Free Final Reckoning: The Fate of Bester by J. Gregory Keyes

something playful about it.
    “That’s my impression.”
    “Gathered in only three days?”
    “Maybe I’m wrong.”
    “No, you’re right. I usually do. But whoever did whatever they did to Jem-has my thanks.”
    She held his eyes for a moment, then went back to work. Bester reflected that, if she actually knew the details of what he had done, she would probably take a very different attitude toward it. Still, it felt good, her thanks. Physiology and psychology. It was always good to feel needed-even when you didn’t want to be.

Chapter 6
    Garibaldi walked carefully around the room, as if his feet were bare and the floor covered in broken glass.
    “He was here,” he muttered.
    “I can smell him.”
    He couldn’t, of course, not literally. But sometimes he thought he had developed a sort of sense-not telepathy, of course, but something older, deeper, more primal. Animal, even.
    “It’s a good bet,” Thompson drawled.
    “This house was registered to one Susan Taroa, but that was just an alias. We traced her back through several other fake names, until we came to Sophie Herndon. She was one of Bester’s interns.”
    “And that’s the woman they fished out of the drink a couple of weeks ago?”
    “Yes. Someone sunk her in a fishing net. But a ship went down in the same area in a storm, and the search and recovery mission found her. When they did an ID check, irregularities popped up. Sheer luck.”
    “Not for her.”
    “No, I guess not.”
    “I want a full tracing team in here. DNA, everything.”
    “The local police already did a sweep.”
    “They didn’t know what they were looking for. I want another one.”
    “Of course.”
    Garibaldi continued his survey of the monster’s lair. The clues Bester had left with Thompson hadn’t led anywhere-or more accurately, they’d led everywhere except to any trace of Bester. The man was a ghost when he wanted to be. He could screw with people’s heads, make them forget, make them remember things that had never happened. Make them do things they never wanted to do.
    Garibaldi had tried following the money. Bester had to have money, to keep moving like this, but even the considerable Edgars resources had failed him. Some banks really were tamperproof, unbribable, beyond his ability to influence, as perverse and unthinkable as that seemed.
    So, what was left to follow? A trail of corpses? Bester was usually careful about that, too. Then again, it seemed as though he was starting to slip up. That was a hopeful sign.
    “What are you looking for, Mr. Garibaldi?”
    “I don’t know. Something. Anything. How about you? Can you pick up any-I don’t know-psychic signature?”
    “No, nothing. Strong telepaths sometimes leave them, it’s true, but they don’t last long. Hours, maybe a day. There’s nothing like that here”
    “Damn.”
    He went to the drawers of the polished coral dresser and started opening them. Nothing. Searched under the mattress. Nothing. He reached to pat under the bed, and his fingers touched something small, cool, smooth.
    “What’s this?”
    He got a cloth from his pocket and reached again, came up with a small cylinder.
    “This is an ampoule,” he grunted.
    He stood and lifted it toward the light.
    “Some sort of pharmaceutical.”
    “That should be right up your alley.”
    “Or on my gravy train, anyway. Yeah, I’ve got a guy I want to see this. And Thompson, I don’t want you talking to anyone about this-understand? Right now this is just our little secret.”
    “Got it.”
     

     
    Niles Drennan was a slight, stiff young man, the sort you could never really imagine cutting loose and having fun. Garibaldi didn’t like him, but he was one of the best synthesizers in the business.
    Technically, his job was to examine the herbal and folk remedies from a thousand worlds and try to isolate their active ingredients. Lately he had worked more on the various biogenic materials turned up in the hunt for a cure for the Drakh