by Jim Butcher
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.
“Benn!” Denton shouted. He lunged for her, heedless of the gun, and got between the armed woman and us. I could hear him talking to her in a low, urgent voice.
“You crazy bitch!” I shouted. “What is the matter with you?”
The two other FBI guys and several patrol officers from outside came running. Murphy grunted and elbowed me in the gut, urgently. I grunted back and moved off of her. Both of us climbed to our feet unhurt.
“What the hell happened?” demanded one of the officers, an older man with thinning grey hair.
Denton turned to the officer, calm and cool. “Misfire. There was a misunderstanding and Agent Benn’s weapon accidentally discharged.”
The officer rubbed at his scalp and eyed Murphy. “Is that true, Lieutenant?”
“Like hell!” I said. I pointed a finger at Benn. “This crazy bi—”
Murphy jammed an elbow into my stomach and glared at me. “That’s true,” Murphy said, while I rubbed at my gut. “It happened just like Agent Denton said. An accident.”
I stared at her. “Murph, give me a break. This woman—”
“Had an accident with her weapon,” Murphy said, voice hard. “Could have happened to anyone.” Murphy turned her glare on the aging officer, and he blinked mildly at her, then shrugged.
Denton turned back to us and studied Murphy intently for a second. Then he nodded. “Roj, George. Why don’t you two make sure the Lieutenant is all right and help her to her car?”
“Sure, sure, Phil,” said a skinny kid with red hair, big ears, and freckles. “Uh, Mr. Dresden, Lieutenant Murphy. Why don’t we go outside and get some air? I’m Roger Harris, and this is Agent Wilson.”
The other FBI guy, a bulky, overweight man in his late forties, his hair receding and his gut overhanging his belt, just beckoned us to follow him and walked toward the door. Murphy glared at Denton for a moment, then spun on her heel and stalked after the bulky Wilson. I followed her.
“I can’t believe that. You all right? Why the hell didn’t you tell them what she did?” I asked Murphy, sotto voce.
“That bitch,” Murphy said back, not nearly as quiet. “She tried to sucker punch me.”
“She tried to ventilate you, Murph,” I countered.
Murphy let out a breath between her teeth, but kept walking. I glanced back at the room behind us and saw Spike’s torn and mangled body being surrounded by more police tape. Forensics had arrived, and the team was getting set to sweep the room. Denton was kneeling down beside Benn, who had her face in her hands, and looked as though she were weeping. Denton was watching me, his grey eyes calculating and expressionless, filing me away under “tall, slender, dark hair, dark eyes, hawkish features, no visible scars.”
I stared at him for a minute and got a hunch, a solid intuition of which I was completely sure. Denton was hiding something. He knew something, and he wasn’t talking. Don’t ask me how I knew it, but something about him, about the way the veins bulged in his forehead, or the way he held his neck so stiffly, made me think so.
“Um,” the kid, Harris, said. I blinked and turned to him. He opened the door for Murphy and me, and we walked outside. “Maybe give Deborah some slack. She’s really stressed out about these Lobo killings. She hasn’t slept much the past month. She knew one of the guys who got killed. She’s been tense ever since.”
“Shut up, Harris,” the overweight Agent Wilson said, his tone disgusted. “Just shut up.” He turned to the two of us and said in a calm voice, “Get the hell out of here. I don’t want to see either of you around a scene that isn’t on your turf, Lieutenant Murphy. Internal Affairs has enough to do, don’t you think?”
He turned and went back into the building. The redheaded kid gave us an apologetic, awkward smile, and then hurried to catch up with the overweight agent. I saw him shoot a glance back at me, his expression thoughtful. Then he was gone. The door shut, leaving Murphy and me on the outside, away from the investigation and the evidence at the crime scene.
I looked up through the clear night at the almost-full moon. Werewolves jumping through windows at gangster’s lackeys in unfinished restaurants. A mangled corpse in the middle of a blood-drenched floor. Berserk FBI field agents drawing guns and shooting to kill. A little kung fu, a little John Wayne, and a few casual threats.
So far, I thought, my nerves jangling, just one more night on the job.
Chapter Three
My stomach roiled around with disgust at the macabre sights inside the building, and with tension at what had nearly happened. One of my ears was still ringing from the sound of the gunshot. I was starting to shake all over now, the adrenaline rush fading and leaving me jumpy and wired. I stuck my hands in my duster’s pockets, careful of the bloodstained shard of glass wrapped in my handkerchief, and turned my face into the wind, closing my eyes.
