by Jim Butcher
Don’t get me wrong. I didn’t think Murphy was a princess in a tower. But at the end of the day, she was just one person, standing in defiance of powers that would regard her with the same indifference as might an oncoming tsunami, volcanic eruption, or earthquake. Life is precious, fragile, fleeting—and Murphy’s life was one of my favorites.
“Okay, Harry,” Murphy said. “Where do we get started?”
I felt awkward standing there while she and Butters sat at the table, but it wasn’t like I could pull out a chair. “Um. Maybe we get started with what you know about my . . . my shooting.”
She nodded and pulled on her cop face—her expression professionally calm, detached, analytical. “We don’t have much, officially speaking,” she said. “I came to pick you up and found the blood and a single bullet hole. There wasn’t quite enough to declare it a murder scene. Because the vic . . . because you were on the boat and it was in motion, there was no way to extrapolate precisely where the bullet came from. Probably a nearby rooftop. Because the bullet apparently began to tumble as it passed through your body, it left asymmetric holes in the walls of the boat. But forensics thinks it was something between a .223 assaultrifle round and a .338 magnum-rifle round; more likely the latter than the former.”
“I never got into rifles. What does that mean?”
“It means a sniper rifle or a deer rifle,” Butters clarified. “Not necessarily military. There are plenty of civilian weapons that fire rounds in those calibers.”
“We never found the bullet,” Murphy said. She took a deep breath. “Or the body.”
I noticed that both Murph and Butters were staring at me very intently.
“Uh,” I said. “I . . . sort of did that whole tunnel-of-light thing—which is a crock, by the way.” I bit down on a mention of Murphy’s father. “Um, I was sent back to solve the murder. Which . . . sort of implies a death. And they said my body wasn’t available, so . . .”
Murphy looked down and nodded.
“Huh,” Butters said, frowning. “Why send you back?”
I shrugged. “Said what came next wasn’t for whiners or rubberneckers.”
Murphy snorted. “Sounds like something my father would say.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Heh.”
Butters arched an eyebrow. His dark eyes flickered between me and Murphy, and thoughtful lines appeared on his face.
“Anyway,” I said. “That’s what you know officially, right? So . . . what else do you know?”
“I know it wasn’t Marcone,” Murphy said. “All of his troubleshooters have alibis that check out. So do he and Gard and Hendricks. I know which building the shot probably came from, and it wasn’t an easy one.”
“Four hundred and fifty yards,” Butters said. “Which means it was probably a professional gunman.”
“There are amateurs who can shoot that well,” Murphy said.
“As a rule, they don’t do it from buildings at their fellow Americans,” Butters replied. “Look, if we assume it’s an amateur, it could be anyone. But if we assume it was a professional—which is way more likely, in any case—then it gives us the beginning of an identity, and could lead us back to whomever he works for.”
“Even if we do assume that,” Murphy said, “I don’t have the access to information that I used to. We’d need to review TSA video records, security cameras—all kinds of things I can’t get to anymore.”
“Your brother-in-law can,” I said. “Dick can.”
“Richard,” she corrected me. “He hates that nickname.”
“Dick who?” Butters asked, looking between us.
I said, “Her brother-in-law,” at the same time she said, “My exhusband.”
Butters’s brow arched even farther and he shook his head. “Man. Catholics.”
Murphy gave him a gimlet look. “Richard runs by the book. He won’t help a civilian.”
“Come on, Murph,” I said. “You were married to the guy. You’ve got to have some dirt on him.”
She shook her head. “It isn’t a crime to be an asshole, Harry. If it was, I’d have put him away for life.”
Butters cleared his throat. “We could ask—”
“No,” Murphy and I said at the same time, and continued speaking over each other.
“The day I ask for that bastard’s help will be the day I—”
“—told you before, over and over, that just because he’s reasonable doesn’t mean he’s—”
“—a murderer and a drug dealer and a pimp, and just because Chicago’s corrupt government can’t put him away doesn’t mean—”
“—you were smarter than that,” Murphy finished.
Butters lifted his hands mildly. “Okay, okay. I was on board at no. No going to Marcone for help.” He paused and looked around the room as if he’d never seen it before. “Because that would be . . . unprecedented.”
“Wally,” Murphy said, one eyebrow arching dangerously.
He held up his hands again. “Uncle. I don’t understand your reasoning, but okay.”
“You think Marcone was behind it, Harry?” Murphy asked.
I shrugged. “Last time I saw him, he said he didn’t need to kill me. That I’d get myself killed without any help from him.”
Murphy frowned. It made her lip hurt and she winced, reaching up. The wince made it hurt worse, apparently, because fresh blood appeared. “Dammit. Well. You can take that a couple of different ways, can’t you?”
“Like how?”
Murphy looked at me. “Like maybe Marcone knew something was happening already, and that’s why he said he didn’t need to kill you. It wasn’t him, but it was still something he was aware of.”
