by a b
Legacy managed a reply “How is everything going?” He spoke in a low tone, careful not to be overheard by Kelly.
“We’re dating,” He could barely contain the joy of the world that had spread across his glowing face. “She’s way out of my league. Kelly, come and meet my – my - “ He stammered suddenly realizing that he had no way of introducing Legacy, ‘my friend’ didn’t really fit, ‘colleague’ was outdated, ‘lover’ was wholly inaccurate – Legacy saw him stalling out and extended his hand.
“Former instructor, at the Washington Bureau.” His hand enveloped hers and Kelly unconsciously leaned forward, swooning visibly at his chiseled looks that outlined years of experience and steely eyes that dipped down deeply into charcoal complexity underneath.
Kelly proved to be playful from word one, as she turned to Tyke and said “Oh, my God. Be glad I didn’t meet him first” She said, walking the thin line of teasing. She turned to Tyke, “So you weren’t kidding about the FBI?” Throwing a glance back to Legacy with a wink, “I thought he just wanted to impress me.” The pucker of her thin expressive lips on the word impress was the kind of flirt that she obviously loved laying out there as bait. She knew that Tyke would rise to take it.
“She’s toying with me. We won’t last. It’s a fling.” He said handing over the money for the food.
Kelly continued talking to Legacy, unable to take her eyes off him. “That’s his way of dealing with possible future rejection, to preempt it. What he doesn’t know is that his neurotic insecurity attracts my appetite for self sabotage.” Beneath thick black eyeliner, her eyes danced a calculatedly immature, intellectual jig.
A twirl sent her skirt just above the propriety line, to finish the tease and she was gone. Legacy could feel the insecurity rising in Tyke, which he quickly diffused by saying “I think she likes me.”
Tyke’s temples throbbed in frustration, and for a moment, after finding the perfect stinging comeback, he discarded it in favor of “I'm going to die alone.”
“That’s the spirit.” Legacy found that the smell of food gave him an appetite. The afternoon had quickly dissipated and his hunger reminded him of the arrangements he needed to make. “Can I use your phone?”
Tyke waved him to an antique replica phone mounted on the wall above a small table in the middle of the hallway. Picking it up, Legacy realized that it was not a replica per se; it was an expertly crafted modern forgery of the old cedar box phones that they used in the old west. The coils, wires, springs and casings all put together lovingly from junk and restored authentically to the period.
He took a moment before raising the earpiece to study the braided black wires leading to the pick up, where the electric impulses would soon become a familiar voice. The fact that Tyke would have such an artful reverence for old technology made Legacy look at him in a different light. Legacy was not the type to bandy about the word ‘genius’ as a reward for excellence. Tyke had always struck Legacy as a genius, but he hadn’t realized until that moment that he was also an artist. The thought breezed through Legacy like the hum of electricity that perhaps all geniuses are artists regardless or their field, because perfection is just a word for immeasurable beauty.
He felt the strange sensation of wanting to comfort Tyke, “Kelly was testing you, she wanted to see if you can handle more than just “going out” with her. She wants to know if there’s a chance it will be a relationship.”
“How did I do?” Tyke asked.
“You failed.” So much for kind words. He caught himself, “But she’ll give you another chance, keep your eyes up. She wants to be everything you think she is.” Legacy dialed one of the few numbers he had memorized.
“I thought you were bad with emotions.” Tyke had laid out all of the boxes and popped the tops.
“I’ve had a lot of emotional input recently. Anyway, the beginning stages of a relationship are all about tactics.” He raised the receiver, craning his tall frame to speak.
Tyke plunged his chopsticks into the nearest box, letting them stick up like miniature standard bearers proclaiming victory over his internal conflict. He had eaten alone for almost six straight months. Today he would have lunch with a friend.
Chapter 48 Criminal Hem
Chess felt the rush as the last bell of the day sounded and the chairs squawked in unison as twenty students pushed away from their desks. The movement hid a small smile. “I got away with it,” She thought.
She’d spent the entire day in rebellious glory. She wore a small silver hair clip, keeping her flowing red hair from falling into her face. It was one that agent Wagner had offered the night before, when they’d talked about make-up.
The dress code at Cherished Hills Academy, called for school uniforms, loafers, tennis shoes only in gym class and only black hair clips were allowed. Chess had seen her friends flaunt the rules with pierced ears and colored nail polish, but she’d never participated in open rebellion until today.
She spotted her friends outside the classroom. She was sure they would notice her painfully obvious ride on the razor’s edge of the wild side. Chess strutted toward them like she was on a Paris catwalk.
“Bzzz, bzzz.” Chess’ phone startled her, and she jumped comically into the middle of the gathering of girls waiting for her. A cackle of laughter as Chess put the phone to her ear.
“Dad?” She asked.
“Who else would it be?” Legacy was stern curiosity.
“I meant, dad.” The question retracted.
“Chess, I’m having you picked up today. I just – you haven’t left yet, right?” he asked.
“No. Whatever.” She replied.
