Side Jobs

by Jim Butcher

  He backed off, unclenching his hands and looking away. I relaxed as well. Will hadn’t meant to deliver a threat to me, as such, but he was a hell of a lot bigger and stronger than I was. Stronger isn’t everything, but simple mass and power mean a lot in a fight, and Will had the ferocity and killer instinct to make them count even more heavily than most. He’d never considered—hell, probably never noticed—the full depth of the statement he was making with his stance and clenched fists.

  It’s another in a long list of things that Martians hardly ever think about: Almost any woman knows that almost any man is stronger than she is. Oh, men know they’re stronger, but they seldom actually stop to think through the implications of that simple reality—implications that are both unnerving and virtually omnipresent, if you aren’t a Martian. You think about life differently when you know that half the people you see have the physical power to do things to you, regardless of whether you intend to allow it—and even implied threats of physical violence have to be taken seriously.

  Will hadn’t intended to frighten me. He just wanted to find his wife.

  “I know it’s frustrating,” I told him, “but it’s the best way to find out something we didn’t know before.”

  “We’ve been through the whole building,” he snapped. “The most we’ve got is a neighbor a couple of floors up who heard a thump.”

  “Which tells us there wasn’t much of a fight,” I said, “or they’d have probably heard it. Fights are loud, Will, even when only one person is fighting. A building like this, everyone knows it when the neighbor beats his wife.”

  “Somebody should have heard her scream.”

  “Maybe it wasn’t as loud as you thought. It was right in your ear. And it upset you. If it ended quickly enough, it might not even have woken anyone up.”

  I looked out the hallway window, toward more of the same sort of apartment building across the parking lot. Will wasn’t going to be terribly helpful in his current state. “I’m going to check across the lot, see if anyone happened to see or hear anything last night. I want you to call Andi and Marcy. Get them over here if you can reach them. After that, go over your phone’s caller ID, Georgia’s cell phone’s caller ID, her e-mail. See if anyone odd has been in contact with her.”

  “Okay,” he said, frowning—but nodding.

  “Control your emotions, Will. Stay calm,” I told him. “Calm’s the best way to think, and thinking’s the best way to find Georgia and help her.”

  He inhaled deeply, still nodding. “Look, Sergeant. . . . One of the guys in that building . . . Maybe you shouldn’t go over there by yourself.”

  I smiled sweetly at him.

  He lifted his empty hands as if I’d pointed a gun. “Right. Sorry.”

  THREE BUILDINGS HAD apartments in them that faced out on the common parking lot in general, and had a view of the Bordens’ apartment in particular. I stood in the parking lot, looking up at the windows for a moment, and then started with the building on the left.

  Most of an hour later, I hadn’t learned anything else, and I figured out my main problem: I wasn’t Harry Dresden.

  Dresden would have looked around with a vague expression on his face and wandered around, bumping into things and barely comporting himself with professional caution, even at a crime scene. He’d ask a few questions that wouldn’t make much sense on the surface, make a few remarks he thought were witty, and glibly insult anyone who appeared to be a repressive authority figure. Then he’d do something that didn’t make any goddamn sense, and produce results out of thin air, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of his hat.

  If Harry were here, he could have taken some hairs out of Georgia’s hairbrush, done something stupid-looking with them, and followed her across the town or the state or, for all I knew, to the other side of the universe. He could have told me more about what had happened at Georgia’s than I could have known, maybe even identified the perp, in general or specifically. And, if things got hot when we went after the bad guy, he would have been there, throwing fire and lightning around as if they were his own personal toys, created especially and exclusively for him to play with.

  Watching Dresden operate was usually one of two things: mildly amusing or positively terrifying. On a scene, his whole personal manner always made me think of autistic kids. He never met anyone’s eyes for more than a flickering second. He moved with the sort of exaggerated caution of someone who was several sizes larger than normal, keeping his hands and arms in close to his body. He spoke a little bit softly, as if apologizing for the resonant baritone of his voice.

