Where the hell is he? Livvy fumed, rinsing the toothpaste out of her mouth and splashing water on her face.
Waking up once more in a strange place, in bed in a WitSec room even smaller and much less comfortable than Chris’ efficiency, she’d experienced a sense of isolation. Someone had really wanted them dead yesterday, and she had not heard from Chris last night. Apparently she’d fallen asleep, still fully dressed, with a half-completed note to herself on the case memopad clutched in one hand. She hadn’t checked, as she promised herself she would before falling asleep, to make sure her partner had come in to WitSec. It was a lapse, she told herself, that Chris himself never would have made. There’d been no response when she tried Chris’ comu.
She gave Louie his breakfast and prescribed medications, then checked his eye, which had improved significantly. Worry mounting, she tried Chris’ comu again, then had a quick laver and dressed in some of the clothes she’d purchased, along with a sandwich and dog food for Louie, at the Central Petite Mall the evening before.
It was early, but Brian Clifford was waiting for her in the hall with a charming smile and an offer to accompany her to breakfast. Thanks, McGregor, she thought, and tardily reminded herself she couldn’t have it both ways. Past a certain age, most people understood and respected the impediment created by a couple of decades difference in chrono age, at least when one of the individuals was under, say, 40. With a decade or two more experience, it wouldn’t matter, but she’d never be able to convince Brian that it mattered now, while he was still so young.
“I can’t this morning, I really can’t,” Livvy said, offering her most noncommittal smile. She thought quickly. “But if you can wait for me while I make one quick stop I’ll show you where you can go.”
She checked in at the WitSec Office while Brian waited in the hall and confirmed that Chris had neither come in last night nor called in.
It took her five minutes to lead Brian to the Atrium. If she directed him to the tearoom in the courtyard, getting lost in the place might keep him occupied for a good part of the day. On the way, she explained firmly but kindly that ethics did not allow her to communicate with a potential witness outside of work.
“Then Josephson’s research on fooling the biol age tests is illegal?” he asked. “Is this what you mean?”
“Yes, researching how to fool biol age testing is illegal. More than that, I really can’t say at this time,” Livvy said noncommittally. She found herself trying very hard for non-flirtatious friendliness, something that she normally managed quite naturally. Damn McGregor.
“Well then, I guess I hope this is all over very quickly,” he said.
“We’ll check-in with you periodically and join you when we can,” Livvy said, opting for being even more indefinite. “You can come and go as you please, of course, but we would really appreciate it, and I cannot stress this enough, if you would stay inside Central for the time being, and don’t contact anyone on the outside. And I hate to ask, but please don’t approach us in the LLE office,” she added, thinking quickly. “It’s complicated. Can you do all that?” And not ask any awkward questions. This last was apparently too much to ask.
“Detective Hutchins. Olivia. What’s going on, anyway? This is about more than Josephson’s research and disappearance, isn’t it?” he asked. He was so young and so serious, and he deserved an answer, even if it followed the pattern she had already set in their relationship. She stopped and faced him.
“Yes, but I can’t tell you now. I promise you, when it’s all over, I will tell you as much as I can without violating my ethics.”
She had growing respect for the fine line LLE officers walked, trying to maintain their low profile while protecting the unsuspecting public.
Ten more meters and they had reached the Atrium, and she pointed the way to the tea room. “Wow! Wow. Wait,” he said as she started to leave. “How can I contact you in case I remember something more?” He smiled again and gestured at the expanse before him.
“Don’t worry. Feel free to wander. Call us at LLE, and Louie and I can always find you,” she said, and turned away.
She tried Chris’ comu again on her way to LLE. Still no response. Surely by now, if he could, he would have at least checked in to see how Louie had done at the veterinarian.
She called the Chief to ask if Chris had called. He was more confident, although there was a slight hesitation before his response. “No, I haven’t spoken to him.” There was a longer pause and Livvly waited him out.
“McGregor’s been working solo and without much supervision for decades. He may have decided to spend the night at home after all, hoping that someone would come back. Or, if he’s in the middle of something, he might ignore his comu. He doesn’t always get back to me right away, either. Trace his movements and let me know what you find.”
