Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “The storm,” I repeated. “You can tap storms and other natural phenomena to get things done. All natural fuel for the mojo.”

  “You didn’t say anything about that before,” Murphy accused.

  “I hadn’t thought of it until tonight.” I rubbed at my face. It made sense. Hell’s bells, that was how the Shadowman had been able to do all of that in one night. He’d called the demon and been able to send it after me, as well as appearing in the shadow he’d projected. And he’d been able to kill again.

  “Have you got an ID on the victim?” I asked.

  Murphy turned to go inside as she answered. “Linda Randall. Chauffeur. Age twenty-nine.”

  It was a good thing Murphy had turned away, or the way my jaw dropped would have told her that I knew the deceased, and she would have had all sorts of uncomfortable questions. I stared after Murphy for a second, then hurriedly veiled my expression and followed her inside the apartment.

  Linda Randall’s one-room apartment looked like the trailer of a rock band that did little besides play concerts, host parties, and fall into a stupor afterward. Dirty clothes were strewn on one side of a king-size bed. There was a disproportionate amount of clothing that looked as though it had been purchased from a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog—lacy and silky and satiny colors, all bright, designed to attract the eye. There were many candles around the bed, on shelves and dressers and a night table, most burned halfway down. The drawer of the night table was partly open, revealing a number of personal amusements—Linda Randall had, apparently, liked her toys.

  The kitchenette, off to one side, looked largely unused, except for the coffeepot, the microwave, and the trash can, in which several pizza boxes were crammed. Maybe it was the pizza boxes that did it, that gave me a sudden pang of understanding and empathy for Linda. My own kitchen looked the same, a lot of the time, minus the microwave. Here had lived someone else who knew that the only thing waiting at home was a sense of loneliness. Sometimes it is comforting. Most often, it isn’t. I’ll bet Linda would have understood that.

  But I’d never have the chance to know. The forensics team was gathered around the bed, concealing whatever was there, like a cluster of buzzards around the exposed head of the outlaws they used to bury up to their necks in the Old West. They spoke among themselves in low, calm voices, dispassionate as skilled dinner chatter, calling little details to the attention of their companions, complimenting one another on their observations.

  “Harry?” Murphy said, quietly. Her tone of voice suggested that it wasn’t the first time she’d said it. “Are you sure you’re all right for this?”

  My mouth twitched. Of course I wasn’t all right for this. No one should ever be all right for this sort of thing. But instead of saying that, I told her, “My head’s just aching. Sorry. Let’s just get it over with.”

  She nodded and led me over toward the bed. Murphy was a lot shorter than most of the men and women working around the bed, but I had almost a head of height on all of them. So I didn’t have to ask anyone to move, just stepped up close to the bed and looked.

  Linda had been on the phone when she died. She was naked. Even this early in the year, she had tan lines around her hips. She must have gone to a tanning booth during the winter. Her hair was still damp. She lay on her back, her eyes half-closed, her expression tranquil as it hadn’t been any time I’d seen her.

  Her heart had been torn out. It was lying on the king-size bed about a foot and a half from her, pulped and squashed and slippery, sort of a scarlet and grey color. There was a hole in her chest, too, showing where bone had been splintered outward by the force that had removed her heart.

  I just stared for a few moments, noting details in a sort of detached way. Again. Again someone had used magic to end a life.

  I had to think of her as she sounded on the phone. Joking, a quick wit. A sort of sly sensuality, in the way she said her words and phrased her sentences. A little hint of insecurity around the edges, vulnerability that magnified the other parts of her personality. Her hair was damp because she’d been taking a bath before she came to see me. Whatever anyone said of her, she had been passionately, vitally alive. Had been.

  Eventually, I realized how quiet the room was.

  The men and women of the forensics team, all five of them, were looking up at me. Waiting. As I looked around, they all averted their gazes, but you didn’t have to be a wizard to see what was in their faces. Fear, pure and simple. They had been faced with something that science couldn’t explain. It rattled them, shook them to their cores, this sudden, violent, and bloody evidence that three hundred years of science and research was no match for the things that were still, even after all this time, lurking in the dark.