  But when something caught his attention, he changed. His dark, intelligent eyes would glitter, and his gaze became something so intense that it could start a fire. During the situations that changed from investigation to desperate struggle, his whole being shifted in the same way. His stance widened, becoming more aggressive and confident, and his voice rose up to become a ringing trumpet that could have been clearly heard from opposite ends of a football stadium.

  Quirky nerd, gone. Terrifying icon, present.

  Not many “vanillas,” as he called nominally normal humans, had seen Dresden standing his ground in the fullness of his power. If we had, more of us would have taken him seriously—but I had decided that for his sake, if nothing else, it was a good thing that his full capabilities went unrecognized. Dresden’s power would have scared the hell out of most people, just like it had scared me.

  It wasn’t the kind of fear that makes you scream and run. That’s fairly mild, as fear goes. That’s Scooby Doo fear. No. Seeing Dresden in action filled you with the fear that you had just become a casualty of evolution—that you were watching something far larger and infinitely more dangerous than yourself, and that your only chance of survival was to kill it, immediately, before you were crushed beneath a power greater than you would ever know.

  I had come to terms with it. Not everyone would.

  In fact . . . it might be for that very reason that someone had put the hit on him. A bullet that strikes from long range and goes cleanly through a human body, and then through the hull of a boat, twice, leaving a series of neat holes, is almost certainly a very high-powered rifle round. A professional rifleman shooting from a good way out was one of the things Dresden had acknowledged had a real chance of taking him out cleanly. He might be a wizard, a wielder of tremendous power and knowledge (as if they’re any different), but he wasn’t immortal.

  Quick, tough, tricky as hell, sure. But not untouchable.

  Not in any number of senses. I should know, having touched him—even if I hadn’t touched him anywhere near soon or often enough. . . .

  And now I never would.

  Dammit.

  I pushed thoughts of the man out of my head before I started crying again. It’s hard enough to pull off an air of authority when you’re five feet tall, without also having red, watery eyes and a running nose.

  Dresden was gone. His cheesy jokes and his corny sense of humor were gone. His ability to know the unknowable, to fight the unfightable, and to find the unfindable was gone.

  The rest of us were just going to have to carry on as best we could without him.

  I KNOCKED ON doors and talked to a lot of people, most of them college-age kids attending school in town. I got a whole lot of nothing about Georgia, though I did get tips on some drug sales that had gone down in the parking lot. I’d pass them on to the right people on the force, where they would become more scenery for the endless march of the war on drugs and wouldn’t amount to anything. The tips did prove the point I’d made to Will, though: Neighbors see things. Maybe I just hadn’t talked to the right neighbor yet.

  When I hit building three, I felt the change in climate as I went through the door. It was more run-down than the other apartments. Some fresh graffiti marked an interior wall. More of the doors had double dead bolts on them. The carpet was old and stained. The pane of a window had been broken out and replaced with a piece of wood. The whole plac
e screamed that unpleasant sorts were lurking about, making the building’s super reluctant to maintain the halls and foyer, maybe forcing him to continue dealing with problems and damage over and over again.

  I couldn’t hear any music.

  That’s unusual in buildings like that one, mostly inhabited by students. Kids love their music, however mind-numbing or ear-rending it might be, and you can almost always hear at least a beat thumping somewhere nearby.

  Not here, though.

  I kept my eyes open, tried to grow a new pair for the back of my head, and started knocking on doors.

  “NO,” LIED A small, fragile-looking woman who said her name was Maria, a resident of the third floor. She hadn’t opened the door more than the security chain allowed. “I didn’t hear or see anything.”

  I tried to make my smile reassuring. “Ma’am, the way this usually works is that I ask you a question, and then you tell me a lie. If you give me a dishonest answer before I have the chance to ask the question, it offends my sense of propriety.”

