Changes (10 page)

13

They took me to the Chicago division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation on Roosevelt. A crowd of reporters was outside the place, and immediately started screaming questions and snapping pictures as I was taken from the car and half carried into the building by a couple of patrolmen. None of the feds said anything to the cameras, but Rudolph paused long enough to confirm that an investigation into the explosion was ongoing and that several “persons of interest” were being detained, and that the good people of Chicago had nothing to fear, yadda, yadda, yadda.

A slender little guy in a fed suit with fish white skin and ink black hair strolled by Rudolph, put an arm around the other man’s shoulder in a comradely fashion, and almost hauled him off his feet and away from the reporters. Rudolph sputtered, but Slim gave him a hard look and Rudy subsided.

I remember stumbling through a checkpoint and an elevator and then being plopped down into a chair. Slim took the cuffs off my wrists. I promptly folded my arms on the table in front of me and put my head down. I don’t know how long I was out, but when I came to, a rather stiff, dour-looking woman was shining a penlight into my eyes.

“No evidence of concussion,” she said. “Normal response. I think he’s just exhausted.”

Slim stood at the door to the little room, which had a single conference table, several chairs, and a long mirror on the wall. Rudolph was standing there with him, a young- looking man in a suit more expensive than his pay grade, with dark, insanely neat hair and an anxious hunch to his shoulders.

“He’s faking it,” Rudolph insisted. “He wasn’t out of our sight for more than a few minutes. How could he have worked himself to exhaustion in that time, huh? Without sweating? Not even really breathing hard? He’s dirty. I know it. We shouldn’t have given him an hour to come up with a story.”

Slim eyed Rudy without any expression showing on his lean, pale face. Then he looked at me.

“I guess that makes you Good Cop,” I said.

Slim rolled his eyes. “Thanks, Roz.”

The woman took a stethoscope from around her neck, gave me a look full of disapproval, and left the room.

Slim came over to the table and sat down across from me. Rudolph moved around to stand behind me. It was a simple psychological ploy, but it worked. Rudolph’s presence, out of my line of sight, was an irritant and a distraction.

“My name is Tilly,” said Slim. “You can call me Agent Tilly or Agent or Tilly. Whatever you’re most comfortable with.”

“Okay, Slim,” I said.

He inhaled and exhaled slowly. Then he said, “Why didn’t you just answer the door, Mr. Dresden? It would have been a lot easier. For all of us.”

“I didn’t hear you,” I said. “I was asleep down in the subbasement.”

“Bullshit,” said Rudolph.

Slim looked from me to Rudy and back. “Asleep, huh?”

“I’m a heavy sleeper,” I said. “Keep a pad underneath one of the tables in the lab. Snooze down there sometimes. Nice and cool.”

Slim studied me for another thoughtful minute. Then he said, “Nah, you weren’t asleep down there. You weren’t down there at all. There was no open space large enough to have hidden you in that subbasement. You were somewhere else.”

“Where?” I asked him. “I mean, not like it’s a big apartment. Living room, bedroom, bathroom, subbasement. You found me on the floor in the subbasement, which only has one entrance. Where else do you think I was? You think I just appeared out of thin air?”

Slim narrowed his eyes. Then he shook his head and said, “I don’t know. Seen a lot of tricks. Saw a guy make the Statue of Liberty disappear once.”

I spread my hands. “You think I did it with mirrors or something?”

“Could be,” he said. “I don’t have a good explanation for how you showed up all of a sudden, Dresden. I get grumpy when I don’t have good explanations for things. Then I go digging until I come up with something.”

I grinned at him. I couldn’t help it. “I was asleep in my lab. Woke up when you guys started twisting my arms. You think I came out of a secret compartment so well hidden that nobody found it in a full sweep of the room? Or maybe I appeared out of thin air. Which of those stories do you think will make more sense to the judge in the civil suit I bring against the CPD and the Bureau? Yours or mine?”

Slim’s expression turned sour.

Rudolph abruptly appeared to my right and slammed a fist down on the table. “Tell us why you blew up the building, Dresden!”

I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help it. I didn’t have a whole lot of energy, but I laughed until my stomach was shaking.

“I’m sorry,” I said a moment later. “I’m sorry. It was just so . . . ahhhh.” I shook my head and tried to get myself under control.

“Rudolph,” said Slim. “Get out.”

“You can’t order me out. I am a duly appointed representative of the CPD and a member of this task force.”

