Ransom X

  *****

  Halfway across the country Wagner wasn’t having much better luck. She’d gotten six propositions from truck drivers as she showed her “pretty face” in gas station after gas station – in the files it said that Darci frequented the convenience stores, sometimes making them a perch for weeks at a time. Wagner had sifted through groups of world-weary teens, drinking from soda cups the size of soup tureens, smoking clove cigarettes to ensure that it stayed on their clothes and announcing their subversive culture to everyone downwind. But she’d gotten only vague statements.

  “Yeah, I seen her around.” Said the rebel son of a local dentist.

  “She was like trippin’ on somebody – love of her life or something.” Continued a girl who looked barely in her teens. She inhaled deeply on a cigarette and blew it toward her bangs. “She didn’t act heartbroke, though.” She batted her eyes toward a greasy haired skate punk.

  “Hey, we were in love twice a day, regular.” He snarled.

  Wagner asked a question that always came back negative, no matter how many times she asked it. “Have you seen her in the last week?”

  “Last Thursday.”

  She snapped her notebook shut and moved on. Wagner moved through a hazy overcast day feeling like the mood of her surroundings was beginning to sink beneath her skin. Snow was never far away in Provo, the mountains rising from the hills to the east. The architecture was 1960’s authentic. Nothing had been updated, including street signs, since the Eisenhower era. It might have been charming in a climate more friendly to paint and plaster, but most of the buildings cracked and peeled in intricate patterns, openly reminiscent of the past.

  Wagner drove along a strip of greenbelt called Sunny Day Park. It was abandoned. The surroundings reminded her of her geographical exile from the case. She hadn’t heard a word from Legacy since boarding the plane. She refused to call in, for fear that he would order her reassignment. If he put in the paperwork and she didn’t show up it could mean a reprimand in her file. Wagner could handle almost anything that she could confront, but the moment that it went into her file, paperwork would destroy her. She wouldn’t give Legacy the chance to reel her in, although the idea of a well-made cup of espresso made her bite down on her ruby red bottom lip. What she wouldn’t give for properly foamed soymilk.

  A banner at a little mom and pop convenience store read “new cappuccino” Wagner was half way past when she saw the sign out of the corner of her eye. She slammed on the brakes and seeing nobody on the road behind her, reversed back to park on the street in front of Gas and Loaf.

  An appropriate name, considering the two young men sitting on the stoop in front of the door. They looked like surfers, with long dyed hair and tanned skin. Wagner approached the door when the bleached blonde said “Don’t go in there, lady, clerk’s a complete bitch.” She noticed the designer mock turtleneck and expensive watch on him. He was not the kind of kid she was looking for. His friend, the one with avocado green hair, chimed in singing “Stay, stay the night!” imitating the grating falsetto of the lead singer of the rock group Chicago. He stood and put his arm across the door.

  Wagner flashed a smile, then a badge. Either one would have sufficed with the boys, and a nod of her head sent them on their way.

  Wagner had skimmed the reports passed down from the agents that come to the Gas and Loaf before her. They’d described the owner-operator as “uncooperative”. She had answered no to every question – even when after a series of “no” a young sparkplug agent had asked her “If her responses were part of some local comedy routine?”

  She said “no.”

  It was hardly the kind of affirmation that Wagner needed along an already cold trail. What she needed was cappuccino.

  What met her inside nearly drained her of all will to live. The cappuccino machine was really a cocoa machine that dispensed powdered, sickeningly sweet chocolate mocha cappuccino. It came dispensed in cups of 12, 22 and 32 oz. “Who drinks a quart of this crap?” Wagner thought, eyeing the HOT TUB extra large cup. She filled a 22-ounce cup and headed toward the cashier. It was a long narrow store, which gave her added time to observe the sour face of the aging store attendant.

  She took a sip on the way, a habit hand to mouth. Her distaste must have shown because the clerk smiled with gritted yellow teeth and said. “Makes you fat, too. That’ll be 75 cents.”

  Wagner wasn’t sure that she’d heard her correctly, “What?”

