by Butcher, Jim
Murphy was extremely cute, for a grown adult who also held a black belt in aikido, and had several marksmanship awards from Chicago PD. She was a real professional, one who had fought and clawed her way up the ranks to become full lieutenant. She’d made enemies along the way, and one of them had seen to it that she was put in charge of Special Investigations soon after.
“Hello there, Murphy,” I told her. I took a swig of ale and said, “Long time, no see.” I tried to keep my voice even, but I’m pretty sure she heard the anger in it.
“Look, Harry—”
“Did you read the editorial in the Tribune? The one criticizing you for wasting the city’s money hiring a ‘charlatan psychic named Harry Dresden’? I guess you must have, since I haven’t heard from you since it came out.”
She rubbed at the bridge of her nose. “I don’t have time for this.”
I ignored her. “Not that I blame you. I mean, not many of the good taxpayers of Chicago believe in magic, or wizards. Of course, not many of them have seen what you and I have. You know. When we worked together. Or when I was saving your life.”
Her eyes tightened at the edges. “I need you. We’ve got a situation.”
“You need me? We haven’t talked for more than a month, and you need me all of a sudden? I’ve got an office and a telephone and everything, Lieutenant. You don’t need to track me down here while I’m having dinner.”
“I’ll tell the killer to be sure to operate during business hours next time,” Murphy said. “But I need you to help me find him.”
I straightened in my chair, frowning. “There’s been a murder? Something in my field?”
Murphy flashed a hard smile at me. “I hope you didn’t have anything more important to do.”
I felt my jaw grow tense. “No. I’m ready.” I stood up.
"Well then,” she said, turning and walking away. “Shall we go?”
Chapter Two
Murphy declined to ride in the Blue Beetle, my old Volkswagen bug.
The Beetle wasn’t really blue, not anymore. One of the doors had been replaced with a green duplicate, the other one with white, when something with claws had shredded the originals. The hood had been slagged by fire, and my mechanic, Mike, had replaced it with the hood from a red vehicle. The important thing is that the Beetle runs, even if it doesn’t do it very fast, and I’m comfortable with the car. Mike has declared that the VW bug is the easiest car in the world to repair, and so that’s what I drive. He keeps it running eight or nine days in ten. That’s phenomenal.
Technology tends to foul up around wizards—flip on a light switch, and it’ll be the time the bulb burns out. Drive past a streetlight, and it’ll pick just then to flicker and die. Whatever can go wrong will, automobiles included.
I didn’t think it made much sense for Murphy to risk her vehicle when she could have taken mine, but she said she’d take her chances.
She didn’t speak as she drove her Saturn down the JFK, out toward Rosemont. I watched her, uncomfortable, as we went. She was in a hurry, taking a few too many chances cutting in and out of traffic, and I put on my seat belt. At least we weren’t on her motorcycle.
“Murph,” I asked her, “where’s the fire?”
She glanced aside at me. “I want you out there before some other people show up.”
“Press?” I couldn’t quite keep a nasty slur out of the word.
She shrugged. “Whoever.”
I frowned at her, but she didn’t say anything else—which seemed typical. Murphy didn’t speak much to me anymore. We rode the rest of the way in silence, exited the JFK, and pulled into the parking lot of a half-completed little strip mall. We got out of the car.
A jet came in, low, heading for O’Hare International Airport, only a few miles to the west. I squinted at it for a moment, and then frowned at Murphy as a uniformed officer led us toward a building surrounded by police tape. There was an abundance of light, the moon overhead bright silver and almost a completely round circle. I cast an enormous, gangly shadow as I walked, my duster flapping around my legs. It towered beside Murphy’s far smaller shadow ahead of me.
“Murphy?” I said. “Aren’t we outside Chicago city limits?”
“Yeah,” Murphy said shortly.
“Uh. Then aren’t we out of your jurisdiction, technically?”
“People need help wherever they can get it, Dresden. And the last several killings happened in Chicago, so we want to look at this firsthand. I already worked things out with the local force. It’s not really an issue.”
