*****
The international airport in Bismarck was officially closed when the converted military transport 707 touched down. Wagner looked out the window. There was no evidence of the earth beneath her other than the sound of the engines struggling to slow and stabilize the plane at the same time. This was the white out that they’d promised when she took off. There couldn’t be worse conditions for gathering physical evidence, and she doubted it was a coincidence.
She gathered her carry on and made it through the concourse, all the while cursing the person who had sent her. At least it couldn’t get much worse.
She stepped out into the frigid night. A black town car was waiting for her on the curb, and the distance almost killed her. Before she even crossed the threshold, a chill went through Wagner’s body like nothing she’d ever felt before in her life. They sky cap had warned her that her coat wasn’t rated for the Dakotas, where the “wind splashes the skin like ice water.”
Stepping out of the automatic door into the night air she understood the warning in a more personal way. The first place where the swirling wind struck was crawling up the open sleeves of her overcoat. Like a submarine with the hull breeched, it flooded her arms. Before she could wrap her arms tightly around herself, the vortex of air snuck into every opening of her wardrobe. The biggest insult came when involuntarily she drew a deep breath in reaction to the shock. The wind had won, and it engulfed her body from the inside out. She couldn’t manage to talk when she shut the door to the car behind her. The agent behind the wheel asked “That your coat?” She couldn’t answer. “I’m supposed to take you to the station - “ She still couldn’t answer, and instead her head bobbled in an approximation of a nod.
The greeting that nature offered Wagner turned out to be one of the nicest parts of the trip. And she would have gladly taken a second plunge into the elements hours later to avoid the crippling emotional chill playing out in a smoky interrogation room in the local sheriff’s office.
The rural office hadn’t seen action like this since – well, never. The locals had given complete control over to the feds by the time Wagner walked passed the entryway that housed clusters of dark suits – along corridors filled with stern hunter’s eyes, and purposeful strides. There were no familiar faces, although the officers calling the shots on the ground were waiting for her arrival. She knew her special treatment would ruffle her fellow agents. Wilkes had arranged a private audience for her with the victim.
Tracy drew the smoke of a glowing cigarette into the bottom of her lungs, as she held a steaming mug between her cupped hands. Her words were infused with a distant emptiness, like she was a witness reporting back and not the victim. The story however was very personal. “I tried to keep some of the – physical evidence, under my fingernails – in my mouth, but Blue knew. He knew everything.”
“If you’d allow us to swab, even after a couple days - “ Wagner leaned in.
Tracy’s eyes rose from the bottom of the cup, “Don’t stick anything in me, not my nails and not my veins. I’m not fucking evidence.”
“You don’t know what traces - “ Wagner replied bluntly.
“I know.” She half stood leaning out over the table toward Wagner, “and I’ll tell you how I know – Blue filled my mouth with rubbing alcohol and bleach then told me that if I swallowed, I’d go blind and crazy. My gums burnt for hours but I didn’t notice it because he put his knife to my throat and told me that all of the blood in a human body could drain in under a minute.” Her expression turned mocking. “I had other things on my mind.”
Wagner controlled her urge to cut in, she knew that Tracy needed to be in charge, and even though it went against every impulse that Wagner had, she sat in silence and waited for Tracy to come back to her.
“Do you know what it’s like to be worthless? Down in your soul, to feel like garbage? I can’t tell you a single thing about the men who abducted me, I have no idea how long I traveled to get here and the only part of the experience I have is up here.” She pointed to her head, “and I don’t trust the words that my mind is sending to my lips, I don’t know if I’d help you if I could. I don’t know who I am. He turned me inside out.” She looked away, a flash of horror in her eyes. “I might even be him.”
Wagner reached across the table, Tracy flinched, but Wagner reached past her arm and took a cigarette out of the pack on the corner of the table. A deputy stepped forward with a lighter then stepped back beside a sign that read no drinking eating or smoking. Wagner expelled the words efficiently as she exhaled. “Your blood might tell us something about where you were – you don’t have to trust anybody, and we don’t have to trust you.” It was clinical, and cut straight to the point. Tracy’s mouth bent up into a poison smile.
Tracy spoke, looking over Wagner’s shoulder into the darkness. The tone was like she was still talking to Blue, daring him to step from the shadows of the interrogation room, “He made me into this and the fucking, burning truth is that only he understands me now.” She crushed out her cigarette, laid her arm out on the table. “Take your blood, I have nothing more to say.”
Wagner turned around in frustration looking back at where Tracy had been staring and at that moment she saw some of her own demons catching up with her. From her angle she could see through the darkness to a glass door to the hallway leading to the entry. Agent Wilkes entered the lobby. Even from fifty yards, he bore the unmistakable stride of someone who was pissed off. Reporting to him was going to be her own bloodletting experience.
Wagner and Wilkes sat in the break room. A bank of vending machines lit Wagner’s face and gave Wilkes a fluorescent outline. There was nothing left to eat, so Wagner drank instant coffee with extra cream.
A lipstick stained cigarette butt sat in an ashtray between the agents. It had been taken right down to the filter before becoming the object of art that reminded Wagner how long they’d be speaking; the pleasantries were long gone. Impatient voices spoke over the ashes.
“Where the hell is more important than here?” Wilkes roared.
Wagner stumbled into a sentence that sounded vaguely Samoan. “Ah, hah – no.” Her voice caught in her throat somewhere between excuse and condemnation.
Wilkes wasn’t listening, “There is no satisfactory answer. There’s no way I can hold my head up after this investigation is over, win or lose. But we cannot lose. Are you getting this?” Wagner nodded.
“If the one unique strategy that I bring to the table. If the one man who I stake energy, resources, and confidence in turns out to be a waste, then we lose. I won’t even have the weight to fall on my own sword, agent. And I’m being literal. So when you tell me that you’re done with the only witness we have and are going out into the field after only thirty minutes, I ask you: where the hell is more important than here?” Wilkes didn’t wait for an answer; he pulled a cell phone from his jacket pocket and dialed a number. It was 2 AM in Virginia when the phone rang.