“Great, well –” An awkward pause from her father, something was definitely up; she’d ask him in the car.
“Bye, dad.” She pushed the phone deep into her coat pocket and looked up to see all eyes on her.
Trisha, the smallest of the group pushed back her long black hair and braved the waters of unbearable torment and stammered, “That was your dad? Can I touch the phone?”
“Pathetic Trish.” Chess answered and the moment passed. She didn’t mind having a father who towered over the other dads at parent teacher conferences, or even a dad who melted the hearts of her adolescent friends. What nagged her was that he was frozen in time, and he had no ability to accept that she was changing. He showered her with the same kind of attention that she needed at age six, even at age fifteen. She was beginning to feel burdened by the private “Saturday Evening Post” meets “Guns and Ammo” world that he had created. It would only get worse with the events of the day.
She listened to the basic flow of the girls’ conversations, waiting for someone to notice the hair clip, or the twinkle in her eye that would lead them to her secret. They talked of a report that was due soon and not even begun. Then her mind skipped like a record across time, following a totally different thread of thought in her mind. She was being picked up?
She’d practically forgotten about the old VW cabriolet that they had in the garage. Her father used it for educational day trips to historical sites around the capitol, but usually it was only for the weekends. This was a weekday. Where were they going? Something was not right. She thought approaching the large central doors of the school that spilled out upon a central rotunda and a faculty parking lot.
Megan, the gossip of the group, broke her trance, “What is that you have in your hair?” Chess turned to the voice, only to see that Megan was aiming at Cathy. Cathy was the flirt and tease of the group and she’d dyed a strand of her hair bright purple. Cathy had layered it under her natural hair and no one had noticed. She was nearing the door, the demarcation point at which nobody could put her in detention for purple hair. “Miss Riverton!”
Steps from freedom, the entire group froze as Vice Principal Graif, the hawk, called to them from down the hall. He had spotted the offending follicles from his perch in the school store. He wrote thirty minutes in detention for Cathy and then turned his eye on Megan’s skirt,
which was an inch out of school specifications. An inch too long might have been acceptable, but upward meant thirty minutes detention, minimum. He tisked the girls with a disapproving click of the tongue, and then his eyes rested on Chess hiding in the middle.
“Why can’t you all look more like Ms. Legacy?” He asked, noticing everything in proper proportion, “She practically glows with a warm wholesome charm.”
Tension surged in the moments after he’d left, then it was gone. Trish cracked up, she pointed at Chess. “Principal’s pet.” Chess looked at all of the friendly faces encircling her, not a trace of annoyance or jealousy. What had she done to deserve her friends?
“What did your dad want anyway, Chess-a-pet?” Cathy asked shoving the detention slip into her plaid pocket.
“He’s coming to pick me up.” Even as she said the words, they sounded wrong. Chess got a strange feeling as she backed away from the group toward the main door. She realized that he hadn’t said “I’ll pick you up,” but no other arrangement of words made sense at all. He never let her share rides with friends even though some were the best sixteen-year-old drivers in the state. He wouldn’t even allow her to share rides with their moms and dads – it wasn’t a discussion. She walked home in a group.
Alarms went off in her head as she stepped out onto the front steps of the school. She saw the lights in the rotunda. “I’ll have you picked up” took on new meaning for her. Her entire cadre of friends stood in the yawning front door. They craned to get a look at Mr. Legacy, but instead they saw an incredible orchestrated abduction.
Chapter 49 Battleship Plan
It was almost time to start. Legacy knew that he was currently coloring outside the lines, working off site, bending rules. He wasn’t concerned about what others would think, particularly. That wasn’t what kept him glancing at his watch with a nervous urgency. He was on the clock now. There were only so many minutes until the next girl was chosen. After that, there were so many hours until she was taken.
It was an odd pressure amplified by his recent work on the case with Wagner. Her dedication to every detail of the case brought with it a certain inertia. Her drive to see Laura safe was kinetic. Legacy sat peering through the darkness waiting for the three separate 2000-watt bulbs and millions of mirrors to illuminate someone whose features and form beckoned to Blue. Legacy could feel Blue’s impulse patterns surge through his own mind. It was a rigorously practiced estimation. Legacy spent hours going through the behaviors that he witnessed on tape. Not many people engaged in conduct that was remotely close to Blue’s, therefore his behavior became very narrowly defined by relatively few visible traits. The jump from behavior to the patterns of thought and decision-making was less of a science. He navigated the skewed synapses of depraved felony like a computer recognizes a face; in subroutines, unconscious thought as complicated as a weather pattern, fragile as any system software authored by Microsoft.
On the balance, he thought, making his final preparations, he was not that different from Wagner. His own methods were cerebral, but the difference in effort was minimal. They both extended their reach in a thousand directions grasping at straws, and although they’d come up with nothing – Legacy gave grudging respect to Wagner. Her intuition was something he hoped to channel, as he was about to be watching faces, like tiles in some kind of living mosaic.
