by Jim Butcher
Molly blinked up at me. “It is?”
I put a hand to my chest and mimed an expression of shock. “Greene! I can hardly believe this. Did you lie to this young woman to frighten her? To make her think she was under arrest?”
“I didn’t lie,” Greene snarled.
“You just led her on,” I said, nodding. “Sure, sure. Not your fault if she interpreted you wrong. Say, let’s go back and check the tape and see where the mistake was.” I paused. “You are recording this, aren’t you? All on the record and aboveboard?”
Greene looked at me like he wanted to kick my nuts up into my skull. “You’ve got nothing but speculation. Get out. Or, as lead investigator, I will have you barred from the hotel.”
“That a threat?” I asked him.
“Believe it.”
I made a show of rubbing at my mouth. “Oh, man. I’m having quite the moral quandary. Because if you do that to me, then hell, maybe the press would find out that you’re dismissing professional consultants with a positive track record with the city.” I leaned forward and added casually, “Oh. And they might find out that you are illegally interrogating a juvenile.”
Greene stared at me, shock on his face. Even Agent Rick arched an eyebrow. “What?”
“A juvenile,” I enunciated, “i.e., one who cannot give you legal consent on her own. I took the liberty of sending for her parents. I’m sure that they and their attorney will have a whole lot of questions for you.”
“That’s blackmail,” Greene said.
“No, it’s due process,” I replied. “You’re the one who tried the end run around the law.”
Greene scowled at me and said, “You can talk all you want, but you’ve got no proof.”
My cheeks ached from smiling so much, and I chuckled.
The door, which had never fully closed, opened on cue. Lydia Stern stood there behind it, her press badge around her neck, a mini-tape recorder in her hand, held up so that Greene could clearly see it. “So, Detective,” she asked, “could you please explain why as a part of your investigation you are interrogating a juvenile without her parents’ consent? Is she a suspect in the crime? Or a witness to any of the events? And what about these rumors of interdepartmental noncooperation slowing down the investigation?”
Greene stared at the reporter. He shot a glance at Agent Rick.
Rick shrugged. “He’s got you. You took a chance. It didn’t pay off.”
Greene spat a word that authority figures oughtn’t say in front of juveniles, and then stomped out. Lydia Stern winked at me, then followed on his heels, recorder held out toward him, asking a steady stream of questions whose only reasonable answers would make Greene look like an idiot.
Rick watched him go and shook his head. Then he said to me, “What’s your stake in this?”
“The girl is my friend’s daughter,” I said. “Just looking out for her.”
He gave me a slight nod. “I see. Greene’s under a lot of pressure. I’m sorry you got treated like that.”
“Rick,” I said in a patient voice, “I’m not a teenage girl. Please don’t try to good-cop me.”
His polite, interested expression vanished for a second behind a quick, boyish grin. Then he shrugged and said, “It was worth trying.”
I snorted.
“You know he can get the subpoena. It’s just a question of running through channels.”
I rose. “That’s not my problem. I’ll leave it to the Carpenters’ attorney.”
“I see,” he said. “You actually are interfering with the investigation. He could probably make it stick.”
“Come on, Agent. I’m protecting the rights of a juvenile. The ACLU would eat that raw.” I shook my head. “Besides. What you’re doing is wrong. Bullying girls. Hell’s bells, man, that’s low.”
A flicker of anger touched Agent Rick’s expression. “Dresden, I know you don’t have a concealed carry permit. You want me to suspect you of carrying a weapon and search you for it?”
Oops. I thought nervously of the revolver in my backpack. If Agent Rick wanted to make an issue of it, I could be in trouble—but I didn’t want him to know that. I tried to shake it off with a nonchalant shrug. “How is that going to help stop the killer before he strikes again?”
Rick tilted his head to one side and frowned at me. Dammit, I’ve got to get a better poker face. He oriented on me, eyes searching over me for possible places to hide a gun. “Irrelevant,” he replied. “If you’re breaking the law, you’re breaking the law.”
From the doorway there was an impatient sigh, and then Murphy said, “Would it kill you to stop being an asshole for five minutes, Rick?”
I hadn’t noticed her arrival, and judging from Agent Rick’s expression, neither had he.
“He’s a consultant for SI, which is also working the case. We don’t have the time to get involved in a pissing contest. People are in danger. We need to work together.”
Rick glared at her, then reined in his temper and shrugged a shoulder. “You may be right. But Dresden, I want you to consider leaving of your own will. If you keep interfering, I’ll arrest you and toss you in the clink for twenty-four hours.”
“No,” Murphy said, entering the room. “You won’t.”
He rounded on her, eyes narrowed. “Dammit, Karrin. You never know when to quit, do you?”
“Of course I do,” she said, setting her jaw. “Never.”
Agent Rick shook his head. He slammed open the door and departed.
Murphy watched him go. Then she sighed and asked, “Are you all right, miss?”
Molly nodded somewhat numbly. “Yes. Just tired.”
A moment later, Sandra Marling hurried in, looked around at all of us, and then went over to give Molly a hug. The girl hugged back, tight.