Relax, Harry, I told myself. Calm down. Breathe in and out, and just keep doing it. See? You aren’t dead. Dead people don’t breathe like that. You aren’t Spike, all torn to pieces on the floor. You don’t have any bullet holes in you, either. You’re alive, and Murphy’s all right, and you don’t have to look at that eyeless face anymore.
But I could see the torn body, still, behind my eyelids. I could smell the ghastly stench of his opened innards. I could remember the blood, sticky on the dusty floor, congealing, thick with tiny flecks of drywall. I tasted bile in my throat, and fought to keep from throwing up.
I wanted to scream, to run, to wave my arms and kick something until I felt better. I could understand Agent Benn’s reaction, almost, if she had been working a string of k
illings like the one I’d just seen. You can’t stare at that much blood for very long without starting to see more of it everywhere else.
I just kept taking deep breaths, in and out. The wind was cool and fresh in my face, sharp with the smells of the coming autumn. October evenings in Chicago are chilly, breezy, but I love them anyway. It’s my favorite time of year to be outside. I eventually calmed down. Murphy must have been doing the same thing beside me, making herself relax. We both started walking back toward the car at the same time, no words needing to be passed between us.
“I . . .” Murphy began, and fell silent again. I didn’t look at her, didn’t speak. “I’m sorry, Harry. I lost control. Agent Denton is an asshole, but he does his job, and he was right. Technically speaking, I didn’t have any right to be on the scene. I didn’t mean to drag you into all this.”
She unlocked the doors and got in the car. I got in the passenger side, then reached out and plucked the keys from her hand as she began to start the engine. She quirked her head at me, narrowing her eyes.
I closed my hands around the keys. “Just sit down and relax for a while, Murph. We need to talk.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Harry,” she said.
“This is the thanks I get for saving your life. Twice, now. You’re going to hold out on me.”
“You should know how it works,” she said, scowling. But she settled back in her seat and looked out the windshield of the car. We could see the police, forensics, and the FBI suits moving back and forth inside the building. We were both quiet for a long time.
The funny thing was that the problems between Murphy and me came from the same source as the problems with Kim Delaney earlier tonight. Murphy had needed to know something to pursue an investigation. I could have given her the information—but it would have put her in danger to do so. I’d refused to say anything, and when I’d pursued the trail by myself all the way to its end, there had been some burning buildings and a corpse or two. There wasn’t enough evidence to bring any charges against me, and the killer we’d been after had been dealt with. But Murphy hadn’t ever really forgiven me for cutting her out of the loop.
In the intervening months, she’d called me in for work several times, and I’d given the best service I could. But it had been cool between us. Professional. Maybe it was time to try to bridge that gap again.
“Look, Murph,” I said. “We’ve never really talked about what happened, last spring.”
“We didn’t talk about it while it was happening,” she said, her tone crisp as autumn leaves. “Why should we start now? That was last spring. It’s October.”
“Give me a break, Murphy. I wanted to tell you more, but I couldn’t.”
“Let me guess. Cat had your tongue?” she said sweetly.
“You know I wasn’t one of the bad guys. You have to know that by now. Hell’s bells, I risked my neck to save you.”
Murphy shook her head, staring straight forward. “That’s not the point.”
“No? Then what is?”
“The point, Dresden, is that you lied to me. You refused to give me information that I needed to do my job. When I bring you in on one of my investigations, I am trusting you. I don’t just go around trusting people. Never have.” She took a grip on the steering wheel, her knuckles whitening. “Less than ever, now.”
I winced. That stung. What’s worse, she was in the right. “Some of what I knew . . . It was dangerous, Murph. It could have gotten you killed.”
Her blue eyes fixed on me with a glare that made me lean back against the car door. “I am not your daughter, Dresden,” she said, in a very soft, calm voice. “I am not some porcelain doll on a shelf. I’m a police officer. I catch the bad guys and I put their asses away, and if it comes down to it, I take a bullet so that some poor housewife or CPA doesn’t have to.” She got her gun out of its shoulder holster, checked the ammo and the safety, and replaced it. “I don’t need your protection.”
“Murphy, wait,” I said hastily. “I didn’t do it to piss you off. I’m your friend. Always have been.”
