by Jim Butcher
“On a personal note—I know nothing that would profit you in any case. All of his people we managed to take revealed nothing. They were that afraid of him. No one seems to know just where the drug comes from, from what it is made, or where this person does business. Shadows, they say. That he is always in the shadows. That is all that I have learned.”
I regarded Johnny Marcone for a moment, and then nodded, once. “Thank you.”
He shrugged. “Good luck. I think it would be best if you and I did not encounter one another in the future. I cannot tolerate any more interference in my affairs.”
“I think that’s a good idea, too,” I said.
“Excellent. It is good to have someone who understands.” And then he turned back toward his remaining two men, leaving the corpse of Gimpy Lawrence on the floor behind him.
I turned and trudged out of the place, into the night and the cold and the misty rain. I still felt sick, could still see Gimpy Lawrence’s eyes as he died. I could still hear Linda Randall’s husky laughter in my head. I still regretted lying to Murphy, and I still had no intentions of telling her any more than I already had. I still didn’t know who was trying to kill me. I still had no defense to present to the White Council.
“Let’s face it, Harry,” I told myself. “You’re still screwed.”
Chapter Eighteen
Have you ever felt despair? Absolute hopelessness? Have you ever stood in the darkness and known, deep in your heart, in your spirit, that it was never, ever going to get better? That something had been lost, forever, and that it wasn’t coming back?
That’s what it felt like, walking out of the Varsity, walking out into the rain. When I’m in turmoil, when I can’t think, when I’m exhausted and afraid and feeling very, very alone, I go for walks. It’s just one of those things I do. I walk and I walk and sooner or later something comes to me, something to make me feel less like jumping off a building.
So I walked. It was pretty stupid, in retrospect, walking around Chicago late on a Saturday night. I didn’t look up very often. I walked and let things roll around in my head, my hands in the pockets of my duster, which flapped around my long legs while the light rain gradually plastered my hair to my head.
I thought about my father. I usually do, when I get that low. He was a good man, a generous man, a hopeless loser. A stage magician at a time when technology was producing more magic than magic, he had never had much to give his family. He was on the road most of the time, playing run-down houses, trying to scratch out a living for my mother. He wasn’t there when I was born.
He wasn’t there when she died.
He showed up more than a day after I’d been born. He gave me the names of three magicians, then took me with him, on the road, entertaining children and retirees, performing in school gymnasiums and grocery stores. He was always generous, kind—more kind and more generous than we could afford, really. And he was always a little bit sad. He would show me pictures of my mother, and talk about her, every night. It got to where I almost felt that I knew her, myself.
As I got older, the feeling increased. I saw my father, I think, as she must have—as a dear, sweet, gentle man. A little naive, but honest and kind. Someone who cared for others, and who didn’t value material gain over all else. I can see why she would have loved him.
I never got to be old enough to be his assistant, as he had promised me. He died in his sleep one night. An aneurysm, the doctors said. I found him, cold, smiling. Maybe he’d been dreaming of Mother when he went. And as I looked at him, I suddenly felt, for the very first time in my life, utterly, entirely alone. That something was gone that would never return, that a little hole had been hollowed out inside of me that wasn’t ever going to be filled again.
And that was how I felt, that rainy spring night in Chicago, walking along the streets, my breath pluming into steam, my right boot creaking with every step, dead people occupying all of my thoughts.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, I suppose, when after hours of walking, my steps carried me back to Linda Randall’s apartment. The police were all gone, now, the lights all off, all the gawking neighbors cozy in their beds. It was quiet in the apartment complex. Dawn wasn’t yet brushing the sky, but somewhere, on a window ledge or in a rooftop nest, a bird was twittering.
I was at the end of my strength, my resources. I hadn’t thought of anything, hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas. The killer was going to get a spell together to kill me the next time he had a storm to draw on, and from the way the air felt that could be anytime. If he didn’t kill me, Morgan would certainly have the White Council set to execute me at dawn on Monday. The bastard was probably out lobbying votes, already. If the matter came before the Council, I wouldn’t stand a chance.
