Ransom X

by I.B. Holder

  Chapter 45 Architect

  Doors passed at regular intervals, like the worn skip of a record, 37, 36 – Legacy brushed down the hallway on his way back to his office. He knew exactly how many doors away any office in the building was from his. It was something that he’d picked up while studying the schematics of a cold case where an architect was killed over a contract dispute fifteen years ago.

  Legacy taught himself the trade, learning everything about the design of the building in which he worked. He knew every length of conduit, and every buttress and stress point in the building, including renovations over its hundred-year history, but it was an imprecise art, and he was constantly finding differences between the physical structure and the plans. 35, 34. It turned out that the way an architect uses space is a lot like the way a painter uses color. It was impossible to be 100 percent certain, 33,32, but Legacy had become so in tune with the slain man’s designs that he recognized that a building attributed to his partner was indeed his design. He’d been killed for a contract, by someone who had access to his plans for the site. 31, the elevator doors opened, 30, 29, it was silly to count the elevator’s over-sized yawning doors as two, but imprecise to count them as one. Silly always won out over imprecise in Legoland. Why did he think of that term right then?

  He and Wagner had agreed that she would go back to her home department in Washington. At least that’s the way the conversation had gone in Legacy’s head. 28, 27. He couldn’t have her around during the next few days, and given the circumstances of her betrayal of his trust she would jump at the chance to leave in good standing, even though he would never work with her again. 26,25,24.

  Legacy had been shot by friendly fire on two occasions. Once in the neck, and another time a bullet from a comrade had grazed his temple. He had patrolled with both of the men who had shot him on subsequent occasions. Neither wound was as damaging as the one that Wagner had delivered to him in the conference room today. It was fatal. The autopsy on their partnership had not been performed yet, but Legacy was ready to dispose of the body. He was a man ahead of his time. Ten doors in a cul-de-sac off of the hallway all counted because they were all visible, 14, 13, 12, 11.

  Luckily Wagner put up no resistance, 10, 9, 8, to his suggestion,7, 6, 5, unfortunately all of the conversation that he’d had with her, 4,3,2, was inside his own mind. Once he opened the door, he’d have to have it in real life, 1.

  The door swung open, and Wagner sat at her desk, tears streaming down her face. Her eyes had turned a dusty blue, diluted by a swirl of emotions that kept her body, ironically, perfectly still.

  If Legacy was affected by her condition, he didn’t show it in the least. He’d walked into far more emotional situations without batting an eyelid, people screaming, wrath of God curses, grief on the order that no person would ever willingly involve themselves in. But that was different and he knew it, he never cared about any of those people and there was nothing that they could do to get under his skin. Wagner was not measured on any scale of indifference. She mattered.

  He stepped up to her desk and after a nervous glance, he began his speech. He explained quickly his plan for her to have a gracious retreat from this office, without any mention from him about what had transpired. This was all on the very reasonable condition that their partnership was terminated immediately and that she leave without a fuss.

  It was a reasonably good pitch, but Legacy was still checking the runners on third and first as he spoke unable to see the signals coming from the bag until he raised his eyes and it was too late.

  The bag, Wagner, seemed prepared for her confrontation with Legacy. Legacy read deep beneath her pupils. She was ironclad certain, sitting with her neatly organized mechanical pencils and sure grip pens, that their talk would be all about shame, guilt and remorse. Luckily for her, Legacy had no vitriol for betrayal. He appealed to her professional side – giving her a way to come out of the situation unscathed. Wagner had long since passed that point, she was scathed, really scathed, and it scratched under that raw surface that Legacy thought that she’d trade career stability for quietly being pushed away from his office and this case.

  “Like hell I will.” The tears now burning down her flaming rosy cheeks, “If I leave, I get reassigned, and with Laura four days away from the next initiation, I don’t have that kind of time and you know it.”

  Legacy tested her. “You betrayed me, and you ruined our best chance at saving that girl.” He pointed to a picture on the wall, Laura’s face shining in her cadet photo; it showed no hint of the trials that poisoned the latest images of her. Legacy could almost feel the effect of his words on her. She was so receptive, he wasn’t certain he could go through with it.

  Legacy was lying to Wagner, but he couldn’t take another chance on her loyalty. The reason for lying seemed justified. Every time Legacy made eye contact with his “partner” for more than a split second however, he saw that his words called up a pain inside her, a deep disappointment that he could see that she attributed to herself in the entirety, and not just this mistake on the job. Watching her accept responsibility so completely made it very hard to push her out the door, but he did.

  Wagner spoke like a squeaky door opening, a continuous and somewhat disturbing sound. “I’ll go on assignment, to Provo.”

  She knew that the teams had been unable to locate Darci, but Legacy let her continue on the thought because, well, Provo was not here and that’s what he ultimately wanted, her absence.

  She continued, “I’ll find Darci and I’ll fix this. And I will only communicate only with my senior officer until this gets wrapped up.”

  That earned her a blank look from Legacy. It took some help for him to understand.

