“Thank you, Director.”
Dismissed, I take my leave, clearing the glass box with its white blinds pulled up. A long hallway, full of other blinded, windowless rooms greets me. I hang right at a fork, guided by more offices all the way down. Where narrow corridors become a bullpen of cubicles, overworked analysts answer phones, staring at black screens with green typesetting illegible from my current angle.
Offices on the outer walls become conference and server rooms. Long rows of desks with state-of-the-art technology on their surface are unmanned. Tim tells me all this will be rendered obsolete in a few years’ time. He knows that because he has seen the future, or so he says.
I don’t know how many of my friend’s stories I actually believe, though many of his predictions over the years have proven true.
The man Director Hazel assigned as my partner is on the phone in one of the smaller conference rooms. Stephen Hardwick could only be described the way Hazel framed him; he drips bitterness, from the scowl under his beard to dead eyes above it. Haggard and hair wild, a crew neck shirt sags under black suspenders at the two days since he probably stopped home to change. A single holster hangs from the left strap arcing up and down the other side of his shoulder.
Unlike Hazel, the lead agent pursuing Jordan West is shorter than me, especially given the heels I picked out today- another stupid decision I made this morning.
Also unlike the Director, there is no tolerance for rookies anywhere on this man’s face.
“The hell, Hazel?” Hardwick roars into the phone. “What is a newbie going to do for this?
"No, I’m not fucking arguing with you, John. If Lance and Jim couldn’t take this on, no rookie is gonna be an improvement…I don’t care if she has commendations coming out of her ass!”
The agent falls silent as garbled sounds on the other end grow louder. At the Director’s harsh response, Hardwick relents.
“Yes, sir,” he says, “Thank you, sir.”
Replacing the handset in its cradle, Hardwick massages the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb, grumbling at the carpeted floor.
Probably not the best time to make myself known.
“Agent Hardwick?”
He doesn’t turn his body; only his neck as far is required. Sunken eyes drift from my feet to the top of my head.
Unlike the many sets of male curiosity which followed me here, this man has no interest in physical characteristics. He is too weathered by his own disgust for the world, and I am a fly on the wall of his pet peeves.
“My name is Ramona Knox.”
I was never good at introductions.
“Right,” the agent sighs, “and I’m the Easter Bunny.”
“Director Hazel said we would be working together on this case.” Hands clasp at my backside, trying not to let the inferiority of my emotions show. “Maybe you could share some of what you know. Just so I’m not operating in the dark here.”
On the other side of the conference table, Hardwick scoffs.
“What is it with you rookies? Come in, all full of carte blanche idealism, thinking you’re going to make any kind of difference here?” His hands find thin hips; only the suspenders hold up his pants as he paces. “Do you know anything about this case, or did Director Hazel send you in diapers?”
Steer into the skid.
“Diapers, sir. Full of shit, too. Not so much as a dossier or name. Luckily, I already know a few things about Jordan West’s operation.”
“Do you now?” Condescension accompanying his retort is corrosive; it drips down my steel exterior and tempts my tongue in ways which will not pay off. “Please, enlighten me.”
Here goes.
“Former MBA. Shot to stardom in Wall Street. Got some hefty titles along the way. Vice President this, Chairman of the Board that. Amassed a small fortune, then disappeared overnight. Next thing we knew, he was at the head of a child trafficking ring. He has people working for him, and no one has a remote lead on motive. All that’s known is he’s sick, twisted and - excuse my language, sir- fucking dangerous.”
“Impressive, Agent,” Hardwick says, “Got anything else up your sleeve?”
Maybe I can win him over.
“Maybe,” I say, walking to a massive cork board setup on wheels. Maps, newspaper clippings, crime scene photographs tacked onto its expanse connect the dots with several feet of yellow yarn. Its mosaic paints an ugly picture; of families torn apart, futures forever altered. It is the challenge in front of us, and right now, seems an overwhelming task.
