Ransom X

by a b

  Legacy would later send a memo breaking down the qualities that made Wagner so effective in fieldwork interviews. She had, after all, tricked him, no small task. Wagner had an almost irresistible ability to draw out the exact emotion that she wanted of the people she questioned. Many of them marked it down to beauty or charm, but it was more than that. She possessed both traits but not in their rare magnetic alloy. It was her manipulation of emotional response, the trap she set in a vacuum.

  People, especially men, claimed she radiated charm, but that was just because they projected their own desires and emotions onto her. In essence, they loved her blank reflective quality because it brought everything back to themselves. Wagner, her perfect make-up one thin layer in the mask of her intentions, lured people with the promise of nothing, and the expectation of everything. She got the information from Darren, and countless others, in this way.

  She wondered whether to call Legacy. His prediction of the very existence of a first girl had culminated in Wagner being just 26 hours behind Darci on a trail that led directly to the door of the Vinyl Men.

  The service on her phone crackled and for some unknown, but universally shared response among cell phone users, she slowed her car into an abandoned fairgrounds parking lot on the edge of town. The collective misguided conclusion that stopping would somehow increase the stability of the waves of communication the same way the ground slows to a solid stop below ones wheels. Cracking paint on a nearby sign read “Home of the Bain Brother’s Circus and Pony Meet”. Wagner imagined Darci standing on this road only a day before, sign in her hand. Darren said she was headed out on the 43 south. Wagner had calculated the van’s working range on a two-lane highway would be no greater than 300 miles in the mountains. The supplies that Darci had swiped from the house before leaving implied a trip verging on the longer edge of that range. It made sense that her “boyfriend” had dropped her at a convenience store while filling up the van. It made more sense why Darci was always at the local gas and sip waiting. Her man might be along this road at any time.

  Wagner held down a button and the autodial engaged.

  Her eyes fixed on the once colorful Bain Bros. Circus sign. It was now a weather-stripped, chipped-up reminder that once a year something happens, or used to happen, at this place. She knew that he wouldn’t answer his phone and that was the only reason she was calling. She worried that Legacy would no longer listen to her. He’d be too busy thinking of the unstated reasons that she’d called to hear what she had to say. He was a bit like a circus, taken in moments, or still frames of performance, he was awe inspiring, unique and fantastic. But once one viewed him in entirety he was a bit kitsch. It was hard to take the entire performance seriously even though each act was complicated and expertly done. The people who knew this side of Legacy saw his existence through the distorted fun house mirror pulled out of a sad solitary clown car – the bowed Mylar reflection, the kind that stretches the neck and squashes the chin into the nose. The content of his insight did not change the ridiculous picture he presented, a man colorful, cracked and chipped on an off ramp of the fringe of the world. She reprimanded herself for letting her focus shift. When had she started doing that? Darci was her main concern. Legacy was a concern, yet without contradiction Laura was her only concern.

  The call connected, Chess’ sweet familiar voice filled the dynamic range of the earpiece “I’m not home, so press one for me.” Not even a mention of dad, he must be two.

  It was just like him to have an even numbered box, the irony, she thought. She didn’t know what to say after the vague tone trailed off in her ear. Her voice muffled by indecision jumped into the silence “Legacy, this is Wagner. I’ve got a trail on Darci – she might be going to meet her boyfriend, and get this, if I’m right, he’s one of the abductors. Route 43 probably ending in Hammet County, Colorado. Thought you should know –” her voice ran on with a purposeful drone even though she’d said everything she wanted to say. “I’m following the chain of command – reporting it directly to you.”

  The phone beeped, connection lost. She silently thanked God for the divine mercy of the dropped call.

  Her tires through gravel sending dust skyward in a thick cloud, like she was covering the point of origin of her retreat. Perhaps it was the lingering presence of a particle of merging dust thrown up from a previous car that had cut off her call to Legacy, and if so, she needed to return the favor.

  Chapter 55 The Dark Lost Its Meaning

  “She sounded nervous, she needs you out there.” Chess said in a voice that, if it were a coat, it would have been threadbare.

  Legacy hadn’t been ready for this walking in his door in the middle of the night. He had been expecting a thousand different variations of anger. There was none of the sting of childish spite in the tears that ran down her face. She was worried about Wagner, a kind of selfless concern for which never in history has an appropriate winning argument been formulated to counter. When something is that real, no one has the right to change it. Chess stumbled on, reading a notepad from which she had transcribed Wagner’s short, troubled message.

  “She gave directions, why would she give directions if she didn’t want you to come?” Legacy was consciously not looking at Chess. Rather, he took in the room over her shoulder where three agents, stone faced and well-practiced at appearing detached, stood like turrets of stone. Chess was rattling off syllables in quick rhythm like a teletype machine in the newsroom of one of those old movies. Legacy looked for the long string of paper tape so that he could read back the part he’d missed.

  “We can talk about this after we send them home.”

  “You weren’t listening, they aren’t going, you’re going. They’re staying.”

