J.M.J.
A/N: Thank you so much for reading and possibly following or favoriting! Thank you especially to AllTrekkedUp for your review on chapter 7! Your support means a lot to me!
Chapter VIII
A Horrible Dilemma
As Squad 51 pulled up in front of 1616 North Leon Street, Roy DeSoto and Art Wicket exchanged puzzled glances. The address was a vacant lot.
"Maybe they gave the wrong number," Art ventured to guess.
"Or they meant to say 'avenue' or 'boulevard' instead of 'street,'" Roy suggested.
Art picked up the mic for the radio. "I guess all we can do is ask for a callback to check the address. If they did give a wrong number, it could be somewhere around here. Why don't you go knock on some doors while I check the address? I'll hit the horn if we're on the wrong street altogether."
Roy nodded and opened the door to the squad. He made his way to the nearest house and knocked on the door.
Meanwhile, Art requested the callback. It only took a moment for the dispatcher to give a reply: "The callback number is nonexistent."
"Can't give their phone number or their address right," Art muttered. Well, if Roy couldn't find out anything from knocking on doors, there wouldn't be anything they could do.
No one had answered Roy's knock at the first house he tried, so he went on to the next one, which had a covered porch. He glanced over his shoulder toward the squad as he waited for someone to answer the door, wondering whether Art had learned anything or not, but he couldn't see the squad from here. A moment later, the door opened a crack, and Roy could see a man peering out.
"I'm from the LA County Fire Department," Roy explained, gesturing toward his badge. "Is everything all right?"
"It's getting better," the man replied.
"Excuse me?" Roy asked in bewilderment at the strange response.
Instead of explaining what he had meant, the man opened the door wider. Now Roy could see that he was holding a gun in his hand. Roy took a step back in alarm.
"What is this?" he asked, unable to think of anything else to say.
"This is about a hit-and-run 'accident' the other day," the man said.
It only took a moment for Roy to figure out the rest of what was going on from this revelation. "You were the driver."
"That's right." The man waved his gun in a gesture for Roy to come in through the door. Seeing the barrel of the gun pointed at him, Roy didn't think he had much other choice. "I was a little concerned it would be that other paramedic instead of you who would come to the door, but I figured if that happened, I could just send him on his way and try again later. It wasn't that much of a risk after all."
"So, you're the one who called in the unknown injury," Roy concluded.
The man nodded. "It's a pretty simple thing to get the fire department to come to you, you know. Now I've only got those two cops to worry about. Maybe you'll be more helpful in tracking them down than your buddy has been."
At those words, Roy's heart sank. So, that was why Johnny hadn't turned up that morning. Roy had been suspecting some kind of trouble, but nothing like this. "You haven't hurt him?"
"Not yet," the man said. "I'm not going to try to make you believe that I'm not going to hurt him, and you, for that matter. The whole point of this is to keep you two and those cops from talking, possibly identifying me. The only reason I'm putting off the inevitable is because I need you two to help me find those cops. See, the police department puts the number of the unit on the top, not all handy and visible on the side like the fire department. Besides that, the police car was too far away for me to see the number even if it had been on the side. So, I wasn't able to find out who the cops were as easily as I could find out who the two firemen were."
Roy didn't reply to this. It was obvious this man was unbalanced. Trying to reason with him wouldn't do any good, and it might antagonize him. Roy couldn't risk him changing his mind and deciding he didn't need Roy's help after all. Even more importantly, he needed to find out where this fellow was keeping Johnny.
"Of course," the man went on, speaking as if he had an ace up his sleeve, "I realize that knowing what your fate is to be whether you cooperate or not may not be the most encouraging for you to cooperate. Because of that, I've decided that I need some additional leverage. I know you have a wife and two kids. Nothing needs to happen to them if you just tell me the names of the two cops. That's all I need – just the names. I can figure the rest out from there. I'll even give you time to think it over. In fact, you can talk it over with your pal. I'm sure the two of you can make a reasonable decision."
Roy flinched at this. The whole situation was bad enough without Joanne and the kids being dragged into it. Roy knew he had to protect them no matter what, but he couldn't in good conscience give this lunatic the names of the two officers. Doing that would be as much as signing their death warrants. It was a horrible dilemma.
/
Pete had accompanied Detective Sergeant Lennox to Fire Station 51 to get more details on John Gage's disappearance. Considering Pete's involvement in the case already, Lennox had requested Mac to let Pete work with him on it, and if it wasn't cleared up by the time Jim Reed came back on duty, to bring him in on it as well. Mac had agreed, recognizing how valuable the two officers' involvement in the investigation could be.
Right now they were talking to Captain Stanley in the kitchen area. The paramedic unit was out on a call, but the three other firemen from the engine company were staying close by, interested in what was going on. The conversation didn't particularly reveal anything new, and Sergeant Lennox was starting to wrap it up when the phone rang. Mike Stoker went to answer it in the captain's office. He was back a moment later.
"Cap, it's the battalion chief," he said. "He wants to talk to you."
Stanley raised his eyebrows, wondering what the battalion chief wanted now. He excused himself to go answer the phone.
"I don't suppose any of you fellows have any light to shed on all this?" Lennox turned to the three remaining firemen.
"The captain knows as much as any of us do," Chet replied. "DeSoto's the only one who might know more, but he didn't seem like it this morning."
Lennox glanced at his watch. "We'll wait a little longer and see if he gets back. Otherwise, we'll just have to come back later."
Cap's phone call took several minutes. When he returned, he looked concerned. "This is not a good day for paramedics, apparently. Art Wicket called in to Dispatch, who turned it over to the chief. The address on that call was a vacant lot, so Roy went to knock on some doors and see if he could learn anything while Art got a callback on the number. Now he can't find Roy anywhere."
/
The door slammed behind Johnny as he darted through it. He winced. He hadn't meant to close it that hard. Nobody would have heard, at least. The car was just pulling up in front now. The noise of the engine would have blocked out the door slamming.
Now Johnny had to make another choice. He'd taken too long leaving the shack, and now he was cornered. For the moment, he was hidden behind the shack, and the kidnapper couldn't see him. However, the second the kidnapper walked through the front door, he'd realize that his prisoner had escaped. Johnny could make a dash for the nearest cover then and take a chance at being too late, or he could make a dash now and take a chance at being seen. He looked around him for what the nearest cover would be. The desert landscape didn't offer much. There was a small clump of trees about two hundred fifty yards away, and otherwise there was only the small dips and falls of the land itself. This wasn't going to be easy.
He held back, deciding to wait. At least it would take the kidnapper a few minutes to find him that way, rather than the seconds that running for it now would give him. He heard the car doors open – two doors. Then he heard a man's voice speaking to someone. So, more than one person had arrived in the car. In that case, either this wasn't the kidnapper at all or he had help. Johnny decided he'd better find out which it was right away. He peered around the corner of the shack just enough to see. When he caught a glance of who was with the kidnapper, his heart sank. It was Roy.