by a b
“She won’t tell them anything.”
“But she will when they find her. There’s a new wind blowing from the federal ineptitude which lets us feast upon its rosy apple red schoolgirl.” A blade flashed from its wrist sheath as it slid into his palm. Blade tapped the monitor showing Laura moving in slumber. “Someone’s looking for her - somebody who don’t seem afraid of the dark, and he’ll find our first mistake cause he doesn’t want this to last. We need to cut our ties.”
“I told you I dropped her off somewhere between here and Provo.” Mac responded.
“Why mention Provo then?” He asked.
“I didn’t.” Mac backpedaled “I mean it could have been Leadville for all I know.”
Blade produced a packing receipt “And the satellite part, you picked that up in Provo, that’s a couple of times that you have crossed paths with that city. And it’s not that pretty, unless someone in it is.”
Blade recalled that Mac had brought Darci into their group on a ride home from a job in Vancouver. She was his girlfriend, and Blade had convinced him to share her for their usual victory video shoot. This one turned out different, because of an idea that Darci had to market it to all of the uptight snobs and slobs who’d wished they’d banged her in high school. The shoot turned into a two-week marathon and the public school patrons, who had become expendable income losers honoring boring jobs and their blathering wives, couldn’t get enough.
Darci had had enough after three days, but Blade milked the abduction angle. She was in whore boot camp and they put her into costume after costume, finally he agreed to let her go because she threatened to go to the cops. The information loop wasn’t closed around her, he couldn’t be sure who knew Darci’s whereabouts, or who would come looking. Blade wasn’t ready for his enterprise to be criminal, not yet, so he let her go. Mac took her to somewhere between their camp and Provo and let her out.
Mac could tell what Blade wanted. “I’ll go get her.”
“I sent Vorest, to cut the ties. Now where do I tell him to look?” Mac told him what he knew.
Blade gave Mac a final piece of wisdom as he walked out the door. “Drink it off, women like Darci weren’t worth the sum total of the ejaculate that had passed their lips.” Of course, Blade knew very little about the subject and it was one of the few subjects he would ever underestimate.
“I’m going to the bar.”
All he needed was a drink and then another four after it. Blade didn’t believe that Mac was capable of deception, other than self-deception. He even questioned whether two thoughts could simultaneously exist in Mac’s consciousness without a mental fission that would blow his head straight off his neck block.
Chapter 37 Give Away
CLUNK, the door slammed behind him. Panic hit Mac like a bucket of ice water. He had seen Vorest deal with people before, he was known for his enjoyment of putting people through pain.
There was a time in Mexico where he cut up a courier to get the drugs out of his stomach. He did it without killing the man. Vorest split the vertebrae with the man lying on his front, tapping into his stomach with the accuracy of a surgeon. The man used his hands to drag himself to a river and drown himself. The pain of exposing that many spinal nerves raw was the kind of torture that brought a hum to Vorest’s lips, all the way back to the Rockies in that particular case. In fact, it had become his tell. Any time one heard him hum a tune; they knew it was from fresh brutality.
Mac could hear Darci’s scream mixing with that sadistic hum in his head.
Mac sped off, down the old dirt trail that led into the dark steep logging road through the woods. His headlight shone yellow coloring a world bathed in the grey blue light of a sliver of the moon. It didn’t matter how bright a light was in this landscape, it soaked it up and left deep shadows lingering in all directions away from the source.
He heard a predator’s heavy tread as it scurried though the underbrush on side of the dusty track. It must have been big, because the throaty Harley engine wasn’t the most subtle accompaniment to the stillness of the remote mountain night. After about five miles twisting and turning downward, the road leveled. A single neon rod twisted into the name of a bar cracked the colorless landscape. Mac let his engine unwind with a fire that he could never express himself. He needed the speedometer to climb above one hundred, partly because it felt like his task was urgent, the other reason was that it was his entire fault.
Mac knew that it was selfish bringing her to the camp the first time, and when he saw what they put Darci through during her stay, he wished he’d never met her. She was so much prettier and more fragile than anything he’d ever seen before. She’d told him that sharing her body was the way that they could be together, and he’d agreed to it. He remembered the first time he’d known that she was better than anyone he’d ever met; she’d grabbed his huge arm and looped it around her and said that she felt like she should thank him every time she curled up in his arms. She went to sleep whispering thank you in his ear over and over. That was when they were on the road together, before they’d come to this hell in the Rockies.
He owed her.
The bike rocked against the kickstand as Mac pushed his weight off of it before coming to a complete stop. He took all three stairs in one jump. The warped boards creaked under the strain.
He slapped a twenty on the bar and told Burly that he needed the phone, all night maybe. He needed to find someone. Burly looked him up and down and pushed the twenty back at him while laying an old rotary phone on the bar. It was a Monday; the bar was empty, which made it the largest phone booth in the west. He dialed information for the Provo area.
