S Hunter - Longevity

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.