Dead Beat df-7

by Jim Butcher

  We ran down the beach, past the beach house-a large structure built to resemble the top few decks of an old riverboat, giving the impression that the vessel had sunk into the sand of the beach. At the far end of the beach we would turn and come back. We went all the way down and back three times before I slowed the pace a little, and said, "So you wanna hear what's going on?"

  "Yeah," he said.

  "Okay." There was no one nearby, and by now the sun had risen enough to be peeking through the Chicago skyline. Mavra couldn't have been listening in herself, and it was unlikely any mortal accomplice could, either. It was as close to ideal privacy as I was likely to get. I started with the arrival of Mavra's package and told Thomas of the events of the entire evening.

  "You know what we should do?" Thomas asked when I was finished. "We should kill Mavra. We could make it a family project."

  "No," I said. "If we take her out, Murphy will be the one to suffer for it."

  "Yeah, yeah," Thomas said. "I'm pretty sure I know what Murphy would have to say about that."

  "I don't want it to come to that," I said. "Besides, whatever this Word of Kemmler is, there are some seriously nasty people after it. It's probably a good idea to make sure they don't get it."

  "Right," Thomas said. "So you keep it away from the nasty people so you can give it to the nasty vampire."

  "Not if I can help it," I said.

  "So Murphy gets burned anyway?" he asked.

  I narrowed my eyes. "Not if I can help it."

  "How are you going to manage that?"

  "I'm working on it," I said. "The first step is to find The Word of Kemmler, or the whole thing is a bust."

  "How do you do that?"

  "The map," I said. "I don't think these guys are running around working the major black magic for no reason. I need to check out where they've been and figure out what they were doing."

  "What about Butters?" Thomas asked.

  "For now we keep him behind my wards. I don't know why Grevane wanted him, and until I figure it out he's got to keep his head down."

  "I doubt Grevane was looking for a polka afficionado," Thomas said.

  "I know. It's got something to do with one of the bodies at the morgue."

  "So why not go there?" Thomas asked.

  "Because the guard was killed there. There's blood all over the place, maybe the guard's body, and God only knows what Grevane did to the place after we left. The cops will have it locked down hard by now, and they'll definitely want to have a nice long talk with anyone who might have been there. I can't afford to spin my wheels in an interrogation room right now. Neither can Butters."

  "So ask Murphy to look around," Thomas said.

  I ground my teeth together for a few steps. "I can't. Murphy's on vacation."

  "Oh," he said.

  "I'm watering her plants."

  "Right."

  "While she's in Hawaii."

  "Uh- huh," he said.

  "With Kincaid."

  Thomas stopped running.

  I didn't.

  He caught up to me a hundred yards later. "Well, that's a bitch."

  I grunted. "I think she wanted me to tell her not to go," I said. "I think that's why she came to see me."

  "So why didn't you?" he asked.

  "Didn't realize it until it was too late. Besides, she's not my girlfriend. Or anything. Not my place to tell her who she should see." I shook my head. "Besides… I mean, if it was going to be right with Murphy, it would have been right before now, right? If we got all involved and it didn't work out, it would really screw things up for me. I mean, most of my living comes from jobs for SI."

  "That's real reasonable and mature, Harry," Thomas said.

  "It's smarter not to try to complicate things."

  Thomas frowned at me for a moment. Then he said, "You're serious, aren't you?"

  I shrugged. "I guess so. Yeah."

  "Little brother," he said, "I simply cannot get over how stupid you are at times."

  "Stupid? You just told me it was reasonable."

  "Your excuses are," Thomas said, "but love isn't."

  "We're not in love!"

  "Never gonna be," Thomas said, "if you keep being all logical about it."

  "Like you're one to talk."

  Thomas's shoes hit the trail a little more sharply. "I know what it's like to lose it. Don't be an idiot, Harry. Don't lose it like I did."

  "I can't lose what I haven't ever had."

  "You have a chance," he said, a snarl in his words, and I had the sudden sense that he had come precariously close to violent action. "And that's more than I've got."

