Jim Butcher - Dresden Files Omnibus

by Jim Butcher

  “Or, unless you have a warrant to enter, or some kind of believable probable cause, I imagine Murph sues your department’s ass to kingdom come.”

  “Maybe I’ll insist,” Rudolph said, smiling.

  “I’d love to see that,” I told him, and I meant it. The mantle was talking to me again, advising me that if I wasn’t going to vent some of my built-up tension on a willing woman, then beating the arrogant stuffing out of Rudolph would be an appropriate substitute.

  “Nah,” the second cop said in a bored, distant voice. “You wouldn’t, sir.”

  I eyed the other guy. He was about five feet, six inches—in all three dimensions. I seriously couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a guy built so solidly. He wore a tailored suit, because I doubted anything fit him off the rack, but it was made of neutral, plain materials, meant to blend into the background of the business world. His salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed short, and his face was rough with beard shadow that I suspected appeared about ten seconds after he was done shaving. Something about the way he held himself, the way his eyes were focused on nothing in particular, put me on notice that he knew what he was doing better than most.

  I wasn’t familiar with the cops in Internal Affairs the way I was with Special Investigations, or the beat cops in the neighborhoods I knew. “They partnered you with Rudy, huh?” I said. “Harry Dresden.”

  “Detective Bradley,” he said. “Sir, it would be in Ms. Murphy’s best interests to speak to us now.”

  “Or we could do it downtown,” Rudolph said. “I don’t care which.”

  “Rudolph,” I said in a pleasant voice, “do you know how long it takes to wash dried blood from a broken nose out of a mustache?”

  “Harry,” Karrin said from the couch, reproof in her voice. “Dial it down a notch?” She waved an apologetic hand at me, out of sight of the men at the door. “Let’s just get it over with, huh?”

  I glowered at the men and said, “I reserve the right to kick—”

  “Harry,” Murphy sighed.

  “—ask you to leave if it looks like she’s getting tired,” I continued smoothly. I looked past Rudolph to the older man and said, “Okay?”

  “Why, you—” Rudolph said.

  Bradley the human tank put a hand on Rudolph’s shoulder. His fingers squeezed slightly, and Rudolph shut his mouth and then shot him a quick, hard look.

  “Sir,” Bradley said, “it’s in no one’s interests to strain an injured woman unnecessarily. We’ll be brief.”

  I growled and said, “Fine. Come in.”

  They did and asked to sit. Whatever. I didn’t sit down. I went and stood behind Karrin, leaning against the wall with my arms folded.

  “Murphy,” Bradley said.

  Karrin nodded at him warily. I knew her enough to recognize some respect in the gesture, if no affection. “Bradley. Out with it, Rudolph. What are you doing here?”

  Rudolph opened the manila envelope and tugged out several pieces of paper with color prints of photos on them. He tossed them onto the coffee table. I picked them up and gave them to Karrin without taking my eyes off the cops.

  She leafed through the pictures, and I felt her tension growing as she did. She passed me the pictures.

  One of them was a still from a security take on a Chicago street. I didn’t recognize the location exactly, but I did recognize the blurred shot of Murphy, in her little SUV, speeding down the street in heavy winter conditions.

  The others were shots from outside the bank, and from security cameras inside. There’d been enough bad weather and enough magic in the air that the shots were all blurry and distorted, but one of them was of a couple of guys coming out the bank door. One of them was average height, and the second was very tall.

  It was a shot of me and a mercenary named Grey during our egress of the heist, taken from a distance. The veil we’d been under must have flickered, or else the shot was from before it solidified and hid us from everyone. As it was, there wasn’t much but outlines. Our faces couldn’t really be made out in the distorted images. Still, there aren’t a lot of NBA-sized guys robbing banks in Chicago. Or anywhere. All of the other images were just as vague, or worse, but had the recognizable silhouette of the same tall fellow, though none of them showed my face, except the last one. In that one, I was sprinting down a sidewalk, and anyone with eyes, which is to say most people who might wind up on a jury, could recognize the image as me.

