Brief Cases

by Jim Butcher

  When given a chance to cross-examine, Luther shook his head, until he got to the testimony of the arresting officer, a black man in his late forties named Dwayne. He rose and asked the officer, “When you brung me in, was I injured?”

  Officer Dwayne nodded. “You were banged up pretty good. Especially your head.”

  “Where at?” Luther asked.

  Dwayne grunted. “Back of your head.”

  “Any other injuries on me?”

  “You were one big bruise,” Dwayne said.

  “How big was the victim?” Luther asked.

  “About five-four, maybe one fifty.”

  “Weight lifter or something?”

  “Not so you’d notice,” Dwayne said.

  Luther nodded. “You known me awhile. How come?”

  “I was the one who arrested you the first damn time.”

  “Officer,” the judge said.

  “Beg pardon, Your Honor,” Dwayne said hurriedly.

  “I remember that, too,” Luther said. “In your experience, a businessman like that handle a guy like me?”

  “Unless he’s armed or got a lot of training, no.”

  “One more question,” Luther said. He squinted at the officer and said, “You in my neighborhood ever since I got out. You ever think I’d be trouble again?”

  “Objection,” Tremont said. “He’s asking for pure conjecture.”

  Luther frowned and said, “Beat cops deal with ex-cons on a regular basis professionally, ma’am. Figure that qualifies him as an expert opinion on potential, uh …” He consulted his notes and spoke in a careful, clear tone. “Recidivism.”

  The judge eyed Luther and said, toward Tremont, “Overruled. You may answer the question, Officer.”

  “No,” Dwayne said. “I’ve seen you with your kids. I wouldn’t have called you for it.”

  “In the arrest report,” Luther said, “does it say what I kept asking the officers?”

  Dwayne cleared his throat and looked down at a notepad in front of him. “Yeah. ‘The suspect kept asking, Where is she? and Is she all right?”

  “Who was I talking about?”

  Officer Dwayne turned a page and cleared his throat. “ ‘The suspect claimed that he only began the confrontation with the deceased after witnessing the man drag a female child, Latino, around the age of ten, into the alley,’ ” he read. “Subsequent investigation could not confirm the presence of any such person.”

  “How hard did they look?” Luther asked.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You heard me,” Luther said. “In your opinion, how hard did the investigating detectives look for a little girl who might clear an ex-con from being guilty of a murder of a big-shot businessman?”

  “Objection.”

  “Overruled.”

  “I’m not a detective,” Officer Dwayne said. “I can’t speak to that. But I’m sure they followed departmental guidelines.”

  My finely honed crapometer, garnered during my days as a legitimate, licensed private investigator, went off. Cops were as thorough as they could be, but that wasn’t always supremely thorough—that was why private investigators could stay in business in the first place. It was understandable: A city the size of Chicago has an enormous caseload, detectives are always buried in work, and the investigations get triaged pretty severely. The preponderance of evidence, absence of witnesses, and Luther’s status as an ex-con would have made this case a slam dunk, a low priority—and, most of the time, the cops would have been right. Once the evidence was all taken and dissected and duly reported on, as far as the police were concerned, they had their man. And there was already a mountain of fresh justice waiting to be pursued on behalf of new victims. Even the most dedicated and sincere police detective could understandably have dropped the ball here.

  “Sure,” Luther said. He sat back down again and said, “I’m done.”

  The judge looked at the clock and asked, “Mr. Tremont, do you have any further witnesses?”

  Tremont listened to something his assistant whispered and rose. “Your Honor, the prosecution rests.”

  “Then so will we,” she said. “Mr. Luther, the defense can begin its case in the morning. I remind the jury that the details of this case are confidential and not to be discussed or disclosed. We will reconvene here at nine a.m.”

  “All rise,” the bailiff said, and we did as the judge left the room.

  I frowned as Luther was escorted out.

  Something did not add up here.

