A Day In The Life

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Back at Headquarters, Sam Lanier heard the fix-it man's shout over the open HT radio's speaker. Grinning, he toggled a switch. "Copy. Truck 2 on scene at Station 51 at 1804."   ##Sam? How did you do that?## Tony spoke into his radio. "I can read minds." Sam laughed. ##No really.## said Manetti, mystified. ##How did you know we were here?## Lanier finally let Tony off the hook. "Their dog ran away with one of their HTs. They're probably looking for it. It's stuck open. I can hear you right now through it. You're on live." Tony scoffed and toggled a replyback on his work radio. ##Sneaky b*st*rd. I'm in the bay, so that radio's probably around here somewhere nearby. I'll be sure to tell em. Uh,...Nobody's immediately around right now but I'll get right on the communications problem pronto.## "I have an ear out." Sam replied back, already deep into his other work.  -------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony's amused smile collapsed into a frown when he saw that Squad 51's side compartment bay doors had been flung wide open. He aimed a flashlight towards them and he noticed that all of the paramedic's medical gear was missing. "Hey! Where is everybody?" A quiet whimper echoed through the blackness. "Boot?" Tony grinned, recognizing the dog's voice. "Come here, boy. You're not in trouble for taking the radio, I promise. Just bring it h--" Tony broke off when his questing flashlight beam encountered a large splash of blood on the floor with red smeared human hand and footprints on top of bloody dog pawprints. Nausea washed acid into his mouth. He was about to tip off Sam out loud when a large hand gripped his mouth from behind in a suffocating grip. "Don't move mister. And you won't get stuck." said Ice into his ear. "Who were you looking for?" "A dog. Just their d-dog." Tony said, not struggling inside of the fierce hold, his eyes still falling on the signs of violence on the floor in growing horror. "The dog? Well, you're not going to find him. He's dead. My cellmate shot him." came the sour smelling convict's harsh reply as he stripped Tony's radio from his hand. It was then Tony realized that 51 was in a hostage situation. "Okay, okay. I'll cooperate. Just don't kill me!" he shouted louder, hoping he was near enough to the lost HT to register on pickup. "I'm definitely going to be your hostage." he said again, finally feeling the knife pressing against his throat. "Are you slow or something?" Ice hissed. "Stop talking now that you've finally figured out what's going on." And with that, Ice hauled Tony with him, forcibly, to the kitchen to join the others. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sam Lanier was suddenly tense and focused. He waved over the other dispatchers silently as he put 51's HT speaker on the main overhead audio monitor. He quickly played back the last seven seconds of recording so all of them could hear Tony's cry for help. "D*mn! I had no clue this was going on." Lanier shared after Ice's last sentence came through. "I thought this open HT was just a dog's mischief, boss." Sam's supervisor leaned on the counter urgently, snapping an order. "A whole new ball of wax, Sam. Not your fault with the rest of this craziness going on. Find a law enforcement unit to handle 51. Top priority. Someone who is actually freed up to take it for real, a.s.a.p. Make it a S.W.A.T. if you have to." said Dane. "On it." said Lanier, worried for everybody at Station 51. "Okay, it sounded like there were at least two assailants." he thought back, while looking up P.D. statuses that he had written down in his crowded notes for the day. "And six hostages." Dane agreed, pulling up the station's roster information. "Two paramedics, a captain, an engineer, and two regular firefighters." "Plus Tony." Sam added. "What about Frank? Isn't he scheduled to work with Tony tonight?" Ron asked. Sam's eyes filled with concern. "I don't know his situation. All I know is that Tony for sure had their only radio inside of the station. We talked for a bit." "Share what you know also with the FBI." Dane told him, hurrying to his office to call the Battalion Chief for District One. "Don't leave anything out! If the FEDs can help end this, then they're welcome to run all over my desk for as long as they need to."

