Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

"Heh," drawled a voice from behind me. "I thought that was you."

I stiffened and turned around. The older of the two cops from upstairs stood ten feet down the hall from me, one hand resting casually on the butt of his sidearm. His dark face was wary, but not openly hostile, and his stance one of caution but not alarm. The name tag on his jacket read rawlins.

"Thought who was me?" I asked him.

"Harry Dresden," he said. "The wizard. The guy Murphy hires for SI."

"Yeah," I said. "I guess that's me."

He nodded. "I saw you upstairs. You didn't look like your typical museum patron."

"It was the big leather coat, wasn't it?" I said.

"That helped," Rawlins acknowledged. "What are you doing down here?"

"Just looking," I said. "I haven't gone into the room."

"Yeah. You can tell that from how I haven't arrested you yet." Rawlins looked past me, into the room, and his expression sobered. "Hell of a thing in there."

"Yeah," I said.

"Something don't feel right about it," he said. "Just... I don't know. Sets my teeth on edge. More than usual. I've seen knifings before. This is different."

"Yeah," I said. "It is."

Dark eyes flicked back to me, and the old cop exhaled. "This is something from down Si's way?"

"Yeah."

He grunted. "Murphy send you?"

"Not exactly," I said.

"Why you here then?"

"Because I don't like things that put cops' teeth on edge," I said. "You guys have any suspects?"

"For someone who just happened to be walking by, you got a lot of questions," he said.

"For a beat cop in charge of securing the scene, you were asking plenty of your own," I said. "Upstairs, with museum security."

He grinned, teeth very white. "Shoot. I been a detective before. Twice."

I lifted my eyebrows. "Busted back down?"

"Both times, on account of I have an attitude problem," Rawlins said.

I gave him a lopsided smile. "You going to arrest me?"

"Depends," he said.

"On what?"

"On why you're here." He met my gaze directly, openly, his hand still on his gun.

I didn't meet his eyes for very long. I glanced over my shoulder, debating how to answer, and decided to go with a little sincerity. "There are some bad people in town. I don't think the police can get them. I'm trying to find them before they hurt anyone else."

He studied me for a long minute. Then he took his hand off the gun and reached into his coat. He tossed me a folded newspaper.

I caught it and unfolded it. It was some kind of academic newsletter, and on the cover page was a photograph of a portly old man with sideburns down to his jaw, together with a smiling young woman and a young man with Asian features. The caption under the picture read, Visiting Professor Charles Bartlesby and his assistants, Alicia Nelson, Li Xian, prepare to examine Cahokian collection at the FMNH, Chicago.

"That's the victim in the middle," Rawlins said. "His assistants shared the office with him. They have not been answering their cell phone numbers and are not in their apartments."

"Suspects?" I asked.

He shrugged. "Not many people murder strangers," he said. "They were the only ones in town who knew the victim. Came in with him from England somewhere."

I looked from the newsletter up to Rawlins, and frowned. "Why are you helping me?"

He lifted his eyebrows. "Helping you? You could have found that anywhere. And I never saw you."

"Understood," I said. "But why?"

He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "Because when I was a young cop, I went running down an alley when I heard a woman scream. And I saw something. Something that..." His face became remote. "Something that has given me bad dreams for about thirty years. This thing strangling a girl. I push it away from her, empty my gun into it. It picks me up and slams my head into a wall a few times. I figured Mama Rawlins's baby boy was about to go the way of the dodo."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Lieutenant Murphy's father showed up with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and killed it. And when the sun comes up, it burns this thing's corpse like it had been soaked in gasoline." Rawlins shook his head. "I owed her old man. And I seen enough of the streets to know that she's been doing a lot of good. You been helping her with that."

I nodded. "Thank you," I told him.

He nodded. "Don't really feel like losing my job for you, Dresden. Get out before someone sees you."

Something occurred to me. "You heard about the Forensic Institute?"

He shrugged at me. "Sure. Every cop has."

"I mean what happened there last night," I said.

Rawlins shook his head. "I haven't heard of anything."

I frowned at him. A grisly murder at the morgue would have been all over the place, in police scuttlebutt if not in the newspapers. "You haven't? Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure."

I nodded at him and walked down the hallway.

"Hey," he said.

I looked over my shoulder.

"Can you stop them?" Rawlins asked.

"I hope so."

He glanced at the bloodied room and then back at me. "All right. Good hunting, kid."

Chapter Fourteen

Wow," Butters said, fiddling with the control panel on the SUV. "This thing has everything. Satellite radio stations. And I bet I could put my whole CD collection inside the changer on this player. And, oh, cool, check it out. It's got an onboard GPS, too, so we can't get lost." Butters pushed a button on the control panel.

A calm voice emerged from the dashboard. "Now entering Helsinki."

I arched an eyebrow at the dashboard and then at Butters. "Maybe the car is lost."

"Maybe you're interfering with its computer, too," Butters said.

"You think?"

He smiled tightly, checking his seat belt for the tenth time. "Just so we're clear, I have no problems with hiding, Harry. I mean, if you're worried about my ego or something, don't. I'm fine with the hiding. Happy, even."

I pulled off the highway. The green lawns and tended trees of the industrial park hosting the Forensic Institute appeared as the SUV rolled up the ramp. "Try to relax, Butters."

He jerked his head in a nervous, negative shake. "I don't want to get killed. Or arrested. I'm really bad at being arrested. Or killed."