The Ultimate Dresden Omnibus, 0-15

by Butcher, Jim

“If he’s superbrilliant, it’s possible that we haven’t even seen the shape of his plan yet. All of this could be one big boondoggle to set us up for the real punch.”

  “You don’t sound like you think that’s the case.”

  She gave me a faint smile. “Criminals aren’t usually the crispiest crackers in the box. And you have to remember that even though we’re flailing around looking for answers, the perp is in the same situation. He can’t be sure where we are, what we know, or what we’re doing next.”

  “Fog of war,” I said thoughtfully.

  She shrugged. “I think it’s a much more likely explanation than that our perp is some kind of James Bond super-genius villain slowly unfolding his terrible design. They’ve shown too much confusion for that.”

  “Like what?”

  “Shagnasty was following you a couple of nights ago, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, so was this PI you told me about. Why stick you with two tails? Maybe because the right hand didn’t know what the left one was doing.”

  “Hngh,” I agreed.

  “From what you say, Shagnasty isn’t exactly an errand boy.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “But it’s apparently coordinating with the perp, taking orders. It didn’t absolutely need to deliver its demand in person. I think it’s pretty obvious that it smashed its way into the Château to provide a distraction so that Madeline could make her getaway.”

  I blinked. Once I’d alerted Lara to the probability of Madeline’s treachery, she most certainly would have taken steps to detain her. Madeline must have known that. I tried to remember how long it had been between the time Luccio and I arrived, and when the naagloshii attacked. Time enough for Madeline to hear about our presence, assume that the worst had happened, and make a phone call for help?

  Maybe.

  Murphy peered at me. “I mean, it is obvious, right?”

  “I got hit on the head, okay?”

  She smirked at me.

  “Hell’s bells,” I muttered. “Yes, it’s obvious. But not necessarily stupid.”

  “Not stupid, but I don’t think it would be unfair to call it a desperation move. I think Shagnasty was the perp’s ace in the hole. I think that when Morgan escaped, the perp figured out where he was headed, the pressure got to him, and he played his hole card. Only when Shagnasty found you, you weren’t actually with Morgan. He got spooked when you and the werewolves nearly pinned him down, and ran off.”

  “The perp grabs one of his other tools,” I said, nodding. “Madeline. Tells her to find me and take me out, make me talk, whatever. Only Thomas beats her senseless instead.”

  “Makes sense,” Murphy said.

  “Doesn’t mean that’s how it happened.”

  “Had to happen some way,” she said. “Say we’re in the right ballpark. What does that tell us?”

  “Not much,” I said. “Some very bad people are in motion. They’re tough. The one guy we’ve managed to grab won’t tell us a damned thing. The only thing we’re certain we know is that we’ve got nothing.”

  I was going to continue, but a thought hit me and I stopped talking.

  I gave it a second to crystallize.

  Then I started to smile.

  Murphy tilted her head, watching, and prompted, “We’ve got nothing?”

  I looked from Murphy to the door to the interrogation room.

  “Forget it,” she said. “He isn’t going to put us on to anyone.”

  “Oh,” I drawled. “I’m not so sure about that. . . .”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Murphy went back into the interrogation room. Twenty minutes later, I came in and shut the door behind me. The room was simple and small. A table sat in the middle, with two chairs on each side. There was no long two-way mirror on the wall. Instead, a small security camera perched up high in one corner of the ceiling.

  Binder sat on the far side of the table. His face had a couple of bruises on it, along with an assortment of small cuts with dark scabs. His odd green eyes were narrowed in annoyance. A foot-long hoagie sat on the table in front of him, its paper wrapper partially undone. He’d have been able to reach it easily—if he could have moved his arms. They were cuffed to the arms of the chair. A handcuff key rested centered on the edge of Murphy’s side of the table, in front of her chair.

  I had to suppress a smile.

  “Bloody priceless,” Binder said to Murphy as I entered. “Now you bring this wanker. It’s police torture, is what it is. My solicitor will swallow you whole and spit out the bones.”

