Ransom X

by a b

  By the time he looked back across the room, excited to share his discovery with his partner, she was gone.

  Brent walked out of Legacy’s office about ten minutes later with the most bewildering feeling of his adult life. Not since the time when he had gotten his first of a series of straight A grades at the academy had he felt this surge generated by the unknown. He’d always been a moderate-to-full-on underachiever throughout high school. People had expected a lot from him and he simply never delivered. He was the second string quarterback, a relief pitcher, and solid B student regardless of class.

  After graduation when the pressure of expectation abated and he began to pursue a spot in law enforcement in a small-town training academy for security guards, everything clicked into place. The structure of his daily routine built walls around him that he’d never had before in his life, and instead of feeling enclosed, Brent began to climb. Six months and he was better than any of his trainers, a year later he was hearing the curious sound of flattery, by some of the best in the business.

  He delivered Legacy’s mail, because he’d heard the rumors about brilliant the washout downstairs. Then when Agent Wagner entered the picture he had a totally different reason to plan his day around multiple visits to their door. She had a piercing look that shot through Agent Brent’s heart and severed his spinal cord on the way through his body, turning him into jelly each time.

  This was a visceral reaction that Brent was completely unready for, he’d always kept his romantic life quietly undistinguished, even though with his square jaw and short cropped jet-black hair he was often the object of attention from the ladies. The challenge that a mere moment with Wagner presented was far beyond a long-term relationship with another, a point that Legacy would have agreed with, had they breeched the subject.

  But Wagner was not the subject of their strange conversation, nor was he exactly certain what he’d gotten himself into wandering out of the door to their office with a notepad filled with, of all things, symptoms that he needed to match with a sickness. He’d explained to Legacy that he had no medical specialty, but that didn’t seem to concern him. What did interest him was that their work would remain completely secret and that he could pass the results only in person, and only to Legacy or Wagner.

  He had a faint idea that Legacy was using his obvious devotion to Wagner as a substitute for professional trust, because after five years he still worked in an office filled with strangers. What Legacy didn’t know, was that he could have trusted him anyway. Brent had many of the best qualities of law enforcement, all of them stalwart. If Legacy were as in tune with emotional values as he was the factual, he would have felt that in their first meeting.

  Brent clutched the notebook and looked at the first page, labeled in bold ink, RULES. Don’t do any of the research on site, don't use any FBI resources, and don’t use your real name when contacting sources. It felt like he was entering a secret society. He wondered if they’d have a wink, nod, and anonymous triple flex handshake over a bathroom stall before passing the information back to him. He smiled even though the thought of keeping secrets from his employer made him uneasy. For all of the reserve that he felt accepting the assignment, there was a tinge of excitement. He looked forward to passing the notebook back to Wagner personally and maybe share a conspiratorial smile. Yes that would be nice, Brent thought.

  *****

  Wagner didn’t drink on the plane. Clamato mixed with tequila was her official airplane drink. Not enough people had an official airline drink, Wagner heartily recommended cultivating a separate airplane personality, complete with different choice in wardrobe, drink and demeanor. She sat in her usual navy blazer, thinking that the drink was going to be her first step along the road. She had heard that it was like drinking a spicy shrimp cocktail followed by a hazy maritime mellow. She knew that she needed it, but the agent in charge of the Provo investigation in the airport was meeting her and she didn’t want to have the flushed cheeks that always seemed to accompany even a single alcoholic drink. Her new airline persona couldn’t overcome her land-based chemistry. So she planned a bait and switch on her senses by ordering bloody Mary mix, with Tabasco and sipping it through the hollowed-out stalk of a piece of celery.

  The spicy liquid flowed onto the back of her tongue, and she let it flow forward over all of her taste buds before swallowing. It was a cheap college student’s method for making a single drink last. During her poor student days, she’d spent more than night at a club nursing a drink, and this one got her almost all the way to the Rockies.

  “On the left side of the plane you will see . . .” Wagner squeezed her eyes shut and her mind altered the captain’s voice, making it rebound like an echo chamber. “The dead body of Laura Doorner. On the right, a disciplinary council which is convening at Agent Legacy’s request.” Wagner frowned in discomfort and the pilot’s voice came back clear and strong.

  “And we’ll be going over the continental divide soon where the rains bound for the Atlantic and Pacific get clearance to land and begin their journey east or west.” The assured voice of the captain made Wagner long for certainty. Questions confronted every design, and she was afraid that the only answer would be found over a lifeless autopsy table. She wasn’t ready to concede that particular outcome yet.

  The wheels chirped an arbitrary complaint about friction and rotational energy and the conversion thereof.

  She had landed on the other side of the continental divide, her problems should now travel west, and she would follow them regardless of the voices that questioned her.

  *****

  At 5:07 eastern time, the feed for the Laura went to static. At 5:10 Legacy got a call from Tyke.

