S Hunter - Longevity

She believed she knew how Josephson had died. He was probably the one who’d shot her with an illegal Stinger. She wasn’t sure about Bedford. He’d had a glancing, bruising blow to the arm and chest – Chris said he’d thrown a fireplace poker at him – and had two Stinger duoloads in him. Bedford had apparently stopped breathing at some point while Chris was up in the cottage and before the Med Techs had arrived. The only one in the room at the time was Williams, and he’d had a gunshot wound.

None of the guards, either from the mansion or the horse farm, were charged with anything. Apparently, they were all happy to be able to go on their own way to find the next wealthy employer. To justify the LLE raids, they were told that Bedford had had illegal hotlabs on his properties. They surely knew this was true, despite the official story that was fed to the media, and they were willing to accept it. The man who’d been paying them was dead; there was absolutely nothing to be gained from questioning LLE’s verisimilitude on other details. Among the subculture of professional security guards, LLE was known to have a very long arm, and the fact that both Bedford and Josephson were dead only added to LLE’s mystique. Surely its officers were dangerous to cross.

Livvy heard a rumor that the guard who’d thrown the armor-shredding grenade at her had awakened on Sunday morning in an alley in one of the roughest neighborhoods of the worst ghetto in D.C. with no memory of how he’d gotten there. He was naked and sore all over but there wasn’t a mark on him other than the new permanent tattoo on his forearm. In dark black antique script of the kind that might be used to print a bible on paper it said, “Absent in body but present in spirit. We know where and who you are.” He was smart enough to know LLE wasn’t just referring to the alley or his current alias. Sometimes there are no second chances, and he decided the life of a mercenary overseas had more appeal at this point in his life.

The memorial services for Bedford and Josephson were three days later, and were widely attended by a great many glamorous, youthful-looking and attractive people, but neither one had a family member present. Jesse was still too traumatized by his mother’s death and his own kidnapping, and only a very few even remembered John Bedford still had a daughter.

While Chris was still in the Chief’s office Dalton stopped at Livvy’s desk with a fresh cup of black coffee, which she put on Livvy’s new desktop cup warmer.

“Nice work,” she said. “And all within your first five – or was it six? – days on the job. You really were thrown into the briar patch right from the start.

“So. Do you think you’ll be staying with LLE for a while? Now that Williams will be retiring on partial disability, we could use another body.”

“DE didn’t have anything to say about him?” Livvy asked.

“Why? Because he was at the site of a battle over a couple of hotlabs, or a kidnapped boy if you prefer, and wounded, by the way?”

Livvy frowned. “You mean even DE…”

“DE, and all of the other squads, including Homicide and, as you already found out, Tactical,” Dalton said, and smiled at her, “know LLE handles its own cases in its own way. Things tend to get very messy if they try to step in, and sometimes it takes years to clean up the mess. LLE is accorded a certain amount of trust. We try not to abuse it.”

Livvy was still frowning as she looked up at Dalton. “You mentioned Williams retiring. Does that mean LLE is looking specifically for someone to partner Agnew?”

“Ah, no. That will probably be me or another LLE veteran. The Chief would never put two LLE rookies together. Despite everything that you went through in the last week, you’re still considered an LLE rookie. He’ll try to get someone in from some other squad to partner with Toscano. Or you, if you choose.

“One of the reasons McGregor isn’t a training officer is that the Chief likes to give the rookies a chance to actually get some training. You know, before they almost get killed.”

Meg looked down at Livvy’s desk and toyed with the coffee mug on the warmer. “McGregor will always count this case as a failure because Mickey Bedford and her bodyguard died. But personally, I can’t think of anyone else who would have even been onto Bedford in time to warn her. As far as the rest of LLE is concerned, you got your men, both of them. And Jesse Bedford survived, and you survived. Good work.”

“Th…Thank you,” Livvy said.

“Can you live with the fact that they’ll never say it?” Meg asked, jerking her head towards the Chief’s office.

“You’ve never met my parents,” Livvy said wryly.

Meg laughed. “Also, in case you’ve forgotten what I said before, let me remind you. LLE tends to be a career-snuffer. No one ever gets out alive, even if they want to leave. But it’s not too late for you.”

“I remember a warning to that effect.”

Chris came out of the Chief’s office and stopped at her desk. His face told her nothing. He nodded at Meg, who nodded back with a lingering smile and moved away.

Chris was moving even more stiffly than she was, although she supposed technically they’d call her manner of walking a limp. She hoped to be ready to go back into the field by the end of the week. McGregor, who had bony injuries, would need longer, even with accelerated healing sessions.

Chris raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her.

“You know, Hutchins, wounded officers are usually entitled to a few days off.”

“I’ve been wounded before,” Livvy said. “Worse than this.”

“But as long as you’re here, maybe you can find Brian Clifford and let him know he can go home and thank him appropriately. And don’t tell him anything about anything. He can read it in the papers.”

“Swell,” Livvy said. “I forgot all about him. I don’t suppose you…” She looked at his face, but he was already turning away. She thought she caught a half-smile.

“No, I suppose not,” she said. “Have a heart. I’m fifty-four. He’s a child.”

“You did say, didn’t you,” Chris said as he was sitting down, “that I should think of your face as a kind of armor?”

The Chief saved her from responding. “Hutchins. In here, now.

“Shut the door.”

Livvy sat in one of the straight-backed chairs and endured the Chief’s scrutiny. It lasted a little longer this morning, but even with her wounded leg she refused to squirm.

“Fatigue. By Saturday morning you’d been almost thirty hours without sleep. You did remarkably well before you got to the cottage. The clean-up crew that went in after you two and Jesse and the two bodies were out said that everyone else, even the guard you took down on the run and pulled into that stall had two solidly placed duoloads and no lasting damage. They may often be scuz but they’re still citizens.”

“Yes, sir,” Livvy said. There was nothing else she could say. She’d said it all in her first debriefing. Some barely recognizable bits of it were actually in the Chief’s official report.

“We could give you work – a lot of it – if you’d like to stay.”

“What does McGregor say? I mean, would we still be partnered?”

“McGregor. He can be demanding. We agreed the choice is yours. I could put you with Dalton for a while if you want.”

“Demanding? Ruthless is the word I’d choose,” Livvy said. She looked over her shoulder to where Chris was at his desk, checking, thumbing through some notes on a memopad. He wasn’t watching them. “I guess I can handle it.”

The Chief continued to regard her thoughtfully. “He also said you were a little clumsy in the field but that he’d become ‘accustomed to your face,’ whatever that means.”