spnxdf: Lost Sons Chapter 6
Harry sighed as the phone interrupted his train of thought. He was in the middle of reading a report from Ramirez, who had collected the data from strange ritual circle they had found several blocks down the street in the other direction from Harvelle’s wagon. So far the report had concluded the circle was made from some type of rare oil, found only in the Middle East.
He picked up the phone after rubbing at his eyes.
“Dres-”
“Harry,” Murphy said quickly. “You need to get out of your office right now.”
Harry frowned. “Why?” He asked.
“A hunter came to town and he is looking for you.” She informed.
The wizard felt a moment of panic shoot through his chest. “A hunter? Murph, you know about those too?”
Murphy huffed in frustration. “Dresden, I don’t have time for this. You don’t have time for this. You need to take everything you have about the Carthage case and get out of your office right now.” She ordered. “He has a brother, Harry. I don’t know where he is.”
“Are they here about Carthage?”
“Harry!” Murphy pressed.
Dresden rose to his feet, snatching up stacks of pictures and documents. “Alright! Alright!” He crammed them into a file folder. “Where do you want me to go?”
“Come to the station.” She instructed. “Don’t go home.”
The wizard was about to reply when he heard the sound of a cell phone chiming down the hallway. It was an odd noise given that it was the day before Thanksgiving and most of the other offices on his floor were closed for the holidays.
Murphy’s voice came to him, concerned. “Harry?”
“I’ll see you at the station, Karrin.” Harry pulled the receiver away and set it down as quietly at he could into the cradle. He picked up his duster, cramming the file snuggly inside before taking out his blasting rod and handgun before approaching the door. He shoved the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and took hold of the doorknob, pressing an ear against the door jam.
There was someone in the hall, talking on a cell phone.
“Sam, I’m really busy right now.” A male voice hissed.
Pause.
“I’m in the office building. Why? Because I’m freezing my perky nipples off in the car! I needed to warm up.” The voice paused again.
“What? What do you mean she has Ellen’s registration?”
He knows the Harvelle woman. Harry thought, his eyes widening. He choose that moment to open the door and step out of his office, rod held just inside the door and yet still ready to blow away a threat.
Down the hall, next to the broken elevator and the stairs stood a man in his thirties, cell phone pressed against his ear. He was dressed in jeans and a brown leather jacket, with well-worn work boots caked in snow and leaving puddles on floor. His hair was short and light brown.
Harry’s appearance in the hall made the man freeze. Their eyes met and a look of surprise flashed across the man’s face.
“Son of a bitch!” He hissed, tearing the phone away from his ear and bolting for the stairs.
Harry rushed after him, long limbs having the advantage over the shorter ones this intruder possessed. He flung himself down whole sections of stairs, glancing over the edge to see the hand and elbow of the fleeing hunter.
“Cas!” The man’s voice said quickly. “2nd floor landing in the stair well, I’m being followed!”
Harry faltered in his stride, coming more slowly and cautiously as before. The furious pounding of the man’s boots came to a stop directly below him. The two remained still for a moment, listening to each other’s heavy breathing when the air around them seemed to part and there was the flutter of wings.
Harry leaped down a flight, standing on the landing across and just above from the hunter.
There was a swirl of motion and the man vanished in a flurry of black and tan. In the blink of an eye the hunter was gone with the sound of wing beats faded in the air…leaving Harry standing alone in the stairwell.
-----
Castiel deposited Dean and the Impala about a block away from where Sam had gone to his meeting. The well-dressed Winchester was walking briskly towards them, braving the cold Chicago air and the lazy flakes of snow without his winter coat over his blazer.
Dean was still catching his breath when Sam opened the passenger side door and climb inside. The angel sat in the backseat, looking between the two brothers.
“I take it we’ve been made?” Sam huffed.
“That Murphy woman knows about Ellen’s car?” Dean asked quickly, his voice strained.
The two brothers stared at one another for a long moment before casting their eyes out upon the snow misted street. That conversation was done.
“It appears we are ill prepared for the organization of the supernatural community in Chicago and the police.” Castiel said to the silence. “The scale of the devastation unleashed in Carthage would not have gone unnoticed by the general public. It would be only logical to assume that others within supernatural circles would be aware of it by now themselves.”
Sam nodded slowly in agreement. “I think the wizard knows about it.”
“Oh…he does.” Dean answered. “He got a phone call. Someone was telling him to leave his office. He said something about Carthage.”
“It must have been Murphy.” The younger brother sighed in frustration. “I started to ask her about the wizard and she started in on me about Carthage. She wasn’t giving him up to us and she wanted to know if…” He found himself looking down at his hands resting in his lap. “…if there had been hunters in the city when the summoning ritual took place.”
