Ghost Story (26 page)

Hell's bells. That put a different spin on things. I mean, I had been hoping to go for a no-harm, no-foul argument with Murphy. But if blood had been spilled and lives lost . . . Well. I knew Murphy. Whether or not she was a cop anymore, she wasn't going to back away.

“Where are they?” she asked.

“This is not a time to kick down doors,” I told her. “Please hear me out.”

Her hand tightened into a fist, but she visibly took control of her anger, took a deep breath, and then nodded. “Go ahead.”

I told her about Fitz and his gang. I told her about Aristedes.

“I notice, Harry,” she said, “that you didn't tell me where they are.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I, uh. I sorta told the kid I would help him. That you would help him.”

Murphy narrowed her eyes. “You did what?”

“They're
kids
, Murph,” I said. “In over their heads. They need help.”

“They've killed at least one person, maybe more,” Murphy said. “There are still laws in this town, Dresden.”

“Send the cops in and it'll get ugly. I'm not sure how much juice their boss has, but even if he can't shoot, he'd be a nightmare for the police—even SI.”

Murphy frowned. “How sure are you about that?”

“Guys like him use fear and violence as daily tools. He won't think twice about hurting a cop.”

Murphy nodded. “Then I'll deal with him.”

“Murph, I know you can handle yourself, but—”

“Dresden, I've dealt with two men since you . . . since the shooting, who were skilled enough for Carlos to call them the next-best thing to full Council-quality warlocks. I've handled several lesser talents, too. The Fomor like to use them as officers and commanders. I know what I'm doing.”

“You've killed them,” I said quietly. “That's what you mean, isn't it?”

She looked away. It was a moment before she answered. “With someone that powerful . . . there's not really a choice. If you try to take them alive, they have plenty of time to kill you.”

I winced in sympathy for her. She might not be a cop anymore, but it was where her heart lay—with the law. She believed in it, truly believed that the law was meant to serve and protect the people of Chicago. When she was a cop, it had always been her job to make sure that those laws worked toward that purpose, in whatever way she could manage.

She loved serving her city under the rule of law, and that meant judges and juries got to do their job before the executioner stepped in. If Murphy had dispensed with that belief, regardless of how practical and necessary it had been, regardless if doing so had saved lives . . .

Butters had said that she was under stress. I now knew the nature of that stress: guilt. It would be ripping away steadily at her insides, at her conscience, scraping them both raw.

“They were all killers,” she said, though I don't think she was talking to me. “Killers and kidnappers. And the law couldn't touch them. Someone had to do something.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Someone always does.”

“The point is,” she continued, “that the way you deal with this kind of problem is to hit it with absolutely everything you've got, and to do it immediately. Before those spell-casting yahoos have enough time to fort up, bend people's minds into defending them, or to start coming after you or someone you care about.” She looked up at me. “I need the address.”

“You don't,” I said. “I'll bring the kids to you. Once you get them away from Aristedes, he's out of help and vulnerable. Then you can help Fitz and company.”

“Fitz and company,” she said in a flat tone, “are murderers.”

“But—”

“No, Harry. Don't give me any rap about how they didn't mean it. They opened fire with deadly weapons in a residential neighborhood. In the eyes of the law and anyone the least bit reasonable,
It was an accident
is unconvincing. They knew what could happen. Their intentions are irrelevant.”

“I know,” I said. “But these aren't bad kids. They're just scared. It drove them to a bad choice.”

“You've just described most of the gang members in this town, Harry. They don't join the gang because they're bad kids. They do it because they're frightened. They want to feel like they belong somewhere. Safe.” She shook her head. “It doesn't matter if they started out as good kids. Life changes them. Makes them something they weren't.”

“What do you want to do?”

“Take a team to their hideout. Deal with the sorcerer. We'll make every effort to avoid harming the others.”

“You're going to open fire with deadly weapons on their home. Maybe you don't want to hurt the kids, but you know what could happen. If you wind up with bodies on the floor, your intentions would be irrelevant. Is that what you're telling me?”

Her eyes flashed with sudden anger. “You haven't been here the past six months. You don't know what it's been like. You—” She pressed her lips together. Then she looked at me and stared, clearly waiting.

I said, very quietly, “No.”

She shook her head several times. Then she said, “The real Dresden wouldn't hesitate.”

“The real Dresden would never have gotten a chance to see them. To talk to them. He'd just skip to the fight.”

She flipped her notepad closed with a snap of her wrist and stood. “Then we've covered what needs doing. There's nothing more to discuss.”

Murphy got up and left the room without a word, her steps smooth and purposeful.

Butters rose and collected Bob and the little spirit radio. “I, uh . . . I usually follow along after her when she's setting up something. Take care of the details. Excuse me.”

“Sure,” I said quietly. “Thanks for your help, Butters.”

“Anytime,” he said.

“You, too, Bob,” I said.

“De nada,”
the skull replied.

Butters hurried out.

I was left standing in the conference room alone.

I
stood there for several minutes, doing nothing. Not even breathing.

Doing nothing is difficult. Once you aren't busy, your head starts chewing things over. Dark, bleak thoughts appear. You start to think about what your life means. If you're a ghost, you start to think about what your death means.

Murphy was being slowly devoured from within by a guilty conscience. I had known her a long time. I knew how she thought. I knew what she held dear. I knew what it looked like when she was in pain. I had no doubt that I made the right call on that one.

But I also knew that she was a woman who wouldn't kill another human, even if he were over-the-hill-and-around-the-bend crazy, unless it was absolutely necessary. No killing is easy for anyone of conscience—but Murphy had been facing that demon for a long time. Granted, she'd been hurt by my death (and let me tell you how furiously frustrated it made me that I was powerless to have changed that). But why would her conscience start catching up to her now? Why develop a sudden case of the damsels when I'd asked her to get more information from her exhusband? Brick walls didn't stop the woman when she had a mind to walk somewhere.

