Ransom X

by a b

  “I’m proud of you, a lot of good work happens during a distraction. We’ll talk about it when you get back.” Legacy said.

  “My plane gets in around ten, I could be at your place at eleven.” Wagner replied.

  The words came out like a gag reflex, “I – well –” a sweet melody erupted from the over Legacy’s shoulder coming from the speakers of his tape player. Later, Legacy told her that it was a tape by a teenage boy, who’d never been out of an institution. Legacy had been waiting for the clarinet savant to get to this moment for over seventeen hours of total chirping chaos.

  It was like the fleeting blossom of a cactus flower, a moment of transparency in a parched desert. Legacy had gotten a glimpse of a tortured soul buried under so many layers of mania that it took days to find a way to the surface only to leave a fleeting message, which almost no one could decipher. He didn’t miss the irony that he was listening to someone screaming to get out, while throwing up new barriers against anyone attempting to get into his life. An impulse, it must have been a simple impulse in his brain that flowed downhill into stream of words. “I need to clean up the place.”

  “We can work my hours for a change.” She flipped back.

  “I’ve really got to start pulling my weight. You’ve got to go.” Legacy stated bluntly.

  “Why is that?” she asked.

  “Turn in the direction of the receiver is pointed.” Legacy said.

  Wagner’s eyes followed the vector up past her mouth and over her shoulder and came eye to eye with the young server who’d taken her cup just moments before. He had returned with a fresh steaming latte.

  “Now you’re just trying to impress me.” Wagner couldn’t repress a cautious smile of reckless delight.

  “Bye, Wagner.” Legacy hung up the phone.

  The beaming boy from Duluth explained that there were free refills for pretty ladies in this seating section of the food court until 10:07. Wagner let him thing that the smile was for him. He turned red. Maybe it wasn’t that bad of a town after all.

  Chapter 25 Eye Pi

  Tyke sat in front of a blossoming bank of computer monitors in an unfinished 18x24 industrial-looking room. He read something on the screen then snickered in a condescending tone at the ignorance of the average guy who posted on his forum. He had no experience thinking like an average guy. Tyke was his screen name when he’d halted half the NYC transportation systems to impress a cheerleader when he was fifteen. He still had never dated a cheerleader in his mid-twenties, but he had spent time in a federal penitentiary, and was then recruited to create computer security devices clever enough to fool people like himself.

  In his free time he ran a public Internet forum – IF – where geek-speak was the currency with which respect was bought and sold. It was the place where Tyke was the richest man in the world. The place where tech-heads of all shapes and colors posted questions about technology ranging from the Apollo Program era to the nanotechnology boom that Tyke predicted would destroy the world before anyone had much of a chance to enjoy it. His theory was that the moment that people could fit a nuclear powered device into a box of crackers – people would no longer trust snacks. Since snack foods were necessary for the sustenance of all of those who understood technology, there would be a mass starvation of nerds. Then the nanos would battle the regular people for the dominance of the planet. But a planet without ding dongs would be hard to fight for, so Tyke favored the nanos in the final confrontation, unless Patrick Stewart happened to still be alive.

  Tyke’s fingers rattled across the keyboard typing a snotty response to a question about the proposed resolution of the new HD3 chip shipping to DILA projector makers in the fall. “Questions about resolution are about as interesting to me as what my shrink says to my problems with authority, but. . .” then he went on to answer the technical question in mind-numbing detail. Tyke conservatively estimated that he typed 120 words per minute, but he distrusted measuring devices and would only estimate.

  The phone rang – his ponytail flipped in counter motion.

  “Tyke’s Crib.” He said into the receiver.

  Legacy was on the other end. “Stanley?”

  “You bitch, don’t you ever call me that, my momma calls me that and that’s all. You’re trying to piss me off, you must want something.” Tyke liked to consider himself a badass in the mold of Samuel L. Jackson over the phone.

  “You’re the only guy I know who can handle this.” Legacy replied.

  “I’m the only guy who can handle most things – my skill set pisses off impossible.” He shifted his frame in his ergonomically designed mesh-backed chair.

  “Is that why you’re sitting at home in a faded NAB t-shirt, answering questions about projector settings in the middle of the day?”

  “You posted that question? You dog, you know I hate questions about optics.”

  “And you can’t lay off of them because you’re fascinated with your own weakness.” Legacy liked that about him, “Look, I need something done fast.”

  Legacy and Tyke had worked together at the NSA for a short stint. They had a kind of kindred bond because everyone treated them as a unique commodity. They’d played chess at lunch for almost a year, until Tyke lost a game and vowed never to talk to Legacy again. It was a part of their relationship that always seemed to crop up right about this time in the conversation.

  “How did you beat me?” Tyke demanded.

  “That was ten years ago, are you still thinking about that?” Legacy of course knew that he still was.

  “Tell me, just tell me if you cheated and I’ll do anything you want.” Tyke jacked into his headset and paced in front of the screens. Legacy made him wait for the answer.

