“Sorry for the mess,” Chris said, lifting some notes from one of the chairs at the eating end of his table. When he finished that, he went to the scrubber and checked – not clean. There was one clean plate in the cupboard; use of that one was usually the signal to run the scrubber. He grabbed it and some flatwear to set before his guest and noticed that she was watching him with amusement. He went back to the kitchen area to wash and dry another plate and two glasses.
“Hey, don’t mind me,” Livvy said. “I’m still living in a hotel room, on room service.”
They had picked up a pizza and a case of beer.
“I don’t use a glass,” Livvy added.
Livvy opened the box and helped herself to a slice as Chris abandoned the glasses and headed back with his plate.
“Pepperoni. I always forget how good it tastes,” she said.
It was 7 pm and Chris’ Arlington efficiency was on the 11th floor, so the foot traffic was negligible and the street traffic undetectable. Louie, gnawing on a dental chewie over near the door, provided the only sound as Livvy and Chris ate for a while in near silence. After a few minutes Livvy couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Have you lived here long?” she asked between bites.
“Almost sixty years,” Chris said.
“It’s… “
“It’s a place to sleep and to work. A quick commute. And the rent is reasonable,” Chris said.
“I’m thinking of a place in Alexandria, near Old Town,” Livvy said.
“There’s a nice area south of King Street.”
“Thanks. Next week I’ll start there,” she said. “You play much?” She nodded towards the acoustic guitar in the corner.
“A little. Never for anyone else.”
“Somehow, I would have guessed that,” she finally said, putting down her pizza. “Look, McGregor, I suspect that, like me, no matter how long you live you will never again have time enough for small talk. I’ll also hazard that I’m as used to eating alone and working while I eat as you are. I’m not going to enjoy this pizza half as much as I should if we try to avoid it now.
“What didn’t you want to talk about in the office?”
Chris finished chewing his mouthful of pizza, swallowed, and took a swig of beer before replying. “I need to hear something first. Cards on the table. Why LLE? Homicide has more status and probably gets more challenging. Tactical can get more exciting.” He moved his longnecked bottle around in the small circle of condensation on the table, but he kept his eyes on her.
“I thought we covered this already. In the car. After Marcy Caster’s,” Livvy said, working at cutting a manageable bite with her fork.
“Humor me,” Chris said.
Livvy put the fork down and looked at him levelly. “You read about my family and you’ve picked up on my inconspicuous vanity…”
Chris stopped moving his beer around but his expression didn’t change.
“…and you’ve decided you can’t trust me?”
“No. That is, I do,” Chris said with a flicker of surprise, but he continued to regard her levelly. “Otherwise you wouldn’t be here like this. That’s not what this is about.”
“Then what?”
“A lot of people look at the violations, unless you’re talking about something like the Right of Maturity Law, as victimless crimes.”
“Or the Pheromone cases you mentioned, or substandard hotlabs, or all kinds of things that can hurt people. Like I said, I thought we covered this the first day we met, after Marcy.”
“Maybe. Did you get bored?’’
Livvy looked down at her congealing pizza and sighed. “When I was young and my friends and I argued I used to give a long soliloquy about the philosophy behind the Laws. Longevity and enhancement technologies are… the ultimate divisive issues. You can’t imagine how often I have heard the arguments, usually from decent, well-meaning people. People who happen to be well-off enough that the consequences wouldn’t touch them. They’d smile and nod and pretend to listen. Not really wanting to think about it much because they wouldn’t want to risk having to change their minds.
“I’ll never be able to work in Longevity in San Francisco, which means I can probably never go home again. I’d know too many of the perps,” she said on a note that made it plain the thought had just occurred to her.
She looked up at Chris. “You know, Mozart was only 35 when he died.”
Chris raised his eyebrows.
“Maybe we need fleeting youth and intimations of mortality to be really creative. Maybe we’ve lost the best part of ourselves. But you said it: genies never get stuffed back into their bottles. They just don’t. So this is what we’ve got. If I can do anything to prevent it, though, we are not going to evolve into a two-tiered society with dynasties of molebiol-engineered superbeings in towers. Enhancements have to be regulated and Longevity has to have a limit. It has to cost more than mere money, and what else is there that compares to biological immortality?”
“Children,” Livvy answered herself with Chris remained silent.