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Quincy and Sam Fujiyama pulled up to the side of the alleyway nearest a dumpster that they had spotted as sitting in a pool of blood. They hurried out and quickly searched the bin with gloves, looking for the newborn baby. "It's not here." Quincy said after they had tipped it over with some effort and scattered its cardboard and paper trash. "Just blood." "And no afterbirth." realized Fujiyama. "Good. You thought of that." Quincy told him. "Nah, only thing left to try is the station itself. Looks like the blood trail leads over that way anyway. Maybe they found it, treated it, and ran it in to another hospital." he said, tracing his flashlight along drag marks and footprints stained in blood that he could see. "In my head, I can see them thinking along those lines." "They'd have to. They're trained to react to solve oddball situations." Sam scoffed as the two of them walked up the alleyway until they were even with the station. They stopped after pacing along its whole length. "Hmm. No gate. How are you over a bit of climbing?" asked the coroner. "Pretty fair, Quince." Sam said, neatly vaulting over the fire station's back wall. "Need a hand?" Quincy scowled. "Yeah, I'm not twenty something like you." he said, offering Sam his hand. Sam quickly helped the older coroner into the back yard. "More blood here." "I see it." said Quincy. "Looks like there was a struggle. Something violent." he said, his demeanor instantly turning overly cautious and worried. A few seconds later, he ducked behind a parked truck quickly, at a noise. Sam the lab assistant and Quincy flicked off their flashlights and peeked over the hood of the truck behind which they had taken refuge. Quincy instantly whipped his hands away from the hood. "Ouch. This engine is still hot." he exclaimed, shaking his palms to cool them. Sam peered at the door label in the darkness. "Huh. Fire department maintenance. Uh,.. Communications Repairs it looks like." he whispered back. "Maybe they're here on business."

Quincy stood back up, studying the activity they could hear in the shadows. "Then they're the good guys. Let's find out." He flicked on his flashlight and waved. "Hello? Are you the fire department repair man?" Sam joined Quincy as the coroner met up with Frank, who was stiffly picking up the spilled trash that Tony had ignored earlier. "Yeah. Who wants to know?" asked Williams. Quincy showed him his official I.D. "I'm Doctor Quincy with the Los Angeles County Coroner's Office. This is Sam Fujiyama, my lab and field assistant. Do you realize that you're tampering with a crime scene right now?" "What?" Frank asked. "Who are you people?" he asked. "We told you, sir, we're from the county morgue." Fujiyama said kindly. "Didn't you notice all of the blood on the ground and all over that door frame over there?" he said, pointing to Station 51's back door. "No, it's night time. I was reading the newspaper. And then I was picking up all of this wind blown trash without a flashlight. That's all I know." Frank said defensively. "My partner and I were called here to restore the firefighters' communications array. It's not working. They missed a call." Quincy had grown thoughtful as he kept casting his flashlight over the blood smears on the ground. "Sir, there was a murder committed here or very near here. A young mother was killed, her baby forcibly taken from her womb. We came here from a triage station in search of the infant." "It's around here?" Frank asked horrified. "It's got to be." Quincy told him no nonsense. "All the blood trail says so. It goes nowhere else." "Then where are the cops?" Frank wondered, eyeing up the two county men. "Shouldn't they be here trying to help?" "Yeah, but there's been a prison break and now there's gang riots in progress all over the neighborhood. There aren't any police available. I'm surprised you were even sent out here without some kind of backup." Sam replied. "Maybe the dispatchers' hands were too full to spread the word." Frank said, shocked at events. Quincy's eyes stayed on the doorframe and the circle of light illuminating a bloody palm print. "Uh, oh." he mumbled, flicking his flashlight off again. He ducked back down behind the maintenance truck. The other two joined him quickly, Quincy's sudden fear infecting them. "Now what?" Sam asked next to him, keeping his voice low. "Whoever came in contact with that blood is or was inside of that fire station." Quincy told him. "How can you tell?" Frank whispered, cowed. "The blood. It was smeared on just the frame and didn't carry over to the surface of the door itself. That meant that door was open at the time it was made. And the hand that made that print is very large. Far too large to be an injured woman's." Sam's eyes got very big in the darkness. "One of the firefighters?" "Or the murderer's." Quincy shared. "Tony?!" Frank gasped. "What?" Quincy wondered. "My partner. He's in there right now!" Frank replied, trying to rise to his feet. Quincy grabbed his shoulders. "Now listen. Somebody has to go for help if this whole situation turns out to be some kind of bad. It's gonna be you, Frank." "But why? My partner's in there!" Frank minced. "That's why." Sam said firmly. "Quincy and I are used to thinking calmly in crime situations. Especially if there are dead bodies lying around." he said, playing a little hard ball to protect the man's life. Frank turned green. "But.. ...i want to help.." he said in a tiny voice. "You can and you will. Go find a police station and call for help." Quincy told him. Frank rose with a set of keys in his hand and started to open the truck's door. Quincy and Sam snatched him back down. "Not the truck! You'll give us both away." said Fujiyama. "Walk. No... Run for help. We'll be okay." Frank's emotional shock finally made him obey and he tore off clumsily down the alleyway towards the main boulevard to flag down a passing motorist for assistance. Once he was gone, Sam rejoined Quincy in his crouch behind the repair truck. "What makes you think it's the murderer running amuck idea, Quince? I know you too well." "When was the last time you've ever driven by a fire station at night and all of its exterior lights were turned off while the station crew was still on duty?" he replied, blinking into the pitch blackness surrounding them, pointing back at the midnight silhouette of Station 51.