“Did you reach them?” I asked Sandra.
“Yes. Mrs. Carpenter is on the way.”
Molly shuddered.
“Good,” I said. “Could you stay with Molly until she arrives?”
“Of course.”
I nodded and said to Molly, “Kid, things are getting complicated. I want you to go with your mom. All right?”
She nodded, slowly, without looking up.
I sighed and got up out of my chair. “Good.”
I left, Murphy and Mouse flanking me as I headed back into the hotel. “Nice guy, Rick,” I commented. “Maybe a little manipulative.”
“Just a tad,” Murphy said. “What happened?”
I told her.
She let out a wicked chuckle. “Wish I could have seen the look on their faces.”
“Next time I’ll take a picture.”
She nodded. “So what’s our next move?”
“Hey, we’re in a hotel.” I bobbed my eyebrows at her. “Let’s get a room.”
Under peaceful circumstances, I’m sure that no rooms would have been available. Obviously, though, circumstances were far from peaceful, and there had been a minor avalanche of cancellations and early departures from the hotel—which only goes to show that people occasionally demonstrate evidence of sound judgment. The convention might have doubled the number of folks attending, but that didn’t mean that they wanted to sleep here.
There was a room available on the fifth floor. I paid an extra fee to allow Mouse to stay, and we got checked in.
There was no one else in the elevator, and we rode in a silence that became increasingly tense. I shifted my weight from side to side and fiddled with one of the two plastic cards the desk clerk had given us. I cleared my throat.
“So here we are,” I said. “Heading up to our hotel room.”
Murphy’s cheeks turned pink. “You are a pig, Dresden.”
“Hey, I didn’t put any innuendo into that. You did it yourself.”
She rolled her eyes, smiling a little.
I watched numbers change on the elevator panel. I coughed. “Yes, sirree. Alone together.”
“It’s a little weird,” she admitted.
“A littl
e weird,” I agreed.
“Should it be?” she asked. “I mean, we’re just working together. We’ve done that before.”
“We haven’t done it in a hotel room.”
“Yes, we have,” Murphy said.
“But they all had corpses in them.”
“Ah. True.”
“No corpses this time,” I said.
“Heh,” Murphy said. “The night is young.”
Her reminder of the dangers before us put a bullet through the head of that conversation. Her smile vanished, and her face regained its usual color. We went the rest of the way in silence, until the elevator doors opened. Neither one of us moved to get out. It almost felt like there was some kind of invisible line drawn across the floor.
The silence stretched. The doors tried to close. Murphy mashed down on the Door Open button with her thumb.
“Harry,” she said finally, her voice very quiet, her blue eyes focused into distance. “I’ve been thinking about…you know. Us.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“How much thinking?”
She smiled a little. “I’m not sure, really. I don’t think I wanted to admit that…you know.”
“Things might change between us?”
“Yes.” She frowned at me. “I’m not sure this is something you would want.”
“Between the two of us,” I said, “I think I probably have more insight into that one.”
She frowned. “How do you know it’s what you want?”
“Last Halloween,” I said, “I wanted to murder Kincaid.”
Murphy glanced down as her cheeks turned pink. “Oh.”
“Not literally,” I said, then paused. “Well. I guess it was literally. But the urge died down a little.”
“I see,” she said.
“Are you and him…?” I asked, leaving the question open.
“I saw him at New Year’s,” she said. “But we aren’t in anything deep. Neither of us want that. We’re friends. We enjoy the company. That’s all.”
I frowned. “We’re friends too,” I said. “But I’ve never taken your pants off.”
“We’re different,” she said, her blush renewing. She gave me an oblique look from beneath pale eyelashes. “Is it something you want?”
My heart sped up a little. “Uh. Pants removal?”
She arched a brow and tilted her head, waiting for an answer.
“Murph, I haven’t been with a woman for…” I shook my head. “Look, you ask any guy if he wants to have sex and he’s going to say yes. Generally speaking. It’s in the union manual.”
Her eyes sparkled. “Including you?” she pressed.
“I’m a guy,” I said. “So yes.” I frowned, thinking about it. “And…and no.”
She smiled at me and nodded. “I know. You couldn’t do casual. You commit yourself too deeply. You care too much. We couldn’t have something light. You would never settle for that.”
She was probably right. I nodded.
“I don’t know if I could give you what you want, Harry.” Then she took a deep breath and said, “And there are other reasons. We work together.”
“I noticed.”
She didn’t quite smile. “What I mean is…I can’t let relationships come close to my job. It isn’t good for either.”
I said nothing.
“I’m a cop, Harry.”
My belly twisted a little as I realized the rejection in the words, and the lack of any room for compromise. “I know you are.”
“I serve the law.”
“You do,” I said. “You always have.”
“I can’t walk away from it. I won’t walk away from it.”
“I know that too.”
“And…we’re so different. Our worlds.”
“Not really,” I said. “We sort of hang around in the same one, most of the time.”
“That’s work,” she said quietly. “My work isn’t everything about me. Or it shouldn’t be. I’ve tried a relationship built on having that in common.”
“Rick,” I said.