  One of the stone faces in the living room turned toward Legacy. An appreciative smile opened a brief fissure and he said, “We called in for authorization to extend –”

  “On whose request?” He nodded toward Chess.

  He couldn’t quite determine why, but it upset him.

  “All of you, out.” He said, and the men responded to the commanding tone, packing up to leave.

  Chess’ words sprung forward like a burner coming to light, flashing fire with a single purpose, “You say it’s all for me, that you need to protect me. It’s like you’re punishing me, you’re blaming me for a weakness that for the life of me I’ve never allowed myself to demonstrate.” Her voice chattered on the verge of hysterics. “Maybe you’re doing this because you know I don’t need you anymore and that scares you. It scares you that soon you won’t be able to make up my mind for me.”

  They locked eyes, Chess had changed; her face had assumed a look of cold calculation. Suddenly, there was no weakness at all in her fifteen-year-old body. Did she need him? Legacy couldn’t be sure if she’d said that because she knew or just to make him question himself. Either way, he knew that she was right. He was so proud of her, standing clenched fists, with white knuckles showing her determination to help Wagner, and see her safely home. He teetered on the edge of telling Chess what she wanted to hear. He could no more walk away from his role in her life than command the darkness into a particular corner of the night sky. Standing there at the height of her capacity of a young woman, Legacy started down the road to forgiving himself. A wave of the past crashed over him, warm like plasma, then, with a cold tingle, it all came back to him.

  The cast of her features reminded him of a mistake he’d made in this same hallway nine years before. It wasn’t actually a mistake, truly, it was more of a discovery of a weakness that no man should ever discover they have. No one knew the truth about what happened the night his wife died. He had never told the parade of analysts, psychiatrists, or friends.

  He’d walked out from an aluminum coffin that night, “BING” filled with fear, sensing from the first puff of air released by the opening of the elevator doors that death was not too far behind him. He raced ahead of the feeling coming to his door, thrown wide open by the intruder, and fi
nding a body, face turned away from him, hidden behind the large entryway chair. Blood pooled in the grout and created a maze on the entryway floor, he couldn’t step one way or the other - then a sound in the closet.

  Scratching on the wall, he’d thrown the door open and been flooded with the strongest emotional pulse that his nearly dry heart had ever produced.

  It should be explained at this point that Legacy had walked around the scene of his wife’s death a thousand times in his mind. It was certainly the recreation of the event gave rise to his vivid way of projecting himself into a crime scene. He’d done it so many times - walking around the body, noticing the position of the auburn hair, matted burgundy against a brick red tile floor. In all of those times, he’d never had the strength to open the closet door again. That was the one memory that he held with such shame that he could not return to that moment, even in the harmless confines of his own mind, years later. He had always worried that somehow his secret might get out if he ever opened that door again, that some look would translate onto his face, in a twitch or glance that could be noticed and read like profanity in the margins of scripture. It would shout out the monstrous truth that he locked in that pie-shaped room.

  What had this week been to Legacy except a series of the breakdowns of everything normal in his life. The intrusion of a partner. The inclusion of that same person into his daily life, followed by betrayal and casting her away.

  Legacy couldn’t deny his urge to listen and let in the world when Wagner was around. She’d taught his daughter new rules of engagement. Now he hardly had a choice.

  He’d taken on this case with a spider’s web and sticky strings of expectation wound around a central core of disappointment, and now as he watched it all unravel he was still unable to drop it. In defeat he still didn’t have the dignity to concede.

  With both bikers dead, he’d arranged for an elaborate ruse, Sabita had been reported missing, abducted by the same thugs who had taken Laura. It bought them a day, maybe 36 hours of waiting for a miracle. Legacy, however, didn’t believe in miracles and even as he set up the conditions for the arrival of one. It was ridiculous; a drowning man searching for pockets of air in between the slippery layers of liquid, knowing he will find none. How could he explain that to any of the thirty trains of thought that were pulling in and out of his head at any given moment with solid concrete destinations.

  How could he square his life, with the actions he had begun to take? If he could have sat down across from himself he would have grilled the man in front of him for answers, but there was no one in front of him except the statuesque figure of his daughter. She needed a different answer, but he decided to give her the truth.

  He slowly walked over to the hall closet and opened the deadbolt with a click. Chess caught her breath hearing the latch slide back into its casing. The door protested before opening, and Chess walked silently behind her father’s wide shoulders peering through the triangle created by his elbow and forearm resting on his ribcage. His breaths were irregular. Deep, then short, short, deep.

  Her eyes adjusted to the dark closet. Legacy stepped out of the doorframe with a look she’d never seen on his face. Somehow, she could tell, he expected this to be some kind of revelation, the answer to a thousand questions. He motioned his hand with such finality almost as if to say this room explained everything about him. The look on his face contributed to the feeling that the explanation wasn’t flattering. He said simply. “Tell me to go and I’ll go. I love you honey.”

