As Chet had instructed, Johnny pulled into the parking lot of Chet’s apartment complex around one. Chet told him that he was picking Cassie up at Rampart that morning and that they would bring in pizza. He had been ordered to bring all his clues and whatever else he had and that they would figure it all out that afternoon. Chet had sounded doubtful. Johnny had refused to be doubtful. After yesterday, he wanted to catch this guy so badly, that he intended to devote all of his energy and attention to doing so. It wasn’t just the Department’s safety that was on the line, in his mind. It was the Department’s reputation.

He picked up the legal pads, county maps and charts that he had made. He was sure the answer was in there somewhere but it just wasn’t clear enough yet. He wondered how bright it was to let the Kellys in on this. Especially Chet. He could be just trying to see all this so he could make fun of it. Somehow though, Johnny doubted that. This was too serious. Too much had happened. Johnny had stared at all this till he was blue in the face and had not been able to work out a solution. Maybe fresh eyes could see something he had missed.

He was glad it was not raining as he juggled all his papers in one hand and rang Chet’s doorbell with the other. Chet, of course, did not have normal doorbell. He had one that sounded like the one on the Addams Family. It had almost made him jump out of his skin the first time he heard it. Chet didn’t live in a regular apartment, like he did. It was what they call a townhouse which meant basically that it had a garage. The front door was next to the garage door. A flight of carpeted stairs just inside the door led to the actual apartment. Chet had bought the place with a VA loan. He’d gotten a good deal as the previous owners were selling it due to a divorce. Chet claimed his mortgage was cheaper than Johnny’s rent but to Johnny the whole set up was weird. Chet only owned the inside of the place not the building or the land it was sitting on. This whole condo idea sounded like a scam to him. He was sure it would never catch on.

Chet came down and let him in. He made no effort to relieve Johnny of any of his burdens. “Perfect timing,” he called over his shoulder as he headed back up the stairs. “The pizza guy just left.”

Johnny trudged up the stairs behind Chet. They opened into a good sized living room. A large L-shaped sofa sat in the center of the room with a square coffee table in front of it. If it had fewer things cluttering it up, most people probably would have considered it a well appointed room. The thing that got to Johnny was the fact that everything was beige. Carpet, sofa, drapes. His place might not be this fancy but at least there was some color. Chet had bought the place furnished but he had not done anything to personalize the decor that Johnny could see, other than clutter it up with junk like barbed wire mounted on a wooden board and a few sports posters that looked like they had come free with something.

He also saw what he usually saw when he came up these stairs. A blur of orange streaked down the hallway toward the bedrooms faster than the human eye could focus on it. He’d yet to be in the same room as Chet’s cat long enough to see if it was the same one that had had kittens on his bed at the station a few years ago.

Chet walked into the kitchen that opened off of this room. “Wanna beer or something?” Chet called.

“Sure,” Johnny called back. He began putting his papers down on the floor next to the sofa.

Cassie was sitting Indian style in the part of the sofa where the two sections met in an L. She pointed to each of the two large pizza boxes on the table. “Carnivore and herbivore,” she said simply.

“What?”

“This one has meat. That one is all veggies,” Chet translated, handing Johnny a beer and sitting down. He opened the box with the meat pizza and grabbed a large slice. “Help yourself. They’re on Cassie.”

“I don’t know, Slob Boy, looks like you have quite a bit on you too,” Cassie laughed as some of the cheese-covered toppings slid off of Chet’s pizza and onto his shirt.

“Ah shit,” Chet groaned. He got up and went into the kitchen.

“That’s what you get for making your sister pay,” Johnny called after him.

“She’s used to it. It’s not like she can cook or anything,” Chet hollered back.

“Come off it,” Johnny laughed. “Everybody can cook.”

“Not me,” Cassie vowed. “I was thrown out of Home Ec in high school and my teacher made me register my hands as lethal weapons with the Good Housekeeping Institute.”

“It’s true,” Chet agreed. He returned from the kitchen with a wet spot on his shirt where the pizza had dripped. “She has two dishes. One’s toast and the other isn’t.”

Cassie flipped him the bird with her good hand.

Johnny just bit into his own slice. This reminded him a little bit of the sibling interaction at Chili’s house only much cruder. He wondered what Mama Chilibeck would make of the Kellys. Johnny decided to change the subject. A full blown Kelly fight would waste way too much time. “I’m surprised that you got them to let you out of Rampart this soon.”

“Oh that was easy. I just told them that it might not be safe to have so many firefighters around. It might attract the madman and if he attacked, too many innocent patients might get hurt,” Cassie said casually while nibbling at a slice of pizza from the other box.

Johnny gasped in shock. “I never thought of anything like that.”

“It takes a really evil mind to come up with an idea like that,” Chet agreed.

“This guy has an evil mind. If we are going to catch him, we have to think like him,” Cassie said. “That’s what they say in the mystery books.”

“Mystery books,” Chet scoffed. “They aren’t like real crime. They just write them so morons like you can feel smart by figuring it out.”

“Mysteries may be my guilty pleasure, Dog Face, but they are still a cut above that spy crap your read. There’s no figuring anything out in those. Guy with tons of gadgets saves world and gets girl with tons of cleavage. Read one and you’ve read them all!” Cassie answered back.

“What kind of sick girl wants to read about murder, anyway? That’s what I want to know,” Chet demanded.

“I’d sure as hell read about Agatha Christie getting her man than some bodice bound bimbo, whose bra size is larger than her IQ, getting her man!”

“All right, you guys. Enough!” Johnny interrupted what promised to be a lengthy exchange. “If everyone is finished eating, let’s get down to solving our own mystery, huh?”

“Who put him in charge?” Chet asked Cassie.

“He’s the guy with the clues. That makes him the head detective,” Cassie said firmly.

“Maybe he ought to go do his detecting in the head then,” Chet scoffed as he picked up the pizza boxes and brought them into the kitchen.

