crowd. "Tell her now."
Robert looked toward the burning wing.
"Three months ago, Audrey asked me to help her disappear."
I felt the ground tilt beneath me.
May you like
"Disappear from Arthur?"
"From everyone," he said. "Including you."