  Murphy sat down at the table across from Binder, folded her hands, and sat in complete silence, spearing him with an unfriendly stare.

  Binder sneered at her, and then at me, presumably so I wouldn’t feel left out. “Oh, I get this now,” he said. “Good cop, bad cop, is it?” He looked at me. “Stone-cold bitch here makes me sit for bloody hours in this chair to soften me up. Then you come in here, polite and sympathetic as you please, and I buckle under the stress, yeah?” He settled more comfortably into the chair, somehow conveying an insult with the motion. “Fine, Dresden,” he said. “Knock yourself out. Good cop me.”

  I looked at him for a second.

  Then I made a fist and slugged his smug face hard enough to knock him over backward in the chair.

  He just lay there for a minute, on his side, blinking tears out of his eyes. Blood trickled from one nostril. One of his shoes had come off in the fall. I stood over him and glanced at my hand. It hurts to punch people in the face. Not as much as it hurts to get punched in the face, granted, but you know you’ve done it. My knuckles must have grazed his teeth. They’d lost a little skin.

  “Don’t give me this lawyer crap, Binder,” I said. “We both know the cops can’t hold you for long. But we also both know that you can’t play the system against us, either. You aren’t an upstanding member of the community. You’re a hired gun, wanted for questioning in a dozen countries.”

  He looked up at me with a snarl. “Think you’re a hard man, do you?”

  I glanced at Murphy. “Should I answer that one, or just kick him in the balls?”

  “Seeing is believing,” Murphy said.

  “True.” I turned to Binder and drew back my foot.

  “Bloody hell!” Binder barked. “There’s a bloody camera watching your every move. You think you won’t get dragged off for this?”

  An intercom on the wall near the camera clicked and buzzed. “He’s got a point,” said Rawlin’s voice. “I can’t see it all from here. Move him a couple of feet to the left and give me about thirty more seconds before you start on his nads. I’m making popcorn.”

  “Sure,” I said, giving the camera a thumbs-up. Odds were good that it would fold if I was in the room for any length of time, but we’d made our point.

  I sat down on the edge of the table, maybe a foot away from Binder and, quite deliberately, reached over to pick up the hoagie. I took a bite and chewed thoughtfully. “Mmm,” I said. I glanced at Murphy. “What kind of cheese is that?”

  “Gouda.”

  “Beef tastes great, too.”

  “Teriyaki,” Murph said, still staring at Binder.

  “I was really hungry,” I told her, my voice brimming with sincerity. “I haven’t eaten since, like, this morning. This is excellent.”

  Binder muttered darkly under his breath. All I caught was “. . . buggering little bastard . . .”

  I ate half the hoagie and put it back on the table. I licked a stray bit of sauce off of one finger and looked down at Binder. “Okay, tough guy,” I said. “The cops can’t keep you. So that leaves the sergeant, here, with only a couple of options. Either they let you walk . . .”

  Murphy made a quiet growling sound. It was almost as impressive as her grunt.

  “She just hates that idea.” I got off the table and hunkered down beside Binder. “Or,” I said, “we do it the other way.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’ll kill
me—is that it?”

  “Ain’t no one gonna miss you,” I said.

  “You’re bluffing,” Binder snapped. “She’s a bloody cop.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “Think about that one for a minute. You think a police detective couldn’t work out a way to disappear you without anyone being the wiser?”

  He looked back and forth between us, his cool mask not quite faltering. “What do you want?”

  “Your boss,” I said. “Give me that and you walk.”

  He stared at me for half a minute. Then he said, “Set my chair up.”

  I rolled my eyes and did it. He was heavy. “Hell’s bells, Binder. I get a hernia and the deal’s off.”

  He looked at Murphy and jiggled his wrists.

  Murphy yawned.

  “Bloody hell,” he snarled. “Just one of them. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  I snorted. “Looks to me like you aren’t in any immediate danger of starvation.”

  “You want cooperation,” he spat, “you’re going to have to show me some. Give me the bloody sandwich.”

