Authors: S. J. Hunter
"So I figured," she said.
"Whoever is shooting, he doesn't seem to be very good at it. I'm worried about the innocent people beyond us. Now that we have the tunics, I think we should give him better targets and charge."
"Where?" Livvy asked, closing her faceplate and turning around to look through the car window.
The eighth and ninth shots both pinged off the top of the car near her head.
"Persistent sort, isn't he? Doesn't he know these cars are projectile-proof?"
"I thought it might be a roof, but I think now it's that oak over in the neighbor's yard."
Livvy nodded. "You're probably right. Much better cover and more accessible than a roof, too. I can't see him, though. Lovely cover."
"On three then," Chris said, moving from a seated to a crouched position. "One, two,..."
Louie chose that moment to poke his head out of the trunk. The ball was in his mouth and he somehow looked expectant, as though waiting for an invitation to play.
"Louie, down!" Chris yelled. "Three."
He and Livvy leapt to their feet and raced straight for the huge oak, peppering the lower branches with darts as they ran. Chris stopped counting the shots that dug into the turf around them. They were shooting blindly into the lower branches, but if just one dart connected... Twenty meters out, and one of them got lucky. A very large vintage rifle fell out of the oak, followed a few seconds later by a limp body, which plunged to the ground and hit with a satisfying thump. It was bearded and dressed like a peasant farmer of the 16
th
century.
The dart gave them at least 10 minutes even with a very large opponent, and of course the fall may have added considerably to that interval.
Both Chris and Livvy flattened themselves against the broad trunk of the tree and stood there, breathing rapidly and searching the branches above their heads.
"I think he was alone," Chris said.
"I think you're right."
Neither of them moved.
"Still, if there is someone else, I want to know."
"Ready?" Livvy said. "Go!"
They stepped out the shelter of the trunk and scanned the roofs of the neighboring houses. Nothing.
Waving her arms in the air, Livvy walked out from under the tree. "Yoohoo." There was nothing, other than a barely-glimpsed figure moving away from the window in Isabella's house. Chris lost interest before she did and almost immediately walked over to begin examining their prisoner. After another minute of scanning the roofs and the windows, Livvy joined him. He'd already cuffed the peasant and, one on either side, they crouched over the sleeping man, whose garb seemed almost natural as long as he was lying in the grass.
"I'll bite," Livvy said. "Is this outfit traditional for the fringe groups around here? "
"No, but maybe he was making a statement," Chris replied. "He may have even expected to get caught."
"Undoubtedly. Even in San Francisco this get-up would attract attention," Livvy said. "So. How did he get here?"
"It had to be before we did. We can look for a car but I'm betting he was dropped off, probably in the dark," Chris said.
"And he didn't shoot at us on the way in because... ?" Livvy asked.
"Now that I can't figure. You'd think he'd prefer to distract us before the interview."
"Isabella...?"
Chris looked up at her. "Not involved with this, at least not directly. We're practically in her flowerbeds, after all. No. Someone who knows about her knew we were going to show up here, but she didn't arrange this."
Chris got an inquiry on his aural and started relaying information and instructions to the approaching back-up over his collar comu.
The sound of several distant sirens changed direction and steadily gained volume. In the next few minutes three cars arrived in rapid succession in an impressive display of force, and uniforms climbed out of the cars and fanned out in several directions. Chris and Livvy scanned the roofs again but neither of them detected any movement other than more vague forms in the windows of the surrounding houses.
"What's your guess?" Livvy asked when it was apparent they weren't going to spot anyone else and they'd gone back to examining their unconscious prisoner. "Religious zealot or Naturals Only fanatic?"
"Dressed like this? No ID, no comu, no paper. He could be either, and there's a lot of crossover. I don't recognize him in particular, but I wouldn't expect to. This is a little extreme for the Naturals Only locals. It's possible that they're escalating, or this one splintered from the group, or he's a fraud. Or he's only a tool. Or any combination of the above."