“Ignore him, Johnny. Let’s see what you’ve got there.” Cassie carefully adjusted her sling a little and leaned forward.

Johnny opened up the county map he had brought and laid it on the table. “I’ve marked out every station that has been hit along with the date that it was hit. The problem is I can’t seem to find any kind of pattern.” He picked up his legal pad. “This is a list of the same thing, including method used, whether it was a hit on the station or the crew, all that. Again no pattern. Our station has been hit once but the crew had been hit twice on calls ---”

“Twice?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Chet said, sitting down with another beer. “I forgot to tell you, he tried to make a Johnny-gabob out of Gage last night.”

Johnny felt the need to tell the whole story now. He had not taken the time to add that attack to his list so he did so as he talked. When he was finished, Cassie asked to see the list.

“This is a lot more detailed that the one that was in the paper this morning,” she commented. “Where did you get the info?”

“Well,” Johnny hesitated a bit. “I couldn’t help but notice this memo on the cap’s desk when I was filling out the log yesterday.”

“I’ll bet that’s against the rules,” Chet teased.

“Not the rules of good detective work. You find info wherever you can,” Cassie stated.

Johnny nodded in agreement. Reading mysteries was also a guilty pleasure of his. He’d always solved it in the books way before now.

“I can’t see any pattern either,” Cassie sighed handing him back his list. She was thoughtful for a minute then looked at Chet. “Do you have an extra calendar laying around here, Big Brother?”

“Calendar? What for?”

“I have an idea.”

“Well then we’d better find a calendar and circle the day. It’s not like you have many ideas.”

“Just get it,” she snarled, glaring at him dangerously and he got up an left the room.

Johnny felt like he was getting whiplash from all the zingers that were bouncing back and forth in the room. Chet returned with a calendar which he quickly opened in such a way that only the month would show not the nearly naked woman that was the photo that month.

“She’ll never drown,” Cassie commented sardonically, having noted the size of the breasts on the model. “Get a pen,” she commanded Chet.

He made a face and picked one up off the table. She read off the dates of each attack and he marked them on the calendar. “What does this prove?” Chet demanded as they all looked at the calendar.

“No, it was a good idea,” Johnny said. “It might have established a pattern of what days this guys attacks or something.”

“Maybe the pattern is that there is no pattern,” Chet signed.

“Let me see that.” Cassie held out her good hand for the calendar. When he had handed it to her she looked at it again. “Wait a minute! There’s no pattern for when he attacks, but look there’s a pattern for when he doesn’t. See no Tuesdays!”

They both looked at the calendar. She was right. “What’s Tuesday? His bowling night?” Chet asked.

“Bowling night?” Johnny scoffed.

“Maybe he has some kind of appointment on Tuesdays,” Cassie suggested.

“What getting his hair done? I’d hate to think we were being stalked by someone who didn’t look his best,” Chet sneered. “Not that it makes any difference what he looks like. No one has ever seen him ----except you, Gage.”

“I didn’t see him either. He grabbed me from behind. All I saw was that damn knife. I didn’t see anything. Or hear anything --- or....”

“Or what?”

Johnny suddenly snapped his fingers. “I smelled something. That’s what I was trying to remember.”

“What BO? So now all we have to do is sniff everybody in the county while-----”

“No, Chet, it was a medicine-y smell.”

“Medicine-y? Did they teach you that word in Paramedic training?” Chet asked.

“Shut up, Chet. He’s onto something. If we can figure out what kind of medicine he’s taking it might lead us somewhere. People that dole out medicine keep records. Good records,” Cassie said.

“You guys know what different medicines smell like on a person's breath?” Chet doubted this.

“Sometimes. But this wasn’t on his breath I don’t think.” Johnny was still wracking his brain.

“Well, if it wasn’t on his breath it must be something that is applied topically.” Cassie was wracking her brain as well.

“What?” Chet asked. “What kind of topic are you talking about?”

“Applied to the skin.” Cassie did not want to waste time explaining medical terms to him.

“Like sunburn lotion?” Chet asked.

Cassie just nodded her head in annoyance but Johnny snapped his fingers triumphantly. “That’s it, Chet. Burns not sunburn but what I smelled smelled like the kind of ointment they give you for burns. I bet this guy has some kind of burn.”

“It still doesn’t tell us who he is or why is so pissed off at the Fire Department,” Chet pointed out.

“Maybe he blames us because he was burned. Remember what Barb said yesterday, people want to sue the Department sometimes over fires,” Cassie said.

“Yeah to try and get money out of the Department. Nobody goes after the Department the way he has over a little burn,” Chet argued.

“Maybe it wasn’t a little burn,” Cassie offered.

“The mummy!”Johnny remembered.

“Now it’s not a guy -- it’s somebody’s mother?” Chet was lost.

“No, Chet, mummy, like the monster. When Roy and I pulled up to the CalTex plant there was a kid there. He claimed that he and his friends had seem the Mummy hanging around the plant.”

“And what does some kid’s overactive imagination have to do with this case?” Chet asked in disgust.

“What if it wasn’t his imagination. What if he did see a mummy?” Johnny challenged.

“John,” Chet said kindly. “There’s no such thing as mummies.”

“What are mummies, Chet?” Cassie asked, with a knowing grin on her face.

“Dead guys wrapped in bandages,” Chet answered flippantly. “So now we are looking for a dead guy?”

“Not a dead guy, Chet,” Johnny said, picking up his forgotten beer. “This guy is very much alive but he’s been badly burned and he’s wrapped in bandages.”

“Maybe to protect skin grafts,” Cassie agreed.

“Most likely. Which means he was really badly burned, bad enough to give him a grudge against the Fire Department if he blames us,” Johnny surmised, leaning back into the cushions of Chet’s couch.

“The motive,” Cassie said with a nod.