“It’s the big compromise, and the only one that could work. Give everyone plugged into Longevity a 200 year allotment and a fifty year reduction in allotment for every child. Three children and you’re almost back to a natural life. It’s as fair as we can make it. I’ve never been able to think of anything else that would work.” There was a long pause. Livvy finally smiled.
“You have got to be one hell of an interrogator,” she finally said. “So now you’re asking me to get personal. Why and how LLE…? All right. The public, the whole public, not just naturals or those plugged into Longevity, need to trust us to enforce the Laws fairly, or it’s open season on others from both camps and the Laws won’t save us,” Livvy said, flushing. “So much for civilization as we currently know it. And I find I can live with the one we have.
“I came here because it’s where it all began, some of it with you, McGregor. And as far as how I got here… I asked my father to call the DC Commissioner. That was so much fun, by the way, that in another fifty years I may even do it again. Or maybe not.”
During Livvy’s extended response Louie got up and walked slowly over to the table, then lay down on the floor in the angle between Livvy and Chris.
“Okay. Well, I hope it’s worth it. Don’t glare at me, Hutchins. You weren’t alive for the Allotment Riots, and the history as taught doesn’t convey the… hopelessness. I just wanted to make sure that if I’m going to ask you to risk your life you’re doing it for something you really believe in.”
“I kind of do that every day already,” Livvy said, pointedly touching her wounded arm and struggling to look aggrieved. “Risk my life, that is,” she added, in case Chris missed the gesture.
Chris gave a slight smile. “Regardless, that really is a scratch compared to what you risk if you continue working this case with me.”
“Tell me, seriously,” Livvy asked, curious. “What is it about Josephson, beside what happened fifty years ago? It can’t be another case of the same sickening abuse.”
“You see? We should have eaten first. Keep eating your pizza. It’s not the end of the world, and it’s probably not even another Sara Torkelson. it’s just the start of a private little war,” Chris said. “LLE has them all the time. Eat.”
Livvy half-heartedly picked up her fork and Chris started his story.
“Josephson was last seen Thursday. His research notes all disappeared sometime between then and when we showed up, with no one at the clinic the wiser.”
“Which means he is seriously gone, won’t be back for a while, and probably had help,” Livvy said.
“You got it. Also, he’s financially flush, able to finance his research into, we can safely say, less lucrative fields, and still able to afford a lavish lifestyle. I had Forensics check out all of his finances yesterday and you should see his home. He’s rich.”
“McGregor, he’s a doctor.”
“I know, but he doesn’t have that many clients, nor is it coming from family or investments. Forensics says he’s been receiving automatic, regular deposits of large sums for as far back they’ve been able to retrieve so far.”
“So he has a rich patron. Someone is financing his research at the licensed lab, hoping for some big new enhancement payoff, or at worst maybe a hotlab, someplace he’s doing illegal resets?” Livvy asked.
“A hotlab, most definitely, and it would be an expensive one. Unfortunately that’s not that unusual. It has to be someone very secretive, though, because none of Josephson’s coworkers even hinted at such an arrangement.”
“Maybe they’re too afraid of him. You think his patron called him away suddenly?” Livvy asked. She reached down and rubbed Louie’s ears.
“I don’t know yet, but it looks like it, doesn’t it? Josephson’s sudden unreliability at the clinic, which triggered LLE alarms, had to have been unplanned. I think Josephson, the arrogant son of a bitch, screwed up. If he’d made the effort to be more patient in communicating with his staff instead of doing his usual toss off… if he’d canceled appointments further ahead or made a reasonable excuse about an emergency, we might not be here. But he followed his high-handed pattern in dealing with others and ignored the implications of an careless exit.”
“So someone calls Josephson away, somewhat abruptly, and then they realize he was sloppy and we’re investigating and they don’t want Josephson found, especially if it leads to them, so they try to have us killed at Isabella’s? Yesterday, how did they even know we’d started working on Josephson’s disappearance? We’d just gotten our assignment. I don’t doubt it; Maas was in that tree before we got there. But how?” Livvy asked.
“Josephson, or more probably his patron, anticipated the fallout from his mistake,” Chris said. “Or someone at the clinic or in LLE clued them in. I can’t think of any other possibility.”
“We’ve come back to the patron, someone with a lot of money to throw around. Someone with enough at stake that they don’t care that what they’re doing may actually escalate the situation. Someone even more proactive than LLE. Who?” Livvy asked.
“You’ve heard of John Bedford?”
“The trillionaire recluse?” Livvy asked. “You think he’s Josephson’s patron?”