“Several killings?” I said. “Several? As in more than one? Murphy, slow down.”
But she didn’t. Instead, she led me into a roomy building that proved to be under construction, though all the exterior work was finished. Some of the windows were still covered with board. I didn’t see the sign on the building’s front doors until I got close.
“The Varsity?” I said, reading it. “I thought Marcone burned it down last spring.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Murphy said, glancing at me over her shoulder. “Relocated and rebuilding.”
Chicago’s resident crime lord, Gentleman Johnny Marcone, was the robber baron of the mean streets. He kept all the rough business inside the city proper, leaving his legitimate interests out in the suburbs, like here in Rosemont. Last spring, when I had confronted him in his club, a previous incarnation of the Varsity, about a deadly new drug on the streets, the place had wound up burning to the ground.
After the whole mess was over, word got out that the drug dealer I’d taken out had been Marcone’s enemy, and that I had nuked him at the crime lord’s request. I hadn’t refuted the rumor. It was easier to let people talk than to force Marcone to make an issue of things.
Inside the building, the floors were rough, unfinished. Someone had turned on a couple of halogen work lights, and they cast the interior into brilliant, clear white light. There was drywall dust everywhere. There were a few card tables set up, with workmen’s tools left out on them in places. Plastic buckets of paint, tarps, and a sack of new paintbrushes waited for use off to one side. I didn’t notice the blood until Murphy put her arm out in front of me to keep me from walking into it.
“Wake up, Dresden,” she said. Her voice was grim.
I stopped, and looked down. Blood. A lot of blood. It began near my feet, where a long splatter had reached out like an arm from a drowning man, staining the dusty floor with scarlet. My eyes followed the path of the long bloodstain back to a pool, maybe an eighth of an inch deep, surrounding a mound of ripped cloth and torn meat that must have been the corpse.
My stomach quailed, threatening to eject the bites of steak I’d taken earlier that evening, but I forced it down. I walked in a circle around the body, keeping my distance. The corpse was, I guessed, that of a male in his thirties. He had been a large man, with a short, spiky haircut. He had fallen onto his side, facing away from me, his arms curled up toward his head, his legs up toward his vitals. A weapon, a little automatic pistol, lay seven or eight feet away, uselessly out of the victim’s reach.
I walked around the corpse until I could see the face.
Whatever had killed him, it hadn’t been human. His face was gone, simply torn away. Something had ripped his lips off. I could see his bloodstained teeth. His nose had been torn all the way up one side, and part of it dangled toward the floor. His head was misshapen, as though some enormous pressure had been put upon his temples, warping his skull in.
His eyes were gone. Torn out of his head. Bitten out. There were the ragged slash marks of fangs all around the edges of the sockets.
I closed my eyes, tightly. I took a deep breath. Another. A third. That didn’t help. The body stank, a sickly sewer-smell that rose up from the torn innards. My stomach wanted to roll up my throat, out my mouth, and onto the floor.
I could remember the other details, even with my eyes closed, and catalogued them neatly for later reference. The victim’s jacket and shirt had been torn to bloody
ribbons along his forearms, in defensive wounds. His hands and arms were a mass of pulped, ripped meat, the palms and fingers slashed to ragged lumps. The curl of his body hid his abdomen from me, but that was where the blood was pooling from, spreading out like ink from a spilled bottle. The stench only confirmed that he had been eviscerated.
I turned away from the corpse and opened my eyes, staring down at the floor.
“Harry?” Murphy said, from the far side of the body. The note of hardness that had been in her voice all evening was absent. She hadn’t moved while I had done my cursory examination.
“I recognize him,” I said. “At least, I think I do. You’ll need to check dental records or something, to be sure.”
I could hear her frown in her words. “Yeah? Who was he?”
“I don’t know his name. I always called him Spike. For the haircut. He was one of Johnny Marcone’s bodyguards.”