The shooter was already blinking his eyes and trying to move with that purposeless shifting that preceded coherent thought. Chris thought he detected the moment, from a change in the man's expression, when he really awakened and realized that something had gone terribly wrong with his plans, and that he was a prisoner. Chris stood up and looked across to Livvy, who was still looking down on the prisoner from the other side.
"At least we can be pretty sure," Livvy said wryly, "that he's not one of those rare pro-Longevity fanatics that want to kill us because they believe we are denying humanity the gift of immortality. He'd be better dressed.
"Also," she continued, "if he's a tool, it's because someone preyed on his fanaticism. No one would throw money away on this level of marksmanship."
"True. Unless they have a lot of money to throw around," Chris said slowly. "Lets hope he wakes up in a mood to talk."
The medics arrived with a stretcher and they moved out of the way.
"So you think we can be pretty sure there's a connection to Josephson's disappearance. Because he knew where to find us and got here first. Can we absolutely eliminate the possibility that he followed us here?" Livvy said as they walked back to the car.
"With Louie silently watching him climb the tree?" Chris asked.
Livvy glanced at the back seat, where Louie was again sitting docilely with his ball in his mouth.
"No, you're right. Of course Louie would have warned us," Livvy said, reaching in through the open door to scratch him behind the ears. "Incidentally, you don't suppose he knows what a 'distraction' is, do you?"
"It doesn't matter. I ordered the damned dog to stay down."
"But he absolutely loves that ball," Livvy said without hesitation. "You know, most of the shots I could see, at least when we were charging, and perhaps before, seemed to be aimed at you more than me. When I got grazed, I was running right next to you."
"Again, we don't really know. I could have been the primary target. Or maybe you're just smaller, or, most likely, he got a good look at you before he started shooting. Your native armor," Chris said. He turned around and leaned against the car as he watched the med techs carrying the prisoner to their van.
"I don't know about that," Livvy said. "With the kind of fanatics LLE probably deals with, I think I just infuriate them more."
"Well," Chris said. "Let's find out."
Livvy looked at him warily. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
"Why not?" Chris said, eyes widened with innocence. "You're injured, aren't you? Your arm needs attention, doesn't it?"
Livvy sighed. "In the medivan? Seriously?" She looked at the already crowded vehicle without enthusiasm as she removed her helmet and tossed it onto the back seat next to Louie. Tucking an errant strand of fiery, sweat-dampened hair behind her ear, she shot Chris a reproachful glance before raising her hand and heading for the medivan. The medtech in the back had been closing the door, but when he saw her coming he smiled broadly and swung it wide again and even stepped out to let her climb in first. Chris could hear the first words of what sounded like a promising stream of outraged invective just before the doors closed and it drove away. Their prisoner was definitely in the mood to talk.
Chp. 6 Tactics (Wednesday)
The bomb was simple, crude really, a typical design used by the groups that felt justified in casually killing LLE personnel because of what they represented. It was the efficiency with which it had been installed that caught Chris off guard. He didn't usually bring an LLE car home, but after coercing Livvy into the medivan with their bigoted prisoner yesterday afternoon, he'd driven out to Josephson's house and he and Louie spent hours performing a rigorous search. It was a huge house. They'd finished very late and he'd decided to go straight home in the car.
That made the placement of the bomb that much more impressive. He'd parked in a guest space in his apartment building's secured garage, although the effectiveness of these private securities was an open joke in Enforcement, and neither a radical bomber nor Chris considered them an obstacle. No, what was impressive about this bomb was that Chris didn't usually drive home and he'd gotten home after 10 PM, so whoever had installed the bomb had almost no notice that there would be an opportunity. This wasn't meticulous planning. Someone was out there scattering a lot of resources around in the hopes of getting lucky.
