Axis and Allies

Very Early Monday

Chapter 4

It took a lot of convincing, make that pleading, on my part to get Murphy to tell me where the murder had taken place and then agree to allow me to check things out with her. I understand there is a whole contamination of a crime scene thing with the police compounded by the potential liability issue of letting a civilian who had no business at this location trample all around and maybe get hurt in the process. I am fairly certain that liability is only compounded when the person is not even old enough to vote yet.

Her eventually ignoring this combination of issues merely confirmed to me that this case had Murphy near the end of her rope and she was willing to chance another reprimand, the last one having busted her back down to sergeant, in order to get a break on this case. For most people to take such a risk, the people involved had to be friends or loved ones. For Murphy they just needed to be citizens of Chicago whom she was sworn to protect. In fact I know she despised some of the city's residents, like "Gentleman" Johnny Marcone, the biggest crime lord the city had seen since Al Capone, but she would still give her life to protect him even as she tried to bust him because that is just what giving her word meant to her.

I threw some cold water on my face, not that Harry has hot since his water heaters always seemed to explode, and got dressed again, before looking at an old pendulum and weight-based clock to see it was three in the morning. God I did not know there was such a time if you did not stay up all night to get to it. What type of idiot actually chooses to wake up at this hour?

I went down in the basement and sealed my two potions with a cork and wax to bring along. I locked that room up and was grabbing the keys for the Blue Beetle and the front door when I noticed Mister was sitting by it patiently apparently waiting for me to let him out. "You want to go out and get yourself a piece do ya Mister?" I asked with a smile but of course the cat did not say anything. His presence though reminded me, so I reached under the couch and grabbed the Katz book as my last act before leaving and then opened the door to let Mister out.

I had expected him to race off into the night to do whatever it is that cats do but instead he merely sauntered up the stairs in a very slow and deliberate manner, looking at me over his shoulder in impatience as if I was taking too long as I locked the door and reset the magical wards. Then with a slow purposeful pace he made his way right over to the Blue Beetle and sat and waited for me to open the door for him.

Harry had told me of numerous times that Mouse had tagged along on investigations but I could not recall Mister every doing so in any of his stories. Oddly, the very fact he appeared to be trying to do so seemed to me to be very uncat-like in nature for felines in general and Mister in particular. Just to be sure I was not reading this wrong and that he would actually wander off, I walked over and opened the passenger side door. He confirmed what I suspected when he immediately jumped in and made himself comfortable on the front seat while I closed the door and walked around to the other side.

I got in and looked at him one more time as if to ensure to both of us he really wanted to go, but his staring reply seemed irritated as if telling me 'come on, let's get on with it.' Okay, this must be the odd things that happen all the time to people who wake up at three in the morning I reasoned with a foggy mind. The world is just not properly reset until at least five I suspected, so I just accepted this as I started the Beetle and drove over to the north side of town where Murphy had called me from.

The neighborhood I had been directed to was one of those formerly working class sections of town that had slowly deteriorated over time. While probably never glamorous even in its heyday, one could see the blocks in this area once had a firm strong and enduring character having been built of traditional red bricks for the most part. These days the same buildings were dilapidated and consigned not as working class apartments but instead served as a mixture of halfway houses, porn shops, pawn shops, and fortress-like all night liquor stores with more security and bulletproof glass than most banks. Chicago, Chicago you are my kind of town is what the singer said. I guess he was somewhere other than here at the time.

In one of my current senior classes that required so many hours of public service, our teacher had explained that during his hippie commune days of the late 1960s some sociologist determined that neighborhoods like this became rundown because someone broke windows or painted graffiti which was an indication to others that crime was welcome in this neighborhood. As I pulled up along the curb I did not see any signs of these to prove the Broken Window theory was true, but the neon signs reading 'All Live Nude Girls' on the strip club and the 'We Pay Cash for Anything' sign on the nearest pawn shop, there were three on that block alone, seemed to meet this communication requirement that Leave it to Beaver was not going to be filmed here.

I smiled in a twisted way and thought if the club advertised 'All DEAD Nude Girls' instead then I likely would have found my necromancer's hang out without too much trying. Thankfully that was not my final destination for the three police cars with flashing lights seemed to have cordoned off one of the halfway houses as their crime scene. Parking was easy to find so I pulled across the street, left Mister in the car, much to his annoyance, and headed to the uniformed cop standing guard and shooing away drunks, prostitutes, and other three thirty in the morning onlookers at the main entrance.