She nodded. Pain flickered in her eyes. I never would have seen that a few years before. But I’d seen Murphy in good times and bad—mostly bad. She’d never say it, never want me to say anything about it, but I knew that her failed marriages had wounded her more deeply than she would ever admit. In a way, I suspected that they explained some of her professional drive and ambition. She was determined to make the career work. Something had to.
And maybe she’d been hurt even more deeply than that. Maybe badly enough that she wouldn’t want to leave herself open to it again. Long-term relationships have the potential for long-term pain. Maybe she didn’t want to go through it again.
“What if you weren’t a cop?”
She smiled faintly. “What if you weren’t a wizard?”
“Touché. But indulge me.”
She tilted her head and studied me for a minute. Then she said, “What happens when Susan comes back?”
I shook my head. “She isn’t.”
Her tone turned dry. “Indulge me.”
I frowned. “I don’t know,” I said quietly. “We decided to break it off. And…I suspect we’d see a lot of things very differently now.”
“But if she wanted to try again?” Murphy asked.
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Let’s say we get together,” Murphy said. “How many kids do you want?”
I blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“I don’t…” I blinked a few more times. “I hadn’t really thought about it.” So I thought about it for a second. I thought about the merry chaos of the Carpenter household. God, I’d have given anything for that when I was little.
But any child of mine would inherit more than my eyes and killer chin. There were a lot of people who didn’t think much of me. A lot of not-people thought that way, too. Any child of mine would be bound to inherit some of my enemies, and worse, maybe some of my allies. My own mother had left me a legacy of perpetual suspicion and doubt, and nasty little surprises that occasionally popped out of the hoary past.
Murphy watched me, blue eyes steady and serious. “It’s a big question,” she said quietly.
I nodded, slowly. “Maybe you’re thinking about this too much, Murph,” I said. “Logic and reason and planning for the future. What’s in your heart doesn’t need that.”
“I used to think that, too.” She shook her head. “I was wrong. Love isn’t all you need. And I just don’t see us together, Harry. You’re dear to me. I couldn’t ask for a kinder friend. I’d walk through fire for you.”
“You already did,” I said.
“But I don’t think I could be the kind of lover you want. We wouldn’t go together.”
“Why not?”
“At the end of the day,” she said quietly, “we’re too different. You’re going to live for a long time, if you don’t get killed. Centuries. I’m going to be around another forty, fifty years at the most.”
“Yeah,” I said. It was one of those things I tried really hard not to dwell on.
She said, even more quietly, “I don’t know if I’ll get serious with a man again. But if I do…I want it to be someone who will build a family with me. Grow old with me.” She reached up and touched the side of my face with warm fingers. “You’re a good man, Harry. But you couldn’t be what I need, either.”
Murphy took her thumb from the button and left the elevator.
I didn’t follow her right away.
She didn’t look back.
Stab.
Twist.
God, I love being a wizard.
Chapter Twenty-three
The room was typical of my usual hotel experience: clean, plain, and empty. I made sure the blinds were pulled, looked around, and shoved the small round table at one side of the room over against the wall to leave me some open space in the middle of the floor. I slung my backpack down on the bed.
&n
bsp; “Need anything?” Murphy asked. She stood in the doorway to the room. She didn’t want to come in.
“Think I have it all. Just need some quiet to get it set up.” There was no reason not to give Murphy a way out of the awkwardness the conversation had brought on. “There’s something I’m curious about. Maybe you could check it out.”
“Pell’s theater,” Murphy guessed. I could hear some relief in her voice.
“Yes. Maybe you could cruise by it and see what’s to be seen.”
She frowned. “Think there might be something in there?”
“I don’t know enough to think anything yet, but it’s possible,” I said. “You get a bad feeling about anything, don’t hang around. Just vamoose.”
“Don’t worry,” she said. “I already planned to do that.” She went to the door. “Shouldn’t take me long. I’ll contact you in half an hour, let’s say?”
“Sure,” I said. Neither one of us voiced what we both were thinking—that if Murphy missed the check-in, she’d probably be dead, or dying, or worse. “Half an hour.”
She nodded and left, shutting the door behind her. Mouse went over to the door, sniffed at it for a moment, then walked in a little circle three times and settled down on the floor to sleep. I frowned down at the carpet and opened my backpack. Chalk wouldn’t do for a circle, not on carpet like that. I’d have to go with the old standby of fine, white sand. The maids would doubtless find it annoying to clean up, but life could be hard sometimes. I pulled out a glass bottle of specially prepared sand and put it on the table, along with the main blob of Play-Doh and Bob the skull.
Orange lights kindled in the skull’s eye sockets. “Can I talk now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “You been listening to things?”
“Yeah,” Bob said, depressed. “You are never going to get laid.”
I glared at the skull.
“I’m just sayin’,” he said, voice defensive. “It isn’t my fault, Harry. She’d probably bang you if you didn’t take it so godawful seriously.”
“The subject. Change it,” I suggested in a flat voice. “We’re working now.”
“Right,” Bob said. “So you’re planning on a standard detection web–ward for the building?”
“Yeah,” I said.