So she did. She called Mickey Bedford, who, even though she sounded a little distracted, was willing to talk to her once she identified herself as Chris McGregor’s partner. Mickey couldn’t help her.
“He left here at about 6pm. He didn’t mention where he was going next. I’m sorry I can’t help you.”
The archive for the car Chris had been using yesterday showed that it had been driven to Mickey Bedford’s yesterday afternoon, then autodriven back to the motorpool and parked itself shortly after 7pm. She went down to search it anyway, but it was clean.
She took a car over to Chris’ apartment and found it eerily empty, with no trace of its owner’s presence. The table was still empty and the blood still formed abstract spray patterns on the walls and floor. She couldn’t believe he’d spent the night.
When she first got back to the squad room she spent a few minutes checking Chris’ desk to see if there was any sign he had been there at work overnight, but she found nothing at all on the Bedford case, only some memopads with notes on other open cases.
“Hutchins, what’s up with your partner?” Williams called over, leaning back. “I mean the good-looking one. What’s his name? Louie.” Agnew kept his head down.
“Louie was injured in the line,” Livvy said, paying scant attention. “Brains and looks and now heroism. There’s no way you can compete, is there Williams?”
Louie, looking heroic indeed with his cuts and scrapes and collection of sutured lacerations, lifted his head and looked over at Williams at the mention of his name, then put his head back down on his paws. His eyes stayed open and moved between Livvy, still sitting in Chris’ chair, and Williams. As his gaze shifted, his eyebrows twitched, giving him a wise, worried expression.
She poked her head into the Chief’s office and knocked on the door. When he looked up, she gave him a brief summary of what she knew about Chris’ movements.
“Okay. Follow through on your prisoners and evidence and check back in with me before you leave for the day,” he said, looking pensive.
She left another message, highest priority now, on Chris’ comu, then began to proceed down the list of questions she’d been compiling last night when she fell asleep. She had to be able to glean at least a few answers from the interviews and forensics studies.
The identity of the pro who’d attacked them on the High Speed was still a mystery. That level of anonymity was very difficult to achieve and sustain, which usually meant that it belonged to someone who was fully committed to it. It suggested that the man was an expensive professional, and someone unlikely to give anything away about his employer, either, assuming that he even knew anything.
Livvy stared at the man for a full five minutes, memorizing his face and trying to detect evidence of enhancements and even surgery. He appeared to be about 21 years old, with the sort of soft and undistinguished face that made description problematic. Although his images were now in the system, Forensics claimed they didn’t match anything previously recorded, even at the bone scan level.
He lifted a lip scornfully. “Give it a try, you bitch. All you and your partner have done is teach me to go for the head shot first. Think of that when I get out of here and disappear.”
That sounded very personal, and Livvy wondered if he had ties to one of the more radical, well-financed groups that favored free access to Longevity. “Subtle. But you’ll find, on longer acquaintance, that I’m not all that suggestible. And you’re now in a system which doesn’t support resets or enhancements for prisoners, or even enough time in the sun to sustain healthy levels of vitamin D,” Livvy said, then decided not to waste any more time. “Look, I’m going to walk out of this room now. Call me if you decide to get practical.” Unlike Robert Maas, another tool, this man was smart and knew his options. Eventually, he might choose one that yielded some useful information to their investigation.
Louie’s contribution, the finger now carefully preserved by the lab techs in Forensics, had been studied but neither prints nor DNA analysis had fit it to an owner. The BOLO to medical facilities had netted accounts of a dangling pinkie, two seriously slashed thumbs (separate incidents) and a complicated report of a left ring finger traumatically amputated secondary to a domestic incident.
She dodged a comu prompt from Brian Clifford by responding in message mode and explaining to him, as charmingly as she could manage given her concerns, that she was busy with interviews but would get back to him as soon as she could. If he had anything new on Josephson, which she doubted, he would have to leave a message.