  The clerk explained in a raspy voice “It tastes bad, it makes you fat and it wires you up. It’s your generation. Refills are a quarter.”

  Wagner defended her generation by refusing to stoop to insult “Can I have a lid?” She stepped closer and flashed a bright smile.

  “Fed’ral cop?” the clerk asked. Wagner was about to ask how she knew when the clerk turned around with a twinkle in her shrewd-looking eye “I saw you flash the badge. You’re wasting your breath and your face with me, dearie.” The clerk zipped her mouth closed and threw away an imaginary key.

  “Too bad,” Wagner thought. She was starting to like the clerk, much like the way one appreciates cactus growing in another yard or clotted sour milk in somebody else’s cappuccino. Which, coincidently, was the same cottage cheese curd consistency as the skin on the clerk’s cheeks, chin and nose. A series of moles and pock marks bulged and fell like rock outcroppings down her loose jowls. Up close, it was hard to look at her without flinching.

  Wagner turned to leave as a disdainful snort caught up with her about halfway to the door. She thought of the satisfaction of topping off her drink, without offering the quarter refill charge, right in front of the smug clerk. That led to the fantasy of pulling out her service revolver and putting the cappuccino machine out of its misery.

  Two sets of magazine racks flanked the exit, and although it was not her usual habit to scan the fashion magazines, she found herself fixed on one headline. It read “Are you ready for the best fitting swimsuit of your life?”

  Wagner doubted if anyone from Provo was ready for anything less. OK, perhaps the truly indifferent folks who only wore a swimsuit once or twice a year – wait, that was the entire population. Most of the readers shared almost none of the same values as the editors, yet one never found literature in any of the permutations of the Gas and Loaf stores across middle America. These fashion magazines were everywhere, and there was one in the hands of the clerk.

  Agent Wagner reached the doorway and paused. The magazine text made her think of Legacy. He talked about how he was always open to trivial thoughts that impressed upon his world. He opened his arms to every thought equally, those that he sought out to analyze and those that simply drifted in upon the wind. It was, he’d said, not because he was more intelligent than others, but that he did examine every thought that he had more completely than almost anyone.

  Why had she connected the headline to Legacy? She stood in the doorway, eyes fixed on the words. The best fitting swimsuit of your life, it was absurd. It meant nothing. Somehow it kept people with limited discretionary spending coming back to the sticky, glossy pages. They must find some kind of harbor in the inflated drama of another’s struggle with thigh fat and capri consciousness that only covered half of what it should. Then she knew what the clerk needed, she felt it in her shoulders then the feeling moved upward and became a gleam in her eye.

  “Are you just going to stand there?” the clerk asked.

  “Don’t talk. We’re being watched.” She spat in a stage whisper. “Your life might be in danger. If you know the girl I’m looking for.” She swiveled on a heel. “You know the picture I’m talking about. Those men who came before, they weren’t with the bureau.”

  “They showed me a badge that looked just like yours.”

  “Did you examine it? The Chinese mafia does a beautiful forgery.”

  “He was a Chinaman.”

  Liu would be pleased. “He’s watching this store, he knows that this is his best lead.” The
edge of her statement hung in the air, razor thin and easy to miss if viewed from the front. It was the unfamiliar thrill of mystery and danger that pulled the clerk out of her safe hiding place to face Wagner’s challenge. She said, “I knew that girl was nothing but trouble.”

  Wagner stepped back up to the counter and found a comfortable angle to lean with her hip pointing outward, elbow resting on an advertisement for chewing tobacco.

  Wagner asked her again about Darci, entreating her to “Act casual and point to the TV like we’re talking about a new show.” She was pleased to find that the clerk’s memory of her was detailed and descriptive. She’d only seen Darci twice, but both sightings were memorable. She told Wagner about the strange behavior of the girl and the way she mocked the poor abducted girl. Her description of Darci’s hysteria brought on by the images of the missing girl’s televised return made Wagner’s ears burn – it must have brought back all of the horrors.

  Why didn’t Darci go to the police? Wagner stopped taking notes for a full intake of breath.

