by Butcher, Jim
He shook his head slowly. “It simply isn’t sufficient to prove that Morgan is innocent. The traitor within our ranks is real. He must be found. Someone must be held accountable for what happened to LaFortier—and not just for the sake of the Council’s membership. Our enemies must know that there are consequences to such actions.”
I nodded. “So not only prove Morgan innocent, but find the guy who did it, too. Maybe I can set the whole thing to music and do a little dance while I’m at it.”
“I feel obligated to point out that you approached me, Dresden.” He gave me his brittle smile again. “The situation must be dealt with cleanly and decisively if we are to avoid chaos.” He spread his hands. “If you can’t present that sort of resolution to the problem, then this conversation never happened.” His eyes hardened. “And I will expect your discretion.”
“You’d hang your own man out to dry. Even though you know he’s innocent.”
His eyes glittered with a sudden cold fire, and I had to work not to flinch. “I will do whatever is necessary. Bear that in mind as you ‘help’ me.”
A door opened upstairs, and in a few seconds Peabody began a precarious descent of the stairs, balancing his ledgers and folders as he did.
“Samuel,” the Merlin said, his eyes never leaving me. “Be so good as to provide Warden Dresden with a complete copy of the file on LaFortier’s murder.”
Peabody stopped before the Merlin, blinking. “Ah. Yes, of course, sir. Right away.” He glanced at me. “If you would come this way, Warden?”
“Dresden,” the Merlin said in a pleasant tone. “If this is some sort of ruse, you would be well-advised to be sure I never learn of it. My patience with you wears thin.”
The Merlin was generally considered to be the most capable wizard on the planet. The simple words with their implied threat were almost chilling.
Almost.
“I’m sure you’ll last long enough for me to help you out of this mess, Merlin.” I smiled at him and held up my hand, palm up, fingers spread, as if holding an orange in them. “Balls,” I said. “Vise. Come on, Peabody.”
Peabody blinked at me as I swept past him on the way to the door, his mouth opening and closing silently several times. Then he made a few vague, sputtering sounds and hurried to catch up with me.
I glanced back at the Merlin as I reached the door.
I could clearly see his cold, flat blue eyes burning with fury while he sat in apparent relaxation and calm. The fingers of his right hand twitched in a violent little spasm that did not seem to touch the rest of his body. For an instant, I had to wonder just how desperate he had to be to accept my help. I had to wonder how smart it was to goad him like that.
And I had to wonder if that apparent calm and restrained exterior was simply a masterful control of his emotions—or if, under the pressure, it had become some kind of quiet, deadly madness.
Damn Morgan, for showing up at my door.
And damn me, for being fool enough to open it.
Chapter Seventeen
Peabody went into an immaculate office lined with shelves bearing books arranged with flawless precision, grouped by height and color. Many of the shelves were loaded with binders presumably full of files and documents, similarly organized, in a dazzling array of hues. I files and documents, similarly organized, in a dazzling array of hues. I guess it takes all kinds of colors to make a bureaucratic rainbow.
I started to follow him inside, but he turned on me with a ferocious glare. “My office is a bastion of order, Warden Dresden. You have no place in it.”
I looked down at him for a second. “If I was a sensitive guy, that would hurt my feelings.”
He gave me a severe look over his spectacles and said, as if he thought the words were deadly venom and might kill me, “You are an untidy person.”
I put my hand over my heart, grinning at him. “Ow.”
The tips of his ears turned red. He turned around stiffly and walked into the office. He opened a drawer and started jerking binders out of it with more force than was strictly necessary.
“I read your book, by the way,” I said.
He looked up at me and then back down. He slapped a binder open.
“The one about the Erlking?” I said. “The collected poems and essays?”
He took a folder out of the binder, his back stiff.
“The Warden from Bremen said you got the German wrong on the title,” I continued. “That must have been kind of embarrassing, huh? I mean, it’s been published for like a hundred years or something. Must eat at you.”
“German,” said Peabody severely, “is also untidy.” He walked over to me with the folder, a pad of paper, an inkwell, and a quill. “Sign here.”
I reached out for the quill with my right hand, and seized the folder with my left. “Sorry. No autographs.”
Peabody nearly dropped the inkwell, and scowled at me. “Now see here, Warden Dresden—”
“Now, now, Simon,” I said, taking vengeance on behalf of the German-speaking peoples of the world. “We wouldn’t want to screw up anyone’s plausible deniability, would we?”
“My given name is Samuel,” he said stiffly. “You, Warden Dresden, may address me as Wizard Peabody.”
I opened the file and skimmed over it. It was modeled after modern police reports, including testimony, photographs, and on-site reports from investigating Wardens. The militant arm of the White Council, at least, seemed to be less behind the times than the rest of us dinosaurs. That was largely Anastasia’s doing. “Is this the whole file, Sam?”
He gritted his teeth. “It is.”
I slapped it shut. “Thanks.”
“That file is official property of the Senior Council,” Peabody protested, waving the paper and the ink. “I must insist that you sign for it at once.”
“Stop!” I called. “Stop, thief!” I put a hand to my ear, listened solemnly for a few seconds and shook my head. “Never a Warden around when you need one, is there, Sam?”