  “That shot of you,” Rudolph said to Karrin, “came from the same day you wound up with your injuries. Hell of a coincidence.”

  “How?” she asked calmly. “Rudolph, everybody in Chicago gets on a security camera or three every day of their lives.”

  “They aren’t all speeding in dangerous conditions,” Rudolph said.

  “Does Chicago have IA doing traffic stops?” Karrin asked. “Now that you’ve cleaned up all the corruption in town?”

  “Speeding down main streets during an ice storm,” Bradley said. “Near reports of gang violence at the same time.”

  “I was trying to make it home in time for my shows,” she said, her tone dry.

  “Car ended up wrecked, didn’t it?”

  “The follies of youthful impatience,” Karrin said, and pointed at her casts. “Been pretty clear about that.”

  Bradley nodded. “Talked to your doctor. Says he hasn’t ever seen injuries like yours from a wreck. Too precise. Says they’re clearly directed violence.”

  “He’s wrong,” Karrin said. “And violating HIPAA.”

  “And your known associate,” Bradley continued, as though she hadn’t spoken. “We got images of him, too.”

  “Beautiful picture of you, Dresden,” Rudolph said. “On the sidewalk outside a building where we found a body the next day.” He consulted a little notebook in his pocket. “One Harvey Morrison, CPA.”

  Karrin gave him her cop face, and I made do with my wizard face, but it was tough. My stomach had just dropped out. Harvey Morrison had died badly, despite my efforts to save his life. Cops get a little funny about the corpses of murdered men and women, particularly when they’re squares, unconnected to the world of crime.

  Failing to save someone isn’t quite the same thing as murdering them—but from the outside, the two can look almost identical.

  Bradley continued. “Morrison was a frequent customer at Verity Trust Bank. Which was robbed the next day. His specific vault was opened during the robbery. During which a number of explosions and a great deal of gunfire occurred.” He nodded at the pictures. “Those other images are of a suspect between six foot eight and six foot eleven, presumably one of the bank robbers.” He looked up at me blandly. “ Six … nine? Isn’t it, Dresden?”

  “I ate all of my Wheaties every morning at breakfast,” I said.

  “Wiseass,” Rudolph hissed. “Keep on cracking wise. I’ve got your ass now.”

  “Cracking wise?” I asked him. I shook my head at Bradley and hooked a thumb at Rudolph. “Who talks like that?”

  “He might be right,” Bradley said quietly. He looked from me to Karrin. “We’re digging. We’re good at it.”

  “You are,” Karrin acknowledged.

  Bradley nodded. “Your family’s done good work in this town, Murphy. Might be a good thing for you both if you talked to us before we dig up anything more.”

  Karrin didn’t look at me, and I didn’t look at her. We didn’t need to check in on this particular subject. Like most of the rest of the world, the cops didn’t have much time for the world of the supernatural. They would look at us blankly if we tried to tell them about a heist run by demon-possessed, two-thousand-year-old maniacs, and including ourselves, a shapeshifter, a Sasquatch, a one-man army, and a pyromancer. They’d figure we were going for an insanity plea and run us in.

  The capacity of humanity to deny what is right in front of it is staggering. Hell, Rudolph had seen a loup-garou tear apart a Chicago police station with his own eyes, and he was still in denial.

  “I
don’t know what to tell you,” Karrin said. “In that picture, I’m just trying to get home out of the storm. I don’t know anything about this accountant.”

  “And I barely know anything about anything,” I said. “Except that there are maybe a thousand people in Chicagoland who are six foot eight or taller. These pictures could be of any of them. Hope you got a real big lineup room.”

  “And this picture? The one of you?” Bradley asked politely.

  “I think I was running to catch a train,” I said. I was trying for guileless.

  Bradley clearly wasn’t buying it. He eyed us both and then nodded and let out a breath. “Yeah. Okay.”

  Rudolph stood up briskly and said, “Well, we tried.”

  Bradley gave Rudolph a steady look. Then he stood and said, quietly, “I’ll be right out. Wait for me.”

  “I am not your fucking junior partner,” Rudolph snarled. “I am your superior officer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Bradley said. “And I’ll be right out.”