  The clerk snarled and explained how Darci’s laughter proved that the girl was either on drugs and totally out of it, or just another selfish teenager mocking other people’s pain. “What’s the matter with you?” The clerk asked.

  Wagner felt the tightness of her skin stretched against the bony frame of her forehead. She pictured Darci watching the aftermath of her ordeal reflected in another girl’s eyes; it must have shaken the ground beneath her feet and sucked the air out of the room around her. The clerk cleared her throat, annoyed. “Well?”

  Wagner eased the creases in her forehead, gave the clerk the prompt she needed to continue the narrative. “I’m afraid that if we put you in protective custody these men will have the resources to get to you.”

  “I’m not afraid.” Her eyes lit up.

  The clerk then spoke of the shoplifting, thinking in an obvious way that the investigation must have something to do with theft. “Cookies were probably just the start for a no good hoodlum like that.” Wagner imagined that it would take more than a few packets of stolen cookies to redeem Darci. But that wasn’t what made her go underground, the timing didn’t make sense.

  “This all happened the day they found the girl?” She asked.

  “Yeah a couple of weeks ago.”

  The sequence didn’t fit. Maybe Legacy’s prediction that the Vinyl Men came back to erase their mistakes was right. If her torturers had caught up with her last Thursday, Wagner should be looking for a body, not a witness.

  The next thing the clerk said came at her like it was in orbit around an imaginary center mass comprised of her, the kidnappers and Legacy. It came from nowhere and seemed to lead out into the darkness of space, only to come back around and clock her with a revelation even Copernicus would be proud of.

  “Then I saw her slap that Edmunds kid. Everyone knows the Edmunds’.” She spoke the name like it was part of local lore. Wagner nodded in stone agreement to keep the words flowing from the stagnant woman. “Well anyway, she did what everybody round here wants more than anything to do. Right out there.” She pointed to the spot on the pavement outside the store with specificity, like a monument should be put up on the exact site. And a contumelious chuckle erupted followed by a wet and very common hacking cough.

  “Last Thursday.”

  The Edmunds kid suddenly became the last person to see Darci, and the punch she had landed on him felt like it had come to rest in the pit of Wagner’s stomach. She was worried that it was too late.

  Wagner pulled up to the North Cliff gated community, the only gated community in town. The town didn’t really need any gated communities, it was on the list of the most safe places to live in Utah. The distinction of being the safest in Utah must make a mockery of all of the other safest cities in the country.

  Still some people, like the Edmunds, liked to have the feeling of going through a gate before parking their overpriced, oversized vehicles in the stubbornly regular sized parking spaces allotted to each tenant, parking space width being one of the last great social equalizers.

  It was one in the afternoon, and Wagner rang the bell for “common cottage” 3A. “BZZZT” The word ‘cottage’ was another affectation of the ruling class of people who paid so much for an apartment that they couldn’t possibly call it by the name allotted to it by the real estate code. “BZZZT” She rang again, with no answer.

  Wagner noticed a button marked “hospitality room” and pressed it. A deep vibrating voice shook the speaker. It would have sounded much more commanding if each of the words hadn’t resolved in an effeminate lisp.

  “Hospitality.” Before Wagner could say anything, the deep bass voice continued. “Come on in.”

  The door buzzed, rattling the screen and sending shivers up the side of the light blue cape cod absurdity that stood in four clusters inside the high-gated walls. There was no cape nearby, or cod for that matter. False wharfs and planked walkways lead from one building to another. It created such a false fiction that one half expected Captain Crunch to saunter past.

  Chauncy, the general manager and hospitality room curator, met Wagner at the door with a cup of steaming cappuccino. Before she could say anything his meaty hand laid the cup in hers. The circle of his forefinger and thumb easily spanned the circumference of the rim.

  “I’m a big man.” He replied to her unspoken observation, “and I’m getting bigger every year.” He patted the flabby gut that hung in the spotlight of one of the recessed lights overhead. Not only was Chauncy largest, blackest and baldest person that Wagner had seen since arriving in Provo, he immediately proved himself to be the most intuitive as well, “Thought you sounded like the cappuccino type.” He said in an apologetic tone, not wanting to offend if he was off, even though he knew he was not.