************************************************************** From:  patti keiper (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Mon 1/02/12 2:55 AM Subject: Possum Sam eyed up the even blacker on dark outline of the building. "Okaayy," he said, worried and cautious. "I accept that as very plausible, but I still don't like the fact that it's us snooping around what's almost guaranteed to be very dangerous!" he hissed in a tense whisper. "Who else is there?!" the older coroner shot back. "I had no idea we'd run into this situation until it kissed the old eyeballs! Come on.." Quincy said, motioning, very frustrated and angry. He began to backtrack along their earlier steps silently, heading for the bloody dumpster site. "Why are we going back there?" Sam asked. "I've got an idea." grumbled Quincy. A minute later, they were there. The dark gray haired coroner stiffly crouched until he was leaning over a largish wet spot.  "Fact... I'm old. You're young." he said, thoughtfully peeling off his protective rubber gloves and throwing them away conscientiously into the garbage. "What's that got to do with anything?" Sam complained. "I don't follow you." "Who'd make a less tempting target to a criminal?" he said, balancing on his crouched toes and lacing his fingers together in front of his knees. The Japanese man's eyes flashed bright even in under the moonless sky over the alleyway. "Oh, no... You're not going into that seized fire station.." Sam admonished, throwing up a warning finger. "It's not our job to stop the bad guys in person! Even if the baby is involved." Quincy just threw him an oh really look and dipped five fingers of a hand into the pool of blood he had been studying. A moment later, he began smearing it onto the front of his jacket with calculation. "What th?--- Quincy!" said Sam, grossed out enough to squint. The coroner harrumphed matter of factly as he peered down at his handiwork. "I'm a victim who stumbled into the alleyway after getting attacked during a riot. Doesn't it look like it?" he asked, continuing to paint away daintly. Finally, Sam unhappily cocked his head. "Grab your collar and grip it a few times. A mugger would most likely use a choke hold." "Thatta boy." he said, doing just that. "I AM doing the right thing." Quincy said gently, finishing his make up job afterwards with a few swipes of blood onto his forehead and cheek. "But it's not the best thing!" Sam spat wholeheartedly. Quincy stood, holding his sticky fingers away from himself. "We may be running out of time and I've made up my mind. Now go get me some alcohol to wash the rest of this blood off of my hand to shorten the risk of further contamination." Sam ran to their coroner's wagon to snatch up the bottle they always kept in the glove compartment. "You're crazy." "Yep. I've been told that before.." Quincy admitted, rising to his feet and joining him by the car. "By Lt. Monahan and Dr. Asten both. Many times." "And by me.." Expertly, Sam cleaned off Quincy's hand with a poured stream of isopropol. "If you don't touch your face, you should be fine. Even if that mother was sick with something before she died." "I won't. Don't worry." Quincy said, taking in a deep nervous breath. Then he met his coworker's gaze with warm affection. "Thanks, Sam." Fujiyama just scowled as he stood back and admired Quincy's handiwork with their flashlight. "Don't thank me. I'm totally against you." he said defensively. "And I thoroughly hate your plan."  Then he stepped forward quickly and grabbed Quincy by the arm. He swiftly tore the fabric off his shoulder visciously in a long solid rip. "There. Now that looks like you've been in a fight." he said chidingly. Quincy never changed his lost puppy dog expression. "That was my favorite Khaki jacket, I'll have you know." he said, partially scolding. "Beggers can't be choosers. Now get the h*ll in there before I change my mind. I'm gonna stay where we were and monitor things from the outside if I can until help arrives." Fujiyama told him. Without hesitation, Quincy shot him a smile, turned, and was quickly gone down the alleyway, hurrying ahead of Sam, who followed. "I'm the crazy one, too, for going along with this whole scheme." Sam grumbled as he resumed their previous spot behind the radio maintenance truck. He began studying the windows he could see in the gloom to figure out where was best to try and peek inside.