Robert Maas, her third lead and the least promising, had rejected his first lawyer on the basis of incompatibility. It was almost impossible to find a lawyer who was natural other than another Naturals Only fanatic, which his parents were refusing to finance, so Maas had no one other than family to advise him to cooperate with Enforcement. Hoping that they’d gotten through to him on some level, Livvy tried him on the one question that mattered.
“Who told you where to find us?”
“Abomination. I followed the stench. You preserve the purveyors of iniquity. You wallow in unnatural sin.”
“How did you know where we’d be?”
“A Righteous One gave me the message and I knew what I had to do. Evil must be destroyed.”
Livvy waited a few minutes while she apparently did some deep thinking.
“Truly,” she said finally, assuming a meekness she could only imagine, “you have shown me a dedication I would not otherwise believe possible. If you told me where to find the Righteous One, perhaps such a one could lead me to a better life.”
“Conversing with a Righteous One is not for such as you.”
“Then you won’t help me?” she asked appealingly.
“You are already damned. You must be expelled.”
Perhaps he was remembering her comment in the medivan, or he was skeptical about her performance, or just immune to her appeal. Whatever it was, he was rejecting any possibility of cooperation, at least with her.
A call to Maas’ mother proved more rewarding. She willingly gave Livvy the address for The Natural Angels of the Lord, the new cult that Robert had embraced so enthusiastically following his breakup with his girlfriend. But when, on a long shot, Livvy called them, they refused to give her any information concerning any of their members. She knew from experience with other encounters with freedom of religion issues that it would be impossible to find out more without a warrant, which would not be issued, even for an LLE investigation. Getting useful evidence from a religious cult was like trying to drag it out of purgatory. Besides, as with everything else they’d tried, it was unlikely either to yield anything useful in court, or to provide a lead they could follow quickly enough to get to Bedford in a timely manner.
Livvy looked down at Louie. “All right. Now I’m really worried. Where is he, Louie?” she whispered. Louie’s ears flicked forward and he met her eyes.
Chris lay perfectly still. He was surprised, but not shocked, to find himself still alive. Think it through. Yesterday, Bedford had wanted them dead, but yesterday, concurrently with the attempt on their lives, he’d had Chris’ apartment broken into. Bedford had expected to acquire Chris’ notes. Chris was still alive because Bedford wanted to know what Chris knew, and more importantly how he knew it. Good boy, Louie, you may have saved my life.
He was lying on something soft – not a floor – and it was covered with cloth, warm and a little musty. There was total silence. There was light strong enough to be apparent through his closed lids. His ribs hurt, even more than he remembered from yesterday, and he was as sore otherwise as he had ever been in his life. Some rhino must have found him while he was out and stomped for a while, hard.
He remembered leaving Mickey Bedford’s, and going over the conversation with Mickey in his mind, feeling fairly confident that he’d been convincing enough. He’d also been worrying about what he should do next. He’d seen nothing suspicious while making his way to the car before feeling three Stinger darts in the back in quick succession, but then he hadn’t really been paying attention. Given the situation, that was inexcusable.
He hoped Livvy had been more cautious and was being sensible. Meg and the Chief would be helping her out with appropriate advice. The Chief’s hardcore policy of using minimal personnel on every case – detectives working alone or in partnerships – was another reason he was still alive. No one could betray him, if they couldn’t get inside on the case, and Bedford might be more reluctant to kill him, if he was one of only two people who knew the weaknesses in his plan. He’d want to ferret out and destroy whatever had given Chris his lead. If he got his hands on Chris’ notes, he’d know.
If you’d been darted before, as he had, you knew the sensation. In the split second after being hit and before turning to look for his assailant, he’d already known that it had to be someone in Enforcement. Not only were Stingers illegal and rare outside of the job – they were hard to get and the criminal element preferred the more lethal varieties of weapons – but the use of three darts suggested someone who understood reversal implants. Unfortunately, he’d either blacked out before spotting who had wielded the Stinger, or had a memory loss from the anesthetic. He had essentially figured out who in his unit was in Bedford’s pay, but as with Bedford himself, he could prove nothing. He was still way behind Bedford, and it looked now like he would never catch up.
