The Trouble with Drakes 17
Title: The Trouble With Drakes chapter 17
Author: stormyd55
Rating: PG...violence and death.
Pairing: Bob/Harry...(may they make like horny bunnies for all time)
Book/TV-Verse: TV
Warnings: Violence and death.
Disclaimer: Not mine! But, oh how I wish they were (evil chuckle).
Word Count: approx. 3300
Summary: Murphy has a close encounter with a Drake.
Author's Note: Well, what are Harry and Bob without Murphy. She has to have a bit of adventure, too.
Important Note! Still having difficulty creating links to previous chapters. So, anyone who wants to read the previous chapters, please click on my author tag. It will bring up everything I've written, but at least you'll be able to read the full story. I'm sorry I can't seem to get it to work right. I'm going to leave this note in every chapter for the benefit of new readers. Thank you for your patience.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4
Title: The Trouble With Drakes 17
Author: stormyd55
Rating: PG...violence and death.
Pairing: Bob/Harry... (may they make like horny bunnies for all time)
Book/TV-Verse: TV
Warnings: Violence and death.
Disclaimer: Not mine! But, oh how I wish they were (evil chuckle).
Word Count:
Summary: Murphy has a close encounter with a Drake.
Author's Note: Well, what are Harry and Bob without Murphy. She has to have a bit of adventure, too.
*****
Murphy was in a good mood for the first time in days. She was on the phone with a contact she had in the City Tax Commissioner's office. "Right, 1214 Archer Trail, got it. Thanks, John, I owe you one." She hung up, raised her fist in the air and gave a loud, "Yes!"
"Got something, Lieutenant?" Kirmani asked as he passed by her cubicle.
She grinned. "Oh, just finally found an address for a guy I've been trying to track down for a couple of days now. Anything more on that museum heist?"
He looked discouraged. "Nope. Our usual informants on the street haven't heard zip on any robberies that might have been done by the same guys. The stuff they took wasn't really worth anything so I doubt we'll find it in a pawn shop. I'm beginning to think that you were onto something about this being a practice run for something bigger."
"Oh, I'm sure there are going to be more thefts using the same M.O. I just don't know what their next target will be." Murphy looked down at the address John had given her. "I'm hoping that this guy may be able to shed some light on the subject."
"Need me to go with you?"
"No. I'm gonna try to get Dresden to go with me. He may have better luck talking to this guy than I will." She didn't mention the fact that that might be because they were both wizards.
"Okay, I'm gonna go call a few pawn shops. Just in case one of those fools trys to hock an anvil." He sauntered off to his desk.
Murphy picked up the phone and dialed Harry's number. She got the answering machine, but the message identifying Harry Dresden's office was so garbled, she didn't even try to leave her own message. As she hung up, she snorted in disbelief. Harry had killed another one. At first, she hadn't really believed him when he told her about his effect on electronics, but lately, she'd been thinking about her six dead cell phones, two fried office computers, one toasted lap top and Harry's numerous deceased answering machines and toasters. She sighed. The man was a menace.
She got up and grabbed her jacket and car keys. Maybe she'd swing by his office. If he was there she get him to go with her.
*****
Murphy pulled her SUV up to the curb and studied the house. It had taken more than forty-eight hours to finally get an address on Sallenger. It was a large, Victorian style house in a high end neighborhood. It was certainly not what one would expect a retired librarian to live in. But, if Harry was right, this guy had been around for way more than a century. The pension plan must be off the charts.
Earlier, she'd gone by Harry's place, but the closed sign was in the window and there'd been no answer to her knocking. So she decided to check out Sallenger herself. After all, how dangerous could a retired librarian be?
Getting out of her SUV, she hesitated a moment and double checked the address. She glanced around at the neighboring houses. They were all large and spaced far apart. Neighborhoods like this bothered her. Anything could go on in one of these houses and no one would ever know. Someone could scream their head off and no one would hear. It gave her the creeps.
She started walking up the long driveway. She could have driven up it, but she wanted to get a feel for the place. Everything was neat and well taken care of. The grass and shrubbery had been recently trimmed. But she also noticed that the mail was still in the box by the front door. She shook her head, thoughtfully. There wasn't anything wrong, but something felt wrong.