Chapter 38 Report Back
Bailey put down the phone with a smile. He had just reported the progress back to Wilkes.
He was quite proud of himself for being useful but not doing any work himself. It was the recipe for promotion at any government agency. The work, any work, could be criticized no matter how stellar, but aiding the work while remaining only a component in the outcome was a one-way ticket to a promotion. There was no one better at being adequate at his job than Bailey, and he had been well rewarded for his undistinguished participation thus far. His new challenge, to rise above his current position in charge of a local agency required either a slow progression of building a good reputation, something he didn’t believe possible, or the confluence of important people knowing his name while not associating it with anything too bad or too good. After all, no one wanted to be overshadowed by a subordinate, especially at the top, nor did they want to promote someone who made them look bad.
Bailey fluttered his fingers along a stack of folders on the case, he didn’t think that Legacy had a hopscotch chance in hell of bringing these men to justice, but he saw an angle in the case that would leave his imprint with the higher ups. He picked through the remains of pastry sticking to the tin foil that lay on the corner of his desk. There was a crumb left from his fresh lemon zest lingonberry scones, a morsel which he plucked and placed onto his back teeth. Bailey tasted a win for him in this case either way.
Chapter 39 Food Groups
A knock at Legacy’s door set a whirlwind dinner into motion. Wagner entered with four grocery bags. She unpacked the contents of one bag that contained a vast array of cooking utensils. The other bags contained a range of food that afforded her the latitude to make almost anything on par with any of the finest casual eateries that were popularly attended by people who longed for a kind of nostalgia that never really existed except in old rusted reproductions of advertisements and posed pictures of pie eating contests on the wall. She looked like a formal version of one of the cheery waitresses that one would find in such a place, black tights tapered up her legs to a short black skirt with a white silk shirt tucked in.
This was the first time that Legacy had seen her out of a suit. This was her version of casual. Not a hair out of place, or a single beaded cuff lace turned in onto itself.
Legacy looked down at Chess
and found that she wore a delighted smirk on her face as she introduced herself.
“I’m Chess. You’re dad’s partner.”
Wagner looked at Legacy waiting for an introduction. He could tell by her amusement that it was a test.
“Agent Wagner.” Legacy clarified.
The sight of her father’s meticulously presented partner must have made the insides of her mind race. He decided this because she was completely without comment.
“I could use help with dessert.”
Chess politely accepted the invitation. A look of conspiracy crossed Wagner’s face as she led Chess into the kitchen – she had no idea what kind of cook her apprentice was. Chess found ways to ruin almost any food product, neglect was her favorite tool. She was famous for burning popcorn, hot pockets and easy mac – the trifecta of simple microwave foods. Legacy waved, then turned to hide an amused concern about what came through those doors next.
Quail stuffed with saffron and rosemary shiitake mushroom stuffing, a three-point injection of the meat with a raspberry jalapeno butter that added just enough spice to make the red pepper Parmesan rice seem tame.
“Any vegetarians?” Wagner asked serving the placemats rather than the people sitting in front of them.
“None.” Chess answered, “This looks delicious.”
“I can’t take credit, Chess did most of the sauces.” Legacy perked up.
“Under strict supervision.”
“My father was gourmet chef. He said that if I had spent as much time cooking as I did training to put a man twice my size through a wall, I’d be in one of the top kitchens in Paris right now.” Wagner said in a tone that indicated that she was more proud of her father’s opinion of her than her own culinary abilities.
“Your father must be disappointed.” Legacy said before he could put his normal social graces in check.
“Dad.” Chess shot back at him.
“Observation, not insult.” He responded.
“He’s a broken man. He reminds me of you.” Wagner spun her knife over her knuckles, a complete pro, changing grip from cutting to attacking, and leveled the tip at the breast of the quail.
Chess was so impressed that she imitated the move with her fork and it ended up on the floor after skidding off of the tablecloth. Legacy looked on as something very important happened. Instead of looking after the fork, both girls looked at each other. It was a moment of inclusion – something that Legacy realized he’d never been able to teach his daughter in their solitary life. Legacy noticed with a strange contentment that he was not a part of.
And in that moment, the symphonic oddity of Wagner’s presence in their dining room was drowned out with the combined laughter of Chess and her in a kind of diminished harmony, poking fun at Legacy. It would be only ten or more times like that, where they ganged up on him, or he was the object of their surprisingly like-minded, but well-meaning ridicule.
“Well-meaning ridicule” was a concept that sounds like a bit of a contradiction until one becomes a father to a daughter. The drive to get attention from their father, especially a stoic one like Legacy, becomes a full-time occupation. The dirt collected can’t be flung back into the face of the parent, that shows lack of respect and Chess had more respect for her father than anyone in her life. This is where it gets semi-contradictory, another trait of the adolescent girl, with the addition of a third party added to a conversation, all of dad’s character ticks are fair game. They can and will be taunted. In this context the daughter shows how observant she really is through her willingness to share her father’s flaws another person.
