Painkiller (7 page)

“President Breedlowe was telling us about a professional rivalry,” I said, “between Dr. Jacobs and a Dr. Mirabella Stanley—”

“Marabella,” Gustafson corrected gently, pushing his glasses back up on his nose from where they’d fallen.

“Knew I should have written that down,” I said with a smirk. “Do you know anything about their feud?”

“Look,” Gustafson said with a broad shrug that didn’t even force him to unfold his arms, “people in our field disagree. There was no heat between Carlton and Marabella. They’d met, they were professionally friendly; calling it a feud would be giving it too much credit. They disagreed on an area of study, it was all polite, written into academic papers published in the biggest journals. It wasn’t like a—” His arms came up now as he searched for a way to explain, “it wasn’t a knife fight, you know what I mean? No one’s reputation was on the line. No names were called. The blood didn’t come up—”

“Cold blood runs the hottest of all,” I said then wondered what the hell I was saying. I mean, I knew what I was saying, but I doubted my words reflected it.

Gustafson frowned at me. “That’s … poetic.”

“Yeah, it’s right up there with ‘a smile can hide evil intent,’” I said and smiled at him. “Look … we’ve got nothing so far on why Dr. Jacobs is dead. Nothing was taken from him in spite of him carrying a wad of cash, and he had a boatload of money in a safe at his house, he was living high on the hog,” I watched Gustafson writhe very subtly. “How much was he paid by the University?”

“Not nearly enough to afford his apartment, if that’s what you’re asking,” Gustafson said. I could smell the discomfort wafting off of him.

Reed smelled it too. “Do you know why Dr. Jacobs would have been in an alley off State Street in the middle of the night with a roll of hundreds in his pocket?”

“He had a gambling—” Gustafson put his face in his hands and grasped at the black ringlets at the top of his growing forehead. “I guess it wasn’t a ‘problem,’ because if you saw the safe, you know he wasn’t losing.” He brought his eyes up and looked at us. “Like I said, he was brilliant.”

“What, he was a card counter?” I asked.

“Crudely, yes,” Gustafson said. “I know one of his favorite haunts was a gambling den off State Street. Played cards, whatever he could that allowed him to bet little or nothing when the numbers were against him and bet big once the odds were in his favor. It’s how he spent his nights. The man probably had a full night’s sleep once a week. The rest of the time? You could find him with cards in front of him at one of those green felt tables.”

I exchanged a look with Reed. “Maybe Dr. Jacobs fleeced the wrong sucker.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time,” Gustafson said warily. “At least last time he just got … put out of commission for a couple weeks.”

“He’s been attacked before?” Reed leaned forward.

“Yeah,” Gustafson nodded. “A couple years ago, when he first started here. Some thugs put him in the hospital. Seems somebody didn’t take kindly to his winning streak. After that, he was more careful, managed his winnings in smaller spurts.” Gustafson looked rueful. “Said it was bad for his wallet but better for his health. I guess it didn’t work.”

I stood up. “Thanks, Dr. Gustafson. You’ve been a huge help.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, taking business cards off his desk and handing one to each of us. “Carlton was an invaluable member of our department and our faculty, and he was a good friend.” Gustafson’s jaw hardened. “Anything else you need, you let me know.”

“Could you distill down the essence of his argument with Dr. Stanley for us poor, unfortunate morons?” I asked, throwing in a little self-effacement.

Gustafson’s eyes widened as he pondered it. “I can try. I don’t think there’s anything there, but if you think it’ll help—”

“It might,” I said, forcefully.

“Then I’ll see what I can do,” Gustafson said with a nod. “It might take a couple of days. The subject’s pretty dense, and I’m not the biggest expert in Carlton’s field.”

“Just get it to us,” I said, nodding at him. “And thank you.”

“Yeah, you were a big help,” Reed said, taking to his feet and shaking Dr. Gustafson’s hand with a little more gusto than I could, given the time constraint I had on touching people. Wouldn’t want to steal his memories, after all. I hated to think which agency I’d get a cease and desist letter from on that. “Thank you.”

We wandered out of Gustafson’s office, keeping our self-imposed silence until we made it outside, the gloomy grey clouds hanging over the city of Chicago, the skyline visible in the distance under the iron sky. “So our vic’s got a gambling problem,” I said with smug satisfaction.