“You’re useless, unprofessional, and impeding this deposition,” Slim said, his tone flat. He turned his dark eyes to Rudolph and said, “Get. Out.”

Slim had a hell of a glare. Some men do. They can look at you and tell you, without saying a word, that they are perfectly capable of doing violence and willing to demonstrate it. That look doesn’t convey any particular, single emotion, nor anything that can be easily put into words. Slim didn’t need any words. He stared at Rudolph with some faint shadow of old Death himself in his eyes, and did nothing else.

Rudolph flinched. He muttered something about filing a complaint against the FBI and left the room.

Agent Tilly turned back to me. His expression softened, briefly, into something almost resembling a smile, and he said, “Did you do it?”

I met his eyes for a second and said, “No.”

Tilly pursed his lips. Then he nodded his head several times and said, “Okay.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Just like that?”

“I know when people lie,” he said simply.

“And that’s why this is a deposition, not an interrogation?”

“It’s a deposition because Rudolph lied his ass off when he fingered you to my boss,” Tilly said. “Now I’ve seen you for myself. And bomber doesn’t fit on you.”

“Why not?”

“Your apartment is one big pile of disorganized clutter. Disorganized bomb makers don’t have much of a life expectancy. My turn. Why is someone trying to tag you for the office building?”

“Politics, I think,” I said. “Karrin Murphy has pissed off a lot of money by wrecking some of their shadier enterprises. Money leans on politicians. I get some spillover because she’s the one who hired me as a consultant on some of it.”

“Fucking Chicago,” Tilly said, with real contempt in his voice. “The government in the whole state is about as corrupt as they get.”

“Amen,” I said.

“I read your file. Says you were looked at by my office before. Says four agents vanished a few days later.” He pursed his lips. “You’ve been suspected of kidnapping, murder, and at least two cases of arson, one of which was a public building.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” I said. “That building thing.”

“You lead an interesting life, Dresden.”

“Not really. Just a wild weekend now and then.”

“To the contrary,” Tilly said. “I’m very interested in you.”

I sighed. “Man. You don’t want to be.”

Tilly considered that, a faint frown line appearing between his brows. “Do you know who blew up your office building?”

“No.”

Tilly’s expression might have been carved in stone. “Liar.”

“If I tell you,” I said, “you aren’t going to believe me—and you’re going to get me locked up in a psycho ward somewhere. So no. I don’t know who blew up the building.”

He nodded for a moment. Then he said, “What you are doing now could be construed as obstructing and interfering with an investigation. Depending on who was behind the bombing and why, it might even get bumped up to treason.”

“In other words,” I said, “you couldn’t find anything in my apartment to incriminate me or give you an excuse to hold me. So now you’re hoping to intimidate me into talking with you.”

Agent Tilly leaned back in his chair and squinted at me. “I can hold you for twenty four hours for no reason at all. And I can make them fairly unpleasant for you without coming close to violating any laws.”

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” I said.

Tilly shrugged. “And I wish you’d tell me what you know about the explosion. But I guess neither of us is going to get what we want.”

I propped my chin on my hand and thought about it for a moment. I gave it even odds that someone in the supernatural scene, probably the duchess, had pulled some strings to send Rudolph my way. If that was the case, maybe I could bounce this little hand grenade back to her.

“Off the record?” I asked Tilly.

He stood up, went out the door, and came back in a moment later, presumably after turning off any recording devices. He sat back down and looked at me.

“You’re going to find out that the building was wired with explosives,” I said. “On the fourth floor.”

“And how do you know that?”

“Someone I trust saw some blueprint files that showed where the charges had been installed, presumably at the behest of the building’s owners. I remember that a few years ago, there were crews tearing into the walls for a week or so. Said they were removing asbestos. The owners had hired them.”

“Nuevo Verita, Inc., owns the building. As insurance scams go, this isn’t a great one.”

“It isn’t about insurance,” I said.

“Then what is it about?”

“Revenge.”

Tilly tilted his head to one side and studied me intently. “You did something to this company?”

“I did something to someone far up the food chain in the corporate constellation that Nuevo Verita belongs to.”

“And what was that?”

“Nothing illegal,” I said. “You might look into the business affairs of a man calling himself Paolo Ortega. He was a professor of mythology in Brazil. He died several years ago.”

“Ah,” Tilly said. “His family is who is after you?”