  Chauncy had a gift for knowing what people needed. “You’re looking for information, not real estate.”

  Wagner’s heart sunk, she thought for a moment that Chauncy had already received a visit from the FBI. “Somebody spoke to you?”

  Chauncy chuckled, a deep rumble, “No darlin’, I’m in hospitality, I just know what people want.” He was a talker, and he began reciting some of his hospitality highlights, each story laced with a level of professional pride and reverence that Wagner wouldn’t have expected. “When one of the Dixon kids of the complex called down asking for extra towels, I knew instead to call a plumber. When the divorcee in cottage 2A met with the local radio personality in 4C, I knew not to show any west facing apartments because of the fact that maintenance was always called to fix the deck railing after her visits – and I won’t even take a stab at explaining how it came loose.” He leaned forward and raised his eyebrows like he was telling a secret in a crowded room. “Perhaps the ex was behind bars for something that funded the sleek SLK that she drove, and she was recreating the feeling of her new life with him. I’m talking too much.”

  He picked up the serviette and took a pair of dainty tongs and picked up a sugar cube, then replaced it. Chauncy smiled humbly, “You don’t want sugar.” He said flatly.

  Wagner liked him more with every syllable. His voice had an easy way of convincing the listener that he was there to please. “No thanks.”

  “Sweet little thing like you stirs it up without adding a thing” Something in the rumbling compliment was so genuine that it made her blush. The lisp reasserted itself “That’s the color I want for my nails.” He held up his hand painted nails to her face.

  “It will bring out your wild side.”

  “That’s the only side I’ve got, sister. So, you’re not here for a tour?” his voice rose slightly to keep from affecting a know it all tone.

  “Have you seen this girl?” The picture of Darci, creased from days of changing hands gave it a fittingly vulnerable look. Her pierced features looked like they might actually lift off the page in a kind of Braille that only other rebellious souls understood. She was an easy ID.

  “S
he stayed in the Edmunds’ cottage for a few days – ate the hospitality cookies three times a day. Pretty, but frayed, same expression on her face, like the tread of an old shoe.” He said, staring at the picture.

  Wagner said, “I need to talk to the Edmunds boy.”

  “I’ll do anything if you can tell me how you get your complexion so creamy smooth.” Wagner cocked her head to the side and they had a deal.

  Chauncy was about to play a part in the investigation, in his eyes, he was aiding and abetting a federal agent who had better skin tone than anyone he’d met.

  Wagner tapped on the door of cottage 3B, the penthouse unit that spanned two of the lower units with panoramic views of the freeway and local strip mall in the distance. A voice, groggy and half-stoned crackled over the intercom. “Who is it dude?”

  “FBI. Bud.” She couldn’t help herself. Motion within the cottage cranked up like a blender working up to speed in an immediate, directionless whirlwind.

  Wagner peeked in the pane of glass beside the tall wooden door. The early afternoon light shone off the textured walls and vaulted ceilings of the interiors, looking like a swirl of vanilla ice cream on a hot summer’s day. A flash of flannel crossed the kitchen entrance, which could have easily been a trick of the light or maybe the blink of an eye for how fast it happened. Wagner knew that the occupants were on the run. She casually unholstered her weapon and walked back down the steps.

  On the other side of the building, sneakers hit greenbelt slipping in a rotary motion that started with a cartoon-like leap from the lower balcony. Darren was the first to his feet struggling toward the entrance to the underground parking garage only yards away without looking back to see Bone struggling to his feet. His face was covered with mud after having slipped and landed in one of the marsh-like areas of one of the overactive brass sprinkler heads.

  Darren waited for him steps inside the garage with a very tangible need. “Keys, tell me you got the keys. Dude, you’re bleeding.”