  If Luther had been a professional tough, a little guy like Curtis Black wouldn’t have a prayer against him. I had been around enough tough guys to size Luther up. I wouldn’t want to take him on in muscle-powered combat if I could avoid it, not even now with all the extra physical stuff the Winter Knight’s mantle had given me. Doesn’t matter how much you bench-press; some people are damned dangerous in a fight, and you’re a fool to take unnecessary chances against them. Luther struck me as one of those men.

  Also, Tremont was way too young a kid to be pulling a high-profile murder case like this one. This was the kind of flashy prosecution DAs loved to showboat. Killers brought to justice, the system working, that kind of thing. They certainly didn’t hand the case off to some kid straight out of law school. Which meant that the old hands in Chicago thought that something about this case stunk to high heaven as well.

  I didn’t know the law really well, but I have a doctorate in the parts of Chicago that never showed up on the evening news. If Luther was telling the truth, then Curtis Black couldn’t have been human.

  Problem was, most humans didn’t know that. Even if Luther was telling the truth about Black, he wasn’t going to get a fair shake from Chicago’s justice system. Hell’s bells, the cop acquainted with him wasn’t even giving him much. Nobody was going to go to bat for him.

  Unless I did it.

  He was a father. For his kids’ sake, I wanted answers.

  I glanced at the clock as I filed out with the rest of the jury. Nine tomorrow morning. That gave me just under sixteen hours to do what wizards do best.

  I left, and began meddling.

  “WELL?” I ASKED the rather large wolf after he had been casting around the alley for a while.

  He gave me an irritated look. He sat, and after a few seconds, shimmered and resumed the form of Will Borden, crouched naked on the dirty concrete. “Harry, you are not helping.”

  “Did you find anything or not?” I asked.

  “This isn’t as easy as it looks,” he said. “Look, man, when I’m wolf, I’ve got a wolf’s sense of smell—but I don’t have a wolf’s freaking brain. I’ve been learning how to sort out signals from the noise, but it’s freaking hard. I’ve been doing this since my freshman year, and I could follow a hot trail, but you’re asking me to sift background. I don’t even know if a real wolf could do it.”

  I looked around the alley where Luther had beaten Black to death with a bowling pin. It had been nearly a year to the day since the murder. There was nothing dramatic to suggest a man had died here, and the bloodstains had long since faded into unrecognizability with the rest of the grunge. We were far enough down the alley to be out of sight of the street except for a slim column of space that cars crossed in under a second. “Yeah, that was a long shot, anyway.”

  “You going to wizard up some information?”

  “After this long, there’s nothing left,” I said. “Too many rains, too many sunrises. Not even Molly could get much.”

  “Then what are we going to do?”

  “Get furry again. We might be here awhile.”

  He frowned. “Why?”

  “I think the girl might come by in the next few hours.”

  “Why?”

  I shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s assume Luther’s telling the truth.”

  “Sure.”

  “This guy grabs a little girl and drags her into the alley. Luther jumps him from behind and gets thrown into a wall. Fights him hard, and beats him t
o death with a bowling pin. What can we deduce?”

  “That Black was stronger than normal and tougher than normal,” Will said. “Some kind of supernatural.”

  I nodded. “A predator. Maybe a ghoul or something.”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “So a predator, operating in the middle of a town? They don’t tend to openly grab little girls off the street, because someone might see it happen.”

  “Like Luther.”

  “Like Luther. But this guy did. He didn’t go after a transient sleeping in an abandoned building, or someone wandering down a dark alley to buy some drugs, a prostitute, any of the usual targets. He went with something dicier. He’s going to do that, he’s going to cut down on every random factor he can.”

  “You think he stalked her.”

  I nodded. “Stalked her, learned her pattern, and was waiting for her.”

  Will squinted up and down the alley. “Why do you think that?”

  “It’s how something from Winter would do it,” I said. “How I would take someone in a busy part of town, if I had to.”