  Her head shook in quick, jerky spasms as her eyes widened. “N-no. I’m not lying. I don’t know anything.”

  Maria tried to shut the door. I got my boot into it first. “You’re lying,” I said, gently. “You’re scared. I get that. I’ve gotten the same treatment from almost everyone in the building.”

  She looked away from me, as if seeking an escape route. “I’ll c-call the police.”

  “I am the police,” I said. Which was technically true. They hadn’t fired me yet.

  “Oh, God,” she said. She shook her head more and more, desperation in the gesture. “I don’t want to be . . . I can’t be seen talking to you. Go away.”

  I lifted my eyebrows. “Ma’am, please. If you’re in trouble . . .”

  I wasn’t sure she’d even heard me. I’d seen women like her often enough to know the look. She was terrified of something, probably a husband or boyfriend or a string of husbands and boyfriends, and maybe a father before that. She was living scared, and she’d been doing it for a long time. Fear had ground away at her, and the only way she’d been able to survive was by capitulating.

  Maria was damaged goods. She shook her head, sobbing, and just started pushing at the door. I was about to pull my foot out and go away. You can’t force someone to accept your help.

  “Is there some kind of problem here?” asked a booze-roughened voice.

  I turned to face a wooly mammoth of a man. He was well over six feet tall and probably weighed three of me, though more of it was mass than muscle. He wore a white undershirt that showed off his belly, and a button-down shirt with the name RAY embroidered on one breast.

  He looked at me and at the apartment door and scowled. “Mary, you got some kind of problem?”

  Maria had gone still, like a rabbit that suspects a predator is nearby. “No, Ray,” she whispered. “It’s nothing.”

  “Sure as hell don’t sound like nothing,” Ray said. He folded his arms. “I’m trying to get the city out here to fix the lights on the street and the fuse box, and you’re making enough noise to fuck up my conversation all the way down the hall.”

  “I’m sorry, Ray,” Maria whispered.

  Something flickered behind Ray’s eyes, an ugly little light. “Jesus, I give you all that extra time to pay off on the rent, and you treat me like this?”

  Maria sounded as though someone were strangling her. “It was an accident. It won’t happen again.”

  “We’ll talk,” he said.

  Maria flinched as if the words had smeared her with grime.

  My hand clenched into a fist.

  Well, dammit.

  I’d seen Ray’s type before, too—bullies who never managed to outgrow the playground; people who liked having power over others and who controlled them through fear. He was big, and he thought that made him more powerful than everyone else. The worm probably had a record, probably had done some time, probably for something fairly gutless. For guys like Ray, sometimes prison only convinces them what dangerous badasses they are, serving as a confirmation and validation of their status as predators.

  Ray looked from Maria to me, with that same ugly light in his eyes.

  “You’re the super?” I asked.

  He grunted in Martian. Fuck off and die.

  It’s an expressive language, Martian.

  “What’s it to you?” he asked.

  “I’m the curious sort,” I said.

  “Fuck off and die,” Ray said, in English, this time. “Get out.” He looked past me to Maria. “Close that goddamn door.”

  “I—I’ve been trying,” Maria said. My foot and my heavy black work boot were both still between the door and its frame.

  Flat rage hit Ray’s eyes, and it was aimed at Maria. That made up my mind for me. Ray was obviously an abuser and one who took out his frustrations wherever he damn well pleased instead of upon their source. He was going to be unhappy with me, and when he realized he couldn’t take it out on me, Maria would be the recipient of his rage. It more or less obliged me to protect her.

  And I wasn’t going to enjoy doing it even one little bit, either. Honest.

  “Get your foot out of the door before I tear it off,” Ray growled.

  “Suppose I don’t,” I said.

  “Last chance,” Ray said, his eyes narrowing to slits. He was breathing faster, now, and I could see sweat beading on his brow. “Get out of here. Now.”

  “Or what?” I asked, mildly. “You gonna hit me, Ray?”

