Chapter 6 – Phantom Menace

Boy, once that Chet gets on a kick, he is unbearable, Evvy thought uncharitably as Chet launched into yet another terrible rendition of "No Woman, No Cry." Ever since Evvy's mom had visited that morning, the lineman had tormented her with off-key versions of various bits of reggae songs, and had addressed her in a pseudo-accent that was stuck halfway between the Queen of England and Bob Marley. Evvy set her teeth and resisted the urge to enlighten him that her family was from Barbados, not Jamaica. She really wanted to clock him hard with the frying pan he was drying, but instead concentrated as hard as she could on her poker hand.

In a way, she understood Chet's impulse. Everyone was on edge about the Booby-Trap Arsonist, and the tension was thick in the Station. Any bit of levity served to relieve that tension and take all of their minds off the malicious actions of the arsonist. Evvy just didn't have the patience that John had (in his "Pigeon" persona) to subtly go along with Chet's distractions. She didn't know which was wearing on her nerves faster: waiting for the arsonist's next strike, or listening to Chet mutilate her Barbadian heritage. Right now, they seemed almost equal on the menace scale.

"I raise twenty," Cap said confidently, tossing two chips into the pile. Although there were no actual monetary stakes involved in the game (everyone got the same amount of chips at the start), John, Roy, and Marco shifted in their seats and took a closer look at their cards. Evvy had two number three cards and two heart cards; she had no idea whether her hand was a good or bad one.

As they waited for Mike to make his decision to bet, raise, call, or fold, John said, "Oh, hey, Evvy, I forgot to tell you I found my advanced rescue training materials. I brought them in, just in case you wanted to take a look. They're in my locker."

"Yuh wanna be a rescue mon, mon?" Chet asked from the sink.

Evvy ignored him. "Thanks, John. I appreciate that."

Mike threw in two ten dollar chips and then one more. "Raise ten." He looked expectantly at Evvy. "Bet, call, or fold."

Evvy glanced at her three of diamonds and three of spades and figured it was a junk hand. She wasn't having the same beginner's luck she had enjoyed at pool. "Eh," she said, placing her hand face down, "probably should get out while the getting is good."

"You fold?" Cap asked.

"Yeah, fold. I'm folding."

Roy eyed her with suspicion. "Do you even understand the rules of the game?"

She shrugged. "I don't have any of the pretty picture cards so I'm reasonably sure I can't win." Everyone sat up straight and tried not to look excited, knowing that the face cards were still in play. She stood, pretty sure that folding meant that she didn't have to play anymore. "You mind if I grab those books, John? I'd love to get started."

"Yeah, sure, no problem," he answered distractedly.

It wasn't until she had rounded the corner into the locker room that she heard Chet yelp, "Wait, Evvy –" but by then she had grasped the handle to John's locker and pulled.

And received a face full of ice cold water. She may have made a sound on the dog-whistle frequency, she wasn't entirely sure. For a moment, she was too shocked to move, and then the unpleasant sensation of frigid water dripping down the open neck of her shirt hit her.

Six faces crowded around, most of them laughing. John wordlessly handed her a paper towel. Chet stood there unrepentantly, his mustache twitching with not-very-well-hidden mirth. "Looks like the Phantom missed his mark," he said, on a giggle unbecoming of a grown man.

Had Chet simply apologized for the misfire—clearly meant for John—Evvy would have instantly forgiven and forgotten. The Phantom was well known on A-Shift, and although his pranks were childish and inconvenient, they were not mean spirited. But instead, he laughed heartily, and Evvy could tell he was considering whether the Phantom had inadvertently found himself a new Pigeon. And that would be a very bad decision on the Phantom's part, Evvy decided.

"You all right?" Marco asked her, almost sounding sincere, even as he patted Chet on the back and stifled a laugh.

"I'm fine," Evvy said tightly, dabbing at her face and chest with the paper towel. As she turned to throw the towel in the trash, she saw the uh-oh look that passed between Roy and Cap, two of the three married men on A-Shift: the recognition of that particular glint in her eye, that particular expression on her face that said that the situation was everything in the world except "fine."

On the next shift, all day long, both the Engine and the Squad bounced from run to run. The paramedics had the worst of it. Minutes after backing into the bay from one call, they would be immediately summoned to the next, even before Roy could shift the vehicle into park. During the one significant break the Engine had—just enough time to dash into the Station and wolf down cold cut sandwiches for lunch—the Squad eased into its spot and John bolted from the passenger side, making a beeline for the latrine. Even as the door swung shut behind him, the klaxon sounded again for the Station, and sixty seconds later, he dashed back, holding a damp paper towel, and flung himself into the seat, not even having enough time to close the Squad's door fully before Roy peeled out again. Evvy had no time to feel sorry for the man as she stuffed the last of her roll into her mouth and swung herself yet again up onto the Engine.