LLE cars were unmarked and had tamper-proofing that needed to be disarmed, but everyone knew this. The true advantage for LLE officers was that they could check the tamper-proofing remotely to make sure it was intact. This morning, distracted and a little tired after his full day and a night crammed with too much preoccupation to be restful, Chris hadn't checked the status of the tamper-proofing before approaching the car. It was a rookie mistake.
It was Louie, grabbing his hand in an insistent, toothy grip and pulling him away from the car, who saved his life. Chris guessed immediately that Louie had smelled something as they approached the car and alerted, he checked and found the tamper-proofing disabled. After a quick survey of the undercarriage of the car he spotted the device easily enough. Such crude devices occasionally could go off without being tripped, and Chris figured time was of the essence. Also, it looked pretty basic, at least superficially, and Chris had over six decades of experience with similar efforts, during which by observation and pertinent questions he'd picked up an expertise that matched all but the most durable Bomb Squad officers.
"What the hell. I don't have time for this horseshit," he murmured fatalistically. He fetched his tool kit and a light, set Louie in a firm stay a reasonable distance away, and slid under the car on his back to examine it more closely.
It was as crude as it looked, and within minutes he had it disarmed, double-checked, and detached.
He was already late, but he took the time to drop the now-harmless thing off at Forensics. He was pretty sure, though, that like everything else lately it would prove to be a dead end. Or if it did yield any information, the bomb and the record of its analysis would end up missing.
• • •
Sipping her first morning coffee, Livvy stared through the observation window at Robert Maas, the peasant in the tree from the previous afternoon, and reviewed what they knew about him. He'd been in a bed under guard overnight for observation at the City Central clinic, and was released to LLE this morning with a diagnosis of concussion and advice to keep an eye on him. That they were doing.
She was feeling especially virtuous. This morning she'd taken one of the new routes Meg had outlined for her and still arrived at work on time. She'd walked all the way up through garden after lovely garden. Even though the experience wasn't as real as her morning jogs in her native San Francisco hills, it was heavenly.
Chris arrived with Louie a half hour later, with no explanation.
The uniforms who'd searched the neighborhood around Isabella's house yesterday afternoon hadn't been able to find a vehicle that they could connect to Maas nor had they found anyone who remembered seeing a peasant walking around before the shooting started. Given the neighborhood, Livvy suspected he would have been noticed. Chris was right. Someone had driven Maas to the tree, probably very early in the morning,
before
Livvy'd even been told about Josephson. The timing showed extraordinary foresight and initiative on someone's part.
It turned out that the only reason Maas hadn't started shooting before they went in to Isabella's was that he'd wedged himself and his weapon in and taken a nap. That much he'd admitted. He may have been hoping to jolt Livvy out of her impassivity, because what he'd actually blurted out somewhat bitterly was, "You'd be dead now, but I fell asleep."
So she'd probably been wrong to suggest Chris was a preferred target and correct in assuming she wouldn't be popular with the local fanatical groups.
Irritated at having been strong-armed into the medivan and forced to listen to the prisoner's incessant harangue during the early part of the trip to Central, Livvy couldn't resist.
"You mean the nap... the
nap
impaired your marksmanship?" she'd asked with a faint note of surprise.
It wasn't her fault that the tech had snickered and the prisoner had clamped his mouth shut and done nothing for the rest of the ride but glare at her. Still, the feeling that she'd let Chris down a little dampened her satisfaction during her morning commute.
Likewise, the gun had proven untraceable. It was a very common gun, freely available through black markets and with clean ID's at the gun shows, and all of its unique markings had been thoroughly etched out.
This morning, Maas had again awakened in the mood for talking, and that continued during and after his transfer into LLE custody. Unfortunately - still - almost nothing he said was to the point, since most of it was a rehash of the irritatingly vague religious and Naturals Only rhetoric that had so annoyed Livvy in the medivan. For her, it was both reassuring and discouraging that no one else was having any better luck with the man. Any questions elicited repeated claims on the 5
th
amendment and more rhetoric.