************************************************** From: patti keiper (pattik1@hotmail.com) Sent: Tue 1/24/12 12:16 PM Subject: When The Cat's Away... "That's it." said the security officer to Dr. Brackett in the outdoor cafeteria. "Any others we get into triage will come through the front door." The burly man in black nodded as he checked his list again for accuracy. "Yep. All dumped here by the services or civilian drive-ins, have been processed." "Thanks, Brad. Go take a break." said Kel, letting go of the foot of the last admitting patient's gurney whom he had treated under the palm trees. He smiled encouragingly to the woman. "You're going to be fine. Your asthma came back today, only because some nutcase broke into your house and frightened you half to death. Like the police, we've got it under control." The exhausted oxygen masked young brunette just nodded tiredly as she was wheeled away to a nurse's station for monitoring. Dr. Early and Dr. Morton joined Dr. Brackett and the three of them finally sat down at a shoved aside fiberglass cafeteria table in shared relief and fatigue. "Wow, that was rough." sighed Mike. "You said it." Kel mumbled, rubbing his face. Nurse Terri Stonelake dropped off a steel pot of hot coffee and a trio of styrofoam cups to the doctors from the dietary services cart she had been pushing ahead of her along with a stack of plastic wrapped sandwiches. "Any pastrami in these?" asked Morton hopefully. "Sorry, doctor. Those were all claimed two hours ago." she shrugged. "Well, who got fed before us doctors!" he snapped in full bluster. "Green tagged patients." she with firm emphasis, and a few daggers, very used to his mannerisms. Brackett just grinned. "She's got you there, Mike.  Victims do outrank doctors in emergency situations in-house."

"Welllll...., okay.." Morton simpered down. "Hey, I'll take one." said a voice eagerly from nearby. The four of them looked up to see Dr. Bob Asten from the coroner's office joining them. "Help yourself. Guest doctors first, too, I suppose." sulked Morton, burying his chin into two palms on top of elbows. Courteously, Bob let Morton choose before him. "I've been snacking from the vending machine between patients. Please.." he said, waving a nimble hand at the tray. "You're hungrier than any of us." "Must have been all that fresh sea air." Morton smiled finally, nabbing two roast beef sandwiches.  "Sailing build's up quite an appetite." "Yeah? Well, mine's gone after I heard that we were losing people in triage." lied Asten, wiping off some mayonnaise from his moustache as he ate quickly from his chicken sandwich. "Uh, not that it was any fault of yours." he quickly recovered his impasse. "Things were tight to the wall."  He looked to Terri Stonelake, the nurse. "How many so far?" She replied wearily. "Eleven total. Not counting a woman brought in by samaritans from an alley in Carson. Dr. Quincy'd probably be able to give you a better history on how they died, than I. He's in the morgue tent doing prelim autopsies with his assistant." "Morgue tent?" Asten peered about eagerly, not finding it in the hub bub of triage clean up activity by an army of Rampart staffers. "I'll take you there." offered Joe, rising as he crumpled up empty suran wrap that had been around his now fully eaten tuna sandwich. "It's around the corner." "Thanks, Joe." said Asten, scooping up one of the doctors' untouched full coffee cups for himself. "He's not answering any of my pages." he said as he followed in Joe's footsteps around used first aid debris. Morton stole Brackett's coffee craftily once the two had disappeared from sight. Kel threw up his hands only once before he guiltily took Joe's.