  Self-control was not one of Ray’s strong suits. He spat out the word “Bitch,” spraying spittle with it as he did. He moved toward me, all three-hundred-and-change pounds of him, his hands balled into fists the size of cantaloupes.

  There was something Ray didn’t know about me: I know martial arts.

  I’m not a truly advanced student, but I’ve practiced every day since I was seventeen. I started with Aikido, then Wing Chun, then Jujitsu. I’ve studied Kali, Savate, Krav Maga, Tae Kwan Do, Judo, boxing, and Shaolin Kung Fu. It sounds impressive laid out like that, but it really isn’t. Once you get two or three arts down, the next dozen or so come pretty quick. Since they are all addressing the same problem, and because human bodies are human bodies, regardless of which continent you’re on, they share characteristic motions and timing.

  Ray swept a fist at me in a looping punch a kiddie-league fighter could have avoided, so I took my foot out of Maria’s door and ducked it. He kept coming forward in a fleshy avalanche, while I went under his arm and took a pair of steps to one side on a diagonal angle. He tried to grab me as I slipped loose, but he wound up losing his balance badly in doing it. I gave him a helpful push with the first two knuckles of my left fist, right in the kidney.

  Ray smashed into the drywall and left dents. I thought about how long it had taken him to build up speed, and I took several steps back. He turned, screaming a vicious oath, and came at me, gathering sluggish momentum like an overloaded tractor trailer. I had to back up another pair of steps to give him enough space to move into a wobbling run.

  He didn’t bother with a punch this time. He simply grabbed at me with his huge arms. I timed it carefully, and dropped to the floor at the last instant, sweeping my leg out in an almost-gentle kick that did nothing except prevent his right foot from proceeding forward and to the floor in proper rhythm with his left.

  The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Ray fell pretty hard.

  He staggered up to his hands and knees and swiped a paw at me in another grab.

  Jesus Christ. Basic self-defense instructors would kill to have a video of this. He was coming at me with every stupid-aggressive move he possibly could, as if working his way through a list.

  There were a lot of things I could have done with the gift he’d made me of his hand, but in real conflict, I don’t get fancy. I go with simple, fast, and reliable. I let him grab my wrist, then broke his grip, wrapped him into a wrist lock, and applied pressure.

  That kind
of hold has very little to do with muscle or mass. That one is all about exploiting the machinery of the human body. It wouldn’t have mattered if Ray was in shape. He could have looked like Schwarzenegger as Conan, and he would have been just as helpless. Human joints are all built to more or less the same specifications, out of similar materials, no matter how much muscle or lard is on top of them. They’re vulnerable, if you know how to use them against your opponent.

  I did.

  Three hundred plus pounds of body odor, stupid and mean, slammed down onto the worn, dirty carpeting in the hallway, as if dropped from a crane.

  While he lay there, stunned, I twisted his wrist straight up and behind him, keeping his arm locked straight with my other hand. From there, I could literally take his arm out of his shoulder socket with about as much effort as it would take to push a grocery cart. And I could make him hurt—a lot, if need be—in order to discourage him from trying any more stupid moves.

  Being Ray, he tried stupid again, screaming and thrashing against the lock. I sighed and kept control, and he and his face relived his crushing impact with the carpet. We repeated that several times, until the lesson began to drill its way through to Ray—he wasn’t going anywhere. It would hurt if he tried.

  “So I’ve been talking to people in several buildings,” I said in a calm, conversational tone. Ray was puffing like an engine. “I was wondering if you could tell me if you saw anything odd or unusual last night? Probably between two and three in the morning?”

  “You’re breaking my fucking arm!” Ray growled—or tried to. It had been watered down with whine.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “If I broke your arm, you’d hear a snapping sound. It sounds a lot like a tree branch breaking, actually, though a little more muffled. What you have to worry about is me dislocating your arm at the shoulder and elbow. That’s worse, overall. Just as painful and it takes a hell of a lot more effort to recover.”