Chris took a long swallow of beer but didn’t bother to answer.
“I doubt I would recognize him if I saw him,’ Livvy said thoughtfully. “But I think he has a reputation as one of those men that where he walks, the ground flinches. Powerful, and not nice with it.”
Chris nodded. “I’ve never seen him either. I’ve just seen shadowed glimpses of him in the news once or twice. Candid shots that his bodyguards made an effort to block, most recently in ’04, when his son Joshua died in a fire.”
“How did you make the connection, though? A chirp in the ear from the fairies? Usually being a reclusive trillionaire isn’t enough to attract suspicion,” Livvy said.
“Now that is a long story,” Chris said.
“Give me the long version and don’t dumb it down, please,” Livvy said. “If I’m going to work LLE – which is my intention with or without you – I need some LLE Research 101.”
Chris hesitated for the first time. “Karen met Bedford when she was lobbying for the Laws; Bedford was lobbying on the other side, for laissez-faire. I’ll never forget what she said about him. ‘He epitomizes the worst. He’s only had twelve years of Longevity and already he’s addicted, convinced of his own entitlement. He has almost no fellow feeling with the rest of humanity. We have to protect ourselves from him, and protect ourselves from becoming like him. He will never, never accept his own mortality.’”
Chris gave Livvy a moment to try to comprehend an ego so strong that although Bedford experienced childhood knowing that he would die, any acceptance of that fate was now alien to him.
“But,” Livvy said hesitantly, “where’s the connection to Josephson? I don’t doubt Karen’s assessment, or that Bedford’s bound to get involved with hotlabs, but…”
“Josephson and Bedford know each other.”
“Bedford is a client of Josephson’s? That’s clear, then.”
“No. At least, not currently. Bedford wouldn’t risk that kind of association. In fact, the only proof I can find that they ever even met is from appointment records from a reset clinic that burned down in ’51. The Greater Potomac Reset Institute. The appointment records show that Bedford saw Josephson quarterly for two years. Then the Institute burned down, and there’s been no record of any contact since, at least that I’ve been able to find. The fire was indistinguishable from any other reset clinic fire, but no religious group or Naturals Only group ever claimed credit for it.”
“An unexplained fire. Hardly unique. McGregor, if you want me to stay awake while we take a tour through some ancient history,” Livvy said, “would it be okay if we took Louie for a walk at the same time? Some fresh air would be nice.” She gave him a beatific smile.
Chris hesitated briefly, then said, “Sure.” He stood up but then sat back down.
“Are you up for this?” he asked. “It’s going to get complicated, and the rest can wait.”
Livvy made a face and stood up, which drew him back to his feet. “McGregor, just give me the information. I take it you actively searched for this connection, because you thought Josephson and Bedford are well mated, and then you looked for evidence that they were hiding their relationship. You have a very suspicious mind, which is maybe why you’re a lot older than you look. I want everything you have, including how you got here. I may get a headache, but I’ll process it. I just need some fresh air, and to think for a minute.”
They were out of the building and half way down the block before either of them said something more.
“This is nice,” Livvy said. They’d passed under a streetlamp and she took the opportunity to look up at the stars before they reached the next one. Mature oaks and maples lined the sidewalk and shaded the park and playground across the street. They headed in that direction.
Louie waited at the street corner, but after they had crossed together, Chris said, “Go ahead, boy, ” and Louie headed out at a gallop, stopping occasionally to sniff when his interest was captured. Chris led Livvy far enough into the park that they could stand under one of the trees, out of the illumination of the streetlamp and the quarter moon.
“It’s just that… I don’t get where all this is going. Are you setting us up to raid Bedford’s properties to look for hotlabs on the basis of Josephson’s disappearance? I know he’s powerful. Is that it? I thought LLE was invincible, and if you had suspicions, you could go in without worrying about providing probable cause, no matter who owned the lab.”
“If I thought it was just for hotlabs, I’d be in there already,” Chris said. Now that he was on his feet and out of his apartment, he moved around somewhat restlessly, scanning the streets and the park. Another attack seemed unlikely, but there was a lot of useable cover in the dark. “I’m giving you background. I’m not sure where it leads.”
“Go on,” Livvy said.
“The records matter, more because of what is missing. After 2052, when there was a spate of arsons, they all started being duplicated centrally on an automatic basis, so now Archives should have duplicate records of resets, with practitioners listed for all procedures. Simple lists, referenced back to birth dates to calculate and monitor compliance on allotments. All pretty straightforward, without medical details, right?”
