Chapter Nine: The Ransom
Of all the professors currently teaching the downtown campus, Rei had to be in contact with Dr. Alison Monroe.
Baz knew his way to her office. He knew the long brick corridors and the way sound reverberated down them. Faraday introduced a problem he hadn't faced yet in the search for a missing archaeologist: the faculty of the Anthropology and Archaeology Department knew who he was. It just happened that the uneasy familiarity the long walk brought wasn't enough to convince Baz to cut his losses and trudge on without Monroe's help.
If Gwen brushed off his questions with her condescending never-you-minds and Cheng glowered every time Baz saw him, he had to find his insider info somewhere.
Up two flights of stairs and down one hall full of morning light and floating dust motes, Baz found Doctor Monroe's office door. He knocked tentatively. Just because he was told Monroe would be in didn't mean she would be in her office.
She could be one more dead end in a strange mystery. Rei, vanishing voluntarily. A ransacked bedroom. A model. A brother. A family friend willing family heirlooms out of the family.
The door swung open. Baz blinked at the sharp woman at the door, her hair falling out of her style and her eyes narrowed while she studied him over the lenses of her glasses.
Monroe regarded him as she might regard a skeleton. She was an anthropologist first and foremost, and Baz was as open a book as anyone. Just as he might be able to discern a Babylonian cylinder seal from an Egyptian one, she could discern a certain kind of person by the calluses on his hands, the stock of him.
"Don't tell me," she said, drawing the moment out. "'The Excavation and Censorship of Erotic Art from Pompeii and Heraculaneum.' Yes?"
The look on Baz's face must've been answer enough. It was difficult to look a woman in the eye after she identified him as the author of a paper featuring the word phallus, and all the academic synonyms he could think of for it, about seventy times. He swallowed hard.
"That was almost three years ago," Baz said.
Monroe shrugged. "It was a good paper."
She stepped aside, letting him into the room before closing the door behind him. The office gave him the same claustrophobic feeling it had almost three years ago. That was a different lifetime and yet, Monroe appeared about the same. Same flyaway hair and stern face.
"What brings you here?" Monroe asked, slipping back behind her desk. "Planning on coming back?"
She didn't invite him to sit, but he did anyway. It felt wrong to stand over her, looking down on her while she glanced between him and her work.
"Rei Collingwood," Baz said.
The anthropologist paused, looking at him over her reading glasses. "What of her?"
"She's supposedly missing."
"Supposedly?" Monroe raised an eyebrow and all Baz could do was nod.
Of all the people he'd come across in the last few days, a university professor should've been the least intimidating. Gwen should've made him stutter. Cheng should've stopped him in his tracks. Instead, it was a woman in reading glasses that reduced Baz to an unsteady boy. Everything that came out of his mouth sounded suddenly stupid and obvious.
"What about Rei?"
What about Rei Collingwood? Being at Faraday brought back a wealth of questions that didn't all tie back to where Rei was. What was she like? What did she do during all her semesters abroad? Why would she ever afford an American boy a second glance when she'd been everywhere in the world? How did he manage to end up in the same classroom as her?
"Are you familiar with Angelo Ferrero?" Baz asked instead.
"You've heard the expression 'quid quo pro,' I imagine," Monroe said. She assumed that he did. It struck Baz that no one assumed anything intelligent from him lately. It was a nice change. It was something he didn't even know he missed until Monroe was there across from him, remembering a thoughtful student instead of a thief-for-hire.
"My Latin's a little rough," Baz said, "you... want something from me?"
What could Doctor Monroe possibly want from him? What did he know that she didn't?
"Yes, I'm familiar with Angelo Ferrero. He's a generous donor. He provided a scholarship fund. Hard to say if he donates because of Rei or if Rei borrowed his interest for old, dusty things," Monroe said. "Now I have a question for you."
Baz gripped the arms of his chair. She answered him. What choice did he have but to answer her?