I grunted. Marcone ran Chicago like his own personal clubhouse. He had legions of employees, allies, and flunkies. His awareness of what happened in his city wasn’t supernatural; it was better than that. He was rational, intelligent, and more prepared for a crisis than any man I’d ever seen. If the Eagle Scouts had some sort of Sith equivalent, Marcone was it.
If someone’s wet-work specialist had come to town, Marcone was very likely to have learned of it. He and his underworld network missed little.
“Dammit,” Murphy said, evidently coming to the same conclusions I had. “Now I have to talk to the scum.” She got out her little notepad and scribbled on it. “Butters, you said that Lindquist’s house had burned down?”
“Big-time,” said Butters.
I nodded. “According to the ghosts hanging around it, the Grey Ghost showed up—I didn’t tell you about the Grey Ghost, did I?”
“Mr. Lindquist filled us in after the shooting,” Butters said.
“Oh, right. Anyway, it showed up with several mortals and snatched him. We’ve got to get him back.”
Murphy nodded, still writing. “What happens if we don’t?”
“A bunch of serial killer–type ghosts start wandering around Chicago, looking for a good time. Ghosts like that can manifest—make themselves the next-best thing to real, Murph. Like the Nightmare. People will get hurt. A lot of them.”
Murphy’s mouth thinned into a line. She wrote on her notepad. “We’ll do triage in a minute. What else?”
“I found the gang who shot up your house last night,” I said.
The tip of Murphy’s pencil snapped against the notepad. She looked up at me, and her eyes were cold, furious. She spoke in a very quiet voice. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” I said. I paused for a moment to think about what I was going to say: Murphy’s temper was not a force to be invoked lightly. “I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about them anymore.”
“Why?” she asked, in her cop voice. “Did you kill them?”
There’d been a little too much intensity in that question. Wow. Murphy was clearly only too ready to go after these guys the minute she knew where they were.
I glanced at Butters, who looked like someone sitting near an armed explosive.
“No,” I said, working out my words carefull
y. If Murphy’s fuse was really as short as it seemed, I didn’t want her charging off to deal with Fitz and his poor crew in true Viking tradition. “But they don’t have the resources they had before. I don’t think they’re going to hurt anybody in the immediate future.”
“That’s your professional opinion, is it?”
“Yes.”
She stared at me for a minute, then said, “Abby was standing on my patio last night when they came by. She took a round in the belly during that attack. She didn’t get down fast enough. They don’t know if she’s going to live or not.”
I thought of the plump, cheerful little woman, and swallowed. “I . . . I didn’t know, Murph. I’m sorry.”
She continued speaking as if I hadn’t said anything. “There was a retiree living in the house behind mine. He used to give me tomatoes he grew in his garden every summer. He wasn’t as lucky as Abby. The bullet hit him in the neck while he was sleeping in bed. He had enough time to wake up, terrified, and knock the handset of his phone out of its cradle before he bled out.”
Hell’s bells. That put a different spin on things. I mean, I had been hoping to go for a no-harm, no-foul argument with Murphy. But if blood had been spilled and lives lost . . . Well. I knew Murphy. Whether or not she was a cop anymore, she wasn’t going to back away.
“Where are they?” she asked.
“This is not a time to kick down doors,” I told her. “Please hear me out.”
Her hand tightened into a fist, but she visibly took control of her anger, took a deep breath, and then nodded. “Go ahead.”
I told her about Fitz and his gang. I told her about Aristedes.
“I notice, Harry,” she said, “that you didn’t tell me where they are.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I, uh. I sorta told the kid I would help him. That you would help him.”
Murphy narrowed her eyes. “You did what?”
“They’re kids, Murph,” I said. “In over their heads. They need help.”
“They’ve killed at least one person, maybe more,” Murphy said. “There are still laws in this town, Dresden.”
“Send the cops in and it’ll get ugly. I’m not sure how much juice their boss has, but even if he can’t shoot, he’d be a nightmare for the police—even SI.”
Murphy frowned. “How sure are you about that?”
“Guys like him use fear and violence as daily tools. He won’t think twice about hurting a cop.”
Murphy nodded. “Then I’ll deal with him.”
“Murph, I know you can handle yourself, but—”
“Dresden, I’ve dealt with two men since you . . . since the shooting, who were skilled enough for Carlos to call them the next-best thing to full Council-quality warlocks. I’ve handled several lesser talents, too. The Fomor like to use them as officers and commanders. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’ve killed them,” I said quietly. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
She looked away. It was a moment before she answered. “With someone that powerful . . . there’s not really a choice. If you try to take them alive, they have plenty of time to kill you.”
I winced in sympathy for her. She might not be a cop anymore, but it was where her heart lay—with the law. She believed in it, truly believed that the law was meant to serve and protect the people of Chicago. When she was a cop, it had always been her job to make sure that those laws worked toward that purpose, in whatever way she could manage.
She loved serving her city under the rule of law, and that meant judges and juries got to do their job before the executioner stepped in. If Murphy had dispensed with that belief, regardless of how practical and necessary it had been, regardless if doing so had saved lives . . .
Butters had said that she was under stress. I now knew the nature of that stress: guilt. It would be ripping away steadily at her insides, at her conscience, scraping them both raw.
