Livia Lone (Livia Lone #1)(21)
“Little bird,” she whispered, and then she was gone.
13—NOW
Barnett’s funeral was everything Livia had hoped for.
It was a perfect spring morning in Crown Hill Cemetery—cherry blossoms blooming, birds singing, a breeze stirring the tree branches. Over a hundred Hammerheads were there to pay their respects to poor Billy, some rolling in on Harleys from as far as Reno and Missoula. There were denim kuttes heavy with Confederate flags and Iron Crosses. Lots of tattooed arms, and a good number of faces and necks, too. Steroid-swollen bodies. Bourbon toasts and Sieg Heil salutes. Livia recognized most of the local leadership, having spent a year with the gang unit before making detective. The G-unit’s mandate was to know everything about Seattle-area gangs, and to make sure the gangs knew they knew, as a means of deterring violence. Livia had wanted access to that intel, so that when she was finally able to get to Weed Tyler, she would be ready.
A hundred mourners logically meant an equivalent number of cell phones, but the Gossamer picked up half again as many. Burners. The gangbangers knew better than to carry their personal units alongside the disposables they used for business, but it was a pain to switch off one phone every time you were going to use the other, or to leave one at home when you were out on your hog and didn’t know who might be trying to reach you on which. And switching burners frequently was a hassle, as well—so many people to apprise of your new contact information. So in the battle between security and convenience, sooner or later convenience almost always emerged victorious. And it only had to win once for the cops to own you.
Livia kept a discreet distance from the funeral, dressed in a conservative skirt and blouse and wearing dark glasses against the late-morning sun. She even laid flowers in front of a marker, standing with head bowed for a few minutes as though in silent contemplation. Which was more than enough time for the Gossamer nestled in her purse to identify every cell phone in the cemetery. She confirmed the data had been stored in the unit, then headed out, face downcast, just another bereft visitor weighed down by the cemetery’s solemnity.
She didn’t go straight back to headquarters. Instead, she drove to the loft, the top of the Jeep off to take advantage of the weather. Ordinarily on so fine a day, she would have used the Ducati, but changing in and out of leathers wasn’t always feasible, and she’d seen enough horrific motorcycle injuries to refuse to ride without the proper equipment.
A couple of the guys on a smoking break outside waved as she headed in the first-floor entrance. Everyone knew she lived on the third floor. She imagined they must have speculated about her solitary existence, but it didn’t matter. They were friendly enough. She waved back and took the stairs three at a time, unlocking and then double-bolting the door behind her.
She laid the Gossamer on her desk, brought over a set of watch-repair tools, and removed the back of the unit. From her gun safe, she retrieved a circuit board she had created from parts purchased from Radio Shack—battery, transistors, memory card, antenna. Visually, her homemade board was a clone of what she had observed on a previous experiment opening up a Gossamer. Of course, hers was nothing but a simulacrum, but it didn’t need to function. It just needed to look right.
She brought the homemade board over to the desk and set it down alongside the Gossamer, from which she carefully removed the circuit board. She spent an hour soldering the Gossamer’s innards into a shell she had designed to house them. When she was done, she closed up the shell and tested the unit. It worked perfectly. She smiled in satisfaction. She’d always been good with tools.
Next, she placed her homemade board inside the original Gossamer casing, screwed the unit closed, and placed it on the base of a hydraulic press. She turned the press on and waited for a moment, listening to the mechanical whine growing louder and smoother as the machine warmed up. Then she pulled the lever and watched as the steel cylinder descended and crushed the unit flat. The results were extremely satisfactory, but she repeated the process twice more to ensure the absolute maximum devastation, then used a tweezers to pick out and pocket the few pieces with markings that might have identified them as not native to a Gossamer. When she was done, she poured the pulverized remains into a bag and headed back to headquarters, tossing the marked pieces along the way.
Back at the Bat Cave, she made sure to look worried and chagrined. “Alvin,” she said. “You’re going to kill me.”
He raised his eyebrows. “What is it?”
She placed the bag on the counter. “I was cutting across the pedestrian overpass at the Light Link University Street Station. And I dropped the Gossamer.”
He blanched. “Oh, no.”
“Oh, yes. I ran down as fast as I could. But a train had already come. And . . .”
She lifted the end of the bag, and what looked like nothing other than the crushed remains of a genuine Gossamer came sliding out onto the counter.
For a moment, they were both silent. Alvin put a hand over his mouth and just stared at the mess, his expression crestfallen. Then he sighed. And then he moved his hand—and Livia saw he was smiling.
“I have to tell you,” he said. “I’ve had equipment misplaced before. Lost. But this . . .” He shook his head and started laughing.
Livia maintained her worried expression. Of course, claiming she’d lost the unit would have been easier. But more suspicious, too. A cop who claimed something had been lost might have stolen it. A cop who brought back something flattened to a pancake was at worst guilty of carelessness.