“The real motive -- not washing out of the academy or getting fired like the cops said. They have always thought it was a firemen. They are even more sure now that he’s been seen in regulation gear,” Johnny commented.

“He could have picked that up at any of the stations he’s been in,” Cassie put in.

“Right. But he’s not a fireman. He was never a fireman. He was a victim.” Johnny finished off the rest of his beer. They were making progress. It was beginning to make sense.

“So what do we do now? Tell the cops?” Chet wondered.

“This is all just speculation,” Cassie noted.

“Oh crap, I died and went to a TV cop show,” Chet complained. “Just let me know when it’s time for the freeze frame.”

“You’re right,” Johnny said to Cassie, ignoring Chet. “We need more solid evidence. And we still have no ID on the suspect.”

“We have to lay our hands on some tangible proof,” Cassie agreed, knowing that she had Johnny were on the same wavelength.

“And where would we find this proof?” Chet asked sarcastically.

“The Fire Department records,” Cassie said. “Barb said that they keep all the tapes. We could probably find the tape of the original call. They have a tape of his voice from when he called in the false alarm.”

“And all we have to do is match them!” Johnny grinned widely.

“Oh I see, all we have to do is con our way into the Dispatch center -----” Chet began.

“Piece of cake. I’ll talk to Barb. I bet there’s a way,” Cassie interrupted.

“Okay. Okay even supposing for a minute that we could get in there, what do we do sit there and listen to the tape of every call in what the last year? Five years? We don’t even know that it was our department that got the call.”

“Oh yes we do, Chet. That much we are sure of, because this is the department he’s exacting revenge on,” Johnny said seriously.

“Besides, we don’t have to listen to every call, just the ones that went bad. There can’t be that many of them,” Cassie said enthusiastically. “And we know that they still have the tapes even if it was more than six months ago because Barb said they save that kind.”

“How are we going to get a copy of the fake trapped kid call tape to have one to compare it to?” Johnny thought outloud. “Maybe the TV station?”

“Nope, we’ll get it from dispatch. Getting to listen to that one will be easy, it’s only a few days old. We’re going to need that little tape recorder of yours, Chet. We’ll make a copy of that tape then have it with us when we go to the records center.” Cassie was thinking. She looked at the clock. It was nearly five. “It’s too late to get in there today but I say were embark on a covert operation tomorrow.” She extended her right hand to Chet “Help me up. Let me go call Barb and get the ball rolling.”

Chet obeyed and she walked down the hall toward the bedrooms. Chet went into the kitchen to get more beers.

Johnny took the bottle Chet handed him and took a drink automatically. He almost didn’t dare think so, but it really looked like they had figured this out. It all made sense. Once you got it to make sense, you could figure it out, or so Hercule Poirot’s little grey cells said.

Cassie Kelly brushed her long auburn hair to the left so that it fell over her shoulder and chest. It almost completely covered the hideous grey sling that Rampart had insisted she use. It was one of the conditions that she had had to agree to in order to win her freedom. She checked the collar of her suit to be sure that the strap of the sling was hidden by it. Then she stepped back and took a look at herself in the full length mirror that was on the back of the guest room door in Chet’s condo.

She was not overly thrilled with what she saw. She was wearing the closest thing she owned to a business suit. It was a brown polyester monstrosity that her grandmother had bought for her two Christmases ago. Her grandmother insisted that everyone needed one good suit for “wakes and weddings”, as the Irish expression went. Kate Kelly did not approve of her granddaughter’s usual style of dress. “Cathleen Kelly, you look like two cents worth of God Help Us!” was her usual comment at obligatory family gatherings.

Cassie had never actually worn the suit before. It was stored, with a bunch of other things she didn’t really want but felt obliged to keep, in the closest in Chet’s spare bedroom. She stepped into the matching pumps that her sister-in-law had given her the same year. She and Kate must have gone shopping together. The two of them were always conspiring to turn her into a proper young lady. They were dreaming! Cassie had thought about sending Chet out last night to buy a pair of panty hose for her but she had decided it would have been impossible to get into them one handed anyway. Boy, did she hate tight skirts that restricted your movement. This whole look was some kind of male plot, she was sure of it. She looked in the mirror again and sighed. What indignities operatives had to suffer when they went undercover!

She had told Chet and Johnny to dress like they belonged in an office setting so she would have to go along with it. She had gotten the run down on dispatch from Barb, without letting her in on their whole plan. No point in bringing Barb down with them if they crashed and burned. From what she was told, most of the people who headed all of the departments they might need to get into were men. She slipped the top button of her jacket open then closed it again. Plan B, she thought. When all else fails, a lot of long hair and a little cleavage would open a lot of doors. That trick had been working since Eve’s day.

Another few swipes with her hairbrush and she declared herself ready. She slipped the brush into the conservative brown leather purse that had come with her shoes and walked into the kitchen.

Chet was sitting at the table, shoveling cold cereal into his mouth and arguing with the scores he was reading on the sports page. He looked up when he saw her. “Jeez, you look like a girl,” he gasped in shock.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Chet,” she threatened with disgust, breaking a ripe banana off of the bunch and plowing through the loose stack of newspapers in search of the front section. The stalker was now front page news and she wanted to make sure that he hadn’t struck again.

Chet was dressed in a blue button down shirt, grey flannel slacks, black dress shoes and a wide blue and red stripped tie. His “wakes and weddings” outfit, Cassie decided. It did look like it would pass for office attire very nicely. Even if he did look like a dork, she thought with a silent giggle.

She noticed that Ember was sitting in Chet’s lap dipping her paw into his cereal bowl and soaking it with milk. Then she licked off her paw and did it again. Chet was so involved with the ‘obvious misprint’ about the Lakers’ game that he never even noticed.

The doorbell, such as it was, sounded and Chet went to answer it. Ember trailed along behind him. Cassie noticed that a navy blue blazer hung on the back of the chair he had been sitting in. She was beginning to feel underdressed.

