Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

Chapter 31 The Girl

  It was a hazy sunny day, where the lower atmosphere churned the yellow rays into a dull blonde illumination before it hit the ground and ran along blue green coastal moss and swept up the shore to meet a gathering in a small rural town.

  Legacy walked the old, cracked railroad tie path up to the assembly. The press was everywhere – black tubes of moving glass fused to their eye sockets, mouths stuffed full of potential controversy. Flannel-clad residents milled about. Matching earth tone garments from chain stores were the norm in the patiently eager gathering. And there was Legacy, standing a full head above the average height in his perfectly fitting navy suit – eyes set on the podium like a sniper waiting for a target.

  There was chatter everywhere, but no one talked to him, as was normal for Legacy. He thought about walking up and announcing that Kennedy would be arriving shortly riding a unicorn (he’d leave the question of which Kennedy up to personal choice and generational bias).

  He was considering this plan when low and behold what stepped up to the podium stacked with microphones from all over the country was a platinum and pink swirl of hair that looked like a candy cane connected to a teen scalp.

  Her name was Sofia Darren and for the next ten seconds she would be the most photographed person in the world. Legacy studied her, pushing up to the front. The fresh paint on her face, glitter pressed in formation around rosy cheeks spoke to the fact that she’d carefully prepared for this moment. The camera’s flashed and she smoothed out her “wild child” spandex tee shirt so that nobody would confuse the wrinkles in the fabric with any kind of body imperfection. She certainly didn’t want anyone to get the wrong impression of her. Though she couldn’t hide the fact that she loved the attention.

  “I am the girl that everyone has been looking for.” She cocked a sly half smile at the crowd then let a somber look wash over her face. “A gang of masked motor bikers kidnapped me almost six months ago, and the shame of what was done to me – really and totally kinky stuff that I cannot repeat in front of my mom and dad, who are in attendance.” she nodded toward the man standing next to Legacy. A man in a tight sports jacket, knuckles white on the shoulder of what must be her grieving mother. “And the worst thing is that they went on to do it to others – and distribute it around under their own video label called Abducted XX.”

  She went on to describe her abductors, known to her as The Choirboys. The aging town sheriff would later get to the podium and confirm that he did remember that a group of riders had come through town on the exact day that the girl was reported missing by her parents six months previous. Legacy found nothing about this public display convincing.

  Sofia took childish delight in choosing different microphones in which to pour out the details of her time riding the roads. She leaned in choosing a fuzzy capped NBC microphone to let out how at first she had fought against any kind of sexual advances. “But look at me.” she stepped back and went to profile – she was a tiny thing. “I didn’t have a chance.”

  Then the questions began.

  A reporter asked, “How many were in the group?”

  “Six.” She answered, a shiver went through her body, and she blurted out inappropriately “I could handle more.” A woman in the crowd gasping in shock put Sofia on the defensive. “Ask your husband, he’s seen it.” Sofia stiffened, people always had judged her harshly in this town, and they still were doing it. Legacy watched as the girl struggled with how to react, and self-control did not win out. She decided to really shock these hicks into a coma. “I guess I should tell all of it, no sense in holding back –”

  Legacy raised his voice, “I’ve seen enough.”

  He stood in an FBI conference room. Legacy could have hidden his anger if he’d wanted to – but it wasn’t worth his time.

  Wilkes pushed pause on the remote, catching her with her most wounded, backed-into-a corner pose. “The time line fits, and it’s what you said we’d find. We can have her here in two hours.”

  “I’ve been there.” Legacy huffed. Wilkes shot a questioning look to Wagner. Legacy didn’t give him time to question, “don’t waste much time on this.” He said standing and walking to the door.

  Agent Bailey squirmed, shifting polyester against the plastic base of his seat reminding people of his presence. It could have been a physical embodiment of a charged withdrawal from nicotine, and or the presence of a superior being upbraided by a subordinate that had broken through his persistent slack southern disinterest and conducted directly into his pants.

  Wagner called out, “Legacy, wait.”

  He teetered at the door, his palm clasped around the warm brass handle. Legacy knew that turning back meant explaining himself to everyone – but leaving meant explaining himself later to Wagner. This was the price of having a partner.