"Yes?"
"Why drop out?"
"Tore my rotator cuff. Nothing fixes that but surgery." He reached subconsciously for it, the scar tissue under his shirt and the tendons under his skin. He blinked and the stadium threatened to come back. He could almost feel the chalk under his fingernails, feel the tear happen all over again.
"What was Rei's relationship with Angelo like?" Baz asked.
"What are you implying? That Rei Collingwood likes older men?" Monroe's eyebrow shot up. "I don't know where Rei is, but if you're planning on earning the princess by rescuing her from the tower..."
"No! I meant she must be taking his illness pretty hard," Baz backtracked furiously before his mind had the chance to detour in the direction Monroe was suggesting. Maybe he had, in quiet moments, already conceived and banished the thought.
Monroe's eyebrow arched ever higher. That look was exactly the kind of thing that motivated well-written exams. Baz hated to imagine how she might look at a student who dared fail.
"Hard? She watched him collapse. He had his stroke at our open house. Rei rode in the ambulance with him." Monroe sighed. "If you are asking if that is why a person might decide to vanish, I don't think so. Not that alone. Rei has more emotional fortitude than that."
At least Angelo Ferrero had someone ride in the ambulance next to him. That could be a long, lonely distance to travel. Baz toyed with the ring at his neck, dragging it up and down the chain.
"Gymnasts have competed in national competitions with torn rotator cuffs. You've obviously recovered, so... why drop out?" Doctor Monroe pressed.
"I still competed with it until I slipped on the rings and bashed my head into the supports," Baz scoffed, angrier than he meant to be. It was a spectacular way to go down. He couldn't have just stumbled on a landing or fallen.
"So, you couldn't finish an undergraduate degree?"
"Quid quo pro," Baz said, "If Rei wasn't missing, per se, where would she go?"
Monroe sighed. "What would stop her from going anywhere in the world?"
"Angelo Ferrero," Baz offered, "so she must be somewhere in Temperance. She has to be."
That was what Gwen meant when she said Rei wouldn't leave. She rode with him in the ambulance. He made her his executor. That wasn't the kind of relationship that was easily abandoned. Not if anything he thought he knew about Rei was true.
Monroe considered. "Rei wrote most of her dissertation in a studio apartment. If she didn't want to be found, she would see to it that she wasn't."
Baz sunk back into his chair. There. That was exactly what he came for. That was what he wanted to know. At least the meeting wasn't just to torture him.
"Thank you," he said. She had another apartment. That was something to go off of.
"I still want to know why the best student in my class left," Monroe said.
Baz blinked at her. "The best?"
He always figured it would've been Rei. Monroe turned into her mentor, after all.
"I didn't stutter," Monroe said, "So? What made you quit?"
There was one word that all his mistakes boiled into. It was stupid to keep pushing when he was hurt, when he knew that the only thing that was really going to stop the pain was surgery. The only way to heal was to take a break and get his tendon stitched back into place, take the time off. The word quit was so harsh. Once upon a time, quitting was the best thing he could do for himself.
"Percocet."
#
Baz tore through Temperance to the only place he could think of that might fix the tension in his shoulder. Biking down the paths wasn't enough. It was such an easy motion to go through. Peddling wasn't a distraction. It was just a method of getting from one place to another and it left his mind too free to wander into memories he wasn't ready for. There was just one big black hole between being an Art History major at Faraday University and being parkour legend of the south side.
He chained his bike into the rack outside the gym and let himself into the building and into the changeroom. He stripped off anything that made him feel too much like a student, too much like a person he wasn't. Gym clothes were so much better. Practical. One step closer to the distraction.
The thing about training, about being so specific about any given movement, of doing something challenging and engaging, was that it was next to impossible to think about anything else. There was too much to worry about. Form, technique, footing, grip, engaging the muscle groups he was supposed to. No room for falling into pits of self-pity. No room for delving deeper into Doctor Monroe's questions.