“Stop saying ‘vic,’” Reed said. “And you heard Gustafson. It’s not a problem if you’re always up at the tables, is it? Because if so, that’s the kind of problem I want to have.”

“It certainly beats the hell out of
our
current problem,” I said, giving him a side-eye as we headed back to the road in the distance, hoping to catch a cab. He looked at me questioningly until I answered. “Too many theories and not a speck of evidence so far.”

“Yeah,” Reed said, shoving his hands into his pockets as we walked, a newfound determination running over him. “Let’s go find this gambling den and start taking care of that problem right now.”

The waiting man’s name was Harrison Graves, but no one called him Harrison and only a few people called him Graves. Almost anyone who knew him called him Harry, and if any of them had been asked if Harry was the sort to murder a man in an alley with his bare hands, not one of them would have believed it possible.

Harry Graves stood on Oak Street Beach, the Drake Hotel looming behind him, Hancock tower rising above that building, cup of plain coffee steaming in his hand, staring out across the white-capped waters of Lake Michigan. It was a gusty day on the lake, not the sort he’d want to be on a boat for. To his left and right there were concrete quays running on either side of the sandy beachfront, water spraying over the top with violent force. The wind rushed over Harry where he stood on the top of a dune, just looking out.

He hadn’t been able to sleep after punching the professor to death in the alley. It wasn’t that he was beset with a regret. He didn’t regret it any more than he regretted spilling coffee on the walk over here. It was just a thing that happened, an inevitable result of the fact that the barista in the too-fancy coffee shop decided to fill his cup to the brim. Predictable and unavoidable unless he’d either dumped some coffee out or sipped it before it was cool. He valued his tongue not being burned more than he worried about the drip running down the side of the Styrofoam, and so here he was, wet fingers, sticky cup, and standing on the beach contemplating, very idly, the unavoidable thing that he’d done last night.

“Shit happens,” he said to the air in front of him. A lady walking her dog behind him heard it, though, and made a face. She was distracted for just a second and stepped in a small dune in the sand, a pit a few inches deep—just deep enough to turn her ankle. She swore and stumbled before recovering her footing.

Harry had already moved on, though. He turned and headed back down the path toward the underpass leading under Lake Shore Drive and back to Michigan Ave. He walked briskly, still not ready to sip the blazing hot coffee yet. That way probably lay pain, though he couldn’t be sure without testing it himself.

He made his way down the walkway ramp toward the underpass, studiously trying to ignore the WWII-era painting of Uncle Sam pointing his finger right at Harry. He’d ignored that particular call at the time that it was first issued and hadn’t really regretted it. As he descended down the concrete walkway toward the covered underpass, the smell of urine practically jumped out at him. The ground was wet. It probably wasn’t all piss, since it had rained a lot lately, but there was enough of it to cause the strong scent to crawl up his metahuman nose and linger there.

Distracted by the stink, he came around the corner and bumped into a guy in running clothes. Harry was walking at normal speed, human speed, and when he collided with the runner, Harry didn’t move much. The runner, though, bounced right off as Harry set his feet by instinct.

“Hey,” the guy said, headphones plugged in, talking artificially loud as he pulled his butt off the pissy, wet concrete in the underpass, “watch where you’re going.”

“Sorr—” Harry started by instinct, burning coffee running down his fingertips—

And suddenly … he wasn’t sorry.

“Yeah, yeah,” the runner disregarded him, getting off the ground, his lime-orange shorts and grey tank top spattered with coffee and other liquid. “Asshole.” He brushed his hands off and started to go around Harry.

Harry reached out and shoved him lightly with the tips of his fingers, smearing coffee onto the grey shirt as he pushed the runner.

“What the—” The runner fell down again, rolling hard, his legs and ass coming up over his head. He landed on his knees like he’d done a backwards flip, and Harry hadn’t even tried very hard. He just wanted to stop the guy for a second, by instinct. The guy’s face had scuffed on the concrete, and he had road rash on his cheek. “What the hell are you doing?” the guy asked, more outraged than scared.

Harry just stood there, coffee cup in hand, and then he sighed, decision made. He threw the coffee cup sideways and it splashed out of the cup and out of the tunnel. Harry took two sharp steps forward toward the runner and grabbed him around the jaw. The guy couldn’t avoid it; he wasn’t strong enough and he wasn’t fast enough, not nearly.

