Death Masks

I slipped into my apartment. Murphy shut the door behind me and locked it. She’d started a fire in the fireplace and had one of my old kerosene lamps lit. I went to the fireplace and warmed up my hands, watching Murphy in silence. She stood with her back and shoulders rigid for a moment, before she came over to stand beside me, facing the fire. Her lips were held into a tense, neutral line. "We should talk."

"People keep saying that to me," I muttered.

"You promised me you’d call me in when you had something."

"Whoa, there, hang on. Who said I had anything?"

"There is a corpse on a pleasure ship in Burnham Harbor and several eyewitnesses who describe a tall, dark-haired man leaving the scene and getting into a multicolored Volkswagen Beetle."

"Wait a second-"

"There’s been a murder, Dresden. I don’t care how sacred client confidentiality is to you. People are dying."

Frustration made me clench my teeth. "I was going to tell you about it. It’s been a really busy day."

"Too busy to talk to the police about a murder you may have witnessed?" Murphy said. "That is considered aiding and abetting a first-degree murder in some places. Like courts of law."

"This again," I muttered. My fingers clenched into fists. "I remember how this one goes. You slug me in the jaw and arrest me."

"I damn well should."

"Hell’s bells, Murph!"

"Relax." She sighed. "If that was what I had in mind you’d be in the car already."

My anger evaporated. "Oh." After a moment, I asked, "Then why are you here?"

Murphy scowled. "I’m on vacation."

"You’re what?"

Murphy’s jaw twitched. Her words sounded a little odd, since she kept her teeth ground together while she talked. "I’ve been taken off the case. And when I protested I was told that I could either be on vacation or collecting unemployment."

Holy crap. The muckety-mucks at CPD had ordered Murphy off a case? But why?

Murphy answered the question I hadn’t asked yet. "Because when Butters looked at the victim from the harbor, he determined that the weapon used to kill her and the one used on that victim you saw last night were the same."

I blinked. "What?"

"Same weapon," Murphy said. "Butters seemed pretty confident about it."

I turned that over in my head a few times, trying to shake out the kinks in the chains of logic. "I need a beer. You?"

"Yeah."

I went over to the pantry and grabbed a couple of brown bottles. I used an old bottle opener to take off the lids and took the drinks back to Murphy. She took her bottle in hand and eyed it suspiciously. "It’s warm."

"It’s the new recipe. Mac would kill me if he heard I served his brown cold." I took a pull from my bottle. The ale had a rich, full flavor, a little nutty, and it left a pleasant aftertaste lingering in the mouth. Make what jokes you will about trendy microbrews. Mac knew his stuff.

Murphy made a face. "Ugh. Too much taste."

"Wimpy American," I said.

Murphy almost smiled. "Homicide got wind that there was a link between the killing in Italy, the one here by the airport, and the one this morning. So they pulled strings and hogged the whole thing."

"How did they find out?"

"Rudolph," Murphy spat. "There’s no way to prove anything but I’ll bet you the little weasel heard me on the phone with Butters and ran straight over there to tell them."

"Isn’t there anything you can do?"

"Officially, yes. But in real life people are going to start accidentally losing reports and forms and requests if I try to file them. And when I tried to apply some pressure of my own, I got put down hard." She took another angry drink. "I could lose my job."

"That both sucks and blows, Murph."

"Tell me about it." She frowned and looked up at my eyes briefly. "Harry. I want you to back off on this case. For your own sake. That’s why I came over here."

I frowned. "Wait a minute. You mean people are threatening you with me? That’s a switch."

"Don’t joke about it," Murphy said. "Harry, you’ve got a history with the department, and not everyone thinks well of you."

"You mean Rudolph."

"Not just Rudolph. There are plenty of people who don’t want to believe you’re for real. Besides that, you were near the scene of and may have witnessed a felony. They could put you away."

Obviously my life was too easy already. I swigged more beer. "Murph, cop, crook, or creature, it doesn’t matter. I don’t back off because some bully doesn’t like what I do."

"I’m not a bully, Harry. I’m your friend."

I winced. "And you’re asking me."

She nodded. "Pretty please. With sugar."

"With sugar. Hell, Murph." I took a drink and squinted at her. "How much do you know about what’s going on?"

"I had some of the files taken away before I could read them." She glanced up at me. "But I can read between the lines."

"Okay," I said. "This might take a little explaining."

"You aren’t backing off, are you?"

"It isn’t an option."

"Stop there then," Murphy said. "The less you tell me, the less I can testify to."

Testify? Hell. There should be some kind of rule about being forced to dodge several kinds of legal land mines at the same time. "This isn’t a friendly situation," I said. "If straight cops go into it like it’s normal business, they’re going to get killed. I’d be really worried even if it were SI."

"Okay," Murphy said. She didn’t look happy. She drank her beer in a long pull and set the bottle on my mantel.

I put my hand on her shoulder. She didn’t snap it off at the wrist. "Murph. This looks bad already. I have a hunch it could get worse, fast. I have to."

"I know," she said. "I wish I could help."

"Did you get the information on that cell phone?"

"No," she said. But as she said it, she passed me a folded piece of paper. I unfolded it with my fingers and read Murphy’s printing: Quebec Nationale, Inc, owner. No phone number. Address a P.O. box. Dead end.

A dummy company, probably, I thought. The Churchmice could have it set up to do a lot of the buying and selling for them. Maybe dead Gaston had been from Quebec instead of France.

"Got it. Thanks, Murph."

"I don’t know what you’re talking about," Murphy said. She picked up her jacket from where she’d tossed it on my couch and shrugged into it. "There’s no APB out for you yet, Harry, but I’d be discreet if I were you."