“That was you, too, wasn’t it? Your idea, I mean, to get records preserved centrally?” Livvy asked.
Chris shrugged impatiently. “It’s an essential database. Before 2052, reset clinic records weren’t, so if there was a clinic fire, the only existing record of a doctor-client relationship might be destroyed. For the Greater Potomac Reset Institute, the records were preserved from the 2051 fire and placed in Central Archives. I have copies here. They show Bedford’s appointments with Josephson.”
“So we have the connection, clearly documented,” Livvy said.
“The originals are missing from both Central and the backup archives. I checked,” Chris said.
“Oh.”
“He’s thorough, or maybe someone is just sweeping for anything with his name. At any rate, the only reason I know the connection exists is that when I’m doing an investigation, I always check my own sources at some point, then crosscheck with Central Archives on the theory that missing records are meaningful. As far as I can tell, my 55 year old copies of the appointment records are currently the only evidence we have that there was ever a connection between the two men.”
“And he must know the records were saved from the fire, because they’ve been destroyed in Central Archives, but he doesn’t know you have copies, although I suppose he might suspect at some point?” Livvy mused. “He doesn’t know that you know, yet. He’s just blindly hoping to keep us from finding something. I’m getting dizzy.”
“We’re almost back to the gritty present. Last year the Potomac Falls Institute was bombed. CCS claimed credit and probably was responsible, but I checked today and found out that, coincidentally, all of John Bedford’s reset maps, which are the most difficult element to manipulate in cases of identity fraud, were part of the records that were destroyed. A security guard died in that one.”
“But aren’t these stored in Central Archives as well?” Livvy asked.
“Only the current one, so it’s convenient for use as the ultimate identification tool. It’s transferred automatically as it’s generated, and the previous copy is deleted,” Chris said. “We should head back. Louie!”
Louie came bounding out of the darkness, and they walked slowly back the way they’d come.
“So we either have to believe in a lot of coincidence, or some random arsonist, in league with a careless archivist, has it in for records that document the Longevity history of John Bedford,” Livvy said. “Or he’s done it to himself. You’re right. Hinky.”
They were back at Chris’ efficiency.
“You have everything from archives?” Livvy asked, looking around, focusing especially on the clutter on the table.
“Hardly. Retrieving anything from that mess would be hopeless. I don’t have that kind of brain. I only have records from cases I’ve worked in some way. I… dislike remembering fragments and finding I can’t get at the whole. Consider it my personal case archive. A very disorganized one.”
Livvy was studying the table with an enigmatic frown.
“Look, Hutchins,” Chris said, “This is one way I work. I doubt that anyone else does anything quite like this. But know this: however it was in Homicide in San Francisco, it’s fundamental here not to become too dependent on Central. They’re as corruptible as anyone else. Other than the radical bombers and arsonists, and hotlab illegals, we end up investigating a lot of wealthy people. And not everyone in Enforcement cares about LLE as much as… the people who work LLE.”
“So you’re putting me on the team?” Livvy asked, drawing another faint smile from Chris.
“The point is, someone thought it was worthwhile to destroy the records already. They’re preparing for something beyond a hotlab raid,” he continued.
Chris finished his beer and popped another one. A lot depended on whether Livvy gave credence to the notion that Bedford and Josephson had been plotting since before she was born.
“Or he’s a particularly paranoid trillionaire. They aren’t all that rare, in my experience. Or someone else, someone not John Bedford, wanted some other association kept secret, and Bedford’s records just happened to be in the way,” Livvy said, reaching for the fresh beer Chris offered her. “Or maybe the careless archivist is just that. Archives lost them. It happens.”
Chris took an especially long swallow of the cold beer.
“Noted. Anyway, Bedford’s family… That is, if you haven’t changed your mind about wanting it all.”
He appraised her frankly. “You really should eat some pizza.”
“Pizza can wait. This is riveting,” Livvy said.
“It’s LLE,” Chris said. “Bedford’s son, Joshua, was a recluse towards the end of his life as well, although he was only 48 chrono. Joshua had one son, Jesse, who was born in ’89 and who lives with his mother. John also has a daughter, Paula, born in ‘47, who’s apparently been estranged from her father for decades. Are you following me so far?”
