by a b
She couldn’t follow him far, her body was tied down under a web netting of inch wide leather straps. There was nothing on her face, it was naked. Blue thought about how he would wet the straps before the session, and then they would shrink, start to pull, cutting into her soft skin. By the end she would surely be gasping for air with a constricted rib cage and clawing at the individual straps for a relief that would only come with his knife. She would beg for him to pull out his knife. He wasn’t ready to kill her yet, but he foamed at the idea of trying out the scene without cutting beneath her skin. He bristled inside but maintained a kind of hesitant charm in his voice. “I’m so sorry I have to do this, it’s what they want.”
He poured a bucket of water over her body.
“You don’t fool me.” Said the glistening Laura. His eyes were so far away that it was impossible to make out what she’d meant. Blue felt uneasy, so he attempted to calm Laura. He would give her a reward before sending her in front of the cameras.
“You’re past a hundred and fifty million. I think that you’ve become the most expensive single object that has ever been sold.” He told her, looking at his watch and fleeing the room. The broadcast was about to start, and he would be as angry at himself for a delay as he would any of his men. Well, almost.
The control room had a bank of televisions, and it didn’t take him a second to hone in on the one spewing the minutia that penetrated his own interests. He didn’t need to turn up the volume, reading the ticker on the bottom was enough.
Code for choosing co-ed sex slaves broken, TV prime time line up where they get picked. Don’t let your daughters on TV between 4-7 pacific.
Chapter 44 The Gang
The Gang of Five had owned the flophouse for over forty years, a farmhouse surrounded by waving fields of brown grass and covered with the remnants of failed farming rusted past recognition, waiting to infect the careless trespasser with tetanus. There were over thirty members in the biker gang making the name a questionable choice, but it must have been appropriate at one time. The leader Big Dog, an impossibly ugly man, always joked that nobody in the group could count so it hardly mattered.
Bikes stood at all angles at the bottom of a long wooden staircase that led to the stretched porch area. A keen eye would notice that bikes progressed in value walking up the path until the nicest bike, Big Dog’s, practically sat on top of the rotting, angled first step. It was the way Big Dog liked it. He didn’t have to swing his leg over the saddle; he just eased off the step onto his ride.
The Gang of Five was a bit of an ugly operation, working outside of the bounds of even the lax rules of biker society. It’s hard to imagine what kind of fraternity would be scowled upon within the community of bikers that accepted nearly every shade and nuance of brutality and vice within its shelter, until someone heard their job description.
They stole bikes.
Big Dog sidestepped a passed out comrade on his way to the phone, then kicked him as an afterthought.
“Get the fuck off the floor.” The biker stirred “I’ve got a business call or I’d stomp your balls, if I could find them.”
This was the snitch call he’d been waiting for. There was a group of Canadian bikers, the pussies, or at least that was the name Big Dog gave them in his head, they were rolling through Chugwater, on their way to Sheridan, and they were all businessmen riding new custom bikes. This was their vacation, and Big Dog was going to show them some “hospitality”, he was going to be their native guide and lead them to a bus terminal where they could buy their ticket home. Twelve custom bikes would fetch about a hundred grand, and that was if the fence cheated them blind, an expectation that was usually met. Big Dog was violent and imposing to regular folk, but other core riders knew they could take advantage of him. He wasn’t someone to be feared. He owed people debts, not the other way around. He’d put the tip of a knife to the pupil of a rival, but he’d never pushed it in.
He picked up the phone and found himself speaking with someone who had.
“Hello Big Dog.” Blades’ attempt at warmth was more sinister than most people could conjure on a meth binge. “Wasn’t hard to find you.”
“I wasn’t running.” Sweat broke out across his body, and he looked out the window like reckoning wasn’t far behind. Big Dog was practically panting. “Where are you?”
“Want to invite me over?”
“Sure.”
“Really?” His voice sounded like a creaky door.
“We’re still friends, right?” He knew they weren’t friends. One of his rookies had made the mistake of pulling some chrome off of Blade’s bike about three years back. He remembered his name because Blade had made him repeat it for two hours on a video recording. Blade made him repeat over and over “I’m Keith Logger, and I’m going to die.” He’d tortured him after each time he said it, like he was completing the meaning of the phrase and if he didn’t say it he’d cut off a finger at the first available joint. There are four discreet joints in the finger and by the time the offender died, he had less than three fingers left. He’d sent the recording to Big Dog with a promise to repeat the process on him.
Big Dog offered everything he had to get the bounty off his head, then had sent two paid assassins after him. Blade sent back the killers with a thank you note. He hadn’t harmed them at all. Big Dog had asked the men why and gotten back the response, “He didn’t seem to think that trying to kill him was personal.”