  Rudolph gave him a disgusted look. Then he eyed me, pointed at me with his index finger, and said, “I’m looking forward to seeing you locked up, Dresden.”

  “Yeah, keep looking,” I told him.

  Rudolph smirked at me. Then at Karrin.

  She stared at him. She’s got a good stare. Rudolph’s smirk faded and he abruptly left without another word.

  “Prick,” Karrin breathed after the door closed behind him. She eyed Bradley and said, “Him? Really?”

  Bradley shrugged, a tectonic shift of massive shoulders. “Job’s gotta get done. Someone’s gotta do it.”

  “Yeah,” Karrin said quietly.

  “Dogs are out,” he said. “Matter of time before they get a scent. You and Dresden both cut it close for a long time. This time you went over the line.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Karrin said.

  “Crap,” Bradley replied. He rubbed a hand over his buzzed scalp. “Okay. That’s how you want it, we play it all the way out.”

  “Do your job,” Karrin said. “You always have.”

  “Yeah.” Bradley shook his head. “Rudolph let it get personal. Unprofessional. Sorry about that.”

  “I don’t expect any better from him,” Karrin said. “Not your fault.”

  “Hey,” I said. “Why does Internal Affairs have this one? Why not Homicide?”

  He shrugged. “Murphy was one of ours, I guess. You were, too, sort of.”

  Karrin stared at him intently for a moment. Then she said, “Thanks for coming by, Bradley.”

  Bradley nodded politely. “Yeah. Thanks for your time. I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Murphy.”

  He left, too, shutting the door carefully behind him, as if he wanted to avoid cracking it in half by accident. Maybe it had been a problem for him before.

  I let out a long breath after he left. Then I went to the door and watched them depart and nodded to Karrin once they were gone.

  “What’d you get from him?” I asked. “I didn’t catch it.”

  “Because I was one of theirs, he guesses,” Murphy said. “Bradley doesn’t guess about anything. He doesn’t know why IA has the case.”

  I rubbed at the spot between my eyes and growled. “Someone is pulling strings behind the scenes. They got the case bumped over to one of their people. Rudolph.”

  “And Marcone owns Rudolph,” Karrin said. She pursed her lips. “Or so we’ve assumed.”

  I grunted. “Who else could have him? Who else has so much influence in this town?”

  She shook her head. “Asking the wrong person in this room.”

  “Hah,” I said. “Something else to look into. What can we expect?”

  “Bradley’s like a starving dog with a bone,” she said. “He gets on a trail, he doesn’t get off it. He doesn’t sweep things under the rug. Doesn’t play the game.”

  “No wonder he’s his age and still junior to Rudolph,” I said. “Fortunately, we have a little thing called fact on our side: We didn’t kill Harvey. Or the guy at the bank.”

  Karrin snorted. “We were there, and we’re lying to the police about it. That would get us put away for a while all by itself. But our DNA was at the scene, and they might turn up eyewitnesses who saw us on the street or find more images from a camera somewhere. Or …”

  “Or someone could make some more evidence happen,” I said.

  She nodded. “They could make a case out of it. This could … wind up badly.”

  “What do we do about it, then?”

  She arched an eyebrow at me. “Do? What are we, the villains in Bradley’s detective novel? Should we try to warn him off the case? Destroy some evidence? Set someone else up to take the fall?”

  I grunted. “Still.”

  “Not much we can do,” she said quietly. “Except find out more about what’s going on. I’ve got a few channels left. I’ll check them.”

  “I’ll add looking into Rudolph’s sponsor to my list,” I said.

  She nodded. “Think this will interfere with the weirdness convention?”

  “Might be meant to,” I said. I thought about it for a long moment and then said, “When I go, call Butters.”

  Karrin quirked an eyebrow at me.

  “This shows every sign of becoming a sharknado,” I said. “Have him get the word out. To everyone. I mean everyone on the Paranet.”

  “What word?”

  “To keep their eyes open, sing out if they see anything, and to be ready,” I said. “Someone’s cooking something big. I can smell it.”