  And I was the one who was supposed to have the answers.

  I didn’t have any for them, and I felt like shit for remaining silent as I stepped back and turned away from Linda’s body, then walked across the room to the small bathroom. The tub was still full of water. A bracelet and earrings were laid out on the counter in front of a mirror, plus a little makeup, a bottle of perfume.

  Murphy appeared beside me and stood with me, looking at the bathroom. She seemed a lot smaller than she usually does.

  “She called us,” Murphy said. “Nine one one has the call recorded. That’s how we knew to come out here. She called and said that she knew who had killed Jennifer Stanton and Tommy Tomm and that now they were coming for her. Then she started screaming.”

  “That’s when the spell hit her. The phone probably went out right after.”

  Murphy frowned up at me and nodded. “Yeah. It did. But it was working fine when we got here.”

  “Magic disrupts technology sometimes. You know that.” I rubbed at one eye. “Have you talked to any relatives, anything like that?”

  Murphy shook her head. “There aren’t any relatives in town. We’re looking, now, but it might take some time. We tried to reach her boss, but he wasn’t available. A Mr. Beckitt?” She studied my face, waiting for me to say something. “You ever heard of him?” she asked, after a moment.

  I didn’t look back at Murphy. I shrugged.

  Murphy’s jaw tensed, little motions at the corners of her face. Then she said, “Greg and Helen Beckitt. Three years ago, their daughter, Amanda, was killed in a cross fire. Johnny Marcone’s thugs were shooting it out with some of the Jamaican gang that was trying to muscle in on the territory back then. One of them shot the little girl. She lived for three weeks in intensive care and died when they took her off life support.”

  I didn’t say anything. But I thought of Mrs. Beckitt’s numb face and dead eyes.

  “The Beckitts attempted to lodge a wrongful-death suit against Johnny Marcone, but Marcone’s lawyers were too good. They got it thrown out before it even went to court. And they never found the man who shot the little girl. Word has it that Marcone offered to pay them blood money. Make reparation. But they turned him down.”

  I didn’t say anything. Behind us, they were putting Linda in a body bag, sealing her in. I heard men count to three and lift her, put her onto a gurney of some kind, and wheel her out. One of the forensics guys told Murphy they were going to take a break and would be back in ten minutes. She nodded and sent them out. The room got even more quiet.

  “Well, Harry,” she said. Her voice was hushed, like she didn’t want to disturb the apartment’s new stillness. “What can you tell me?” There was a subtle weight to the question. She might as well have asked me what I wasn’t telling her. That’s what she meant. She took her hand out of her jacket pocket and handed me a plastic bag.

  I took it. Inside was my business card, the one I’d given to Linda. It was still curled a little, where I’d had to palm it. It was also speckled with what I presumed was Linda’s blood. I looked at the part of the bag where you write the case number and the identification of the piece of evidence. It was blank. It wasn’t on the records. It wasn’t official. Yet.

  Murphy was waiting f
or my answer. She wanted me to tell her something. I just wasn’t sure if she was waiting for me to tell her that a lot of people have my card, and that I didn’t know how it had gotten here, or if she wanted me to say how I had known the victim, how I had been involved with her. Then she would have to ask me questions. The kinds of questions you ask suspects.

  “If I tell you,” I said, “that I was having a psychic premonition, would you take me seriously?”

  “What kind of premonition?” she said. She didn’t look up at me.

  “I sense…” I paused, thinking of my words. I wanted them to be very clear. “I sense that this woman will have a police record, probably for possession of narcotics and solicitation. I sense that she used to work at the Velvet Room for Madame Bianca. I sense that she used to be close friends and lovers with Jennifer Stanton. I sense that if she had been approached, yesterday, and asked about those deaths, that she would have claimed to know nothing.”

