Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

Chapter 42 Dry Sparks

  Legacy blasted through the conference doors like a cannon; he icily regarded clerks serving coffee to members of the gathering, and took command. Everyone could feel the explosive power of his power unleashed. “No coffee, nothing to eat. Nobody gets comfortable.”

  The clerks looked at Director Doorner, who nodded, confirming who was in charge inside the confines of those very special circumstances. Cups were whisked from the table and Legacy’s eyes toured the room. Doorner, Wilkes, and Bailey sat awkwardly on the receiving end of a ten-minute diatribe. Members of Wilkes staff sat across the table, three of them. One pass of the eyes told him that any one of them would buckle under ten seconds of scrutiny. They were educated, but untested in the field.

  People who spend time in the field looked like Wilkes and Doorner, they wouldn’t give up their secrets without a fight.

  Doorner brought one thin freakishly tall secretary, whose devotion shone out from behind her plain looks and bookish chic glasses. She’d do anything to protect the man sitting across from her.

  Legacy held up a newspaper, banner headline citing, “Abducted Girls TV Ties.”

  “How did they get this?” He processed every move in the room. The head scratch to the shifting in the seat. “Nobody should have known, but you all did, right?”

  Doorner was the object of his abrupt tone, and although inwardly offended, he nodded with great civility. His secretary tightened her grip on a pen that she used to take notes and practically snarled at Legacy.

  Legacy prowled the room, and Wagner caught a glimpse of what made him so good in the interrogation room. Nothing escaped his senses. He laid out the rules, hands on the table palms up. One question that everyone at the table had to answer looking into his eyes. “Did you leak this information?”

  One by one they stared into Legacy’s eerie still pupils and gave their answers. One by one the answer “no “seemed to take all of their energy to say and the relief was palpable when their turn was over. Legacy had a way of making a room of grown men and women feel the weight of their possible guilt the same as if it were real.

  Wagner watched the circle come round to her, standing at the door. She felt something grip her from the inside as he swiveled on her with a questioning look. She heard a voice rise inside of her.

  “I am the spy. I reported on your progress.”

  Legacy took one look at Bailey and confirmed what Wagner had said. His eyes lost their intensity for just a moment then he said in a voice that Wagner would never forget. “Did you leak it to the press?”

  She wanted to weep, to breakdown right there; she wanted Legacy to know the answer without asking the question, that she’d failed him. She’d failed Laura too, she realized. Her mouth moved but no words came out.

  Legacy had his answer, “Of course you didn’t.” She felt for a moment that she was forgiven, but his next words came quickly with venom. “But you gave away this investigation to whoever did.”

  They’d all passed the test. Legacy put a single finger down on the table and pressed. It was meant to focus his mind on one spot – but his thoughts were going in a thousand directions. There had to be someone else who knew. Tyke respected secrets more than he did his own brilliance. Wagner. He hadn’t seen that coming, but he did know that she’d never jeopardize a clean collar on the Vinyl Men. He couldn’t be that wrong about her.

  His eyes snapped up from the table with one final question for Doorner. “There’s no one else who knew this information?”

  “Absolutely none.” He said thinking that Legacy must have failed to find the leak. However in that line he was completely wrong, in that moment Legacy figured out exactly who it was, he just didn’t want to believe it.

  “Have security escort the aides to holding. I need to talk to the directors in private.” Wagner touched his left shoulder and he practically flinched.

  “Legacy.” Her voice pleaded.

  “Get out.” He responded.

  “You would have known anyway when you asked –” She said.

  Legacy took her hand from his shoulder and replaced it by her side, like he was posing a doll with great care and yet emotional attachment that vanished the second it was in place. “I wasn’t going to ask you.” Legacy didn’t read the people closest to him. It was something he couldn’t tell her before, and he didn’t expect that she’d ever know now.

  Bailey left the room like it was a matinee performance, a lazy smile on his lips. Wagner didn’t make eye contact even when he brushed by her in the doorway. She was still looking back at Legacy. Even when the chamber doors shut with her on the other side she didn’t feel like she’d escaped the pull of Legacy on the other side.

  She knew how a fish must feel not understanding the tug from inside, but knowing that their guts were ripped out with every struggling motion. And she couldn’t help believing that she deserved to be on the hook.

  Whatever was going on in that conference room buzzed in the shadows of the corridors well beneath the lowest levels of the superstructure. Legacy was in control of the entire building, and his energy powered the turbines that kept oxygen moving. He allowed people to breathe his air. Wagner reached their office and slumped in his chair taking a deep breath and slowly exhaling.

  Legacy dropped his interrogation powerhouse persona the minute the door closed behind Wagner, as it was no longer necessary. Everyone in the room knew it. He reached out a long arm across to shake Director Wilkes hand.

  “Congratulations, Daniel, your men passed.” A look of confusion crossed Director Doorner then Legacy extended his other hand, “the same for you, Bob.” There they stood, in an awkward triangle, both shaking a different hand of Legacy’s.

  “So it was all Wagner?” Director Doorner asked, pulling back.

  “I didn’t say that, Bob.” Pulling his hand forward so that he could shake it in synchronization with Director Wilkes.

  “Is this some sort of test?” Wilkes asked impatiently.

  Legacy dropped both hands suddenly. “You know it is, you also know that I didn’t find a single liar in the bunch. There were only two people who could have lied to me on the first try and gotten it past me. But only you, Daniel, are observing my behavior – the trait of a guilty man trying to discover what he’s let slip.”

  Wilkes smiled and chuckled. “So you think it’s me?”

  Legacy drilled straight into his cerebral cortex and came out on the other side with a core sample, visually of course. “I know it is.”

  Wilkes looked between Doorner and Legacy. His affable smile dropped and he spoke. “Do you want to interrogate me?”

  Wilkes had seen Legacy in the room; it was the mental equivalent of turn of the century dentistry with no anesthetic, while using a dull drill. The cost of spending fifteen minutes fighting Legacy was a price that he was unwilling to pay. He turned to Doorner.

  “I have nothing to show for endless hours on this case, and this lead represented less than zero chance of honing in on them. I needed an excuse, for when this case, the most important case in history of the Agency, did not end favorably. Legacy’s investigation appeared to be a way not to shoulder the entire blame.” Wilkes’ pragmatic tone and military bearing gave even words spoken in cowardice and confession a noble bent. “I chose a target, someone who everyone would believe would be capable of fucking up the case by taking his eye off the ball.”

  Legacy added “Never mind that we’re old friends, eh?”

  “I never liked you, Legacy.” He stared him down.

  Legacy took the temperature of his words, “Yes, Daniel, you did.” He said with finality.

  Doorner stood in a slow calculated motion and he spoke in slow, calculated phrases, “I can’t replace you Agent Wilkes, it would take a month to bring someone up to speed. Legacy, you have my apologies, but I’m in Daniel’s corner on the viability of this lead, it was worse than a needle in a haystack. Still, you should have failed on your own merits not wi
th the carpet ripped out from under you. Daniel there will be repercussions when –” Doorner folded his hands in front of himself hearing his own slip of the tongue and standing at attention for a moment as the error slipped past him and out the door, “I mean if this does not end favorably. Now, this discussion has been a great waste of time.”

  Doorner left the room like the trailing edge of a cloud burst with Wilkes quickly on his heels. Legacy could tell that Wilkes didn’t want another word to have to pass between he and Legacy. Whether it was shame or animus it was hard to tell.