“That’s a reasonably accurate description. His wife in particular.”

Tilly absorbed that, taking his time. The room was silent for several minutes.

Finally, Tilly looked up at me and said, “I have a great deal of respect for Karrin Murphy. I called her while you were resting. She says she’ll back you without reservation. Considering the source, that is a significant statement.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Considering the source, it is.”

“Frankly, I’m not sure if I can do anything to help you. I’m not in charge of the investigation, and it’s being directed by politicians. I can’t promise that you won’t be questioned again—though today’s events should make it harder to get judicial approval to move against you.”

“I’m not sure I understand your meaning,” I said.

Tilly waved a hand toward the rest of the building. “As far as they’re concerned, you’re guilty, Dresden. They’re already writing headlines and news text. Now it’s just a matter of finding the evidence to support the conclusion they want.”

“They,” I said. “Not you.”

Tilly said, “They’re a bunch of assholes.”

“And you aren’t?”

“I’m a different kind of asshole.”

“Heh,” I said. “Am I free to go?”

He nodded. “But since they’ve got nothing remotely like evidence that you were the one to plant the explosives, they’re going to be digging into you. Your personal life. Your past. Looking for things to use against you. They’ll play dirty.”

“Okay by me,” I said. “I can play, too.”

Tilly’s eyes smiled. “Sounds like. Yeah.” He offered me his hand. “Good luck.”

I shook it. I felt the very, very faint tingle of someone with a slight magical talent. It probably augmented Tilly’s ability to separate truth from fiction.

I got up and walked wearily toward the door.

“Hey,” Tilly said, just before I opened it. “Off the record. Who did it?”

I stopped, looked at him again, and said, “Vampires.”

His expression flickered with swiftly banished emotions: amusement, then realization, followed by doubt and yards and yards of rationalization.

“See,” I said to him. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”

14

I came out of the doors of the FBI building to find a ring of paparazzi surrounding it, waiting with predatory patience to get more material for their stories. A couple of them saw me and hurried toward me, beginning to ask me questions, thrust microphones toward me, that sort of thing. I winced. I was still pretty tired, but it was going to play merry hell with their gear if I got too close to it.

I looked around for a way to get down the sidewalks without messing up anybody’s equipment, and that was when they tried to kill me.

I’d been the target of a drive-by attempt once before. This one was considerably more professional than the first. There was no roar of engines to give me a warning, no wildly swerving vehicle. The only tip-off I had was a sudden prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck and a glimpse of a dark sedan’s passenger window rolling down.

Then something hit me in the left side of my chest and hammered me down onto the stairs. Stunned, I realized that someone was shooting at me. I could have rolled down the stairs and into the news crowd, put them between myself and the shooter, but I had no way of knowing whether the shooter wanted me bad enough to fire through a crowd in hopes of getting me. So I curled into a defensive ball and felt two more heavy blows land against me: one of them on my ribs, the second on my left arm, which I’d raised to cover my head.

There was an exclamation from below, and then there were several people standing over me.

“Hey, buddy,” said a potbellied cameraman in a hunting jacket. He offered me a hand to help me up. “Nasty fall, there. You still in one piece?”

I just stared at him for a second, the adrenaline coursing through me, and realized that the cameraman—all of the newsies, in fact—didn’t even know what had just happened.

It made a creepy kind of sense. I hadn’t heard anything. The assassin must have been using a suppressor. There hadn’t been any flashes, so he must have done it right, aiming at me through the car window while sitting far enough back to make sure the barrel of his gun didn’t poke out suspiciously—and that he never became a highly visible target. I had helped, too, by denying the onlookers the subtle clue of a dead body with little holes in the front of it and big ones in the back. No sound, no sight, and no victim. Why should they think that murder had just been attempted?

“Move!” I said, hauling myself up by the cameraman’s paw. I struggled to get higher, to look over the crowd and get a plate off of the dark sedan. It didn’t take much more than stepping around a couple of people and standing on tiptoe to get a view of the shooter’s vehicle, cruising calmly away, without roaring engines, without crashing up onto the sidewalk or running red lights. It just vanished into the traffic like a shark disappearing into the depths. I never got a clear look at the plates.