Murphy was quiet for a moment, then said, succinctly, “Shit.”
“What, Murph?” I looked back at her, without looking down at Spike’s mangled remains.
Murphy’s face was set in concern, for me, her blue eyes gentle. I saw her wipe the expression away, as quickly as a shadow crosses the floor, a smoothing of lines that left her features neutral. I guess she hadn’t expected me to turn to her. “Take a look around a little more,” she said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“What am I looking for?” I asked her.
“You’ll know it,” she said. Then added, in a whisper that I think she didn’t intend me to hear, “I hope.”
I turned back to my work, and looked around the room. Off to one side, one of the windows was broken. Near it was a table, lying askew on the floor, its legs warped and bent. I walked over to it.
Broken glass littered the ground around the collapsed table. Since the glass was on the inside of the building, something must have come in through the window. There was blood on several of the broken pieces of glass. I picked up one of the larger ones and frowned at it. The blood was dark red, and not yet wholly dried. I took a white handkerchief from my pocket, folded the shard of glass into it, and then slipped it into the pocket of my duster.
I rose and paced over the floor, my eyes downcast, studying the dust. In one spot, it was rubbed almost clean off the floor, as though a struggle had taken place there without blood being spilled. In another spot, where the halogen lamps didn’t quite reach, there was a pool of silver moonlight below a window. I knelt down beside it.
In the center of the pool was a paw print, in the dust, a paw print almost as big as my spread hand. Canine. Dots at the tips of the paw spoke of heavy nails, almost claws.
I looked up through the window at the rounded silver shape of the almost-full moon.
“Oh, hell,” I breathed. “Oh, hell.”
Murphy came toward me and watched me silently for a moment, waiting. I licked my lips, stood up, and turned to her. “You’ve got problems.”
“No kidding. Talk to me, Dresden.”
I nodded, then pointed at the window. “The attacker probably came in there. He went after the victim, attacked him, got the gun away from him, and killed him. It’s the attacker’s blood on the window. They struggled a while, over there by that clean spot, maybe, and Spike made a break for the door. He didn’t make it there. He got torn to pieces first.”
I turned toward Murphy, looking down at her solemnly. “You’ve had other murders happen in the same way. Probably about four weeks ago, when the moon was last full. Those were the other killings you were talking about.”
Murphy glanced at my face for a moment, keeping her eyes off mine, and nodded her head. “Yeah. Four weeks ago, almost exactly. But no one else picked up the full moon angle. Just me.”
“Uh-huh. Then you should see this, too,” I said. I led her over to the window and showed her the paw print in the dust beneath it. She regarded it in silence.
“Harry,” she said after a minute. “Are there such things as werewolves?” She brushed a strand of hair back from her cheek, a small and oddly vulnerable gesture. She folded her arms over her stomach, as though she were cold.
I nodded. “Yeah. Not like you see in the movies, but yeah. I figure that’s what you got going here.”
She drew in a deep breath. “All right, then. All right. What can you tell me? What do I need to know?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t get a chance to say anything. There was a brief bout of shouting outside, and then the front doors of the building banged open. Murphy tensed, and I saw her mouth set in a hard little line. Her back straightened, and she stopped hugging herself, putting her fists on her hips.
“Goddammit,” she said. “How do those assholes get everywhere so fast?”
I stepped forward, so that I could see. A quartet of people in suits came through the door, fanned out in an almost military diamond formation. The man in front was not quite as tall as me, but still very tall, six feet and three or four inches. His hair was jet black, as were his eyebrows, while his eyes were a shade of grey as pale as wood smoke. His dark blue suit fit him well, and I had the impression that it concealed an athletic build, in spite of the fact that he had obviously seen more than four decades. A blue identification badge reading “FBI” in huge, obnoxious letters dangled from one lapel.
“Secure the scene,” he said, his voice deep, tense. “Lieutenant Murphy, what the hell are you doing on a crime scene out of your jurisdiction?”