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The black flap of the concealing tent flipped up into its lamp lit interior from a clear plastic skylight. The shaft of electric light revealed just a black body bag with its bloody cardboard note carefully lain over the top of its torso. "Huh, that's funny. They're not here." Asten snatched it up and read it while Dr. Early checked out the dead woman's autopsy notes out of curiosity. "Ooo." Joe grunted in sympathy. "Hmm?" asked Asten, still looking around for any message from his coroner. "Things all look in place. Nobody unauthorized has been in here." "Oh, it's not that. It's this. Quincy's ruled her dead by live vivisection. While eight months pregnant." Early said, tapping the notes Quincy had left behind. "What?!" gaped Bob. "Give me that." he snapped angrily as he took the chart from Joe's hands as he began to put two and two together about a nasty suspicion. Then he found it after casting his eyes around the tent a bit. "Oh, great." he said sarcastically, dropping the chart back onto a portable table. "I'm afraid I don't follow you." Joe said amicably. "Do you see another body bag in here? One maybe a foot long at the most?" Early wasn't slow. "For the woman's baby... No, I don't." Asten began pacing in irritation. "Well, let me let you in on a little dirty secret about my fellow colleague, Dr. Early. He has an overprotective instinct when it comes to any child or infant fatality cases that are even the slightest bit out of whack." "Oh, don't tell me." "Yes, I'm afraid my man's gone hunting for the missing fetus. This is so embarrassing. I assure you, he'll be disciplined to the fullest extent of my department for abandoning your triage area." Bob stated. Dr. Early held up an understanding hand. "No need. I think I may know what your coroner may have been thinking about that." "What was that?" It was Bob's turn to shrug in incomprehension. "Whether or not that missing baby was still alive." Bob's face turned a particular shade of pasty mortification. "Oh. That does put this infraction thing into a whole new light, now doesn't it?" Then he suddenly remembered what was in his hands. "And I think I may know where he might have gone to go look." "Where?" "In the alleyway behind a...." he squinted myopically at the stained cardboard. "Fire Station 51." he replied, showing Dr. Early the note. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "It's no problem at all, Dr. Asten." said Joe graciously as the two approached Dixie's desk in the E.R. "Miss McCall here knows the number to that firehouse in question. If your man, Quincy, was there, I'm sure Station 51'll know about it. Now, if you'll excuse me. I'm going to go grab that evening snack I abandoned outside.." "Sure sure.." Asten nodded. "Thanks for your help." "What can I do for you, Doctor?" Dixie smiled, quickly angling in on the hints Joe had thrown at her. "Just call these fire boys?" "Yeah, for now." the doctor sighed. "It's a good start." "Hang on." Dixie charmed, picking up a phone receiver with a hand full of still elegant fingernails. She dialed out. Then she frowned. "Huh. I'm getting a busy signal." "That's odd. What's the number? I'll try them on the emergency phone." he said, pointing to the red one on the wall. Dixie told him. "310-830-3170. I'll try again on mine, too." she said, redialing. Soon, both doctor and nurse hung up their receivers reluctantly. "Nope. No connection. Their phones are definitely out." said Asten. "I'll try the county fire department dispatcher. Maybe he knows something about some fresh riot damage to that neighborhood." Dixie said, picking up her desk phone once more. A minute later, Dr. Asten had his information from the caller Dixie had gotten a hold of for him. "A Mr. Lanier said that Lieutenant Monahan's at L.A. Headquarters right now for a police incident involving a possible hostage situation at the station. And my instinct is that if Quincy was anywhere near that, his nose is probably well into it. Thanks, Dix. I owe you one.  Do you know if any of the extra medical staff can leave Rampart yet?" "Yes, they can. The Code Orange was declared over twenty minutes ago." "Great. If Quincy calls, tell him I'm at L.A.Co.F.D.H.Q. wanting to ream his--" "I'll do that." Dixie said quickly, cutting off Bob Asten's ire neatly.

