by Jim Butcher
“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?”
“What’s tomorrow night?”
“Movie fest,” I said, and held up the film schedule. “Half a dozen films showing here. Another half a dozen in Pell’s theater. And most of their monsters aren’t nearly as friendly as Hammerhand and the Reaper.”
“God almighty,” Murphy breathed. “Any chance this could be regular folks playing dress up?”
“I doubt it. But it’s possible.”
She nodded. “We’ll let Greene cover that angle, then. Consider yourself to be on the clock for the department, Harry. What’s our next move?”
“We talk to the surviving victims,” I said. “And I try to figure out how many ways there are for someone to do something this crazy.”
She nodded, and then frowned at me. “First, you get some sleep. You look like hell.”
“Thanks,” I said. “Feel like I’m about to fall down.”
She nodded. “I’ll see if I can talk to Pell, if he’s even awake. I doubt we’ll get to the others before morning. Assuming they survive.”
“Right,” I said. “I’ll need to get back here and do some snooping tomorrow. With any luck, we can track down our bad guy before something else jumps off the movie screen.”
Murphy nodded and rose. She offered me a hand. I took it and she hauled me up. Murphy is a lot stronger than she looks.
“Give me a ride home?” I asked.
She already had her keys in her hand. “Do I look like your driver?”
“Thanks, Murph.”
We headed for the door. Usually I have to shorten my steps to match Murphy’s, but tonight I was so tired that she was waiting for me.
“Harry,” she said. “What if we can’t find out who is doing it in time?”
“We’ll find them,” I said.
“But if we don’t?”
“Then we fight monsters.”
Murphy took a deep breath and nodded as we stepped out into the summer night. “Damn right we do.”
Chapter
Fourteen
Murphy drove me home and parked in the gravel lot next to the century-old converted boardinghouse. She killed the engine in the car, and it made those clicking noises they do. We sat there with the windows rolled down for a second. A cool breeze coming off the lake whispered through the car, soothing after the unrelenting heat of the day.
Murphy checked her rearview mirror and then scanned the street. “Who were you watching for?”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“You rubbernecked so much on the way here, I’m surprised your shoulders aren’t bruising your ears.”
I grimaced. “Oh, that. Someone was tailing me tonight.”
“And you’re just now telling me about it?”
I shrugged. “No sense worrying you over nothing. Whoever he is, he’s not there now.” I described the shadowy man and his car.
“Same one who ran you off the road, do you think?” she asked.
“Something tells me no,” I said. “He wasn’t making any effort to avoid being spotted. For all I know, he could just be a PI gathering information on me for the lawsuit.”
“Christ,” Murphy said. “Isn’t that thing over with?”
I grimaced. “For a talk show host, Larry Fowler can really hold a grudge. He keeps doing one thing after another.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have burned down his studio and shot up his car, then.”
“That wasn’t my fault!”
“That’s for a court to decide,” Murphy said in a pious tone. “You got an attorney?”
“I helped a guy find his daughter’s lost dog five or six years ago. He’s an attorney. He’s giving me a hand with the legal process, enough so it hasn’t actually bankrupted me. But it just keeps going and going.”
Neither of us got out of the car.
I closed my eyes and listened to the summer night. Music played somewhere. I could hear the occasional racing engine.
“Harry?” Murph asked after a while. “Are you all right?”
“Hungry. Little tired.”
“You look like you’re hurting,” she said.
“Maybe a little achy,” I said.
“Not that kind of hurt.”
&nb
sp; I opened my eyes and looked at her, and then away. “Oh. That.”
“That,” she agreed. “You look like you’re bleeding, somehow.”
“I’ll get over it,” I told her.
“Is this about last Halloween?”
I shrugged a shoulder.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said, “There was a lot of confusion in the blackout and right after. But they found a corpse in the Field Museum that had been savaged by an animal. Lab guessed it was a large dog. They found three different blood types on the floor, too.”
“Did they?” I asked.
“And at Kent College. They found eight dead bodies there. Six of them had no discernable means of death. One had its head half severed by a surgically sharp blade. The other had taken a .44 round to the back of the head.”
I nodded.
She stared at me for a while, frowning and waiting for me to continue. Then she said, in a quiet, certain voice, “You killed them.”
My memory played some bad clips in my head. My stomach twisted. “I didn’t do the headless guy.”
Her cool, blue eyes stayed steady and she nodded. “You killed them. It’s eating at you.”
“It shouldn’t. I’ve killed a lot of things.”
“True,” Murphy said. “But they weren’t faeries or vampires or monsters this time. They were people. And you weren’t in the heat of battle when they died. You made the choice cold.”
I couldn’t lift my eyes for some reason. But I nodded and whispered, “More or less.”
She waited for me to say more, but I didn’t. “Harry,” she said. “You’re tearing yourself up over it. You’ve got to talk to someone. It doesn’t have to be me or here, but you’ve got to do it. There’s no shame in feeling bad about killing someone, not for any reason.”
I let out a short little laugh. It tasted bitter. “You’re the last person I’d expect to tell me not to feel bad about committing murder.”
She shifted uncomfortably. “Sort of surprised myself,” she said. “But dammit, Harry. You remember when I shot Agent Denton?”
“Yeah.”
“Took me some time to deal with it, too. I mean, I know he’d lost it. And he was going to kill you if I didn’t do it. But it made me feel…” She squinted out at the Chicago night. “Stained. To take a life.” She swallowed. “And those poor people the vampires had controlled at the shelter. That was even worse.”