Johnny came into the kitchen carrying a box of Dunkin’ Donuts. “Wasn’t sure if there was time to eat or not,” he said. He was dressed in a white shirt, with dark brown pants and a brown tie. He carried a brown tweed sports jacket, with leather patches at the elbows, over his shoulder.

“We’re not punchin’ a time clock, Gage,” Chet said digging into the box of assorted donuts. “We’ll make time for these. Grab yourself some coffee.”

Cassie noticed that Ember was no longer in evidence. She had undoubtably beat a hasty retreat under Chet’s bed where she usually was when there was someone in the house she did not know.

Johnny had also grabbed a donut. He put it in his mouth so that his hands were free to pour some coffee into one of the mugs he had just liberated from the mug tree on the counter next to the stove. Once the coffee was in the cup he turned back around to face the table. When he laid eyes on Cassie he was so surprised by her appearance that he sucked his breath in. Along with his breath came enough powdered sugar from the jelly donut he still had in his mouth to cause him to choke.

“Don’t make me hurt you, Johnny,” Cassie threatened in the same tone she had used on Chet.

Johnny feebly tried to make some kind of explanation once he got his breath back but failed miserably. He now had powdered sugar and a blob of jelly on his tie. Cassie had the sinking feeling that she was going on a mission with the boobs from Car 54, Where Are You? Where the heck were Starsky and Hutch when you needed them?

Eventually they were ready to leave. It was decided that they would take Johnny’s car since it was already parked out in front. Johnny, now wearing one of Chet’s ties, went around and unlocked the passenger side door. Both Chet and Cassie headed for it.

“No way,” Chet hissed to Cassie. “You’re not riding in the front seat. I don’t want anyone to think you’re Johnny’s date!”

“You’re right, Chet,” she hissed back ‘innocently’. “It’s much better if people think you’re Johnny’s date.”

Chet made a face at her and got in the backseat. Cassie shot him a triumphant look and climbed into the passenger seat.

Johnny pulled into the LA County Fire Department headquarters complex. He always found the place a little intimidating but they were able to find the Dispatch building with ease. It was a low building with thick walls and no windows. A variety of radio towers, small round microwave receivers and other antennae dotted the roof. It had been nicknamed “The Bunker” and it was supposed to be bombproof and completely earthquake resistant. In the event of disaster, the communication center had to remain operational.

They got out of the car and walked into the first set of a double set of thick steel doors. Once inside the doors a disembodied, mechanical sounding voice greeted them suspiciously. There was a security camera mounted in one corner of the ceiling. Cassie stepped up to it.

“Hi,” she said, as she smiled pleasantly into the camera, “I’m Barb Yates’ friend. I believe she called about our visit.”

A buzzer sounded on the innermost of the steel doors. “Come in,” the voice said.

Chet and Johnny shot each other curious glances as they followed Cassie through doors. Once inside they came upon a metal desk with a security guard sitting behind it. He asked for Cassie’s name then checked his list.

“Okay,” he grunted. He opened up one of his desk drawers and pulled out three Visitors badges. “You gotta keep these on at all times. They are expecting you at the chief dispatcher’s office. Fourth door on the left.” He pointed down the hallway with his head and then paid them no more attention.

They each picked up one of the badges and snapped it on their clothing using the alligator clamp that was attached to the plastic laminated badge.

“Wonder how long they send you up the river if they discover that real Fire Department employees are impersonating visitors.” Chet whispered as they walked down the hall.

Johnny and Cassie both shushed him.

They hesitantly walked through the open door of the chief dispatcher’s office. The office was of average size but appeared to be quite large as the inner most wall was actually a floor to ceiling window the looked out onto the operations floor where a bank of dispatchers processed emergency calls 24 hours a day. A black man sat behind the desk studying a large green and white stripped computer print out.

“Hello,” he greeted pleasantly. “You must be Cassie Kelly, Barb’s friend.”

“Yes I am,” Cassie said shaking the hand the man had extended in greeting.

His pleasant facade faded a little as he looked at Johnny and Chet. “It this them?” he asked, a note of disapproval in his voice.

Johnny and Chet had no idea what was going on but they had the sudden urge to squirm under this man’s scrutiny.

“Yes,” Cassie said smoothly. “Barb and I thought that if they could see what went on here and get a feel for the operations, then they wouldn’t be so darned rude to the dispatchers.” She glared at Chet and Johnny to keep them quiet.

“Let me guess. 51's right? I tell ya, we all had a listen to the tape of that call. We might've brought a formal complaint but, I think due to the fact that they were under fire, we can overlook it this once.”

Both Chet and Johnny were ready to explode in fury but a dangerous look from Cassie kept them quiet. Soon the chief dispatcher was taking them on a short tour of the center. They were walked past the operators as they handled calls from the public quickly and efficiently. They saw the calls were all being piped into a bank of machines the size of phone booths that held large reel to reel tape machines. The reels were in constant motion. Mountains of IBM punch cards were being fed through other machines in other rooms. Gone were the days when curbside call boxes telegraphed messages to the Fire Department that set off a series of bells to bring help to an emergency.

The tour ended in a conference room. There was a long table in the center with a large commercial tape recorder sitting on it. A box with several other tapes in it sat next to the machine. “These tapes represent the calls that the center receives in just one week. Why don’t you sit down and listen to them? That’s the best way to get a feel for all the different kinds of things that our people have to cope with and what it takes to get a call from initial report to acknowledgment of assigned company.” He showed them how to operate the tape machine and assured them that this was merely a player. There was no way they could accidentally erase any tapes. He told them to be sure and turn the lights out when they were finished and then he left.

