The offices of Special Investigations were probably uncomfortable at the best of times. The space was probably fifty by twenty feet, almost all of the available space stuffed full of desks and chairs. In August, with the air conditioners huffing painfully like first-time joggers, trying to keep up with the heat? It was like being packed into a cigar case and set on a rock in Death Valley.
Most of the staff appeared to be on their lunch break by the time Mr. Dresden and I strolled through the doors of the precinct. We hadn't gotten many stares on the way through. I guess I looked like the sort of punk-ass teen who'd end up there are some point or another. Dresden was a ubiquitous sight after so many years. We did catch a few curious glances when Mr. Dresden steered me purposefully toward S.I. but in the end, no one stopped us.
I'd almost turned around and sprinted right back out the door when he'd introduced me to Karrin Murphy.
If I'd just passed her on the street, I probably wouldn't have spared her a second glance. She was short, barely coming up to my chest. Five-foot tall, tops, without her shoes. Petite but athletic. The sleek blonde hair was pushed back out of her face, cut in a style that favored function over style. She had a cute, upturned nose, and a generically pretty face. She looked like she could blend into any one of the PTA meetings at my school.
Beneath that unassuming facade lay the soul of a freaking tiger waiting to pounce. Her eyes were glacial when she pushed me to sit, face cold and betraying nothing. Her thoughts and feelings were a stark contrast to the facade she projected. They were like a boiling pot, angry, popping loudly, and spinning around and around before anything could stick to the metaphorical bottom of the pan.
She looked me up and down, holding her tongue until she'd gotten the measure of me. I could tell, even without pressing for her thoughts, that she was supremely unimpressed. I was unused to that amount of hostile scrutiny and slid further down my chair in response.
"So," she drawled, taking a stab at dry sarcasm, rather than the fury I could feel she wanted to fling at me. "You're the reason for all this fuss?"
Fuss seemed like such an understatement for what I'd done that it almost dragged a laugh from me. I knew it would be a bad idea to laugh at her in her current state of mind, so I crushed the desire and nodded meekly.
"Yes, ma'am. And I'm really, really sorry."
A muscle ticked near her eye and her jaw flexed, grinding her anger against her back teeth, rather than lobbing it at me. I was impressed by her level of restraint. I was absolutely sure I'd have been read the riot act by anyone else. Even Harry hadn't been able to help himself when we'd climbed into his patchwork VW Bug.
"Sorry doesn't clean up the mess. Mind telling me what the hell you did?"
"I...I found a ritual to raise the dead." I tried very hard not to let my eyes slide over to meet Mr. Dresden's.
I'd decided sometime on the way over to keep him out of this if possible. If the truth got out, he was going to be in trouble too, for withholding the information he had. There was a very real chance I could be killed. I wasn't going to deprive Chicago if its only wizard into the bargain if I could help it. If things went sour, as I suspected they might, dad was going to need all the support he could get. Mom would never accept it from Harry, but at the very least, I could make sure that she had no more objections to him.
"And you thought it was a good idea to raise half the dead in Chicago? How do you even have the juice for something like that, anyway? I thought that magic like that wasn't possible without the aid of something big. The maniacs who terrorized Chicago last Halloween needed spirits to accomplish their plan. A lot of them."
"I've been wondering that myself," Harry said, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He hadn't had time to shave before I'd arrived and had been in too much of a hurry to meet Murphy to bother with it afterward. He had an impressive amount of five-o'clock shadow. "It really shouldn't have been possible, especially not for a kid as green as you are."
"I had help," I confessed. "I did a few experiments with ectomancy before I tried anything big. I attracted the attention of a spirit. It claimed it was a practitioner and that it could help me."
"A wizard ghost?" Karrin said skeptically.
"Well, I'm not sure how truthful it was. It was probably a bad idea to trust a floating blue skull in a suit. But hey, who suspects evil from somebody named Bob?"
Harry jerked a little beside me, and blank shock stole across his mind before he could conceal it. He hid the motion well, turning it into a shift on his chair, as though the hard surface made him uncomfortable. Karrin didn't notice the slip, but I did. I was dying to ask the obvious follow-up questions. How did Harry know the spirit? Had he dealt with it before? But, judging by the fact he wasn't looking either Karrin or me in the eye, I figured he didn't want to talk about it here. So I let the subject drop for the time being.
"So you and...Bob," Karrin said, stressing Bob's name with mild scorn, "Decided to raise the dead. Why?"
