Dining with the Devil
Matt Casey carefully stepped down from his pickup truck and used his weight to push the door shut, and looked at the house he'd parked at the curb of. There was a black car parked in the driveway, so apparently somebody was home. It was getting late in the summer evening and the sun was starting to set over the city of Chicago and the sky was illuminated in almost eerie shades of gold and pink. The day had been hot and muggy, even with the sun going down the heat hadn't staved off yet, Casey felt a bead of sweat trickling down the side of his head but didn't reach to wipe it away. Instead, he clutched the bag he'd brought with him and made his way up to the front door, in the distance he could hear faint sounds of dogs barking and kids screaming. He walked up the steps, reached the door and pressed the doorbell. He heard it ring inside, and awaited a response.
A half muffled voice called from somewhere close by, "Back here!"
Casey went back down the steps and went around the house to the back yard. He stopped and looked in minor awe of the large backyard, and the huge deck built onto the back porch, where Hank Voight stood beside a large grill.
The 50-something cop was dressed in a short-sleeve button up blue checked shirt and dark blue jeans, if the late June heat was getting to him, he sure as hell wasn't letting it show.
"How do you take your meat?" Hank asked.
No 'Hello', no formalities, just straight to the point. Casey supposed that that was just the kind of guy that Voight was all around. Still, he'd expected the conversation to be a bit more casual.
"Medium well," he finally answered as he walked onto the deck, and spotted the two porterhouse steaks still wrapped in cellophane on their Styrofoam trays set beside the grill.
Voight noted the brown paper bag in Casey's grip and inquired, "What's that?"
"Uh, well," Casey set the bag on the table, "I know wine's supposed to go with red meat, but I thought whiskey would be more appropriate."
Voight grunted in what sounded like approval. "My man," he said jokingly. As he set the meat over the fire, he glanced over at the firefighter and also took notice of the hinged arm brace that spanned the length of Casey's wrist up to his bicep, confined in a black sling strapped around his shoulder. "How's the arm?"
"Hurts," Casey answered simply. If he'd been fully honest he would've gone with 'Hurts like a bitch' but he thought that would be overstating the obvious.
"What'd the doc say?"
"Said it's healing well," Casey answered as he sat down on one of the chairs. "Be a while before I can actually get this thing off."
"You drove over like that?" Voight sounded amused.
"I sure as hell wasn't about to tell anyone from 51 that I was coming here," Casey pointed out. Asking one of them for a ride and having to explain the why and where was one discussion Casey was not in the mood to get into right now.
That earned a chuckle from the Intelligence sergeant. After that though there was a silence in the air between the two men as Casey watched Voight grilling the food. Finally, Hank turned back towards him and said, "I wasn't sure you'd show up."
"I wasn't sure myself," Casey admitted.
There was another pause in the conversation. After a minute or so Voight finally told him, "I'm glad you came."
Casey nodded, not so much in agreement, just in response. "Same."
2 weeks earlier-
"What the hell?" Casey asked Severide as they stood on the apparatus floor and saw a black police SUV pull up outside 51, and saw Voight step out of it.
"What do you think he wants?" Kelly asked.
Casey shrugged his shoulders and they watched as the cop wearing pitch black shades marched up the driveway to the floor.
"Voight," Casey addressed the cop.
"Lieutenant Casey, Lieutenant Severide," he addressed them brusquely.
The two lieutenants exchanged a confused look. What was going on now?
"What's going on, Hank?" Casey wanted to know.
Voight spoke to both of the men, "I'll make this short and to the point. Either of you or any of your men pissed off anybody recently?"
The two looked at each other again, trying to figure out what Voight was getting at.
"What do you mean?" Casey asked.
Hank removed his sunglasses, pocketed them and responded, "Intelligence got called to Firehouse 33 two days ago, somebody opened fire on the place, hit three firefighters, two are in critical condition."
"What?" both men were in disbelief both at this news, and that they hadn't heard about it before now.
"Yesterday," Voight continued without missing a beat, "We get called out to Firehouse 25, same thing, the place got sprayed, five people were hit, one's critical, one's stable. Right now we don't know if anybody was actually targeted or if it's all random, if somebody's actually gunning for CFD in general or just picking firehouses for the hell of it. Either way we're keeping as much of a lid on it until we can figure out what we're going up against. So again, anybody got a beef with anybody on the job lately?"
Both lieutenants shook their head, still feeling stunned by this revelation.
"Anybody made any threats against anybody at 51, any pissed off family members to any calls you were on lately?" Voight asked them.