“Dammit,” I growled. Pain was starting to register on me now, especially in my arm. The protective spells I’d woven over my duster had held out against the bullets, but the leather had been pulled pretty tight over my skin and as a result it felt like someone had smashed a baseball bat into my forearm. The fingers of my left hand were tingling and refused to do more than twitch. I felt similar throbs from the other two hits, and ran my hands over the duster, just to be sure none of them had gone through without my noticing.

I found a bullet caught in the leather of my left sleeve. It hadn’t penetrated more than maybe a quarter of an inch, but it was trapped in the leather and deformed from the impact. I pulled a handkerchief out of my pocket, wrapped the bullet in it, and put it back again, managing to do the whole thing unnoticed while about a dozen people looked at me like I was a lunatic.

From the street came a wheezy little
beep-beep!
The
Blue Beetle
came slowly down the street and stopped in front of the building. Molly was behind the wheel, waving at me frantically.

I hurried down to the street and got in before the mismatched color scheme of my car sent the obsessive-compulsive federal personnel in the building behind me into a conniption. As Molly pulled away, I buckled up, then got a sloppy kiss on the face from Mouse, who sat in the backseat, his tail going
thump-thump-thump
against the back of the driver’s seat.

“Ick!” I told him. “My lips touched dog lips! Get me some mouthwash! Get me some iodine!”

His tail kept wagging and he smooched me again before settling down and looking content.

I sagged back into my seat and closed my eyes.

Maybe two minutes passed. “You’re welcome,” Molly said abruptly, her tone frustrated. “No problem, Harry. Whatever I can do to help.”

“Sorry, padawan,” I said. “This has been a long day already.”

“I came back from the church and saw a bunch of guys and cops were going in and out of your apartment. The door was broken down and the whole place looked like it had been ransacked.” She shuddered and clenched the wheel. “God. I was sure you were dead or in trouble.”

“You were about ninety percent right,” I said. “Someone told the feds I was the one who blew up the office building. They wanted to talk to me.”

Molly’s eyes grew wide. “What about the Swords? We’ve got to tell my dad, right away, or—”

“Relax,” I said. “I stashed them. They should be safe for now.”

Molly puffed out a breath and subsided in relief. “You look terrible,” she said, after a minute. “Did they beat you up or something?”

I swept my eyes left and right as we went on, searching. “Giant centipede.”

“Oh,” Molly said, drawing the word out, as though I had explained everything. “What are you looking for?”

I’d been scanning the traffic around us for a dark sedan. I’d found about thirty of them so far, being a master detective and all. “The car of the guy who just shot at me.” I produced the bullet, a little copper-jacketed round more slender than my pinkie and a little under an inch long.

“What is that?” Molly asked.

“Two-twenty-three Remington,” I said. “I think. Probably.”

“What’s that mean?”

“That it could have been almost anybody. It’s the round used in most NATO assault rifles. A lot of hunting rifles, too.” A thought struck me and I frowned at her. “Hey. How did you know where to find me?”

“I let Mouse drive.”

Thump, thump, thump.

I was tired. It took my brain a second to sort out the humor in her tone. “It isn’t funny when everyone does it, Molly. Not ready for the burden of constant wiseassery are you.”

She grinned widely, evidently pleased at having scored the point on me. “I used a tracking spell and the hair you gave me in case I ever needed to find you.”

Of course she had. “Oh, right. Well-done.”

“Um,” she said. “I’m not sure where we’re driving. As far as I know, your apartment is still crawling with guys.”

“Priorities, grasshopper. First things first.”

She eyed me. “Burger King, huh?”

“I’m starving,” I said. “Then back to the apartment. They should be gone by the time we get there, and it’s the only place where I’m sure Susan and Martin will be trying to make contact.”

She frowned. “But . . . the wards are down. It’s not safe there anymore. Is it?”

“It never was,” I said calmly. “If someone really wants to come kill you, it’s hard to stop them. All you can do is make it expensive for them to try it, and hope that they decide the price is too high.”

“Well, sure,” Molly said. “But . . . without the wards, aren’t you kind of having a super discount sale?”

Kid had a point. Anyone who ever wanted to take a whack at me had a peachy opportunity now. Attention, shoppers! Discount specials on Harry Dresden’s life. Slightly used, no refunds, limit one per customer. Shop smart. Shop S-Mart.

I leaned my head against the window, closed my eyes, and said, “What’d Forthill tell you?”

“What he always says. That he couldn’t make any promises, but that he’d do whatever he could to help. He said to call him back in a few hours and he’d see what he could get from his peeps.”

