Mickey paced indecisively for a moment and then stopped at a small ornately- carved table and waved a hand over its polished surface. A life-sized holographic video of a boy appeared. He was sitting on white sand, with lovely translucent blue-green and foaming tropical waters breaking behind him. There was a surfer in the distance, but no one else in sight.
“Mother, don’t. It will look stupid,” the image said, laughing. The image was of a young teenager, brown-haired and blue-eyed. “I told you. I want you to do one of the ocean, so I can enlarge it for my wall. Stop! The ocean is over there.” Still laughing, he pointed behind him a couple of times and then held up his hand as though to cover the optical.
Mickey waved her hand again and the image disappeared.
“Jesse has sacrificed so much because I’ve wanted to keep him safe, and now this… In some ways, he is more innocent that other children his age. He has been so protected, and confined.
“Do you have a child, Detective McGregor?” Mickey asked, turning to him once more.
“No.”
“By choice? No, please forgive me, that is perhaps too personal.”
“It’s all right,” Chris said. “My wife died young. With our unborn child.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It was a lifetime ago. Mickey, take Jesse to Italy. While you are there, get the implant and the mapping. Let us try to get some evidence.”
“Children change everything,” Mickey said. “Will you stay a few more minutes and meet Jesse? Please, I want you to meet him.”
“Of course. It’s one of the reasons I came.”
“I am so afraid,” she added, almost to herself. “This man will do anything…”
Brian Clifford, it developed, was happy to hear from one of the LLE detectives he had met the day before and delighted to contemplate spending the next few days in a tiny, characterless room in WitSec, especially when told that Livvy would be in a room close by. He was especially pleased by her offer to pick him up after work, and agreed readily that it would be fun to make their rendezvous secret. His only request was that they stop by his apartment first so that he could pick up a few things. Livvy was accustomed to the effect she had on some men, but this time it registered that Brian Clifford was very young, probably almost as young as he looked. It also registered that Chris had counted on her affect on the young lab tech to gain his cooperation in their plans for his safety.
Starting to feel a little pressed for time, Livvy dropped Louie off at the City Central Veterinary Clinic with a promise to pick him up in two hours, then hurried over to Forensics to log in the finger, gun, and towel from Chris’ apartment. Chris had requested that she enter them under an anonymous address code to avoid raising any red flags as a match to an LLE officer. It was, apparently, another LLE prerogative.
That left her with seventy minutes for updating the Chief and giving him Chris’ notes for safekeeping. After the incident on the High Speed, he’d requested an immediate debriefing. From Chris’ attitude, Livvy had determined that in the parlance of a senior LLE detective that meant whenever that senior detective could find the time that day, or maybe the next. She didn’t delude herself into thinking she had the same latitude.
“Hutchins, in here now,” the Chief called as soon as Livvy stepped into the squad room. He simultaneously waved Best out.
“Close the door and sit,” he said. “And then give it all, starting from Josephson’s disappearance.”
She started there, but then, as Chris had done, she had to jump back over fifty years to the Greater Potomac Reset Institute fire, and tie in the Potomac Falls Institute bombing, the Maas attack, the bomb under Chris’ car, the still anonymous professional on the High Speed returning from Paula Bedford’s, and the attempt, foiled by Louie, at Chris’ apartment. Too much of the case seemed to depend on the timing of the attacks on her and Chris. She went on to what she worried was even shakier ground: what they had learned about the characters of Josephson and Bedford that suggested they might be capable of such a fraud. The Chief had been listening without interruption, but this last part he waved away impatiently.
“If you continue to work in LLE, this won’t seem incredible. Also, since the rich and powerful are the ones that usually have the resources for it, they are the ones we often encounter in our fraud investigations. It’s the reason we have been given so many prerogatives and one of the reasons we enforce anonymity so strictly. Almost all our fraud cases would become headlines, if they are made public.”
The Chief continued to stare at her thoughtfully for a few moments. Livvy squirmed mentally but took his cue and didn’t interrupt.
“Where is McGregor now?” he asked finally.
“Warning Mickey Bedford, Joshua’s widow.”
“It stops there. Here too. No one else comes in on this. No one.”
“You’re not convinced,” Livvy said flatly.
The Chief registered surprise. “Oh, I believe it. McGregor has excellent instincts, and even though all of the connections are tenuous and we have nothing directly linking Bedford to any of it, the guy’s own daughter… “
“She said he has an obsession.”
“Warning – Mickey, is it? – is absolutely necessary. But for the rest of it… Dalton’s been briefing you on the way we do things here?”
“LLE handles things differently,” Livvy said dutifully. “We abhor publicity.”
The Chief gave her a sharp glance, then smiled and set down the stylus he had been using on a memopad during her summary.
“As Dalton has apparently explained, LLE shuns the spotlight. No need to let the firebrands know that a trillionaire is prepared to kill most of his family to get the chance to cheat on his allotment.”
“Some of the people I grew up with would say we forced him to it, that Bedford’s other crimes are a direct result of being forced into a corner by the Laws,” Livvy said. “They’d say the Law should be changed; that Bedford is entitled to all the benefits he can afford.”
“Your family?” the Chief said.
“But I never would,” Livvy said, ignoring the Chief’s query.
He leaned back in his chair, watching her.
“You know your commandments?” he finally asked.
“Yes,” she answered, dragging out the syllable.
“Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill,” he continued. “Pretty clear, and most people have a moral compass that aligns closely with those. For Longevity and Enhancement Laws… there are a lot of people out there, as you know, that feel comfortable debating the Laws and discounting them, figuring they lack authority in terms of good and evil. Not so McGregor. One reason McGregor is such a good LLE detective is that he never compromises on them. He might compromise on every other thing having to do with Enforcement, but he never compromises on LLE.
“Sometimes… most of the time, I wish the damned process had never been discovered. Unfortunately, it’s not going away. If we can’t enforce the Laws, if LLE is ever revealed to be slack or corruptible, we’ll end up like most of the rest of the world – in anarchy or a brutal oligarchy,” the Chief said finally.
“For now, this case depends on the two of you. Less chance of the details getting out and less risk that your evidence will be ferreted out and ‘lost.’” That’s been my experience. It’s a bad position to be in,” he added, “but McGregor has been here more often than not.”
“Is there…” Livvy started, then stopped.
The Chief was watching her shrewdly. “A dilemna, isn’t it? A suspicious mind is a valuable asset in an LLE detective.”
Livvy stayed quiet.
The Chief gave a small smile that reminded her of her partner. “Of course, this is all exactly what I would say if I’m in Bedford’s pay and want to suppress any evidence you find.”
She had, in fact, been thinking something along those lines, although not exactly that. She had meant to ask the Chief if there was anyone she could rely on in Forensics. She was beginning to understand how completely alone she and Chris were, even after reporting to the Chief, and not just because of the need to keep it quiet to prevent a