“Well? Don’t keep me in suspense, rookie,” Hardwick says over my shoulder. I don’t dignify his snark, because all that matters to me is drawn on this canvas.
A question.
“The abductions started in L.A., right? That’s the working theory? At first, it was always the same. Grocery stores. Large department stores. But then, the suspects started getting too jittery. If they wanted to be professionals, variety was key. Obviously, we haven’t found much in the way of dead kids, so something else is happening. They’re being sold.”
“What’s your point, Knox?” Hardwick asks, crossing his arms. “This had better be good.”
“So by now, if we’re going according to the theory I last heard, West has people in his employ, which is why we never see him. Even if we could catch one of them, none have talked so far.”
“They’re all willing to go away for him,” Hardwick agrees. “Okay, so you’re not completely in the dark. No thanks to Hazel, that is.”
I ignore the jab, unwilling to sell myself to a man who doesn’t buy it whatsoever.
“Look here,” I say, pointing back to the map. Suddenly, my choice of dress feels less of a concern. “They’ve been working their way north for years. Seven in L.A.. One in Sacramento. Three in Portland. Just so happens they haven’t moved from the Capitol in a while.”
“Any theory as to why?”
I shrug, stepping back from the board. “Could be the wide array of lawmakers and dignitaries in this city. Could be a personal attachment to D.C. Either way, whatever West is doing here, he doesn’t plan on leaving anytime soon.”
“Hmm,” Hardwick muses.
I chuckle. “You almost sound impressed.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. You got chops, kid. But the agents we lost had them too, and many more years behind them. Soon as you underestimate Jordan West, he wins.”
“Blofeld and Partridge, right?”
“You’ve done your homework, rookie.”
“Always do.”
Hardwick sighs, joining me at the board. His fingers point between locations across the United States. There are no suspect photos, only sketches, because none have ever been in our custody long enough to take one.
“Lance Blofeld was killed pursuing one of West’s associates. Cornered the man on a rooftop, but it was ours who ended up splattered on the street below.”
“And Partridge?”
Another sigh, followed by an expression which warrants nothing less than empathy; a trait I do not readily possess.
“Jim was my partner for nine years. It was he and I who started working this case when West came to the Capitol.”
“What happened to him?” I ask.
Change in the agent’s customary bitterness is immediately evident. A thousand things haunt Stephen Hardwick, but few so much as this one.
“Jim was always level. I was the hothead. But one day, he started acting erratic. Going outside the protocol, taking risks he shouldn’t have. We found his body washed up on the shores of the Potomac two weeks ago.
“I won’t lie, kid. I think the Spider had something over Partridge, and goaded him into some sort of sick game. And he paid for it in fucking spades.”
On the board in front of me, something connects all these suspects. I read their names, scrawled on strips of torn paper below artists’ renderings from the mouth of witnesses, reported sightings and the barest scraps of solace. I look at their faces; none are descri
bed as older than mid-twenties, early thirties.
All men, willing to follow the Spider. He connects them, but the why is what eludes.
“These boys are giving up a lot for West,” I remark, “If they’re caught, they’ll never walk. It’s not a risk to take lightly for anyone.”
“What are you saying, Knox?”
“Something connects these men to Jordan West. You don’t go to work for a child abductor for the 401K, right?
“No,” I say, “this is a cult, Stephen. They look to West for something, and obviously get it from him. Otherwise, what’s the damn point?”
Hardwick has no response.
Neither do I. Standing in front of this twisted vision with my new, disgruntled partner, it is all I can do not to wonder if either of us will walk away. If what Hardwick says is true, and Jim Partridge was manipulated to his death before surfacing in the Potomac River, I will have to keep my guard up; or risking falling victim to the same pattern.
Chapter Two
Ever since I was a little girl, a strange man has appeared to me. His shoes are the finest leather, and he never seems to age. The suit he wears is always the same; a white shirt with black blazer, and a matching silk vest between them. His beard is always perfectly trimmed, and his eyes never lose sight of empathy.
