by a b
Laura performed like there was nothing at all wrong going on when she was on camera. There was a detachment to her performance, as she created the illusion that she was in control. Things were not being done to her, things were just being done. Her eyes were wide open the entire time. It was the kind of power that most people give away to their abductors, but she never did. Blue pushed her to react, but she didn’t flinch even during his most shocking sermons. Blue started to develop an attachment to her, instead of the other way around.
Laura dusted her eyelids with a neon eye shadow then turned to him and batted her eyes, pursed her expressionless lips. He couldn’t help but laugh. Eleven minutes to air.
The group was waiting a couple of buildings away their costumes form fitting around lanky arms, boney shoulders. It was clear they didn’t like Laura at all.
Feely, Yellow, watched the door, “It’s those fucking spooky eyes.”
Brown added, “She reminds me of my mother.”
Purple cracked a smile, “Thanks for getting my dick hard.”
Brown shot back “Don’t mess with my mother.”
Purple put forefinger to nostril and snorted out a bullet of mucus on the carpet. Green surprised everyone in the room by opening his mouth. “I’m having a hard time getting hard with her.”
Yellow continued, “That’s what I mean it’s those fucking eyes.”
They waited watching the door in silence. Green walked over to a case of champagne sitting by the door. He asked Brown “These were outside all night, right?”
Brown nodded. Green picked up a bottle and began shaking it like he was playing a Tommus. “Nice and icy.”
Ten minutes later Laura entered the room, dressed the part of a slutty schoolgirl, glasses and backpack completed the costume. Each day they changed the surroundings slightly to represent the theme of their performance. Many things had occupied the center of the room: airline seats, military bunk beds, a sandbox filled with mud, but today there was a long banister with a chandelier hung overhead. The cast led her into the foyer then started spraying her with sticky sweet champagne – she was the entertainment for a graduation party. She kept her eyes wide open even though the bubbles stung. Laura turned away from the camera. Only Blue would notice what she was doing, and if he ever figured it out she’d be dead. She wondered if any of her colleagues would see what she wanted them to – it would be easy to focus on anything but the pain and suffering, she’d learned that early on.
The “graduate” was moving in to straddle her, pulling his vinyl-covered friends into a circle around them. She drifted off, eyes open but at least it didn’t feel real. Her mind clung to the fact that she had two secrets and either one of them could break through the circle.
Chapter 23 Biker Bar
Wagner would never have guessed how many biker hangouts there were in the greater Bismarck area. At around 3 AM, with the winds blowing granules too small to be called snow, particulate ice was a better description; she stumbled up to The Potter’s Wheel. A hippy biker that had established itself as a “drink and dive” in the seventies. It had become popular because during the cold winters, a customer could drink himself silly then crash in one of the upstairs rooms without ever leaving comfort of climate control.
Wagner strutted up to the bar. The room greeted her with a series of whistles and hoots. A wood-burning fireplace cast a reddish glow over the packed long wooden benches. There were only three tables in the place, but they went wall to wall. A no smoking sign hung on the stovepipe that fed the warm exhaust up through the rafters. Carved beside the sign was the word “weed.” Wagner did a tactical scan of the place and made a decision. She did a playful spin approaching the bar. This was a role-play that she would have never tried before meeting Legacy. Even though she was in no mood for the attention she played into it, leaning forward on the bar, and calling over the bartender.
“What can I get for you little miss?” The bartender was a stout tattooed teen whose shaved head and stubbly beard looked like a mushroom cap sprouting from his shoulders.
Wagner said in a tipsy-loud voice that she’d learned from her father “Three shots of tequila,” putting up four fingers and fanning them in his face. She noticed his nametag, “Jake.” Lingering on the K, a smile came to her lips “and some - information.” Her tone dropped on that last word. Eavesdroppers lost the conversation thread but everyone in the place watched.
The bartender looked around nervously, Wagner pinched one of his chubby cheeks and continued her balancing act in front of the crowd. “I know that if any of these roughnecks hears you talking to a police officer, you won’t just have a pierced nose-” Wagner drew her finger around the curve of his throat and tickled his ear. “You’ll have a pierced neck so lets keep this part of the conversation private, give me the drinks and lean in or I flash a badge and take you outside.”
They were the center of the room, and the center of the entire biker nation for a moment.
Jake put two beefy arms on the bar and settled in to talk to her. A few of the patrons cheered, thinking it was his lucky day.
“I want to know about some recent traffic, not local.” Wagner said.
“Nothing’s local, nobody lives in this shit hole – don’t jerk me around because you’ve got a badge-” Jake replied.
Wagner broke out into a hysterical laugh. She spun on the barstool and waved her hands excitedly like whatever he’d said was the best joke she’d ever heard. Confusion painted Jake’s face until her elbow came down full force on the nerve in the center of his wrist. That same wrist would tingle for another week. Jake gave a muffled grunt.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” Wagner announced her apology while pinning the other arm to the bar with her forearm. Her next breath got to the point - “Want me to go for the eye sockets next, Jake?”