I noticed something, too, when we had been talking about the shot that had killed me and the shooter's location, and gathering more information about potential assassins. Murphy hadn't said much—but she'd
not
said a whole hell of a lot more.

She had never, not once, mentioned Kincaid.

Kincaid was a partially inhuman mercenary who worked for the scariest little girl on God's green earth. He was centuries old and he was a phenomenon in a fight. He had somehow overcome the negative aspects of the human nervous system, at least as it applied to firing a weapon under pressure. I'd never seen him miss. Not once.

And it was he who had told me that if he wanted to kill me, he'd do it from at least half a mile away, with a heavy-duty rifle round.

Murphy knew as well as I did that the opinion of an assassin with centuries of experience would be invaluable in the investigation. Initially, I hadn't suggested it, because Murph had kinda been dating the guy for a while, and seemed to care for him. So it seemed more appropriate to let her bring it up.

But she hadn't.

She'd never mentioned him at all.

She'd run the meeting too rapidly, and was ready to fight with me over something, anything. The entire argument about Fitz and his crew had been a smoke screen.

The only question was for whose benefit it had been. Mine, so that a possibly crazy ghost wouldn't go storming off for vengeance of some kind? Or had it been a veil of fog for her own benefit, because she couldn't reconcile her view of Kincaid with that of the faceless person who had killed me?

That felt right. That she knew it in her heart and, without realizing it, was frantically scrambling to find a less painful truth with her head.

My reasoning was based on my knowledge of human nature and of Murphy's personality, and on my intuition—but I'd spent a lifetime trusting my instincts.

I thought they were probably right.

I played through the possibilities in my head. I imagined Murphy, distraught and falling to pieces on the inside, in the days after my murder. We never got to find out if we'd be anything together. We'd missed it by moments. I knew that when there had been enough time for her rage to abate, the sorrow would begin to pile up. I imagined her in the next month or so, no longer a cop, her world in shambles.

Word of my death would have gotten around fast—not only among the wizards of the White Council, but among the remaining vampire Court, over the Paranet, and from there to the rest of the supernatural world.

Kincaid probably heard about it within a day or two. As soon as someone filed a report about me, the Archive, the supernatural recorder of all written knowledge that dwelled within a child named Ivy, would have known. And I was probably one of the only people in the world she thought of as a friend. She was what? Twelve? Thirteen?

News of my death would shatter Ivy.

Kincaid would, I think, have gone to Murphy to offer what comfort he could. Not the hot-chocolate-and-fluffy-robe brand of comfort. He was more likely to bring bottles of whiskey and a sex-music CD.

Especially if he was already right here in town,
a dark, nasty part of me whispered in my head.

I imagined Murphy taking shelter where she could and bidding him farewell when he left—and then, over the next few weeks, slowly lining up facts and reaching conclusions, all the while repeating to herself that she was probably wrong. That it couldn't be what it looked like.

Frustration. Pain. Denial. Yeah, that would be enough to draw rage out of anybody. Rage she would be carrying with her like a slowly growing tumor, becoming more and more of a burden. It was the sort of thing that might push someone to kill another person, even when maybe it wasn't necessary.

That death would cause more guilt, more frustration, which would cause more rage, which would cause more violence, which would add to guilt again; a literal vicious cycle.

Murphy didn't want to get shots from airport and train-station security cameras because she didn't want to find out that the man she'd been sleeping with had killed one of her friends. When drawn close to that plausibility, she reacted in anger, pushing away the source of illumination about to fall on what she didn't want to see.

She probably wasn't even aware of the clash of needs in her head. When you're grief-stricken, all kinds of irrational stuff flies around in there.

Detective work isn't always about logic—not when you're dealing with people. People are likely to do the most ridiculously illogical things for the most incomprehensible of reasons. I had no logic to aim at Kincaid. But the theory fit a whole lot of pieces together. If it was correct, it explained a lot.

It was only a theory. But it was enough to make me want to start digging for more evidence where I might not otherwise have looked.

But how? How was I going to start digging into Jared Kincaid, the Hellhound, the closest thing to a father Ivy had ever had—and do it without Murphy's help? For that matter, I'd have to find some way to do it without her knowledge, and that seemed like something that would be more than a little slimy to do to a friend.
Augh
. Better, maybe, to focus on the immediate problems first.

I had to find Morty, whose plight had clearly been low on Murph's priority list.

I had to help Fitz and the rest of his clueless, teenage pals.

And for all of it, I needed the help of someone I could trust.

I took a deep breath and nodded.

Then I walked until I had passed through an exterior wall of the Bright Future house, and set off to find my apprentice before the night got any deeper.

I
always considered myself a loner.

I mean, not like a poor-me, Byron-esque, I-should-have-broughta-swimming-buddy loner. I mean the sort of person who doesn't feel too upset about the prospect of a weekend spent seeing no one, and reading good books on the couch. It wasn't like I was a people hater or anything. I enjoyed activities and the company of friends. But they were a side dish. I always thought I would also be happy without them.

I walked the streets of a city of nearly three million people and, for the first time, there was nothing that connected me to any of them. I couldn't speak to them. I couldn't touch them. I couldn't get in an argument over a parking space, or flip the bird to a careless driver who ran a light while I was crossing. I couldn't buy anything in one of the stores, making polite chitchat with the clerk while paying. Couldn't pick up a newspaper. Couldn't recommend a good book to someone browsing the shelves.