"It's a start," Ryan repeated, his tone even and giving no indication as to whether or not he actually believed her in the slightest.  "We'll check out the crime scene.  Sure hope it does jog your memory because that's all they had notes on," he replied, holding the mentally repeating some of the information from her file.  Not that there was much in there to memorize.  The investigation really hadn't gone far, leading to the dismissal as a rogue hit-and-run.  He wasn't sure it hadn't been that simple -- there was certainly nothing to suggest that there was, aside from a woman in his passenger seat claiming to be the victim, looking for answers.  That part certainly wasn't playing out like any murder he'd run into before, and so if nothing else, it had earned his curiosity.<br/><br/>He seemed to roll his eyes at the term 'agent'.  The word was on his badge, but most seemed to recognize that it was little more than a formality, a leftover perk from a time when he felt like more than he was now.  Granted, generally speaking, an FBI Agent's jurisdiction was in the investigation, not in the action.  That usually fell to the SWAT or local officers, but even back in the office when sitting at his desk, the way people treated him had changed.  The cases he received were less involved, more local, the kind of stuff that was only handed to the FBI because of some archaic rule about how the situations were escalated, or because the local detective was being investigated for embezzlement or racketeering.  Nothing that would whet his whistle, and it was clear (to him at least) why that was.<br/><br/>He'd only been 27 when he was involved in the hostage negotiation where everything went to shit.  His progression to field agent had gone by rapidly, and his training was over within months before he was cut loose to work on his own.  The negotiation seemed cut and dry -- a pervy asshole with a pistol and an incubating hangover holding a waitress at a diner hostage, starting to have second thoughts when the drunken haze began to fade -- but the man inside wasn't a rapist or a psychopath.  He was an idiot, who made the mistake of getting plastered while he was armed and didn't know how to handle rejection in his stupor.  The end result was that as he was forced to face the facts in the light of day, his nerves weren't prepared for the stress like a career criminal or premeditating dipshit might have been.  No one had expected it -- the local officer had been calling him by name all night long.  Said they went to church together.  Maybe it was the anxiety, madness brought on by the bright flare of the red and blue lights outside the 24-hour diner window that made him do it, or maybe he still had just enough liquor in his system to make him think he could survive it, but the bastard came out, guns blazing.<br/><br/>Dodson had taken a bullet to the gut, something that stirred up his insides something fierce, but it passed straight through, and took a chunk of his spine with it.  The doctors said he'd never walk again, then pat themselves on the back when a year and a half later he'd forced himself out of the wheelchair through sheer force of will, all smiles about the wonders of modern medical science when honestly he just wanted to get up so he could put an end to their damn patronizing.  He'd come a long way since then, walking on his own, but his success had come to plateau, and he was left with a cane and a limp that, despite his will, would be with him until the day he died.   Seven years later, and he was still struggling with it.  Yeah, he knew the risks, and no, he didn't have a pro-football career destroyed by the bullet, or anything tragic like a Lifetime movie.  He had enough going for him that he'd make a living, one way or another.  He'd just imagined it was the kind of living where he could walk without that damned cane.<br/><br/>"Agent," he muttered darkly.  They let him keep his badge, even gave him a fancy company car as a consolation prize, but he wasn't an agent.  He was a delivery boy.  The only thing she was keeping him from was a microwave with his lunch in it and a few more hours of solitaire.  "Let's be honest, you didn't exactly win the lottery when I walked in.  I'm sure the boys can manage without me for a day or two, and I've got nothing better to do."  He shrugged.  "Maybe between the two of us we can figure out exactly what's going on here."