  “She has calluses on the crux of her thumbs-” Legacy announced as if everything would fall into place after hearing it.

  Bailey looked at his own nicotine stained fingers and laughed. “That clears everything up, agent.”

  Wilkes said, “Jesus, Martin, if I wanted a fortune cookie I’d order out. What the hell are you talking about?”

  Wagner was the first to catch on “Her thumbs.” She walked around behind Legacy and reached around him hugging him tight. “Hooked around the rider’s belt loops, it would take weeks, and it would mean –”

  Legacy finished her sentence “She was hanging on,” Legacy’s hand slid over Wagner’s, a little pressure on the tendon in between Wagner’s thumb and forefinger and her grip popped open like an automatic lock. “She wants attention.”

  Wilkes cut in “Bikers, sex tapes and testimony that proposes an exact timeline fit before the ransom demands of the first girl and this is supposed to be a coincidence?”

  “It’s supposed to fit. It’s marketing, promotion in front of the press to the people from her hometown. This is a convenient distraction.”

  “I’m pursuing the biggest abduction case since the Lindbergh baby and the entire country didn’t have minute by minute updates on that one. Tell me why I don’t run down every lead that comes my way?” His fist pressed into the soft wood of the conference table.

  “You’ll get tired.”

  “If we weren’t old friends –

  “It’ll be easier to break this case than it will be to end that sentence.” Legacy was glad that he’d stayed; he’d forgotten how much he liked Wilkes’ misguided full body commitment to finishing a job. Legacy knew the history of Wilkes and the Doorner family. Wilkes had known Laura in diapers, and he’d sooner fling himself into a fire than watch her suffer. Legacy could see that his old friend stood in front of him ready to direct the full resources of the bureau at any shadow that crossed the radar. He even detected the scent of a stronger emotion that crossed the line of a paternal, professional relationship with Laura.

  Legacy’s thought process always took him into the realm of none of his damn business, but he couldn’t help it. Soon he’d know more about Wilkes’ vulnerabilities and limitations than he wanted. Legacy invaded the privacy of everyone he spoke with. Another reason he hated talking to friends. Thank goodness he didn’t have many.

  He turned to the television screen where Sofia had been caught in mid-sentence, wounded and ready to wound. They’d made her feel like an exaggeration of a person without ever taking the time to find out if it was true. They should know that the shock they felt was the smallest tip of the iceberg of the true vulgarity that hemmed in the real world like grotesque gothic bookends.

  Wagner’s voice cut into Legacy’s thought process. “Legacy, we could bring her in and you could get inside her head and show us –”

  “I’ve been there. She’s about to say something that will shock the crowd, mainly directed at her mother. She’ll wish she hadn’t said it right after it comes out.” Legacy pressed play.

  Sofia lashed back at the crowd, “You think that was bad? They used to superglue my lips together t
hen go for triple penetration, think about it!” Gasps from the crowd, a smug look on Sofia’s face turned crimson as she realized that the prevailing reaction in the crowd wasn’t shock, it was an almost dehumanizing form of pity. They were not like her, they could not understand her. Anger set into her features, they would never understand.

  Legacy paused the tape again. He tried not to pity everyone in the charade. “Don’t waste much time on her.”

  In the hallway a minute later, Wagner caught up to him. Wagner walked several paces with him before saying, “There’s something else.”

  Legacy was surprised, was she beginning to read him, “They wouldn’t understand.”

  Wagner watched the glare off of the wall panels in an effort not to meet his eyes, “Try me.”

  Legacy stopped, it took him a moment to find the words, “She wasn’t afraid, every one of the girls who crossed paths with our guys were afraid – she wasn’t.”

  He let that sink in for a moment. He saw something cross her face, something like pure concern. Not that she needed any particular emotion to make her face shine, even in the dim hallway light, but Legacy saw a strobe effect of emotional understanding. At the mention of fear, the yellow flecks of her inner eye danced a jittery ballet of speculation and memory combined. Someone had once immersed her in a kind of fear that wasn’t contained at the time of the event, but instead continues to spill forward into every facet of their life, filling them like a tower of champagne glasses without the assurance that the bottle would ever empty.

  Legacy cut into her ocular tango with a message of hope. “But we learned something from her.”