Ghost Story (The Dresden Files 13)

whomever he works for.”

“Even if we do assume that,” Murphy said, “I don’t have the access to information that I used to. We’d need to review TSA video records, security cameras—all kinds of things I can’t get to anymore.”

“Your brother-in-law can,” I said. “Dick can.”

“Richard,” she corrected me. “He hates that nickname.”

“Dick who?” Butters asked, looking between us.

I said, “Her brother-in-law,” at the same time she said, “My exhusband.”

Butters’s brow arched even farther and he shook his head. “Man. Catholics.”

Murphy gave him a gimlet look. “Richard runs by the book. He won’t help a civilian.”

“Come on, Murph,” I said. “You were married to the guy. You’ve got to have some dirt on him.”

She shook her head. “It isn’t a crime to be an asshole, Harry. If it was, I’d have put him away for life.”

Butters cleared his throat. “We could ask—”

“No,” Murphy and I said at the same time, and continued speaking over each other.

“The day I ask for that bastard’s help will be the day I—”

“—told you before, over and over, that just because he’s reasonable doesn’t mean he’s—”

“—a murderer and a drug dealer and a pimp, and just because Chicago’s corrupt government can’t put him away doesn’t mean—”

“—you were smarter than that,” Murphy finished.

Butters lifted his hands mildly. “Okay, okay. I was on board at no. No going to Marcone for help.” He paused and looked around the room as if he’d never seen it before. “Because that would be . . . unprecedented.”

“Wally,” Murphy said, one eyebrow arching dangerously.

He held up his hands again. “Uncle. I don’t understand your reasoning, but okay.”

“You think Marcone was behind it, Harry?” Murphy asked.

I shrugged. “Last time I saw him, he said he didn’t need to kill me. That I’d get myself killed without any help from him.”

Murphy frowned. It made her lip hurt and she winced, reaching up. The wince made it hurt worse, apparently, because fresh blood appeared. “Dammit. Well. You can take that a couple of different ways, can’t you?”

“Like how?”

Murphy looked at me. “Like maybe Marcone knew something was happening already, and that’s why he said he didn’t need to kill you. It wasn’t him, but it was still something he was aware of.”

I grunted. Marcone ran Chicago like his own personal clubhouse. He had legions of employees, allies, and flunkies. His awareness of what happened in his city wasn’t supernatural; it was better than that. He was rational, intelligent, and more prepared for a crisis than any man I’d ever seen. If the Eagle Scouts had some sort of Sith equivalent, Marcone was it.

If someone’s wet-work specialist had come to town, Marcone was very likely to have learned of it. He and his underworld network missed little.

“Dammit,” Murphy said, evidently coming to the same conclusions I had. “Now I have to talk to the scum.” She got out her little notepad and scribbled on it. “Butters, you said that Lindquist’s house had burned down?”

“Big-time,” said Butters.

I nodded. “According to the ghosts hanging around it, the Grey Ghost showed up—I didn’t tell you about the Grey Ghost, did I?”

“Mr. Lindquist filled us in after the shooting,” Butters said.

“Oh, right. Anyway, it showed up with several mortals and snatched him. We’ve got to get him back.”

Murphy nodded, still writing. “What happens if we don’t?”

“A bunch of serial killer–type ghosts start wandering around Chicago, looking for a good time. Ghosts like that can manifest—make themselves the next-best thing to real, Murph. Like the Nightmare. People will get hurt. A lot of them.”

Murphy’s mouth thinned into a line. She wrote on her notepad. “We’ll do triage in a minute. What else?”

“I found the gang who shot up your house last night,” I said.

The tip of Murphy’s pencil snapped against the notepad. She looked up at me, and her eyes were cold, furious. She spoke in a very quiet voice. “Oh?”

“Yeah,” I said. I paused for a moment to think about what I was going to say: Murphy’s temper was not a force to be invoked lightly. “I don’t think you’re going to have to worry about them anymore.”

“Why?” she asked, in her cop voice. “Did you kill them?”

There’d been a little too much intensity in that question. Wow. Murphy was clearly only too ready to go after these guys the minute she knew where they were.

I glanced at Butters, who looked like someone sitting near an armed explosive.

“No,” I said, working out my words carefully. If Murphy’s fuse was really as short as it seemed, I didn’t want her charging