I walked slowly, my normal sauntering being far too difficult at three-thirty in the morning, over to the officer like I was supposed to be there and announced myself with that tone of resigned boredom you see on cops shows. "I am Molly Carpenter and I was told to come here to see Sergeant Karrin Murphy." I said not hiding how tired I was to allow my presence to appear as a burden rather than my request. My tone, my passive emotion ability, or the fact I knew the ranking officer's name was enough for the young uniformed cop to step aside and direct me to the stairs to the left and up to the third floor. I nodded thanks and then trudged that direction, noting in the lobby there were no signs of closed circuit cameras and that the 'reception desk' for this hotel was behind a bulletproof barrier to rival the liquor stores outside. Yep this was certainly a classy neighborhood.

Three flights of stairs later, thankful I wore my sneakers today instead of heels, I found half a dozen cops standing outside the obvious room where the murder had occurred seemingly await permission to do whatever cops do. Flashes from within told me the crime scene photographer was in the process of taken doing his job while Karrin's voice could easily be made out telling him what to take picture of. The cops look at me but I stayed just far enough away for them to avoid asking me why I was here and did not make eye contact by looking down at the floor. I noted the hallway's carpet did not appear to have been vacuumed much less steam cleaned since, well since forever, so dirt had been well ground into it over the years. My guess is that walking barefoot on it would feel like walking on a beach.

After I heard Karrin say that she had all the pictures she needed I decided I would use my same introduction with the officers standing outside the room that I had downstairs. It seemed to work without question so I waited by leaning up against a wall with my eyes closed while they sent one of their number to go tell Karrin I was here.

"Private eye work exciting enough for you Molly?" Murphy laughed seeing how tired I was. I admit that I did not try to even fake it for her. Harry usually looked exhausted too so I figure I was merely continuing the image for him. Karrin would harass him continuously if I appeared all perky all the time in these situations.

"What type of idiot thinks three in the morning is the right time to kill someone rather than be home asleep in a comfortable bed?" I asked with a pained smiled.

"Coroner thinks from the temperature of the body that the murder actually it happed about midnight." She explained.

"Ah the witching hour." I said as a joke but this made her look more seriously at me. I forgot for a second how serious this case was to her so anything I said related to magic was bound to draw more of a response than I was looking for at the moment.

"Meaning you found something?" Hope was etched plainly upon her face at her question. Damn it, so much for a slip of the lip. I really hated letting her down.

"Maybe." I said explaining the book I had found, glossing over Mister's part in this, but also clarified on my inability to read it.

She pulled her notebook from her pocket, I guess all police detectives carry such things, and flipped to find something she had written sometime earlier. She recopied this on a blank page and tore it from the book to hand to me. "That dead museum guy, his name was Jonathan Rothstein, his grandfather is some sort of head member of his Temple. He can probably read the book for you and tell you if it means anything." I noted the address was in the same part of town my parents lived so I slipped the note into my pocket and promised Sergeant Murphy to head over there after school today. I think the fact that neither of us held out much hope that this book would prove valuable made the delayed timeline acceptable.

The crime scene photographer finished packing up his gear and stepped out and told everyone he had completed his work and that the police could go in to bag and tag evidence or to remove the body. Karrin looked at me. "You sure you really want to do this Molly?" She asked almost compassionately. I merely nodded, afraid my voice might break.

Okay I, like most teens, had seen my share of horror movies growing up so I figured there was little in the room that could scare me if I had lived through a marathon movie date viewing of Chisel I-VII. I mean could any real murderer actually be as twisted as a psychopath who made teenagers caught making out at his drive-in theater chisel off their own body parts to escape? I liked to think not. But of course I was wrong. In real life the human mind finds violent death repulsive not entertaining.

The very first difference that hit me was the smell. Theaters in my neighborhood do not have 'smell-o-vision' to make your experience as real as life, so unless you happen to be on a double date between guys named Nick and Jimmy who decide that a flatulence challenge is required at that time in a nearly silent theater, the odds are you will only have to suffer though the smell of buttered popcorn. By the way, I did not stick around so I am unsure which of the two won, or how boys even judge such things, but I will report there was no second date for either of them.

A dead body, even a recent dead body, does not smell like buttered popcorn either. I'd heard Harry describe scenes where the blood had flowed so much that its metallic scent hung in the air. Thankfully for me there was only a small amount of blood to be had and the body had not been dead long enough, less than four hours at night, to begin to rot and smell. That meant the only thing smells I had to endure were the ones related to how a body releases it bowels upon death. Picture the worst diaper you ever had to change, I have six younger brothers and sisters so I know what I am talking about, and triple the smell and you would know my suffering.