He started out on the pull-up bar, drowning out the rest of the world in repetitions.
"If you're gonna just rep 'em out like that, I'm tying a plate to you."
Baz faltered, dropping back to the ground. Diego loomed over, arms crossed.
"You make it look so damn easy," Diego said.
He better have. He hadn't spent half his life on parallel bars and rings just to be shown up by lifters.
"You're here all day. Work on it," Baz managed only when he caught his breath.
Diego said nothing, just dug his laser vision into Baz's skin. It was an impressive ability, really. It just wasn't one Baz particularly appreciated in the moment.
"What?" Baz asked finally.
"Attitude, bro," Diego said, "what is up with you? This about that girl?"
Did Baz think about anything anymore that wasn't somehow related to Rei? How had his life somehow come to revolve around a girl he hadn't even spoken to in almost three years? How did his life oscillate up and down just to settle back onto her?
"What about her?" Baz said.
Diego pointed behind him. Baz twisted to face the TV mounted in the corner of the gym. Subtitles scrolled across the bottom, giving words to the anchor on the screen. A picture of Rei's ransacked bedroom popped up.
Ransom finally demanded for Rei Collingwood.
Cheng's face replaced the news anchor's.
"This is about my sister. I'll do anything. I plan to meet their demands and ensure her safe return," the subtitles promised. Somehow, Cheng didn't look too broken up about it. Baz was beginning to suspect Cheng had two settings: scowling and speaking to a crowd.
"Ransom?" Baz mumbled it mostly to himself, not comprehending the scrolling text without hearing it for himself. There couldn't be a ransom. Rei was missing, but she was locked away voluntarily in some studio apartment in the city. That was the narrative Baz was becoming more and more certain of. How could there be a ransom if Rei left of her own accord?
"You're pretty hung up on this girl," Diego said, jarring Baz out of the spinning questions.
He wasn't wrong, as much as Baz wanted him to be. His fate was inevitably tied to hers. So, what did it mean for Baz if ransom was demanded in exchange for Rei's safe return?
"I can't think about this right now." Baz shook his head and shook out his hands just to jump back up to the bar. Diego grabbed a handful of his shirt and yanked him back down.
"You're going to hurt yourself, you self-destructive walnut. Get down."
"I'm not—"
"Shut up. I patch you up like once a week. If you won't ever go to a real doctor, the least you can do is not tear yourself up in the first place."
Baz shrugged out of Diego's grip but made no motion to move.
"I don't know what the hell is wrong with you, but smashing thirty chin ups isn't going to fix it," Diego kept going.
"Moving into life coaching now, are you?"
Diego promptly smacked Baz upside the head. He earned that one, but it still stung. It was also exactly the kind of tough love that got Baz back on his feet in the first place, back when Baz had the desire to straighten himself out but not the energy or the will for it.
"I've got a client for the next half hour," Diego said, "and you're gonna spot me on the bench after if you don't manage to kill yourself first."
Maybe it was best not to argue with a guy who could pick Baz up and throw him across the room if he so chose. Maybe it was best not to argue with the guy who was too often in a position to jab at Baz's knots and bruises.
"Yeah, alright." Baz admitted defeat. It was better to give in early, before his protests dissolved into middle school comebacks. It was hard to put up a good fight against someone who was right.
Diego clapped him on the shoulder.
Even without Diego's direct supervision, Baz managed to curb his energy into something that wouldn't pull a muscle. That was enough to get the dusty university smell out of his memory, enough to ground him firmly in the life he managed to scrape back together. What he didn't sweat out, he washed away in the shower afterward.
Baz only looked at his phone on his way out of the gym.
Heard about the ransom thing. Come tell me if this wine was worth importing from Bordeaux.
Diego wasn't looming over his shoulder telling him not to spend the night drinking a bottle of wine. There was no one to tell him to say no to Gwen.
So he didn't.