"I don't think so," Kelly answered.
"Not that I know of," Casey added.
Voight nodded in understanding. "Okay, until we get any news on what's going on, keep your eyes open and watch your backs, you notice anything or anybody that even feels off, let us know."
"We'll pass the word along," Casey told him. "Thanks for the heads up."
Voight had returned to 51 during the next shift with Antonio Dawson and Jay Halstead to give the whole station house an update on the situation, which wasn't much. So far there were no actual suspects, and the people from the other firehouses had been talking, but so far nothing had come up that could say what happened had been aimed at them specifically. It still seemed to be anybody's guess who was targeting firehouses and why, and on 51's end there had been nothing new to report about any of the people they'd dealt with between the last shift and this one.
"As of right now there haven't been anymore incidents but that's no guarantee the heat's off," Voight explained to Boden and his men. "We don't know who this guy is, where he is, or what his next move is, so just be alert for anything suspicious."
"Copy that," Boden responded.
As the cops moved to leave the firehouse, Casey asked Voight, "Do you really think somebody is targeting First Responders for a specific reason?"
"Hell of a target," Hank responded, "The people who psychoanalyze guys like this would probably say we're looking for someone who tried to join CFD and was rejected with a history of mental and violence problems, unfortunately in this city there's no shortage of people who could fit that profile."
As they headed off the apparatus floor, Casey caught the glimpse of a car rolling up the street and for just a split second saw a gun aimed out of the driver side window.
"Look out!"
Casey threw himself against the older cop and tackled Voight to the ground just as an explosion of gunfire started. Casey was dazed and moaning from the burning pain running through his arm from his wrist to his elbow, it felt like he'd broken something. He was only half aware of the sound of return gunfire from the two other cops on the apparatus floor, everything seemed to run in slow motion after that. Casey tried to move his arm and when he did he saw the blood that covered the whole bottom half of his sleeve and that was quickly pooling on the floor. What happened next seemed to pass in a blur. He was aware of noises, people shouting, he felt the presence of people around them more than he actually saw them, he felt something tighten around his arm until he thought it was going to snap off at the joint entirely. He heard familiar commands being shouted and felt his body jerked off the ground and onto a backboard and into the ambulance. He heard the sirens blaring and the noise made his skull feel like it was going to explode. There were still people talking around him though he couldn't really see who it was, everything just felt surreal, like a dream.
The next thing he was actually aware of was waking up in the hospital after having a bullet dug out of his arm. Things were quiet now and calmed down, and he was alone. Or so he thought, as he started to close his eyes a movement from the corner startled him and he saw it was Voight.
It turned out that when Casey knocked Voight to the ground, Antonio and Halstead had opened fire on the driver of the car, and they'd managed to hit him, and he drove his car up the sidewalk and hit a lamp post. He was dead by the time anybody got to him, the name on his driver's license identified him as 32-year-old Roland Morgan. It would be a while before anything could really be determined about his motive, but it did appear that he'd had some long standing, slow burning grudge against the CFD.
Present-
Evening had turned to night, the sky was dark, and the steak dinner had been over for some time. The two plates now bearing only potato skins, bones and a pink coating of steak juices, sat on the table ignored as the cop and the firefighter enjoyed two glasses of whiskey.
"I should've said something before at the hospital," Voight broke the silence, "but you know I'm not good at speeches."
Casey choked on a short laugh, recalling the first night Voight marched into Molly's and very poorly tried to clear the air with the members of Firehouse 51.
"But I want to thank you for saving my life," Hank told the Truck lieutenant.
Casey half shrugged and replied, "Must've been temporary insanity."
That got a good laugh out of the cop.
Voight stood up and collected their plates and told Casey, "I can give you a ride back."
Casey shook his head, "Nah, that's fine..." he groaned as he stood up, "I'm good."
"You sure?" the cop looked at Matt like he knew otherwise.
"I haven't been taking the painkillers they gave me, so there can't be any interaction with the whiskey, so I should be unimpaired enough to drive myself back," Casey explained.
Voight looked at the younger man and just nodded, "You say so."
Casey headed for the back door, then turned back and said, "Thanks for inviting me over, Hank."
Hank looked at him as he stepped past him with the dishes, "No problem, Casey."
"I won't say 'Let's do it again sometime', but..." Casey trailed off.
Voight turned and looked back at him and responded, "You know where to find me."
Matt nodded, "Yeah, thanks." He left the kitchen, cut through the dining room and showed himself out the front door.