  Karrin nodded, and her gaze flicked to the grandfather clock against the wall. “You’ve still got a little time before you need to be back,” she said.

  “Yeah?”

  She nodded. Her blue eyes were very direct. “Come here.”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Um. Things haven’t really changed on that score. I’m not sure that—”

  She let out a wicked little laugh. “Adapt and overcome, Harry. I’m intelligent. And you’ve at least got a decent imagination. Between the two of us, we’ll come up with something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now. Come. Here.”

  It would have been incredibly impolite to refuse a lady.

  So I went.

  Chapter

  Six

  I might have been feeling pretty smug on my way back to the car.

  But my babysitter had an early morning, so as pleasant as it sounded, there would be no staying around for more. I had to go do the responsible dad thing.

  I was whistling as I got in the Munstermobile and got it to roar to life. The car was an old hearse from the forties, painted in shades of dark blue and purple, with flames on the hood and front fenders. It was not subtle. It was not anywhere close to subtle. But I figured that since I wasn’t, either, that made it an entirely appropriate vehicle for me.

  The car growled its way to life, and I turned and put one arm on the backrest of the front seat, to look behind me as I pulled out of Karrin’s driveway, and nearly had a freaking heart attack.

  Two monsters sat in the backseat.

  My reflexes kicked in as I flinched, twisting at the waist to bring up my left hand, the one with my makeshift shield bracelet. I let out a garbled, incoherent cry as my will slammed through it and the copper band exploded with a small cloud of green-yellow sparks as the shield came up between me and the threat. My right hand locked into a rigid claw and a small sphere of the same color of green-yellow energy gathered within the cage of my fingers, spitting and hissing with vicious heat.

  The wavering, unsteady light flickered and flashed with manic irregularity, and I got a chance to process the threat.

  Neither of the monsters was moving, and both of them were beautiful.

  The one on my left was a woman who looked like she had come to a glorious autumn of youthful beauty. Her hair was darker than an undertaker’s grave, and her silver-grey eyes threw back the light of my readied magic in flashes of green and gold. Her teeth were white and perfect,
and her smile looked sharp enough to cut a throat. She was wearing a white suit and sat with her legs crossed, gorgeously, and her hands folded in her lap.

  “New colors,” she said, her voice velvety smooth and calm. “The shield used to be blue. What changed?”

  “He made an alliance with a powerful guardian entity,” said the second monster, a woman seated beside the first. She was as lean as a rod of rebar, but colder and harder, and her opalescent green eyes were too big to be strictly human. Silver-white hair fell to her shoulders, today in a fine silken sheet. Her voice sounded calm and precise, and she wore a glacier blue dress that belonged on a runway. “It does not interfere with his duties.”

  I looked back and forth between the two women. My heart rate began to slow as my conscious mind started to catch on to the fact that I was not, apparently, under attack.

  Which was not to say that I was not in danger.

  I silently counted to five while I took a slow breath and decided to be calm and cautious—and polite. “Lara Raith,” I said to the first monster, inclining my head slightly. Then I turned to the second and did the same, only a shade more deeply. “Queen Mab.”

  “So nice to see you again, Harry,” Lara said, her sharp smile widening as she tucked a lock of dark hair behind her ear. “I love your hair. You look absolutely wolfish. How long has it been?”

  “Since that mess on the island,” I said. “How’s the Vampire Queen business?”

  There was something merry in her eyes as she widened them. “Booming. I sometimes think I might be about to explode at the prospect of all the marvelous opportunities that have been opening to me.”

  “As long as you don’t do it in my car,” I said. “Hi, Mab.”

  The second monster stared at me for a silent moment. Mab was the OG wicked faerie, the Queen of Air and Darkness, and her tolerance for my usual insouciance had limits. It had such limits that I still had a small lump on my skull that hadn’t gone away, ever since she’d smashed my noggin against the inside of an elevator. She stared at me the way a cat stares at any creature of about the right size to be eaten, and said, “It is, in fact, my car.”

  “Ah,” I said. “Right. Well. It’s a company car.”