"I remember hearing he had an enforcer," I said. "I guess he doesn't anymore."
Murphy shrugged. "So it would seem."
"So what will you do next?"
"Run down this hairstylist angle, I guess. I'll talk to Bianca and to Marcone, but I can already tell you what they'll tell me." She flicked her notebook closed and shook her head, irritated.
I watched her for a minute. She looked tired. I told her so.
"I am tired," she replied. "Tired of being looked at like I'm some sort of nutcase. Even Carmichael, my own partner, thinks I've gone over the edge in all of this."
"The rest of the station think so too?" I asked her.
"Most of them just scowl and spin their index fingers around their temples when they think I'm not looking, and file my reports without ever reading them. The rest are the ones who have run into something spooky out there, and they're scared shitless. They don't want to believe in anything they didn't see on Mister Science when they were kids."
"How about you?"
"Me?" Murphy smiled, a curving of her lips that was a vibrantly feminine expression, making her look entirely too pretty to be such a hardass. "The world's falling apart at the seams, Harry. I guess I just think people are pretty arrogant to believe we've learned everything there is to know in the past century or so. What the hell. I can buy that we're just now starting to see the things around us in the dark again. It appeals to the cynic in me."
"I wish everyone thought like you do," I said. "It would cut down on my crank calls."
She continued to smile at me, impish. "But could you imagine a world where all the radio stations played ABBA?"
We shared a laugh. God, that room needed a laugh.
"Hey, Harry," Murphy said, grinning. I could see the wheels spinning in her head.
"Yeah?"
"What you said about being able to figure out how the killer did this. About how you're not sure you can do it."
"Yeah?"
"I know it's bullshit. Why did you lie to me about it?"
I stiffened. Christ, she was good. Or maybe I'm just not much of a liar. "Look, Murph," I said. "There's some things you just don't do."
"Sometimes I don't want to get into the head of the slime I go after, either. But you do what needs to be done to finish the job. I know what you mean, Harry."
"No," I said, shortly. "You don't know." And she didn't. She didn't know about my past, or the White Council, or the Doom of Damocles hanging over my head. Most days, I could pretend I didn't know about it, either.
All the Council needed now was an excuse, just an excuse, to find me guilty of violating one of the Seven Laws of Magic, and the Doom would drop. If I started putting together a recipe for a murder spell, and they found out about it, that might be all the excuse they needed.
"Murph," I told her. "I can't try figuring this spell out. I can't go putting together the things I'd need to do it. You just don't understand."
She glared at me, without looking at my eyes. I hadn't ever met anyone else who could pull that one off. "Oh, I understand. I understand that I've got a killer loose that I can't catch in the act. I understand that you know something that can help, or you can at least find out something. And I understand that if you dry up on me now, I'm tearing your card out of the department Rolodex and tossing it in the trash."
Son of a bitch. My consulting for the department paid a lot of my bills. Okay, most of my bills. I could sympathize with her, I supposed. If I was operating in the dark like she was, I'd be nervous as hell, too. Murphy didn't know anything about spells or rituals or talismans, but she knew human hatred and violence all too well.
It wasn't as though I was actually going to be doing any black magic, I told myself. I was just going to be figuring out how it was done. There was a difference. I was helping the police in an investigation, nothing more. Maybe the White Council would understand that.
Yeah, right. And maybe one of these days I'd go to an art museum and become well rounded.
Murphy set the hook a second later. She looked up at my eyes for a daring second before she turned away, her face tired and honest and proud. "I need to know everything you can tell me, Harry. Please."
Classic lady in distress. For one of those liberated, professional women, she knew exactly how to jerk my old-fashioned chains around.
I gritted my teeth. "Fine," I said. "Fine. I'll start on it tonight." Hoo boy. The White Council was going to love this one. I'd just have to make sure they didn't find out about it.
Murphy nodded and let out a breath without looking at me. Then she said, "Let's get out of here," and walked toward the door. I didn't try to beat her to it.
When we walked out, the uniform cops were still lazing around in the hall outside. Carmichael was nowhere to be seen. The guys from forensics were there, standing around impatiently, waiting for us to come out. Then they gathered up their plastic bags and tweezers and lights and things and filed past us into the room.
Murphy was brushing at her windblown hair with her hand while we waited for the ancient elevator to take its sweet time getting up to the seventh floor. She was wearing a gold watch, which reminded me. "Oh, hey," I asked her. "What time is it?"
She checked. "Two twenty-five. Why?"
I breathed out a curse, and turned for the stairs. "I'm late for my appointment."
I fairly flew down the stairs. I've had a lot of practice at them, after all, and I hit the lobby at a jog. I managed to dodge a porter coming through the front doors with an armload of luggage, and swung out onto the sidewalk at a lope. I have long legs that eat a lot of ground. I was running into the wind, my black duster billowing out behind me.
It was several blocks to my building, and after covering half of them I slowed to a walk. I didn't want to arrive at my appointment with Monica Missing-Man puffing like a bellows, with my hair windblown and my face streaming with sweat.
Blame it on being out of shape from an inactive winter season, but I was breathing hard. It occupied enough of my attention that I didn't see the dark blue Cadillac until it had pulled up beside me, and a rather large man had stepped out of it onto the sidewalk in front of me. He had bright red hair and a thick neck. His face looked like someone had smashed it flat with a board, repeatedly, when he was a baby - except for his jutting eyebrows. He had narrow little blue eyes that got narrower as I sized him up.
I stopped, and backed away, then turned around. Two more men, both of them as tall as me and a good deal heavier, were slowing down from their own jog. They had apparently been following me, and they looked annoyed. One was limping slightly, and the other wore a buzz cut that had been spiked up straight with some kind of styling gel. I felt like I was in high school again, surrounded by bullying members of the football team.