With each call, a feeling of dread descended upon the crew. Every fire-involved building held the possibility that the Booby-Trap Arsonist might be at work. Two other incidents had occurred over the past week and a half, one involving 10s, and one serious event that had put a lineman from 129s into the ICU with a serious concussion. The only discernible patterns were that the buildings struck were usually vacant for some reason, newly constructed or abandoned and waiting for demolition, and that the trap involved easily-obtainable solvents that would ignite when the fire was well underway. Evvy especially worried about John and Roy, because the paramedics regularly swept buildings for victims that may or may not be trapped, and rarely took hose support with them.

Despite the stress, or maybe as an ill-advised attempt to relieve it, the Phantom turned his attention fully toward Evvy. Resurrecting a litany of greatest hits that had already been deployed on the hapless Gage over the years, the Phantom struck randomly with Evvy in his sights. He replaced the sugar with salt for her morning cup of coffee. He slimed her locker door handle with Vaseline. He tried, but failed, to nail her with a water bomb in the kitchen cabinet, apparently forgetting that Evvy was inches shorter than John. He replaced the filling in her beloved Oreos with mint-flavoured toothpaste. With each "surprise," Evvy pasted on her I'm-a-good-sport face, and made no comment.

It was only after she rolled out of bed at one thirty in the morning and jammed her feet into her turnout boots—only to find that the Phantom had left a raw egg in the left one—that she decided that payback was a bitch, and so was she. Chet's self-satisfied grin as she stomped to the Engine, the shattered egg crunching and squishing under her foot, cemented her resolve.

The Station rolled out to a single-vehicle accident and arrived in good time, there being little traffic at this hour of the morning. Evvy manned a reel line, washing down the pavement to dilute any leaking fuel, muttering imaginative curses about Chet's lineage to herself as the egg in her boot congealed. The Cadillac had skidded off the road and plowed into a tree, its mashed hood a silent testament to the high rate of speed at which the vehicle had been traveling. John and Roy laboured to extricate the four very drunk young men from the car; from where Evvy stood, it did not appear that any of them was seriously injured.

"Hey, Chet," John called, "we're going to need the Jaws here. The driver's side door is jammed."

"On it," Chet answered, already trotting toward the Engine. No matter how irritating the lineman may have been at the Station, on scene, he was nothing but professional and helpful to the paramedics. The crew had its hands full, though, as the college-aged victims did everything in their inebriated power to make extricating them from the wrecked vehicle difficult. One made the very unwise decision to crack open a can of beer just as the LAPD officer strolled up.

Once the doors were popped open, two of the victims tried to make a run for it. The officer bolted after one, and Chet dropped the Jaws and chased after the other. Evvy couldn't see much of anything in the darkness, but she could hear the sounds of struggle and shouts of protest as the victims were tackled and restrained.

"Kelly?" Cap called worriedly into the darkness. There were muffled sounds of pain, and a surprised and angry, "Hey, man, calm down!" before Kelly's voice wafted back with an "I'm okay Cap." Cap shook his head and gestured for Evvy to go assist the paramedics, who were having their own difficulties.

The driver had a small cut on his forehead that was being tended to by Roy. He raised unfocused eyes toward Evvy as she peered over Roy's shoulder through the ruined door. "Hey," he slurred, "I thought Shaft was a cop, not a fireman." The next sound out of his mouth was an indignant "Ow!" as Roy pressed the gauze maybe a little harder than necessary over his minor wound.

"Evvy, a hand here?" John asked from the back seat of the passenger side. "This one's passed out – no visible wounds or head injury. Can you grab the backboard just in case? And I'll need the biophone." Evvy was glad to make herself useful, and helped maneuver the young man onto the board for further assessment. As John took his vitals, she thought she saw the kid's eyes open briefly, then close again, his head lolling limply to the side. She didn't think he would win any awards for his acting. Her suspicions on the severity of his injury were confirmed when the eyes flew open again as John swabbed his arm to insert the IV that Rampart had ordered. The syringe flew out of John's hand as the young man tried unsuccessfully to escape from the backboard to which he was strapped.

John just sat back on his heels—the victim was restrained and not going anywhere—with an expression that said he would give anything to be back in his warm bunk. Finally, he remarked, "Look, man, I can put this IV in a lot of different places. Your arm is the easiest. But I can pick a another spot—" he let his eyes drift down to the young man's belt buckle. "Your choice."

Evvy choked back a laugh at the scandalized look on the victim's face as his imagination took him to places the paramedic would never actually go. "Naw, man, my arm's fine, do it in my arm. . ."

