Now her old office was occupied by John Stallings, and Murphy had a desk in the large room that housed SI. It wasn't a new desk, either. One leg was propped up with a small stack of triplicate report forms. It wasn't unusual in that room. SI was the bottom of the chute for cops who had earned the wrath of their superiors or, worse, had taken a misstep in the cutthroat world of Chicago city politics. The desks were all battered and old. The walls and floor were worn. The room obviously housed at least twice as many work desks as it had been meant to contain.
It was late. The place was quiet and mostly empty. Whoever was on the night shift must have been out on a call of some kind. Of the three cops in the room, I only knew one of them by name-Murphy's current partner, a blocky, mildly overweight man in his late fifties, with hair going steadily more silver in sharp contrast to the dark coffee tone of his skin.
"Rawlins," I said.
He turned to me with a grunt and a polite nod. "Evening."
"What are you doing here this late?"
"Giving my wife ammunition for when she drags my ass to court to divorce me," he said cheerfully. "Glad you made it in."
"Murph around?" I asked.
He grunted. "Interrogation room two, with the British perp. Go on down."
"Thanks, man."
I went down the hall and around the corner. To my left was a security gate blocking the way to the building's holding cells. To the right was a short hallway containing four doors-two to the bathrooms, and two that led to the interrogation rooms. I went to the second room and knocked.
Murphy answered it, still wearing the same clothes she'd been in at the storage park. She looked tired and irritated. She grunted almost as well as Rawlins had, despite her complete lack of a Y-chromosome, and stepped out into the hall, shutting the door behind her.
She looked up and studied my head for a second. "What the hell, Harry?"
"Got a visit from Shagnasty the Skinwalker when I went to talk to Lara Raith. Any trouble with Binder?"
She shook her head. "I figured he'd have a hard time doing whatever he does if he can't get out of his chair or use his hands. I've been sitting with him, too, in case he tried to pull something."
I lifted an eyebrow, impressed. There hadn't been time to advise her how to handle Binder safely, but she'd worked it out on her own. "Yeah, that's a pretty solid method," I said. "What's he in for, officially?"
"Officially, I haven't charged him yet," she said. "If I need to stick him with something, I can cite trespassing, destruction of property, and assault on a police officer." She shook her head. "But we can't keep this close an eye on him forever. If I do press charges, it won't be long before he's under lighter security. I don't even want to think about what could happen if he got to turn those things loose inside a precinct house or prison."
"Yeah," I said, nodding. "Long term, I don't think you can hold him."
Her mouth twisted bitterly. "Hate it when I have to let pricks like that walk."
"Happen much?"
"All the time," she said. "Legal loopholes, incorrect procedures, crucial evidence declared inadmissible. A lot of perps who are guilty as hell walk out without so much as a reprimand." She sighed and twitched her shoulders into something like a shrug. "Ah, well. It's a messed-up world. Whatcha gonna do?"
"I hear that," I said. "Want to compare notes?"
"Sure," she said. "What did you get?"
I gave her the rundown of what had happened since I'd last seen her.
She grunted again when I finished. "Isn't that sort of dangerous? Involving the vampires?"
"Yeah," I said. "But it's Thomas. I think Lara is probably sincere about getting him back. Besides. Why worry about smoking in bed when your building is already on fire?"
"Point," she said. "I got the photos. They don't tell me anything new. I ran those account numbers you gave me through the system to see if anything came up. Brick wall."
"Dammit."
"It was a long shot anyway," she said.
"Binder give you anything?"
Her mouth scrunched up as if she wanted to spit out something that tasted terrible. "No. He's a hard case. Career criminal. He's been grilled before."
"Yeah," I said. "And he knows that you can't do anything but make him sit still for a little while. If he gives us anything on his employer, he'll lose his credibility with clients-assuming that he lives that long."
She leaned her shoulders back against the wall. "You say this Shagnasty thing has Thomas's cell phone?"
"Yeah. Think you can track it?"
"As part of what investigation?" she asked. "I don't have the kind of freedom to act that I used to. If I wanted to get what amounts to a wiretap, I'd have to get approval from a judge, and I don't know any of them who would take 'my friend the wizard's vampire brother was kidnapped by a demonic Navajo shapeshifter' as a valid justification for such a measure."
"I hadn't really thought of it like that," I said.
She shrugged. "Honestly, I suspect Lara's resources and contacts are better than mine, given the time constraints."
I couldn't quite suppress a growl of frustration. "If she learns anything. If she's honest about what she learns."
Murphy frowned, scrunching up her nose. "Where was Thomas taken from?"
"I'm not certain, but I think he was at the storage park. His rental van was there, and he said something about not being able to handle all of them on his own."
"Them? The grey suits?"
I nodded. "Most likely. But since Thomas never pitched in during the fight, I figure Shagnasty probably snuck up on him and grabbed him while he was being distracted by Binder and his pets."
"And you can't track him down with magic."
"No," I growled through clenched teeth. "Shagnasty is countering it somehow."
"How is that possible?"
I took a moment to assemble my thoughts. "Tracking spells are like any kind of targeted thaumaturgy. You create a link, a channel to the target, and then pour energy into that channel. In the case of a tracking spell, you're basically just setting up a continuous trickle of energy, and then following it to the target-kind of like pouring water on a surface when you want to see which way is downhill."