  “I cheated.” He finally said.

  Tyke danced around the room like he’d just won the lottery. On a side note, he had won two separate grand prize lottery drawings and no one had ever been able to prove fraud. “I knew it. How did you do it?”

  “That wasn’t part of the deal.” Legacy could practically feel the blood draining from Tyke’s face. He knew that years of his free time would be reliving the terms of the agreement they’d just struck. Tyke returned to the conversation in a grudging tone.

  “I can figure it out, now that I know.”

  “That’s strange because I was working under the impression that you’d assumed that I was cheating over the last ten years, and you still hadn’t figured it out.” Legacy twisted the knife deeper, as Tyke contorted in silent pain. “I need to know how to get every TV channel in the country playing on my TV. What do I need?”

  “You’re going to have to go old school, band 2 broadcast satellite with a rack set of decoders – and you still wouldn’t be able to get HBO. Why? What are you thinking?”

  Legacy wasn’t ready to spell out everything – there was only one person who needed to know what was in his head.

  Chapter 26 Visiting Team

  Legacy met Agent Wagner at the door of his apartment. There were no visible signs of her having been on the road, nor of her having worked 36 out of the past 40 hours. Legacy marveled at the visual of her coming through the door. She was the first woman in his house in years; he hadn’t been aware that the inside of his place was more like a crypt than an apartment until someone crossed the threshold and entered. Something about her enthusiasm breathed life into the place for a moment.

  Chess peered through the crack in her bedroom door to get a glimpse of Wagner as she walked side by side with her father to the study. Legacy said in a loud voice, “Goodnight, Chess,” as he passed her room. It forced her to retreat before replying. “Goodnight, dad.”

  The study was wall-to-wall videotapes, pictures, and copies of official testimonies. Every part of the walls was covered with documents from the case. Video stills covered the windows like a collage made in a manner that only Legacy’s subconscious could decipher, if there was any order at all. Anything that might catch his eye and bring the facts of the case into convergence, br
ing the walls crashing in, was posted on the four walls. Five girls surrounded his living area and the bed was made, buried under the paperwork of the investigation.

  “I guess you do bring it home.” Her tone was the same as his daughter just before calling him a “freakazoid.”

  Legacy stopped short, for a moment. What had surprised Wagner? He didn’t see anything odd in the room – it was all connected and laid out based on the competitive relationship between fact which followed a radial pattern around the pictures, and theory which climbed the walls and ended up on the ceiling looking down on the hard facts. It was chronological, working in clockwise fashion around the room beginning at magnetic north. It seemed pretty obvious to Legacy. It seemed that having a partner was going to be hard work.

  “All of the victims were on local TV. Four days before their abduction. This one,” he pointed to Missy, “was interviewed on her prom queen victory while practicing to ride a motorcycle in the resulting parade.”

  “Sure that’s not national?” Wagner quipped.

  “And Carla filled in for the weather girl - Brit was live on scene of a fire. Tracy was interviewed at a protest against habitat destruction in the Bay area.” Legacy looked up from his notes. “All local TV news.”

  Legacy let it sink in. All of the hours Wagner’s team had spent trying to find a thread to tie the victims to their abductors, and there was nothing. No more contact that a roulette ball to the eventual cup that it lands in. This pack grabbed an image off a screen then hunted it to extinction. Legacy went on to explain the technical details that made it possible to get all the channels in the country on satellite. There were over two thousand pre-digital, forty-foot dishes that could be hacked in order to do the job. Most of them were sold in the late seventies, and tracking down their owners would be near impossible.

  “Anyway, Blue would have covered his tracks so well on this purchase, we’ll never pin him to it.” Legacy said distractedly.

  “You give him too much respect.” Wagner added.

  Legacy’s head snapped up, nothing she could have said would have offended him more. “Contempt” there was edgy restraint in his voice, “it’s not respect.” He pointed to a picture that hung on the wall right beside the door, like a sentry, he had to pass every time he left the room. It was Blue. His eyes burned into the image, Wagner had to snap him out of it.

  “I didn’t mean it like that.” He swung his gaze onto her face. It fit so well with the pictures of pretty women around the room, Legacy looked at the crest of her forehead as it sloped down into apologetic green eyes. He almost blushed as he remembered “3am”. Lovely.

  It was a joke that he’d heard when he was in basic training. The human mind finds the beauty in anything around 3am. It was the best time to threaten the life of a prisoner who had a fear of death – even a miserable existence has merit at 3am. Happy memories of his former life were hard to come by. Wagner reached out and touched him on the shoulder.

  “I meant that you understand his capabilities better than anyone.” Wagner brushed invisible lint from his shirt.

  Legacy took the awkward silence. Wait, did he really just think that silence was awkward? He’d have to come back to that thought. He took the break to add to her education.