"Mm-hm," John said mildly, skillfully inserting the IV. "Now you've got to keep this arm still."

"Yeah, man, anything you say," the victim said, suitably subdued.

As the ambulance attendants transferred the now-compliant victim to the gurney, Evvy murmured, "You are a terrible person, Pretty."

"I'm too tired to disagree with you there, Gumby," John said, and picked up the biophone to escort the victim to Rampart.

January was winding its way to a close, and it didn't seem that the authorities were any closer to identifying or catching the Booby-Trap Arsonist. Evvy flicked the newspaper open as she sat at the kitchen table, perusing a fairly sensationalized feature story on the string of arsons. Mentally, she went through the suspicious fires that 51s had been called to, which, at last count, totaled four. The arsonist had been busy, and had seemed to settle on a modus operandi that worked for him or her. The initial fire would be located deep within the building, or on an upper floor, aided by accelerants. Once the firefighters were busy subduing the blaze, hidden containers of flammable liquids—gasoline, turpentine, ethyl alcohol—would overheat and explode. All of the volatile organic compounds, or VOCs, used so far in the fires attributed to the arsonist were easily obtainable by just about anyone, which left few specific leads to follow. The only saving grace so far was that there had been no civilian casualties, except for the unlucky few who had been hit with debris from the car crash setup earlier that month. The arsonist apparently only targeted firefighters, not members of the general public. So far, anyway, Evvy thought pessimistically. The last briefing on the investigation included a warning that the arsons were increasing in frequency and size, which meant that the person likely was getting less and less gratification from each crime. It was only a matter of time before he or she targeted a populated building.

Evvy shook her head as she came to the end of the article. The writer's tone had been almost admiring, as if the arsonist were some kind of clever folk hero. Yeah, it's all fun and games until it takes out a city block.

She was distracted by the sound of the Squad backing in. The paramedics had left early on a "woman down" run nearly two hours ago. Roy shuffled into the kitchen and went straight for the coffee pot. After a moment, John followed, his expression blank, and walked directly out the kitchen door to the parking lot without speaking. Cap frowned as he watched, then said, "Roy? Is he okay? Was it a bad run?"

Roy placed his cup gently down on the counter with a shaking hand and rubbed his eyes. "Yeah, Cap. This one was pretty bad. Johnny's taking it hard." Cap shot another worried look toward the kitchen door.

When John didn't reappear after five minutes, Evvy got up and poured a cup of coffee, then ducked out the door. She found John sitting on top of his Rover's hood, staring into the distance. Tapping him on the shoulder, she handed him the cup and then climbed up beside him. She didn't ask if he was all right; he clearly wasn't. But John worked through his thoughts with a torrent of words, so he would talk when he was good and ready. She waited.

"Fifteen year old girl," John muttered. "Fifteen. She was too scared to tell her parents she was pregnant, so . . ." He closed his eyes. "She used knitting needles." Evvy didn't say anything. "By the time her mother found her this morning, she was pretty far gone. She bled out in the ambulance before we even got to Rampart." He held the hot mug without taking a sip, hunching forward and wrapping both hands around it as if he were cold. "I just don't understand why . . ."

Not for the first time, Evvy reflected on the difference between her perspective and his. An unwanted pregnancy for a man was a problem, an inconvenience, but not something that would necessarily derail his whole life. "I guess when you're fifteen, you think getting pregnant is the end of the world. You can't see the options."

John sighed. "It's just such a waste."

Evvy wrapped her arms around her upraised knees. "It's hard to know what you would do in that situation," she commented quietly. "If I found out I was pregnant right now, today, I'd feel like my career was over. Probably like my life was over, but I'd figure it out. When you're fifteen, you can only see the problem and not the solutions." She fixed her eyes on the smoggy horizon, then said, "She probably felt like she was all alone. But she wasn't. You were there with her at the end. There wasn't anything you could do for her, but what you did was everything."

John was silent for a long moment. Then he gave a sad version of his half-grin. "You ever considered becoming a–"

She cut him off, as usual. "I don't want to be a paramedic, Pretty, for the millionth time."

He elbowed her lightly, careful not to spill his coffee. "I was going to say, ever considered becoming a therapist," he said.

"I'd have to actually talk to people," she pointed out mildly. "Not a strength."

John nodded in agreement a little too quickly for her liking. "Right." He gulped a big mouthful of caffeine and knocked her arm again. "But thanks."

"Yeah," she said, sliding off the car. "I'll, uh, I'll do the latrine for you if you want to sit out here awhile and get your head together." At his surprised look, she shrugged. "Cleaning, I can do. Talking, not so much." Before he could say anything else, she stuffed her hands into her trouser pockets and headed back into the station.