I fidgeted uncomfortably. The more times I explained it, the stupider I felt. The plan seemed reckless and half-cocked, with the benefit of hindsight. The chances that Molly's body had been buried in Bucktown were slim. The chances that it was intact enough to raise as a zombie was even more remote. Two years of decomposition without any embalming would probably leave little tissue left. If left in an environment at a consistent 50 degrees Fahrenheit, it would only take a few months for a body to rot into little more than a skeleton.
"I wanted to find her," I mumbled. "I thought I could find Molly."
Karrin's shoulders slumped, the cold anger melting away to something closer to pity. I preferred the anger. I'd had enough pity to last me a lifetime. Poor Daniel, with his missing sister and broken family. I hated it. I hated the way people looked at me when they knew.
She sighed. "I can understand that. And I suppose this is a better outcome than I was expecting. At least there isn't a cabal of evil necromancers trying to invade the city. Just a ghost and a reckless teenager."
"I think you're right, you know," I said quietly. "About Molly. That she's apart of the cold case that got punted onto your desk a month or so ago."
It was Karrin's turn to jerk in surprise. "How did you-? That's classified!"
"The kid's a Sensitive," Harry said with a sigh of his own. "It's an extension of some people's magical ability to be able to sense feelings, read objects, and skim surface level thoughts if they're determined or the recipient is unwary. Mind telling me what he's talking about, so we're all in the loop?"
Karrin uncrossed her arms and dropped into a seat behind her desk. She rummaged in a drawer, finally producing a stack of manilla folders, plunking them onto the desk with a weighty smack of paper.
She wagged a warning finger at us both. "You're not on the case Harry, so I shouldn't be telling you this. Off the record, you hear me? And the kid shouldn't know at all. This doesn't leave the room."
Harry nodded. "What's going on, Murph?"
She flicked back the cover of the first folder. The spine was well-worn, which meant she'd been pouring over it often. That warmed me to her a little. It was good to know that someone out there still cared. Was still looking to carve out a little justice for Molly.
She plucked photos from the folders and handed the sheaf of them over to Harry. They were mostly candid shots, though a few of the older girls had official photos from their IDs. Molly's was in the middle, beaming out at the three of us, frozen in still color, face fixed in a forever smile.
"Six of them are confirmed victims in our serial case. Most of them found two years ago, though a few have cropped up more recently. The remaining five are suspected victims that fit the killer's profile."
Harry flinched. "Blonde, young, and white." He thumbed the last picture and drew it out. It showed a pretty brunette, with a false smile and an air of haughty confidence in her looks. "Except this one. Who is she?"
"Claudia Danforth. From what we can tell, she was a party girl. Daddy was rich and well-connected. Alleged connections to Marcone, but no one can prove anything."
Harry's eyes flicked up to meet Murphy's. "Is there any chance he's got a connection to the killings?"
Karrin shrugged. "Anything is possible, but we doubt it. There's no motive and it violates his code of ethics, dubious as it is. Marcone has few rules, but we know he doesn't hurt kids. What does he gain from murdering the daughter of an associate? No, we think that Claudia saw something she shouldn't have, and was killed as a result. When she was found, her hair had been cut and dyed, probably in an attempt to make her fit the preferred victimology."
Harry laid the pictures on the desk and stared at them for a long time. After a few minutes he finally asked;
"What does he do to them, Murph?"
Karrin's eyes closed and a look of faint nausea rolled across her face. "You really don't want to know, Dresden. God, I don't want to know. I pray to God I'm wrong about this. I don't want to give Michael and Charity the details."
"Murph-"
Karrin spun the folder wordlessly so that Harry could read the autopsy report. Even the clinical overview was enough to have my breakfast rising to the back of my throat. Bodies partially dismembered, and the missing parts not recovered. Extreme violence employed, bones snapped, marks that had more in common with animal attacks than any tools a human might use.
Harry looked a little green when he was through. "Jesus, Murph. This is..."
"Fucking savagery," she finished.
The phone on Karrin's desk let out a shrill chime. We all jumped, uttering various noises of surprise. Karrin jabbed an imperious finger toward the door and Harry and I got up, taking the hint. The call was probably important, and she needed the least amount of magical interference possible. Without Bob, I didn't think I'd be a death sentence to technology, but I really couldn't be sure, so I loitered outside the office with Harry.
After a muttered discussion Karrin hung up her phone and retrieved her tailored blazer from the back of her chair, slinging it on over the shoulder rig and her badge.
"Come on, Dresden. If you're here you might as well accompany me." She pursed her lips when she shifted her gaze to me. "And you'll have to stay in the back of the car. No time to drop you back in Bucktown."
"Where are we going?"
"To the Fulton River District. They've found bodies in a storage lot. They match our killer's profile. Four more." She swallowed convulsively. "And they found a few trophies. It looks like one of them might be Molly's."