by Jim Butcher
"She's a gutless little harlot, you mean."
"That will be enough, young lady," Mama Murphy said, her voice crackling with heat and steel. "Your sister found a man who genuinely loves her. I might not be entirely confident about the notion, but she's old enough to make her own choices. And besides, you know how much I always liked Rich."
"Yes, I know," Murphy growled. "Can we talk about something else?"
"All right."
"Where are the boys?"
Mama Murphy rolled her eyes and nodded at the group around the big television out on the grass. "Somewhere in there. You can hear them yelling if you listen."
Murphy snorted. "I'm surprised Rich isn't watching the game, too."
"Karrin, I know you're still angry with him. But it's hardly the man's fault that he wanted to start a family."
"That was just a rationalization, Mother," Murphy said. "What he wanted was for me to stay home so that I wouldn't make him look bad at work."
"I'm sorry you still think that," Mama Murphy replied. "But you're cheapening him. It isn't as though he could start a family by himself. He wanted a woman willing to do that with him. You made it clear that you didn't."
"Because I didn't want to give up what I do."
"There are other people in the family who have taken up your father's duties," Mother Murphy said, her voice bitter. "There's no need for you to do it."
"That isn't why I became a cop,"
Mother Murphy shook her head and sighed. "Karrin. Your brothers are all serving. They're taking their time in settling down. I don't want to tell you what to do with your life-"
Murphy snorted.
"- but I do want to have the chance to hold my grandchildren while I'm still young enough and strong enough to do it. Rich wants to settle down, and your sister wants to be the woman he does it with. Is that such a bad thing?"
"I just can't see you flying to New Orleans every month to visit them."
"Of course not, dear," Mama Murphy replied. "I don't have that kind of money. That's why they'll be settling down here."
Murphy's mouth dropped open.
"Rich has already put in for his transfer and had it approved. He'll be working for the FBI office here in Illinois."
"I don't believe this," Murphy grated. "My own sister. Here. With Rich. And you're just going to keep throwing this in my face."
"Not everything is about you, Karrin," her mother said, her voice prim. "I'm sure we can all be adults about this."
"But he's my ex-husband."
"Whom you divorced," Murphy's mother replied. But the harsh words were delivered in a gentle tone. "For goodness' sake, Karrin, you've already made it clear that you didn't want him. Why should you care if someone else does?"
"I don't," Murphy protested. She waved a vague hand. "But Lisa isn't just 'someone.'"
"Ah," said Mama Murphy.
Just then Murphy's cell phone chirped. She checked it, frowned, and said, "Excuse me." Then she walked twenty or thirty feet away from me, out into the sunshine, head bent to the phone.
"That will be work, I assume," Mama Murphy said to me. "You're the private investigator, aren't you?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"I saw you on Larry Fowler."
I sighed. "Yeah."
"Is it true that he's suing you for demolishing his studio?"
"Yeah. And his car. I had to get a lawyer and everything. The lawyer says that Fowler's guy won't have a case, even in civil court, but it's expensive and it's taking forever."
"The legal system can be that way," Mama Murphy agreed. "I'm sorry my daughter dragged you into our family squabble."
"I volunteered," I said.
"And now you regret it?"
I shook my head. "Hell-uh, heck, no. She's been there for me too many times, Mrs. Murphy. I don't know if you're aware of how dangerous her job can be. The kinds of things she faces in Special Investigations can be especially difficult. And disturbing. Your daughter saves lives. There are people who would be dead right now if she hadn't been there. I'm several of them."
Mama Murphy was quiet for a moment before she said, "Before they established Special Investigations, the department routinely handed all those cases to senior detectives in the Thirteenth Precinct. The cases were referred to as black cat investigations. The detectives as black cats."
"I didn't know that," I said.
She nodded. "My husband was a black cat for twelve years."
I frowned. "Murphy never told me that."
"I never told her. And Karrin never knew her father very well," Mama Murphy said. "He was away so much of the time. And he died when she was only eleven."
