by S J Hunter
“If I thought it was just for hotlabs, I’d be in there already,” Chris said. Now that he was on his feet and out of his apartment, he moved around somewhat restlessly, scanning the streets and the park. Another attack seemed unlikely, but there was a lot of useable cover in the dark. “I’m giving you background. I’m not sure where it leads.”
“Go on,” Livvy said.
“The records matter, more because of what is missing. After 2052, when there was a spate of arsons, they all started being duplicated centrally on an automatic basis, so now Archives should have duplicate records of resets, with practitioners listed for all procedures. Simple lists, referenced back to birth dates to calculate and monitor compliance on allotments. All pretty straightforward, without medical details, right?”
“That was you, too, wasn’t it? Your idea, I mean, to get records preserved centrally?” Livvy asked.
Chris shrugged impatiently. “It’s an essential database. Before 2052, reset clinic records weren’t, so if there was a clinic fire, the only existing record of a doctor-client relationship might be destroyed. For the Greater Potomac Reset Institute, the records were preserved from the 2051 fire and placed in Central Archives. I have copies here. They show Bedford’s appointments with Josephson.”
“So we have the connection, clearly documented,” Livvy said.
“The originals are missing from both Central and the backup archives. I checked,” Chris said.
“Oh.”
“He’s thorough, or maybe someone is just sweeping for anything with his name. At any rate, the only reason I know the connection exists is that when I’m doing an investigation, I always check my own sources at some point, then crosscheck with Central Archives on the theory that missing records are meaningful. As far as I can tell, my 55 year old copies of the appointment records are currently the only evidence we have that there was ever a connection between the two men.”
“And he must know the records were saved from the fire, because they’ve been destroyed in Central Archives, but he doesn’t know you have copies, although I suppose he might suspect at some point?” Livvy mused. “He doesn’t know that you know, yet. He’s just blindly hoping to keep us from finding something. I’m getting dizzy.”
“We’re almost back to the gritty present. Last year the Potomac Falls Institute was bombed. CCS claimed credit and probably was responsible, but I checked today and found out that, coincidentally, all of John Bedford’s reset maps, which are the most difficult element to manipulate in cases of identity fraud, were part of the records that were destroyed. A security guard died in that one.”
“But aren’t these stored in Central Archives as well?” Livvy asked.
“Only the current one, so it’s convenient for use as the ultimate identification tool. It’s transferred automatically as it’s generated, and the previous copy is deleted,” Chris said. “We should head back. Louie!”
Louie came bounding out of the darkness, and they walked slowly back the way they’d come.
“So we either have to believe in a lot of coincidence, or some random arsonist, in league with a careless archivist, has it in for records that document the Longevity history of John Bedford,” Livvy said. “Or he’s done it to himself. You’re right. Hinky.”
They were back at Chris’ efficiency.
“You have everything from archives?” Livvy asked, looking around, focusing especially on the clutter on the table.
“Hardly. Retrieving anything from that mess would be hopeless. I don’t have that kind of brain. I only have records from cases I’ve worked in some way. I… dislike remembering fragments and finding I can’t get at the whole. Consider it my personal case archive. A very disorganized one.”
Livvy was studying the table with an enigmatic frown.
“Look, Hutchins,” Chris said, “This is one way I work. I doubt that anyone else does anything quite like this. But know this: however it was in Homicide in San Francisco, it’s fundamental here not to become too dependent on Central. They’re as corruptible as anyone else. Other than the radical bombers and arsonists, and hotlab illegals, we end up investigating a lot of wealthy people. And not everyone in Enforcement cares about LLE as much as… the people who work LLE.”
“So you’re putting me on the team?” Livvy asked, drawing another faint smile from Chris.
“The point is, someone thought it was worthwhile to destroy the records already. They’re preparing for something beyond a hotlab raid,” he continued.
Chris finished his beer and popped another one. A lot depended on whether Livvy gave credence to the notion that Bedford and Josephson had been plotting since before she was born.
“Or he’s a particularly paranoid trillionaire. They aren’t all that rare, in my experience. Or someone else, someone not John Bedford, wanted some other association kept secret, and Bedford’s records just happened to be in the way,” Livvy said, reaching for the fresh beer Chris offered her. “Or maybe the careless archivist is just that. Archives lost them. It happens.”