“Yes, John Bedford, one son, deceased, one daughter, estranged, and one grandson, living with his mother. But I still have no idea where you are going with it.”
“Neither do I, but I want you to have the relationships straight.
“As I said, Joshua died in a fire in ‘04. In his secure, fireproofed mansion. There were no signs of violence; the fire protection appears to have malfunctioned. Arson investigators said it was an electrical fire, accidental, and it happened so quickly that he and the two employees that were there at the time didn’t have a chance to escape.”
“That’s like a full cement truck delivery of bad luck,” Livvy said. “But what motive would there be for his death? Who benefited?”
“As far as I can determine, Jesse. Also, Jesse is the sole heir for his grandfather’s trillions. If it was a professional job rather than an accident, it was very professional, and yet I couldn’t find any motive other than the money.”
“You can’t suspect an 18 year-old child…?” Livvy said.
“No, I don’t,” Chris said. “Do you want me to heat up some of that pizza now?”
“Thanks, but I’ll wait until you’re done. Another beer is fine. Are we getting close?”
“Not my fault,” Chris said. “The guy has had a long life.”
“And apparently blameless, despite everyone’s impression of him. Unless he’s had issues with LLE before?”
“Not that I can find. Just a deficit of pertinent records. But there’s a new element at play. John Bedford was born in 2004.”
“Ah,” Livvy said. “That’s a twist. And two children: Joshua, and Paula. You see, I remember. That means his 100th birthday was three years ago and he’s had to start aging naturally. He’d be…” She did some quick calculations. “If he started getting resets in ’34 when they first became available to the very rich, he’d be 33 biol by now, unless he’s been getting illegal resets. From Josephson, perhaps. But he’s famous. How can he get around it in the long run? He’s too well documented.”
“I don’t know, but that’s the point. I have to believe he’ll try. I think he would hesitate at nothing. In fact, I think he’s killed once already.”
“Karen?” Livvy asked after a short pause, confused.
“No… No. This isn’t a vendetta, Hutchins. It’s just a typical case,” Chris said, narrowing his eyes at her. “Karen’s death was an accident. Do you think I wouldn’t have investigated that thoroughly, or that if I had any real suspicions that he was responsible that Bedford would still be alive?” he added matter-of-factly. “No, he would have no reason to risk that kind of exposure, except that he probably detested her as much as a man like him could detest someone of so little significance to him. I think he killed his son, Joshua. I think he arranged the fire. My problem is, I can’t even prove it wasn’t an accident.”
“But why kill his own son? He can’t need the money.”
“I don’t know why, except perhaps to hide something that Joshua found out about, or at least guessed. Perhaps something he hasn’t even done yet, that Joshua found out he was planning.”
“Chris,” Livvy said slowly, “I can’t see it. When I worked Homicide, I saw some family murders, for greed, for jealousy, and a few that were just plain insane. But this man, killing his own son in cold blood… and it doesn’t seem to fit in any plan that could benefit him. If Bedford is getting illegal resets from Josephson, is that something that Joshua would expose, or Bedford would kill him to hide? I doubt it. He’s too well known, he can’t hide it that long anyway, even as a recluse. Ten, maybe fifteen years if he’s really lucky.”
The use of Chris’ first name was enough to pull him up short. He was dealing with a man whose thought processes were largely alien to his own, and one of the reasons he wanted to talk this through with Livvy was to make sure he wasn’t missing, or imagining, anything.
“I agree. As I said, I don’t think it’s just a matter of hiding a hotlab.”
“Why now?” she asked finally. “I mean, Josephson wasn’t planning this, so that means Bedford wasn’t planning it. Like you said, sloppy. Something precipitated this urgency.”
Chris felt his shoulders relax. He hadn’t known until that minute whether she would accept what he had to say, or quite how much he was hoping she would be with him.
“You look surprised,” Livvy said. “You know, sometimes when I carry an umbrella it rains.”
Chris lifted his eyebrows. “Meaning?”
“Meaning just because you have a prejudice against the man, doesn’t mean he isn’t corrupt as a Russian politician.”
“I wish I knew,” Chris said ruefully. “There are a lot of things I don’t know, that are purely speculation.
“Maas… it’s easy enough to put it into a bitterly angry man’s head that LLE is protecting everything he would like to see destroyed. Bedford might have direct or indirect influence in CCS or other radical groups. Even fanatics can appreciate getting an extra push in the direction they naturally want to go. Money or hype, take your pick.
