Longevity

bandages, and a saturated hand towel. It looks like it was a bit of an ordeal, putting on a bandage. I guess he isn’t ambidextrous. Too bad for him.”

Turning back towards the main room, she found Chris calling in a BOLO for a man with a traumatic finger amputation.

“Louie’ll do,” Chris said when he got off the comu. “Those gouges across his ribs are all superficial. Nothing penetrating. I want that eye looked at as soon as possible, though.”

“So the guy breaks in somehow, with his gun drawn and ready for a fight if necessary,” Livvy said, “but he probably knew you were gone. He came for your notes. Louie surprises him and… disarms him. Traumatically. Good boy, Louie. The guy dashes into the bathroom because it’s closer and anyway, he doesn’t have time to think. He maybe tries to wrap his hand in the towel, digs out whatever you had in there for treating wounds, improvises a weapon, and makes a dash for the door, with Louie harassing him the whole way,” she added, surveying the blood trail. “Probably not a professional or he would have had a back-up weapon, or maybe he just doesn’t think of it, with his injured hand and all.

“He makes it out, slamming the door to keep Louie inside, and discards the towel rack in disgust.” She’d found a very detailed footprint in blood and was getting a comu close-up of it, as well as close-ups of the finger and gun.

While she was talking, Chris had been scanning the apartment with his comu to create a video record. He went into the kitchen after he’d finished and found some plastene bags and tongs and held them out to Livvy. Although she made a face, she took them readily enough and used them to pick up and bag the bloody evidence: the finger, gun, and towel.

“Maybe you could sue the bastard,” Livvy said helpfully. “I guess we should take the weapon for fingerprints, and collect some of the blood, but do we really need it?” She picked up the bag with the finger, looked at it closely, and shook it in Chris’ direction.

“I think it’s an index finger. Makes sense. Louie got it when he took the gun,” she added.

Chris started walking purposefully around the room, checking to see if anything else had been disturbed and pulling out a few items and placing them on a chair at the table.

“Does there seem to be anything missing?” Livvy asked, standing over the table. “I don’t want to touch anything until you have a chance to check it.”

Chris gave the table top a cursory survey. “No, but that’s no surprise. There’s blood everywhere in the room but the area near the table.”

“Do you want to pack these?” she asked. “Even if we take everything, I don’t know if you’ll ever be able to find anything again if I shift your order.”

“No worry,” Chris said. “Just take them all.”

Livvy began piling memopads and CUs into a collapsible, and she looked up one more time. “I’m trying to maintain some sort of order, but…”

“There isn’t any, really,” Chris said after a beat.

“McGregor, what is it? You’re in white-knuckle mode and my guess is you don’t have as much experience with that as your age suggests.”

“I knew Bedford would be taking extreme measures to find out how we grew suspicious of him. This,” he said, making a dismissive gesture towards the bloody half of the room, “is my fault, but still not a big deal. Other than poor Louie… But it just means Bedford is still ahead of us. He’s winning.”

“Right. LLE. Proactive. All right, let’s figure out what we need to do,” Livvy said reasonably. “I would also like to point out that I was here last night too, and I didn’t think of it, and also, thanks to your foresight on the train, and Louie of course… thanks to Louie, Bedford hasn’t succeeded in anything he tried today.”

“The lab tech,” Chris said after a moment. “He may not like it, but I want him in WitSec as well. If Josephson has any reason to suspect this tech knows something, and they know we’ve talked to him, then he’s at risk.”

“OK. While you’re getting checked out at the Central clinic, I’ll talk to him, right after I take Louie in to the veterinarian. Brian, right? Will he come in?”

“Brian Clifford. Call him first, on your way to drop Louie off,” Chris said. “Tell him to make up a family emergency so he can take a few days off without attracting too much attention, and arrange to pick him up after he’s left work for the day, so his co-workers don’t see you. And tell him you’ll be in a WitSec room, too. He’ll come.

“I wish to hell we could bring Mickey and Jesse in, too. But we don’t have enough. They haven’t witnessed anything and I doubt if they’d come, and anyway I’m not sure they’d be safer there than in a villa in Italy.

“Are you going to be all right without a stop at your apartment?” Chris asked.

“Hotel room, remember? Sure, I can buy whatever I need,” Livvy said.

“I want to go and see Mickey and Jesse Bedford, today, to warn them about what they might be facing.”

“After you see a doctor,” Livvy said.

“No, now,” Chris said with a hint of impatience. Livvy opened her mouth for rebuttal, but Chris shook his head. “Look, I know I need my ribs taped, and I’ll take some pain meds if they’re offered, but I’m breathing fine now. What do you suppose would ease my conscience if Bedford gets to that boy before I warn them?”

“It needs to be done, and today, I agree, but I can do it,” Livvy said.

Chris picked up the carryall he’d filled with personal items for himself and Louie. “Bedford is still ahead of us, and we may be forcing him to speed up his schedule. When he tries to have two LLE detectives killed, it suggests that he is contemplating a significant move. He’s desperate.

“If we are going to get ahead of this man, we need to split up. I think I can manage to sit down with Mickey Bedford in her secure, comfortable home without risking further injury. I need you to take care of Louie and make sure Brian Clifford is safe. And then I need you to get them both into WitSec and yourself into the office to smooth things over with the Chief. At this point, I think that means a full verbal summary.”

“You’re kidding, right? The whole story?”

“You did say you had a knack, and I admit it, your version works.”

”But McGregor, I’m not sure the Chief likes me now, and after this…”

Chris shook his head. “So you pulled a few strings to get here. Let me know when you start raking in the big benefits of that manipulation. Meanwhile, you need to be very careful. And I’m trusting you with my dog and a witness.”

“You are ruthless. And you needn’t look like you think that’s a good thing,” Livvy said, picking up the box full of memotabs and CUs.

Chp. 11 Defense (Thursday)

Chris took a deep breath, fighting off the fatigue that threatened to prevent him from doing his work. How does one explain to a woman that her father-in-law, a man she’s known and presumably trusted for decades, is not only planning to kill her but his own grandson? Could any motivation explain something so incomprehensible to most sane people?

Even more worrisome were the constant reminders, at Isabella’s, at Josephson’s clinic, on the High Speed, in his own apartment, damn it, that Bedford was ahead of him all the way – more than fifty years ahead, to be honest. This was Chris’ only chance to change that now that he was convinced his suspicions were real. Before the events of the last few days he had never been sure he wasn’t taking something Karen had said about someone and granting it the elevated status of prophecy.

Unfortunately, he still had no evidence that would stand up to scrutiny in the courts; he had only his instincts and a cascade of events and connections that he found convincing but that meant nothing in terms of the Law. The evidence would have to come later, if at all, hard-won with work and persistence. In the meantime, in the face of that inadequate evidence, he had to convince Mickey Bedford of her danger.

Although also brunette and vaguely exotic, the woman sitting before him was otherwise quite different from Paula Bedford. Whereas Paula had been tall and slender, Mickey was petite and somewhat voluptuous. Chris reminded himself that he wasn’t dealing with sisters. Paula was John Bedford’s daughter; Micaela was the woman his son had chosen to marry.