by Butcher, Jim
“Rosie!” she cried, her face very pale. “Oh my God!”
“Easy, easy,” I told her, putting a hand against Molly’s shoulder to prevent her from embracing the wounded girl. “Don’t jostle her.”
“She’s hurt,” Molly protested. “Why haven’t they put her in an ambulance?”
“She’s not in immediate danger,” I said. “Two other people were. The ambulance took them first. She goes on the next one.”
“What happened?” Molly asked.
I shook my head. “I’m not sure yet. I didn’t see much of it. They were attacked.”
The girl on the floor suddenly stirred and opened her eyes. “Molly?” she said.
“I’m here, Rosie,” Molly said. She touched the injured girl’s cheek. “I’m right here.”
“My God,” the girl said. Tears welled from her eyes. “He killed them. He killed them.” Her breathing began to come faster, building toward panic.
“Shhhhhhh,” Molly said, and stroked Rosie’s hair back from her forehead as one might a frightened child. “You’re safe now. It’s all right.”
“The baby,” Rosie said. She slid her hand from mine and laid it over her belly. “Is the baby all right?”
Molly bit her lip and looked at me.
“She’s pregnant?” I asked.
“Three months,” Molly confirmed. “She just found out.”
“The baby,” Rosie said. “Will the baby be all right?”
“They’re going to do everything possible to make sure that you’re both all right,” I said immediately. “Try not to worry about it too much.”
Rosie closed her eyes, tears still streaming. “All right.”
“Rosie,” Molly asked. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I’m not sure,” she whispered. “I was sitting with Ken and Drea. We’d already seen our favorite scene in the movie and we decided to go. I was bending over to get my purse and Drea was checking her makeup and then the lights went out and she started screaming…And then when I could see again, he was there.” She shuddered. “He was there.”
“Who?” Molly pressed.
Rosie’s eyes opened too wide, showing white all around. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “The Reaper.”
Molly frowned. “Like in the movie? Someone in a costume.”
“It couldn’t be,” Rosie said, her trembling growing more pronounced. “It was him. It was really him.”
The next medical team arrived and headed right for us. Rosie seemed to be on the verge of another panic attack when she saw them, and started thrashing around. Molly leaned in close, whispering to her and continually touching her head, until the EMTs could get to work.
I stepped back. They got Rosie loaded onto a stretcher. When they laid her arm down by her side, I could see several small, round marks, irregular bruises, and damaged capillaries just under the surface of the skin at the bend of her arm.
Molly stared at me for a second, her eyes wide. Then she helped the EMTs throw a blanket over Rosie and her track marks. The EMTs counted to three and lifted the stretcher, flicked out the wheels underneath, and rolled her toward the doors. The girl stirred and thrashed weakly as they did this, letting out whimpering little cries.
“She’s frightened,” Molly told the EMTs. “Let me ride with her, help keep her calm.”
The men traded a look and then one of them nodded. Molly let out a breath of relief, nodded to them, and went to walk by the head of the stretcher, where Rosie could see her.
“Don’t worry,” said the other EMT. “We’ll be right back for you, sir.”
“What, this?” I asked, and waved vaguely at my head. “Nah, I didn’t get hurt here. This is from earlier. I’m good.”
The man’s expression was dubious. “You sure?”
“Yep.”
They took the girl out. I dragged myself to the wall and propped my back up against it. A minute later, a man in a tweed suit came in and walked directly to Rawlins. He spoke to the officer for a moment, glancing over at me once as they talked, then turned and walked over to me. Of only average height, the man was in his late forties, thirty pounds overweight, balding, and had watery blue eyes. He nodded at me, grabbed a chair, and settled down into it, looking down at me. “You’re Dresden?”
“Most days,” I said.
“My name is Detective Sergeant Greene. I’m with homicide.”
“Tough job,” I said.
“Most days,” he agreed. “Now, Rawlins back there tells me you were an eyewitness to what happened. Is that correct.”