  He walked down the hall to a very important meeting with a glass of scotch; his knees traced bicycle circles in the air, like he was remembering how to walk. His mind was committed completely to another place and time. One in which he’d come home to find a body, and all of his fears had projected outward and he saw clearly that the still body was that of his daughter, Chess. Then when he’d opened the closet and found her alive, all he could feel was relief.

  He’d loved his wife. She’d crept into the fiber of his being like no one had ever before or since. And when he’d realized that it was her dead and Chess alive, he was relieved. It was a feeling that ebbed like a slow geological tide and did not recede for months after her burial. Everyone thought he was sick with grief, however that came later, and lasted for a good amount of time. He was equal parts relief and shame.

  Chess peered into every crease of blackness, every nook where carpet met white paint. What she saw, she could not say.

  Chapter 56 Late Deliveries

  If they’d driven through the night, they’d be here by now. His impatience was quickly turning to anger.

  Blade paced on the worn tufted industrial carpet in the control room. He could tell something was wrong. Even though he wasn’t expecting a call upon the completion of the job, in fact, he’d given express orders to run completely silent on these missions. He still could not shake the feeling that something was wrong.

  He adjusted a camera, zooming in on Laura’s face. There was a bit between her teeth and shiny beads of residue from earlier copulations in the corners of her mouth. Her mouth stretched each time Yellow pulled on the bridle and his weight shifted into her from behind. Fresh jockey silks were hanging on the wall; there were still two more riders to come after Yellow. Even though they were not broadcasting, they kept up the façade. They couldn’t give Laura any reason for hope, that would ruin the whole game.

  He tore his eyes away from the screens and looked instead at a figure on a palm pilot in his hand. Thirty million dollars was sitting in an account. Laura accounted for twenty million of that sum. It was the kind of ransom demand that would have been impossible to collect and protect the identity of the recipient in almost any other case. He was the breadwinner of so many pornographers, they were lining up to feed him a piece of their prize. Clean, pure revenues that couldn’t be traced any easier than a drop of rain could be tracked down a river.

  There was more money in human flesh than all of the major entertainments combined. If Shakespeare were alive and as smart as they said, Blade thought, he’d be writing and directing porn.

  Blade couldn’t quite tap the source of his unease. He’d read the reports of the concert, the scene of disarray. It all seemed to be going to plan. But there was something in the release of information, something in the way things were related to the public that sounded – crafted. There were reports of journalists complaining about access, and although Blade knew that the last thing the FBI wanted to do was advertise its gross failure to the public. He was waiting expectantly to hear the approach of tires, and the familiar guttural laughter of the Harley engine accompanying the van.

  If they’d driven through the night, they’d be here by now. He’d send the boys away for the afternoon after this session. He had to prepare for the worst. He was the best when preparing for the worst. A dubious smile crossed his lips thinking of the worst things he could do to the girl still locked in his cage.

  Yellow was in the home stretch. Laura’s hair cascaded down and fell into her face as he let the reigns go. Before the rhythm could even be broken, there was a fresh rider. The orange silks had been taken from the wall, and Yellow was staggering into the blackness out of sight of the cameras.

  He was met at the door by Blade; a brief exchange sent him out of the room with a jump in his step. Blade sent him away; he spoke loud enough to be heard by everyone in the studio. Blade wanted to be alone in the compound with her tonight. The eerie chill of that thought crossed the floor and climbed up her naked limbs. Laura began moving at a fevered pace, alive with a new purpose. She needed to finish this session; she needed to get back to her cell. Blade watched her from the doorway, sending his most sympathetic glance her way. She had on blinders, eyes forced straight ahead; she knew what she had to do.

  When Blade reentered the control room, he looked at the close up of her eyes in the camera lens. She was as blank and mysterious as instinct itself. Her senses behind a stone wall, grey concrete eyes feeling the pressure of the air fr
om the surrounding atmosphere poked forward like they wanted to burst from her head.

  Blade informed the rest of the men that they could have the afternoon off as they filed out of the room.

  “Lay low and stay close.” That was his message for each nodding matchstick head. He knew that would send them to the nearby bar where they’d sit on wobbly bar stools drinking the piss nectar of some domestic brewery.

  It would give him time to set about covering the tracks of a suddenly very weighty organization. If his feeling were right, there would be people coming after them. It was always best in any conflict to give the opponent a moving target. He mouthed a silent deadline of 9pm tonight to the air surrounding his lips. He assured the air that he would be initiating the new girl, or be riding down some midnight highway, arson blazing from his tailpipe, ashes falling through his headlights like a rainstorm formed in a codicil of hell.

  He often thought about what the girls he’d chosen would be doing right now if they hadn’t been taken from their miserable lives.

  Was there an invisible wind that blew through the souls of people that left the residue of unrealized torment? Were there other potential girls who felt a stinging cold in their spine when they brushed against a stranger in public, or when they saw their image on a closed circuit TV in their local drug store? Did they feel a fleeting tingle because it might just have well been them bent over a librarian’s desk learning new ways of collecting a late fee? If they did, Blade was willing to bet the most fragrant white pus that collected in front of his stained gums that they pinched themselves beneath their shirtsleeves trying to bring the torture back.