He opened his eyes and confirmed that he was alone. The light was from numerous small sources built into the walls and ceiling. Including the bed he was lying on, the room was provided with a number of comforts, including antique books, lounge chairs, a dining set, a kitchen, and a series of large viewing screens on one wall. There weren’t any windows. It was about twice the size of his efficiency, and a lot more richly furnished. After giving it just a little thought, he decided it was an underground bunker created by someone who had a lot of resources, remembered the Riots, and wanted to be prepared for next time.
With an effort, Chris sat up, keeping his back ramrod straight. He’d had fractured ribs before, but not like this. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going to make plans to fight his way out. He’d also been kidnapped before, and so far this time wasn’t so bad. Except for his ribs.
If it was Bedford’s bunker, he could start with a number of assumptions about it: hidden from the outside world; capable of being secured from the inside, although not currently; variable power sources, including a lot of remote sources of power independent from the grid; good supplies of food and water; and, probably, a system for monitoring what was happening out in the world. He suspected there was also a lock on the outside of the door and a system that allowed them to watch him, in which case they now knew he was awake. The system that allowed viewing the inside of the room might well be a new addition, or maybe not. Bedford seemed to take the long view on things.
Bedford didn’t waste any time. He came alone, closing the door behind him as he entered, and because he was a secretive man, Chris suspected there was no one watching at the moment although there was undoubtedly some security within easy call.
For the first minute, they studied each other. Chris felt a brief chagrin at the disadvantage of sitting on the bed, leaning back against the wall, but he supposed it was better than lying across it and unconscious.
He had been prepared for it, but it still surprised him to see how much John Bedford looked like Jesse. Chris had been looking in the mirror for almost 70 years taking for granted the immutability of the face looking back, but he had somehow been thinking of John Bedford as an old man. The slim young man with the face of Jesse Bedford and the hard gaze sat down in an antique leather armchair near the door. He was 103 chrono, 33 biol, but looked 21. A difficult accomplishment, even with the blurring of physical ages that Chris now took for granted.
Chris thought he knew what Bedford wanted. He didn’t fool himself into believing Bedford saw him as anything but a small bump in the road. To a man who would plan the murder of three members of his own family, someone like Chris was barely a blister.
“You’re a self-righteous meddler. First it was your damn pest of a wife whose interference helped make all of this necessary in the first place. Your precious Laws.
You could easily look the other way and no one would even notice. A few simple manipulations by those of us who can afford it, world leaders, the men who really run this country, no one is hurt, and you’ve preserved continuity for a nation that badly needs it.
“I paid for this life. I built it. Who the hell do you think funded the science that created Longevity? The naturals you pretend to care about?”
“You lived through the Riots, but none of it meant anything to you?” Chris asked.
“So there were a lot of people who had no understanding of the situation who reacted with panic. With a little backbone, we could have won in the streets, and by now, everyone would accept the outcome. They’d get used to it, and they’d stop caring. They would have learned to appreciate having leaders freed from the cares of aging and mortality. Leaders growing in wisdom.”
Chris laughed. It hurt more than he cared to admit to himself, but he honestly couldn’t suppress it. “You mean, like you? You mean like the slaves of three centuries ago accepted their status? Enforced with whips and chains and hunting dogs. Its just one of your fatal flaws, Bedford; you underestimate every one around you and overestimate yourself. You, as one of a master race of immortal overlords?” Chris suppressed his scorn but allowed himself to sound amused.
“And yet here I am, with all the power,” Bedford said. He didn’t quite sneer. “I’m the one in control.”
“Confusing power and wealth with merit is the sign of a seriously unbalanced ego. What do you want, Bedford?” Chris asked, suddenly bored. “We’re never going to agree, so why am I here?”
“I want you to understand that the only way you’re going to get out of here alive is to tell me how you discovered my plans, what you know and what you’ve reported. And then I want you to go out and forget it, and destroy any record of it. If you want to live, and I know you do, maybe as much as I do, you’re going to do all of that.”
