“Referring to yourself?”
Tim sighs.
“The woman who gave me this job talked about fairness. And she knew everything about being treated unfairly, so her word was worth its salt.
“She told me… fairness is a utopian ideal. It rests upon a balance that does not exist. For something to be truly balanced, something else must be skewed. For every hardwon justice, there is an atrocity waiting to take its place. Which means, in short, balance itself rests on unfairness.”
“Huh,” I say, “Well, none of that helps me at all.”
Before Tim can respond, the antiquated phone on my kitchen counter begins to ring. It used to be white, but time and cigarette smoke have rendered it hues of beige and orange.
I pick up on the second ring, letting the curled telephone wire extend until almost straight.
“Knox,” I say, settling back into my chair on the kitchen’s opposite wall.
“It’s Hardwick. We got another kid.”
“What?”
“Ashton Heights. Name is Emily Rickard. Same M.O.- grocery store. Talking with the parents now, but the mother is in bloody hysterics. Her only child, too.”
My eyes shoot to Tim, the chaos of random intelligence forgotten on the kitchen table Maya used to serve me chicken noodle soup and help solve math problems.
Suddenly, all I can think of is the first time we spoke, under a table in this very house. I was scared, and he offered to show me darkness was no different from light- just a little harder to love.
I wonder if Emily Rickard has someone to tell her such a thing. Tim has nothing comforting to offer, in any event.
He is Death, and won’t have to live with any of it.
“I’ll be right there,” I tell Hardwick, “Don’t let the mother leave until I get there.”
None of that matters, because she is gone, and Director Hazel mandated me to bring her home.
I wonder if every little girl has a guardian angel.
Chapter Three
The first time I met the man who calls himself Death, I was five years old.
A year out of the foster care system, I don’t remember many of the events leading up to that day. Like most of the two-year period after Daniel shot Tiffany at the bottom of a gravel pit, my young life is a blur. I don’t know if something happened within that period to draw Tim’s attention to me. All I remember is Maya dating a less than stellar individual named Jeremy, pushing a bookshelf up against the apartment door, telling me to hide under the table. The man was possessive, abusive and- to a five-year-old- terrifying.
Under the long kitchen table we had back in the early seventies; whose tablecloth was yellow with little white diamonds dotted across them, I closed my eyes and prayed Jeremy wouldn’t hurt us.
Ro, you have to hide!
Trembling in the dark, I listened to the sounds of reckoning, bearing down in the form of pounding and shouting at the door. At the moment I was most afraid for my life, the man now sitting in my SUV’s passenger seat appeared to me. Looking just as he does two decades and some later, he told me not to be afraid.
Who are you? I asked then.
I did not see where he came from, but here we were, sitting cross-legged across from each other. I hugged my teddy, a ratty bear named Rufus. He was beaten and tattered from being dragged everywhere behind me.
My name is Death, he said, but my friends call me Tim. Would you like to be friends, Ro?
Next to imminent doom as Maya screamed at Jeremy to stop yelling and leave, it didn’t seem like the worst option in the world.
Is that your friend? he asked, pointing at the bear. I nodded, and the man who called himself Death asked his name.
Rufus, I replied in my most helpless voice. Please, don’t kill my teddy.
Tim smiled at the panic wrapping itself around runaway anxiety as I saw only Maya’s feet return to the kitchen. The rest of her obscured by the tablecloth, I listened as she dialled the police.
Why, I would never, Tim promised in a hushed tone. You don’t need to be afraid, Ramona.
I hope that advice will serve me well now, because I am fucking terrified. I wish Maya’s ex-boyfriend was the lowest I could say I’ve met, but it is apparent there are worse monsters in wait.
“You’re sweating,” Tim says, never looking away from the window.
“Yeah, because this is not exactly what I had in mind when I joined the FBI.”
“And what did you expect?”
The world to my left passes in a blur. Houses and parks and schools are carbon copies of each other, stationed only blocks apart. We pass Arlington Cemetery; the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier looms over the landscape, casting further pall on an overcast September day.