"Line of duty?"
Momma Murphy shook her head. "The work got to him. He… he grew distant and started to drink too much. And one night at his desk he took his own life." She faced me and said, her voice tired and sad, "You see, Harry, my Collin never spoke of it, but I can read between lines as well as anyone. I know what my daughter is facing."
That hung in the air between us for a moment.
"She's good," I said. "Not just skilled. She's got a good heart, Mrs. Murphy. I'd sooner trust her with my life than anyone else in the world. It isn't fair for you to give her a hard time about her job."
Mama Murphy's eyes sparkled, though they were also a little sad. "She thinks she's protecting me from the awful truth, Harry, when I complain about her work and she keeps things secret in reply. It makes her happy to know that her mother is not even aware of such dangerous things. I could never take that away from her."
I arched an eyebrow at Mama Murphy. Then smiled.
"What?" she asked.
"I see where she gets it," I said.
Murphy turned back to me, her expression hard, and beckoned me. I went over to her.
"It's Kincaid," she said, her voice held tight and quiet. "He says to tell you he's at the shelter and the Red Cross has shown up."
"What? Hell's bells."
She nodded. "They do a blood drive every three months out of the shelter's basement."
Where the Black Court was. Where the coffins and Renfields and darkhounds were. Mavra and her brood would never allow themselves to be seen. The Red Cross volunteers were as good as dead if they went in the basement. "Oh, crap."
"I'm calling it in," she said.
"No," I said, alarmed. "You can't do that."
"Like hell I can't," she said. "People are in danger."
"And they're going to be in more danger if this escalates," I said. "Tell Kincaid to try to delay the Red Cross people. We'll get down there and hit Mavra right now, before the volunteers can put themselves in the line of fire."
Murphy scowled up at me, her voice rising a little. People started to give us surreptitious looks. "Don't tell me how to do my job."
"This isn't your job, Murph," I said. "Do you remember when I told you that I'd tell you everything? Do you remember that you agreed to trust my judgment? That you wouldn't go calling in the cavalry on these things?"
Her expression became even more furious. "Do you think that I'm too stupid to know how to handle this?"
"I think that you're way too worked up already. And that you can't let this family thing get in the way of making the right decision. Getting the mortal authorities involved would be bad for everyone, Murph. Bad for you. Bad for SI. You might win the day, but when these things hit back, your people are going to suffer."
For a second I thought she was going to strangle me. "What do you expect me to do?"
I got in her face, and I didn't care if she avoided my eyes or not. "I expect you to listen to the person who knows what he's talking about. I expect you to trust me, Murph, the way I trusted you. Get on the damn phone and tell Kincaid what I said and ask where to meet him. Then we take care of business."
The eye contact got more intense, but Murphy shivered and broke it off before it could go any deeper. "Fine," she said. "I'll do it. But don't think I won't kick your ass over this later. Now back off bef
ore you blow up my phone."
I did, returning to the pavilion.
Mama Murphy regarded me speculatively. "Work?"
I nodded.
"That was quite an argument," she said.
I shrugged.
"It would seem that you won it."
I sighed and said wryly, "And I'll pay for it later."
"You'll both be leaving, then?"
"Yeah."
Mama Murphy looked back and forth between me and Murphy for a moment and then said, "Let me get you another burger before you go."
I blinked at her.
She assembled food, including a second burger for Murphy, and passed me the paper plates. She frowned at my hands, then up at my face, and asked, "Will you take care of my daughter?"
"Yes, ma'am. Of course I will."
Her blue eyes flashed fiercely, and she said, "Let me get you a piece of cake."
Chapter Twenty-nine
Murphy grabbed a gym bag out of her car and then followed me to Ebenezar's truck. She stopped about twenty feet short of it and said, "You're kidding me."
"Come on," I said. "You want to show up where there might be some trouble in your own car? That'd be nice for responding emergency units to see. So get in."