He organized the screens along simple axis markers labeling them A-T along the bottom, then 1-10 along the y-axis. A1 was the lowest left corner, T10 was the top right. The stacked images like the rows and columns of an extreme Jeopardy game filled his vision.
In the minutes leading to 4:00 Eastern time, when the clock really started ticking, Legacy practiced calling out his images. Tyke would freeze the feed, marking the digital recording so that they could go back to that image later with the touch of a button. Legacy knew that the odds of spotting the exact frame that caught Blue’s attention would be next to impossible. Instead, he would first keep all of the women who were remotely possible. Then, in the hours after, he would go through those images and decide if they fit all the criteria of symmetry, expression and age. Then he hoped he’d have a handful of faces that he could act upon. It was simple, actually, all he needed was to intercept one thought from Blue: “Her.” Get there before his men, then spend ten minutes interrogating the abductor and he’d have the location of Laura. This was a fact. Tyke counted down the moments before 4 pm, and then gave Legacy one last boost of confidence.
“So, how are you so sure that he’ll use this same time slot and this same method after every media outlet in the country reported on it?” The clock read 3:59. He sure knew how to pick his spots.
“I could be wrong.” Legacy said with an inward smile. Tyke belted out a long genuine baritone laugh.
“Let’s play battleship.” Tyke began the simultaneous recording of 1531 channels and Legacy started calling out his shots.
“C1, R5, T7.”
Chapter 50 The Choice
Across the continent, spires of lodge pole pines rose around a clearing. In the clearing, a compound of wooden cabins and outlying huts signaled the only human presence for miles around. It would have been a rustic scene of frontier living were it not for the line of rectangular trailer cabs that lined the dirt parking lot, connected by electrical conduits terminating in large heating and cooling units in what used to be the supply shaft breach in the ceilings. Also, the huge oval satellite dish that adorned the large central recreation center hardly seemed the kind of comfort endemic to such an outlying area.
When someone works so hard to get away from people, it seemed odd that they would open the floodgates of television and essentially invite all of it back into their living room, along with commercials.
This was no longer a camp for children. The entire compound had been leased to a survivalist group before the current occupants bought it in a cash deal so quiet that it hadn’t entered the books of the rural mountain county, nor had it even been heard by the falling trees. Property taxes were billed in the name of a fake corporation, and paid in cash, so nobody complained.
The former occupants had made modifications to the property. The place looked like a military training camp. A trail down the middle cut through sections of tall metal pipe then under barbed wire traps elevated twelve inches above the dirt, finally ending in a firing range – it was an obstacle course meant to be run with an automatic weapon slung until the final sprint to the “kill zone.”
The first time Blade had seen it he pictured overweight middle aged men plodding through the course only to fire colored point balls at a series of weathered targets. The targets a rainbow of circular paint layers under which some danger once had been outlined. Maybe it was a tax collector, or an environmental lawyer. Blue extinguished his cigar on the heel of his boot then walked into the community room.
The group was all assembled. A punch bowl filled with pomegranate juice and everclear sat in the middle of a long table. It was his favorite drink. He loved the irony of feeding his soul and killing his mind at the same time.
“I heard on TV, we’ve all been captured.” A roar of laughter went through the room. “Gave some time for Sean to get his dick straight again.”
Mac chimed in, “When do we go back on the air?”
“Initiation. Which leads us to a little window shopping.”
Mac picked up a chicken wing from an obscene mountain of freshly barbecued meat, and pointed to the rows and stacks of thrift store televisions that lined the wall; he pulled an imaginary trigger “Bitches, bitches, and more bitches.” His open-mouthed growl left no mystery about where all the extra sauce went. A fraternity-like atmosphere meant that anything could be said, no matter how ignorant, arrogant or incendiary. The sound of an organ over a southern Baptist ministry program spilled from the TV at the bottom front of the pile. All the rest of the sets were quiet, giving a soft spiritual hum underneath the raucous discussions.
The word ‘fuck’ was used more than ‘amen’ at a
revival meeting, but the bravado of the group milling about the Cheetos and bean dip was misleading. They were all posturing around their leader, hoping that one of their inane remarks would call attention to themselves, put their own relationship in a special light with Blade. It could be that the word ‘brunette’ would conjure up a memory of the second girl, the one whose hair Blue cropped short and slicked back lovingly before every session.
A simple comment such as, “Fucking brunettes, I want fucking brunettes this time.” like the one spouted by Feely indeed did garner a sidelong smile from their leader.
Their secret society originally bound by blood and suffering had shifted into a less urgent emergence of family-like relationships. Everyone had begun to seek the approval from a dominant male, which Blade only gave out sparingly. His long fingers brushed Feely’s shoulders. Feely positively flushed with pride which instantly turned to shame as he noticed that Blade had used him like a napkin, leaving lines of hot wing sauce across his skin. Mac was the first to laugh, joined by Stones who always used the selection process as a time to get bulging-eye drunk. Vorest snorted, happy that Blade had chosen a target.