  Blood trickled down the brim of his nose; his tongue darted out to taste it, in a move meant to gross out his brother. Unfortunately, Bone had forgotten that his face was also caked with mud - a fact that his taste buds reminded him of with a sticky dirt frosting effect. Darren smiled as he doubled over spitting his mistake into the dark corners.

  “Dumbass.” He chided.

  All was forgiven seeing the keys emerge from his brother’s shredded cut off pants pocket. “Let’s go.”

  Darren darted around the Lexus back bumper and hit the keyless entry button unlocking all of the doors. He reached for the handle but found a large hospitable hand blocking his entry. It belonged to Chauncy. The other hand grabbed him by the scruff of his neck. “Running off?”

  The clicking of Wagner’s heels on the rigid concrete floor of the parking structure was calculatedly slow, letting her approach grow in the minds of the two boys until her stature visibly increased. She looked over the pair with a serious expression. Neither one of them would look at her. Bone’s eyes darted around like they were following the movements of a bird in a cage. His mask of mud and turf a sharp contrast to his large white eyeballs.

  Wagner detected the stale smell of pot on the boy’s pajamas as she split between them walking toward Chauncy, who stood holding up a set of car keys. The keys changed hands with a loud clank.

  Darren finally got up the nerve to say something. “This is complete –”

  Wagner cut him off. “Failing to respond to a federal agent is a serious matter. Running from or evading an agent who is pursuing you as a principal witness comes with jail time.”

  Bone found his tongue, “Our dad’s a lawyer.”

  Wagner snapped back “My boss is the head of the FBI.”

  Darren’s jaw looked like the hinge had dropped out completely. It hung at an angle, his mouth searching for a response. Chauncy broke in with a chuckle, so irregular it sounded like an echo even before it hit the concrete garage walls. Wagner had asked him to box in the kids’ car, now she was putting the same fences around their options. Pretty soon, if she spoke with the right authority, the ideas would solidify around them until they were more effective than a jail cell. The adolescent brain can invent no end of its own torturous confines if nudged toward a blossoming future despair.

  “We don’t know his name.” Bone offered.

  “Shut up dude.” Darren replied.

  “Whose name?”

  “The guy who gets us the pot.” Wagner was dumbstruck, but to Bone it must have seemed like she needed convincing because he added. “You know, Jerry.”

  “Dude.” His brother conceded.

  “I thought you didn’t know his name.” Wagner followed.

  “We don’t, lady.” Stone offered not realizing his blunder.

  She countered, “You don’t know Jerry?”

  “Whoah.”

  “I’m not here for Jerry.”

  “What do you want?” Darren leaned forward into the light, flashed a smile. He had a kind of bumbling warmth that Wagner hadn’t given him credit for earlier. He brushed a long lock of hair off his forehead and slicked it back into the flow of his long hair. For a second, he almost seemed like a person who was exactly his age, but nowadays no one over the age of twelve could possibly be like that. They all have to seem wiser, or more discontent, gifted or troubled than the generation before them. “Officer babe, we’re clean. Hey, this is me being nice.”

  Wagner sneered a half cocked smile aimed to threaten the boy. Defiant laughter went through the Darren; he wasn’t stepping down, so Wagner walked over. Within inches of his face she remarked, “I like the nose ring.” She grabbed the stud that dug a trench between the septum of his nostrils. A plaintive howl of discomfort and embarrassment filled the garage. Bone watched, laughing and bleeding.

  A car took that moment to pull in; Wagner changed her grip so that it looked like she was playfully tweaking his nose, when really it was rotating the piercing.

  “God, please, stop. Alright, we’re sorry, whatever.” The list of things to say to make her quit flowed almost randomly from his mouth. Wagner didn’t hear a single one.

  “How about I wear this eyebrow piercing on my index finger.” She jammed her finger into the hoop, and then pulled it out an inch, stretching the skin above his eyebrow and bringing it into perhaps the most thoughtful expression of his life. “Or my middle finger.” The hoop fit on her finger, now she was effectively controlling his face like a bit controls the movement of the head of a horse. All the while flipping him off for his troubles.

  “This is me being nice.” She said.