The room itself was decorated in the 1930's German fanatic style. There were not one but two red, white, and black Nazi flags proudly centered on two of the room's four walls. A third wall was mostly a doorway to a small kitchen and a second one to an even smaller bathroom. The last wall had a life-size image of Adolf Hitler stuck to the wall.

Now I knew that such things like sports figures and movie characters had become popular for displaying on living room or bedroom walls. My youndest brother was really into the Transformers and had an Optimus Prime plastered upon his wall while my older brother went for Peyton Manning. The world of both jocks and nerds seemed to have reached the same end state. But even so, really, there were enough people out there wanting one that a Hitler life-sized sticker was seen as a profitable venture by some company?

The only furniture in the room consisted of a small stood on which a seventeen inch television set sat and a well aged padded chair upon which the body was seated. The only other remarkable thing in this room was the mound of dirt, about two cubic feet worth so more than two feet high, piled directly in front of the body.

Murphy watched me closely, maybe looking for the first sign that I was going to be sick or freak out, or maybe from that weird twinkle in her eye she was proud of me for not doing so immediately. To tell the truth the second option seemed more disturbing to me than the first since I did not know how to deal with Murphy acting like my big sister. I tried to be diligent and do what I figured Harry might do and used my eyes and my mind to take in the scene around the corpse and all the key details.

Starting, the victim was twentyish, white, and bald. He was presently shirtless and his body bore numerous tattoos, some professional like the swastika on his right bicep that bore the letters BBC beneath it, and some of the obvious amateur prison variety. All were in keeping with his room decorations, which means to say there were no hearts with "I love Susan" anywhere visible that I could see. Out of the center of his chest was sticking a dagger with a Nazi emblem engraved in the hilt.

"BBC?" I asked Karrin. I seriously doubted that this was the logo for the British Broadcasting Company from cable.

"It stands for Brotherhood of the Bent Cross." Murphy answered. "They are a neo-Nazi street gang that popped up here not so long ago. The group is mostly anarchists with a slice of good old down home racism to add to the mix. We busted them around the periphery of a few near riots but we never even got a weapons charge on them to hold them overnight."

"Enemies?"

"You know any in this crowd on the Good Samaritan list?" She responded dryly. "African American and Jewish groups have been known to take offense at their tattoos, but it has never escalated beyond words as far as the police have seen."

"So nothing to suggest the Brotherhood pissed off the wrong person." I finished.

"Not a bit, though something we are looking into." Murphy finished and I turned back to the scene before me. I focused this time on the dirt, which of course is the reason Murphy had me here in the first place. Did not want her thinking I was a waste of time.

Beyond just the obvious big pile of dirt there was also a huge clot of this same mud on the front of the victims neck and chest, as well as packed tightly into his open mouth and nostrils. When I say packed tight I mean literally smashed as deeply in as kids making mud pies would likely do with a cake pan. By the corpse's blue tint of skin I assumed he had died of asphyxiation related to all the mud in its system. I have always been told death in this manner is a comparatively slow and painful way to go. Obviously whoever, or whatever, had killed him knew that and even perhaps desired that result as well. The dagger, which also had mud on the handle, therefore had been stabbed into the heart only after the victim was already dead which explained the relatively small amount of blood visible on the shirt.

I stepped back and looked at the pile partially coving the victim's feet and lower legs. "This looks like it was dumped here with a wheelbarrow." I said to Murphy.

"Would have to be a pretty sizable one for that amount of dirt and since there is no real cone at the top of the mound like is normal when someone dumps a load of dirt or sand, we do not think it was dumped." She answered in a cop voice.

"No video in the hallway I assume?"

"Have you seen this place?" Karrin asked. "It's the kind of dive where people go to remain nameless and faceless in society. No one asks questions and no one sees anything."

"Like a killer wheeling a couple wheelbarrows full of dirt into the lobby and up the elevator." I said.

"Elevator is broken, surprise surprise, in this high-class establishment, so no they had to lug it up the stairs." She said.

"Okay I agree that certainly screams magic." I said not really having any other answer even though I was not experienced in just what kind of magic it could have been. "Any footprints found in all the dirt?" I asked hopefully.

"Nope." She answered. "And no fingerprints anywhere on the body either."

I turned back and looked more closely at the corpse, away from his face this time and instead at his hands. Like his chest these were muddy too, but the fingertips seemed heavily so, and at least two of his fingernails seemed to have been torn away as well.

Murphy saw my focus and explained. "Those look like serious defensive wounds as if the victim fought off his attacker. There are no signs of blood beneath the nails though with all that mud."

"Okay I admit it." I said at last. "I am completely baffled and have no clue what you are facing."