"What does it run on, coal?"
Ebenezar stuck his bald head out of the window, scowling. "No idea. Mostly I just turn it loose to hunt down dinner for itself."
"Murph," I said. "This is Ebenezar McCoy. Ebenezar, this is Karrin Murphy."
"You," Ebenezar said without approval. "I heard you've given the boy a hard time."
Murphy scowled. "Who the hell are you?"
"My teacher," I told her in a quieter voice. "A friend."
She glanced at me, then pursed her lips. She didn't miss the shotgun or the staff in the truck. "You're coming along to help?"
"As long as you don't think I'm too old, girlie," he drawled, heavy on the sarcasm.
"You got a driver's license? You driven Chicago streets lately?"
The old wizard scowled at her.
"Thought so," she said. "Move over."
He sputtered. "What?"
"I'm driving," she said. "So move."
I sighed. "Better move over, sir," I told Ebenezar. "We're in a hurry."
Murphy's gym bag thumped onto the ground and she stared at me with her mouth open.
"What?" I asked.
"Sir?" she said, her voice incredulous.
I scowled at her and ducked my head.
She picked up her bag, blinked a couple of times, and said, in her professionally politest tones, "If you don't mind, Mister McCoy, I know the streets better, and there are lives at stake."
Ebenezar's scowl had been half subverted by a small smile, but he said, "Bah. I'm too old to see the street signs anyway." He opened the door and started scooting. "Get in, get in. Come on, Hoss; we ain't got time to wait on you."
Murphy did not go so far as to slap her magnetic cop light on the top of the truck, but she got us to a parking garage near Mavra's lair in a big hurry. She knew the streets of the old town as well as anyone I'd ever seen, and she regarded niceties like red lights, one-way streets, and right-of-way with an almost magnificent lack of concern. Ebenezar's old truck kept up with her gamely enough, though I found my head bouncing off the roof a couple of times.
I told Murphy what I'd learned about the vampires' lair on the way.
Murphy shook her head. "Damn. This isn't what I expected. That they'd take something right in the middle of so many people."
"Me either," I said. "But that only means we need to move sooner instead of later. The longer the vamps are there, the more of those hostages they're going to bleed out, and the greater the risk of one of their Renfields snapping and opening up on pedestrians with an assault rifle."
"Assault rifles," Murphy said. "And hostages. Jesus, Harry, people could die."
"No could about it. They're already dying," I replied. "At least three bodies already. And the Renfields are just a matter of time."
"What if you're wrong?" Murphy said. "Do you really expect me to charge in guns blazing against people who might or might not already be dead? I have an obligation to protect citizens, not to sacrifice them."
My teeth clacked together as the truck went over a heavy bump. "These are the Black Court. They kill, and they do it frequently. Not only that, but they can propagate their kind more rapidly than any other vampire. If we let a nest of them go unmolested, we could potentially have dozens of them in a few days. In two weeks there could be hundreds. Something has to be done, and now."
Murphy shook her head. "But it doesn't mean it needs to be vigilante work. Harry, give me three hours to establish probable cause and I'll have every cop and every SWAT team in two hundred miles ready to take on that nest."
"And you'll tell them what, exactly?" I said. "'Basement full of vampires' is not going to cut it, and you know it. And if they go in with blinders on, cops will get killed."
"And if it's us?" Murphy asked. "What then? We kick down the door, shoot anything standing, and then make like we're the Flying Van Helsings? A direct assault on a wary target is one of the best ways in the world to get killed."
"So we figure something out," I said. "We get a plan."
Murphy shot me a look past Ebenezar, who evidently had decided to stay out of it. "This isn't like the Wal-Mart plan with the marbles, is it?"
"I'll tell you when I know. Let's get there and see if we can find out first. Maybe Kincaid will have something."
"Yeah," Murphy said without much hope. "Maybe. Here, this is where Kincaid is meeting us."