“What kind of jerks does he think we are?” Chet grumbled. “For his information, there is still a way we could erase these tapes using magnets -------”

“Well, we aren’t going to,” Cassie said firmly. She put the brown leather purse onto the table and slid it opened. She took out the small, more modern cassette recorder that had been secreted there. It was among Chet’s supply of spy gadgets, most of which she had been able to talk him out of bringing. While he considered himself the next best thing to James Bond, he reminded her far more of Maxwell Smart.

They sat down and began listening to the tapes. It took a while to realize that the code on the white stickers on the large reels represented the date so they were able to load up the tape of the day of the call they were looking for. When they found it. Chet made a copy of it on his cassette recorder. He even made a back up copy just in case.

“Okay,” Johnny said. “Now what?”

“Now comes the tricky part,” Cassie told them as they put the tapes back the way they had found them. She reached up and removed her Visitors’ badge. She turned it around so that the word ‘visitor’ was facing in. Then she put the badge back on with the blank side in view. “Now we are no longer visitors. We are employees who carelessly put our badges on backwards. Come on, Barb says there is a tunnel that connects this building with the records center.”

They left the conference room and instead of heading back the way they had come they turned in the opposite direction and headed deeper into the bowels of the massive complex that was the
Fire Department Headquarters. The hallway became more crowded. Cassie had told them to just act like they belonged there. Johnny thought that was easier said than done. He was sure that they would be discovered at any minute and probably fired on the spot.

They finally found their way to the entrance of the tunnel. This was also protected but a double set of blast doors but there were no security measures in place at this entrance as it did not open to the outside world. There was a young woman in the tunnel struggling to push a heavy metal card that was laden with boxes of tapes. Large green binders that held reams of computer print outs were also balanced precariously on the cart. As she pushed it along, just ahead of them, one of the swivelling wheels of the cart turned the wrong way causing the cart to lurch and the paperwork to fly off of it. The sheets that were not safely in binders opened all over the floor.

“Oh damn!” The woman was disgusted.

Cassie grabbed Johnny’s arm. “Okay, Johnny, go turn on the charm,” she whispered as she propelled them all forward to the girl’s aide. Johnny’s reputation was legendary. Dixie even included warnings about him in the orientation speech she gave to new nurses.

“Those wheels have a mind of their own, just like the shopping carts at Ralph’s,” Cassie said with a smile. “At least, there’s no eggs in here.” She stooped to help pick up the things that had fallen and motioned for Chet to do the same. A quick glare at Johnny set him into motion trying to hit on the girl.

While the girl was occupied, Chet and Cassie picked up the things that had spilled. No one noticed that Cassie rolled up a relatively small pile of printouts and stuffed them securely into her sling. This darned thing might come in handy after all. By the time the cart was reloaded, the four were fast friends. When they reached the other end of the tunnel the security guard did not challenge them or ask to see their badges since they were in the company of the girl who came through here several times a day transporting records from one department to another. They helped her get the cart onto the elevator and got on it with her. She got off at Transcriptions. They continued on up to Records on the fourth floor.

When their new friend got off of the elevator, they had it all to themselves. Cassie slid the rolled up printout from where it had been hidden in her sling. She unrolled it. The numbers and codes on the green and white stripped paper meant nothing to her.

“What’s that?” Chet demanded.

“Our ticket to the records department, I hope.”

“What’s the plan?” Chet asked, as casually as if they were merely planning another prank.

“I’ll let you know when I come up with one,” she admitted.

Johnny was too nervous to talk and there was not enough room in the elevator to pace. How had he gotten himself mixed up in this?

When they stepped off the elevator in the records department. Cassie walked purposely up to the wooden counter than ran down side of the room. A middle aged woman with gray hair looked up at them over her half glasses. She reluctantly got up from her desk and approached her side of the counter. “What can I do for you?” she asked curtly, she seemed annoyed at the interruption.

“Save my life, I hope,” Cassie said, shaking the printout with disgust, not letting the woman actually see it. “I’m from transcriptions but as you can see,” she said looking emphatically at her cast and sling, “my typing has been a little curtailed so I get this job. I’m sure you’ll find this hard to believe, but there has been a screw up in file numbering.” Her voiced dripped sarcasm.

“Don’t tell me,” she woman’s shell was cracking a bit as a smile almost crossed her face.

“Penelope Wilson.” They said in unison. From somewhere in the dark reaches of her memory Cassie remembered hearing Barb tell about the niece of one of the high ranking chiefs who was grossly incompetent and was shuffled from department to department trying to mitigate the amount of damage she might be able to do.

“We’ve looked everywhere else. The double number has got to be in the special incidence files. So I’m going to have to take a look at them,” she signed deeply.

The woman nodded but then looked up at Chet and Johnny. “And they’re going to help you. They don’t look too bright,” the woman whispered.

“How do you think I ended up with them,” Cassie complained in a quiet voice.

“Well, you might as well be nice to them. The way this place works they’ll probably end up as our bosses one day.”

“The dumber they are the higher they’ll go,” Cassie agreed.

The woman opened the swinging gate at the end of the counter so that they could enter. She brought them back to another conference type room although this one was much more sparse and utilitarian. She unlocked a series of file cabinets. “Good luck,” she said with a sympathetic shake of her head, then she left them alone.

It was the first time Johnny had breathed since they'd entered the records office. “How did you do that?” he gasped.

“Pretty well, I thought,” Cassie smiled.

“That was....that was....” Johnny searched for the right words.

“That was blarney, Johnny. An old Irish trick,” Cassie said with a laugh.

She instructed Chet to pull out three drawers and set them on the table. She slid the cassette player out of her purse. Barb had explained that the tapes with these files had been copied onto cassette tapes for ease of storage. "I don’t think we need to listen to every tape one, just ones that seem likely. We know we are looking for a man and he didn’t sound black or Hispanic on the trapped kid tape.”