They'd found in the records that Maas was a 32 year-old single man who had been raised in a natural family, and prior to dropping into LLE custody yesterday he'd had no criminal record other than a few nonviolent protest-related arrests that had never led to prosecution. Maas' distressed family told them that he had recently broken up with a long-term girlfriend who had a good job as a high-class receptionist and who had decided to start getting resets every two years, now that she could afford them. Psych Services sent an officer who listened to the history supplied by Maas' family, observed him interacting with Chris, and remarked that the recent break-up supplied sufficient motivation for Maas to have reacted violently. The officer asked that they give him a call if anything else developed in the case.
After two hours listening to Maas, Chris asked Meg Dalton to give it a try. Livvy didn't need to ask why Chris turned to her. Meg had decades of experience and she was a lovely woman, about 30 biol, with warm brown eyes and soft brown hair that, as far as Livvy could tell, owed nothing to enhancements. The shooter wasn't fooled. He stared at Meg with disdain and refused to talk to her other than to tell her that she was a disease and that if she and others like her weren't stopped she would infect decent families until there were none left. There was a lot more in the same vein before Meg too gave up.
"Thanks for tossing that my way, McGregor," Dalton said. "I haven't had a good old-fashioned incoherent theological debate with a looney in a month, and I was missing it. Also, all the colorful vernacular. A real treat. You'd enjoy yours, Hutchins, if Maas even deigned to speak to you. Which he wouldn't."
"Ah yes. Abomination," Livvy said. "I heard that one." She paused. "While my partner went to search Josephson's no doubt luxurious mansion, I got to ride to the Clinic in the cozy medivan. All because of a tiny scratch on the arm that had stopped bleeding."
"I wanted you along in case he said anything," Chris said.
Livvy opened her mouth.
"Anything useful," Chris amended quickly.
"Thanks, Dalton. It was worth a try," he added as Meg smiled and started to walk away.
"Hey McGregor," Williams called from the other side of the room, "I don't suppose you could have done us all a favor and put that moron back into the tree and let him drop out again a couple more times? Might have saved us all some trouble."
"Well, you know Williams, I did think about it," Chris called back, "but then it occurred to me that as he is now, he's a candidate for your future brother-in-law."
Williams grinned and Agnew, who had been the target of a campaign to set him up with Williams' sister, hooted.
"You're not buying it, are you?" Livvy asked quietly.
"That he's from one of the radical groups, with on deeper agenda? That I believe."
"But he knew where to wait for us," Livvy said. "And there was something said earlier, something that seemed to connect for you in terms of Maas' incompetence. You said no one would have paid him 'unless they had a lot of money to spend.' What did that mean to you? And there was something I said, too, but I can't remember what it was."
"It's of no consequence. I doubt we'll find anything to connect Robert Maas to Josephson," Chris said. He was going through everything in Maas' record for the third time.
"McGregor, that's not what I asked you. I need you to catch me up. If you even think there is a connection between Robert Maas, and Josephson, and someone... someone with a lot of money, who do you think that would that be?"
Chris leaned back in his old-fashioned desk chair with his hands locked behind his head. Livvy's desk faced his, perpetuating an office layout that had reappeared after every attempt to modernize, or realign, or reorganize LLE. He continued to stare at her until she waved at him.
"How's your arm?" Chris asked.
"Who would that be?" she said, ignoring his question.
Chris pushed off from his desk and still relaxed, with a single push slowly spun his chair through a 360 degree rotation. When he was facing Livvy again, he said quietly, "Not here.
"Let Maas' family and lawyer wear him down for a while, then we can try him again. I want to go talk to Josephson's coworkers and get his notes from the clinic," he said, raising his voice back to normal levels. He stood up and grabbed a memopad.
"Despite an exhausting search, Louie and I couldn't find anything in his luxurious mansion that appeared to be work-related, and there wasn't a single clue as to where he could have gone."
"Your call," Livvy said, frustrated.