Ransom X

  *****

  Wagner didn’t drink on the plane. Clamato mixed with tequila was her official airplane drink. Not enough people had an official airline drink, Wagner heartily recommended cultivating a separate airplane personality, complete with different choice in wardrobe, drink and demeanor. She sat in her usual navy blazer, thinking that the drink was going to be her first step along the road. She had heard that it was like drinking a spicy shrimp cocktail followed by a hazy maritime mellow. She knew that she needed it, but the agent in charge of the Provo investigation in the airport was meeting her and she didn’t want to have the flushed cheeks that always seemed to accompany even a single alcoholic drink. Her new airline persona couldn’t overcome her land-based chemistry. So she planned a bait and switch on her senses by ordering bloody Mary mix, with Tabasco and sipping it through the hollowed-out stalk of a piece of celery.

  The spicy liquid flowed onto the back of her tongue, and she let it flow forward over all of her taste buds before swallowing. It was a cheap college student’s method for making a single drink last. During her poor student days, she’d spent more than night at a club nursing a drink, and this one got her almost all the way to the Rockies.

  “On the left side of the plane you will see . . .” Wagner squeezed her eyes shut and her mind altered the captain’s voice, making it rebound like an echo chamber. “The dead body of Laura Doorner. On the right, a disciplinary council which is convening at Agent Legacy’s request.” Wagner frowned in discomfort and the pilot’s voice came back clear and strong.

  “And we’ll be going over the continental divide soon where the rains bound for the Atlantic and Pacific get clearance to land and begin their journey east or west.” The assured voice of the captain made Wagner long for certainty. Questions confronted every design, and she was afraid that the only answer would be found over a lifeless autopsy table. She wasn’t ready to concede that particular outcome yet.

  The wheels chirped an arbitrary complaint about friction and rotational energy and the conversion thereof.

  She had landed on the other side of the continental divide, her problems should now travel west, and she would follow them regardless of the voices that questioned her.