Author's note: Thanks to everyone who took the time to review my story. I've allowed a couple of guest reviews to remain even though they weren't positive because I don't want to be thin-skinned. Neither review was abusive. The reviewers did not attack me or anything I was trying to say, just told me what they thought the problems were with my writing. That's fine. I disagreed about the flashback, but I'm not surprised somebody thought it. It would just take WAY too much work to rewrite it another way, and other people didn't seem to think it was that bad, so I left it alone. The other one, somewhere in chapter 1 or 2, in I actually did fix.
Second author's note: The people have spoken! Readers seemed to be tracking with me and enjoying the story until I put this chapter up. I guess must have kind of "jumped the shark." Thank you for letting me know kindly! You have no idea how much I appreciate that! That, I am guessing, is a real value of this kind of writing. I can find out quickly just where I've messed up, and can fix it. If it wasn't for people's earlier kind reviews, I might have simply given up and decided my story was "dumb." But people seemed to be liking it before, so I have the idea it is salvageable. I have reworked this chapter and taken out a whole sub-plot that didn't seem to be working for the readers and moved in a whole different direction. Hopefully it will be a little better now. :)
Also, and this wasn't due to a guest review, but a very kind and supportive PM that also told me that some of the details of the flashback were incorrect, I have rewritten a small, inconsequential part of chapter 5.
As always, I don't own these guys & don't make any money off of them. I'm just having fun sharing my imagination and seeing what people think.
A few minutes before seven the next morning, Johnny and Roy were just done delivering a patient, a victim of an early morning traffic accident, to Rampart, when they were met in the hallway of the Emergency department by the two FBI agents.
"Mr. Gage," the man said. "Your dispatch told us we could find you here. There's been some new developments. Would you like to talk here or back at your station?"
Johnny thought for a minute. "Let's go in the lounge. At this time of the morning nobody else is there. Oh, and Roy can come too. I've told him everything."
Both agents nodded toward Roy and they all went into the lounge.
"Mr. Gage," Mr. Harding began. "First let me tell you that your hunch seems to have been correct. Two hours ago we picked up Athena Clinton at LAX getting off a flight from Rapid City, South Dakota. She has confessed to the murder of Patricia Two Elk, and to threatening you."
"Did she say why she did it?" Roy asked.
"Not really. You need to understand, Ms. Clinton is in a somewhat fragile mental state. But we have done some legwork of our own in an attempt to find the motive, and we believe we have found it. "
"Okay, what?" Johnny asked.
It was the female agent, Ms. Warner, who actually told him the story. "We started from where you said you had last seen Ms. Clinton, at Harbor General Hospital two days after Thanksgiving, 1974, and that the next day you found that she had been admitted to a treatment center, but were not told where. Well, we found out where. It wasn't a drug rehabilitation center, as you seemed to believe, but a psychiatric center. You may be an excellent paramedic, but you were completely wrong in your diagnosis of what was wrong with your former girlfriend. She wasn't on drugs, she was off them. She had a history of paranoid schizophrenia, and had been taking some powerful anti-psychotic drugs, which she had stopped, cold turkey, some six weeks before."
"I had no idea!" Johnny gasped.
"She did tell us the reason she stopped taking them." Ms. Warner continued, taking no notice of Johnny's reaction.
"And that was…" Johnny prompted.
"She stopped taking her meds when you and she first were…intimate."
Johnny looked confused. "But...but..." he stammered. "We nev..." he trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence.
"Ah. Not surpising. Apparently she had a false pregnancy while she was in the mental hospital. She wanted a child very badly to replace the baby she had lost. Her mother told us that was all she wanted out of you, the only reason she ever dated anybody.
Johnny winced, and nodded. He could see it, now that he was told about it. Her very oddness which he had thought was creativity screamed mental illness to him now, and he could see that much of her behavior had reflected that, and not drugs he had supposed. And the "surprise" she had had for him must have been the beginning of her believing that she was pregnant when she wasn't.
Ms. Warner continued relentlessly. "Apparently, this false pregnancy continued for two years while she was committed to a mental institution. She wasn't released until she was able to realize that she wasn't and never had been. This realization came with a profound anger toward you, as though you had denied her what she wanted or taken it away from her. Somehow her doctors didn't realize how dangerous this anger made her, and she was released anyway, and helped to get a job and an apartment. The apartment, very purposefully on her part, was located only three blocks from your fire station. She has been stalking you for six months. During this time her co-workers say that she rarely spent any money, even going hungry, as she was saving up for something, apparently a round trip plane ticket to Rapid City."
Johnny closed his eyes painfully and ran a hand through his hair. "I never saw her. How could she have been stalking me?"
The other agent chimed in. "We said she was crazy. We didn't say she wasn't smart."
"I guess since Athena's been caught that means you'll be leaving for South Dakota right away?" Roy asked. "Would you like me to take you to the airport when you go and pick you and Kimberly up when you get back?"
Johnny looked at Roy with gratitude. He hadn't thought of that. "Yeah, if you'll do that for me, I'd appreciate it. I'll get you the Trent's phone number in case anything comes up. It's who my mother works for, or who she was working for, and the only number where I will be able to be reached while I'm gone."
"I see. This is going to cost you an awful lot, isn't it?"
"Yeah, it is, first for the airline ticket, and then you can't fly to the reservation. I'll have to rent a car in Rapid City. Thanks for offering the ride. That'll save me the cost of an airline ticket."
They headed for the locker room so they could get out of their bunker pants and into their uniforms before their shift ended in about half an hour. Then Roy walked to the kitchen, and John to the dorm, making a beeline for the phone. First he called the airport to arrange for a flight. He bought a round trip ticket and a second one-way child's fare for the return trip, leaving the date open since he didn't know what to expect. He barely blinked at the total fare, though it was more than he'd hoped. He knew it would be expensive, and he wasn't used to flying. He hung up and breathed deeply, exhaling slowly and trying to relax. To his surprise and consternation he found himself near tears at the thought that the child's fare for the return trip was the first gift he'd ever bought his daughter.