  “In the world of interrogation, knowing a person is more of a deductive process than additive. I learned what a person won’t do a lot quicker than I get to know what they will – I know Blue wouldn’t leave a trail, but I can’t tell you what he did to cover it up. He is all about input, nothing escapes him. Does that make sense?” Legacy was actively soliciting response in the conversation – it must be 3am. He ran up against something she’d said earlier, on the phone she’d claimed that he was ’just trying to impress her.’ Was he? Was that possible?

  “It makes perfect sense.” Wagner added in reassurance. He looked at her a moment then realized that she was responding to what he had said aloud and not what he had been thinking subsequently.

  “They’ll move on their next victim in seven days. All of the previous girls were on TV between seven and eleven thirty PM eastern time, four days before their abduction.”

  “With a thousand local channels out there, what do you think our chances are choosing the same one they do?” Wagner asked.

  Legacy didn’t have an answer, at this point he knew who the Vinyl Men wouldn’t choose, not who they would. Predicting the negative was a particularly frustrating brand of certainty.

  “It gets worse,” he confided. “I can’t verify that Laura was on TV before her abduction. We could be chasing around a system that they’ve already abandoned.”

  Chapter 27 Kick Rocks

  Blue sat in the rec room at the complex. It was a stained, pegboard lined open area, where children used to play church dodge ball – and have nightly bible story readings. Now it was an Orwellian version of hell, over a hundred mismatched TV screens lined the long wall, stacked with the kind of care that most people reserve for their high school yearbooks or office policy handbooks.

  Dust collected in the musty corners, particles weighed down by thick billowing cigarette smoke. Blue scanned the images, all obscured with snowy interference. This is what Mac had been talking about; the TV distribution amplifier was on the fritz. He couldn’t get a good image unless he turned off all but one set. What good was one TV set to Blue? His mind worked too quickly for one story, or one input of any kind.

  He tried closing his eyes and turning up the audio on multiple channels, but that was filled with static and crackle. This was no good at all. He found himself impatient for Mac to return. Then he could blanket his mind with images and ward off that headache that always seemed to come when there was no avalanche of other stimuli. He could feel it pounding beneath his temples already- it may have been the reminder of the heart that caused him pain.

  What he could not see would have fed the pain until it became razor sharp retribution. Police surrounding the biker bar in the Dakota’s, near the drop point he’d carefully planned for young Tracy. The event went totally unnoticed, or he would have been waiting for Mac’s return with a knife in his hand. Instead, he turned his attention back to the closed circuit feed of Laura. In his boredom, he’d been merciless with the sessions, scheduling them one after another. He’d given permission and strict instructions on how to pierce her nipples on camera; the second one was almost complete when he turned his attention toward her eyes. She watched the fishhook barb go through the hole and Blue saw the recognition of what it would take to get it out again. It was a fleeting moment, a flutter of her eyes before locking out her emotions again. She was a challenge like none of the other girls had presented – the other girls were like drilling teeth, the minute Blue got beneath the surface there was pain. Laura was killing off her senses one by one. She was dying in front of the lens, piece by piece. Finding a pocket of life was like tapping cold blue water beneath an ancient sun baked desert. Her eyes were deep wells, still full beneath the surface. She was beyond beautiful.

  Chapter 28 Conjugal Visit

  Mac filled up the tank; his hands clamped regretting the cold metal pump that no longer had a clip to hold the flow steady. He had to do it the old fashioned way, standing over the nozzle, smelling the methyl fumes with his cigarette ash dangling an arms length away from ignition. If Darwin were right, a fireball was imminent. CLICK, the tank was finally full.

  He handed over the cash to the aging clerk. “Thanks, come again.” Something about her tone made him want to steal something on the way out of the store. He fought the impulse, because Blade would kill him for even thinking about it. Mac wondered if the news of his slip up had trickled back to the home base. He forced himself to put it out of his mind. Anyway, the only news that arrived at camp was through the TV, and until he picked up the mail and got it back there, there was no reception. The thought steadied him as he tucked a chocolate covered snack cake into his pocket and left the gas station.

  Mac scanned the landscape. His head turned ba
ck and forth walking to the van. Someone looking at him might think he was afraid of detection, or nervous about the stolen snack cake, but it was really Mac’s clumsy way of looking for someone. He didn’t have a lot of practice at being discrete.

  Mac pulled the van into the parking lot of a mail-it store, pulling up his pants twice before entering. He came out moments later with a package, almost an arm in length. He delicately placed it on the seat next to his, as this was precious cargo. This was the key to getting his beloved TV back in operation. Only one more errand left.

  He cruised around the back alleys, knocked on the doors to gas station rest rooms. She couldn’t be far away. This is where he’d met her; this is where he’d dropped her off. She said she’d wait for him. She couldn’t be far.

  After almost an hour he found her, huddled in the back alley behind a Wal-Mart store, face masked off by hood strings pulled tight. Her legs tangled and she almost fell in her excitement to get to the van. “Mac!” she screamed. Mac grabbed her in a bear hug and pulled her in through the passenger window.