  Murphy mulled over my words for a moment. “You know, Dresden,” she said, and her voice was tight, cool, furious, “if you’d sensed these things yesterday, or maybe even this morning, it’s possible that we could have talked to her. It’s possible that we could have found out something from her. It’s even possible”—and she turned to me and slammed me against the doorway with one forearm and the weight of her body, suddenly and shockingly hard—“it’s even possible,” she snarled, “that she’d still be alive.” She stared up at my face, and she didn’t look at all like a cutesy cheerleader, now. She looked like a mother wolf standing over the body of one of her cubs and getting ready to make someone pay for it.

  This time I was the one to look away. “A lot of people have my card,” I said. “I put them up all over the place. I don’t know how she got it.”

  “Goddammit, Dresden,” she said. She stepped back from me and walked away, toward the bloodstained sheets. “You’re holding out on me. I know you are. I can get a warrant for your arrest. I can have you brought in for questioning.” She turned back to me. “Someone’s killed three people already. It’s my job to stop them. It’s what I do.”

  I didn’t say anything. I could smell the soap and shampoo from Linda Randall’s bath.

  “Don’t make me choose, Harry.” Her voice softened, if not her eyes or her face. “Please.”

  I thought about it. I could bring everything to her. That’s what she was asking—not half the story, not part of the information. She wanted it all. She wanted all the pieces in front of her so she could puzzle them together and bring the bad guys in. She didn’t want to work the puzzle knowing that I was keeping some of the pieces in my pocket.

  What could it hurt? Linda Randall had called me earlier that evening. She had planned on coming to me, to talk to me. She was going to give me some information and someone had shut her up before she could.

  I saw two problems with telling Murphy that. One, she would start thinking like a cop. It would not be hard to find out that Linda wasn’t exactly a high-fidelity piece of equipment. That she had numerous lovers on both sides of the fence. What if she and I were closer than I was admitting? What if I’d used magic to kill her lovers in a fit of jealous rage and then waited for another storm to kill her, too? It sounded plausible, workable, a crime of passion—Murphy had to know that the DA would have a hell of a time proving magic as a murder weapon, but if it had been a gun instead, it would have flown.

  The second problem, and the one that worried me a lot more, was that there were already three people dead. And if I hadn’t gotten lucky and creative, there would have been two more dead people, back at my apartment. I still didn’t know who the bad guy was. Telling Murphy what little more I knew wouldn’t give her any helpful information. It would only make her ask more questions, and she wanted answers.

  If the voice in the shadows knew that Murphy was heading the investigation to find him, and was on the right track, he would have no qualms about killing her, too. And there was nothing she could do to protect herself against it. She might have been formidable to your average criminal, but all the aikido in the world wouldn’t do her any good against a demon.

  Then, too, there was the White Council. Men like Morgan and his superiors, secure in their own power, arrogant and considering themselves above the authority of any laws but their own, wouldn’t hesitate to remove one police lieutenant who had discovered the secret world of the White Council.

  I looked at the bloodstained sheets and thought of Linda’s corpse. I thought of Murphy’s office, and what it would look like with her sprawled on the floor, her heart torn from her chest, or her throat torn out by some creeping thing from beyond.

  “Sorry, Murph,” I said. My voice came out in a rasping whisper. “I wish I could help you. I don’t know anything useful.” I didn’t try to look up at her, and I didn’t try to hide that I was lying.

  I sensed, more than saw, the hardening around her eyes, the little lines of hurt and anger. I’m not sure if a tear fell, or if she really just raised a hand to brush back some of her hair. Then she turned to the front door, and shouted, “Carmichael! Get your ass in here!”

  Carmichael looked equally as slobbish as he had a few days ago, as though the passage of time hadn’t changed him—it certainly hadn’t changed his jacket, only the food stains on his tie and the particular pattern of rumplement to his hair. There had to be something comforting, I reflected, in that kind of stability. No matter how bad things got, no matter how horrible or sickening the scene, you could count on Carmichael to look like the same quality of crap. He glared at me as he came in. “Yeah?”

  She tossed the plastic bag to him, and he caught it. “Mark that and log it,” she said. “Hang around for a minute. I want a witness.”