She rang the bell and waited. After a moment, she rang it again. Finally, she saw movement past the window. She heard someone unlocking the door. When it opened, she saw a man who looked to be in his fifties. He's over a hundred years old? she thought. He wore simple slacks, a button down shirt and a sweater vest.
"Yes, may I help you?"
"Are you Lorenzo Sallenger?"
"Yes, I am. And you are?" he inquired.
"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Murphy, with Chicago's Special Investigations unit. Your name came up in one of our investigations and I'd like to ask you a few questions. May I come in." While she was speaking, she glanced over his shoulder to get a look inside. She noticed the smoke detector on the wall had been disconnected. She also noticed an acrid smell, as if something were burning. It was foul and there was an odd familiarity to the smell that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it set off alarms in her head.
He looked irritated. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. Now is not a good time. I'll be in the city tomorrow. Perhaps I could come by your precinct and speak with you then."
"Sir, is something burning?" She was trying to buy time to identify the strange smell.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Yes, I'm afraid that I'm a terrible cook. I had to disconnect the smoke alarms. I'll reconnect them, later. Now, if you don't mind." He started to close the door when Murphy realized what she was smelling. One never really forgets the stink of burning human flesh and hair.
She pulled her gun and commanded, "Freeze!"
Instead of freezing, he threw open the door. He puffed up his chest and his face contorted. Murphy's survival instincts had always been top notch. A voice inside her head screamed for her to run. She dove to her right and rolled back to her feet. Not skipping a beat she ran around the corner of the house. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw an enormous burst of green flame engulf the spot where she'd just been standing.
She poked her head around the corner and watched as Sallenger stepped through the doorway and, once in the open, he began to change, to expand. Then, where Sallenger had been standing, there stood a... dragon? It was the size of a large, make that a very large, horse... or maybe a SUV. Add to that wings and it was huge. It stood on its hind legs, it was greenish brown and it looked pissed. Then it looked at her.
In a flash, Murphy pulled back around the corner. She flattened her back against the side of the house. Her eyes were wide and she was having difficulty breathing. She'd gone up against some strange things since she'd first met Harry, but this was a freakin' DRAGON. Yeah, he'd told her about them. What was it he called them? Drakes? But hearing about it and seeing it from a few feet away were two totally different things. Get a grip, Murphy. You can do this, she thought as she calmed her breathing and readied her gun.
She slowly edged towards the corner of the house. Then, taking a deep breath, she spun around the corner, pointing her gun at... nothing. It was gone.
Puzzled, she kept her gun raised and started searching the immediate area. Her expression was tense. Her eyes kept darting this way and that. The damn thing was too big to hide easily, unless it had gone back to its human form.
Murphy was standing in the yard, about twelve feet from the front door. The grass was scorched where the green flame had hit it earlier. She was just starting to relax and lower her gun when she heard a low hiss. She lifted her head to look up. Crouched on the edge of the roof was the dragon. It glared at her and hissed again. When it started to inhale, she knew what was coming and ran for the front door.
She dove through just as a ball of green flame again hit the place she'd just been. She heard a roar of frustration as she fell to the floor. She rolled onto her back and brought her gun up yet again. Breathing heavily, she waited for the creature to appear.
It hopped down from the roof and turned in mid-air, so that it was facing her when it landed. Murphy waited. It stalked forward like a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse. Murphy felt like a mouse. Then she felt like an angry, pissed off mouse. Just as it started to inhale, she fired her gun. Her position on the floor was awkward, so her aim was off. Still, when she put three solid holes in its wing membrane, it stumbled back with an unearthly scream and it started choking on its own flame. Coughing, it set several bushes and one tree on fire.
Murphy couldn't help but chuckle as the creature staggered about choking and coughing up little gouts of flame. "What's wrong? Can't stand your own cookin'?" She got up to take another shot at it. That's when she heard the sirens.
The dragon also heard the sirens. It glared at her one last time and leapt into the air. Murphy rushed out the door after it, but, before she could get off another shot, it was disappearing over the tree tops.