  Wagner nodded at him, “You are my senior officer.”

  Legacy rolled his eyes. He’d always disliked hierarchy when someone considered him in charge. He respected his superior officers, but he never learned to put himself on the same plane as his commanders even when his advance in rank made it statutory. He turned on her.

  “You should know that by now.” The defiant look on Wagner’s face stung in a way that he was not expecting. She’d turned around everything that he’d wanted out of the conversation and had taken the prerogative of being hurt in the process. How was it possible that he was on the defensive? Not ten minutes ago, she was standing before the Director of the FBI admitting that she was the source of the leak of information from this office. Admittedly, she was not the one who put it into the public domain, but she alone gave her superiors the ability to pluck and use Legacy’s investigative methods in isolation to serve themselves and not the case.

  It was the kind of intellectual dishonesty that made him abhor the human intellect. Especially in a governmental setting where such manipulations happen daily, the best ideas get taken, changed, mutated, and finally spat out by someone “in charge” who wants to take credit for something he doesn’t completely understand. And the parts he does understand, the parts he added, ruin the original idea.

  How long he stood in front of Wagner before registering and uttering the last words he would say to her in person until the conclusion of this case was unrecorded by either he or Wagner. Given the processes that Legacy went through, it was probably a matter for the archeological records. He and his original thesis stood still, she had to leave but he didn’t want to send a signal of acquiescence with a goodbye.

  Legacy had to be sure that this stray wouldn’t ever come back to his door, even if he didn’t truly believe the words coming out of his mouth. Legacy said “Going to Provo gets you out of my sight and that’s all I care about right now, so go.” He added in a guttural invective, “It won’t change anything.”

  Wagner said nothing, the tears had dried, but the clenched jaw pulling her smooth skintight across her cheekbones persisted. “It might change things for her.” She pointed back toward the far wall. Legacy looked at the wall where she’d pointed, and then quickly back at Wagner a
nd lit up. He recognized something in the picture that he’d never seen before. The dim light muted the colors in the photo and Laura’s expression lifted off the page. It was right there, all along, the reason Blue had chosen her. He scanned the photos of the other girls in his mind, letting memory drift together with a waking dream and turn the pictures into black and white. With the color removed he saw the same thing crystal clear, each time.

  By the time he looked back across the room, excited to share his discovery with his partner, she was gone.

  Brent walked out of Legacy’s office about ten minutes later with the most bewildering feeling of his adult life. Not since the time when he had gotten his first of a series of straight A grades at the academy had he felt this surge generated by the unknown. He’d always been a moderate-to-full-on underachiever throughout high school. People had expected a lot from him and he simply never delivered. He was the second string quarterback, a relief pitcher, and solid B student regardless of class.

  After graduation when the pressure of expectation abated and he began to pursue a spot in law enforcement in a small-town training academy for security guards, everything clicked into place. The structure of his daily routine built walls around him that he’d never had before in his life, and instead of feeling enclosed, Brent began to climb. Six months and he was better than any of his trainers, a year later he was hearing the curious sound of flattery, by some of the best in the business.

  He delivered Legacy’s mail, because he’d heard the rumors about brilliant the washout downstairs. Then when Agent Wagner entered the picture he had a totally different reason to plan his day around multiple visits to their door. She had a piercing look that shot through Agent Brent’s heart and severed his spinal cord on the way through his body, turning him into jelly each time.

  This was a visceral reaction that Brent was completely unready for, he’d always kept his romantic life quietly undistinguished, even though with his square jaw and short cropped jet-black hair he was often the object of attention from the ladies. The challenge that a mere moment with Wagner presented was far beyond a long-term relationship with another, a point that Legacy would have agreed with, had they breeched the subject.

  But Wagner was not the subject of their strange conversation, nor was he exactly certain what he’d gotten himself into wandering out of the door to their office with a notepad filled with, of all things, symptoms that he needed to match with a sickness. He’d explained to Legacy that he had no medical specialty, but that didn’t seem to concern him. What did interest him was that their work would remain completely secret and that he could pass the results only in person, and only to Legacy or Wagner.

  He had a faint idea that Legacy was using his obvious devotion to Wagner as a substitute for professional trust, because after five years he still worked in an office filled with strangers. What Legacy didn’t know, was that he could have trusted him anyway. Brent had many of the best qualities of law enforcement, all of them stalwart. If Legacy were as in tune with emotional values as he was the factual, he would have felt that in their first meeting.

  Brent clutched the notebook and looked at the first page, labeled in bold ink, RULES. Don’t do any of the research on site, don't use any FBI resources, and don’t use your real name when contacting sources. It felt like he was entering a secret society. He wondered if they’d have a wink, nod, and anonymous triple flex handshake over a bathroom stall before passing the information back to him. He smiled even though the thought of keeping secrets from his employer made him uneasy. For all of the reserve that he felt accepting the assignment, there was a tinge of excitement. He looked forward to passing the notebook back to Wagner personally and maybe share a conspiratorial smile. Yes that would be nice, Brent thought.