“Maybe up to now Josephson has just been Bedford’s practitioner, on reserve to do illegal resets when the time came. Then again, some of Josephson’s research is suspicious as well. Borderline illegal.”
“Goody, we’re at the molebiol stuff. Now I really am going to get a headache,” Livvy said, taking another swallow of beer. “But keep going. Suspicious how? I wasn’t there when you talked to that tech.”
“I’m not ready to speculate on that, other than he seemed to be working on ways to fool the tests for biol age,” Chris said, but his eyes, resting on Livvy’s face, were hooded.
“Okay,” Livvy said. “We can wait on pure speculation and stick to our guts for now. Let me follow through on LLE’s involvement, though, pretending that we know Bedford is Josephson’s patron. Once Josephson’s unexplained absence was noticed, and LLE got involved, Bedford could count on us, or I should say LLE, going to see Isabella.”
“True, and he had Maas waiting.”
“Wait, back up. How did Bedford know yesterday morning that LLE knows about Josephson, again?”
“Josephson confessed to Bedford that he was careless in his communication with the clinic staff or, knowing him, Bedford assumed he was careless, or…” Chris hesitated.
“Ah, yes, the good news. Bedford may have a rat planted in LLE somewhere,” Livvy said. “Back to that. So LLE was set up at Isabella’s and if Maas hadn’t taken a nap, we’d be dead. Well… maybe an overstatement. Maas, after all.”
“What?” Chris said.
“Never mind. Anything else I should know while I’m trying to put all the pieces together?”
“I took an LLE car back here last night after searching Josephson’s mansion. Louie wouldn’t let me get into it this morning and I found a bomb attached to the undercarriage. It was pretty crude, but it could scarcely be random. It was an attack focused on me, so I suspect Bedford knows who to target in LLE.”
“Slick, McGregor,” Livvy said, annoyed. “Does the Chief know? Were you even going to tell me? Why is he being this aggressive, anyway? What does it buy him?”
“LLE personnel are used to it. Like I said, we’ve been targets for the worst of the radicals for years. The bomb is at Forensics now, but I don’t expect to learn anything from it. Bedford can’t know anyone has connected him to Josephson already; you’re the only one who’s heard any of this. All he wants to do is slow down the investigation into Josephson’s disappearance before it leads to him – if it ever does.”
“You’ve been even busier than I thought. I repeat, were you even going to tell me? About the bomb?”
“Livvy,” Chris said, “of course I was going to tell you. Even if it’s aimed mainly at me, it puts you at risk. I just wanted to talk about Josephson and Bedford first, so that you could get a sense of the whole picture as I see it. Do you see now what you’ve gotten yourself into?”
Livvy looked a little puzzled, but shook her head as though to clear it.
“Back up. If Bedford has us killed, the Chief would just put more people on it, and get Homicide involved, and it would draw way more attention to the case,” Livvy said carefully. “Wouldn’t it?”
“Not the way LLE handles things. The Chief would put another team on Josephson, and they’d become targets as well, but it would definitely slow things down. Remember, so far all of these attempts can be considered random attacks on LLE detectives, unless someone else thinks about the fact that Maas beat us to Isabella’s. New detectives on Josephson would buy Bedford time, probably enough time for him to do what he wants to do,” Chris said. “LLE does their own homicide investigations on LLE officers.”
“You don’t say? I know in San Francisco we lost a few, but I always figured some other Homicide team was on it.”
Now that the worst was over, Chris went into the kitchenette to warm up some of the pizza. Livvy was being unusually quiet, and wasn’t eating, although she was still attacking her beer.
“In fact, these kinds of attempts play well for someone like Bedford,” Chris called from the kitchenette as he set the flash warmer, “since they smack of amateurism, which is what you typically get from the radical groups. If he’s the instigator, he’s hoping to get lucky and hoping it looks like luck. If anything looks too professional, it arouses suspicions.”
Chris came back to the table and sat down again. Livvy stared at him with her elbow on the table and her chin in her hand. Her expression revealed nothing.
“McGregor,” she finally said, “has anyone ever told you that you sure know how to muffle a party?”
“I have a knack,” Chris said.