Then I walked off and left the little wizard sputtering behind me.
I get vicious under pressure.
The trip back was quieter than the one in. No B-movie escapees tried to frighten me to death—though there were a few unidentifiable bits wrapped up in spider silk, hanging from the trees where I’d established the pecking order, apparently all that was left of the bug I’d smashed.
I came out of the Nevernever and back into the alley behind the old meatpacking plant without encountering anything worse than spooky ambience. Back in Chicago, it was the darkest hour of night, between three and four in the morning. My head was killing me, and between the psychic trauma the skinwalker had given me, the power I’d had to expend during the previous day, and a pair of winter wonderland hikes, I was bone-weary.
I walked another five blocks to the nearest hotel with a taxi stand, flagged down a cab, and returned to my apartment. When I first got into the business, I didn’t think anything of sacrificing my sleeping time to the urgency of my cases. I wasn’t a kid in my twenties anymore, though. I’d learned to pace myself. I wouldn’t help anyone if I ran myself ragged and made a critical error because I was too tired to think straight.
Mister, my bobtailed grey tomcat, came flying out of the darkened apartment as I opened the door. He slammed his shoulder into my legs, startled me half to death, and nearly put me on my ass. He’s the next best thing to thirty pounds of cat, and when he hits me with his shoulder block of greeting I know it.
I leaned down to grab him and prevent him from leaving, and wearily let myself into the house. It felt a lot quieter and emptier without Mouse in it. Don’t get me wrong: me and Mister were roommates for years before the pooch came along. But it had taken considerable adjustments for both of us to get used to sharing our tiny place with a monstrous, friendly dust mop, and the sudden lack of his presence was noticeable and uncomfortable.
But Mister idly sauntered over to Mouse’s bowl, ate a piece of kibble, and then calmly tur
ned the entire bowl over so that kibble rolled all over the floor of the kitchen alcove. Then he went to Mouse’s usual spot on the floor and lay down, sprawling luxuriously. So maybe it was just me.
I sat down on the couch, made a call, left a message, and then found myself lacking sufficient ambition to walk all the way into my bedroom, strip the sheets Morgan had bloodied, and put fresh ones on before I slept.
So instead I just stretched out on the couch and closed my eyes. Sleep was instantaneous.
I didn’t so much as stir until the front door opened, and Murphy came in, holding the amulet that let her in past my wards. It was morning, and cheerful summer sunlight was shining through my well windows.
“Harry,” she said. “I got your message.”
Or at least, that’s what I think she said. It took me a couple of tries to get my eyes open and sit up. “Hang on,” I said. “Hang on.” I shambled into the bathroom and sorted things out, then splashed some cold water on my face and came back into the living room. “Right. I think I can sort of understand English now.”
She gave me a lopsided smile. “You look like crap in the morning.”
“I always look like this before I put on my makeup,” I muttered.
“Why didn’t you call my cell? I’d have shown up right away.”
“Needed sleep,” I said. “Morning was good enough.”
“I figured.” Murphy drew a paper bag from behind her back. She put it down on the table.
I opened it. Coffee and donuts.
“Cop chicks are so hot,” I mumbled. I pushed Peabody’s file across the table to her and started stuffing my face and guzzling.
Murphy went through it, frowning, and a few minutes later asked, “What’s this?”
“Warden case file,” I said. “Which you are not looking at.”
“The worm has turned,” she said bemusedly. “Why am I not looking at it?”
“Because it’s everything the Council has about LaFortier’s death,” I said. “I’m hoping something in here will point me toward the real bad guy. Two heads are better than one.”
“Got it,” she said. She took a pen and a notepad from her hip pocket and set them down within easy reach. “What should I be looking for?”
“Anything that stands out.”
She held up a page. “Here’s something,” she said in a dry tone. “The vic was two hundred and seventy-nine years old when he died.”
I sighed. “Just look for inconsistencies.”
“Ah,” she said wisely.
Then we both fell quiet and started reading the documents in the file.
Morgan had given it to me straight. A few days before, a Warden on duty in Edinburgh heard a commotion in LaFortier’s chambers. She summoned backup, and when they broke in, they found Morgan standing over LaFortier’s still-warm corpse holding the murder weapon. He professed confusion and claimed he did not know what had happened. The weapon had been matched to LaFortier’s wounds, and the blood had matched as well. Morgan was imprisoned and a rigorous investigation had turned up a hidden bank account that had just received a cash deposit of a hell of a lot of money. Once confronted with that fact, Morgan managed to escape, badly wounding three Wardens in the process.
“Can I ask you something?” Murphy said.
“Sure.”
“One of the things that make folks leery of pulling the trigger on a wizard is his death curse, right?”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “If you’re willing to kill yourself to do it, you can lay out some serious harm on your killer.”
She nodded. “Is it an instantaneous kind of thing?”
I pursed my lips. “Not really.”
“Then how long does it take? Minutes? Seconds?”
“About as long as it takes to pull a gun and plug somebody,” I said. “Some would be quicker than others.”
“A second or three, then.”
“Yeah.”