I leaned against the door to Linda’s apartment. It was striped with POLICE LINE—DO NOT CROSS yellow-and-black tape. I didn’t really realize what I was doing until I had already worked a spell that opened the door, unfastened the lowest strip of yellow tape, and walked into her apartment.
“This is stupid, Harry,” I told myself. I guess I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I walked around Linda’s apartment, smelling her perfume and her blood. They hadn’t come to clean up the blood, yet. The apartment manager would probably have to handle that, later. They never really show you details like that at the movies.
I eventually found myself lying on the floor, on the carpeting next to Linda Randall’s large bed. I was curled on my side, my back to her bed, my face toward the sliding glass doors that led out to her little concrete patio. I didn’t feel like moving, like going anywhere, like doing anything. Useless. It had all been useless. I was going to die in the next two days.
The worst part was that I wasn’t sure that I cared. I was just so tired, exhausted from all the magic I’d had to use, from the walking, from the bruises and punches and lack of sleep. It was dark. Everything was dark.
I think I must have fallen asleep. I needed it, after everything that had happened. I don’t remember anything else, until the sun was too bright in my eyes.
I blinked and lifted a hand against the light, keeping my eyes closed. Mornings had never been my best time, and the sun had risen above the tops of the buildings across the street, cheerful springtime sunshine that dashed down through Linda Randall’s curtains, through my eyelids and into my brain. I grumbled something, and rolled over, face to the cool darkness under Linda’s bed, back to the warm sunlight.
But I didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I started to get disgusted with myself.
“What the hell are you doing, Harry?” I demanded, out loud.
“Lying down to die,” I told myself, petulantly.
“Like hell,” my wiser part said. “Get off the floor and get to work.”
“Don’t wanna. Tired. Go away.”
“You’re not too tired to talk to yourself. So you’re not too tired to bail your ass out of the alligators, either. Open your eyes,” I told myself, firmly.
I hunched my shoulders, not wanting to obey, but against my better judgment, I did open my eyes. The sunlight had turned Linda Randall’s apartment into an almost cheerful place, overlaid with a patina of gold—empty still, to be sure, but warm with a few good memories. I saw a high-school year-book lying nearby, underneath the bed, several photographs serving as bookmarks. There was also a framed picture of a much-younger Linda Randall, smiling brightly, none of the jaded weariness I had seen in her in evidence, standing in her graduation robes between a kind-looking couple in their late fifties. Her parents, I presumed. She looked happy.
And, lying just in the edge of a stray little beam of sunlight, one that was already retreating as the sun rose above the edge of the buildings, was a small, red plastic cylinder with a grey cap.
My salvation.
I snatched it out from under the bed. I was shaking. I shook the canister, and it rattled. A roll of film was inside. I opened up the canister and dumped the film into my hand. The plastic leader had been retra
cted into the case—there were pictures on the film, but they hadn’t been developed yet. I closed the film up again and reached into the pocket of my duster and drew out another canister, the one I’d found at Victor Sells’s lake house. The two were a match.
My mind spun around, taking off down a whole new track. An entirely new realm of possibility had opened up to me, and somewhere in it might be my opportunity, my chance to get out of this alive, to catch the killer, to salvage everything that had started going to hell.
But it still wasn’t clear. I couldn’t be sure what was going on, but I had a possible link now, a link between the murder investigation and Monica Sells’s aborted inquiry into the disappearance of her husband, Victor. I had another lead to follow, but there wasn’t much time to follow it. I had to get up, to get on my feet, and get going, fast. You can’t keep a good wizard down.
I stood up, grabbed my staff and rod, and started toward the door. The last thing I needed was to get caught trespassing on a crime scene. It could get me arrested and stuck in holding, and I’d be dead before I could get bail. My mind was already rolling ahead, working out the next step, trying to find this photographer who had been at Victor’s beach house, and getting these pictures developed and seeing if there was anything in them that was worth Linda Randall’s death.