  I didn't push him. We got to the end of the trail and moved off it, slowing to walk down the beach, winding down. "Thomas," I said, "what's wrong with you today, man?"

  "I'm hungry," he said, his voice a low growl.

  "We can hit a McDonald's or something on the way home," I suggested.

  He bared his teeth. "Not that kind of hunger."

  "Oh." We walked awhile more, and I said, "But you fed just yesterday."

  He laughed, a short and bitter sound. "Fed? No. That woman… that wasn't anything."

  "She looked like she'd just run a marathon. You took from her."

  "I took." He spat the words. "But there's no substance to it. I didn't take deeply from her. Not from anyone anymore. Not since Justine."

  "But food is food, right?" I said.

  "No," he said. "It isn't."

  "Why?"

  "It isn't like that."

  "Then what is it like?"

  "There's no point in telling you," he said.

  "Why not?"

  "You couldn't understand," he said.

  "Not if you don't tell me, dolt," I said. "Thomas, I'm your brother. I want to understand you." I stopped and put my hand on his shoulder, shoving him just hard enough to make him turn to face me. "Look, I know it's not working out the way we hoped. But dammit, if you just go storming off every time you get upset about something, if you don't give me the chance to understand you, we're never going to get anywhere."

  He closed his eyes, frustration evident on his face. He started walking down the beach, just at the edge of what passed for surf in Lake Michigan. I kept pace. He walked all the way down the beach, then stopped abruptly and said, "Race me back. Beat me there, and I'll tell you."

  I blinked. "What kind of kindergarten crap is that?"

  His grey eyes flashed with anger. "You want to know what it's like? Beat me down the beach."

  "Of all the ridiculous, immature nonsense," I said. Then I hooked a foot behind Thomas's calf, shoved him down to the sand, and took off down the beach at a dead sprint.

  There's an almost primal joy in the sheer motion and power of running a race. Children run everywhere for a reason-it's fun. Grown-ups can forget that sometimes. I stretched out my legs, still loose from the longer jog, and even though I was running across sand, the thrill of each stride filled my thoughts.

  Behind me, Thomas spat out a curse and scrambled to his feet, setting out after me.

  We ran through the grey light. The morning had dawned cold, and even at the lakeside the air was pretty dry. Thomas got ahead of me for a couple of steps, looked back, and kicked his heel, flinging sand into my face and eyes. I inhaled some of it, started gasping and choking, but managed to hook my fingers in the back of Thomas's T-shirt. I tugged hard as he stepped, and I outweighed Thomas considerably. He stumbled again, and, choking and gasping, I got ahead of him. I regained my lead and held it.

  The last hundred yards were the worst. The cold, dry air and sand burned at my throat, that sharp, painful dryness that only a long run and hard breathing can really do to you. I swerved off the sand toward the parking lot, Thomas's footsteps close behind me.

  I beat him back to the SUV by maybe four steps, slapped the back of the vehicle with my hand, then leaned against it, panting heavily. My throat felt like it had been baked in a kiln, and as soon as I could manage it I took t
he keys out of my black nylon sports pouch. There were several keys on the ring, and I fumbled at them one at a time. After the third wrong guess I had a brief, sharp urge to break the window and grab the bottle of water I'd left sitting in the driver's seat. I managed to force myself to try the keys methodically until I found the right one.

  I opened the door, grabbed the bottle, twisted off the cap, and lifted it to ease the parched discomfort in my throat.

  I took my first gulp, and the water felt and tasted like it had come from God's own water cooler. It took the harshest edge off the burning thirst, but I needed more to ease the discomfort completely.

  Before I could swallow again, Thomas batted the water bottle out of my hand. It arched through the air and landed on the sand, spilling uselessly onto the beach.

  I spun on Thomas, staring at him in surprised anger.

  He met my gaze with weary grey eyes and said, "It's like that."

  I stared at him.