“Mostly,” I said. “I only saw what happened at the very end in here.”
“Uh-huh,” he said. He blinked his watery eyes and absently removed a pen and a small notebook from his pocket. Behind him, cops were surrounding the area where the victims had lain with a circle of chairs and stringing crime scene tape between them. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“The lights went out,” I said. “People panicked. We heard screams. Rawlins went to help and I went with him.”
“Why?” he asked.
“What?”
“Why,” Greene said, his tone mild. “You’re a civilian, Mr. Dresden. It’s Rawlins’s job to help people in emergencies. Why didn’t you just head for the door?”
“It was an emergency,” I said. “I helped.”
“You’re a hero,” Greene said. “Is that it?”
I shrugged. “I was there. People needed help. I tried to.”
“Sure, sure,” Greene said, blinking his eyes. “So what were you doing to help?”
“Holding the light,” I said.
“Didn’t Rawlins have his own flashlight?”
“Can’t have too many flashlights,” I replied.
“Sure,” Greene said, writing things. “So you held the light for Rawlins. What then?”
“We heard screams in here. We came in. I saw the attacker over that girl they just took out.”
“Can you describe him?” Greene asked.
“Almost seven feet tall,” I said. “Built like a battleship, maybe three hundred, three twenty-five. Hockey mask. Sickle.”
Greene nodded. “What happened.”
“He attacked the girl. There were other people behind him, already down. He was about to cut her throat with the sickle. Rawlins shot him.”
“Shot at him?” Greene asked. “Since we don’t have a dead bad guy on the floor?”
“Shot at him,” I amended. “I don’t know if he hit him. The bad guy dropped the girl and swung that sickle at Rawlins. Rawlins blocked it with his flashlight.”
“Then what?”
“Then I hit the guy,” I said.
“Hit him how?” Greene asked.
“I used magic. Blew him thirty feet down the aisle and through the projector and the movie screen.”
Greene slapped his pen down onto the notebook and gave me a flat look.
“Hey,” I said. “You asked.”
“Or maybe he turned to run,” Greene said. “Knocked the projector over and jumped through the screen to get to the back of the room.”
“If that makes you feel better,” I said.
He gave me another hard look and said, “And then what?”
“And then he was gone,” I said.
“He ran out the door?”
“No,” I said. “We were pretty much right next to the door. He went through the screen, hit the wall behind it, and poof. Gone. I don’t know how.”
Greene wrote that down. “Do you know where Nelson Lenhardt is?”
I blinked. “No. Why would I?”
“He apparently attacked someone else at this convention today and beat him savagely. You bailed him out of jail. Maybe you’re friends with him.”
“Not really,” I said.
“Seems a little odd, then, that you dropped two thousand dollars to bail out this guy you’re not friends with.”
“Yeah.”
“Why did you do it?”
I got annoyed. �
��I had personal reasons.”
“Which are?”
“Personal,” I said.
Greene regarded me with his watery blue eyes, silent for a long minute. Then he said, patiently and politely, “I’m not sure I understand all of this. I’d appreciate it if you could help me out. Could you tell me again what happened? Starting with when the lights went out?”
I sighed.
We started over.
Four more times.
Greene was never so much as impolite to me, and his mild voice and watery eyes made him seem more like an apologetic clerk than a detective, but I had a gut instinct that there was a steely and dangerous man underneath the tweed camouflage, and that he had me pegged as an accomplice, or at least as someone who knew more than he was saying.
Which, I suppose, was true. But going on about black magic and ectoplasm and boogeymen that disappeared at will wasn’t going to make him like me any better. That was par for the course, when it came to cops. Some of them, guys like Rawlins, had run into something nasty at some point in their careers. They never talked much about it with anyone—other cops tend to worry about it when one of their partners starts talking about seeing monsters, and all kinds of well-intentioned counseling and psychological evaluations were sure to follow.