It was then that I heard a sound, and stopped. It came again, a quiet scraping.
Someone turned the key in the dead bolt of the apartment’s front door and swung it open.
Chapter Nineteen
There was no time to flee beneath the bed, or into the bathroom, and I didn’t want to be limited in mobility in any case. I leapt forward and stood behind the door as it opened, keeping very still.
A man entered—slim, short, harried-looking. His hair, a listless shade of brown, was drawn back into a ponytail. He wore dark cotton pants and a dark jacket, and carried a pouch on a strap at his side. He shut the door, most of the way, and looked around with great agitation. But, like most people who are too nervous to be thinking clearly, he was seeing less than he should have been, and though his head swept over where I would have been in his peripheral vision, he didn’t notice me. He was a good-looking man, or so it seemed, with strong lines to his jaw and cheekbones.
He crossed the room and stopped short when he saw the bloodstained bed. I saw him clench his hands into fists. He made a strange, cawing little sound, then hurried forward, to throw himself down on the floor by the bed and start pawing underneath it. After a few seconds, his pawing grew more frantic, and I heard him curse out loud.
I slid my fingers over the smooth surface of the film canister in my pocket. So. The mysterious photographer lurking outside of Victor Sells’s lake house was here looking for the film. I had a feeling in my stomach like I get when I finish a particularly difficult jigsaw puzzle—a peculiar satisfaction mingled with a touch of smugness.
I settled my staff and rod silently into the corner by the door and flipped my official police consultant’s badge, complete with my photograph on it, out of my duster, so that it showed against the black canvas. I covered my ratty old T-shirt with the coat and hoped that the man would be too rattled and nervous to notice that I was wearing sweatpants and cowboy boots beneath the duster.
I kept my hands in my pockets, pushed the door shut with a little nudge of my boot, and just as it closed, said, “So. Returning to the scene of the crime. I knew we’d catch you if I just waited.”
The man’s reaction would have had me rolling in laughter on any other day. He jerked, slammed his head against the bottom of the bed, yelped, drew himself back from the bed, turned to look at me, and all but leapt back over the bed in surprise when he saw me. I revised my opinion of his looks—his mouth was too pinched, his eyes too small and too close together, giving him the intent, predatory look of a ferret.
I narrowed my eyes and stalked toward him one slow pace at a time. “Just couldn’t stay away, could you?”
“No!” he said. “Oh, God! You don’t understand. I’m a photographer. See? See?” He fumbled with the case at his side and produced a camera from it. “Taking pictures. For the papers. That’s what I’m doing here, just trying to get a good look around.”
“Save it,” I told him. “We both know you aren’t here to take pictures. You were looking for this.” And I pulled the film canister out of my pocket, held it up, and showed it to him.
His babbling stopped, and he stood stock-still, staring at me. Then at the canister. He licked his lips and started trying to say something.
“Who are you?” I asked. I kept my voice gruff, demanding. I tried to think of what Murphy would sound like, if I was downtown with her right now, waiting for her to ask me questions.
“Uh, Wise. Donny Wise.” He swallowed, staring at me. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
I narrowed my eyes at him and sneered, “We’ll see about that. Do you have identification?”
“Sure, yeah.”
“Let me see it.” I speared him with a glance, and added, “Slowly.”
He goggled at me and reached for his hip pocket with exaggerated slowness. With one hand, he drew out his wallet and flipped it open to his driver’s license. I stalked toward him, snatched it, and studied it. His license and picture agreed with the name he’d given me.
“Well, Mr. Wise,” I began, “this is an ongoing investigation. So long as you give me your cooperation, I don’t think that we—”
I looked up to see him peering at my name badge, and my voice trailed off. He jerked his wallet back, and accused, “You’re not a cop!”
I tilted my head back at an arrogant angle. “Okay. Maybe not. But I work with the cops. And I’ve got your film.”