  Within five minutes, she had them vying with each other for who could be the most helpful. The showdown had saved her probably three hours in a police interrogation room, and innumerable headaches with their father, the lawyer. A wink in Chauncy’s direction was an invitation for him to leave. She was ready to go to work.

  “We met like you said.”

  “Stealing? Why were you stealing anything?” Wagner said looking at the gleaming Lexus key ring in her hand.

  Bone cut in “That lady at the Gas and Loaf totally asks for it.” Bone didn’t have the sense to filter his honesty, and an odd companionship between stupidity and honor.

  Wagner recalled how her conversation with the clerk from the Gas and Loaf had pushed her to steal a refill on a cappuccino – one that she didn’t even want, for that matter.

  Her gaze swung back to Darren. “And you started a sexual relationship?”

  “I liked her.” Darren said protectively.

  This wasn’t what Wagner was expecting, usually women like Darci chose men who can hardly conceive of sentiment. It makes them feel more comfortable with the shabby treatment they ultimately get.

  Darren’s greasy hair was the constant preoccupation of his skinny fingers, pushing the coiff around, searching for a way to hide behind it. His story came out halting every once in a while, like he was letting the other
people in the story catch up to his thoughts, or maybe he was just skipping like a record back into the groove in his head where he could still hear the echoing of his own words.

  Darren described the way they’d hooked up after the gas station. She became a regular at the gate, and at the hospitality room buzzer. He offered to get her a key once, but she’d dismissed it by saying something cute like “Fuck that, I stop coming if I’m either welcome or expected.”

  “I should have known right then.”

  “What?”

  “She was holding back.” His voice took on an adolescent approximation of a sage-like quality. “Just like when you’re working a new trick on the board, if you hold something back, that’s when you get hurt. If you’re all in, you’ll answer the bell after using your head as a friction brake on a gravel road, just to get that last ride. You get me?” His speech had a ring of familiarity to it, he probably used with all the girls. Wagner processed the boy, and played along.

  “Yeah, that’s deep. And she held back, where did that take her?” pressing him to return to Darci.

  Darren forgot entirely the position he was in, “Bet you never had anyone hold back with you.”

  If she had been able to escape the absurdity of the moment she would have recalled several relationships, all of them ended by her. It was always the same, face-to-face meeting with a different handsome young man who no longer held her interest – interest wasn’t right – they had simply lost their relevance in her life.

  Wagner flexed a lean, iron tricep and pulled Darren to his feet. “I don’t have time for games.”

  “Jesus, lame, hold on.” Again words spilled out without connection, “I was getting to that.”

  Wagner turned away from him and withdrew far enough into the shadows of the garage to become a faint outline.

  “We had fun, she told me about how her parents died in the war – um – you know, the last one.” An obvious history buff. “That she’d hitched a ride to Provo, and that she was waiting for a friend to join her before going down to Mexico. I thought it was a girl friend, cause you don’t tell your boyfriend about another boyfriend, but then something strange happened, and now I’m not so sure.”

  A snicker in the corner broke the silence. Bone, muddy, bloody and giggling at the misfortune of his brother. “She got you, man.” Wagner began to wonder what would count for strange among these brothers.

  “I’m going to meet her at the Kmart deli for an Icee and some fries, and I wait about twenty minutes and go out to have a smoke and wait some more outside. I’m not a patsy, but I think maybe she’s asleep in one of the dressing rooms so I ask some of the Kmart crowd if they’ve seen a girl like her. And one of them says that he was smoking in the loading area about ten minutes back and he saw a girl in a van.” A squeal erupted from his brother expecting the next tidbit of the story. “Shut up.”

  “I come around the corner and see her in the passenger seat talking to this old biker-fatty.”

  “Why do you say biker?” Wagner asked.

  “Tats, belly and beard – and something he said. Anyway she kicks her leg over him and they start to rock the van.”

  A whistle through Bone’s nose as he began to convulse in laughter. “And he watched, the whole thing. He waited till they were done before going up. Classic.”

  “I was fucking being polite.”