Dean’s knuckles whitened on the steering wheel.
Castiel leaned forward between the seats. “If there are police willing to protect this wizard, then our attempts to locate him now will become much more difficult.”
“He isn’t going home. Not without an escort.” Sam agreed. “And if he’s got the police on his side, who knows how many other people in this city he could call on for help.” He pointed to a parking lot just out of sight due to the snow. “There is a pub down there…apparently people in the ‘know’ go there for a drink or two. A sign behind the var says that it is ‘Accorded Neutral Ground’ based on the Unseelie Accords.”
“Do you believe Harry Dresden is a patron?” Castiel asked.
Sam nodded slowly. “If its got regular cops hanging out there that know him, I’m sure he probably comes around once and while. But a fat chance that’s going to happen while we’re in town. The people already there all but bolted out the door when Murphy said my name and the barkeep might just shoot either of us if we come back.” He frowned and shrugged. “Oh, and Murphy’s threatened to arrest us if she catches us in town.”
“So they know about hunters.” Dean mused for a moment, hardly concerned about the threat of police. He then sat back and looked over his shoulder at Castiel.
Castiel stared at him.
“Dean, what you plan to suggest is rife with complications.” The angel said.
“We tried doing it the right way. We got no other options.” Dean said. “He knows we’ve been to his bar and to his office. Maybe what we’re looking for is at his house.”
Castiel’s eyes hardened.
“We’ve broken into places for less.” Dean continued to defend his position. “We need these swords and at this point, I’m not about to sit on my hands and wait any more. Should have just stolen them in the first place.”
Sam watched as his brother initiated the staring contest that was common place between both the angel and the hunter. They had their own wavelength that did not require the effort to speak. He wondered if that had been a side effect of Castiel’s involvement in resurrecting his brother from Hell. If the branding Dean wore on his shoulder was much more than just a reminder that he had been dead and now owed his new life to the forces of Heaven.
For the first time in Sam’s presence, it was Castiel who looked away first. The angel pulled back and took his seat again, admitting his defeat.
Dean looked at Sam. The other hunter shrugged. “Let’s give it a shot.”
“’Bout time.” Dean muttered, turning up the heat in the Impala and taking off back to their motel.
-----
Murphy was waiting for Harry in the observation room of interrogation when he arrived at Special Investigations. She was leaning against a wall, arms folded across her chest and chewing on a nail when he was directed in and the door was shut behind him.
“I was about to send a black and white to your office,” she said after a moment.
Harry nodded. “I got here as fast as I could,” he replied. “After I chased a guy off my floor and watched him vanish in the second floor stairwell.”
Murphy’s eyes harden. “Vanished?” She repeated.
“Yeah. Vanished.” Harry made the hand motion for going ‘poof’, setting his folder down on small counter that held the surveillance cameras to the room beyond the one way glass.
“You get a good look at him?” she asked.
“About six foot, blue jeans, brown leather jacket. Short hair. Solid looking guy but in a good way.” Harry counted off just as Karrin produced a print out and held it up to him. It was a mug shot taken in Little Rock, AK. It took a moment for Harry to see past the ridiculous expression the man was wearing but it was indeed the guy he saw in the stairwell.
“That’s him.”
Murphy nodded, taking the paper back. “I got a phone call from a detective in New York City. She said that a couple of hunters were looking to get in contact with a cop in the Chicago area that knew about the supernatural.”
“Murph,” Harry said, both surprised and amused. “When did you start networking like that?”
“What I do among my fellow officers is none of your business Dresden.” She smiled at him. “Anyway, I had a meeting today with a Sam Winchester.” She produced a similar mug shot of a much taller man with longish hair and wearing a miserable scowl. “He and his brother Dean are looking for you.”
Dresden sighed, carding his hand through his hair and weighing the information. He had hunters in the city looking for him. He had evidence of a hunter in Carthage. He was investigating Carthage for the White Council. There was just no way this was all coincidence.
“I decided to follow a hunch and ask about Harvelle,” Murphy continued. “The second I produced her registration, Sam shut right up.”
Harry looked up. “He must have known her then. And yeah, Harvelle’s a hunter. Elaine got back to me about her contacts and said she owned a bar in Nebraska that was a haunt for these people. Husband was one too.”
Murphy nodded in agreement and reached behind her to produce another folder. “I called in a favor, looking into the two dead bodies they found in the hardware store explosion. There was little they could get in DNA evidence and the medical examiners are pretty sure there is going to be no way to identify the victims. All they can tell us is that there were two bodies and they were female.”
Harry nodded slowly. “I’m beginning to suspect Harvelle might be one of them.”
“The second one might be her daughter.” Murphy said quietly.