Jake couldn’t move his arm. He was face to face with Wagner and had no leverage to resist. “We’ve had about ten new faces this week.” He stammered, “My whole arm is burning.”
“That’s good, did any of them have female baggage? The kind that can’t walk?” Wagner watched his eyes.
“A rider carried his bitch up to their room. He said that she was drunk, but she was doped.” He winced.
“Blonde?” Jake nodded, teeth grinding “When did they arrive?”
“Two days ago.” Wagner did some calculations, that timetable put her in this bar less than a day after the initiation.
Wagner smelled blood in the water. “How does a biker arrive with a doped up wife?”
“He drove up in an old Econoline van, but he was a biker, only bikers find this place –” he replied.
“And me.” Wagner reminded him.
“My lucky day. Can I have my arms back?” Jake’s cigarette was burning close to the skin between his index and middle finger. Wagner released her grip, and let him stand upright. She didn’t see the quick hand signal he made to the room, and Wagner was too intent to notice how quickly the place began to clear out behind her, only because of what Jake said next. “Your guy hasn’t checked out yet, he’s still here.”
Chapter 24 Bat Of An Eye
Legacy shut the door to his office and popped videotape into the player mounted on the wall below a LED projector. As the bulb warmed up, the images of the day’s events began to fill the far wall. Laura was almost life-sized on the screen that dropped with an annoyed tug from Legacy. The worst part of his day was beginning.
He stood in the room. Champagne splashed off of Laura’s almost naked body, soaking the floor in a radial pattern outward, making the carpet hold the pattern of his footsteps as he toured the room. Legacy approached Laura before the sex acts started; her eyes were fixed wide looking at some point in the distance. It was like she could exit the room leaving no tracks at all.
The other forms in the room began to move. Laura spoke when the controller gave her words to say, turned and twisted with his desires. Legacy watched the long curving black lines across her forehead. It was li
ke war paint, she went to battle giving them everything they wanted and nothing more.
Legacy paced around the Vinyl Men, he had worked out a personality sketch for each based on their “work.” They displayed a consistency that was tightly controlled.
They acted like a pack – a social structure built around a leader who supplies individual members of the group with very specific, highly specialized responsibilities. Although the surroundings changed daily, the sex acts from girl to girl remained almost constant, demeaning but not especially defined by the personality of the victim in the middle. They hadn’t dressed up the prom queens as prom queens. The actress played the same parts as the animal activist. The prey was not the important part of this equation. Laura stood bent over the railing, flashing a glimpse of the chain that ran between her nipples, down, and then disappeared into her pubic hair. Legacy stood by her, dug his fingernails into the soft wood of the banister. He actually felt the wood, it was so solid, and the room was very real to him. He could feel something coming together, but he wasn’t sure yet what it was. His mind scrambled through all of the tapes he’d seen, searching for something to connect to what he was watching. He drilled down into the aquifer just above his medulla and there it was – “What an idiot!” She could have been anybody. In that moment Legacy realized how they picked their victims.
The 3D photorealistic crime scene slipped away. Legacy’s eyes found the familiar shapes of his study coming back into existence around him. It was three AM; Chess wouldn’t be going to school until 7:30. He waited for the sun. Legacy knew for the first time that he had found a short cut to get ahead of them – and with each second ticking off the clock, he worried that he was giving back his lead.
*****
Wagner rounded the stairs gun drawn. The music droning out of the jukebox from the bar below thumped through the aged timber floor. She was looking for room number 5, the second room on the left. It was a deluxe room meaning the window wasn’t broken and the lock worked. A phone rang at the end of the hall, then another closer to her.
Wagner knelt in front of the door and holstered her gun. Her hair fell into her face as she removed the pin holding it back and inserted it into the keyhole. Click. Far down the hall a door opened and a broad-chested man came lumbering out of his room. Bleary-eyed, he charged down the hall.
The unexpected speed with which the man closed on her caught her off guard. She barely had time to stand before her shoulder came under an urgent grip. Wagner’s impulse was to neutralize the man with a quick thrust of her elbow into his septum, but something stopped her. She looked into his eyes and sensed that it was not after all an attack.
Her theory was immediately supported when his stale breath spilled out a warning. “Cops in the house.” He ran on.
The bartender, by warning the upstairs occupants had just lowered his official status from piece of shit, to dead piece of shit. She braced herself, knowing that her temper would not serve her here, in this hallway. There was nothing to take out her frustration upon.
Ring. The phone rang in room 5. Wagner knew it was a signal. Another lout was coming down the hall at breakneck speed and after a quick calculation Wagner stepped out to meet him.