Thirty seconds later, two fire trucks rounded the corner and pulled up in front of Sallenger's house. Murphy was a little confused by their arrival, until she remembered the smell of burning flesh that had tipped her off that something wasn't right. A neighborhood like this probably had the good smoke detectors that would alert the fire department when they went off. She looked over at the disconnected smoke detector she'd noticed earlier. If the creature had set fire to something or, judging by the smell, someone, causing the alarm to sound and then disconnected the device, it would have been too late. Unless someone called to let them know it was a false alarm, the fire department would already be on its way.
She cautiously moved forward to search the house. As it turned out, it was fairly easy to follow the acrid scent. When she pushed open the kitchen door, she almost gagged. The corpse was still smoking. She couldn't tell if it had been a man or a woman, though it had most likely been the real Sallenger. There simply wasn't much meat left. How hot did a fire have to be to burn away almost all the flesh in what had to be only minutes. The chair it was sitting in and the area immediately around the corpse was burned black, but the rest of the kitchen seemed to be untouched. Though his bonds were almost ash, it was easy to tell that the victim had been tied to the chair. The remains of a rag or cloth was stuffed into his mouth, probably to muffle his screams as he burned to death.
She quickly left the kitchen and herded the firemen, who were just entering, out of the house. She assured them that there was no fire and that it was a crime scene. She then called Kirmani and the crime lab to get a team out to the house. She did a quick search to make sure that there was no one else in the house. She stepped outside to wait for Kirmani and the CSU team. She noticed that the firemen had put out all the little fires around the front yard. Fortunately, it had rained recently, so they hadn't spread much.
While waiting, Murphy tried again to reach Harry. All she got was the answering machine, which, miraculously, seemed to be working again. She left a message this time and pocketed her phone.
The Crime Scene Unit arrived first. She led them to the corpse. One of them immediately started taking photos for the reports. The other looked at Murphy. "Spontaneous Human Combustion?"
Murphy closed her eyes in frustration and said, "Considering the fact that he was tied to the chair? I'm thinkin' not."
At that moment, Kirmani arrived. He stepped into the kitchen, took one look at the corpse and pulled back. "Holy... Damn! Is that the guy you were coming out here to see?"
"Don't know yet. It'll take dental records to identify him."
"Was some kind of excelerent used? Gasoline, maybe?"
"Won't know until Butters runs some tests."
"I take it you're gonna want Dresden out here."
Murphy sighed in frustration. "Can't get a hold of him. He's not answering his phone. Make sure we get an extra set of those crime photos. I'm going to need him to see them. And make sure that Butters does a full chemical analysis." She didn't really need it. She already knew what burned the guy to a crisp. But she wasn't about to advertise that she just went toe to toe with a dragon. "Also, I'm guessing that this probably was Sallenger, so check around the house. See if you can find anything to tell us who the next of kin is."
She approached one of the Crime Scene guys and asked, "Is it going to take long to get him to the morgue?"
The guy looked at her as if he wanted to say something nasty. But instead, he held up the lower portion of a leg bone with the foot still attached. Then the foot fell off. He looked down at the foot and then back up to Murphy. "Its gonna take a while."
Murphy turned to Kirmani. "Stay with the body. I'm going back to the precinct to get started on my reports. I'll meet you at the morgue in a couple of hours." She made her way out to her SUV. As she was pulling away from the curb, she wished that she was heading to the nearest bar instead of her office.
*****
It was shortly after midnight when Murphy made her way out of the precinct building and started walking toward her SUV. She'd just spent a couple of hours trying to figure out a plausible report to write. Then, she spent another hour, in the morgue, listening to Butters go over the details of Sallenger's death. Or rather, what didn't kill him.
Butters went over every known excelerant, industrial torch, and weapon, such as a flame thrower. None of them fit with what cooked Sallenger. They weren't even positive that it was Sallenger. They couldn't use dental records, because apparently Sallenger didn't need a dentist. Murphy privately thought that, if the guy was a wizard, he probably used magic to keep his teeth in good shape. Butters managed to get a bone marrow sample and was comparing the DNA to hair samples taken from the house. But, identification was going to take a while. All those cop shows on TV had the lab results come back way too fast. In reality, it took time.
Murphy had to sit and listen to Butters report despite the fact that she already knew exactly how Sallenger died. Had she not listened to him, other officers would have thought it odd. And she couldn't very well put in the report that a dragon barbecued him and then took a flamin' shot at her.