“I don’t know,” I reply, trying to focus on the road, rather than Emily Rickard. “Being relegated to a bomb squad perimeter somewhere. Doing coffee runs.”
“Give yourself some credit, Ro.”
I scoff. “Credit would be getting to watch the bomb squad.”
“What are you saying?” Tim asks, finally turning his head to look at me. His eyes are too empathetic for someone who claims to be the destroyer of worlds.
“There are better people than me?”
We split away from the busy boulevard for a quieter avenue. Tim is quiet. Four lanes are spirited down to two, making drivers more apt to cut each other off. A Chevy behind me honks when I don’t move according to his satisfaction, unaware I’m too busy talking to the empty space next to me.
“I had a wife once,” he says after a while, “She was the love of my life. She used to tell me the universe is built on unfairness. In fact, they were her last words on this Earth.”
“There you go, talking about fairness again.” Rethinking the spite of my tone, I ask what happened to her.
“She died. Childbirth. It’s a long story. My point is, I used to think I was nothing without her. And when she died, existence became a whole lot messier. But eventually, there came a day when I was forced to be everything without her. I had to become something new.”
“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”
Tim smiles. “You are more capable than you will ever be aware of. Nothing has stopped Ramona Knox yet, has it?”
It hasn’t, but I don’t want him to feel he’s outsmarted me. I want to live in my bottomless pit of self-doubt and second-guessed decisions. It is where I feel safest; a bat in my cavernous cocoon.
The grocery store lot has been evacuated. Save the fire engines, lone ambulance and multiple degrees of law enforcement patrolling in and around the store, there is no one parked between the yellow lines. A uniformed officer stops me at the turn-in; I flash my badge. He nods and waves me through, oblivious to Tim’s presence.
Nobody can see him but me.
We pull off to the side, and Hardwick immediately spots us. My new partner stops conversing with one of the DCPD detectives, approaching my oversized vehicle.
“Got here as fast as I could,” I say as Tim joins my side. “What do we got?”
Hardwick sighs, hands on hips. He is as tired of this as the rest of the city is, having lost two colleagues to these abductions. In no way, shape or form does he mask mild resignation to these crimes.
“West’s golden standard. Stake out a grocery market, wait until the parent isn’t paying attention. Gone.”
“Is that the mother there?” I ask. In the near distance, a frantic woman paces back and forth by a set of cruisers. Their lights still flash, but the sirens are silenced. It is enough to deter a group of spectators gathered at the sidewalk, facing the market, from advancing.
The woman is uncooperative with her minders. Two DCPD officers look like they would rather be where the action is, only making a minimal effort to babysit the despondent mother. She is short and heavy, with a bob cut I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing.
“Joan Rickard. We haven’t been able to get a coherent statement out of her,” he says, “ Knox, there’s something else.<
br />
“Kid’s dad is in high places. Not Secret Service worthy, but no doubt they’ll get involved.”
“They’re going after politicians’ families now?”
“Not yet,” Hardwick replies, “but inching up the ladder. They knew exactly whose kid this was, whose wife that is, and where they would be on a Sunday morning-”
Hardwick is interrupted by a gentleman in plainclothes joining us; the detective he was speaking with, before we turned into the crime scene. He is no older than I am, with styled hair and blue eyes. There is no emotion in them.
“Agent Knox,” Hardwick says, “This is Detective Ryan Royce with the D.C. Police Department.”
“Homicide division,” the detective clarifies.
“Does your department always send Homicide after child abductors, Detective?” I ask.
“Cutbacks,” Royce says, “Plus, these are looking more and more like murders, Agent. Thirteen kids gone, never to be seen again. That does sound like a job for my division, wouldn’t you say?”
“Okay,” I reply, unwilling to argue any further, “we’re going to need to check the security cameras to try and get a face attached to the suspect. I’ll talk to the mother. Stephen, you get the video evidence.” I turn to Royce. “And Royce; just...go collect some samples or something.”