“Oh, I don’t think so. Besides, there are too many other people who already know about it, and too many records.”
“I doubt it. I think it’s just you and your pretty little partner, and I can deal with her easily enough.
“You think you’ve had a hard few days? Think hours, days, the rest of your life, which will be very short, for you and for her. And for what; the hypocrisy of trying to enforce some meaningless restrictions that you’d circumvent yourself if you could?” Bedford sounded very sure of himself, and Chris found it annoying.
“You’re confused. You are so blinded by your own ego you think everyone else thinks like you do, only less openly. Try to get outside of it, Bedford and understand: some of us have this idea that humanity trumps megalomania. Can’t seem to shake it.
“Do you feel nothing for Jesse, your grandson?”
Bedford’s gaze flickered, but he said only, “He’s my creation, too. He won’t even know what he’s missed.”
Chris stared at the young-old face for a while. It was like staring at a mask.
“You haven’t been living all these years, Bedford. You’ve been dying. You’re already in your own private little hell, aren’t you?” Chris asked, and smiled.
By 4 pm Livvy’s fifth call to Chris had gone unanswered. She took a break from kicking around her dead-end leads, had something to eat, and tried to concentrate. Without Chris to help her toss ideas around, she was going to have to think it through on her own, but she had reached the point where she was ready to stop worrying about what she could prove – an impasse – and start going with what she knew.
She knew that if Bedford had taken Chris, rather than killed him outright – a prospect that made her clench her hands in frustration – then he had done so to find out what Chris knew and what useful evidence they had. His first attempt at this, when he tried to steal Chris’ private notes and Louie mauled his agent, had failed. At that point, Bedford would have been pleased enough to have had them both killed on the train. Now, it looked like he had decided to go straight to the source, or at least she hoped so, because that meant that Chris was probably still alive, somewhere.
At any rate, she didn’t dare wait another night. At this point trying to find her partner was her top priority. It was only incidental that it was probably the most productive thing she could do in terms of progressing on her case.
Ever since the Chief had ordered her to keep the case confidential she had been mulling over the possibility he had concerns beyond media leaks. Both Chris and the Chief had suggested it: it was possible that someone in LLE was talking to Bedford, someone other than the person or persons in archives who were destroying and altering records. For now, she was going to pretend she knew this absolutely.
She looked around the room. Williams was in high spirits, tossing a stylus at the back of Best’s head, then hooting when he swatted at it. She caught Agnew looking at her. He quickly glanced at his partner and looked away. She was accustomed to men looking at her. This was different.
Meg Dalton came by on her way to the coffee corner and Livvy made a decision. She made and held eye contact aggressively and tilted her head in the direction of the Atrium, then waited a long few minutes before getting up and walking out of the room. She found Meg at the bench with the geese and the predatory fox.
This time they stood, Meg looking back down the hall, leaning back with her elbows on the rail, and Livvy looking out over the Atrium.
“You’re looking a little frazzled in there. When was the last time you heard from McGregor?”
“Yesterday afternoon. I’m aware that he’s neither a training officer nor accustomed to having a partner but…”
“But this is a little extreme,” Meg supplied. “What happened to Louie?”
“He had… an altercation with someone at McGregor’s apartment.”
“Hmm. LLE tends to be unpopular with a whole bunch of the people we’re trying to protect, but you three seem to be getting more than your share of hostility,” Meg said.
“An unlucky streak,” Livvy said.
“Uh huh,” Meg said, and waited.
Chris had seemed to trust Dalton, and certainly Livvy had no reason not to. But orders were orders. She couldn’t say anything. Instead, she asked a question.
“How much do you know about this case McGregor and I are working?”
Meg continued to watch the hall as she replied. “Josephson’s disappearance? Besides the background I gave you Tuesday, a little more that I can guess, but probably not nearly as much as you do. I suspect that Josephson is with someone who has a lot of money and who is paying for Josephson’s special skills. I suspect the Chief has McGregor’s notes by now and with time I could piece the rest together. But unless you two are… out of the picture for some reason, I won’t be taking an active role.
