Ransom X
Chapter 46 Mission Incomplete
Wagner set a purposeful stride dragging her carry on bag across the worn mustard-colored carpet of the Provo International Airport. The man she was seeking made it easy for her to find him. He looked like he was practically seducing his watch, considering the attention he gave to the oversized face strapped to his thin wrist. Wagner judged him to look about 30 even though she knew he was well into his forties. His name was Yu, and his mixed Taiwanese, Samoan ancestry gave him a huge frame upon which he appeared to be almost paper-thin. He swam in his dark blue blazer simply because no amount of tapering could accommodate the broad shoulders that dominated his razor wire frame. Perhaps it was this dichotomy of being a small man in big shoes that gave him such a dogged personality, Yu was already well known at the FBI for his commitment to completing any mission. It was this trait that got him the Darci assignment. The failure to come through, and undoubtedly three sleepless nights with absolutely no progress, showed on his face. He tapped the glass of his watch as Wagner approached.
“I’m on final boarding call.” He said.
“Then we’ll make it quick.” Wagner replied. Yu’s eyes shot skyward like he knew that nothing with Wagner would be easy. They’d known each other in the Washington office. Yu respected her thoroughness and had requested her on the original assignment until he’d found that she was working with the notorious Martin Legacy.
Ten minutes later, Yu’s plane pushed away from the gate and he and Wagner sat in the airport bar. It was tucked away from the concourse, hidden like the den of ill repute that it was.
Wagner sipped the sinful combination of soda water and lime. Yu was preparing to be off duty and he ordered sea breeze after sea breeze.
“You made me miss my plane.” He crunched ice on his back molars.
“You had a backup.” She was certain that he had.
“We have an active lead right now; all of the field teams have been reassigned.” Wagner gave him a look that told him that he would have to deal with her in the bar, or expect a companion on his plane ride out. Yu huffed out a long sigh. “I suppose you want a personal briefing of the trails I’ve covered.”
“I read your preliminary report on the plane.” Yu motioned to the bartender for another drink.
“Then you know she’s been seen around town, sleeping in restrooms and stealing candy bars – she cleaned out a locker at the bus station on Wednesday – must have seen us coming.”
“Must have seen something coming.” Wagner corrected.
Yu had the air of false detachment. His voice was flat, face flat, air leaked out of his nose. His act didn’t play with Wagner. It was empty theatrics.
Wagner responded, “More likely she was a mess that someone came to clean up, someone less forgiving than the police.”
“We worked on that theory.” His defensive posture suddenly dropped, replaced by a defeatist sprawl. “What do you expect to find out here?”
“Answers.” Wagner said with steely determination.
“You might be able to get them, kid, you’re a sharp one.” Yu bit the fruit off of a plastic pick drawn from the empty ice of his second drink.
After an hour more of pointed questions from Wagner, the table was in great need of being bussed. Four glasses vied for space in front of the downright chummy Yu. He had developed an airline personality right in front of Wagner without ever leaving the ground.
“That’s my second option.” He said hearing the intercom announce first boarding. “We have two hundred miles in Wyoming to comb for a satellite dish about this big.” He spread his fingers to the width of a grain of salt. “As seen from outer space.” He spoke with a stutter so near laughter that it came across sounding like tears.
“You’ll make it.” Wagner smirked.
“True.” Said Yu, shifting his light frame on the wooden seat. “I heard you are in the door with Martin Legacy. Desk to desk” He held up his hands to represent the position of the desks, palms inward.
Wagner nodded.
“What’s it like rubbing up against brilliance? Eh?” He growled in his deep baritone, clapping his hands together.
Wagner let her voice drop “You tell me.”
Agent Yu laughed all the way to his connection in Phoenix, the flight added two hours onto his journey but he wore the inconvenience with an oversized smile, the impossible kind a child carves onto the face of a squat pumpkin. He liked Wagner, and he thought that if she had been there in the first place, his team might have turned something up.
Wagner saw one hole in the investigation by Agent Yu, and while it was a pinhole in an otherwise rock solid edifice, she needed to track it down before the trail could be considered cold.
She stepped out into the last few moments of sun that would bathe the Utah landscape in a warm orange light. The effect was intensified by the mammoth streaked stone-face rising sharply just east of town that served like a reflector, sending back the warmer earth tones to criss-cross the city floor.
Wagner felt there was a possibility that Darci, by all accounts a free soul, stayed in this area for a reason. It wasn’t the scenery. The only kind of reason, if Wagner’s memory served her, that a girl her age would linger in a town like this was the attention of a man. It was a dangerous game staying in one place, being the only living link to a group of vicious criminals. Love as an emotion was the equal of fear in youth, and then the scales tip back slowly as years pass. By the ripe old age of 23, Wagner needed to prove her theory true. She could feel the tingle of her own fear of failure, located somewhere back in the coelomic cavity of her inner ear. The flush of romance she felt only briefly, and at increasingly longer intervals of time in between, like an echo of a peal of faraway laughter. Wagner studied her features in the side mirror of her rental car; they were exactly as she remembered herself looking at eighteen, save the severe expression. A bath and twelve hours of sleep would not erase the misfortune that set her on the path of law enforcement, but suffice it to say that if the eighteen-year-old Wagner were to see Agent Wagner on the street, she’d shriek and run away. Wagner remembered running from trouble into someone’s arms, and where it had led her. The recollection reminded her that at eighteen, fear might aid gravity and send a girl underground, but no force in the heavens could push them away from their primary attraction.