There turned out to be a lot more of these kind of files than Cassie had imagined. After searching for over an hour they seemed no closer to finding the stalker than they had been yesterday. Everyone had shifted and stretched but no one had voiced any doubt that they would find anything. That didn’t mean the thought hadn’t crossed their minds. It was much easier to ferret out the truth in mystery books.

Each file was in its own folder that contained a transcription of the call, all of the follow up reports from the assigned company, the conclusions of the investigation of the Fire Marshall or the arson investigator if there had been one, and any notes that had been added by anyone involved with the case. There were also medical reports and even autopsy reports if those were warranted. The tapes were in clear plastic bags with plastic handles that kept the bags closed. The bags had to be snapped open which took two hands, much to Cassie’s disgust. Luckily there were not many that matched the criteria that they were looking for so not many tapes actually had to be played.

“We don’t even know that this guy made the initial call himself,” Chet said wearily. “It could have been a neighbor or anything.”

“We won’t know that till we find the file, will we?” Cassie’s voice held enough challenge to make him reach for the next file in his drawer.

Cassie also reached for her next file. She opened the folder and the address that the caller had given jumped out an hit her between the eyes. It would forever be burned into her brain. 1423 Wellington Road. It was the address of the CalTex plant but this was being reported as a house fire.

Her eyes danced over the report as the facts became apparent. The responding company called in for clarification when the address led them to an abandoned factory instead of a house. There was no answer when the dispatch operator tried calling the informant back. They had had to track the address down through the cross reference files the phone company keeps. The call came in at 2 AM. Only skeleton crews work at the phone company at that time, It took 13 minutes to discover that the call had come from 1402 Conestoga Street in a completely different response district. Another crew was dispatched but by the time they got on scene the house was fully involved and the only thing that they were able to do was keep the fire from spreading to neighboring structures. It was later discovered that the man, who had been critically burned in the fire, had once been employed at the CalTex plant and had inadvertently given the wrong address. The caller had never been told of his mistake as his wife had ultimately succumbed to the burns she had received in the fire. “I found him,” she said simply. So simply that the other two failed to comprehend at first.

She handed the file to Johnny and he read it aloud.

“Bingo,” said Chet in agreement. He opened up the bag the tape was in and slipped it onto his player. It was the same voice, right down to the excited southern accent. They played the tape they had made earlier for comparison. They matched.

“Chet, how are we going make a copy of this tape?” Johnny wondered since they had only one recorder now.

Chet smiled mysteriously and slid something out of the inside pocket of his jacket. It was about the size of a transistor radio. They recognized it as part of the pile of spy gadgets he had proudly shown them the day before. “This is a miniature tape recorder,” he said proudly.

“While you guys make the tape, I’m going out to the Xerox machine I saw on the way in here and make copies of all of these reports,” Cassie said.

She stepped out of the room. There was no one around and she was able to make all of her copies without anyone noticing a thing. When she returned to the room, the tape had been copied and two of the file drawers were back in place. They slipped the file back into its folder along with its tape, refiled it and put that drawer back into the file cabinet.

Cassie slid the copies into her sling where the printout had once been and put the larger cassette recorder back into her purse. Chet slid the smaller one back into his coat pocket. They turned off the lights and went back out into the office. The woman was not at her desk so they got back onto the elevator and made good their escape. The ride down to the main floor was uneventful, although they expected to be caught at any time. Once they got to the main floor it was a simple task to blend in with the throngs of office workers who were heading out to lunch.

It was quite a hike back to Johnny’s car from this building but as soon as they were out of the crowd they began discussing their next move.

“Okay, we know who he is, what’s our next move? Bust him? We have his address right here in the report!” Chet was feeling confident.

“I doubt he lives there any more, Chet,” Cassie said. “It said that place was a total loss.”

“Well, we got his name all we have to do is look him up in the phone book ----” Chet was enthusiastic.

“What do you think, Johnny?” Cassie asked.

“I think it’s time we turned all this over to the police,” he said simply.

“What?!” Chet was astounded. “This is our case. We solved it!”

“Yeah, but we're firemen -- firefighters. We’re not cops. Arresting people is their job.”

“Haven’t you ever heard of a citizen’s arrest?” Chet asked as they all got into Johnny’s car.

“Yeah, but I don’t want to make one. We’ll turn all this over to Chili’s dad and see what he thinks.”

Soon they were seating across the desk from Sam Chilibeck. He was drumming his fingers on his desk as he read. Johnny was pretty sure it was something he did when he was annoyed. When Sam finally put the last sheet of paper down on the desk, Johnny could contain himself no longer. “Well, what’d ya think?” he demanded.

“I think it might be a good idea to talk to this Orlan Whitfield fella,” Sam said.

“We don’t have a current address on him,” Chet admitted.

“I think we might be able to locate one ourselves,” Sam said a bit sarcastically. “The police do still have a trick or two up our sleeves.” He pressed a button on his phone and told the person that answered what he needed. “This shouldn’t take too long.”

“In case it does, today is Tuesday,” Cassie said. No one in the room had a clue as to what she was talking about. “Look at the medical report. It says the patient is now in the out patient program at the Burn Treatment Center. That usually means weekly appointments and this guy has never attacked us on a Tuesday. That means he had something else to do that day. Dr Lassiter is his doctor.”

Again Sam buzzed the person in the outer office to have them check and see if Whitfield had an appointment with Dr Lassiter this afternoon. The phone rang a few minutes later. Sam wrote something on a scratch pad as he spoke. When he hung up he looked at them. “Meet us at the Burn Center at 3 this afternoon. Mr Whitfield has a 3:30 appointment but I’m pretty sure I can persuade him to have a little talk with us.”

They all stared at him blinking with surprise.

“It’s your collar. I assumed you’d want to be in on it,” Sam said simply.

By 3:10, Johnny, Chet and Cassie were sitting in an empty doctor’s office on the twentieth floor of the Burn Treatment Center, a hospital that specialized in the care and treatment of severe burns. Two uniformed cops were secreted in the hallway, while Sam waited in the waiting room for Orlan Whitfield to come in. The nurse on the reception desk had promised to point him out. She had also commented that Mr Whitfield had struck her as “kinda weird in a spooky sort of way.”