It’s complicated, but it couldn’t have been too painful because at the end of the meal, Legacy asked Chess for a glass of wine and sat at the table enjoying it rather than taking scotch in his study alone.
“You must be having a blast.” Chess said as she poured the wine and set it in front of her father. Legacy took a sip. There was a dusty residue that rose to the top of the glass.
Wagner and Chess cleared the plates. A series of clanks and drumming of footsteps in the kitchen and the door opened. It was dessert time.
Chess and Wagner brought down the house with their personal crockery cups of crème de leche custard presented along with a display of butane torch mastery. Wagner caramelized the sugar around the edge of the cup then scorched a cursive monogram into the top layer. When she came to her own, she didn’t bother with her own initials saying it was all for display. That didn’t sit well with Legacy who grabbed the torch and scorched AW into the top of hers while the ladies watched on laughing.
“Martin, I’m surprised you knew my first name.” Her lips pouted ever so slightly.
“It stands for Agent Wagner.” The pout became real until she lifted her eyes to his deep chestnut pupils and he added “Angela.” Legacy simply uttered, “Got you.”
She could have stabbed him, she was so pleased. The dinner was one of those meetings of strangers that go much better than planned. It was the very discord of their personalities that worked that night, under that roof, in a way that none of them seemed prepared for.
At around seven thirty, as the last of the dishes hit the drying rack Chess piped up “Can I be excused? I’m beat.”
Something didn’t sit well with Legacy, a hair trigger went off in his mind, and the last sentiment of the night was not going to be serious. What was Chess up to? “You bugged my room.”
“No, I was just going to listen at the door–”
“This - case, it’s very sensitive-” His tone was protective.
“Dad, I know what you’re working on –”
“How?”
Wagner said, “It’s all over the papers, the country is treating this like a baby down the well situation – excuse the crude analogy but there’s really nothing pleasant to compare this to.” She turned to Chess. “Your father is right though, stay away from the door.”
Legacy wasn’t ready to have real conversations in front of a third party. Chess sensed his growing displeasure and chimed in. “After hearing a mature discourse from my elders, I choose,” She flipped her hair posing for her father as the model child “to reread the Gnostic gospels and go to bed.” A quick peck on the forehead, one last little joke at his expense indicating that she was really the parent and he the child, and she left the room. Wagner verbalized what Legacy was almost always thinking.
“She’s great.”
Legacy agreed dipping into a proud tone “I know.”
Three hours later they were fast-forwarding through tape, looking at sections that Legacy had highlighted from the transcripts. Transcripts that could hardly be read – so much so that Legacy would point to the next section or read off time code rather than verbalize what was said on camera by the participants.
They sat in the middle of the storm that was the escalating paper explosion that covered the flat vertical surfaces of the room and spilled onto the floor radiating out from the television and chairs. Every page that had been written every interview and analysis of the case was in that room and had passed through Legacy’s hands before landing in its current resting spot. Legacy consistently surprised Wagner by his ability to locate whatever document he needed by standing in the middle of the room and accessing some kind of internal topographic catalog that he charted off of the constellations of pictures on the wall.
Wagner noticed that pictures and captions were the only things allowed on the walls and all text documents were confined to resting surfaces. Nothing was filed, or inside a drawer of any kind. He had explained upon her first visit that once things were out of sight, they were, for him, truly out of mind.
Wagner flipped forward to another section of the tape almost an hour after the one they’d been viewing.
Wagner let out an annoyed huff. She was tired of sliding backwards and forwards looking for sections of the video where the participants spoke. Not only was it an assault her visual cortex, all the positions being changed, the wide shots turning to close ups, the
impersonal nature of unnatural speed making a real document seem like a cartoon -Legacy could tell that she was frustrated by the process.
Asking Legacy to change his ways was like staring up at the stars and asking for some new pictures. She took out her laptop and then produced a plastic divider sheet notebook filled with discs. Using her DVD drive and a piece of software called Time Code Crunch, she located the next section of the transcript by typing in the time provided by the transcript then playing forward on the DVD.
“We’ve got a system going here, agent.” It took only seconds to get to a still image of the group on camera. She hit play and Blue’s voice crackled over the speaker a static complaint.
“She moves like a cat, but she doesn’t purr enough.” The camera moved in to a close up on Purple.
“Freeze that.” Legacy studied the clear digital signal on screen. Two sadistic eyes peered out of the form fitting purple mask. “That’s good.” A pure form of human viciousness seemed to deflect light away from Purple, Legacy soaked it up and his voice became sinister too. “He’s a killer, and he enjoys what he’s doing.”