“Did Morgan get blasted by LaFortier’s death curse then?”
I lifted an eyebrow. “Um. It’s sort of hard to say. It isn’t always an immediate effect.”
“Best guess?”
I sipped at the last of the coffee. “LaFortier was a member of the Senior Council. You don’t get there without some serious chops. A violent death curse from someone like that could turn a city block to glass. So if I had to guess, I’d say no. LaFortier didn’t throw it.”
“Why not?”
I frowned some more.
“He had time enough,” Murphy said. “There was obviously a struggle. The vic has defensive wounds all over his arms—and he bled to death. That doesn’t take long, but it’s plenty of time to do the curse thing.”
“For that matter,” I mused, “why didn’t either of them use magic? This was a strictly physical struggle.”
“Could their powers have canceled each other out?”
“Technically, I guess,” I said. “But that sort of thing needs serious synchronization. It doesn’t often happen by accident.”
“Well. That’s something, then,” she said. “Both men either chose not to use magic or else were unable to use magic. Ditto the curse. Either LaFortier chose not to use it, or he was incapable of using it. The question is, why?”
I nodded. “Sound logic. So how does that help us get closer to the killer?”
She shrugged, unfazed. “No clue.”
That’s how investigation works, most of the time. Cops, detectives, and quixotic wizards hardly ever know which information is pertinent until we’ve actually got a pretty good handle on what’s happening. All you can do is accumulate whatever data you can, and hope that it falls into a recognizable pattern.
“Good thought, but it doesn’t help yet,” I said. “What else have we got?”
Murphy shook her head. “Nothing that I can see yet. But do you want a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
She held up the page with the details on the incriminating bank account. “Follow the money.”
“The money?”
“Witnesses can be mistaken—or bought. Theories and deductions can throw you completely off target.” She tossed the page back onto the coffee table. “But the money always tells you something. Assuming you can find it.”
I picked up the page and scanned it again. “A foreign bank. Amsterdam. Can you get them to show you where the payment came from?”
“You’re kidding,” Murphy said. “It would take me days, weeks, maybe months to go through channels and get that kind of information from an American bank, if I could get it at all. From a foreign bank specializing in confidentiality? I’ve got a better chance of winning a slam-dunk contest against Michael Jordan.”
I grunted. I got the disposable camera out of my duster pocket and passed it over to Murphy. “I snapped some shots of the scene—a lot more of them than are in the Wardens’ file. I’d like to get your take on them.”
She took the camera and nodded. “Okay. I can take them by a photo center and—”
My old rotary telephone rang, interrupting her. I held up a hand to her and answered it.
“Harry,” Thomas said, his voice tight. “We need you here. Now.”
I felt my body thrum into a state of tension. “What’s happening?”
“Hurry!” my brother snapped. “I can’t take them on by m—”
The line went dead.
Oh, God.
I looked up at Murphy, who took one look at my face and rose to her feet, car keys in hand, already moving toward the door. “Trouble?”
“Trouble.”
“Where?”
I rose, seizing my staff and blasting rod. “Storage rental park off Deerfield Square.”
“I know it,” Murphy said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter Eighteen
The handy part about riding with a cop was that she has the cool toys to make it simpler to get places quickly, even on a busy Chicago morning. The car was still bouncing from sweeping into the street from the little parking lot next to my ap
artment when she slapped a whirling blue light on the roof and started a siren. That part was pretty neat.
The rest of the ride wasn’t nearly as fun. Moving “fast” through a crowded city is a relative term, and in Chicago it meant a lot of rapid acceleration and sudden braking. We went through half a dozen alleys, hopped one bad intersection by driving up over the curb through a parking lot, and swerved through traffic at such a rate that my freshly imbibed coffee and donuts started swirling and sloshing around in a distinctly unpleasant fashion.
“Kill the noise and light,” I said a couple of blocks from the storage park.
She did it, asking, “Why?”
“Because whatever is there, there are several of them and Thomas didn’t think he could handle them.” I drew my .44 out of my duster pocket and checked it. “Nothing’s on fire. So let’s hope that nothing’s gone down yet and we’ll be all sneaky-like until we know what’s happening.”
“Still with the revolvers,” Murphy said, shaking her head. She drove past the street leading to the storage units and went one block past it instead before she turned and parked. “When are you going to get a serious gun?”
“Look,” I said, “just because you’ve got twice as many bullets as me—”
“Three times as many,” Murphy said. “The SIG holds twenty.”
“Twenty!? Look the point is that—”
“And it reloads a lot faster. You’ve just got some loose rounds at the bottom of your pocket, right? No speed loader?”
I stuck the gun back in my pocket and tried to make sure none of the bullets fell out as we got out of the car. “That’s not the point.”
Murphy shook her head. “Damn, Dresden.”
“I know the revolver is going to work,” I said, starting toward the storage park. “I’ve seen automatics jam before.”
“New ones?”
“Well, no . . .”
Murphy had placed her own gun in the pocket of her light sports jacket. “It’s a good thing you’ve got options. That’s all I’m saying.”
“If a revolver was good enough for Indiana Jones,” I said, “it’s good enough for me.”