Johnny was nervously pacing around the large office while they waited. Chet played with the pens in a fancy marble holder on the desk.

Cassie looked out the window. Sitting and waiting were not things she was good at, but she had decided to try and make the best of it. Her state of mind was somewhere between Johnny’s caged tiger pacing and Chet’s nervous fidgeting. The tension in the air was palpable. After spending the day as they had, it would be a shame for someone’s nerves to blow it now. “Good thing the windows are sealed shut up here. I’d hate to think what would happen if the Phantom were to drop a water balloon from here,” she said with a smile.

“He’s retired,” Chet said in a bored voice.

“Now that’s blarney,” Johnny stated emphatically. “I may not speak it but I know it when I hear it!” He was sure that the Phantom would be pulling pranks at the station again once things got back to normal. And that might actually be some time soon, if this guy was the stalker and they arrested him. Unless they were completely wrong. He continued his pacing and carrying on a silent argument with himself over the matter.

Chet went back to playing with the things on the doctor’s desk. Cassie looked at the window again. ‘That went well,’ she thought glumly.

Finally, the office door opened. The nurse showed Sam and a man whose face and hands were covered by flesh colored mesh, into the office. She stepped out and the man looked around suspiciously.

“What’s goin’ on here? You ain’t doctors.”

“No, Mr Whitfield, we aren’t. I’m Chief Sam Chilibeck with LAPD. These people are with the Fire Department. We’d like to have a little talk with you.”

Whitfield suddenly bolted for the door but the two uniformed officers were on the other side of it and walked him back into the doctor’s office. Sam motioned Whitfield to sit down in one of the chairs across from the doctor’s desk. He sat on the edge of the desk himself and began to ask him questions. They were innocuous at first but soon involved his whereabouts on several of the nights that attacks had been launched against the fire department.

“I ain’t got to talk to you. You got nothin’ on me.” Whitfield was defiant. “If you did, you’da charged me by now.”

“This can be easy. Or this can be hard,” Sam sighed. He then placed Whitfield under arrest. He signaled for the officer to cuff him.

“How’d you find out?!” Whitfield demanded suddenly. “There wasn’t nothin’ that could trace them attacks to me.”

Sam read Whitfield his Miranda rights and Whitfield waved his right to have an attorney present. “Ain’t like you can trust them anyway,” Whitfield muttered. “Okay,” he finally said. “It was me. I done it and I’m glad.” He rattled off his series of complaints against the fire department and concluded with the fact that they were the ones who should be under arrest.

No amount of argument could make Whitfield face reason until, out of frustration, Johnny played the tape for him. He was shocked when he heard his own voice give out the wrong address. His shoulders slumped and he almost seemed to collapse in upon himself. “I did it,” he muttered quietly. “My fault. I killed Hilda.”

“No, Mr Whitfield,” Johnny said sympathetically. “It was an accident. A terrible accident. No one is to blame.” Tears glistened in Johnny’s eyes. He had spent the past few weeks hating this man. He had been anonymous and evil; a real bad guy. But he was not evil. He wasn’t even a bad guy. He was just an average guy that something horrible had happened to.

The uniformed officers led him away. “Looks like a textbook insanity plea,” Sam said. “I bet it never even comes to trial.”

“What’ll happen to him now?” Cassie asked.

“There will be a hearing but my guess is he’ll end up in a mental facility for a long time to come,” Sam said. “Well, Johnny, you were right. You’re one tenacious son of a gun. You took the bit in your teeth and didn’t let anything stop you till you found the guy. You’d probably make a good cop. Any chance of leaving the fire department?” he joked.

“No way, Sam. I’m not a cop. I’m a fireman. That’s all I want to be.”

Sam looked up at Cassie and Chet and they nodded in agreement with Johnny. “Well, that was a damn fine piece of detective work all the same. We did check the court records playing this angle but we came up dry. I guess in the long run though, the important thing is that we got this guy and this is finally over”

Sam had gone on talking but Johnny had tuned him out. The words, “So whatdya think?” made him re-focus.

“About what?”

“The barbecue! I was telling your fellow detectives here, that in celebration of successful conclusion of this case, in no small part due to the three of you, your humble public servant and police chief is going to throw a barbecue on Saturday. Everyone else will be eating my world renowned barbequed chicken and Paully and I will be eating crow. You won’t want to miss that!”

It was established that there would be plenty of rabbit food for non-meateaters and Sam secured each of their promises to attend. With that he left them to let the whole thing sink in.

“I can’t believe it’s really over,” Cassie sighed.

“It is, isn’t it,” Chet said quietly. “It’s over. Because of us.” This seemed like a hard concept for any of them to grasp.

“We did it!” Johnny finally said, throwing his arms around them both without thinking. It was like they had won a major football game. There were several moments of mutual back slapping and high fiving.

Suddenly Chet said, “jeez, I feel just like the Mod Squad.” He seemed a little overly emotional.

“Odd squad, in your case, Big Brother,” Cassie argued.

It erupted into a full scale Kelly argument but somehow Johnny didn’t care. He didn’t even care that they has managed to crack the case. The important thing was, the siege was over. It was safe to go back to being a fireman. He just wasn’t cut out to be a cop or a spy. From now on, the only mysteries he’d be solving would be in books.

Johnny had managed to sneak up to the sixth floor the next time he’d been at Rampart. This time he had located the pretty nurse. When he invited her to the barbecue he’d been a little miffed to hear that Chili had also called to invite her, which meant the creep had her number. But both Chili and Johnny had been turned down. The nurse said had just started to date a new guy and that she and Dwyer already had made plans for that day. Dwyer! What gave Dwyer the idea that he could replace him?