Big Dog knew that his debt was personal, and the bribe had been rebuffed over a pay phone in Oklahoma. Big Dog remembered it like the dying words of his mother, which were “You’d never run over your own mother.”
Blade had said, “That’s not the way I want you to pay.”
Big Dog asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
Blade had answered, “Nothing.”
The echoes of that conversation still rang in Big Dog’s head as he moved through the house filling his pockets with secret stashes of money and weapons. A cache of cocaine hidden behind a wall socket spent like pure green. He pulled up the carpet tack strips in the corner of his room and picked out a pistol from a water-damaged hollow. All the time he kept up a distracted half-conversation.
“So, how have you been, there was a rumor that someone finally caught up with you – and well – you know.”
“There’s something I want from you.” Big Dog froze. Was this a real offer? Or was this a trick? “You’re going to need all of the weapons that you’ve been grunting around collecting.”
“You got me wrong, I’m on the can.” He dropped his handgun.
“Your shit sounds like a semi-automatic hitting the floor.”
“You got it all wrong - “
“I’ll make you eat that shit if you don’t shut up and listen.”
“And then –”
“You do this and you’re free.”
Blade explained the task. Big Dog was going on a killing spree. Blade described a specific method of death for each of the targets. He made Big Dog write them out in such detail, that Big Dog thought that Blade must really want to do the job himself, and that delegation was only possible if it were done exactly as specified.
“Flip the main breaker when you’re done. That’s important.”
“Why?”
“That’ll tell me you’ve finished the job.”
Big Dog wanted to ask how but the snarl in Blade’s voice quieted him.
Blade saved the names and address for the end. It was the icing on a sadistic cake that shocked the Big Dog to the point of interruption.
“Are you shitting me? This is who you want – dead?”
Blade let the silence crackle in between them. Rural Wyoming phone lines were still primarily underground copper lines from the turn of the century and the effect was a background static that presented itself as almost a message. “Don’t ask questions, or I might show up personally to answer them.”
Big Dog understood, but at the same time he couldn’t believe who he
was being asked, rightly told, to slaughter. This was the kind of hit that would cement Blade’s already legendary brutality. It was impossible that he or anyone would give this kind of order. It was inhuman. Big Dog spat tobacco juice down onto his belly, a self-respecting hyena wouldn’t pick over these bones, he thought.
“When do we go -”?
“You roll now.”
Chapter 45 Architect
Doors passed at regular intervals, like the worn skip of a record, 37, 36 – Legacy brushed down the hallway on his way back to his office. He knew exactly how many doors away any office in the building was from his. It was something that he’d picked up while studying the schematics of a cold case where an architect was killed over a contract dispute fifteen years ago.
Legacy taught himself the trade, learning everything about the design of the building in which he worked. He knew every length of conduit, and every buttress and stress point in the building, including renovations over its hundred-year history, but it was an imprecise art, and he was constantly finding differences between the physical structure and the plans. 35, 34. It turned out that the way an architect uses space is a lot like the way a painter uses color. It was impossible to be 100 percent certain, 33,32, but Legacy had become so in tune with the slain man’s designs that he recognized that a building attributed to his partner was indeed his design. He’d been killed for a contract, by someone who had access to his plans for the site. 31, the elevator doors opened, 30, 29, it was silly to count the elevator’s over-sized yawning doors as two, but imprecise to count them as one. Silly always won out over imprecise in Legoland. Why did he think of that term right then?
He and Wagner had agreed that she would go back to her home department in Washington. At least that’s the way the conversation had gone in Legacy’s head. 28, 27. He couldn’t have her around during the next few days, and given the circumstances of her betrayal of his trust she would jump at the chance to leave in good standing, even though he would never work with her again. 26,25,24.
Legacy had been shot by friendly fire on two occasions. Once in the neck, and another time a bullet from a comrade had grazed his temple. He had patrolled with both of the men who had shot him on subsequent occasions. Neither wound was as damaging as the one that Wagner had delivered to him in the conference room today. It was fatal. The autopsy on their partnership had not been performed yet, but Legacy was ready to dispose of the body. He was a man ahead of his time. Ten doors in a cul-de-sac off of the hallway all counted because they were all visible, 14, 13, 12, 11.
Luckily Wagner put up no resistance, 10, 9, 8, to his suggestion,7, 6, 5, unfortunately all of the conversation that he’d had with her, 4,3,2, was inside his own mind. Once he opened the door, he’d have to have it in real life, 1.
The door swung open, and Wagner sat at her desk, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes had turned a dusty blue, diluted by a swirl of emotions that kept her body, ironically, perfectly still.