The first time he appeared to me, I was five years old. After my parents were found dead in a gravel pit, I went to live with my Aunt Maya- my mother’s sister. According to stories she told me, Tiffany Stewart was always a screw short of stable, and the men she loved had even fewer in their drawer.
The working theory, at least to the police, was Daniel Knox turning the gun on his twenty year old wife, then himself. The drugs in his system- a cocktail of heroin, crack cocaine and alcohol levels which would have killed most men his weight- explained most of it.
Maya Stewart, my only living relative, has not aged well. She lives in an armchair, hooked up to oxygen tanks chastising all the years she spent with a cigarette to her lips. She looks nothing like the woman who single-handedly raised a twenty-eight year old rookie FBI agent.
Rather, Maya wheezes against the chair bearing her permanent outline as I close the door behind me in our Stanton Park apartment. My aunt hears the intrusion, but cannot speak until I have appeared at the living room’s precipice.
The grey machine to the chair’s immediate left filters air into her compromised body. It is enormous; the tube reaching from its chambers is thin as she is, feeding oxygen through her nostrils.
“Ro.”
Rocking back and forth in the decrepit chair, the words from her lips are swept over sandpaper on the way out. In sharp contrast to the gentle smile, she sounds like a monster.
“How are you feeling?” I ask, lingering at the threshold. The sight of her hurts my heart. For that, I could never leave her.
“Oh, you know,” she replies, eyes drooping with swaying shoulders. “There are good days, and bad ones, love.”
I kick off the heels, which I should have never worn today. I should have never framed my bangs in such a stupid manner. Thinking about it now, I might have gotten away with the shoes if I wore a skirt. Instead, my commanding agent and partner think I’m a cold hearted bitch with half a brain.
Not far from the truth, but perception is everything.
“And which is today?”
I take a seat on the adjacent couch in front of the block television. Wheel of Fortune plays- her favourite. We have not been fortunate enough to upgrade the ten-year old furniture weight only Maya uses for entertainment. Curly gray hair and sunken features, she is helpless to do anything other than watch a daytime score of game shows and soap operas.
She chuckles. Coming at great cost, it ends on a wince.
“If you don’t know the difference by now, Ro, I ain’t going to tell you.”
“Sorry. I should know better than to ask,” I say, sitting forward. My stupid haircut falls down my neck; I push the strands behind my ear. “Just wanted to make you smile.”
“You’re sweet,” Maya replies, placing a shrivelled hand over my own. “I pray you never feel anything like this-”
Lapsing into consecutive fits of hoarse coughing, I have to wait until the horrible retching subsides, before instructing her to take it easy.
“Please rest, Maya. Would you like a blanket?”
The woman aged a thousand years smiles and says that would be wonderful. I vacate my seat, walking to the hallway linen closet. Its white wood blinds stare back as I reach for the handle.
Beside it, a tall mirror is hung to the wall. I haven’t been able to look at myself in it since I was a child. But resting a hand on the closet door, I look up to it, and see a familiar face staring back at me. Were I to turn around, the presence would not manifest until it were most opportune to him.
At my smirk, he knows I can’t talk openly. I retrieve the blanket from a column of darkness and, pulling it from deep shelves, close the door. Returning to the chair, Maya wheezes at the quilt being drawn across her concave lap. When sure she is comfortable, I retreat to the kitchen- a room my aunt rarely intrudes on.
Rather than a kitchen table, there is only a workspace. It foregoes napkin holders and any sense of camaraderie in favour of my new task of saving children from the Devil. Where Maya and I used to sit and talk about our day has become a symbol of obsession; mountains of documents, files and photos. There are no dirty dishes in the sink. All the clean ones haven’t been touched in months.
Since Maya got sick, I’ve lived on takeout or near starvation.