“Pretty sure that Roman Catholic priests don’t have peeps,” I said gravely. “Too trendy and ephemeral. Like automobiles. And the printing press.”

Molly didn’t return fire against my comments, though I’d made them lightly. She was conflicted on the whole issue of the Church, which I thought was probably a fine state for her mind to be in. People who ask questions and think about their faith are the last ones to embrace dogma—and the last to abandon their path once they’ve set out on it. I felt fairly sure that the Almighty, whatever name tag He had on at the moment, could handle a few questions from people sincerely looking for answers. Hell, He might even like it.

“Harry,” she said. “We could talk to my father.”

“No,” I said in a calm and final tone. “That isn’t even on the table.”

“Maybe it should be. Maybe he could help you find Maggie.”

I felt a sharp stab of anger and pain go through me—a vivid memory. Michael Carpenter, Knight of the Sword and unflagging friend, had gotten his body torn and beaten to bits trying to help me with one of my cases. Bearing a Sword melded to one of the nails of the Crucifixion, given him by an archangel, he had been a bulwark against very real, very literal forces of evil in the world. It was incredibly comforting to have him on your side. We’d waded into all kinds of ridiculously lethal situations together and come out of them again.

Except that last time.

He was retired now, and happy, walking only with the aid of a cane, out of the evil-smiting business and spending his time building houses and being with his family, the way he’d always wanted to. So long as he stayed retired, I gathered that he had a certain amount of immunity against the powers of supernatural evil. It would not surprise me at all if there were literally an angel standing over his shoulder at all times, ready to protect him and his family. Like the Secret Service, but with swords and wings and halos.

“No,” I said again. “He’s out of the fight. He deserves to be. But if I ask for his help, he’ll give it, and he’ll have chosen to accept the consequences. Only he can’t protect himself or your family from them anymore.”

Molly took a very deep breath and then nodded, her worried eyes focused on the road. “Right,” she said. “Okay. It’s just . . .”

“Yeah?”

“I’m used to him being there, I guess. Knowing that . . . if I need him, he’s there to help. I guess I always had it in my head that if things ever went really, truly bad, he’d Show Up,” she said, putting gentle emphasis on the last words.

I didn’t answer her. My father had died when I was young, before I learned that there was anything stronger than he was. I’d been operating without that kind of support for my whole life. Molly was only now realizing that, in some ways, she was on her own.

I wondered if my daughter even knew that she had a father, if she knew that there was someone who wanted, desperately, to Show Up.

“You get yourself an apartment and your plumbing goes bad, he’ll still be there,” I said quietly. “Some guy breaks your heart, he’ll come over with ice cream. A lot of people never have a dad willing to do that stuff. Most of the time, it matters a hell of a lot more.”

She blinked her eyes several times and nodded. “Yeah. But . . .”

I got what she didn’t say. But when you need someone to break down the door and commence kicking ass, you
really
need it. And Michael couldn’t do that for his daughter anymore.

“Tell you what, Molly,” I said. “You ever need a rescue, I’ll handle that part. Okay?”

She looked at me, her eyes blurred with tears, and nodded several times. She clasped my hand with hers and squeezed tight. Then she turned her face back to the road and pressed down on the accelerator.

We hit a drive-through and went on back to my apartment.

At the top of the stairs that led down to my door, I felt myself starting to get angry. They’d hammered the door flat. There were some scuff marks on it, but not much more than that. Tough door. But the wooden frame around it was shattered. There would be no way to get the door mounted again without extensive repairs that were probably beyond my skill level.

I stood there shaking with rage. It wasn’t like I lived in an ivory tower or Bag End. It was just a dingy little hole in the ground. It wasn’t much of a place, but it was the only home I had, and I was comfortable there.

It was my home.

And Rudolph and company had trashed it. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

Molly touched my shoulder for a second. “It’s not so bad. I know a good Carpenter.”

I sighed and nodded. I already knew that when all this was over, Michael would be Showing Up for me.

“Just hope Mister will be back soon. Might have to board him somewhere until the door is fixed.” I started down the stairs. “I just hope that—”

Mouse let out a sudden, deep growl.

I had my blasting rod out and my shield up in less than two seconds. Mouse is not an alarmist. I’ve never heard him growl outside the presence of danger of one kind or another. I checked to my right, and saw no Molly standing there. The grasshopper had vanished from view even more quickly than I’d readied my defenses.