Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

Chapter 68 Explained Inquest

  The formal inquest was well into its second hour of questioning. Legacy imagined the stenographer was beginning to realize how dreadfully boring her government job was and always would be, but she continued to pick and pluck the instrument in front of her as if it were a fine instrument playing a somber and meaningful piece of music. Every note had to be exactly correct, predicted as much as recorded at the moment the word entered the cognizance of the committee members and became part of the grand symphony.

  Actually, it didn’t matter what metaphor she coated her tedious job in, she still wanted to hurt every person on earth who talked.

  Legacy stared at the woman, much more interested in the recorder of the meeting than the topics of the meeting itself. He watched the movement of her hand, the graceful curve of her neck that seemed to be held tightly in place by the swept up hair that urged gravity into a counter motion upward. Her chin hovered like it was following the odd request of her hair. She was fascinating.

  “I have no interest in the question whatsoever.” Legacy replied. He hoped it was the answer to the question that had been most recently asked, he wasn’t paying attention to the conversation.

  “It occurs to me,” said a plump man in dress blues, “that we can learn much simply observing the agent.”

  “I’m just suggesting that he recount the results of his methods, and give insight.”

  “I have no interest in that kind of accountability whatsoever.” Legacy said, now certain that he was answering correctly.

  The head of the commission shuffled some of the papers in front of him, stalling, like his next duty was not particularly his favorite. “Now the matter of the death of Corwin Wells-”

  Legacy glanced up, confused by the name.

  “The man you’ve come to know as Blade – can we bridge this sensitive matter?”

  “It’s why I’m here, isn’t it?” Legacy let his gaze travel across the room to where his two character witnesses, agents Brent and Wagner watched the closed, informal hearing from the raised rotunda that circled the conference room. Legacy knew the more adjectives before the word investigation or hearing, the more trouble they might think you are in. For example, had it been a “closed informal supervisory hearing,” it would have been even worse. Nothing in Wagner’s gaze foretold any danger, however. Wagner nodded to him, signifying no doubt that she had been relatively pleased with his performance up until now.

  “No, no, this isn’t a – we’re just looking for the facts and your report leaves the events of the final bullets – the ones that entered – um” he searched through more papers even though he knew exactly what they were going to say.

  “The back of his head?” Legacy offered, and the man nodded like a sales clerk confirming a wildly favorable sales price. “I left that out for reasons of incrimination.”

  Wagner scowled then; Legacy could feel it without looking back at her.

  Legacy had known that absence of reporting on those final moments with Corwin Wells might lead to a dismissal. Legacy thought of his favorite movie character, “You can’t handle the truth!” a general had screamed it, and everyone who’d ever taken up secret service work loved him for saying it. Some of the bravest men are in prison, while the cowards look through records searching for a way to put the next one there.

  Legacy, however, didn’t think himself a hero, or even brave in this instance, merely pragmatic and final. He had to be very diplomatic in the way he expressed himself on the record.

  “I shot him through the back of the head at close range using my sidearm –‘

  “Was it perhaps a misfire, or some mistake –”

  “No.”

  The officer made an attempt to correct him “And you meant for the wound to – slow his pursuit –”

  “He was unconscious when he took the bullets.”

  There was a sudden still in the room. Even the stenographer had stopped and now stared at Legacy in shocked silence. Legacy was pleased to have gotten her attention and took the moment to impart some advice.

  “You need to take a vacation soon, or you’ll be the one answering questions.”

  “Me?” She asked, not wanting to be the subject of Legacy’s observation.

  A phone rang on the front desk and one member of the commission whispered the message into the chairman’s ear.

  “We’ll have a recess.” The stenographer moved to mark the tape and tear off the long roll of questions and answers from the previous hours, but the chairman looked at her directly as she was in process and said, “Leave everything.”

  The doors to the observation room above were opened and Wagner and Brent were escorted out; then the committee members filed out. Legacy was alone. He knew what was about to happen, down to the timing of the next entrance, but that didn’t change his mind about how he would handle it. In fact, he still didn’t know exactly what he was going to say, a remnant of the days when he asked the questions and never gave answers back. He wasn’t good at making himself understood, in a traditional sense, so he’d have to rely upon his thundering charm. That thought almost brought a smile to his face.

  The clank of the bar rattling the wood as it slid the bolt out of the way to allow the door to swing inward vibrated, then was swallowed up by the modern inner surfaces of the inquest room. The large oak door, a fixture surely of the original design when everything was stone and marble, its latching mechanism would have been as sharp as gunfire had the room not been updated. There was carpeting up to the chair rail, and sound-buffering ceiling shingles. Legacy imagined that Doorner had been around long enough to be able to compare the effect of his entrance in both settings, and he bet that Doorner was thinking mainly about architecture when he entered.

