Ch7: Double the Trouble

POV: Connie Murphy

People closer to seven feet tall than six should not be capable of ninja-esque stealth.

Yet here we were, with a missing lanky PI.

To be fair, he had been quietly sitting in the spare chair in my cubicle after we ID'd Sharon, seemingly content to let us do our jobs while he took a nap. That kind of thing tends to fade into the background when you're busy organizing a (wo)manhunt for an insurance fraud murderer gone lethal mugger.

It also wasn't a complete surprise to find his chair empty at first. There was a vending machine, bathrooms, or a simple need to stretch your legs that might encourage someone to leave their seat temporarily.

No, the surprise was that the seat remained empty. And when I asked, no one could recall seeing it vacated, or even seeing its previous occupant wandering around. Which was not good for a whole slew of reasons, ranging from a missing victim to an unknown civilian running around the station unsupervised.

So Kirmani and I had to expand our search for the highly conspicuous PI beyond the bullpen area.

Of course the only damn clue that we found for what might have happened was with the desk sergeant. McCoy's fancy, dinged-up staff was just as gone as its owner. His receipt for its custody innocently stashed with the paperwork, even though no one saw him stop by the desk.

Needless to say, I was not pleased about this Houdini bullshit before I'd even called our 'wizard' about this case.

"C'mon, Sid," I said, marching for our cruiser.

"And, uh, where are we going?" he asked, quick stepping to catch up. "It's not like we have any clue which way McCoy went."

"Where we always go when things get weird. Besides, we still need to inform Dresden that Sharon is back in town."

"Right," Sid nodded, taking the driver's seat. "And we can get Dresden to track down our victim playing hooky. Probably."

"He does have a way of finding things," I agreed, then growled at the passenger seat. Stupid thing was still pushed all the way back to accommodate McCoy's freakish height. The vicious sound of the seat cranking forward to a reasonable position suited my mood. "Let's go."

I spent the ride to Dresden's stewing over how McCoy essentially pulled a runner on us.

That was not victim behavior. Victims looked to the police to solve their problems. Hopefully with understanding and patience, but not uncommonly with impertinent impatience.

McCoy had been incredibly understanding. The kind of understanding that only comes from dealing with the police with some regularity. I was just about willing to bet hard cash he had done his fair share of consultant work for his local PD. Either that, or he got dragged in on suspicions a lot, though I would have expected more nervous ticks or bravado if that were the case.

Which is why McCoy up and vanishing was so weird. We were helping, and making progress, and, if he had done consulting before, he knew how the process worked, how to help us help him. Yet he had poofed off to who-knows-where to do who-knows-what shortly after seeing we had a vague lead to follow.

The only conclusion I could come to was that he intended to run Sharon down himself, instead of sitting back and letting us handle it.

But why?

The answer my mind kept circling back to was the mystery item in McCoy's stolen bag. My gut said that whatever it was, McCoy was determined to keep anyone else from getting their hands on it. Police or thief. Logic said this item was valuable, the reason his bag was stolen. And that if it wasn't straight up illegal, it was probably only legal on a technicality or something.

The man was a goddamned mystery wrapped in an enigma, but when I found him, I was going to get some answers.

My chance came sooner than I expected.

"Why am I not surprised?" I growled at the tableau before me.

Because sitting right there at Harry's dinky little table, with a mug of tea and facing the door, was that bastard McCoy.

"Lieutenant," the biggest annoyance greeted me with a mocking salute of the mug, a smuggly amused grin on his lips.

I should have known McCoy would show up here. Harry had a gift for getting into all the weird shit, so of course this other Harry in all his mysteriousness would find him.

"Let me guess, you've already told Dresden all about Sharon being back in town," I gritted out.

"Seemed only polite, given how she tried to kill him previously," McCoy returned sagely. "Plus I figured he could offer more insight from his own previous work."

"I didn't tell you the name of my consultant," I said with narrowed eyes.

McCoy shrugged in faux innocence. "I've found that police bullpens can be just as bad as high school locker rooms for gossip."

I really just wanted to hit McCoy in his smug, calm face, but that wouldn't be professional.

"Any reason you decided to sneak out of the station?" Sid asked into my fuming silence.

"I don't know about you, but I don't call walking out the front door sneaking," McCoy replied with a shrug. "I wasn't being held at the station, and you were busy looking for things from your end. Figured I'd head out and get things started from another angle."

"No one saw you leave!" I sputtered. "At all!"

McCoy just offered another shrug, except amusement danced in his eyes, even as they skittered away from meeting mine.

"You-!"

"Okay!" Dresden proclaimed, jumping up out of his seat between me and McCoy. "I think I'll get some more mugs. You and Kirmani can pull up a seat, Murphy, since we seem to have so much to discuss," he said with forced cheer, gesturing to the desk. "And try not to break anything while I'm gone. Please."

I gave McCoy another glare as Harry scurried off to the back. He just calmly stared back at me over the rim of his mug.

"You know you didn't leave us any way to contact you," Sid fished as we got seated. It was probably better if Sid asked the questions for now. I was still steamed by McCoy's nonchalance about fleeing the station.