There is no comfort in the blizzard of intel I’ve amassed since Ian Armstrong called me three days ago, said John Hazel was assigning me to the most volatile case in Washington. My show for Hardwick was the result of scrambling to inform myself, rather than the diligence and personal interest I showed him.
And in the chair I should be sitting, sorting through my clusterfuck of emotions over abducted kids and my aunt’s general health, my old friend sits, looking out at the evidence.
“You’re in my spot,” I tell him, closing the swinging door behind me. He doesn’t respond, hovering over missing persons reports, crime scene photographs and folders full of forensics results. Walking towards him, I place my holstered gun and badge down on the table’s end. “Personal interest?”
“You could say that,” my friend says, “Anyone who ends up dead is my business, after all.”
“Well, when we find a single body, I’ll be sure to let you know so you can claim it.”
“It’s not like that.”
I scoff. “You know, I’m still never sure why you insist on following me around when there are a couple billion people closer to death than I am.”
My friend smiles, but it is slight; tempered. Disingenuous.
“I go where I’m needed, Ramona.”
“What, not enough decrepit women to usher into the afterlife? Kind of in my prime over here. Wait,” I say, unsure whether I’m joking. “Is this Spider guy going to take me out? Is that why you’re here?”
Returning to the mounting evidence in front of him, the feigned smile drops off my friend’s lips. Suddenly, I am not so sure I want to hear the answer.
“I wasn’t always…this,” he says, “To be honest, it’s a bit ludicrous how I came into it. But the spot needed to be filled, and I was a better choice than some who came before me.”
“What do you mean, ‘before you’?”
He chuckles. “You would not believe a word of it. Point is, eternity is a long time to do a job of this nature. You have to...find things to care about, or be driven to madness.
“Do I know the outcome of your being assigned to Jordan West?” He shakes his head. “It is not an answer I have been brave enough to go looking for. Surely, it will be hard enough to watch play out.”
“What, can’t offer me protection?” I ask, leaning my shoulder against the refrigerator. Inside, I know it’s empty, just like me. “Or, kill West for me?”
&
nbsp; Soon as the words have left my lips, I know the joke is a bad one.
“It doesn’t work that way,” says the man who calls himself Death. “My job is to drive souls toward my realm, and power it while maintaining a balance between those arriving and leaving.”
“Huh,” I remark, “Leaving for where?”
“Their eternal state, of course. Salvation. Damnation. I don’t know what either really entails. I’m just the middleman, locked out of both. Some call me a guardian, others a necessary evil. I can’t pay opinions mind, Ro.”
“And mine?”
“Excuse me?”
“Does my opinion of you matter?”
The glare he casts feels like the aluminum door against my bare arm. It leaves little white hairs of my neck on end and breaks my heart, all at the same time.
“If you had seen the things I have, you wouldn’t even be asking.” My friend finally stands, walking closer. I have grown so much in the years we have kept each other company, and he has never changed. The suit is always the same. Immaculate. A pocket watch chain hangs between vest and blazer. In the silence between us, its ticking fills the gaps.
Moving away from the refrigerator, I take the spot he previously occupied. There is work to be done, and I don’t have time for Tim’s riddles. Pushing myself in, I am left to pour over a gruesome promise to save these kids, broken in a thousand pieces across my old kitchen table.
“Trying to figure out where this thing begins,” I say, “Twenty-three kids between 1989 and 1994. Twelve in the Capitol. Most came from good homes, loving families. Whole communities are shattered by their disappearances. And now, the politicians are getting involved, as D.C. flies into a panic about our most treasured resource.”
“A behemoth task, to be sure,” Tim replies.
On some level, he is reason. He may be a hallucination, or some symptom of my absolute lack of love life, but he speaks the words I need to hear.
“Why did they pick me, Tim?”
The man who calls himself Death smirks.
“I think,” he says, “in times of very few options, we look to the best and the brightest of us to lead the way, but rarely consider the burden placed upon those few.”
Leviathan Page 2