  “You’re going to make me put you in jail. The hero of the FBI is now going to be called in for court martial. When this court reconvenes you are going to tell the truth, and before you say anything, I’m going to tell you what the truth is.”

  “I saw Laura at the press conference.”

  Turning on a dime, Legacy saw that Doorner wanted something, “How did she seem?” Doorner’s sharp steel grey eyes held Legacy’s attention in an uncomfortable way. Legacy figured that this man could command attention from almost anyone, and began to see how he’d carved out such a place of power.

  “She seemed almost whole –” Doorner nodded, as if much cheerier assessments had been made but somehow, this one was satisfactory.

  “You like to tell the truth.”

  “It keeps me out of trouble.” Doorner almost laughed.

  “You could have made it look a lot more like an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Then you knew it would lead to something like this.”

  “He was the ringleader, pure intellect, brutality and persistence. It wouldn’t be over when he went behind bars, he’d keep going. I couldn’t match his intensity all of my life. I beat him on that one field, but three out of seven he would have been standing over my dead body.”

  “That’s not a reason to execute the man –‘

  “He would have struck back through every underworld contact he’d made in twenty years of riding the asphalt, he would have reached out from his cell to finish the job on your daughter then if he was feeling ironic, mine. I didn’t want to be ready for the challenge he presented every day of my life - “

  Doorner let his fingers skim the tape of the stenographer. “I can’t make you a hero without an official debriefing – there’s a shake-up coming and someone has to come out of this looking like a good guy. Believe me, I know how hard it is for an agent to look like a good guy these days.” He ripped the long tape from the roll and the end curled up like a ribbon. “I’m going to use this to wipe my ass, I’ll have the stenographer type up a new one I dictate. You’re coming to Washington with a new title that has you reporting to no one but the new regional director.” He said it like a challenge, expecting to be count
ered.

  Legacy disarmed him, “That sounds great,” Doorner looked relieved, he turned for the door, “But I’ll need a favor.”

  “I just did you a favor,” Doorner said, raising the trailing edge of the stenography tape.

  “That made your life easier not mine.” Doorner squinted like he was looking at a totally new species, not without some fascination.

  “If I’m going to stay, I will accept no official commendation. I will stay in the Alexandria office and report only to director Wilkes - “

  “Wilkes is on his way out. His performance –‘

  “Present company included, he is the man I respect most at the agency.” Doorner’s lips receded, clenching the wrinkles out of the skin around his mouth. Legacy continued without pause, “We have a history, and I trust both his internal and external logic.”

  “His final report cites you for insubordination –”

  “And that’s exactly how it should, in all honesty, read. It’s people like you who make things read the way they want them to.”

  Doorner suddenly burst into a smile, “You’re trying to make it easier for me to submarine your promotion.” A gleam in the old man’s eye told Legacy that he’d come across a man who’d probably never allowed himself to be manipulated in his life. He dropped the tape at Legacy’s feet.

  Doorner walked to the door at a jaunt, his steps as careful as a mine­sweeper’s, his words marked the counterpoints of an internal composition exactly. “This is going to hurt the person who requested specifically to report to you. Lateral moves are never popular at the agency.”

  “That’s their problem.” Legacy said with some satisfaction.

  The director turned at the door and studied Legacy, eyes shining with a special cocktail of wisdom and mischief allowed only to the boys that live inside the minds of old men. “Sure you don’t want any say in who gets the praise for the operation?” Legacy shook his head. “I could promote Bailey for his part.”

  Color visibly drained from Legacy’s already pale face; he thought of all of the people who should be rewarded for the safe return of Laura and wouldn’t include Bailey in the meanest part of the periphery. He looked at Doorner and saw that he was waiting for an answer; behind the impatience Legacy saw a punishing brand of enjoyment that only military men recognize and respect.

  Doorner wasn’t going to let him out of the room without a concession of some sort.

  “I need him here with me.” Legacy said in a lifeless monotone. “Giving a fine man like Bailey more power and influence over the affairs of the FBI might seem like it is a great idea,” he gulped down a thin mixture of bile and saliva collecting in the back of his throat. “But I must selfishly request that he is not given a higher post because I require his direct supervision.”

  The director looked like he was about to burst out into laughter, but a form-fitting official shrug and he was all business again. “I’ll find someone else then, as a favor.”

  Legacy watched the director exit the room; he waited for the other shoe to drop, as he knew that it would.

  “You owe me one now, Agent Legacy.” Rang down the corridor where the director had just exited. Legacy could tell that Doorner hadn’t even turned his head back toward the door, and had been staring directly forward when he’d spoke, so confident that Legacy was waiting on his words. Legacy could also hear that the words were said through lips pulled tight against the bottom of his jaw, either a scowl or a smile, Legacy thought. He wouldn’t know until it came time to call in the favor.