“They were all killers,” she said, though I don’t think she was talking to me. “Killers and kidnappers. And the law couldn’t touch them. Someone had to do something.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Someone always does.”
“The point is,” she continued, “that the way you deal with this kind of problem is to hit it with absolutely everything you’ve got, and to do it immediately. Before those spell-casting yahoos have enough time to fort up, bend people’s minds into defending them, or to start coming after you or someone you care about.” She looked up at me. “I need the address.”
“You don’t,” I said. “I’ll bring the kids to you. Once you get them away from Aristedes, he’s out of help and vulnerable. Then you can help Fitz and company.”
“Fitz and company,” she said in a flat tone, “are murderers.”
“But—”
“No, Harry. Don’t give me any rap about how they didn’t mean it. They opened fire with deadly weapons in a residential neighborhood. In the eyes of the law and anyone the least bit reasonable, It was an accident is unconvincing. They knew what could happen. Their intentions are irrelevant.”
“I know,” I said. “But these aren’t bad kids. They’re just scared. It drove them to a bad choice.”
“You’ve just described most of the gang members in this town, Harry. They don’t join the gang because they’re bad kids. They do it because they’re frightened. They want to feel like they belong somewhere. Safe.” She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter if they started out as good kids. Life changes them. Makes them something they weren’t.”
“What do you want to do?”
“Take a team to their hideout. Deal with the sorcerer. We’ll make every effort to avoid harming the others.”
“You’re going to open fire with deadly weapons on their home. Maybe you don’t want to hurt the kids, but you know what could happen. If you wind up with bodies on the floor, your intentions would be irrelevant. Is that what you’re telling me?”
Her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “You haven’t been here the past six months. You don’t know what it’s been like. You—” She pressed her lips together. Then she looked at me and stared, clearly waiting.
I said, very quietly, “No.”
She shook her head several times. Then she said, “The real Dresden wouldn’t hesitate.”
“The real Dresden would never have gotten a chance to see them. To talk to them. He’d just skip to the fight.”
She flipped her notepad closed with a snap of her wrist and stood. “Then we’ve covered what needs doing. There’s nothing more to discuss.”
Murphy got up and left the room without a word, her steps smooth and purposeful.
Butters rose and collected Bob and the little spirit radio. “I, uh . . . I usually follow along after her when she’s setting up something. Take care of the details. Excuse me.”
“Sure,” I said quietly. “Thanks for your help, Butters.”
“Anytime,” he said.
“You, too, Bob,” I said.
“De nada,” the skull replied.
Butters hurried out.
I was left standing in the conference room alone.
Chapter Nineteen
I stood there for several minutes, doing nothing. Not even breathing.
Doing nothing is difficult. Once you aren’t busy, your head starts chewing things over. Dark, bleak thoughts appear. You start to think about what your life means. If you’re a ghost, you start to think about what your death means.
Murphy was being slowly devoured from within by a guilty conscience. I had known her a long time. I knew how she thought. I knew what she held dear. I knew what it looked like when she was in pain. I had no doubt that I made the right call on that one.
But I also knew that she was a woman who wouldn’t kill another human, even if he were over-the-hill-and-around-the-bend crazy, unless it was absolutely necessary. No killing is easy for anyone of conscience—but Murphy had been facing that demon for a long time. Granted, she’d been hurt by my death (and let me tell you how furiou
sly frustrated it made me that I was powerless to have changed that). But why would her conscience start catching up to her now? Why develop a sudden case of the damsels when I’d asked her to get more information from her exhusband? Brick walls didn’t stop the woman when she had a mind to walk somewhere.
I noticed something, too, when we had been talking about the shot that had killed me and the shooter’s location, and gathering more information about potential assassins. Murphy hadn’t said much—but she’d not said a whole hell of a lot more.
She had never, not once, mentioned Kincaid.
Kincaid was a partially inhuman mercenary who worked for the scariest little girl on God’s green earth. He was centuries old and he was a phenomenon in a fight. He had somehow overcome the negative aspects of the human nervous system, at least as it applied to firing a weapon under pressure. I’d never seen him miss. Not once.
And it was he who had told me that if he wanted to kill me, he’d do it from at least half a mile away, with a heavy-duty rifle round.
Murphy knew as well as I did that the opinion of an assassin with centuries of experience would be invaluable in the investigation. Initially, I hadn’t suggested it, because Murph had kinda been dating the guy for a while, and seemed to care for him. So it seemed more appropriate to let her bring it up.
But she hadn’t.
She’d never mentioned him at all.
She’d run the meeting too rapidly, and was ready to fight with me over something, anything. The entire argument about Fitz and his crew had been a smoke screen.
The only question was for whose benefit it had been. Mine, so that a possibly crazy ghost wouldn’t go storming off for vengeance of some kind? Or had it been a veil of fog for her own benefit, because she couldn’t reconcile her view of Kincaid with that of the faceless person who had killed me?
That felt right. That she knew it in her heart and, without realizing it, was frantically scrambling to find a less painful truth with her head.