  “Well. That’s not creepy or anything, Harry.”

  I showed my teeth. “Not much difference between wolves and sheepdogs, Will. You should know.”

  He nodded. “So, we wait here and see if she’s still going by?”

  “Figure if she still goes by here, she’ll do it fast and she’ll be worried. Should make her stand out.”

  “You know what else stands out on a busy Chicago street? A timber wolf.”

  “Thought of that,” I said, and produced a roll of fabric from my duster’s large pockets.

  “You’re kidding,” Will said.

  I smiled.

  “And what’s in the guitar case?”

  I smiled wider.

  A FEW MINUTES later, I was sitting on the sidewalk with my back against a building, an old secondhand guitar in my lap, the case open beside me with a handful of a change and an old wadded dollar bill in it. Will settled down beside me, wearing a service dog’s jacket, resting his chin on his front paws. He made a little groaning sound.

  “It’ll be fine, boy.”

  Will narrowed his eyes.

  “Just keep your nose open,” I said, and started playing.

  I started with the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt,” which was pretty simple. I sang along with it. I’m not good, but I can hit the notes and keep the rhythm going, so it more or less worked out. I followed it up with “Behind Blue Eyes,” which gets a little harder, and then “Only Happy When It Rains.” Then I followed it up with “House of the Rising Sun,” and completely mangled “Stairway to Heaven.”

  There wasn’t a ton of foot traffic on a weekday evening on this street, not in a fairly brisk late March, but nobody really looked at me twice. I made about two and a half bucks in change the first hour. The life of a musician is not easy. A patrol car went by and a cop gave me the stink-eye, but he didn’t stop and roust me. Maybe he had things to do.

  The light started fading from the sky, and I was repeating my limited set for the fifth or sixth time when I started to think about giving up. The girl, if she was still following the same pattern, definitely wouldn’t be running around town alone after it became fully dark.

  I was singing about how you’d get the message by the time I’m through when Will suddenly lifted his head, his eyes focused.

  I followed the direction of his gaze and spotted a girl of about the right age getting off of a bus. She started walking right away, down the street, though she stayed on the other side, directly toward the El station a block away.

  “There we go,” I said. “Kid walking a regular route alone gets jumped in Chicago, kid’s probably using public transit, running on a schedule. Makes her real predictable. Perfect mark for a predator.”

  Will made a low growling sound.

  “I think I’m kinda smart, yeah,” I said to him. “Get her scent?”

  Will nudged me with his shoulder and growled again.

  I frowned and looked around until I spotted a rather large and rough-looking man descending from the bus at the last second before it left for the next stop. He started down the sidewalk, in pursuit of the girl. He wasn’t maniacally focused on her or anything, but he wasn’t moving like someone coming home tired after a day of work, either. I recognized his pace, his stance, his tension, just as Will had. He was a predator in covert pursuit of his prey.

  Worse, he had a smartphone. His thumbs were rapping over it as he walked after the girl.

  “Damn,” I said. “Whoever Black was, he was connected. I’m on the creep. You stick with the girl.”

  Will gave me one brief, incredulous look.

  “I’m six-nine and scarred; you’re furry and cute. She’s eleven—she’s going to like you.”

  Will gave me a flat look, his gold eyes utterly unamused. On a wolf, that’s unsettling.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Wag your tail and paw your nose or something. Go!”

  I’ll give Will this much: He knows when actions matter more than questions. He took off at once, vanishing into the oncoming evening.

  Meanwhile, I put my guitar in the case, set it back into the alley, rose, and focused my will and my attention on the thug. Wizards and modern technology don’t get on well, and nothing dies as fast as cell phones when a wizard means to shut them down. I gathered up enough power to get the job done without taking out the lights on the whole block, flicked a finger at the man pacing the girl, and murmured, “Hexus.”