“All right,” Livvy said, leaning back in her chair. “Let’s check and see if I’ve followed you on the essentials. The complicated part you mentioned. We are going up against a sociopathic megalomaniac with unlimited resources and an evil mad scientist on retainer. Since he’s a tricky bastard who has achieved influence with several… wacky… homicidally inclined terri… terrorist groups that actually should hate him, we may have to deal with them simultaneously. That’s so unfair, by the way. So far, he doesn’t know we’ve connected him to his pet quack, but he’s happy enough to kill us just to delay LLE making the connection, since they’d have to start all over from our notes, and that might take them a few days – or at least until they got over being inconsolable, that is – and meanwhile, he can get on with… whatever his dried up little walnut of a heart desires.
“We suspect that that is something repulsive that he has been planning for over 50 years – about which we are so far clueless – and we want to try to dwar… to thwart him. Sound about right?’
Chris shrugged, but his eyes were glinting. “You’ve nailed the basics. I guess I might have saved a lot of time if I’d summarized like that to begin with, and skipped the details that might count as, well, actual evidence.”
“That’s okay. I have a few knacks, too,” Livvy said, reaching for her beer again and taking another long swallow. “Where is the Chief in all this? You know, the man who answers to “sir” and occasionally tries to tell you which way to get froggy?”
“I haven’t told him or anyone else at work that I suspect a connection between Josephson and Bedford. We’ll fill the Chief in as soon as we have something more than a series of coincidences to put Bedford solidly in the picture. The only thing concrete is my copies of the appointment records, and a missing doctor.”
“It’s pretty thin,” Livvy said.
“I want you to seriously consider going back to San Francisco until this is all over. Before now, Bedford has just been targeting us casually, to slow us down on Josephson. After tomorrow, he’ll know we’ve found the connection to him, and it will get… dicey. With a good family excuse, you could leave tomorrow.”
This seemed to sober Livvy again, although she had finished her fourth beer, keeping up with Chris respectably. She looked at the bottle in her hand like she was starting to regret it, maybe because it precluded something stronger.
“Were you even listening to me before? I’ve already made a commitment to myself to go back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving to pay for getting in here,” she said. She looked up at Chris quizzically. “But surely you know me a little better than that already. I’d be insulted except that I’m aware that acquiring a partner wasn’t your idea.”
“I had to offer, or it was going to nag at my conscience. You haven’t even had time to adjust to being a regular target for the fanatical amateurs, and soon we’re going to have pros after us,” Chris said.
“Okay. Understood. Apology accepted. Can we move on to where you think we should go from here? It’s all still just gut work, after all. Even the fifty-year-old connection to Josephson, if it came out, would prove nothing.”
“That’s why it’s going to get more serious tomorrow. I want to talk to Paula Bedford in the morning. She’s been estranged from her father for years, and I want to see if she will tell us why, or offer some insight. I think she will talk to you more readily than to me. But understand this: once we do this, it may really be a little like going to war.”
“That settles it,” Livvy said. “I need fuel. I am eating this semi-warm pepperoni pizza. Despite having one too many already, I am scrounging through your beer supply for another cold one. My apologies, but I am requisitioning your couch, where I expect to have a supremely restful night. And I demand a toothbrush, even if it’s yours.”
Chris stood up again when she mentioned the semi-warm pizza and picked up her plate. She looked up at him in challenge.
“I have, unfortunately, no better alternatives to any of that,” Chris said, carrying the pizza back to the flashwarmer. “Although I might be able to find you your own toothbrush.”
Chris dried his hands in a ‘fresher after finishing cleaning up in the kitchenette, then walked back into the table, gripped the back of his chair and looked down at his guest. He had to give her credit – a lot of credit. She’d hung in there, absorbing not only the bare facts of the case but the processes that had allowed their accumulation. A pro all right.
“You should have had more pizza,” he said quietly.
“Mmmm. I’m good. It was good, though, thanks,” Livvy murmured, and turned her head from one side where she had laid it down on her crossed arms on the table to the other so that she could look up at him.
“Just very tired. Put the toothbrush where I can find it, please. I’ll wait for you to…”
Chris cocked his head to one side and grinned. His guest – his first guest in probably a decade – appeared to have fallen asleep between one word and the next. He scanned the apartment, letting his gaze linger for a moment on Louie, who was lying on his blanket near the door. His eyes were open. He gazed back at Chris and thumped his tail on the floor twice.
“I guess I made an impression,” Chris said.
Louie lifted his head for a few seconds, then laid it back down on his forepaws and closed his eyes.
“Everyone’s a critic. Maybe I can consider this a practice run,” Chris said softly, still looking at Louie. “At being a better host.”