So if a cop found himself face-to-face with a vampire or a ghoul (and survived it), its only existence tended to be in the landscape of memory. Time has a way of wearing the sharpest edges away from that kind of thing, and it’s easy to avoid thinking about terrifying monsters, and even more terrifying implications, and get back to the daily routine. If enough time went by, a lot of cops could even convince themselves that what happened had been exaggerated in their heads, bad memories amplified by darkness and fear, and that since everyone around them knew monsters didn’t exist, they must therefore have seen something normal, something explainable.
But when the heat was on, those same cops changed. Somewhere deep down, they know that it’s for real, and when something supernatural went down again, they were willing, at least for the duration, to forget about anything but doing whatever they could to survive it and protect lives, even if in retrospect it seemed insane. Rawlins would poke fun at me for “pretending” to be a wizard when there was a fan convention in progress. But when everything had hit the proverbial fan, he’d been willing to work with me.
Then there was the other kind of cop—guys like Greene, who hadn’t ever seen anything remotely supernatural, who went home to their house and 2.3 kids and dog and mowed their lawn on Saturdays, who watch Nova and the Science Channel and subscribe to National Geographic, and keep every issue stored neatly and in order in the basement.
Guys like that were dead certain that everything was logical, everything was explainable, and that nothing existed outside the purview of reason and logic. Guys like that also tend to make pretty good detectives. Greene was a guy like that.
“All right, Mr. Dresden,” Greene said. “I’m still kind of unclear on a few points. Now, when the lights went out, what did you do?”
I rubbed at my eyes. My head ached. I wanted to sleep. “I’ve already told you this. Five times.”
“I know, I know,” Greene said, and offered me a small smile. “But sometimes repeating things can jiggle forgotten little details loose. So, if you don’t mind, can you tell me about when it went dark?”
I closed my eyes and fought a sudden and overwhelming temptation to levitate Greene to the ceiling and leave him there for a while.
Someone touched my shoulder, and I opened my eyes to find Murphy standing over me, offering me a white Styrofoam cup. “Evening Harry.”
“Oh, thank God,” I muttered, and took the cup. Coffee. I sipped some. Hot and sweet. I groaned in pleasure. “Angel of mercy, Murph.”
“That’s me,” she agreed. She was wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a very light cotton blazer. She had circles under her eyes and her blond hair was messy. Someone must have gotten her out of bed for this one. “Detective Greene,” she said.
“Lieutenant,” Greene replied, all courtesy on the surface. “I didn’t realize I’d called Special Investigations for help. Maybe someone bumped the speed dial on my phone.” He reached into a pocket and took out a cell. He regarded it gravely for a moment and then said, “Oh, wait. My mistake. You aren’t on my speed dial. I must have slipped into some kind of fugue state when I wasn’t looking.”
“Don’t worry, Sergeant,” Murphy said, smiling sweetly. “If I find out whodunit, I’ll tell you so you can get the collar.”
Greene shook his head. “This is messy enough already,” he said. “Some clown in a horror movie costume cuts a bunch of horror fans to ribbons. The press is going to make piranhas look like goldfish.”
“Yep,” Murphy said. “Seems to me you should take all the help you can get. Don’t want to screw it up in front of all those cameras.”
He gave her another flat look and then shook his head. “You aren’t exactly famous for your friendly spirit of cooperation with your fellow officers, Lieutenant.”
“I get the job done,” Murphy said easily. “I can help you. Or I can see to it that the press knows that you’re refusing assistance in finding a murderer because of departmental rivalry. Your call.”
Greene stared at her for another long minute, then said, “Does calling someone an overbearing, egotistical bitch constitute sexual harassment?”
Murphy’s smile grew sunnier. “Come to the gym sometime and we’ll discuss it.”
Greene grunted and rose, stuffing his pad and pen into his pocket. “Dresden, don’t leave town. I might need to speak to you again.”