Murphy reached down and turned the corpses left arm over exposing the underside where a series of letters and numbers had been inscribed, likely with the dagger, based on the size and shape of the cuts. The combination read S 1 3 6 1 1. "These cuts mean anything to you in your world?" Murphy asked me without much hope.

"Actually, 'S' is a supposed mystical letter around the world and if the numbers read 13, 6, and 11 then those too have mystical connections." I answered.

"Or they could be a combination to someone's lunchbox as a kid." Murphy said angry at this case but not at me.

"Sorry Murph." I said trying to apologize.

"One more thing…" She pulled an evidence baggie from a pile and showed it to me. "We found this jotted note of paper that says 'Shertel's magic book, Furher's copy, 505.' Would any of this mean anything to you either?" She asked hopefully.

"I seem to recall someone named Shertel. Obviously the number is a specific page so I will see what I can find out." I lied because I just could not tell her no again. "That will be an easy one for me to track down after class too. Are you going to be at the office tonight if I can find anything out?" I asked hoping it was her day off.

"Yeah, I figure with all the pressure from the Mayor's office on this I will be racking up some overtime." She answered.

"Sorry Murph." Damn it, I said it again anyway.

"Not your fault kid." She waved me off. "I thank you for trying." She said in a tone that let me know our time together was coming to an end once more. "Let me know if these book-things pans out ok?"

I said my goodbyes and made my way back to the Blue Beetle. I just sat down distracted in the driver's seat when I noticed that Mister was not in the car where I had left him and the passenger door was partly opened. Granted we were only a couple miles from Harry's home and I could leave him here, but I still felt responsible to try and find him first.

"Mister?" I called out. "Come back Mister and I promise to scratch your belly." I forgot about the drunks lined up by the crime scene, one of whom must have thought I was speaking to him because he began to stagger my way. Thankfully, at this point the cat bounded down from the fire escape stairway above him and just close enough to the drunk's course as the cat ran toward me to send the wino spinning and make him fall on his ass. Without so much as an acknowledgement to me the cat bounded into the car and back on his front seat. I closed the door and went around to my side ignoring the complaints of the drunk as I started the car and left.

As I drove home trying to plan out my day, Mister immediately rolled over on his back and looked at me expectantly. I assumed this was more of a standard cat thing than actually understanding what I had said, but with Harry's choice in pets one would never know. My recent trip to the nail salon had Mister purring in complete contentment until I pulled up back at Harry's place to let him back in the house.

Mister noted our stop and with resigned eyes waited for me to open the door. Once I did the cat shuttered once, as if flinging water from his fur, looked at me heading toward the door and instead bounded off down the alley. My skillful fingers were not obviously enough so he was on to other pursuits. Since we were back in his neighborhood I did not worry…really…who would mess with a thirty pound house cat?

I made it to my Mom's house just before five when she had promised to call me and got a look of surprise and pleasure that I was showing such responsibility by already being home. I of course did not mention where I had been the last two hours, the fact that part of it was spent staring at a pile of dirt with a bald, dead Nazi in the middle of it. Moms, I have found, do not take these kinds of stories with a grain of salt…more like a truckload. Instead I had a quick plate of the breakfast she was making for the rest of the family before gathering up my books for class.

I did take the time to jot down 'Shertel's magic book, Furher's copy, 505' from the evidence I had been shown as well as all the places I had to go today on the same scrap of paper Murphy had given me. I had to call Ms. Brown and tell her I would be taking the case. I had to take the Katz book over to Grandpa Rothstein for a quick look. I had to find anything I could on this Shertel guy's magic book, preferably a copy so I could look at page 505. And I had a calculus mid-term test. Of that list the test was the one I felt most confident in my abilities would result in success.

"You don't looking like you slept well Molly." Mom said as her eyes appraised me closely as I changed into fresh clothes. Independent or not, I have to admit having someone else do you laundry is way cool.

"Harry's couch is not the most comfortable place to sleep mom." I said keeping her at arm's length emotionally but obviously she still worried and saw me as her little girl. "Really, I will be fine."

Yeah those types of words do not work well on your mother. Thankfully, Harry Carpenter, my youngest brother and named after Harry Dresden, chose that moment to begin crying for his own breakfast. Since that required my mother's presence immediately to keep him from waking up the entire house, she let the conversation go. I meanwhile chose that moment to scoot out the door before she could return.

I passed the hallway mirror and noted the beginnings of dark circles under my eyes. Nothing makeup would not cover up for me, but I realized my mom was telling the truth. I did look tired. "Who knew that detective work meant saying goodbye to a normal night's sleep?"