He cursed again and started stuffing his camera back into his bag, clearly meaning to leave. “No. You got nothing. Nothing that connects any of this to me. I’m out of here.”
I watched him start past me, toward the door. “Don’t be so hasty, Mr. Wise. I really think you and I have things to discuss. Like a dropped film canister underneath the deck of a house in Lake Providence, last Wednesday night.”
He flicked a quick glance up at me. “I have nothing to say to you,” he mumbled, “whoever the hell you are.” He reached for the door and started to open it.
I gestured curtly to my staff in the corner, and hissed, in my best dramatic voice, “Vento servitas,” jerking my hand at the doorway. My staff, driven by tightly controlled channels of air moving in response to my evocation, leapt across the room and slammed the door shut in front of Donny Wise’s nose. He went stiff as a board. He turned to face me, his eyes wide.
“My God. You’re one of them. Don’t kill me,” he said. “Oh, God. You’ve got the pictures. I don’t know anything. Nothing. I’m no danger to you.” He tried to keep his voice calm, but it was shaking. I saw him tilt his eyes at the glass sliding doors to the little patio, as though calculating his chances of making it there before I could stop him.
“Relax, Mr. Wise,” I told him. “I’m not here to hurt you. I’m after the man who killed Linda. Help me. Tell me what you know. I’ll take care of the rest.”
He let out a harsh little laugh, and eased a half step toward the glass windows. “And get myself killed? Like Linda, like those other people? No way.”
“No, Mr. Wise. Tell me what you know. I’ll put a stop to the killings. I’ll bring Linda’s murderer to justice.” I tried to keep my voice soothing, even, fighting against the frustration I felt. Hell, I’d wanted to rattle him, but I hadn’t meant to scare him so badly that he wanted to jump through a plate-glass sliding door. “I want these people stopped just as badly as you do.”
“Why?” he demanded. I saw a little contempt in his eyes, now. “What was she to you? Were you sleeping with her, too?”
I shook my head. “No. No, she’s just one more dead person who shouldn’t be.”
“You’re not a cop. Why risk your ass to do this? Why go up against these people? Haven’t you seen what they can do?”
I shrugged. “Who else is going to?” He didn’t answer me, so I held up the film canister. “What are these pictures, Mr. Wise? What is on this film that was worth killing Linda Randall for?”
Donny Wise rubbed his palms over his thighs. His ponytail twitched as he looked about the room. “I’ll make you a deal. Give me the film, and I’ll tell you what I know.”
I shook my head. “I might need what’s on here.”
“What’s there isn’t any good to you if you don’t know what you’re looking at,” he pointed out. “I don’t know you from Adam. I don’t want any trouble. All I want is to get my ass out of this alive and in one piece.”
I stared at him for a moment. If I traded him, I’d lose the film, and whatever was on it. If I didn’t, and if he was telling me the truth, the film wouldn’t do me any good. The trail had led me here, to him. If I didn’t dig up a lead to somewhere else, I was dead.
So I snapped my fingers, letting my staff rattle to the floor. Then I tossed him the film, underhand. He dropped it, and stooped to recover it, studying me warily.
“After I get out of here,” he said, “we’re quits. I’ve never seen you before.”
I nodded. “Fine. Let’s have it.”
Donny swallowed and ran a hand back over his hair, giving his ponytail a nervous little tug at the end of the motion. “I knew Linda from around. I’d taken some pictures of her, for a portfolio. I do shoots for some of the girls around town. They want to make it into magazines, most of them.”
“Adult magazines?” I asked.
“No,” he snapped, nervous still, “Uncle Abner’s magazine for children. Of course adult mags. Nothing really classy, but you can make some good money even if you’re not Hugh Hefner’s type.
“So on Wednesday, Linda comes to me. She says she’s got a deal for me. I shoot some pictures for her and give her the film, and I get—and she’s real nice to me. All I have to do is show up where she says, shoot a roll through the windows, and go. Deliver to her the next day. So I did it. And now she’s dead.”