Chapter 8: Squad Room

Tino got there first, with the extinguisher from our surgery suite.

He stood on the front step in a cloud of white powder and emptied it into the sign.

Elio dragged me back from the door by my scrubs.

"Let go."

"It's wood and paint. You're not."

The fire trucks came at 5:40.

By then the sign was a black board hanging from one bracket, dripping foam onto the sidewalk.

Half the letters had burned away.

The C had fallen on the step, scorched and curled at the edges.

The old men from the coffee bar stood across the street in their slippers, watching.

So did the families who'd waited in my line the day before.

A fireman sniffed the bracket.

"Gasoline," he said. "Somebody wanted this to go up fast."

Dina came out of the building holding the cash box against her chest.

"Eleven thousand two hundred dollars," she said. "They didn't get it."

Then she burst into tears, and so did I.

Elio stood on the sidewalk with his jaw tight, staring at the black board.

"I swore on a stethoscope," he said, mostly to himself.

"You did."

"I'm regretting it."

"I know. Keep regretting it."

I picked up the C.

It was still warm.

At two that afternoon, I walked into the homicide unit at the Justice Center downtown with the burned letter in my hand.

Tino waited in the car.

He said he didn't go into police buildings unless he was under arrest.

The squad room was open, with a dozen desks and a coffee machine that had been broken since the nineties.

Half the men in it had been at my wedding.

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