"Okay," she said. "I get that, mostly."
"The way to stymie a tracking spell is to prevent that channel from ever being formed. If it never gets created, then it doesn't matter when the water gets poured. There's nothing to cause it to start flowing. And the way you prevent the channel from forming is to shield the target away from whatever focus you're using to create the link."
"Like what?"
"Well, for example. If I had one of your hairs and wanted to use it as part of a tracking spell, you might beat it by shaving off your hair. If the hair in my spell doesn't match up to an end somewhere on your head, no link gets created. So, unless I had a hair that had been torn out from the roots, and fairly recently, you'd be hidden."
"And that's the only way to beat a tracking spell?"
"Nah," I said. "A good circle of power could probably screen you off, if you took the time and money to give it serious juice. Theoretically, you could also cross into the Nevernever. Thaumaturgy originating on the earth doesn't cross into the spirit world very efficiently-and before you ask, yeah, I tried it from the Nevernever side, too. It was failed spell number three."
Murphy frowned. "What about Justine?" she asked. "Justine was able to find him once before."
I grimaced. "She was able to give us a vague direction a few hours after Thomas had ripped most of the life out of her. It isn't the same this time."
"Why not?"
"Because she wasn't sensing Thomas so much as the missing part of her own life force. They haven't been together like that in years. Thomas-digested, I guess you could say-all of that energy a long time ago."
Murphy sighed. "I've seen you do some neat stuff, Harry. But I guess magic doesn't fix everything."
"Magic doesn't fix anything anything," I said. "That's what the person using it is for." I rubbed at my tired eyes.
"Speaking of," she said. "Any thoughts as to why these wizards didn't seem to be using magic?"
"Not yet," I said.
"Any thoughts as to the nature of our perpetrator?"
"A couple," I said. "There are all these disparate elements in play-Shagnasty, Binder, Madeline Raith. There is serious money moving around. And if we don't find this cockroach and drag him into the light, things are going to be bad for everyone. I don't know what that tells us about him."
"That he's really smart," Murphy said. "Or really desperate."
I arched an eyebrow. "How do you figure?"
"If he's superbrilliant, it's possible that we haven't even seen the shape of his plan yet. All of this could be one big boondoggle to set us up for the real punch."
"You don't sound like you think that's the case."
She gave me a faint smile. "Criminals aren't usually the crispiest crackers in the box. And you have to remember that even though we're flailing around looking for answers, the perp is in the same situation. He can't be sure where we are, what we know, or what we're doing next."
"Fog of war," I said thoughtfully.
She shrugged. "I think it's a much more likely explanation than that our perp is some kind of James Bond super-genius villain slowly unfolding his terrible design. They've shown too much confusion for that."
"Like what?"
"Shagnasty was following you a couple of nights ago, right?"
"Yeah."
"Well, so was this PI you told me about. Why stick you with two tails? Maybe because the right hand didn't know what the left one was doing."
"Hngh," I agreed.
"From what you say, Shagnasty isn't exactly an errand boy."
"No, it isn't."
"But it's apparently coordinating with the perp, taking orders. It didn't absolutely need to deliver its demand in person. I think it's pretty obvious that it smashed its way into the Chateau to provide a distraction so that Madeline could make her getaway."
I blinked. Once I'd alerted Lara to the probability of Madeline's treachery, she most certainly would have taken steps to detain her. Madeline must have known that. I tried to remember how long it had been between the time Luccio and I arrived, and when the naagloshii attacked. Time enough for Madeline to hear about our presence, assume that the worst had happened, and make a phone call for help?
Maybe.
Murphy peered at me. "I mean, it is is obvious, right?" obvious, right?"
"I got hit on the head, okay?"
She smirked at me.
"Hell's bells," I muttered. "Yes, it's obvious. But not necessarily stupid."
"Not stupid, but I don't think it would be unfair to call it a desperation move. I think Shagnasty was the perp's ace in the hole. I think that when Morgan escaped, the perp figured out where he was headed, the pressure got to him, and he played his hole card. Only when Shagnasty found you, you weren't actually with with Morgan. He got spooked when you and the werewolves nearly pinned him down, and ran off." Morgan. He got spooked when you and the werewolves nearly pinned him down, and ran off."
"The perp grabs one of his other tools," I said, nodding. "Madeline. Tells her to find me and take me out, make me talk, whatever. Only Thomas beats her senseless instead."
"Makes sense," Murphy said.
"Doesn't mean that's how it happened."
"Had to happen some way," she said. "Say we're in the right ballpark. What does that tell us?"
"Not much," I said. "Some very bad people are in motion. They're tough. The one guy we've managed to grab won't tell us a damned thing. The only thing we're certain certain we know is that we've got nothing." we know is that we've got nothing."
I was going to continue, but a thought hit me and I stopped talking.
I gave it a second to crystallize.
Then I started to smile.
Murphy tilted her head, watching, and prompted, "We've got nothing?"
I looked from Murphy to the door to the interrogation room.
"Forget it," she said. "He isn't going to put us on to anyone."
"Oh," I drawled. "I'm not so sure about that... ."
Chapter Thirty-one