  A wave of disruptive energy washed out across the street and over the man and his smartphone. There was a little flash of light and a shower of sparks from the phone, and the man flinched and dropped the device. Most people would have stared at it or looked wildly around. This guy did neither. He sank into a defensive crouch and started scanning his surroundings with wide eyes.

  He knew he was being threatened, which meant he had some kind of idea that a wizard might be about. That meant he was no mere thug. He was clued in enough to the supernatural world to know the players and how they might operate. That meant he was elite muscle, and there were only so many players who he might be working for.

  I checked the street, hurried through an opening in traffic, and went straight for him. He spotted me in under a second and ran without hesitation, both of which impressed me with his judgment—but he took off after the girl, which meant that he wasn’t giving up, either. I swerved to pursue him, leapt, and pulled my knees up to my chin in the air, hitting the hood of a blue Buick with my hands as I flew over it, and came down still running.

  We rounded a corner, and I understood what was happening.

  The thug I was pursuing wasn’t the grabber. He was just riding drag, making sure the girl didn’t bolt back the way she came. I saw the girl ahead, being hurried into a doorway by three more men, and my guy poured it on when he saw them.

  I slowed down a little, taking stock. The goons ahead had seen me coming behind their buddy, and hands were going into coats. I flung myself into the doorway of an office-supply store, now closed for the evening, and the thugs all hustled through their own door, without producing guns on the street.

  Suited me. I had been hoping to get them somewhere out of the way, anyhow.

  I waited until they were inside, gave them a five count, and then paced down the street. The door they’d gone through belonged to a small nightclub. A sign hanging on the door read CLOSED FOR REMODELING.

  The door was locked.

  It was also made of glass.

  I smiled.

  I HUFFED AND I puffed and I blew the door in with a pretty standard blast of telekinetic force. I tugged my sleeve up to reveal the shield bracelet I’d thrown together out of a strip of craft copper and carefully covered with the appropriate defensive runes and sigils. I channeled some of my will down into the bracelet, and the runes hissed to life, spilling out green-gold energy and the occasional random spark.

  “All right, people!” I called into t
he club as I stepped through the door. “You know who I am. I’m here for the girl. Let her go, or, so help me God, I will bring this building down around your ears.” I wouldn’t, not while the girl was still in here, but they didn’t know that.

  There was silence for a long moment. And then music started playing from deeper inside the club. “Bad Romance” by Lady Gaga.

  “Okay,” I muttered. “Have it your way.”

  I advanced into the darkened club, my shield bracelet throwing out a faint haze of light from the runes—just enough to keep me from bumping into walls. I went through the entry hall, past a collection window where I supposed cover fees would be paid, to double doors that opened onto the bar and dance floor.

  I raised my left arm as if wielding an actual shield, the bracelet glowing, and stepped forward into the club.

  The little girl was sitting in a booth against the far wall. The four thugs were fanned out on either side of her, guns in hand but pointing at the floor. Sitting with the little girl in the booth was the ADA’s pretty assistant. When I came through the door, she lifted a hand and clicked a remote, and Lady Gaga’s voice cut off in the midst of wanting my bad romance.

  “Far enough,” the woman said. “It would be a shame if someone panicked and this situation devolved. Innocents could be hurt.”

  I stopped. “Who are you?” I asked.

  “Tania Raith,” she replied, and gave me a rather dizzying smile.

  House Raith was the foremost house of the White Court of vampires. They were seducers, energy drainers, and occasionally a giant pain in the ass. The White Court was headed up by Lara Raith, the uncrowned queen of vampires, and one of the more dangerous persons I’d ever met. She wielded enormous influence in Chicago, maybe as much as the head of the Chicago outfit, Gentleman Johnnie Marcone, gangster lord of the mean streets.

  I made damned sure to keep track of the thugs and precisely what they were doing with their hands as I spoke. “You know who I am. You know what I can do. Let her go.”

  She rolled her eyes and spun a finger through fine, straight black hair. “Why should I?”