She looked away from me as an officer with a flashlight walked past the car, shining the light about on the ground as he looked for exterior evidence. “You were my friend, Dresden. Now . . .” Murphy shook her head once and set her jaw. “Now, I don’t know.”
There wasn’t much I could say to that. But I couldn’t just leave things there. In spite of all the time that had gone by, I hadn’t tried to look at things from her point of view. Murphy wasn’t a wizard. She had almost no knowledge of the world of the supernatural, the world that the great religion of Science had been failing to banish since the Renaissance. She had nothing to use against some of the things she encountered, no weapon but the knowledge that I was able to give her—and last spring I had taken that weapon away from her, left her defenseless and unprepared. It must have been hell for Murphy, to daily place herself at odds with things that didn’t make any sense, things that made forensics teams just shake their heads.
That’s what Special Investigations did. They were the team specially appointed by the mayor of Chicago to investigate all the “unusual crimes” that happened in the city. Public opinion, the Church, and official policy still frowned at any references to magic, the supernatural, vampires, or wizards; but the creatures of the spirit world still lurked about, trolls under bridges, cradle-robbing faeries, ghosts and spooks and boogers of every kind. They still terrorized and hurt people, and some of the statistics I’d put together indicated that things were only getting worse, not better. Someone had to try to stop it. In Chicago or any of its sprawling suburbs, that person was Karrin Murphy, and her SI team.
She had held the position longer than any of her many predecessors—because she had been open to the idea that there might be more than was dreamt of in Horatio’s books. Because she used the services of the country’s only wizard for hire.
I didn’t know what to say, so my mouth just started acting on its own. “Karrin. I’m sorry.”
Silence lay between us for a long, long time.
She gave a little shiver, finally, and shook her head. “All right,” she said, “but if I bring you in on this, Harry, I want your word. No secrets, this time. Not to protect me. Not for anything.” She stared out the window, her features softened in the light of the moon and distant streetlights, more gentle.
“Murphy,” I said, “I can’t promise that. How can you ask me to—”
Her face flashed with anger and she reached for my hand. She did something to one of my fingers that made a quick pain shoot up my arm, and I jerked my hand back by reflex, dropping the keys. She caught them, and jammed one of them in the ignition.
I winced, shaking my stinging fingers for a moment. Then I covered her hand with mine.
“Okay,” I said. “All right. I promise. No secrets.”
She glanced at me, at my eyes for a breath, and then looked away. She started the car and drove from the parking lot. “All right,” she said. “I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you because I need every bit of help I can get. Because if we don’t nail this thing, this werewolf, we’re going to have another truckload of corpses on our hands this month. And,” she sighed, “because if we don’t, I’m going to be out of a job. And you’ll probably end up in jail.”
Chapter Four
"Jail?” I said. "Jail? Hell, Murphy. Were you planning on mentioning this to me anytime soon?”
She shot me an irritated scowl, headlights of cars going the opposite way on the highway flaring across her face. “Don’t even start with me, Harry. I’ve had a long month.”
A dozen questions tried to fight their way out of my mouth. The one that ended up winning was, “Why didn’t you call me in on the other killings, last month?”
Murphy turned her eyes back to the road. “I wanted to. Believe me. But I couldn’t. Internal Affairs started riding me about what happened with Marcone and Victor Sells last spring. Someone got the idea that I was in cahoots with Ma
rcone. That I helped to murder one of his competitors and took out the ThreeEye drug ring. And so they were poking around pretty hard.”
I felt an abrupt twinge of guilt. “Because I was on the scene. You had that warrant out for me and then had it rescinded. And then there were all those rumors about me and Marcone, after the whole thing was over . . .”
Murphy’s lips compressed, and she nodded. “Yeah.”
“And if you’d have tried to tell me about it, it would have been throwing gasoline on the fire.” I rubbed at my forehead. And it would have gotten me looked at harder, too, by whoever was investigating Murphy. She had been protecting me. I hadn’t even considered what those rumors Marcone had spread might do to anyone besides myself. Way to go, Harry.
“One thing you’re not is stupid, Dresden,” she confirmed.
“A little naive, sometimes, but never stupid. IA couldn’t turn anything up, but there are enough people who are certain I’m dirty that, along with the people who already don’t like me, they can screw me over pretty hard, given the chance.”