  “They were fucking, you were being polite.” Came from his brother.

  Wagner could see that the truth of the matter was that he hadn’t known what to do. And the intervening time hadn’t supplied him with any better answer than the one he’d had on that day.

  “I got angry and I banged on the van door.”

  “After they were finished.”

  “They opened the van door – He was doing up his pants. She introduced him as her uncle before I could even get pissed off. She was so smug and formal. Then he lumbered out and told me to stay the fuck away from her, and that if I didn’t, he knew my name. She could hear the way he was threatening me and she just laughed.” He turned on his brother’s laughter like it was some distant echo of hers.

  “Dude, shut the fuck up.” Bone wasn’t quite ready to stop, but he managed to lower the volume. “That’s when the biker guy talked about being on a short hop, and he’d be back through town soon.” He looked at Wagner like he’d said something important. She stared blankly back. Darren explained, “A short hop is a biker term for pit stop on the way home. Anyway I split.”

  “Then you took her back – and she dumped you again.”

  Wagner pulled Bone to his feet and sent him back to the apartment. He had been keeping Darren on the defensive. She needed everything he had, and Darren himself had noted the dangers of holding back.

  The minute Bone disappeared out of the bright corona of the open exit, looking back protectively like somehow something might happen to the paint job on the car during the interrogation, Darren’s story changed. It wasn’t the facts of what he’d said; it was the tone that accompanied the narrative. It was mournful and full of self-doubt. Darren obviously cared much more for Darci than he wanted to admit, his pride and a faint sense of urgency crept into his voice like he might somehow catch her from her fall with something that he said, something useful he remembered.

  Darren hadn’t left the area immediately as he’d said, he’d gone back into the Kmart and ordered more fries and waited. His instinct was right, about twenty minutes later Darci came in, looking like a total babe, certainly not looking for him as she gazed coyly down the rows of value priced merchandise. She spotted him and walked right up to the table. He’d pretended to believe the story that the big bald man with his zipper down was her uncle. She told him not to ever mess with her uncle because the boys he ran with had the kind of temper a man doesn’t learn, it’s the dark kind that a man can only be born with.

  “Darci finished two plates of fries then she kissed me goodbye. We went back to normal until –” Darren receded into a memory, from his expression Wagner could tell that he blamed himself for something.

  “Until what?”

  “I got a call, from the uncle.” Darren brooded.

  “What did he want?”

  “A favor.”

  The word ‘favor’ sounded like a foreign word. Like even now the concept did not match anything he could understand.

  “He said he’d been phoning all over trying to find me, and that I was the only one that stood between Darci and the morgue. I remember how he said the word ‘morgue’; it was like an immediate threat for her, and a later threat for me at the same time. He was desperate. He kept saying over and over that I had to go out in the middle of the night an find her and take her to my house. I must have been waffling, because he burst out with “I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE.”

  “This guy was ready to jump down the receiver and strangle me.” Wagner could guess how the fat man felt, especially when she first met Darren, but she was beginning to warm to the concerned attitude and dusty soprano tones of the boy. His face seemed to re-experience details of the story he was telling on a five second delay. The words came out of his mouth only to have his facial expression catch up after a short break.

  Wagner looked differently upon the lines across his chin and brow that she’d thought must have been created by the set of a smug expression. Now she saw in the crease between his eyebrows, a look of concern.

  “I did it. I found her.” A look of triumph crossed his face moments later. “I told her that her uncle called, and she basically did everything he told her to do without question. That included living with me.”

  “That was last Thursday.”

  “Thursday was the day she came to live here.”

  “Hold it, the clerk said she saw Darci hit you on Thursday.” She said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “I called her uncle a fat fuck.” The anger caught up with his eyebrows and they creased the center of his forehead. “She went back to him, I’m so stupi
d.” Tears welled up in his eyes.

  “Where is she now?”

  Ten minutes later, Wagner pointed her government-issue rental sedan out of the gated community, still digesting Darren’s tearful last thoughts. She looked out of the tinted windows and saw no one to congratulate her on her fine work. Behind her there was only a weeping boy, and a hospitality room manager who desperately wanted her to stay and trade make-up tips. Neither of them had what they most wanted; only Wagner had walked out with it all.