The wizard closed his eyes and let out a breath. “Harvelle did have a daughter.” He said somberly.
“DNA and finger print evidence recovered from the truck was connected to the blood found on the street and several of the shotgun cases recovered. Hair found on the passenger seat matched the blood on the ground…hair found on the driver’s seat had thirteen genetic markers that connecting the passenger to the driver as a child to parent.” Karrin reached for a chair sitting at the surveillance desk and settled herself down into it. “Daughter’s name was Joanna Beth Harvelle. According to her birth records she’d be about twenty five. College dropout. Her last known address was Duluth, Minnesota about three years ago. She was there for a few months working in a bar and then one night after a break in, she just up and disappeared. Girl went completely off the grid.”
Harry found a chair for himself and took a seat. “There is more isn’t there.”
Murphy nodded grimly. “There was a third set of prints and DNA recovered from the backset of the truck. All of it was matched to a missing persons case in Pontiac, Illinois.”
Harry opened the folder and pulled out the documents. “James Novak. Missing since 2008.”
“They connected him to DNA that was provided by the wife.” Murphy explained. “I hate to be the agent that is going to tell Mrs. Novak they have found their husband’s been riding around in the back of a car owned by another woman.”
Harry chuckled dryly in agreement and then paused. “Wait…” He looked up. “Have they identified James from any of the bodies?”
“They are still processing it.” Karrin sighed. “Identifying ten thousand bodies is not an easy task.” She explained. “It took them over a year to handle the three thousand that died in 9-11.”
“But there is no evidence he was in the hardware store explosion.” The wizard mused. “And if he came with these two, he might not have been caught up in all the crap that killed all the people in this town.”
“If you want to try I’m sure I can get you a sample of his DNA for a tracking spell.” The officer admitted. “You’re gonna need to bring me on this if I get the file for you…follow the chain of evidence, all that legal stuff.”
Harry looked up. “Murph…”
“Harry, be realistic. You have a guy who has been missing for over a year turn up for the first time in a town that some warlock decided to use for a summoning ritual…I don’t think you are going to find him.” Murphy gestured about herself. “Alive, anyway.” She added as an afterthought.
The wizard sighed in dismay. “I know, but it might be worth a shot. If they haven’t found his body yet…he might among the missing men that were not found in the town.” Harry sat back and regarded the missing persons report. “I’ve got to at least try. We might find those men.”
Murphy threw her hands up in defeat. “Fine. I’ll put in a request to the state police. Maybe they’ll feel like getting their paperwork in order they and run it down here before we all go on vacation.”
They sat in silence while Harry read the details of the bomb report. This was all stuff that he was probably going to run to Edinburgh with to inform the Council. The bomb had been simple but powerful. There was no known signatures as of yet, but Harry had the feeling that there wouldn’t be any. Unless of course the agents decided the overwhelming amount of rock salt found in the blast area was it.
“The bomb was to kill the hellhounds.” Harry said after a moment to the silence in the room. “The concentrations of metals and the salt are all known weapons against creatures of the supernatural.”
Murphy nodded slowly, arms crossed over her chest and regarding the wizard. “And someone had to stay behind to blow up the bomb.”
“Why two people though?” Harry said, looking up from the report.
The officer stared back at him grimly. “I think who ever was wounded in the street was one of the bodies. If I had to fathom a guess…if she was attacked by a hellhound…”
Harry closed his eyes and sighed. “One doesn’t usually walk away from that.”
“William Harvelle died years ago. From what I figure, Joanna Harvelle was their only child. If both where there…” Murphy shook her head. “I think someone decided they weren’t going to leave their little girl to the mercy of those beasts.”
The wizard hung his head. “Hells bells.” He whispered quietly.
“Also…” Murphy reached forward and pulled at a document in the folder, putting it on top. “Ballistics report.”
Harry glanced at it.
“Shot gun shells.” He murmured.
“From three different guns. There were also slugs from a colt pistol that was made back in the 1800s.”
Harry frowned at her and then the report. “You can tell the age of the gun?”
“Lets just say that the FBI were just a little surprised to find that out themselves. They have matched it to a couple of cold cases and one assault.” Murphy explained. “They found a slug in the public parking area and out in the field where the bodies are being recovered.”
“Have they found the guns?”
Murphy stared at him, her expression neutral.
“They found two shotguns with the bodies.” She said. “The third gun and the Colt pistol are MIA.”
Harry glanced up at her, the puzzle coming together in his mind. Suddenly the hardware store explosion made more sense that just the suicide of two people caught between a rock and a hard place. The Hellhounds had been found in the store and bodies radiating away from the blast. They had been lured in to a trap.
“Someone else was there too,” Murphy concluded. “And they got away.”
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