She sighed as she walked through the parking lot. There were some days she missed being a regular detective, solving ordinary murders where the perp was the disgruntled employee, or the girlfriend, or the cheating husband, something normal.
Murphy stopped. She'd caught an odd sound, almost like the flapping of wings. She looked around, but couldn't see anything odd in the darkness. She began to get nervous. She had the strangest feeling that she was being watched.
She shook her head in self disgust. I'm starting to get paranoid, she thought. As she got into her vehicle, she pulled out her cell phone and tried to call Harry, yet again. Still no answer. She was well past worried about him. She decided to swing by McAnally's to see if he was there and maybe a few other haunts she knew about. If she couldn't find him, she'd go by his place and see if she could figure out what happened to him. As she pulled out of her parking space, she said to herself, "When I do find him, I'm gonna kick his ass for making me worry."
*****
It was after 3 am. when Bob and Harry got home. After they'd finished their meal, they'd sat talking for hours until the restaurant closed at 2 am. and the manager had politely asked they to leave. They were both tired and a little giddy. All they both wanted was to crawl into bed, curl up in each other's arms and go to sleep. On the drive back, Bob had suggested that they throw out that damn twin bed as soon as they got home, but Harry said that it could wait until morning. He was hoping that Bob would be patient and let him sell the bed. After all, just because Kendra left Bob some money, didn't mean that they could just throw out perfectly good stuff when they could sell it instead.
They had parked the jeep and were walking up to the back door when Harry heard Murphy calling him. He stopped and wondered what the hell she was doing there at that time of night. Warily, he watched as she hurried up to him. "Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, "I've been trying to find you for hours."
Exasperated, Harry snapped back, "Sorry, Murph. I didn't know that I had to get your approval to go out."
She opened her mouth to give what could have been a snappy retort, a vicious expletive or a clever insult. Harry would never know. Before she could say anything, she suddenly had the breath knocked out of her as she was yanked off her feet and carried thirty feet into the air by her shoulders.
Harry's mouth dropped open as he stared at his friend being carried off by a Drake.
(To Be Continued.)
Author: stormyd55
Rating: PG...violence and death.
Pairing: Bob/Harry...(may they make like horny bunnies for all time)
Book/TV-Verse: TV
Warnings: Violence and death.
Disclaimer: Not mine! But, oh how I wish they were (evil chuckle).
Word Count: approx. 3300
Summary: Murphy has a close encounter with a Drake.
Author's Note: Well, what are Harry and Bob without Murphy. She has to have a bit of adventure, too.
Important Note! Still having difficulty creating links to previous chapters. So, anyone who wants to read the previous chapters, please click on my author tag. It will bring up everything I've written, but at least you'll be able to read the full story. I'm sorry I can't seem to get it to work right. I'm going to leave this note in every chapter for the benefit of new readers. Thank you for your patience.
Ch 1 Ch 2 Ch 3 Ch 4
Title: The Trouble With Drakes 17
Author: stormyd55
Rating: PG...violence and death.
Pairing: Bob/Harry... (may they make like horny bunnies for all time)
Book/TV-Verse: TV
Warnings: Violence and death.
Disclaimer: Not mine! But, oh how I wish they were (evil chuckle).
Word Count:
Summary: Murphy has a close encounter with a Drake.
Author's Note: Well, what are Harry and Bob without Murphy. She has to have a bit of adventure, too.
*****
Murphy was in a good mood for the first time in days. She was on the phone with a contact she had in the City Tax Commissioner's office. "Right, 1214 Archer Trail, got it. Thanks, John, I owe you one." She hung up, raised her fist in the air and gave a loud, "Yes!"
"Got something, Lieutenant?" Kirmani asked as he passed by her cubicle.
She grinned. "Oh, just finally found an address for a guy I've been trying to track down for a couple of days now. Anything more on that museum heist?"
He looked discouraged. "Nope. Our usual informants on the street haven't heard zip on any robberies that might have been done by the same guys. The stuff they took wasn't really worth anything so I doubt we'll find it in a pawn shop. I'm beginning to think that you were onto something about this being a practice run for something bigger."
"Oh, I'm sure there are going to be more thefts using the same M.O. I just don't know what their next target will be." Murphy looked down at the address John had given her. "I'm hoping that this guy may be able to shed some light on the subject."