“Won’t that be nice,” I mumbled, and sipped more coffee.
Greene handed Murphy a card. “My cell number is on it. In case you actually do want to cooperate.”
Murphy traded him for one of hers. “Ditto.”
Greene shook his head, gave her a barely polite nod, and walked off to speak to the officers near the taped-off section of floor.
“I think he likes you,” I told Murphy.
Murphy snorted. “He’s had you running in a circle, huh?”
“For an hour.” I tried not to sound too disgusted.
“It’s annoying,” she said. “But it really does work. Greene’s probably the best homicide detective in the state. If he had a personality he’d have made captain by now.”
“I don’t think he’s going to be much help on this one.”
Murphy nodded, and sat down in the chair Greene had vacated. “So. You want to give me the rundown here?”
“I haven’t even finished my coffee,” I complained. But I told her, starting with bailing Nelson out of jail and skipping over the details of the visit to Michael’s house. I told her about the attack, and how Rawlins and I had presumably cut it short.
She exhaled slowly. “So this thing must have been from the spirit world, right? If it got shot full of bullets, didn’t die, then dissolved into goo?”
“That’s a reasonable conclusion,” I said, “but I didn’t exactly have time to make a thorough analysis. It could have been anything.”
“Any chance you killed it?”
“I didn’t hit it all that hard. Must have had some kind of self-destruct.”
“Dammit,” Murphy said, missing the reference. No one loves the classics anymore. “Will it come back?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said.
“That’s not good enough.”
I sighed and nodded. “I’ll see what I can figure out. How’s Rawlins?”
“Hospital,” she reported. “He’ll need a bunch of stitches for that cut he took.”
I grunted and rose. It was an effort, and I wobbled a little, but as soon as I got my balance I walked over to the remains of the projector on its stand. I bent down and picked up a large round tin, the one the movie reel had come in. I flipped it over and read the label.
“Hunh,” I said.
Murphy came over and frowned at the tin. �
��Suburban Slasher II?”
I nodded. “This means something.”
“Other than the death of classic cinema?”
“Movie fascist,” I said. “The guy that jumped them looked like the Reaper.”
Murphy gave me a blank look.
“The Reaper,” I told her. “Come on, don’t tell me you haven’t ever seen the Reaper. The killer from the Suburban Slasher films. He can’t be slain, brings death to the wicked—which includes anyone who is having sex or drinking, apparently. If that’s not classic cinema, I don’t know what is.”
“I guess I missed that one,” Murphy said.
“There have been eleven films featuring the Reaper so far,” I replied.
“I guess I missed those eleven,” Murphy amended. “You think this was someone trying to look like the Reaper character?”
“Someone,” I murmured with exaggerated menace. “Or some thing.”
She gave me a level look. “How long have you been waiting to use that one?”
“Years,” I said. “The opportunity doesn’t come up as often as you’d think.”
Murphy smiled, but it was forced, and we both knew it. The jokes didn’t change the facts. Something had killed one young man only a few feet from where we sat, and the lives of at least two of the wounded hung on the skills of the doctors attending them.
“Murph,” I said. “There’s a theater right down the street. Run by a guy named Clark Pell. Could you find out what movie was showing there this afternoon?”
Murphy flipped to an earlier page of her notebook and said, “I already did. Something called Hammerhands.”
“Oldie but a goodie,” I said. “Ruffians push this farmer out onto train tracks and the train cuts his hands off at the wrist. They leave him for dead. But he survives, insane, straps sledgehammer heads to the stumps, and hunts them down one at a time.”
“And Clark Pell was the victim beaten here earlier today,” Murphy said. “Badly beaten with some kind of blunt instrument.”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence,” I said.
She frowned. “Can someone do that? Bring movie monsters to life?”
“Sorta looks that way,” I said.
“How do we stop them?” she asked.
I dragged the con schedule out of my pocket and paged through it. “The real question is, how do we stop them before tomorrow night?”