  Carmichael looked down at the bag and saw my card. His beady eyes widened. He looked back up at me, and I saw the shift in gears in his head, reclassifying me from annoying ally to suspect.

  “Mr. Dresden,” Murphy said. She kept her tone frosty, polite. “There are some questions we’d like to ask you. Do you think you could come down to the station and make a statement?”

  Questions to be asked. The White Council would convene and execute me in a little more than thirty hours. I didn’t have time for questions. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. I’ve got to comb my hair tonight.”

  “Tomorrow morning, then,” she said.

  “We’ll see,” I said.

  “If you aren’t there in the morning,” Murphy said, “I’m going to ask for a warrant. We’ll come and find you and by God, Harry, I’ll get some answers to this.”

  “Suit yourself,” I told her, and I started for the door. Carmichael took a step forward and stood in my way. I stopped and looked at him, and he kept his eyes focused on the center of my chest. “If I’m not under arrest,” I told her, “then I presume I’m free to go.”

  “Let him go, Ron,” Murphy said. Her tone of voice was disgusted, but I could hear the hurt underneath it. “I’ll talk to you again soon, Mr. Dresden.” She stepped closer and said, in a perfectly even tone, “And if it turns out that you’re the one behind all this, rest assured. Whatever you can do and whatever you can pull, I will find you and I will bring you down. Do you understand me?”

  I did understand, really. I understood the pressure she was under, her frustration, her anger, and her determination to stop the killing from happening again. If I was some kind of hero from a romance novel, I’d have said something brief and eloquent and heartrending. But I’m just me, so I said, “I do understand, Karrin.”

  Carmichael stepped out of my way.

  And I walked away from Murphy, whom I couldn’t talk to, and from Linda, whom I couldn’t protect, my head aching, weary to my bones, and feeling like a total piece of shit.

  Chapter

  Sixteen

  I walked down the block from Linda Randall’s apartment building, my thoughts and emotions a far more furious thunderstorm than the one now rolling away from the city, out over the vastness of the lake. I called
a cab from the pay phone outside a gas station and stood about with my back resting against the wall of the building in the misting rain, scowling and waiting.

  I had lost Murphy’s trust. It didn’t matter that I had done what I had to protect both her and myself. Noble intentions meant nothing. It was the results that counted. And the results of my actions had been telling a bald-faced lie to one of the only people I could come close to calling a friend. And I wasn’t sure that, even if I found the person or persons responsible, even if I worked out how to bring them down, even if I did Murphy’s job for her, that what had happened between us could ever be smoothed over.

  My thoughts were on that topic and similar issues of doom and gloom when a man with a hat pulled low over his face began to walk past me, stopped halfway, then turned and drove his fist into my belly.

  I had time to think, Not again, and then he struck me a second, and third time. Each blow drove into my guts, thrust me back against the unyielding wall, made me sick. My breath flew out of my mouth in a little, strangling gasp, and even if I’d had a spell already in mind, I wouldn’t have had the breath to speak it.

  I sort of sagged when he stopped hitting me, and he threw me to the ground. We were at a well-lit gas station, just before midnight on a Saturday night, and anything he did was in full view of any cars going by. Surely, God, he didn’t plan on killing me. Though at the moment, I was too tired and achy to care.

  I lay there for a moment, dazed. I could smell my attacker’s sweat and cologne. I could tell it was the same person who had jumped me the night before. He grabbed my hair, jerked my head up, and, with an audible snip of steel scissors, cut off a big lock of my hair. Then let me go.

  My blood went cold.

  My hair. The man had cut off my hair. It could be used in almost any kind of magic, any kind of deadly spell, and there wouldn’t be a damned thing I could do to stop it.

  The man turned away, walking quickly, but not running. In a flood of panic and desperation, I leapt at his leg, got him around the knee, and yanked hard. I heard a distinctive little pop, and then the man screamed, “Son of a bitch!” and fell heavily to earth. One fist, one very large and knob-knuckled fist, was clutched around my hair. I tried to suck in a breath, and leapt for that hand.