  “Tell your boys up in operations to look for a tack signature on a long-wave arc at these coordinates.” He spewed out three twelve-digit sets of numbers. “One of the receivers I put a trace on requested a re-initialization thirty seconds ago, it should give you a location.”

  “I can’t believe Blue would be this sloppy.” Legacy tore the page of notes from his notebook and stood, uncertain where to go with it.

  “Maybe he didn’t have a choice, the signals been down for three minutes. This might be it.”

  Legacy’s voice rose in anger. “No. It’s not. He had plans, and he never scraps his plans.”

  Tyke let it pass. “Sure man, it’s probably just a lucky break. There’s no way he’d know you were scanning for a socket connection like this old satellite receiver requires. He slipped up.”

  Legacy called up the website on his computer, a test pattern had replaced the usual feed. “I’ll believe it when I see it, how long will it take for the satellite to reacquire?”

  “Five, maybe ten minutes.”

  Legacy entered the operations room, with all hell breaking loose around him. Screens showed the transmission break, and all of the websites that had lost the feed. People scrambled from station to station in the unreasonable assumption that somehow what they were seeing might change. Legacy gave the number sets to the tech in charge, Edwards was his name, and he wore an angry scowl. He didn’t like the interruption. “Where did you get these?”

  “It’s part of my investigation.”

  “Why the hell isn’t it part of ours?” An underling whispered something in his ear. “Sorry, special Agent Legacy, I meant to say why the hell isn’t it part of ours, sir?”

  “I just worked up the theory.”

  “Yeah, right.” He tapped the computer keys, called up a communication window with an old FORTRAN interface prompt. “I’m taking to the satellite now, let’s see who it’s talking to.”

  “And where. My source said we should be able to track this down to fifty square miles.” Legacy added. “The source you worked this up with just a few minutes ago.”

  “That’s right.” Deputy Bailey entered the room. “Is this really important, or is this a glitch?”

  Both Legacy and Edwards dismissed Bailey without a word, fixated instead by the stream of cod
e. Edwards spoke, “So if this establishes a link, are we going to see Laura again?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “It’s communicating. Why are you looking for this kind of receiver, it’s over thirty years old?”

  “It’s got certain properties that the abductors – utilize.”

  “I can see where this might be hacked for receiving an open channel to programming. Is this how they got all of those local channels?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It’s communicating. If they’re using it for distribution we should have picture in the next ten seconds.”

  They watched the websites, all still flashing a message of disconnect from media.

  Chapter 46 Mission Incomplete

  Wagner set a purposeful stride dragging her carry on bag across the worn mustard-colored carpet of the Provo International Airport. The man she was seeking made it easy for her to find him. He looked like he was practically seducing his watch, considering the attention he gave to the oversized face strapped to his thin wrist. Wagner judged him to look about 30 even though she knew he was well into his forties. His name was Yu, and his mixed Taiwanese, Samoan ancestry gave him a huge frame upon which he appeared to be almost paper-thin. He swam in his dark blue blazer simply because no amount of tapering could accommodate the broad shoulders that dominated his razor wire frame. Perhaps it was this dichotomy of being a small man in big shoes that gave him such a dogged personality, Yu was already well known at the FBI for his commitment to completing any mission. It was this trait that got him the Darci assignment. The failure to come through, and undoubtedly three sleepless nights with absolutely no progress, showed on his face. He tapped the glass of his watch as Wagner approached.

  “I’m on final boarding call.” He said.

  “Then we’ll make it quick.” Wagner replied. Yu’s eyes shot skyward like he knew that nothing with Wagner would be easy. They’d known each other in the Washington office. Yu respected her thoroughness and had requested her on the original assignment until he’d found that she was working with the notorious Martin Legacy.

  Ten minutes later, Yu’s plane pushed away from the gate and he and Wagner sat in the airport bar. It was tucked away from the concourse, hidden like the den of ill repute that it was.

  Wagner sipped the sinful combination of soda water and lime. Yu was preparing to be off duty and he ordered sea breeze after sea breeze.

  “You made me miss my plane.” He crunched ice on his back molars.

  “You had a backup.” She was certain that he had.

  “We have an active lead right now; all of the field teams have been reassigned.” Wagner gave him a look that told him that he would have to deal with her in the bar, or expect a companion on his plane ride out. Yu huffed out a long sigh. “I suppose you want a personal briefing of the trails I’ve covered.”

  “I read your preliminary report on the plane.” Yu motioned to the bartender for another drink.

  “Then you know she’s been seen around town, sleeping in restrooms and stealing candy bars – she cleaned out a locker at the bus station on Wednesday – must have seen us coming.”

  “Must have seen something coming.” Wagner corrected.

  Yu had the air of false detachment. His voice was flat, face flat, air leaked out of his nose. His act didn’t play with Wagner. It was empty theatrics.