The moment his hand reached out to push her out of the way, it was blocked by her left hand, and then she slid it into the crux of her right elbow. This made Wagner the pivot point for a newly constructed biker merry-ground. Using all her weight, she heaved downward causing the biker’s center of gravity to drop, concentrating the force of his impact on the lower portion of the door. The lock stood no chance as the human battering ram went face first into the bottom panel, shoulders hitting squarely with a resounding crack. The door flew open.
Wagner stepped over him in the doorway as she drew her weapon, finger locked to the trigger in a cold embrace. The lights flickered as they came on, illuminating in yellow and brown tones through two dusty burnt lampshades a messy room with rumpled twin beds. She saw the remains of a half eaten dinner, and an open window. He’d been in this room only moments before.
Wagner walked over to the phone and picked it up. She didn’t wait for the voice on the other end. She said, “Jake, you’d better pray I catch him before he kills again, cause I know how to make sure you never sleep with both eyes closed, ever.” She slammed down the receiver.
*****
The cleaning crew swept through the food court at 9:45 every morning. Only one “customer” sat amid the sea of plastic chairs and white acrylic topped tables. Wagner had been there for over an hour, waiting for nine o’clock on the east coast, when it was safe to call Legacy. The hour time difference gave her more time to contemplate the words she would use when he picked up the phone. She’d been over and over the events of the night – agents had responded and made The Potter’s Wheel into the hub of the largest manhunt in the history of the bureau. Wilkes had shown up, with a more forgiving line on Legacy’s methods, seeing as how they had almost netted the drop-off man. He’d put his hand on Wagner’s shoulder, and pronounced in a deep baritone “close.” Close was not in her vocabulary, close is not what penetrated into her blood. The journals of crime are not etched in the text of “close.” The trail didn’t get any fresher than last night and it couldn’t have chilled any faster in this frigid place.
She looked at the pathetic Dixie cup she’d filled with water in the drinking fountain. Her first drink of the day and it wasn’t coffee. Of course there was a coffee shop in the food court, but it didn’t open until ten. Anyone who could wait for a cup of coffee until ten danced on the edge of the seventh circle of hell – no, worse, they river danced right over the edge into a tepid Dixie cup of water. Ten o’clock mall coffee drinkers were the problem with the Dakotas. She was about to expand her theory worldwide when the nagging thought popped back into her head. What was she going to say to Legacy?
Her phone rang, right on time, five minutes to ten. She flipped it open. “Wagner.”
Legacy didn’t mince words “Big news.”
Wagner responded, “I know Legacy, I blew it, I had the drop-off guy, and he slipped right through my fingers.”
Legacy said, “What?”
Wagner “I ruined the assignment, our guy was staying in a fleabag motel five miles from the drop, and he got away. Isn’t that why you called?”
Legacy plunged forward, “This changes our conversation. Was he driving a van? Don’t answer, he was driving a van, and I’m willing to bet he had instructions not to check in to any fleabag motel. That’s good; it gives us a timeline to work with. How long had they been there?”
“Didn’t you hear me, I lost him. I could have closed this whole thing, but I let him slip out the window.”
“Now let’s find out where he came from and where he went.”
“Why aren’t you an ass when I do things wrong, and – when I am - “ She searched for the proper term.
“A little ray of sunshine?”
“Yes, like that, you save your harshest criticism for when I deserve – I deserve something -” She stammered.
“Praise? I’ll work on that. You haven’t had your coffee yet have you?”
“No.”
“Get it, and sit down because I’m about to change your mind.”
“It’s going to be four minutes until the coffee shop opens.”
“I can wait.”
“You want to – engage in small talk – maybe something personal - for three minutes?” She could feel Legacy cringe on the other end of the line. “Call me back.” The conversation restarted with a steaming latte in Wagner’s hand and finished with the cold dregs of the unfiltered espresso at the bottom of the cup. Wagner needed some steadying at the beginning, and Legacy knew exactly how to put her at ease.
*****
“You made a mistake with the bartender, but having him cuffed and in custody in the middle of that company might have been disastrous for Laura.” He explained that word would have gotten back to the group – quickly if not instantly throug
h the biker network – and they would have killed Laura. It would have been a flick of the wrist riding down some open road. Legacy concluded his analysis. “I’m not saying this to make you feel better.”
Wagner breathed a sigh of weary caffeinated acceptance, “I’ll be spending the day here.”
“You should get another coffee. You’re out.”
Wagner looked around the mall to see if there were any cameras on her. “How do you do that?”
“They brought in a specialist to study me once.” Legacy quipped.
Wagner replied, “I want a copy of the study.” A young man with a push broom walked up to the table and cleared the coffee cup with a polite nod. He’d evidently mistaken her fixation on the cup for impatience at the service. By the time she realized what was going on several moments of silence had passed, and she returned her attention to the conversation. “Sorry, I got distracted, you said you had big news?”