  The day was hazy, low clouds hung vengeful in the sky – plotting the return of a late-season snowstorm. Legacy entered the train station and caught the 5:40, just like he had every day. It was almost like the events of the past twenty-four hours hadn’t even happened, like a day had been skipped and now the world was back in order. Except today he was going the other way. Out of Alexandria and into the industrial areas surrounding the harbor.

  He stepped into the high-rise building and after passing by several “undetectable” wafer-thin security cameras mounted in the textured ceilings, he boarded the freight elevator that serviced Tyke’s floor.

  A minute later and the door opened, Tyke stood behind the door, his big grin inches from the chrome hinges. He held an envelope in his hand. It was the culmination of a special project Legacy had asked him to investigate. Tyke offered it to Legacy then whisked it away before Legacy could snatch it.

  “I came through for you again, bet you’re wondering whose name is in this envelope?”

  “I knew that if it was done on a computer, you’d eventually be able to figure out who did it.”

  “Don’t you be saying eventually like that – your boys are still scratching their heads and bobbing them up and down in planning meetings about how to find this guy. Whose name I’m giving you.” He held up the envelope like a lawyer presenting evidence to the jury. “Now I get something before I give.”

  “Seems like what everybody does these days.”

  “They suspected me right?”

  Legacy snatched the envelope from his hands with a gesture of such quickness that Tyke’s fingers double clutched the air in a kind of tactile disbelief, the envelope had just been in his hand. Legacy put it in his pocket without looking at the paper inside. “I saw your name as a person of interest when going through the case documents, that’s when I called you.”

  “So, you knew all along it wasn’t me.”

  “No, but I knew you would be able to give me a name, and if you couldn’t – well that doesn’t matter now.” He said, patting his inside pocket and turning to leave. “I’ll get my “boys” to work arresting this guy.”

  “How do you know that name’s real? I could be punking you.” Tyke stood on his toes to add a couple of inches to his contumelious grin, but when Legacy wheeled around on him, he immediately began to rock back and forth on his legs nervously.

  Legacy smirked. “You’ve tried to outsmart me before face to face, and it didn’t work.”

  “What if I hadn’t been here?” he said, and with all the bravado drained from his voice, Tyke sounded strangely humble. “I would have beaten you and then you’d have gotten in trouble for bringing me in on it in the first place.”

  “I would have found you.” That was how one leveled a threat.

  An earnest curiosity put a crease in Tyke’s baby-faced brow “How?”

  “The same way I beat you in chess.” And for no reason other than camaraderie Legacy found himself saying, “I owe you one.”

  Legacy could hardly remember the impulse to engage someone outside the family circle, but he didn’t give a second thought as to why it would come out now. His mind was in a restful state that allowed him to hover near operational normalcy. This is the way people deal with the unending stream of information that consciousness supplies – or at least this is the surface that is easiest to present to the world. He walked into the hallway and in a moment, DING, the elevator doors opened.

  Legacy attempted a smile at the doorman, but it buckled on his lips to form a sneer. The man neither noticed the intention nor the result. It took a lot of energy and went unnoticed, and it was the end of the briefest phase in Legacy’s life, the one where he would appear to be pleasant to others.

  Legacy gripped the familiar second floor handrail where he made the turn into his hallway. The wood was soft and slightly concave, light brown showing through the dark mahogany stain from years of fingers pressing the last good area where one could get a handgrip before the wood bent into the wall at the landing.

  He touched his fingers gently just above his top lip. It was an olfactory test to which he already knew the answer. The rails had been cleaned, as they were everyday with a cleanser that smelled slightly of orange peel. The scent was as regular as Legacy was, but tonight it smelled a little less tart, like the smell had faded from its afternoon application sooner than usual, or the cleaner had been diluted. Perhaps the furnace
had been blasting on high all afternoon and carried the scent from the surface of the wood to hidden corners of the building.

  There was one other possibility, Legacy thought opening the locks on his door and pushing the door inward.

  Chess stood with a stern look on her perfectly angelic face. “You’re late. Two hours.” She pointed to the wall clock with such drama as if she were expecting it to loosen itself from its frame and fall to their feet in shock.

  Legacy put a hand to her hair and let his fingernails comb back from the widows peak until it stumbled over a variety of clips that held it, kid fashionably, in place. “Hey, I failed to come home last night.”

  “That’s right.” Chess set her jaw, but the corners of her mouth were at odds with her posture and kept peeking upward. Her eyes lit up with joy. “Wagner told me everything, I’m so proud of you.” She jumped as high as she could but still needed the ready help of her father’s strong arms to help her climb up and link her arms around his neck. “You got the bad guy, you're my hero.”

  He carried her effortlessly into the main room. She twisted around until they were face to face. “And as a reward, I’m not going to tell you what I did while you were gone.” Mischief flashed in her green eyes. She tried a judo move, which was immediately reversed.