The detective and Hardwick snicker amongst themselves.
“What?” I ask, “Is that a bad plan?”
Neither answer my question. Instead, Hardwick walks past, bumping my shoulder on the way to the store entrance. Its manager stands there with crossed arms and a balding head, counting every lost dollar for the time he’s forced to close.
“A ‘good luck’ would have been nice,” I mutter, watching Royce and Hardwick disappear inside the store. My morbid guardian angel does not take complaints, and looks to the mother I must now console. “You’re sure you can’t just tell me where West is?”
“I could,” he says, “but I’m not supposed to interfere.”
Unbelievable.
“Thanks for your help, then. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a grieving mother to question.”
Turning my back on him, I wonder if there is any reason he talked to me under that table at five years old, as Maya’s estranged boyfriend threatened to beat down the door. I wonder if this is all a game to him.
Maybe he just wants to see what I’ll do.
Emily Rickard’s life hangs in the balance. Questioning why the nuisance at my side refuses to help will not stop her captors from selling her off; or worse, killing her.
Joan Rickard is the version of a parent none ever want to be. Conservatively applied mascara is smudged around her eyes, haircut paid for by a man she probably never sees. Her blouse is pink and a size smaller than her actual bust, with khaki capris and low-cut heels.
“Mrs. Rickard?” I say. I flash my newly-minted badge at the two uniformed blues keeping her under guard. “Ramona Knox, Bureau. Could I have a moment of your time?”
Emily’s mother wipes an eye with her finger and nods. The droplets pulled away with it are black from her makeup and soulless as I am.
“Of course, Miss Knox.”
“A minute, gentlemen?” I ask the officers. They oblige, eyeballing me as they walk away from their car. One tells me to signal if I need anything, but I’m no damsel. Left with Mrs. Rickard, struggling to maintain her composure, I have to be the monster who questions her.
“We are going to get her back, Joan,” I tell her. “I am going to get her back.”
She witholds a gasp.
“I don’t know what happened. One second she was with me. I turned around, and then, Emily was gone.”
“Has Emily been talking to any strangers, lately?”
“Of course not,” Mrs. Rickard says, “Why?”
“The FBI is trying to piece together a pattern, so we can trail the suspects-”
Mrs. Rickard holds up a palm, cutting me off.
“So you don’t even have a clue what you’re doing, do you?”
“Ma’am, it’s okay. Just calm down.”
“Calm down? Calm down? My daughter is missing, lady! How the fuck am I supposed to calm down?”
“Joan, I didn’t mean any offense-”
“Oh, you didn’t mean any offense!” she exclaims, signalling the officers watching our interaction with suspicion from afar. “That’s great! Tell me, Agent Knox- are you a mother?”
I chuckle.
“No, ma’am.”
“Well then, I would not expect you to ever understand the level of pain and suffering raging through every fibre of my being right now. I would not expect your reckless treatment of my daughter’s disappearance to matter at all to you, or-or,” she stammers, losing ability to string words together through her sobs. “I’m never going to see my baby again, am I?”
Emily’s mother loses full control, almost collapsing as the two DCPD officers reach us. I catch her, feeling every shudder through the larger woman’s arms as I hold her inside my own. I pat her back, struggling to breathe in her grip.
The woman is not wrong.
I have no idea what this feels like, and never want to.
“So we have nothing.”
Behind the desk, Director Hazel’s disappointment is deafening. I would let myself be panicked by it; but now, I have Joan Rickard’s public meltdown on my mind to contend with. Stephen Hardwick stands at ease beside me, looking more tired than ever. Tim sits on a brown leather couch I didn’t notice last time I was in this office.
“Right now,” Hardwick explains, “there’s a fresh lead. We were able to pull up video surveillance footage of the suspect, but the image isn’t clear enough to confirm an identity.”