*************************************************** From: patti keiper (pattik1@hotmail.com) Subject: Turnabout.. Sent: Sat 2/25/12 10:16 PM A sudden loud banging on the kitchen's outside door made Ice, Stu, Tony the repair man, and all six firefighters jump. The half dozing Chet moaned as lung pain jolted through him as a result. Gage steadied him as his gaze went quickly to all of the windows in the room. The newborn baby girl in the oven didn't react to the noise openly. Roy put a hand inside to check her consciousness level with sudden worry. The knocking came again and everybody froze, eyeing up Ice and Stu with indecision. "If that's another service guy..." Ice warned, still actively guarding Tony with his knife while the man visibly worked through the shock of being taken hostage. Cap held up a hand. "None that I know about. This could be a walk up." he said, still sitting in the kitchen chair nearest Chet's head. "A walk up?" Stu parroted, his voice grumbling warning. "We handle emergencies by going out on calls usually. Well, sometimes, folks come to us here at the station for help..." Hank explained. "We've....got an intercom panel outside so they can talk to us." "Use it. And make whoever it is go away without tipping them off." Stu decided. Hank gestured questioningly around the room. Ice sighed with impatience and finally pointed to Mike Stoker. "Okay. You, Hot Shot. Make it work. But don't crack those blinds open one inch." Stoker got up out of his chair and went to the door's speaker. When Stu nodded, he pressed the button. "L.A. County Fire Station 51. This is Fireman Stoker." A clumsy hand fumbled the reply toggle. ## *Spap*. You've gotta help me, please.. I... I've been attacked by a mob. I'm... bleeding and I can't stop it. *gasp* *cough* ## said a male voice through the intercom. Quincy continued to knock and plead desperately, not having to feign the fear showing in his voice. Mike glanced at the two convicts and tossed his head in a question. He had concern etched all over his face for the mystery man still begging for aid very vocally outside. "Can I open the door?" he asked. Stu threw up his hands, including the one clutching the gun. "Well, why not? Let's make it an even bigger party.." he said sarcastically. "If he's a cop, though...." "...he dies..."  Ice finished eagerly. Stu was suddenly surprised at his partner in crime. "No,...Ice." he corrected quietly, "What's the matter with you?" he finally said angrily."I think you've done enough killing for one day! Just chill out. We'll think it through like we're doing all the rest." Gage used the distraction to talk to Roy while glancing at Kelly's racing EKG monitor. "Is the baby...?" "She's okay. Just exhausted." DeSoto replied with another sigh of stress. "How's Chet?" "Stable enough. His breathing's still equal both sides.  But his meperidine's no longer working. He needs another--" "Hush!" Stu commanded, turning his pointed gun at the two paramedics. "One thing at a time." Then he raised his eyebrows at Stoker. "Okay, fire boy. Let him in." Mike opened the door and literally caught a fifty something year old man who was wearing a bloody, torn tan jacket as he tumbled to his knees. "Sir, easy. I got you. Go ahead and lay down right here on the floor." he said, instinctively reaching for the pulse point in the bend of the man's elbow.

Gage and Roy watched their visitor intently, but neither one dared move from where they were seated. "Now kick the door shut.." Stu commanded Mike.  The engineer did so, with a free foot, right from where he kneeled by the new man's head. "Atta boy. All right, mister. What's your name? We're all friends here." Stu grinned. Ice remained tense and suspicious, nervously shifting his knife from palm to palm as he watched all of the others in the room. Quincy didn't open his eyes from where he lay panting. "I... I don't know." he said, his face tight and pinched in apparent heavy pain and weakness. "Oh, my chest!" Mike spoke about the grip he had on the coroner's brachial artery through the jacket's sleeve to Johnny and Roy. "120, strong and regular. Not an M.I.. And most of this blood's well clotted up." Johnny finally piped up. "Can we please get over there with the gear?" he prompted the two convicts. Stu was making a face at the sour smell of rotting blood wafting off of Quincy's clothes. He covered his nose, waving them on ahead with disgust. "No moves." Roy and Johnny grabbed for the trauma and drug gear boxes. And almost, for the orange one, the biophone. They left it where it sat, latched tight, on the table. "How long ago did this happen?" Roy asked, beginning to slice off Quincy's blood soaked jacket with his shears as he crouched over him. "I ...I  don't know. I guess I must have.... blacked out.." said their gray haired patient. Johnny Gage began a quick head to toe sweep with his hands."You got any kind of identification on you? Any kind of..." One hand stopped at a lump in a side pocket. "Is this your wallet?" Quincy