Dead Beat (The Dresden Files 7)

I checked at the pharmacy, but the place had been closed the night before, and no one had been there or heard about anything out of the ordinary. I checked the neighboring places of business, but it was a part of town where not much was open after six or seven in the evening, and no one had seen or heard about anything out of the ordinary.

Most of the time the investigation business is like that. You do a lot of looking and not finding. The cure for it is to do more looking. I walked back to the SUV and went to the next spot on the map, at the Field Museum.

The Field Museum is on Lake Shore Drive, and occupies the whole block north of Soldier's Field. I felt a brief flash of gratitude that things usually went to hell during the workweek. If this had been a Sunday with the Bears at home, I'd have had to park and then backpack in from Outer Mongolia. As it was, I got a spot in the smaller parking lot in the same block as the museum, which cost me only a portion of the national gross income.

I walked to the entrance from the parking lot, and slowed my steps for a few strides. There were two patrol cars and an ambulance parked outside the Field Museum 's main entrance. Ah hah. This stop looked like it might be a bit more interesting than the last one.

The doors had just opened for normal visiting hours, and it cost me yet more of my money to get a ticket. My wallet was getting even more anorexic than usual. At this rate I wouldn't be able to afford to protect mankind from the perils of black magic. Hell's bells, that would be really embarrassing.

I went in the front entrance. It's impressively big. The first thing my eyes landed on was the crown jewel of the Field Museum -Sue, the largest, most complete, and most beautifully preserved skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered. They're the actual petrified bones, too-none of this cheap plastic modeling crap for the tourists. The museum prided itself on the authenticity of the exhibit, and with reason. There's no way to stand in Sue's shadow, to see the bones of the enormous hunter, its size, its power, its enormous teeth, without feeling excruciatingly edible.

Late October is not the museum's high traffic season, and I saw only a couple of other visitors in the great entrance hall. Museum security was in evidence, a couple of men in brown quasi-uniforms, and an older fellow with greying hair and a comfortable-looking suit. The man in the suit stood next to an unobtrusive doorway, talking to a couple of uniformed police officers, neither of which I recognized.

I moseyed over closer to the three of them, casually browsing over various exhibits until I could get close enough to Listen in.

"... damnedest thing," the old security chief was saying. "Never would have figured that this kind of business would happen here."

"People are people," said the older of the two cops, a black man in his forties. "We can all get pretty crazy."

The younger cop was a little overweight and had a short haircut the color of steamed carrots. "Sir, do you know of anyone who might have had some kind of argument with Mister Bartlesby?"

"Doctor," the security man said. "Dr. Bartlesby."

"Right," said the younger cop, writing on a notepad. "But do you know of anyone like that?"

The security man shook his head. "Dr. Bartlesby was a crotchety old bastard. No one liked him much, but I don't know of anyone who disliked him enough to kill him."

"Did he associate with anyone here?"

"He had a pair of assistants," the security chief replied. "Grad students, I think. Young woman and a young man."

"They a couple?" the younger cop asked.

"Not that I could tell," the security chief said.

"Names?" the older cop asked.

"Alicia Nelson was the girl. The guy was Chinese or something. Lee Shawn or something."

"Does the museum have records on them?" the cop asked.

"I don't think so. They came in with Dr. Bartlesby."

"How long have you known the doctor?" the older cop asked.

"About two months," the security chief said. "He was a visiting professor doing a detailed examination of one of the traveling exhibits. It's already been taken down and packed up. He was due to leave in a few more days."

"Which exhibit?" the young cop asked.

"One of the Native American displays," the security man supplied. "Cahokian artifacts."

"Ka- what?" the older cop asked.

"Cahokian," the security chief said. "Amerind tribe that was all over the Mississippi River valley seven or eight hundred years ago, I guess."

"Were these artifacts valuable?" asked the older cop.

"Arguably," the security chief said. "But their value is primarily academic. Pottery shards, old tools, stone weapons, that kind of thing. They wouldn't be easy to liquidate."

"People do crazy things," the young cop said, still writing.

"If you say so," the security chief said. "Look, fellas, the museum would really like to get this cleared up as quickly as possible. It's been hours already. Can't we get the remains taken out now?"

"Sorry, sir," the older cop said. "Not until the detectives are done documenting the scene."

"How long will that take?" the security chief asked.

The older cop's radio clicked, and he took it off his belt and had a brief conversation. "Sir," he told the security chief, "they're removing the body now. Forensics will be over in a couple of hours to sweep the room."

"Why the delay?" the chief asked.

The cop answered with a shrug. "But until then, I'm afraid we'll have to close down access to the crime scene."

"There are a dozen different senior members of the staff with offices off of that hallway," the security chief protested.

"I'm sure they'll finish up as quickly as they can, sir," the cop said, though his tone brooked no debate.

"Told my boss I'd give it a try." The chief sighed. "You want to come explain it to him?"

"Glad to," the cop said with a forced smile. "Lead the way." The two cops and the security chief strode off together, presumably to talk to somebody with an office, a receptionist, and an irritatingly skewed perspective on the importance of isolating a crime scene.

I chewed on my lip. I was pretty sure that the apparent murder the cops were talking about and my hot spot of dark magic had to be related to each other. But if the hot spot was located on a murder site, it would be shut away from any access. Forensics could spend hours, even days, going over a room for evidence.