If Legacy was affected by her condition, he didn’t show it in the least. He’d walked into far more emotional situations without batting an eyelid, people screaming, wrath of God curses, grief on the order that no person would ever willingly involve themselves in. But that was different and he knew it, he never cared about any of those people and there was nothing that they could do to get under his skin. Wagner was not measured on any scale of indifference. She mattered.
He stepped up to her desk and after a nervous glance, he began his speech. He explained quickly his plan for her to have a gracious retreat from this office, without any mention from him about what had transpired. This was all on the very reasonable condition that their partnership was terminated immediately and that she leave without a fuss.
It was a reasonably good pitch, but Legacy was still checking the runners on third and first as he spoke unable to see the signals coming from the bag until he raised his eyes and it was too late.
The bag, Wagner, seemed prepared for her confrontation with Legacy. Legacy read deep beneath her pupils. She was ironclad certain, sitting with her neatly organized mechanical pencils and sure grip pens, that their talk would be all about shame, guilt and remorse. Luckily for her, Legacy had no vitriol for betrayal. He appealed to her professional side – giving her a way to come out of the situation unscathed. Wagner had long since passed that point, she was scathed, really scathed, and it scratched under that raw surface that Legacy thought that she’d trade career stability for quietly being pushed away from his office and this case.
“Like hell I will.” The tears now burning down her flaming rosy cheeks, “If I leave, I get reassigned, and with Laura four days away from the next initiation, I don’t have that kind of time and you know it.”
Legacy tested her. “You betrayed me, and you ruined our best chance at saving that girl.” He pointed to a picture on the wall, Laura’s face shining in her cadet photo; it showed no hint of the trials that poisoned the latest images of her. Legacy could almost feel the effect of his words on her. She was so receptive, he wasn’t certain he could go through with it.
Legacy was lying to Wagner, but he couldn’t take another chance on her loyalty. The reason for lying seemed justified. Every time Legacy made eye contact with his “partner” for more than a split second however, he saw that his words called up a pain inside her, a deep disappointment that he could see that she attributed to herself in the entirety, and not just this mistake on the job. Watching her accept responsibility so completely made it very hard to push her out the door, but he did.
Wagner spoke like a squeaky door opening, a continuous and somewhat disturbing sound. “I’ll go on assignment, to Provo.”
She knew that the teams had been unable to locate Darci, but Legacy let her continue on the thought because, well, Provo was not here and that’s what he ultimately wanted, her absence.
She continued, “I’ll find Darci and I’ll fix this. And I will only communicate only with my senior officer until this gets wrapped up.”
That earned her a blank look from Legacy. It took some help for him to understand.
Wagner nodded at him, “You are my senior officer.”
Legacy rolled his eyes. He’d always disliked hierarchy when someone considered him in charge. He respected his superior officers, but he never learned to put himself on the same plane as his commanders even when his advance in rank made it statutory. He turned on her.
“You should know that by now.” The defiant look on Wagner’s face stung in a way that he was not expecting. She’d turned around everything that he’d wanted out of the conversation and had taken the prerogative of being hurt in the process. How was it possible that he was on the defensive? Not ten minutes ago, she was standing before the Director of the FBI admitting that she was the source of the leak of information from this office. Admittedly, she was not the one who put it into the public domain, but she alone gave her superiors the ability to pluck and use Legacy’s investigative methods in isolation to serve themselves and not the case.
It was the kind of intellectual dishonesty that made him abhor the human intellect. Especially in a governmental setting where such manipulations happen daily, the best ideas get taken, changed, mutated, and finally spat out by someone “in charge” who wants to take credit for something he doesn’t completely understand. And the parts he does understand, the parts he added, ruin the original idea.
How long he stood in front of Wagner before registering and uttering the last words he would say to her in person until the conclusion of this case was unrecorded by either he or Wagner. Given the processes that Legacy went through, it was probably a matter for the archeological records. He and his original thesis stood still, she had to leave but he didn’t want to send a signal of acquiescence with a goodbye.
Legacy had to be sure that this stray wouldn’t ever come back to his door, even if he didn’t truly believe the words coming out of his mouth. Legacy said “Going to Provo gets you out of my sight and that’s all I care about right no
w, so go.” He added in a guttural invective, “It won’t change anything.”
Wagner said nothing, the tears had dried, but the clenched jaw pulling her smooth skintight across her cheekbones persisted. “It might change things for her.” She pointed back toward the far wall. Legacy looked at the wall where she’d pointed, and then quickly back at Wagner and lit up. He recognized something in the picture that he’d never seen before. The dim light muted the colors in the photo and Laura’s expression lifted off the page. It was right there, all along, the reason Blue had chosen her. He scanned the photos of the other girls in his mind, letting memory drift together with a waking dream and turn the pictures into black and white. With the color removed he saw the same thing crystal clear, each time.