And McCoy's lack of contact info was another little detail our search for him had turned up. Somehow, we hadn't gotten a phone number, or a local address, from him. It's pretty much impossible to follow up on an investigation's progress without those, yet he'd wandered off anyway. I suppose he could have been banking on Harry being able to easily get in touch with us as a consultant, except that also meant he believed Harry would help him out. A somewhat out of place belief for someone who probably hadn't heard of Harry before today.

"To be fair, I haven't arranged to stay anywhere around here yet, so I don't have an address or phone number to give you. Calling my home number wouldn't do you much good either, seeing as no one there could really contact me either, given this was an unintended stop," McCoy cordially explained.

"Ever heard of a cell phone?" Sid sarcastically asked.

"Sure. But I have this terrible habit of accidentally breaking the damn things," he replied with a depreciating smile. "Like Murphy's Law decided to enforce itself if me and a cell phone come into contact for too long. So I've pretty much written off ever owning one, seeing as I don't have the money to spare to get a new one every week."

The crazy thing about that explanation? There were no tells that said he was lying. Either a man with amazing situational awareness was somehow also a complete klutz with a phone, or he was a phenomenal liar.

Or maybe it's something else, like magic, a small part of me whispered. I quashed the thought. Magic wasn't real. And even if it was, why would wizards be banned from using cell phones?

Then I realized that at some point my brain had sorted McCoy into the same wizard category as Harry. That was new. I'd never put anyone else in that figurative box. There were some who came close, having a brand of oddness that was in line with Harry's magical beliefs, but they'd all been missing some ephemeral quality that made Harry a wizard. McCoy wasn't missing it.

Of course, that little tidbit would be a lot more useful if I had any idea what it really meant. Or if I even knew what that elusive quality was.

Harry then returned from his living space with the second set of mugs, which he placed before Sid and myself before taking his own seat. I could see the tension flowing out of him as he realized that I wasn't laying into his client anymore.

"So, Mr. McCoy has informed me that Sharon is back, and that she's moved on from fraud and murder, to theft and attempted murder. Is there anything the venerable police of Chicago have to add?" Harry asked.

I sighed. "Not really, but we've only just begun investigating."

"Right," Harry nodded along. "Well, I was just getting around to asking Mr. McCoy here about which item exactly it was among his stolen belongings that led to the theft," he said with a pointed look at the man in question.

McCoy got a startled, and slightly betrayed, look to his face as we all turned to him for the answer.

It was nice to know that the police weren't the only ones McCoy was giving the run around to.

McCoy spent a moment eyeing us, fingers drumming the table. Then he sighed and began explaining. "It's a database with a lot of data on it. It's stashed in an antique, as in several hundred years old, human skull that I inherited from my foster father."

"Okay," I said, kind of flummoxed.

I wasn't really sure why the PI was treating a database like some huge secret. If he'd just come out with this in the first place, I wouldn't think much of it. The skull thing was weird, and somewhat frowned upon, but I'd heard of weirder, and it wasn't illegal except in certain cases. However, hiding the existence of the database and the skull made them seem really suspect.

"And you felt the need to hide this because?"

"I wasn't sure that the skull or the database wouldn't be confiscated for some reason," he said with a vaguely apologetic shrug. "They're mine, one of the few things I recovered from my foster father's home when it burned down. Plus, I've seen authority abused a bit too much."

Well. It might be a bit presumptuous, but to my ears it sounded like McCoy's time in the foster system wasn't an easy one. A lot of orphans who got the rough end of the system ended up possessive as hell of their belongings. They'd lost too much to openly trust strangers with the things that were important to them. And such orphans often lost faith in institutions after being so badly failed by them when they were most needed.

"So Sharon was after the database? What's so special about it?" I asked.

"Maybe. I don't advertise that I have it or anything, so it could have been a lucky grab," he said, frustrated. "As for why it's special, there's a lot of old tomes scanned into it. The kind of old books that are mostly found in private collections or museums. I'm not even sure if some of the lore books in there still exist anymore. I suppose she could make forgeries using the data, but I couldn't say for sure what she plans to do with it."

"So it's a digital library of a bunch of old books?" Sid asked with incredulous skepticism. "Why's that of interest to you?"

"Basically, and besides the fact that they're mine, I like knowing about the original forms of myths. Call it a hobby, if you want," McCoy replied a bit defensively.

I flicked a glance over to Harry at the mention of myths, seeing as they were so close to magic. The look on his face suggested that my consultant was reaching some conclusions of his own from this conversation. I wondered what they were, and if they were the kind Dresden would share with me, or the kind he'd gloss over for being magical.

"Is there anything else you need to share, Mr. McCoy?" I asked, ready to get out of Weirdsville and back to normality so I could sort out what all I'd just learned.

"Nope," he replied, popping 'p' and leaning back in his chair.

"Then we're headed back to the station. Here's my card so you can call to provide a contact number," I said, standing up and sliding my business card over to McCoy. "Stay out of trouble, both of you."

"I'll do my best, Murphy," Harry said with a smile as he walked me and Sid to the door. McCoy just grunted.

I just knew I was going to regret leaving those two alone.

AN: So I did the research, and it is generally legal in the USA to own human bones. You can't buy/have Native American bones, but that's about it. Of course, if it's suspected to be part of an open investigation, I'm sure they could take the bones as potential evidence. Which Book!Harry has to worry about because it's not like he has paperwork to prove that Bob's an old skull, so the police could try to take him to confirm the skull isn't part of an open case.