S Hunter - Longevity

“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.