"Need me to go with you?"
"No. I'm gonna try to get Dresden to go with me. He may have better luck talking to this guy than I will." She didn't mention the fact that that might be because they were both wizards.
"Okay, I'm gonna go call a few pawn shops. Just in case one of those fools trys to hock an anvil." He sauntered off to his desk.
Murphy picked up the phone and dialed Harry's number. She got the answering machine, but the message identifying Harry Dresden's office was so garbled, she didn't even try to leave her own message. As she hung up, she snorted in disbelief. Harry had killed another one. At first, she hadn't really believed him when he told her about his effect on electronics, but lately, she'd been thinking about her six dead cell phones, two fried office computers, one toasted lap top and Harry's numerous deceased answering machines and toasters. She sighed. The man was a menace.
She got up and grabbed her jacket and car keys. Maybe she'd swing by his office. If he was there she get him to go with her.
*****
Murphy pulled her SUV up to the curb and studied the house. It had taken more than forty-eight hours to finally get an address on Sallenger. It was a large, Victorian style house in a high end neighborhood. It was certainly not what one would expect a retired librarian to live in. But, if Harry was right, this guy had been around for way more than a century. The pension plan must be off the charts.
Earlier, she'd gone by Harry's place, but the closed sign was in the window and there'd been no answer to her knocking. So she decided to check out Sallenger herself. After all, how dangerous could a retired librarian be?
Getting out of her SUV, she hesitated a moment and double checked the address. She glanced around at the neighboring houses. They were all large and spaced far apart. Neighborhoods like this bothered her. Anything could go on in one of these houses and no one would ever know. Someone could scream their head off and no one would hear. It gave her the creeps.
She started walking up the long driveway. She could have driven up it, but she wanted to get a feel for the place. Everything was neat and well taken care of. The grass and shrubbery had been recently trimmed. But she also noticed that the mail was still in the box by the front door. She shook her head, thoughtfully. There wasn't anything wrong, but something felt wrong.
She rang the bell and waited. After a moment, she rang it again. Finally, she saw movement past the window. She heard someone unlocking the door. When it opened, she saw a man who looked to be in his fifties. He's over a hundred years old? she thought. He wore simple slacks, a button down shirt and a sweater vest.
"Yes, may I help you?"
"Are you Lorenzo Sallenger?"
"Yes, I am. And you are?" he inquired.
"Sir, I'm Lieutenant Murphy, with Chicago's Special Investigations unit. Your name came up in one of our investigations and I'd like to ask you a few questions. May I come in." While she was speaking, she glanced over his shoulder to get a look inside. She noticed the smoke detector on the wall had been disconnected. She also noticed an acrid smell, as if something were burning. It was foul and there was an odd familiarity to the smell that she couldn't quite put her finger on, but it set off alarms in her head.
He looked irritated. "I'm sorry, Lieutenant. Now is not a good time. I'll be in the city tomorrow. Perhaps I could come by your precinct and speak with you then."
"Sir, is something burning?" She was trying to buy time to identify the strange smell.
He glanced over his shoulder. "Yes, I'm afraid that I'm a terrible cook. I had to disconnect the smoke alarms. I'll reconnect them, later. Now, if you don't mind." He started to close the door when Murphy realized what she was smelling. One never really forgets the stink of burning human flesh and hair.
She pulled her gun and commanded, "Freeze!"
Instead of freezing, he threw open the door. He puffed up his chest and his face contorted. Murphy's survival instincts had always been top notch. A voice inside her head screamed for her to run. She dove to her right and rolled back to her feet. Not skipping a beat she ran around the corner of the house. Looking back over her shoulder, she saw an enormous burst of green flame engulf the spot where she'd just been standing.
She poked her head around the corner and watched as Sallenger stepped through the doorway and, once in the open, he began to change, to expand. Then, where Sallenger had been standing, there stood a... dragon? It was the size of a large, make that a very large, horse... or maybe a SUV. Add to that wings and it was huge. It stood on its hind legs, it was greenish brown and it looked pissed. Then it looked at her.