  Legacy would later send a memo breaking down the qualities that made Wagner so effective in fieldwork interviews. She had, after all, tricked him, no small task. Wagner had an almost irresistible ability to draw out the exact emotion that she wanted of the people she questioned. Many of them marked it down to beauty or charm, but it was more than that. She possessed both traits but not in their rare magnetic alloy. It was her manipulation of emotional response, the trap she set in a vacuum.

  People, especially men, claimed she radiated charm, but that was just because they projected their own desires and emotions onto her. In essence, they loved her blank reflective quality because it brought everything back to themselves. Wagner, her perfect make-up one thin layer in the mask of her intentions, lured people with the promise of nothing, and the expectation of everything. She got the information from Darren, and countless others, in this way.

  She wondered whether to call Legacy. His prediction of the very existence of a first girl had culminated in Wagner being just 26 hours behind Darci on a trail that led directly to the door of the Vinyl Men.

  The service on her phone crackled and for some unknown, but universally shared response among cell phone users, she slowed her car into an abandoned fairgrounds parking lot on the edge of town. The collective misguided conclusion that stopping would somehow increase the stability of the waves of communication the same way the ground slows to a solid stop below ones wheels. Cracking paint on a nearby sign read “Home of the Bain Brother’s Circus and Pony Meet”. Wagner imagined Darci standing on this road only a day before, sign in her hand. Darren said she was headed out on the 43 south. Wagner had calculated the van’s working range on a two-lane highway would be no greater than 300 miles in the mountains. The supplies that Darci had swiped from the house before leaving implied a trip verging on the longer edge of that range. It made sense that her “boyfriend” had dropped her at a convenience store while filling up the van. It made more sense why Darci was always at the local gas and sip waiting. Her man might be along this road at any time.

  Wagner held down a button and the autodial engaged.

  Her eyes fixed on the once colorful Bain Bros. Circus sign. It was now a weather-stripped, chipped-up reminder that once a year something happens, or used to happen, at this place. She knew that he wouldn’t answer his phone and that was the only reason she was calling. She worried that Legacy would no longer listen to her. He’d be too busy thinking of the unstated reasons that she’d called to hear what she had to say. He was a bit like a circus, taken in moments, or still frames of performance, he was awe inspiring, unique and fantastic. But once one viewed him in entirety he was a bit kitsch. It was hard to take the entire performance seriously even though each act was complicated and expertly done. The people who knew this side of Legacy saw his existence through the distorted fun house mirror pulled out of a sad solitary clown car – the bowed Mylar reflection, the kind that stretches the neck and squashes the chin into the nose. The content of his insight did not change the ridiculous picture he presented, a man colorful, cracked and chipped on an off ramp of the fringe of the world. She reprimanded herself for letting her focus shift. When had she started doing that? Darci was her main concern. Legacy was a concern, yet without contradiction Laura was her only concern.

  The call connected, Chess’ sweet familiar voice filled the dynamic range of the earpiece “I’m not home, so press one for me.” Not even a mention of dad, he must be two.

  It was just like him to have an even numbered box, the irony, she thought. She didn’t know what to say after the vague tone trailed off in her ear. Her voice muffled by indecision jumped into the silence “Legacy, this is Wagner. I’ve got a trail on Darci – she might be going to meet her boyfriend, and get this, if I’m right, he’s one of the abductors. Route 43 probably ending in Hammet County, Colorado. Thought you should know –” her voice ran on with a purposeful drone even though she’d said everything she wanted to say. “I’m following the chain of command – reporting it directly to you.”

  The phone beeped, connection lost. She silently thanked God for the divine mercy of the dropped call.

  Her tires through gravel sending dust skyward in a thick cloud, like she was covering the point of origin of her retreat. Perhaps it was the lingering presence of a particle of merging dust thrown up from a previous car that had cut off her call to Legacy, and if so, she needed to return the favor.