Chris took an especially long swallow of the cold beer.
“Noted. Anyway, Bedford’s family… That is, if you haven’t changed your mind about wanting it all.”
He appraised her frankly. “You really should eat some pizza.”
“Pizza can wait. This is riveting,” Livvy said.
“It’s LLE,” Chris said. “Bedford’s son, Joshua, was a recluse towards the end of his life as well, although he was only 48 chrono. Joshua had one son, Jesse, who was born in ’89 and who lives with his mother. John also has a daughter, Paula, born in ‘47, who’s apparently been estranged from her father for decades. Are you following me so far?”
“Yes, John Bedford, one son, deceased, one daughter, estranged, and one grandson, living with his mother. But I still have no idea where you are going with it.”
“Neither do I, but I want you to have the relationships straight.
“As I said, Joshua died in a fire in ‘04. In his secure, fireproofed mansion. There were no signs of violence; the fire protection appears to have malfunctioned. Arson investigators said it was an electrical fire, accidental, and it happened so quickly that he and the two employees that were there at the time didn’t have a chance to escape.”
“That’s like a full cement truck delivery of bad luck,” Livvy said. “But what motive would there be for his death? Who benefited?”
“As far as I can determine, Jesse. Also, Jesse is the sole heir for his grandfather’s trillions. If it was a professional job rather than an accident, it was very professional, and yet I couldn’t find any motive other than the money.”
“You can’t suspect an 18 year-old child…?” Livvy said.
“No, I don’t,” Chris said. “Do you want me to heat up some of that pizza now?”
“Thanks, but I’ll wait until you’re done. Another beer is fine. Are we getting close?”
“Not my fault,” Chris said. “The guy has had a long life.”
“And apparently blameless, despite everyone’s impression of him. Unless he’s had issues with LLE before?”
“Not that I can find. Just a deficit of pertinent records. But there’s a new element at play. John Bedford was born in 2004.”
“Ah,” Livvy said. “That’s a twist. And two children: Joshua, and Paula. You see, I remember. That means his 100th birthday was three years ago and he’s had to start aging naturally. He’d be…” She did some quick calculations. “If he started getting resets in ’34 when they first became available to the very rich, he’d be 33 biol by now, unless he’s been getting illegal resets. From Josephson, perhaps. But he’s famous. How can he get around it in the long run? He’s too well documented.”
“I don’t know, but that’s the point. I have to believe he’ll try. I think he would hesitate at nothing. In fact, I think he’s killed once already.”
“Karen?” Livvy asked after a short pause, confused.
“No… No. This isn’t a vendetta, Hutchin
s. 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 mi
ght 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.
“We suspect that that is something repulsive that he has been planning for over 50 years – about which we are so far clueless – and we want to try to dwar… to thwart him. Sound about right?’
Chris shrugged, but his eyes were glinting. “You’ve nailed the basics. I guess I might have saved a lot of time if I’d summarized like that to begin with, and skipped the details that might count as, well, actual evidence.”
“That’s okay. I have a few knacks, too,” Livvy said, reaching for her beer again and taking another long swallow. “Where is the Chief in all this? You know, the man who answers to “sir” and occasionally tries to tell you which way to get froggy?”
“I haven’t told him or anyone else at work that I suspect a connection between Josephson and Bedford. We’ll fill the Chief in as soon as we have something more than a series of coincidences to put Bedford solidly in the picture. The only thing concrete is my copies of the appointment records, and a missing doctor.”
“It’s pretty thin,” Livvy said.
“I want you to seriously consider going back to San Francisco until this is all over. Before now, Bedford has just been targeting us casually, to slow us down on Josephson. After tomorrow, he’ll know we’ve found the connection to him, and it will get… dicey. With a good family excuse, you could leave tomorrow.”
This seemed to sober Livvy again, although she had finished her fourth beer, keeping up with Chris respectably. She looked at the bottle in her hand like she was starting to regret it, maybe because it precluded something stronger.
“Were you even listening to me before? I’ve already made a commitment to myself to go back to San Francisco for Thanksgiving to pay for getting in here,” she said. She looked up at Chris quizzically. “But surely you know me a little better than that already. I’d be insulted except that I’m aware that acquiring a partner wasn’t your idea.”