In a flash, Murphy pulled back around the corner. She flattened her back against the side of the house. Her eyes were wide and she was having difficulty breathing. She'd gone up against some strange things since she'd first met Harry, but this was a freakin' DRAGON. Yeah, he'd told her about them. What was it he called them? Drakes? But hearing about it and seeing it from a few feet away were two totally different things. Get a grip, Murphy. You can do this, she thought as she calmed her breathing and readied her gun.
She slowly edged towards the corner of the house. Then, taking a deep breath, she spun around the corner, pointing her gun at... nothing. It was gone.
Puzzled, she kept her gun raised and started searching the immediate area. Her expression was tense. Her eyes kept darting this way and that. The damn thing was too big to hide easily, unless it had gone back to its human form.
Murphy was standing in the yard, about twelve feet from the front door. The grass was scorched where the green flame had hit it earlier. She was just starting to relax and lower her gun when she heard a low hiss. She lifted her head to look up. Crouched on the edge of the roof was the dragon. It glared at her and hissed again. When it started to inhale, she knew what was coming and ran for the front door.
She dove through just as a ball of green flame again hit the place she'd just been. She heard a roar of frustration as she fell to the floor. She rolled onto her back and brought her gun up yet again. Breathing heavily, she waited for the creature to appear.
It hopped down from the roof and turned in mid-air, so that it was facing her when it landed. Murphy waited. It stalked forward like a cat getting ready to pounce on a mouse. Murphy felt like a mouse. Then she felt like an angry, pissed off mouse. Just as it started to inhale, she fired her gun. Her position on the floor was awkward, so her aim was off. Still, when she put three solid holes in its wing membrane, it stumbled back with an unearthly scream and it started choking on its own flame. Coughing, it set several bushes and one tree on fire.
Murphy couldn't help but chuckle as the creature staggered about choking and coughing up little gouts of flame. "What's wrong? Can't stand your own cookin'?" She got up to take another shot at it. That's when she heard the sirens.
The dragon also heard the sirens. It glared at her one last time and leapt into the air. Murphy rushed out the door after it, but, before she could get off another shot, it was disappearing over the tree tops.
Thirty seconds later, two fire trucks rounded the corner and pulled up in front of Sallenger's house. Murphy was a little confused by their arrival, until she remembered the smell of burning flesh that had tipped her off that something wasn't right. A neighborhood like this probably had the good smoke detectors that would alert the fire department when they went off. She looked over at the disconnected smoke detector she'd noticed earlier. If the creature had set fire to something or, judging by the smell, someone, causing the alarm to sound and then disconnected the device, it would have been too late. Unless someone called to let them know it was a false alarm, the fire department would already be on its way.
She cautiously moved forward to search the house. As it turned out, it was fairly easy to follow the acrid scent. When she pushed open the kitchen door, she almost gagged. The corpse was still smoking. She couldn't tell if it had been a man or a woman, though it had most likely been the real Sallenger. There simply wasn't much meat left. How hot did a fire have to be to burn away almost all the flesh in what had to be only minutes. The chair it was sitting in and the area immediately around the corpse was burned black, but the rest of the kitchen seemed to be untouched. Though his bonds were almost ash, it was easy to tell that the victim had been tied to the chair. The remains of a rag or cloth was stuffed into his mouth, probably to muffle his screams as he burned to death.
She quickly left the kitchen and herded the firemen, who were just entering, out of the house. She assured them that there was no fire and that it was a crime scene. She then called Kirmani and the crime lab to get a team out to the house. She did a quick search to make sure that there was no one else in the house. She stepped outside to wait for Kirmani and the CSU team. She noticed that the firemen had put out all the little fires around the front yard. Fortunately, it had rained recently, so they hadn't spread much.
While waiting, Murphy tried again to reach Harry. All she got was the answering machine, which, miraculously, seemed to be working again. She left a message this time and pocketed her phone.
The Crime Scene Unit arrived first. She led them to the corpse. One of them immediately started taking photos for the reports. The other looked at Murphy. "Spontaneous Human Combustion?"
Murphy closed her eyes in frustration and said, "Considering the fact that he was tied to the chair? I'm thinkin' not."
At that moment, Kirmani arrived. He stepped into the kitchen, took one look at the corpse and pulled back. "Holy... Damn! Is that the guy you were coming out here to see?"
"Don't know yet. It'll take dental records to identify him."