gripped his wrist quickly and met his eyes directly with both of his suddenly clear wide open ones. "Yes.." he said with vague implication. Then they closed again in a grimace as he turned his head away to gag a bit. "What's the matter?" Ice prompted Johnny, his caution streak on hyper drive. Johnny was perplexed and his face mirrored it as he peeled off gripping fingers. "Nothing so far... uh, I just found out how we can find out who he is.." Gage replied honestly, only partially tipped off. He dug out Quincy's wallet. He had cracked it only long enough to read the name when the metal of the coroner's shield badge almost winked betrayingly in the bright light surrounding them. "His name's Quincy. H--He's 55 years old from Pasadena. No medical alert or medical insurance card, Roy." Ice started laughing. "No insurance? That means he can't pay? No wonder the muggers left him alive. He had no cash on him." Stu capitulated with a like grin. "Poor bastard. Beaten to within an inch of his life... Boy, do I know how that feels." Gage flashed a fast glance at Roy and cleared his throat. "Yeah, we might have been working with a 'dead' guy." he mumbled, tossing the wallet onto the coroner's stomach for safe keeping. "A what?" DeSoto asked, distracted by the blood pressure he was starting to take. "He doesn't seem that serious to me." "A death guy.. I mean almost,...a real one.." Gage coughed, he hinted vaguely, continuing his sweep down both of Quincy's twitching legs. Roy paused in pumping up the mercury dial on the blood pressure cuff. "Death guy?" Johnny picked up Quincy's folded wallet and held it up. "I mean this was a really important thing and the gang who attacked him completely missed it." Then he smiled, artificially. "How stupid can they get?" Right then the newborn baby girl in the oven started crying.   And on the floor between the three firefighters, Quincy started smiling. He sat up. Johnny's face fell wide open, "Whoa,, wait a minute.." he muttered when he realized what Quincy was about to do, very concerned for his safety once their captors learned what he was. But Quincy just shrugged, still seated, as his captors quickly figured out that he was faking. "That's better. I knew the baby had to be here somewhere." Stu got angry. "Just what do you think you were going to do, old man?" he said, aiming his gun right at Quincy's head. "Tackle the two of us?" Roy, Johnny and Mike scrambled out of range, pressed protectively against the cabinets with their backs as they remained silent. Quincy eyed up the fire fighters. "It's okay. I had to do this. I had to know if that poor mother's baby was still alive." he said, staying seated on the floor with his hands carefully placed out in the open, palms down on top of the linoleum. He ignored the BP cuff dangling from his arm as he calmly looked at Stu. "At my age, mister? Ridiculous! I acted purely on my own. Do you see any police car lights flashing away out there?" Ice's eyes shifted back and forth, suddenly calculating. "He's not a cop then. Cops wouldn't do this kind of stunt. They'd storm through the windows, shooting in tear gas grenades and other stuff. Maybe he's family or a neighbor of the chick I wasted who lives nearby or something." "Who exactly are you?" Stu demanded, setting a foot onto one of the empty chairs surrounding Chet. For added emphasis, he shifted his gun hand to rest on top of Kelly, its muzzle aimed casually up at the bottom of Chet's jawline. The injured firefighter's breathing began to pick up in his effort to inhale with the added weight of Stu's hand on his chest. "Ughh.." Chet groaned, half out. Roy called out a warning. "Chet, stay still." Stu just grinned. "I'm waiting. Nicely. Answer the question." Quincy licked his lips, his earlier bravado forgotten. "All right. I'm a medical examiner with the county. We found the mother a few hours ago in the alleyway and once we discovered her baby was missing, I came back to search for it where they last found her.  You weren't hard to find. The blood trail led me straight up to the back door." "In the middle of a prison riot that was flooding the whole neighborhood?" Ice wondered, tilting his head with exasperation. "I....can get a little impulsive when it comes to lost children." Quincy admitted. "Not one of my finer points, I'm told. It usually gets me into trouble." Stu smiled again. "Like now." Ice's ire wasn't finished yet. "You must be off your rocker, old man! Covering yourself up in a day old corpse's blood just to get inside a fire station that had major trouble brewing? That's... that's just plain disgusting!" Ice said, waving away the stench on Quincy's clothes with a grimace. "What can I say? I am a little nuts. Why do you think I work with dead bodies and not live people most of the time? And your behavior now is showing me that you no longer know how to act around innocent people who've done you no harm at all." Quincy told him. "Like around that tiny baby screaming her frightened little head off over there."

