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 5th 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.”