"Was some kind of excelerent used? Gasoline, maybe?"
"Won't know until Butters runs some tests."
"I take it you're gonna want Dresden out here."
Murphy sighed in frustration. "Can't get a hold of him. He's not answering his phone. Make sure we get an extra set of those crime photos. I'm going to need him to see them. And make sure that Butters does a full chemical analysis." She didn't really need it. She already knew what burned the guy to a crisp. But she wasn't about to advertise that she just went toe to toe with a dragon. "Also, I'm guessing that this probably was Sallenger, so check around the house. See if you can find anything to tell us who the next of kin is."
She approached one of the Crime Scene guys and asked, "Is it going to take long to get him to the morgue?"
The guy looked at her as if he wanted to say something nasty. But instead, he held up the lower portion of a leg bone with the foot still attached. Then the foot fell off. He looked down at the foot and then back up to Murphy. "Its gonna take a while."
Murphy turned to Kirmani. "Stay with the body. I'm going back to the precinct to get started on my reports. I'll meet you at the morgue in a couple of hours." She made her way out to her SUV. As she was pulling away from the curb, she wished that she was heading to the nearest bar instead of her office.
*****
It was shortly after midnight when Murphy made her way out of the precinct building and started walking toward her SUV. She'd just spent a couple of hours trying to figure out a plausible report to write. Then, she spent another hour, in the morgue, listening to Butters go over the details of Sallenger's death. Or rather, what didn't kill him.
Butters went over every known excelerant, industrial torch, and weapon, such as a flame thrower. None of them fit with what cooked Sallenger. They weren't even positive that it was Sallenger. They couldn't use dental records, because apparently Sallenger didn't need a dentist. Murphy privately thought that, if the guy was a wizard, he probably used magic to keep his teeth in good shape. Butters managed to get a bone marrow sample and was comparing the DNA to hair samples taken from the house. But, identification was going to take a while. All those cop shows on TV had the lab results come back way too fast. In reality, it took time.
Murphy had to sit and listen to Butters report despite the fact that she already knew exactly how Sallenger died. Had she not listened to him, other officers would have thought it odd. And she couldn't very well put in the report that a dragon barbecued him and then took a flamin' shot at her.
She sighed as she walked through the parking lot. There were some days she missed being a regular detective, solving ordinary murders where the perp was the disgruntled employee, or the girlfriend, or the cheating husband, something normal.
Murphy stopped. She'd caught an odd sound, almost like the flapping of wings. She looked around, but couldn't see anything odd in the darkness. She began to get nervous. She had the strangest feeling that she was being watched.
She shook her head in self disgust. I'm starting to get paranoid, she thought. As she got into her vehicle, she pulled out her cell phone and tried to call Harry, yet again. Still no answer. She was well past worried about him. She decided to swing by McAnally's to see if he was there and maybe a few other haunts she knew about. If she couldn't find him, she'd go by his place and see if she could figure out what happened to him. As she pulled out of her parking space, she said to herself, "When I do find him, I'm gonna kick his ass for making me worry."
*****
It was after 3 am. when Bob and Harry got home. After they'd finished their meal, they'd sat talking for hours until the restaurant closed at 2 am. and the manager had politely asked they to leave. They were both tired and a little giddy. All they both wanted was to crawl into bed, curl up in each other's arms and go to sleep. On the drive back, Bob had suggested that they throw out that damn twin bed as soon as they got home, but Harry said that it could wait until morning. He was hoping that Bob would be patient and let him sell the bed. After all, just because Kendra left Bob some money, didn't mean that they could just throw out perfectly good stuff when they could sell it instead.
They had parked the jeep and were walking up to the back door when Harry heard Murphy calling him. He stopped and wondered what the hell she was doing there at that time of night. Warily, he watched as she hurried up to him. "Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, "I've been trying to find you for hours."
Exasperated, Harry snapped back, "Sorry, Murph. I didn't know that I had to get your approval to go out."
She opened her mouth to give what could have been a snappy retort, a vicious expletive or a clever insult. Harry would never know. Before she could say anything, she suddenly had the breath knocked out of her as she was yanked off her feet and carried thirty feet into the air by her shoulders.
Harry's mouth dropped open as he stared at his friend being carried off by a Drake.
(To Be Continued.)