  "It's exactly like that." His expression didn't change as he went around and got into the SUV on the passenger side.

  I stayed where I was for a moment, trying to ignore my thirst. It was all but impossible to do so. I thought about living with that discomfort and pain hour after hour, day after day, knowing that all I had to do was pick up a vessel filled with what I needed and empty it to make me feel whole. Would I be able to content myself with a quick splash of relief now and then? Would I be able to take enough to keep me alive?

  For a time, perhaps. But time itself would make the thirst no easier to bear. Time would inevitably weigh me down. It would become more difficult to concentrate and to sleep, which would in turn undermine my self-control, which would make it more difficult to concentrate and sleep-a vicious cycle. How long would I be able to last?

  Thomas had done it for most of a year.

  I wasn't sure I would have done as well in his place.

  I got into the SUV, closed the door, and said, "Thank you."

  My brother nodded. "What now?"

  "We go to 7-Eleven," I said. "Drinks are on you."

  He smiled a little and nodded. "Then what?"

  I took a deep breath. The run had helped me clear some of the crap out of my head. Talking to my brother had helped a little more. Understanding him a little better made me both more concerned and a bit more confident. I had my head together enough to see the next step I needed to take.

  "The apartment. You keep an eye on Butters," I said. "I'm hitting these spots on the map to see what I can find. If I can't turn up anything on my own, I might have to go to the Nevernever for some answers."

  "That's dangerous, isn't it?" he said.

  I started the car and shrugged my shoulder. "It's a living."

  Chapter Thirteen

  I took a shower, got dressed, and left Thomas behind with the still-sleeping Butters. Thomas settled down on the couch with a candle, a book, and an old U.S. cavalry saber he'd picked up in an estate sale and honed to a scalpel's edge. I left the sawed-off shotgun on the coffee table within arm's reach, and Thomas nodded his thanks to me.

  "Keep an eye on him?" I asked.

  Thomas turned a page. "Nothing will touch him."

  Mouse settled down on the floor between Butters and the door, and huffed out a breath.

  I got into the SUV and got out Mort's map. I headed for the nearest magical hot spot marked in bloody ink on the map-the spot of sidewalk on Wacker.

  It was a bitch to find a parking place. It's never easy in Chicago, and I had a shot at a pretty good spot on the street, but while the Beetle would have managed just fine, the S.S. Loaner would have had to smash the cars on either side a few inches apart to fit. I wound up taking out a mortgage to pay for a parking space at a garage, walked a couple of city blocks, and proceeded down the street with my wizard's senses alert, feeling for the dark energy that the city's dead had found.

  I found the spot on the sidewalk outside of a corner pharmacy.

  It was so small I had walked almost completely through it before I felt it. It felt almost like walking into air-conditioning. The residual magic felt cold, like the other dark power I'd touched, terribly cold, and my skin erupted in goose bumps. I stopped on the spot, closed my eyes, and focused on the remaining energy.

  It felt strange somehow. Dawn had dispersed most of the energy that had been there, but even as an aftertaste of the magic that had been worked there, the cold was dizzying. I'd felt dark power similar to this before today-similar, but not identical. There was something about this that was unlike the horrible aura surrounding Grevane, or that I had sensed from wielders of black magic in my past. This was undeniably the same power, but it somehow lacked the greasy, nauseating sense of corruption I'd felt before.

  That was all I could sense. I frowned and looked around. There was a spot on the sidewalk that might have been a half-cleaned bloodstain, or might have been spilled coffee. Around me, business-day commuters came and went, some of them pausing to give me annoyed glares. Cars purred by on the street.

  I checked at the pharmacy, but the place had been closed the night before, and no one had been there or heard about anything out of the ordinary. I checked the neighboring places of business, but it was a part of town where not much was open after six or seven in the evening, and no one had seen or heard about anything out of the ordinary.

  Most of the time the investigation business is like that. You do a lot of looking and not finding. The cure for it is to do more looking. I walked back to the SUV and went to the next spot on the map, at the Field Museum.