  Murphy reached out, picked up the handcuff key, and tossed it to me. I unlocked his left wrist. Binder seized the sandwich and started chomping on it.

  “All right,” I said, after a moment. “Talk.”

  “What?” he said through a mouthful of food. “No soda?”

  I swatted the last inch or two of hoagie out of his hand, scowling.

  Binder watched me, unperturbed. He licked his fingers clean, picked a bit of lettuce out of his teeth, and ate it. “All right then,” he said. “You want the truth?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  He leaned a bit toward me and jabbed a finger at me. “The truth is that you ain’t killing no one, biggun. You ain’t and neither is the blond bird. And if you try to keep me, I’ll bring down all manner of horrible things.” He leaned back in his chair, openly wearing the smug smile again. “So you might as well stop wasting my valuable time and cut me loose. That’s the truth.”

  I turned my head to Murphy, frowning.

  She got up, walked around the table, and seized Binder by his close-cut head. It didn’t provide much of a grip, but she used it to shove his head roughly down to the top of the table. Then she took the key back from me, undid the other set of cuffs, and released him.

  “Get out,” she said quietly.

  Binder stood up slowly, straightening his clothes. He leered at Murphy, winked, and said, “I’m a professional. So there’s nothing personal, love. Maybe next time we can skip business and give pleasure a go.”

  “Maybe next time you’ll get your neck broken resisting arrest,” Murphy said. “Get out.”

  Binder smirked at Murphy, then at me, and then sauntered out of the room.

  “Well?” I asked her.

  She turned and held out her hand. Several short hairs, some dark and some grey, clung to her fingers. “Got it.”

  I grinned at her, and took the hairs, depositing them in a white envelope I’d taken from Rawlin’s desk. “Give me about a minute and I’ll have it up.”

  “Hubba hubba,” Rawlins said through the intercom speaker. “I like this channel.”

  “This is a great way of chasing down the bad guy,” Murphy said half an hour later. She gave me a pointed look from her chair at her desk. “Sit here and don’t do anything.”

  I sat in a chair next to her desk, my hand extended palm down in front of me, holding a bit of leather thong that ended in a simple quartz crystal in a copper-wire setting. My arm was getting tired, and I had gripped it under my forearm with the other hand to support it. The crystal didn’t hang like a plumb line. It leaned a bit to one side, as if being supported by a steady, silent puff of wind.

  “Patience,” I said. “Binder might not be a crispy cracker, but he’s been in business for a couple of decades. He knows why you grabbed him by the hair. He’s learned to shake off something like this.”

  Murphy gave me an unamused look. She glanced at Rawlins, who sat at his desk. The desks were set up back-to-back, so that they faced each other.

  “Don’t look at me,” he said, without glancing up from his sudoku puzzle. “I don’t run as fast as I used to. I could get used to chasing down bad guys like this.”

  The crystal abruptly dropped and began swinging back and forth freely.

  “Ah!” I said. “There, there, you see?” I let them look for a second and then lowered my arm. I rubbed my sore muscles for a moment. “What did I tell you? He shook it off.”

  “Oh, good,” Murphy said. “Now we have no clue where he is.”

  I put the crystal into my pocket and grabbed Murphy’s desk phone. “Yet,” I said. I punched in a number and found out that you had to dial nine to get out. I started over, added a nine to the beginning of the number, and it rang.

  “Graver,” Vince said.

  “It’s Dresden,” I said. “Tell me what he just did, like thirty seconds ago.”

  “Be patient,” Vince said, and hung up on me.

  I blinked at the phone.

  Murphy looked at me for a second and then smiled. “I just love it when I don’t know part of the plan, and the guy who does is all smug and cryptic,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  I glowered at her and put the phone down. “He’ll call back.”

  “He who?”

  “The PI who is following Binder,” I said. “Guy named Vince Graver.”

  Murphy’s eyebrows went up. “You’re kidding.”

  Rawlins began to chortle, still working on his puzzle.