“What the—” the guy started to say, but he barely got even that out before Harry twisted, hard and fast, and broke the runner’s neck, turning his face around a hundred and eighty degrees and guaranteeing death.

His work done, Harry pushed the runner’s body away, disgusted. He shook his own head considerably more conservatively than he’d just shaken the runner’s and sighed again. He looked sidelong at his wasted coffee, and his ears perked up as he heard the sound of a telephone dialing behind him.

“911 Emergency,” came a faint, faded voice. “Do you need police, fire or ambulance?”

Harry spun to see a woman in her mid-twenties, dressed for a jog of her own, yoga pants and a tight-fitting workout shirt running down her wrists to where she clutched her cell phone. She wore a horrified look and her phone had fallen away from her ear. Her breaths were coming in sharp gasps. “Oak Street Beach—the underpass—there’s a murder—ohmi—”

He hadn’t even heard her coming, hadn’t sensed her behind him, hadn’t been paying an ounce of attention the whole way until the runner he’d just killed had jarred him out of his self-imposed reverie and forced him into action.

Harry looked right at the woman, and she looked right at him. Her cell phone still squeaked, the speaker blaring, but quietly enough that only his meta ears picked it up at this distance. “Ma’am? Are you still there?”

“Shit,” Harry said.

I was on the phone with Detective Maclean, in the back of a cab rolling toward downtown, listening to the skepticism in his voice as I went over what we’d found. The air in this particular cab reminded me of a school bus I’d once looked over in the course of an investigation in Utah. It was weird and grossly rubbery smelling, like they’d made the seats out of recycled poop cut with plastic.

My conversation with Maclean was starting to feel as if it were manufactured out of similar components. “There’s a gambling den off State Street,” I told him. I could hear him breathing disapproval on the other end of the line. “That’s where Dr. Jacobs was coming from when he got popped.”

“Uh huh,” Maclean said, his faith in my investigative skills shining through in his tone. “A gambling hall right off State Street. Of all the places someone could put an illegal operation, they chose there. Sure. I’ll get right on investigating that.”

“If I wanted to make up fibs, I’d come up with something better than that,” I said.

“Sure you would,” Maclean said.

“Listen, ass,” I said. The cabbie’s head turned around sharply. “Not you. This is Illinois, all right? How many of your former governors have ended up behind bars?”

Maclean grunted at the other end of the line. “I think we’re running four out of the last seven at the moment.”

“See, in most places, that would defy belief,” I said, “but here, it’s just ‘the Chicago way,’ right?” Maclean ground his teeth. I could hear it through the phone. “Also, I fly and can shoot fire from my fingers. Time was, that would be believed impossible. Now we just accept it as fact. So … why are you having so much trouble believing me when I say there might be a gambling hall off State Street?”

“I’ll talk to Vice,” he said, still nonplussed. “See if they’ve heard any rumors. Where are you going to be?”

“Downtown at my hotel. Thanks,” I said. I heard a rustle in the background behind him as I hung up.

“I think technically ‘the Chicago way’ is, ‘He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue,’” Reed said, looking out the window at the Gold Coast scrolling by on our right.

“Cops get antsy when you say that kind of thing to them,” I said, looking out at Lake Michigan on the left. My phone rang and I answered before I even realized it was Maclean. “Go.”

“We just got a 911 call from someone at Oak Street Beach,” Maclean said. “Down on one of the walking paths. They said ‘murder.’”

“That’s … usual, right?” I asked cautiously, trying not to be too much of an ass.

“No, it is not usual for people to be murdered in Streeterville!” he shouted at me through the phone.

“Oak Street Beach is right over there,” Reed said, pointing out the window ahead of the driver.

“Pay the cabbie,” I said and hung up as I threw my phone in my pocket and opened the door.

“What the f—” the cab driver shouted in accented English as I stepped out onto Lake Shore Drive at fifty miles an hour.

I know, that was dramatic. But I’d had my fill of riding around in cabs for a while, honestly. This shit was tiresome. I zoomed out of that door, slamming it behind me, but kept low, about ten feet off the ground, hoping the FAA wouldn’t notice. It’s not like they were that put out about those commercial drones all over the place nowadays, after all. Or if they were, they hadn’t issued a million cease and desist orders yet.