It wasn't a pleasant neighborhood. The city had been working on urban renewal projects for decades, but the lion's share of the money had gone to restore higher-profile, more infamous neighborhoods, such as Cabrini Green. In that time, many neighborhoods that had been borderline steadily eroded, and had usurped the infamous-neighborhood crown. The slum is dead. Long live the slum.
I'd seen worse, but not many. Tall buildings and narrow alleys choked out a lot of the sunshine. Most windows below the third or fourth floor had been boarded up. Ground level commercial properties were largely vacant. The storm drains were clogged with litter and other urban detritus, most of the streetlights were out, and graffiti and gang signs had been spray-painted everywhere. The air smelled like mildew, garbage, and exhaust. The residents of the neighborhood moved with brisk purpose, confidence, and flat eyes as they walked, doing everything they could to indicate by body language that they were not good targets for assault or robbery.
I spotted a drug house in the first ten seconds of looking around. The burned-out hulk of an abandoned car had been stripped for parts before it had been set on fire, and I had a notion that Murphy was the first cop to visit in the past several weeks.
But there was something missing.
Bums. Transients. Homeless folk. Winos. Bag ladies. Even in broad daylight there should have been someone collecting cans, panhandling change, or shambling along drinking from a bottle still covered with a paper bag.
But there wasn't. Everyone moving was getting from one place to another, not eking out a living from the environment.
"Look kind of quiet to you here?" Murphy asked, voice tight.
"Yeah," I said.
"They've been killing," she said, almost spitting the words.
"Maybe. Maybe not," Ebenezar said.
I nodded. "There's dark power at work here. People sense that, even if they don't know what it is. You're feeling it now."
"What do you mean?"
I shrugged. "The presence of dark magic. It makes you feel nervous and angry. If you forced yourself to calm down and tried to sense it, you could feel it. It leaves a kind of stain around it."
"Stinks," rumbled Ebenezar.
"What does that have to do with missing street people?" Murphy asked.
"You've been here about three minutes, and the power bothers you already. Imagine living in it. Getting a littl
e more afraid every day. Angrier. More demoralized. People get rattled enough to leave, even if they don't understand why. Over the long term this kind of power breeds its own wasteland."
"You mean that the vampires have been here for a while?" she asked.
"To have this much effect, it's been days at least," I said, nodding.
"More like two weeks." Ebenezar grunted with assurance. "Maybe three."
"God," Murphy said, shivering. "That's scary."
"Yeah. If they've been here that long, it means Mavra has something in mind."
She frowned. "You mean that this vampire came here and then chose when to make you aware of its presence? This could be a trap."
"It's possible. Paranoid, but possible."
Her mouth tightened into a line. "You didn't mention that at breakfast."
"We're doing battle with the living dead, Murph. Expect the occasional curveball."
"Are you patronizing me now?"
I shook my head. "No. Honest. Where's Kincaid?"
"Second level of this parking garage," Murphy said.
"Stop on the first level," I told her.
"Why?"
"He doesn't know about Ebenezar, and I don't want to spook him. We'll walk up and meet him."
Ebenezar nodded to us and said, "Good call, Hoss. Decent gunman can be twitchy. I'll give you a minute, then drive on up."
Murphy stopped the truck and we got out. I waited until we were several paces from the truck before I lowered my voice and said, "I know. You're afraid."
She glared at me, and started to deny it. But she knew better, and shrugged one shoulder instead. "Some."
"So am I. It's okay."
"I thought I was over this," she said. Her jaw tightened. "I mean, the night terrors are gone. I can sleep again. But it isn't like before, Harry. I used to get scared, but I'd be excited too. I would have wanted to do it. But I don't want this. I'm so afraid that I'm about to throw up. Which sucks."
"You're scared because you've learned things," I told her. "You know the kinds of things you're fighting," I said. "You know what could happen. You'd be an idiot if you weren't afraid. I wouldn't want someone with me who didn't have enough sense to be worried."