Quincy's accusation caught Ice a little off guard. His rage wilted and immediately turned soft and uncertain. He headed towards the infant squawling behind him, reaching a pair of blood caked fingers out to her. "No... I...She's mine. Even if it's only for a little while. I won't hurt her." he whispered. "I made her a promise." he smiled. "Good for her. Where do WE stand in your line of thought?" Quincy asked. "Are we going to end up being just a pile of shredded, rotten meat, too, like that baby's mother, when all of this is over?" Stu eyebrows rose in surprise. Then he let the coroner talk, half amused at the effect the man was having on his cellmate. "No.. no.. uh, I don't know." Ice said defensively, uncomfortable. "That depends." "Depends on what?" Quincy pressed, slowly moving backwards until his back rested against the cabinet doors, too. Calmly, he laced his fingers together over a knee after he kicked away the cut remnants of his stinking coat with a shoe. "On whether or not any of you rat on us that we're here." Ice replied sarcastically. At this, Tony the repair man's nervousness suddenly flared. His eyes shot to the truck's radio that Ice had tucked into a sleeve. Startling, Ice snatched it out and made sure it was turned off.  Just to be sure, he pulled out the Nicad battery from its back and threw it across the room. The communications man flinched at the clatter and Roy held up a hand in front of him to calm him down. "It's okay. That was never on. That's not your fault." he said with strong emphasis to Ice so that fact finally registered on the crazed young convict. But even at Roy's words, Tony remained trembling and twitchy. "Why is he still acting so nervous?" Ice demanded. Tony jerked and finally blurted out. "I got A.D.D. man... I... I can't handle stress... I'm sorry.." and he began to sob quietly. "I just really wish people knew we were here, you know. Can you blame me?"  He glanced up once, at Cap, before lowering his eyes again. His hands motioned turning a dial subtlely behind a covered palm. Cap tilted his jaw as his mind processed that. He parroted the same back at Tony. Tony bobbed his head twice, with another confirming glance at Hank, before sagging once again into a very real tearful submission. Hank leaned into Marco next to him and whispered. "Chet's HT is on the air in the bay." "Here's hoping." Lopez said, equally sotto voce. Cap went on out loud. "We've been thinking the same thing ourselves for hours now. It's only natural to want an out." "Just like you, when you acted on it." Quincy said, too, looking at Ice and Stu quietly. "Why should we have to pay the price for your illegal freedom? She sure did." he said, indicating the baby. Ice's face was struck with a sudden horror and he dropped his knife onto the floor. Kelly coughed weakly, coming further out of sedation. Sighing deeply, Stu blinked as if he had just become aware of the discomfort he was causing Chet. He picked up his gun hand with a shrug and returned to his usual place, seated in Cap's recliner. To Roy and Johnny's relief, Chet breathing began to even out from its hard laboring, that had been caused by Stu's added weight, into a normal quality. Stu began spinning his bullets in their magazine casing as he waved the two paramedics to go care for their friend. "Today was Russian roulette, old pal." He said to Ice, who was falling to pieces in front of him. "Just like I've been trying to tell ya. Society says we're evil through and through. There is always a price paid in the end, for being that, Ice. And I'm afraid that price comes now. I know it, and I think you've finally learned it, too. At last. What have you got to say for yourself?" Ice was left standing alone and unsupported. The task of addressing the others clearly had been passed on to him. Ice's confidence was shaken enough that he picked up the crying baby and her heated towel into his arms for comfort. He tried cooing to hush her, but nothing worked. He was entirely unaware that the knife had slipped from his fingers.  "You do as we say, all of you!" he said, raging, but his eyes were finally filling with tears of sudden guilt and remorse as he stared at and finally understood the unhappy, falling tears of the baby. Tears that he, and he alone, had caused. In the leather chair, Stu nodded with satisfaction that his lesson about life to Ice was being heeded. He stopped spinning his gun's bullet chamber and began to empty them out, one by one into his lap until he was completely disarmed. He didn't resist when the firemen rushed him and Ice both and tied them up with long pieces of torn phone cording. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ "Chet! .... Chet! Can you hear me?" Gage shouted as he reassessed Kelly's awareness with a sternal rub. Kelly barely felt it, but he spit out the noisy suction tube Roy was using on him to clear a large amount of bloody saliva out of his mouth. "Stop.. It's gone. I'm awake. How's...*gasp*... the baby?" "Pink and healthy. Just the way I like them." Quincy said, showing her off to Chet proudly. Marco wanted to know something. "How did you know your barging in here was going to work out?" he asked the coroner. "I didn't. I just got lucky. I mean, what DO convicts do when cops don't storm the riot as planned?" Quincy shrugged. Then he eyed up the biophone on the table between them. "Want me to set up the comm line?"

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