Wagner pulled her sedan into the parking lot of a strip mall, irregular signs marked stores like Alice’s Nicks and Snacks, and Express Communications Beepers, places that she couldn’t believe anyone would have any business in even during full daylight, then drove around to the back alley. It was one of many alleys that she would visit during her search. The convenience store next door was home to one of the many colorful clerks whom she would shove a picture of Darci under his or her nose and ask the same question, “Have you ever seen this girl?” And if they said yes, she would add her own follow up in hopes of getting to that emotional magnetism that kept her in orbit around the same old dumpsters and mini marts, instead of reaching escape velocity, hitching a ride on the 15 freeway and exploring an exotic new world of out-of-town trash cans and convenience stores. She would ask, “Was there any particular boy that showed interest in her?”
The night wore on, and since convenience stores never closed, Wagner had something to do with every minute of the present darkness. Everywhere she went, she heard the same story, another agent had already been there, sometimes twice asking about the same girl. On the rare occasion that the clerk remembered Darci, her follow up yielded nothing. The girl was a wisp, a puff of air entering and exiting leaving no lasting impression on anything or anyone she touched. It was all exactly what she’d read in Yu’s report. Wagner cursed Yu’s blasted efficiency.
The news of the murders in Wyoming broke at 5:02 AM. Agent Yu, leader of the field team who’d made the discovery, came to the podium just in time for the top of the hour news cycle to flood the graphics department with speculative catch phrases to display beneath
the footage of the press conference. Things like “Internet bloodbath, will the government come out of this clean?” and “Abductor Bikers take Bullets” filled in the vacant space between Yu’s words and let everyone know exactly nothing about what he was saying. The message did filter across, however.
Yu walked to the platform buffeted by a stiff western plains breeze, swaying slightly like a man in the initial stages of a hangover. He explained that five bodies had been found, all brothers, and all fit the body type of the men referred to by the media as the “Vinyl Men”. Agent Laura Doorner and the final brother of reportedly six were not among the bodies. The largest manhunt in history was being undertaken in those morning hours to find the missing brother, the one that matched the description of Blue, now known to be Bertrand “Blade” Henry, and he was most likely on foot.
A reporter yelled a question into the momentary pause. “Why would he be on foot, there’s report of motorcycle traffic in this neighborhood last night - “
Yu cut in, “It appears as if the group were themselves victim of a sudden attack from a group of bikers. I won’t comment on the details as it might compromise the investigation, but I will say, this looked personal.”
Almost a perfect punctuation to Yu’s final statement, a young ATF agent came charging out of the house and threw up in the bushes. Undoubtedly this clip would be played over and over during the next hour with the subtitle “Vigilantes serve justice cold.”
Yu backed away from the podium and the indistinct roar of the press corps. A team leader thrust a phone into his hand the minute he turned away from the cameras, and he put it to his ear. The voice on the other end was unfamiliar.
“What did you mean by ‘personal’ in your press conference?”
“I don’t know who you are – “
“I’m routed directly through Director Doorner’s office so it maybe we can cool the formalities?”
Yu looked at the aide, who’d supplied the phone, nodded to his silent question, “Is this real?”
He spoke candidly.
“The attackers went to great lengths to make certain that these men went through a great deal of pain before they died. Very individual in nature, each was taken to specific room, to enjoy a specific type of torture. They all ended up in the same place, however.”
“The bodies weren’t left apart, that doesn’t fit.”
“No they all were found apart, I was speaking less literally, and I meant they all went to hell.”
“Did you think I’d enjoy the metaphor?”
Yu took a guess, “No, agent Legacy.”
“Well, I did. It probably tells me more about the way the scene was designed than the photos will. This man wanted to send these people to their own personal hell. So speak freely.”
“Always do.” Yu found himself wanting to please Legacy, and he had no idea why.
“Have you processed the scene?”
“We have a hundred agents on scene, I doubt that we’ll find any new evidence larger than a grain of salt in our next sweep.”
“Did you find a fingerprint on the dedicated breaker circuit for the satellite?”
“That’s not part of the crime scene.”
“Humor me.”
Yu was used to delegating tasks like this, but something in Legacy’s voice told him not only to move, but to move quickly.
The rusty metal screeched as he carefully lifted the front plate of the breaker box. He pulled out a pen flashlight and examined the socket connection for the satellite. Dust on the lower curve plate of the switch told the story that this switch had not been flipped.
“Nope.” But with the penlight on something caught his eye as he swung the metal door closed. Cobwebs sticking to the outer door in matted bands, he swung the light up around the edges of the box and found dangling connections that used to end on the door. This had been opened recently. “Wait a second.” He reexamined the box. In the upper corner, right under the hinge, he found it. A fingerprint in the dust on the main breaker, he reported it to Legacy.
“Can you think of a reason why a band of criminals would take time from a revenge crime and flip the breaker?”
“One of them had a live chandelier wire shoved down into his stomach.” Yu commented.
“And a light switch nearby. Right? This was a decoy. That breaker switch is the reason we found them and it was flipped intentionally. He lured us in.”
“He trapped a hundred federal agents, for what? A sneak attack?”
“Blade wanted all our resources engaged over here – so he could get back to business over there.”
“He got my attention.”
“Thank you for your help, agent.”
“I’ve got squads looking for a trail.”
“You won’t find it there. Blade is far away. The good news is, this means everything’s back to normal.”
“How is that good news?” Yu heard the click of the call disconnecting; obviously goodbyes were not in order. He called out to a passing agent, “Get someone in here to process the breaker box.” He walked up the stairs to the house bustling with activity; his breath turned to fog as it mixed with the air. Just moments before, he had been hot on the trail, but now he was beginning to feel the cold.