Since he had struck out with the nurse, and since he knew where it was and since he was sure that parking would be at a premium, Johnny had agreed to give Chet and Cassie a lift to the barbecue. It had been mutually agreed, by all members of the John Gage Detective Agency, that their part in the solution of the case be kept quiet. They were reasonably sure that they had broken several very strict Fire Department regulations in their gathering of evidence and since they all did want to remain employed by the Fire Department, the less said the better. The police agreed to say that it was an anonymous tip that had come from the crime stoppers hot line that had finally cracked the case.

Johnny had to park several doors down from 142 Calvert Drive. He knew the neighbors would not object to the all the cars parked in front of their houses. He was sure they were all in attendance. Nobody threw a party like the Chilibecks and the whole world was generally on the guest list. As soon as they entered the crowded yard, people began to holler greetings to Johnny. He introduced Chet and Cassie to everyone that came close enough to so. Teresa was the first actual Chilibeck they ran into but after a brief ‘hello’ she was dragged away by a group of children who were waiting for the badminton set that she was carrying.

They mingled with the crowd as they continued to make their way toward the house. “This is just like a Kelly family reunion,” Chet hollered above the constant din.

“No way,” Cassie called back. “We’ve been here for over twenty minutes and the police haven't been called in to break up a fight.”

Finally the crowd seemed to part like the Red Sea and Chili came up to them at a trot. “‘Bout time you got here,” he grinned broadly.

Chili paid no attention to Chet but moved right up next to Cassie. He put a friendly arm around her uninjured shoulder and drew close to her so that he could be heard above the party noise. “I’m so glad you could come. I’ve been wanting to get to know you better. Come on, let me show you around.” Chili smoothly cut her off from the other two and began walking her away. He shot Johnny a “catch you later, I have something more important to do right now ” look over his shoulder than returned his undivided attention to Cassie.

Johnny was a bit startled by the move. He turned to say something to Chet. Chet did not look startled. He looked angry. Suddenly Teresa walked by again. This time she was carrying three large covered bowls. Chet suddenly got an evil smile on his face. He walked up to Teresa offering to help her with the bowls. They too disappeared into the crowd. Johnny shook his head. He couldn’t believe his two friends were trying to hit on each other’s sisters.

“Don’t worry, Reece can handle the likes of him,” Sam Chilibeck said. “And I’m betting that Chet’s sister could chew Paully up and spit him out, even on her worst day.”

“You got that right,” Johnny laughed.

“Come on into the kitchen for a cold one,” Sam invited.

Johnny followed him into the house. By some miracle, the kitchen was deserted at the moment. The quiet was a welcome change after the noisy chaos of the yard. Sam opened up the refrigerator and took out two beers. He opened them both and handed one to Johnny.

“Well, Johnny,” Sam said after a comfortable silence. “I have to admit that I thought you were just being obstinate but it really paid off. Things didn’t add up to you and you kept after it until you found the truth.”

“Yeah but the truth didn’t really turn out to be what I expected,” Johnny admitted. “I thought this guy was some kind of horrible monster but he was a victim. He’d lost his wife, his home, he’d been disfigured. To tell you the truth, I ended up feeling sorry for him. I don’t even know how you found it in yourself to arrest him.”

“That was easy. When I looked at him I didn’t see him as a victim. I saw him as the guy who put Paully on a respirator, who went after you with a knife, who broke the Kelly girl’s arm and killed that engineer. A cop has to look at the bigger picture.”

“Guess I wouldn’t make a very good cop then,” Johnny commented.

“Yeah,” Sam laughed “you’ve got too much compassion. Which is fine in your real line of work.”

“I’m done playing cop. Figuring out who-done-it is one thing but I don’t like the part where you have to arrest the guy,” Johnny declared.

“Maybe not, but someone has to do it. When they searched Whitfield’s apartment, they discovered that he was in the process of making two powerful letter bombs. One was addressed to your station and one to Paully’s. He had to be taken down, Johnny. He was dangerous and that’s the bottom line.”

The news of what could have happened if Whitfield had not been caught was unsettling. Sam figured Johnny needed a few minutes alone to work things out for himself. “Well, the cook’s break is over. I’d better get back on the job before the wife comes and barbecues me.” Sam laughed. He poked Johnny’s shoulder lightly. “Ya done good, kid,” he said, then headed out the back door.

Johnny stood in front of the sink a few minutes nursing his beer. He glanced up and looked out the window over the sink. Chet and Chili were heading this way. They each wore the forlorn look of a man who had struck out. Farther across the yard, Johnny saw Cassie and Teresa with their heads together. Undoubtably, they were discussing the techniques, or lack of, of their respective brothers.

He had the beer ready to hand them when they came inside. They each leaned against the sink, sipping their beer in companionable silence. Finally Chili said. “I can’t believe it’s really over. No more attacks at the station.”

“No more looking over our shoulders on every call,” Johnny agreed wholeheartedly.

“No more Arnie and Ernie,” Chet put in. They each raised their beer bottle in a silent toast.

Just then the back door opened and Mama bustled into the kitchen. “What are you three doing in here?!” she demanded. “Come on now, get outside and circulate. How do you ever expect to find a nice girl and get married. Come on. Move, move, move!”

She started herding them to the door but before they could actually leave a very serious blue-eyed, curly-haired girl ran into the kitchen. Unfortunately for Mama’s dreams of an upcoming wedding, she was only about six years old. She ignored the three men and stalked right over to Mama.

“Nana!” she reported excitedly. “Michael chased Buster up onto the garage roof with Papa’s Barbie Q tongs!!”

“That fool dog,” Mama was exasperated. (Surely, her beloved grandson could not be at fault.) She put her hand to her head trying to remember where in the house the step ladder had been left.

“Gentlemen,” Johnny said with a wide grin. “This looks like a job for the Fire Department.”

The End!!!!