Storm Front

I was at the end of my strength, my resources. I hadn’t thought of anything, hadn’t come up with any brilliant ideas. The killer was going to get a spell together to kill me the next time he had a storm to draw on, and from the way the air felt that could be anytime. If he didn’t kill me, Morgan would certainly have the White Council set to execute me at dawn on Monday. The bastard was probably out lobbying votes, already. If the matter came before the Council, I wouldn’t stand a chance.

I leaned against the door to Linda’s apartment. It was striped with POLICE LINE – DO NOT CROSS yellow-and-black tape. I didn’t really realize what I was doing until I had already worked a spell that opened the door, unfastened the lowest strip of yellow tape, and walked into her apartment.

"This is stupid, Harry," I told myself. I guess I wasn’t in the mood to listen. I walked around Linda’s apartment, smelling her perfume and her blood. They hadn’t come to clean up the blood, yet. The apartment manager would probably have to handle that, later. They never really show you details like that at the movies.

I eventually found myself lying on the floor, on the carpeting next to Linda Randall’s large bed. I was curled on my side, my back to her bed, my face toward the sliding glass doors that led out to her little concrete patio. I didn’t feel like moving, like going anywhere, like doing anything. Useless. It had all been useless. I was going to die in the next two days.

The worst part was that I wasn’t sure that I cared. I was just so tired, exhausted from all the magic I’d had to use, from the walking, from the bruises and punches and lack of sleep. It was dark. Everything was dark.

I think I must have fallen asleep. I needed it, after everything that had happened. I don’t remember anything else, until the sun was too bright in my eyes.

I blinked and lifted a hand against the light, keeping my eyes closed. Mornings had never been my best time, and the sun had risen above the tops of the buildings across the street, cheerful springtime sunshine that dashed down through Linda Randall’s curtains, through my eyelids and into my brain. I grumbled something, and rolled over, face to the cool darkness under Linda’s bed, back to the warm sunlight.

But I didn’t go back to sleep. Instead, I started to get disgusted with myself.

"What the hell are you doing, Harry?" I demanded, out loud.

"Lying down to die," I told myself, petulantly.

"Like hell," my wiser part said. "Get off the floor and get to work."

"Don’t wanna. Tired. Go away."

"You’re not too tired to talk to yourself. So you’re not too tired to bail your ass out of the alligators, either. Open your eyes," I told myself, firmly.

I hunched my shoulders, not wanting to obey, but against my better judgment, I did open my eyes. The sunlight had turned Linda Randall’s apartment into an almost cheerful place, overlaid with a patina of gold – empty still, to be sure, but warm with a few good memories. I saw a high-school yearbook lying nearby, underneath the bed, several photographs serving as bookmarks. There was also a framed picture of a much-younger Linda Randall, smiling brightly, none of the jaded weariness I had seen in her in evidence, standing in her graduation robes between a kind-looking couple in their late fifties. Her parents, I presumed. She looked happy.

And, lying just in the edge of a stray little beam of sunlight, one that was already retreating as the sun rose above the edge of the buildings, was a small, red plastic cylinder with a grey cap.

My salvation.

I snatched it out from under the bed. I was shaking. I shook the canister, and it rattled. A roll of film was inside. I opened up the canister and dumped the film into my hand. The plastic leader had been retracted into the case – there were pictures on the film, but they hadn’t been developed yet. I closed the film up again and reached into the pocket of my duster and drew out another canister, the one I’d found at Victor Sells’s lake house. The two were a match.

My mind spun around, taking off down a whole new track. An entirely new realm of possibility had opened up to me, and somewhere in it might be my opportunity, my chance to get out of this alive, to catch the killer, to salvage everything that had started going to hell.

But it still wasn’t clear. I couldn’t be sure what was going on, but I had a possible link now, a link between the murder investigation and Monica Sells’s aborted inquiry into the disappearance of her husband, Victor. I had another lead to follow, but there wasn’t much time to follow it. I had to get up, to get on my feet, and get going, fast. You can’t keep a good wizard down.

I stood up, grabbed my staff and rod, and started toward the door. The last thing I needed was to get caught trespassing on a crime scene. It could get me arrested and stuck in holding, and I’d be dead before I could get bail. My mind was already rolling ahead, working out the next step, trying to find this photographer who had been at Victor’s beach house, and getting these pictures developed and seeing if there was anything in them that was worth Linda Randall’s death.

It was then that I heard a sound, and stopped. It came again, a quiet scraping.

Someone turned the key in the dead bolt of the apartment’s front door and swung it open.

Chapter Nineteen

There was no time to flee beneath the bed, or into the bathroom, and I didn’t want to be limited in mobility in any case. I leapt forward and stood behind the door as it opened, keeping very still.

A man entered – slim, short, harried-looking. His hair, a listless shade of brown, was drawn back into a ponytail. He wore dark cotton pants, a dark jacket, and carried a pouch on a strap at his side. He shut the door, most of the way, and looked around with great agitation. But, like most people who are too nervous to be thinking clearly, he was seeing less than he should have been, and though his head swept over where I would have been in his peripheral vision, he didn’t notice me. He was a good-looking man, or so it seemed, with strong lines to his jaw and cheekbones.

He crossed the room and stopped short when he saw the bloodstained bed. I saw him clench his hands into fists. He made a strange, cawing little sound, then hurried forward, to throw himself down on the floor by the bed and start pawing underneath it. After a few seconds, his pawing grew more frantic, and I heard him curse out loud.

I slid my fingers over the smooth surface of the film canister in my pocket. So. The mysterious photographer lurking outside of Victor Sells’s lake house was here looking for the film. I had a feeling in my stomach like I get when I finish a particularly difficult jigsaw puzzle – a peculiar satisfaction mingled with a touch of smugness.

I settled my staff and rod silently into the corner by the door and nipped my official police consultant’s badge, complete with my photograph on it, out of my duster, so that it showed against the black canvas. I covered my ratty old T-shirt with the coat and hoped that the man would be too rattled and nervous to notice that I was wearing sweatpants and cowboy boots beneath the duster.