Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(18)

“I don’t expect any better from him,” Karrin said. “Not your fault.”

“Hey,” I said. “Why does Internal Affairs have this one? Why not Homicide?”

He shrugged. “Murphy was one of ours, I guess. You were, too, sort of.”

Karrin stared at him intently for a moment. Then she said, “Thanks for coming by, Bradley.”

Bradley nodded politely. “Yeah. Thanks for your time. I hope you feel better soon, Ms. Murphy.”

He left, too, shutting the door carefully behind him, as if he wanted to avoid cracking it in half by accident. Maybe it had been a problem for him before.

I let out a long breath after he left. Then I went to the door and watched them depart and nodded to Karrin once they were gone.

“What’d you get from him?” I asked. “I didn’t catch it.”

“Because I was one of theirs, he guesses,” Murphy said. “Bradley doesn’t guess about anything. He doesn’t know why IA has the case.”

I rubbed at the spot between my eyes and growled. “Someone is pulling strings behind the scenes. They got the case bumped over to one of their people. Rudolph.”

“And Marcone owns Rudolph,” Karrin said. She pursed her lips. “Or so we’ve assumed.”

I grunted. “Who else could have him? Who else has so much influence in this town?”

She shook her head. “Asking the wrong person in this room.”

“Hah,” I said. “Something else to look into. What can we expect?”

“Bradley’s like a starving dog with a bone,” she said. “He gets on a trail, he doesn’t get off it. He doesn’t sweep things under the rug. Doesn’t play the game.”

“No wonder he’s his age and still junior to Rudolph,” I said. “Fortunately, we have a little thing called fact on our side: We didn’t kill Harvey. Or the guy at the bank.”

Karrin snorted. “We were there, and we’re lying to the police about it. That would get us put away for a while all by itself. But our DNA was at the scene, and they might turn up eyewitnesses who saw us on the street or find more images from a camera somewhere. Or …”

“Or someone could make some more evidence happen,” I said.

She nodded. “They could make a case out of it. This could … wind up badly.”

“What do we do about it, then?”

She arched an eyebrow at me. “Do? What are we, the villains in Bradley’s detective novel? Should we try to warn him off the case? Destroy some evidence? Set someone else up to take the fall?”

I grunted. “Still.”

“Not much we can do,” she said quietly. “Except find out more about what’s going on. I’ve got a few channels left. I’ll check them.”

“I’ll add looking into Rudolph’s sponsor to my list,” I said.

She nodded. “Think this will interfere with the weirdness convention?”

“Might be meant to,” I said. I thought about it for a long moment and then said, “When I go, call Butters.”

Karrin quirked an eyebrow at me.

“This shows every sign of becoming a sharknado,” I said. “Have him get the word out. To everyone. I mean everyone on the Paranet.”

“What word?”

“To keep their eyes open, sing out if they see anything, and to be ready,” I said. “Someone’s cooking something big. I can smell it.”

Karrin nodded, and her gaze flicked to the grandfather clock against the wall. “You’ve still got a little time before you need to be back,” she said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded. Her blue eyes were very direct. “Come here.”

I arched an eyebrow. “Um. Things haven’t really changed on that score. I’m not sure that—”

She let out a wicked little laugh. “Adapt and overcome, Harry. I’m intelligent. And you’ve at least got a decent imagination. Between the two of us, we’ll come up with something.” Her eyes narrowed. “Now. Come. Here.”

It would have been incredibly impolite to refuse a lady.

So I went.





6


I might have been feeling pretty smug on my way back to the car.

But my babysitter had an early morning, so as pleasant as it sounded, there would be no staying around for more. I had to go do the responsible dad thing.

I was whistling as I got in the Munstermobile and got it to roar to life. The car was an old hearse from the forties, painted in shades of dark blue and purple, with flames on the hood and front fenders. It was not subtle. It was not anywhere close to subtle. But I figured that since I wasn’t, either, that made it an entirely appropriate vehicle for me.

The car growled its way to life, and I turned and put one arm on the backrest of the front seat, to look behind me as I pulled out of Karrin’s driveway, and nearly had a freaking heart attack.

Two monsters sat in the backseat.

My reflexes kicked in as I flinched, twisting at the waist to bring up my left hand, the one with my makeshift shield bracelet. I let out a garbled, incoherent cry as my will slammed through it and the copper band exploded with a small cloud of green-yellow sparks as the shield came up between me and the threat. My right hand locked into a rigid claw and a small sphere of the same color of green-yellow energy gathered within the cage of my fingers, spitting and hissing with vicious heat.