“Nice to see you, too, Agent Denton,” Murphy said in a flat tone. “You get around fast.”
“I told you that you weren’t welcome on this investigation,” Denton said, his words crisp. His grey eyes flashed, and I saw a vein bulge rhythmically on his forehead. His gaze shifted to me. “Who is this?”
“Har—” I started to say, but Murphy’s snort cut over my words.
“No one,” she said. She flashed me a look that said, very clearly, to shut up. That annoyed the hell out of me.
“Harry Dresden,” I said, making the words loud and clear. Murphy and I exchanged a glare.
“Ah,” Denton said. “The charlatan. I’ve read about you in the Tribune.” His clear, tense gaze returned to Murphy. “You and your psychic friend might want to step out of the way. There’s police work being done here. The real kind, where we worry about fingerprints, fibers, genetic matches—silly things like that.”
Murphy’s eyes narrowed, along with mine, but if the twin glares affected Denton, it didn’t show in his face. Murphy and Denton had a brief staring match, her fury against his steely intensity.
“Agent Benn!” Denton called.
A woman, not quite into her thirties, with a shoulder-length mane of hair gone prematurely grey, turned toward us from her intent contemplation of the corpse. She had olive skin, deep, green eyes, and a thin, severe mouth. She walked toward us with a sort of hard-muscled sensuality, moving like someone who is capable of being fast and dangerous when necessary. Of the four FBI agents who had entered the room, she was the only one obviously sporting a weapon. Her jacket was unbuttoned, and I could see the straps of her shoulder rig against the white of her shirt.
“Yes, sir,” Benn said. Her voice was very quiet. Her eyes took up a position midway between Murphy and me, looking at neither of us while watching us both.
“Please escort these two civilians,” Denton stressed the word, “from the crime scene.”
Benn nodded once, but didn’t say anything in reply. Just waited. I gathered myself to go, but paused. Murphy planted her feet and lowered her arms casually to her sides. I recognized the stubborn out-thrust angle of her jaw. She had that look she got when she was behind on points in one of her martial-arts tournaments. Murphy was ready to fight. Damn. I had to get her cooled off before we could accomplish anything.
“Murphy,” I said, quietly. “Can we talk outside?”
“Like hell,” Murphy said. “Whoever this killer is, he’s knocked off half a dozen people in the last month. I’m here, and I’m after this
man. The Rosemont department has given their consent for me to be here.” Murphy glared up at Benn. The FBI agent had her by a considerable margin of reach and muscle. I saw Benn’s eyes narrow, her shoulders grow tenser.
“Do you have that in writing?” Denton demanded. The vein in his head throbbed more angrily. “And do you really think you want me reporting this to your superiors, Lieutenant?”
“Don’t push me, Denton,” Murphy said, her voice hot. I winced.
“Look, Murphy,” I said. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Let’s just go outside for a minute.” I squeezed, just a little.
Murphy turned back toward me. She chanced a brief glance up at my eyes, and then relaxed a little, a flicker of uncertainty crossing her features. She started to ease down, and I let my breath out. I definitely didn’t want this dissolving into violence. It wouldn’t accomplish anything.
“Get them out of here,” Denton said, and there was a note to his voice that I didn’t like.
Benn didn’t give us any warning. She just moved, fast and hard, stepping toward Murphy and flicking some sort of martial-arts blow I wasn’t familiar with toward her temple. There was a quick blur of motion. Murphy’s hands got there before the blow landed, and she turned, somehow levering Benn’s weight off from her legs and slamming the grey-maned woman hard into a wall.
Benn’s expression went from shocked and surprised to furious in the space of half a second. Her hand dipped into her jacket, hesitated for half a second, and then resumed motion. She drew her gun with an expert’s precision, smooth and quick without seeming hurried. Her green eyes blazed. I threw myself at Murphy, colliding with her and driving her over and down as the gun went off, louder than a close clap of thunder in the interior of the half-finished restaurant. We landed in a heap on the dusty floor.