  Wagner responded, “More likely she was a mess that someone came to clean up, someone less forgiving than the police.”

  “We worked on that theory.” His defensive posture suddenly dropped, replaced by a defeatist sprawl. “What do you expect to find out here?”

  “Answers.” Wagner said with steely determination.

  “You might be able to get them, kid, you’re a sharp one.” Yu bit the fruit off of a plastic pick drawn from the empty ice of his second drink.

  After an hour more of pointed questions from Wagner, the table was in great need of being bussed. Four glasses vied for space in front of the downright chummy Yu. He had developed an airline personality right in front of Wagner without ever leaving the ground.

  “That’s my second option.” He said hearing the intercom announce first boarding. “We have two hundred miles in Wyoming to comb for a satellite dish about this big.” He spread his fingers to the width of a grain of salt. “As seen from outer space.” He spoke with a stutter so near laughter that it came across sounding like tears.

  “You’ll make it.” Wagner smirked.

  “True.” Said Yu, shifting his light frame on the wooden seat. “I heard you are in the door with Martin Legacy. Desk to desk” He held up his hands to represent the position of the desks, palms inward.

  Wagner nodded.

  “What’s it like rubbing up against brilliance? Eh?” He growled in his deep baritone, clapping his hands together.

  Wagner let her voice drop “You tell me.”

  Agent Yu laughed all the way to his connection in Phoenix, the flight added two hours onto his journey but he wore the inconvenience with an oversized smile, the impossible kind a child carves onto the face of a squat pumpkin. He liked Wagner, and he thought that if she had been there in the first place, his team might have turned something up.

  Wagner saw one hole in the investigation by Agent Yu, and while it was a pinhole in an otherwise rock solid edifice, she needed to track it down before the trail could be considered cold.

  She stepped out into the last few moments of sun that would bathe the Utah landscape in a warm orange light. The effect was intensified by the mammoth streaked stone-face rising sharply just east of town that served like a reflector, sending back the warmer earth tones to criss-cross the city floor.

  Wagner felt there was a possibility that Darci, by all accounts a free soul, stayed in this area for a reason. It wasn’t the scenery. The only kind of reason, if Wagner’s memory served her, that a girl her age would linger in a town like this was the attention of a man. It was a dangerous game staying in one place, being the only living link to a group of vicious criminals. Love as an emotion was the equal of fear in youth, and then the scales tip back slowly as years pass. By the ripe old age of 23, Wagner needed to prove her theory true. She could feel the tingle of her own fear of failure, located somewhere back in the coelomic cavity of her inner ear. The flush of romance she felt only briefly, and at increasingly longer intervals of time in between, like an echo of a peal of faraway laughter. Wagner studied her features in the side mirror of her rental car; they were exactly as she remembered herself looking at eighteen, save the severe expression. A bath and twelve hours of sleep would not erase the misfortune that set her on the path of law enforcement, but suffice it to say that if the eighteen-year-old Wagner were to see Agent Wagner on the street, she’d shriek and run away. Wagner remembered running from trouble into someone’s arms, and where it had led her. The recollection reminded her that at eighteen, fear might aid gravity and send a girl underground, but no force in the heavens could push them away from their primary attraction.

  Wagner pulled her sedan into the parking lot of a strip mall, irregular signs marked stores like Alice’s Nicks and Snacks, and Express Communications Beepers, places that she couldn’t believe anyone would have any business in even during full daylight, then drove around to the back alley. It was one of many alleys that she would visit during her search. The convenience store next door was home to one of the many colorful clerks whom she would shove a picture of Darci under his or her nose and ask the same question, “Have you ever seen this girl?” And if they said yes, she would add her own follow up in hopes of getting to that emotional magnetism that kept her in orbit around the same old dumpsters and mini marts, instead of reaching escape velocity, hitching a ride on the 15 freeway and exploring an exotic new world of out-of-town trash cans and convenience stores. She would ask, “Was there any particular boy that showed interest in her?”

  The night wore on, and since convenience stores never closed, Wagner had something to
do with every minute of the present darkness. Everywhere she went, she heard the same story, another agent had already been there, sometimes twice asking about the same girl. On the rare occasion that the clerk remembered Darci, her follow up yielded nothing. The girl was a wisp, a puff of air entering and exiting leaving no lasting impression on anything or anyone she touched. It was all exactly what she’d read in Yu’s report. Wagner cursed Yu’s blasted efficiency.

  The news of the murders in Wyoming broke at 5:02 AM. Agent Yu, leader of the field team who’d made the discovery, came to the podium just in time for the top of the hour news cycle to flood the graphics department with speculative catch phrases to display beneath the footage of the press conference. Things like “Internet bloodbath, will the government come out of this clean?” and “Abductor Bikers take Bullets” filled in the vacant space between Yu’s words and let everyone know exactly nothing about what he was saying. The message did filter across, however.