Kris Longknife's Bloodhound, a novella by Mike Shepherd Page B

breaths of the ocean air.  Certainly, his ancestors must have been people of the coast.  Someday he must check on his roots, but just now, all his investigative skills were fully occupied.
    He retrieved his now unbaited hook, added a pair of cubed bait that the box assured him was just the thing to lure half the ocean’s fish out of the sea.  He checked the area around him to make sure he had it all to himself, then made an even longer cast.
    A few minutes later, he became aware he was not alone on the pier.
    As he first walked out on the pier, he had taken stock of those on it today.  There were the usual collection of fishermen and women.  Some plied their rods alone, others in groups that were talkative or silent as was their wont.  There were the usual young couples, more interested in each other than the scenery or the fishing whether they had gear or not.
    He had spotted Leslie the moment she set foot on the pier, though he had ignored her until she spoke to him.  That was no easy thing for an old man to pass up such a lovely sight.
    There was nothing lovely about the man now making his way slowly out on the pier.  His eyes took the measure of every person on the pier as if they might be secret assassins waiting for his next footstep to strike.
    Taylor did not have to task his computer with identifying the man.  He remembered him from The Lost Dutchmen’s doorway.  
    For someone undercover, the man had poor spycraft.  He had not even bothered to stop and rent fishing tackle.
    Taylor took all of this in out of the corner of his eye, and proceeded with his fishing.
    Right up to the time that Arlen Cob rested his elbows on the pier’s handrail beside Taylor and said, “You catch anything?”
    “Not so much as a bite,” Taylor answered reeling in his line.  He held up the hook.  “Empty.  The little beggars here must be very good thieves.”
    The security man refused the bait to talk of thievery.  “Good thing, you not catching anything.  It would be an even better idea if you kept you fishing out here on the pier.  You know, not dropping your hook in waters where it’s not wanted.”
    Taylor rebaited his line again.  This time he put three cubes on the hook.  “I doubt if the fish really want me dropping my line in their faces,” he said as he whipped the line out, casting it further than before.
    “Nice little girl you got running around with you,” the security man said.
    “Leslie is a special agent of the Wardhaven Bureau of Investigation.  She’s nobody’s little girl.”  Taylor allowed himself a scowl, but aimed it at the wine dark sea.
    “You being on annual leave and her chasing out here to spend her lunch hour with you, people might talk.  People might talk even more if two dead bodies were found in the same bed of some cheap hotel, with them in no condition to talk back to them’s that talk.”
    “The Bureau does not take kindly to their agents being killed.”  This time Taylor aimed his scowl at the man.
    His smile was cruel.  “Not everyone at the Bureau is as good as you.  If a case gets handed off to someone just putting in their time to retirement, it might stay open for a very long time.  Especially if, finding the answer might be inconvenient, even embarrassing, to people who don’t like to be embarrassed.  Do I make myself clear?”
    “Are you threatening a Bureau agent?” Taylor said, keeping his temper.  Barely.
    “Threatening?  No, of course not.  We’re just taking fishing, man.  You being on holiday, you wouldn’t be recording anything.  Me, being on my lunch hour, I left my recorder running.  You know what it would show.  Just you and me talking about fishing and the weather, and what a nice couple those kids are over there.  People would be amazed at your vocabulary, Senior Chief Agent Foile.  Amazed.  Best if my recording is never called into court, don’t you think?”
    Foile could tell when he’d been put in check.  “Yes,” he