“It all goes to how LLE…”
“… handles things differently,” Livvy interrupted with asperity. “So I gather. Look, I appreciate all of the advice you’ve been giving me, all the mentoring,” here she gave Meg a small nod, “but this still seems wrong. Any other unit, if a member is missing under somewhat suspicious circumstances, they mobilize heaven and earth. It’s the way it’s always been. And now you’re telling me you know something about this case, and the Chief…”
“The Chief wants you to do exactly what you’re doing. Work the case as thoroughly as you can. McGregor must have given you a full background Wednesday night…”
“How did you know that?” Livvy asked sharply.
Meg looked at her calmly. “Because it’s what I’d do.”
“I’m sorry,” Livvy said. “Sorry. I’m just on edge.”
“It all fits with what I’ve been trying to tell you, Livvy. We keep these cases under wraps because it’s ruinous to allow the anti-Longevity zealots to use them as propaganda. Secrecy and deniability are crucial. You’ll never work anywhere with more autonomy, but it comes with a price. The brutal truth is, often LLE would prefer not to take cases to court. That means that to a certain extent we trim our consciences in terms of proper, legal, stand-up-in court police procedures. If that seems wrong to you… I can’t help you make that choice, but perhaps you should rethink this career shift you maneuvered. As I said, the Chief can’t tell you to do it, and McGregor won’t. It’s a choice we all have had to make for ourselves,” Meg said. “And that is probably more than I should have said on the subject.”
“In other words,” Livvy said, “among other things, deniability is another LLE priority. Another reason for the secrecy. The Chief wants to hold you in reserve in case we fail, and he wants to be able to deny knowledge in case we succeed in averting an LLE disaster but our efforts bring down the wrath of the judicial system if someone in power with some good attorneys takes exception to our methods. We can be the rogue LLE detectives who created a mess independently of the rest of the unit. Tell me, Meg, is there some thought, too, that LLE can better afford to lose me than you?”
Meg turned to look at her and smiled. “Not from my perspective, no, and I doubt from the Chief’s. And McGregor would be a huge loss.
“Are you ready for this?” she asked suddenly. “Still want to give it a full week?”
“In terms of my career in Enforcement, I’m starting to feel the truth of what Chris said. But I’m not Alice and I haven’t traveled through a wormhole lately,” Livvy mused. “I don’t care about any of that. He also said that we were initiating a ‘private little war.’ I need to engage.”
Meg smiled but remained silent.
“And the first thing I need is some intel. I asked you to come out here so I could ask a specific question,” Livvy said. “I had hints from both McGregor and the Chief that there is someone in LLE that I can’t trust. I’m not talking about Archives or Forensics, but someone in the detective squad.”
Meg continued facing away from the Atrium and looking back down the hall. Then after a moment she looked down at the floor, put a hand on her forehead and closed her eyes. When she took her hand away, she said, “Let me offer you some practical advice. In LLE, unlike any other unit, the two most important pieces of information you can have about a suspect are their chrono and their allotment. That’s true as well for understanding where the derelicts who work in the LLE brain trust are coming from.”
Meg shrugged. “It’s something you may want to consider doing before working here too much longer. You can do it from here,” she added, “and I need to get back. I’ve got my own minor catastrophe pending.”
“Wait,” Livvy said. “One more thing. This ‘private little war’ McGregor described. I need to take that literally, don’t I? That’s LLE code for a double-or-nothing, take-no-prisoners, tactical action, isn’t it? Just deny it if I have it wrong, please.”
Meg looked at the polished stone-inlaid floor for moment and then met her eyes. “I have nothing to say about that except that you catch on quickly. And now you can forget I ever confirmed it.”
“Confirmed what?” Livvy asked with a blank expression.
Meg was smiling when she turned away to head back to the office.
As an LLE detective, Livvy had access to ages and family histories for everyone in the city. She sat down on the bench with the topiary fox stalking her and tapped into the files.
Chris, of course, she already knew: 101 chrono, widowed, no children.
