Chapter 3; Harry
I love the autumn air. Not cold, and devoid of any humidity. It was perfect weather for not getting glares when I donned my black leather duster. As I tread the gravel toward the lake, I noticed all the sights and smells of Lake Michigan. My eye first caught the navy blue and tan of the ebbing and flowing water, carrying sediments and throwing them around jovially under the water. The white caps in the distance, the scent of mildew and fish, and the crunch of beige sand under my shoes were recognized as well as I hurried closer to something that would inevitably ruin the peace.
Ah. There it was.
An ugly brown had seeped into the sand, splattered like the paint on those paintings you find in museums, where it looks like the artist flung a brush full randomly at the canvas, and you stare at it as you think of how it resembles something you've seen an elephant paint, and wonder how the hell it sold for a gazillion dollars. As I got closer, where there was a crowd of very interested police officers concentrating on the middle of where they were standing, the brown splatters got closer and closer, at last forming into a big puddle underneath an officer's feet. I overheard an officer reports that forensics had found at more three different people's blood at the scene, two belonging to the murder victims and one unknown, possibly the suspect.
An older dark-skinned man observed with a grim face watched from the opposite side of the group from me. He glanced up, and a wary smile played on his face, then confusion. He mumbled something into someone's ear, someone I couldn't see and that he had to bend down to reach, then he separated from the group. Seconds later, Detective Rawlins and Sergeant Murphy rounded the mass.
"Harry," Murphy greeted me, a little skeptical. "I was just telling Rawlins that I was going to call you…"
"Yea, my ears were burning," I responded somewhat cheerily, but there was no hiding the dark undertone in my voice as I looked at the blood under my feet. "What's going on?"
"Two unidentified men were murdered last night. One is completely decapitated, and the other's head is cleaved in two." She looked tough and chock full of businesslike reserve, but she was pale and her face was hard as she looked at me. "The murder weapon was a sword." She left the rest of the sentence, laced with accusation, hang in the air. She suspected the wardens of the White Council, the only people she knew who carried big-ass swords and had also executed warlocks in Chicago before.
"I'd have to check. If it was…" I looked at Rawlins. He stood a few feet off to the side, and seemed to be very interested in a seagull that was screaming a few feet farther off. "If it was the wardens, to constitute an execution, they would have had to be warlocks. I'd have to get close to them, and I might be able to sense any residual magic on them." I looked at the sun, low over the lake in the east, and Murphy followed my gaze. "There's no guarantee that I'll find anything, though. Not since the sun has risen. Most, if not all, the residual magic has been dispersed."
Murphy did not look happy about that. She loves the perfect case. Stop it before it happens and put the bad guy away immediately. This case shot that halfway to hell, so she was already upset. She was hoping the answer would be easy to find. It so rarely was.
She strode over to Rawlins and talked quickly to him, looking first to me, then to the mass of policemen, who were starting to disperse. He nodded, and he whispered something in another cops ear. The cop looked at me, frowned, and mentioned me through. I nodded at both of them, and knelt down over the gruesome sight.
The first man's body lay on his back, his knees folded under him like he was kneeling before he fell. His neck was sliced at an angle, the cut staring at the base of the throat and ending at the top of the spine. He was covered in his blood, which looked like it had squirted like a crimson fountain from his artery. His head lay a few feet away, and it was guarded from the hungry seagull by the police. The second man was about a foot to his left, on his stomach and a little on his side. He had a lot less blood, but was a more disturbing sight. His skull had been completely opened, displaying the dull grey-pink intricacies of the human brain to the beach. It was such a disgusting sight, and the combination of that and the smells of the beach and the blood made me wobble on the balls of my feet. I held myself steady for a moment, closing my eyes and counting down from five, before opening them again, and holding my hands a couple inches away from the corpses. I concentrated, trying to find the tell-tale throbbing of nauseating energies that generally surround a warlock. I tried to find any residual thrum of energy that the wardens' swords emitted. I tried to find anything, but…
No, nothing but the violence of their death came from the two corpses. I frowned at them, then at Murphy and Rawlins. Her eyes became frustrated, and she turned away. The rest of the cops were eyeing me, unhappy, and I was shunted from the group. Murphy approached me again.
"What is it?" She was obviously holding on to hope that I had found something, even something little.
"I didn't find any residual energy, but I'm fairly sure they weren't warlocks. The angle of the cut on the guy's neck shows that he was kneeling over whatever killed him. It would be extremely hard for the wardens to get such a clean cut at that angle by standing over him. And as for the second guy, I've never heard an execution that didn't completely take the warlocks head off, unless there was a fight. They would still try to remove the head, no matter how the warlock was killed. Also, a warden always cleans up after executions. This is way too messy. The pieces don't fit." I paused and said, "I'm sorry, Murph."
She eyed me.
"I can check it out anyway," I sighed.
"You bet your ass you can check it out anyway," she said. "Rawlins." She turned to him discussed something quietly with him. He nodded, and they both walked over.
I nodded. "Rawlins."
"Dresden. What's a busy guy like you doing over here at this hour?"
"Oh, you know. Wanted to get a nice swim, try to get an early morning tan, see if I can find any fun dead bodies to check out."
"Fun dead bodies, huh?"
"I like to poke them with sticks."
He grunted. "Well, we can hire you, but it wouldn't be for as much pay as you usually get."
"A deal-or-no-deal kind of thing?"
"You got it." He gave a twitch of his shoulder, and gave me a face that said I don't make the rules, sorry. "If it were up to Stallins, I'd have to tell you that civilians aren't allowed near murder sites and kick you out."
"Such a charming fellow." I said, a bit of a snarl on my face. But I needed the money. "I'm in. We'll get this guy, no problem." Murphy put her game face on.
The power of positive thinking.