“The lab is analyzing the footage now, sir,” I interject, earning a glare from my partner. “If they find anything, we should hear back within a day.”
Hazel looks between us, lingering longer on me.
“This is bad, folks. This is more than ordinary citizens. West is going after important people now; their families. Louis Rickard is an advisor to the Secretary of Defense. Next thing we know, it will be the Joint Chiefs’ kids. Thank God Chelsea Clinton is a young adult, is all I’ll say.”
“It won’t come to that, sir,” I promise.
“What makes you so sure, Agent? Your window on Emily Rickard is closing fast, and you’re standing here, trying to convince me otherwise!”
Because I won’t let it, I want to say. My mouth has a habit of getting me into trouble. Words must be tempered, gracefully laid down-
“Director Hazel, I would like to question the partners at Jordan West’s old firm,” I say.
Or not.
“What?”
All three of them say it- Tim, Hazel and Hardwick. All give me the same look; the one which questions whether a woman is too emotional to handle such an assignment.
There is no more time for doubt.
“I think there are still things we can learn from them. We go in under the presumption that no one is in trouble. We’re just making a second pass for any information on the Spider.”
Hardwick speaks.
“Why would they co-operate without a warrant?”
“He’s right, you know,” Tim says from the corner, leaning deeper into the sofa. Cushions crinkle against his supposed weight; I’m not sure if anyone else observes the disturbance.
“Because,” I reply, “they don’t want to be implicated in a child’s disappearance. Especially the daughter of an advisor to a high-ranking official.”
“Or,” Hardwick argues, “the media gets a bigger whiff than they already have, and then we have bigger problems than one missing child, Knox.”
My glare returns to the Director.
“You assigned me to this; you and Ian. Obviously, sir, one of you thinks I stand a chance in Hell of pulling this off. To be honest, kind of still trying to figure out why. I have less experience, less knowledge and worse aim with a gun than anyone in this room.
“But of anyone, I want to see these kids brought home. I never want them to feel a fraction of the things I’ve felt. These kids actually belong somewhere, with people who love them.
“I would have killed for that, once upon a time,” I continue, unaware where the words of my most haunted depths emerge from. “But there’s no chance of that for me. So, if you will let me do my job, sir, I will kill for them instead. Or, if you want to hamper and string me up with red tape, I’ll turn in my gun and badge right now, and Stephen here can keep bashing his head against a very tired wall.”
Looking to Hardwick, my partner’s jaw hangs open, brow raised. As for Hazel, I can’t tell if he returns awe or disgust. He makes good on neither.
“Fine,” he concedes, “Get in contact with DCPD, bring Ryan Royce with you. The perception of all branches working together, extending a hand to Harry Quinn, will play out much better.”
“As opposed to bearing down on him,” Hardwick agrees. “I’ll get Royce to meet us there.”
When my weathered partner has disappeared, and I am left alone with Hazel, the silence is heavy. Even my guardian angel radiates discomfort in the moments before my boss opens his mouth and speaks.
“Ian said you were fierce,” he chuckles; not at all the reaction I expected for insubordination.
“Sir?”
Hazel clears his throat before continuing. “Used to have an agent under my command. Most loyal, self-righteous, smug son of a bitch there ever was. Man wasn’t by-the-book in any regard, but he generally followed the rules, made his case when rules needed to be bent. For the greater good, he said. Didn’t happen often but...once in a while.”
“Seems Hazel knows the rules aren’t going to help anyone here,” Tim remarks from the couch.
Thank you, obvious narrator of my life.
“That agent was James Partridge,” Hazel continues. He sits forward against the discomfort of long days and stressful decisions, elbows running the desk to where his fingers interlock. “I will never be able to explain the sudden change all of us saw in Jim during his last days alive. He was short-tempered, prone to unnecessary risks.”
“What do you think happened, sir?” I ask, trying to connect all these disparate pieces in my brain. Maybe I can paint a picture before Hazel does it for me.
Leviathan Page 3