  The Field Museum is on Lake Shore Drive, and occupies the whole block north of Soldier's Field. I felt a brief flash of gratitude that things usually went to hell during the workweek. If this had been a Sunday with the Bears at home, I'd have had to park and then backpack in from Outer Mongolia. As it was, I got a spot in the smaller parking lot in the same block as the museum, which cost me only a portion of the national gross income.

  I walked to the entrance from the parking lot, and slowed my steps for a few strides. There were two patrol cars and an ambulance parked outside the Field Museum 's main entrance. Ah hah. This stop looked like it might be a bit more interesting than the last one.

  The doors had just opened for normal visiting hours, and it cost me yet more of my money to get a ticket. My wallet was getting even more anorexic than usual. At this rate I wouldn't be able to afford to protect mankind from the perils of black magic. Hell's bells, that would be really embarrassing.

  I went in the front entrance. It's impressively big. The first thing my eyes landed on was the crown jewel of the Field Museum -Sue, the largest, most complete, and most beautifully preserved skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered. They're the actual petrified bones, too-none of this cheap plastic modeling crap for the tourists. The museum prided itself on the authenticity of the exhibit, and with reason. There's no way to stand in Sue's shadow, to see the bones of the enormous hunter, its size, its power, its enormous teeth, without feeling excruciatingly edible.

  Late October is not the museum's high traffic season, and I saw only a couple of other visitors in the great entrance hall. Museum security was in evidence, a couple of men in brown quasi-uniforms, and an older fellow with greying hair and a comfortable-looking suit. The man in the suit stood next to an unobtrusive doorway, talking to a couple of uniformed police officers, neither of which I recognized.

  I moseyed over closer to the three of them, casually browsing over various exhibits until I could get close enough to Listen in.

  "… damnedest thing," the old security chief was saying. "Never would have figured that this kind of business would happen here."

  "People are people," said the older of the two cops, a black man in his forties. "We can all get pretty crazy."

  The younger cop was a little overweight and had a short haircut the color of steamed carrots. "Sir, do you know of anyone who might have had some kind of argument with Mister Bartlesby?"

  "Doctor," the
security man said. "Dr. Bartlesby."

  "Right," said the younger cop, writing on a notepad. "But do you know of anyone like that?"

  The security man shook his head. "Dr. Bartlesby was a crotchety old bastard. No one liked him much, but I don't know of anyone who disliked him enough to kill him."

  "Did he associate with anyone here?"

  "He had a pair of assistants," the security chief replied. "Grad students, I think. Young woman and a young man."

  "They a couple?" the younger cop asked.

  "Not that I could tell," the security chief said.

  "Names?" the older cop asked.

  "Alicia Nelson was the girl. The guy was Chinese or something. Lee Shawn or something."

  "Does the museum have records on them?" the cop asked.

  "I don't think so. They came in with Dr. Bartlesby."

  "How long have you known the doctor?" the older cop asked.

  "About two months," the security chief said. "He was a visiting professor doing a detailed examination of one of the traveling exhibits. It's already been taken down and packed up. He was due to leave in a few more days."

  "Which exhibit?" the young cop asked.

  "One of the Native American displays," the security man supplied. "Cahokian artifacts."

  "Ka- what?" the older cop asked.

  "Cahokian," the security chief said. "Amerind tribe that was all over the Mississippi River valley seven or eight hundred years ago, I guess."

  "Were these artifacts valuable?" asked the older cop.

  "Arguably," the security chief said. "But their value is primarily academic. Pottery shards, old tools, stone weapons, that kind of thing. They wouldn't be easy to liquidate."

  "People do crazy things," the young cop said, still writing.

  "If you say so," the security chief said. "Look, fellas, the museum would really like to get this cleared up as quickly as possible. It's been hours already. Can't we get the remains taken out now?"

  "Sorry, sir," the older cop said. "Not until the detectives are done documenting the scene."

  "How long will that take?" the security chief asked.