Agnew was only 27 chrono, unmarried and a rookie in LLE. It must have been a choice right after making grade, and it was a strange one. LLE was not considered a stepping-stone to anything. One joined it from conviction or sometimes, if one was talented but a little wild one was shuffled into it to save their career. Like Williams, she suspected. She looked a little deeper and saw that Agnew came from a working class family, naturals, and that he had excelled at the Academy. Like every other city employee, he could receive a reset annually as a benefit, if he chose to use them. He had gone in for a reset three months ago. Perhaps he was from one of those ambivalent families that wanted their children to have choices.
Best, 82 chrono, married to his fourth wife, two children from the first marriage and none since, twenty-five years in LLE. A possibility, she supposed, but after twenty-five years in the squad?
Dalton was 83 chrono, married and divorced once years ago, with LLE fifty-five years, like Chris a highly decorated detective. She was the only other woman on the squad.
Toscano, 45 chrono, married, one child, with LLE ten years. Dalton’s partner. That alone put him way down on the list.
Best’s partner, Wachowski was 34 chrono, unmarried, and the other LLE rookie. Transferred from Tactical at his own request after a back injury that had taken some time to heal, despite accelerated healing. She might find more about that if she called Bruno, discretely.
They were all possible suspects, because any one of them could have some special, hidden need for money. But Meg had more than just hinted to her that chrono and allotment were important clues. She had directed her to these records as though the information would give her a motive and a suspect.
It was Williams, Agnew’s partner, whose personal history caused Livvy to straighten up on the bench. Williams was 71 chrono and had been transferred to LLE from Homicide 10 years ago. His wife – his second, much younger wife – had recently given him a third child. His first wife had divorced him five years ago and had custody of their two teenaged children. In such situations, the Law was lenient, although Williams had had his last reset and was required to pay a substantial fine. Williams was the only one on the squad whose chrono and allotment history suggested a motive, but it was a doozy.
Putting her comu away, Livvy walked slowly back to the office. Williams’ antics had appeared almost frenetic today. She’d thought Agnew’s reaction, which mainly consisted of ignoring his partner, was that of someone who had had their quota for the week and wasn’t in the mood for more. He’d seemed in fact slightly embarrassed, as she would be in his situation. Now, she drew on years of experience assessing suspects and playing poker and thought about what she’d really seen on Agnew’s face. That was consciousness of guilt she’d been seeing; she’d bet on it.
When she got back to her desk, she spent another minute in careful observation and decided she could raise her bet. She stifled her wave of fury. There had to be a way to use it.
“Hutchins, in here,” the Chief called, and Livvy jumped.
He nodded at the door after she stepped into his office and she pulled it closed behind her.
“An IA came in to Homicide. Mickey Bedford was killed on her way to Dulles along with her bodyguard. Looks like a kidnapping gone wrong. They took the boy,” he said.
“Jesse,” Livvy said, and swallowed.
The Chief rested his chin on his knuckles and sighed heavily, then opened his palms and rubbed them over his face as though clearing cobwebs.
“You want me over there?” Livvy asked. She hadn’t sat down.
“No,” the Chief said slowly. “There was no one left behind connected to your case and if there is anything useful, Homicide will find it. I’ll follow the case reports for you. I want you working on Josephson from what we have here. That probably means, at this point, McGregor’s disappearance.
“Dalton says she’s given you enough to make you dangerous,” the Chief added, watching her steadily.
“I’d say so.”
“Do you have anywhere to go?”
“Yes, Chief, but I’d rather not say for now.”
“Go with it, then. At this point we’re running out of options.”
He continued to looked at her keenly and rubbed his hand over his face again. “McGregor said you did well with that incident with Maas, and he gave you his notes to bring in, which to my way of thinking implies a fair degree of confidence in you.
“Sometimes I hate this job. You have this under control?”
“Absolutely not,” Livvy said calmly.
The Chief snorted and then grimaced. “Good. I like my detectives to have a realistic picture of the situation. If you need anything special, go to Bruno Morelli in Tactical.”
“I’ll remember that,” Livvy said.