  A trap door opened without a word and she fell, she found her backside hitting the couch cushions with a sting of wounded pride. “I was just kidding dad.”

  “So was I.”

  “Me landing on my butt is not a joke.”

  “I found it to have a kind of representational humor.”

  “You are so esoteric.”

  Legacy had no idea what she was saying, but before he could ask, Chess’ face turned suddenly serious.

  “Agent Wagner was medically evac -”

  “She’s fine.” Legacy cut in. “Concussion, laceration, broken bones - all of them – but that’s all.”

  “Very funny dad. What do you want to order for dinner?”

  Legacy was about to inform her that Wagner had been discharged from the hospital, and was going to list Wagner’s exact injuries, then thought the better of it. Chess didn’t need the information; all she needed to know was that Wagner was going to be all right. He prided himself momentarily on filtering information like a normal parent would, then continued the discussion in a way that almost no normal parent would. “She also damaged her attitude and won’t be able to argue with me for at least two weeks, so if you wouldn’t mind picking up the slack dear,” Not waiting for a reply he continued. “And she has a misaligned sense of emotional balance. The doctors are recommending a complete brain replacement if she continues disagreeing with me.”

  “You can’t wait until I pass that one along, can you.”

  Legacy didn’t even crack a smile. “I think we should make something for dinner – how would we go about doing that?”

  “We have flour, pancake mix and pinto beans in the cupboard.”

  “Delicious.”

  Legacy realized during the extended half argument, half discussion, or the new word that Chess coined that night, “arguscussion” that they had while waiting for the pizza to arrive that he enjoyed arguing with his daughter. Perhaps adolescence wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  Two weeks later, Legacy sat at his desk staring at the pale recess in the back of Wagner’s neck. A week before she’d turned her desk away from his and announced that it was a permanent move.

  She was under the impression that this was some kind of punishment – after he’d rejected a present from her. Understandably, it was a thank you gift for saving her life. Wagner was visibly angry when he’d thrown her present into the trash bin after a cursory inspection, but she became livid when he explained the decision to her. The gift in question was a set of wireless headphones that could be paired with the stereo and in Wagner’s words “Allow for the complete private enjoyment of the music furnished on his very special tapes.” Legacy countered with the silent proposal that the gift was more worthy of removal by janitorial professionals, but when Wagner had plucked it from the bin and pressed for a reason, he’d explained that music filled a room and thoughts filled a head. She was asking him to fill his head with music – but that would interfere with his thoughts. Then he suggested that she use the headphones, as they wouldn’t bother her. That's when the desk was moved, a grumbling sound punctuated by spats of Wagner’s complaints. Legacy hadn’t offered to help.

  Legacy found the new arrangement much less distracting, and strangely he’d found the back of her neck fascinating. In the week that he’d had to examine the movement, structure and extension of her skin compared to her mood, Legacy found an expressive new entity. He could tell from the pressure of her fingers as they slid along the base of her hair, how much tension was in Wagner, whether the phone call she was on was going well. A slight blush of the skin came with a new thought and foretold the announcement of something pleasant. The recess seemed to deepen ever so slightly when she needed something. Legacy found that he could often prompt a desired reaction by asking for her feedback on something in one of the cases they now shared. The expression she had on her face when she turned to answer was always some shade of official sternness chosen at random from the cadet catalog of proper office behavior, but there were always the undercurrents of excitement and involvement that were like a breath of fresh air into the room. The stale old cases found a little life each time Wagner brought her mind to bear on the details and reminded Legacy of the reasons that they’d gone unsolved in the first place; they hadn’t been working on them.

  Legacy could see that Wagner was fully engrossed in one of the reports on an old blackmail case and he took his opportunity to exit the room unnoticed.

  “You’re standing, why are you standing? It’s not time for you to stand.” Wagner grumbled, but she didn’t turn.

  Legacy grabbed a bouquet of flowers from his briefcase and the crackle of the paper brought a pink flush to the skin on Wagner’s neck. “Man this place is boring.”

  Legacy still said nothing, allowing the anticipation to bubble into a tempest in Wagner’s mind. He took long strides for the door. “Who are the flowers for?” she blurted out, still keeping her nose down in the report.

  “I have an errand, and it’s none of your business.”

  Wagner’s hand went up to her hair and she tugged a ring from the configuration that was swept up high at the back of her head. She twisted the hair around her finger in a repetitive motion and it almost calmed her into silence. “I should have followed Agent Brent when he was promoted to the Washington office.”

  Legacy squinted, like he was trying to squeeze the truth out of the image of Wagner’s neck. “I happen to know for a fact that the promotion was offered to you first, before Brent and that you opted to stay here.”

  “Hah.” Wagner managed, in a forced tone. Then to cover she began to rant. “You never change, you think the world is all about you - “