  “What?” I said, looking back and forth between them.

  “He was a vice cop in Joliet a couple of years ago,” Murphy said.

  “He found out that someone was beating up some of the call girls down there. He looked into it. Word came down to tell him to back off, but he went and caught a Chicago city councilman who liked to pound on his women for foreplay. What’s-his-name.”

  “Dornan,” Rawlins supplied.

  “Right, Ricardo Dornan,” Murphy said.

  “Huh,” I said. “Took some guts.”

  “Hell, yeah,” Rawlins said. “And some stupid.”

  “It’s a fine line,” Murphy said. “Anyway, he pissed off some people. Next thing he knows, he finds out he volunteered for a transfer to CPD.”

  “Three guesses where,” Rawlins said.

  “So he resigns,” Murphy said.

  “Yeah,” Rawlins said. “Without even giving us a chance to meet him.”

  Murphy shook her head. “Went into private practice. There’s a guy who is a glutton for punishment.”

  Rawlins grinned.

  “He drives a Mercedes,” I said. “Has his own house, too.”

  Rawlins put his pencil down and they both looked up at me.

  I shrugged. “I’m just saying. He must be doing all right for himself.”

  “Hngh,” Rawlins said. Then he picked up his pencil and went back to the puzzle. “Ain’t no justice.”

  Murphy grunted with nigh-masculine skill.

  A couple of minutes later, the phone rang, and Murphy answered it. She passed it to me.

  “Your guy’s a nut,” Vince said.

  “I know that,” I told him. “What’s he doing?”

  “Took a cab to a motel on the highway north of town,” Vince said.

  “Stopped at a convenience store on the way. Then he goes to his room, shaves himself bald, comes out in his skivvies, and jumps in the damn river. Goes back inside, takes a shower—”

  “How do you know that?” I asked.

  “I broke into his room while he was doing it,” Vince said. “Maybe you could save your questions until the end of the presentation.”

  “Hard to imagine you not fitting in with the cops,” I said.

  Vince ignored the comment. “He takes a shower and calls another cab.”

  “Tell me you followed the cab,” I said.

  “Tell me your check cleared.”

  “I’m good for it.�
�

  “Yeah, I’m following the cab right now,” Vince said. “But I don’t need to. He’s headed for the Hotel Sax.”

  “Who are you, the Amazing Kreskin?”

  “Listened in on the cabbie’s CB,” he said. “ETA, eighteen minutes.”

  “Eighteen?” I asked.

  “Usually found between seventeen and nineteen,” he said. “I can’t guarantee I can stay on him at the hotel, especially if he tumbles to the tail. Too many ways out.”

  “I’ll take it from there. Do not get close to him, man. You get an instinct he’s looking in your direction, run for the hills. This guy’s dangerous.”

  “Yeah,” Vince said. “Hell, I’m lucky I haven’t wet my pants already.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know you are. It’s cute. Seventeen minutes.”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “With my check. I’ve got a two-day minimum. You know that, right?”

  “Right, right,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

  “What have we got?” Murphy asked as I put the phone down.

  “Binder thinks he shook me,” I said. “He’s headed for a meeting at Hotel Sax.”

  She stood up and grabbed her car keys. “How do you know it’s a meeting?”

  “Because he’s been made. If he was here alone, he’d be on his way out of town right now.” I nodded. “He’s running back to whoever hired him.”

  “Who is that?” Murphy asked.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  The Hotel Sax is a pretty good example of its kind in the beating heart of downtown Chicago. It’s located on Dearborn, just across the street from the House of Blues, and if you look up while standing outside of the place, it looks like someone slapped one of those fish-eye camera lenses on the sky. Buildings stretch up and up and up, at angles that seem geometrically impossible.

  Many similar sections of Chicago have wider streets than you find in other metropolises, and it makes them feel slightly less claustrophobic, but outside of the Sax, the street was barely three narrow lanes across, curb to curb. As Murphy and I approached, looking up made me feel like an ant walking along the bottom of a crack in the sidewalk.