Death Curse: Chapter 17
A shorter chapter, this time. :)
Chapter 16
The rain was still coming down by the bucketful by the time I was finished and we headed back out. Normally I would have liked to stay longer, but there were a few things working against me. For one, I wasn't officially supposed to be there, and the longer I stayed under the scrutiny of cops and crime scene techs, the more likely it was that word of my presence would leak out and get Murphy into even more trouble, and I didn't exactly want that on my conscience. For another, I was starting to feel not so hot, even with Elaine's warding... thingie... still doing its thing. I was beginning to suspect that, whatever it was she had done, it had something to do with why I couldn't sense the magical energy coming off the body. If she'd placed a sort of shield or ward around me, it might act like a kind of dampening field. It was unsettling, as though I'd had a limb paralysed or cut off. I should have asked her for the specifics on what she did, if only so that I could put a technical name to it, and maybe even reproduce it if push came to shove. Or explain to someone else how to reproduce it. Maybe. Better to amputate than die, right? I shuddered in spite of myself. This was new territory, and I wasn't exactly keen on exploring it, no matter how crappy I felt.
Not that I was about to say anything about feeling sick to Murphy. She had enough on her mind as it was, without having to worry about something over which she had no control. The nosebleed wasn't exactly reassuring, although it had stopped completely, and I was hopeful that it wouldn't come back. I followed her out into the rain, then clambered into the Blue Beetle. I heard the engine of Murphy's car grumble into life, and turned the key in my own ignition. Nothing. I cursed and tried again. Still nothing. I kept trying, but this time there wasn't even a flicker of life in the old girl. After five minutes Murphy got out of her car and came to tap on the window, her expression a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
"Need a lift, Dresden?"
I blew out my cheeks in a sigh of frustration. "If you wouldn't mind. I'll call Mike from your office."
"You need a better car," she said as we got into hers and headed out.
"The problem isn't the car. I've explained this already."
"Uh-huh." She looked dubious, until a moment later when her radio crackled loudly, gave off an unhappy-sounding whine of feedback, and then died. "You're costing me a fortune in electronics."
"Sorry." I concentrated on not making her car die, not that I had that much control over it. My little 'talent' of screwing up technology seemed to be acting up worse than usual: by the time we got back to SI, Murphy's engine was making a grinding noise that was definitely not normal-sounding. She didn't say anything, but then, she didn't have to. I just hoped that I wouldn't have to pay two mechanics' bills at the end of the day. My finances haven't exactly been in great shape lately.
We went in through the back door, so as not to attract too much attention. Murphy held up a hand to stop me before we stepped into the situation room. "Wait up. Let me go in and turn off the computers and projector first."
I fidgeted in the hallway while she did that, dripping rainwater into a puddle on the floor. I've never been particularly good at waiting for anything. I shivered, hunching my shoulders in my duster, and not for the first time wished that they'd turn on the heating in this building before January. I glanced into the room in time to see Murphy beckon to me, and followed her lead. The room was set up the way it always was in the case of multiple murders and serial killers: a map of the city on one wall, complete with pin-flags to mark the location of the bodies, photos of the victims in all conceivable positions tacked to a cork board on another wall, the third wall made of white board covered in notes written with dry-erase markers. I immediately recognized Murphy's neat cursive, as well as Stallings' illegible scrawl, and a number of other examples of handwriting whose owners I couldn't identify.
"How long have you been tracking these guys?"
Murphy grunted. "Not long enough. Three weeks, but the murders started the week before that -we just didn't connect the first one to the others until the second week of the investigation. The murders seem so random, you know?" she gestured at the boards in frustration. "There's no obvious link between the victims, the locations are so far apart that I can't think of a good reason for which they were picked. I feel like I'm grabbing at straws, here, and I don't know about you, but I can't help but feel we're running out of time."
"I know what you mean," I found myself staring at the map of Chicago on the wall, little red flags marking the locations of all four murders, and for the first time in well over a week things snapped into place. "I can't believe there's no connection. There has to be. Why go to all this trouble and leave evidence of what they're doing behind, unless it was absolutely necessary? What if... Murph, you got any tracing paper?"
She blinked at me, then got up from where she'd been perching on the edge of a desk. "I'll see what I can rustle up."
She returned a few minutes later with paper that was at least transparent enough to pass as tracing paper, and I pressed it onto the map, uncapping a felt pen with my teeth. I marked the four points where the murders had been committed, and added a fifth dot. Removing the paper from the wall I spread it out on the table. "Do you see it?"
"See what?" she bent over the paper.
I took the pen and played connect-the-dots. "See it now?"
"Christ," she breathed. "It was staring me in the face."
On the paper, I had traced an almost perfect pentagram.
Chapter 18
Chapter 16
The rain was still coming down by the bucketful by the time I was finished and we headed back out. Normally I would have liked to stay longer, but there were a few things working against me. For one, I wasn't officially supposed to be there, and the longer I stayed under the scrutiny of cops and crime scene techs, the more likely it was that word of my presence would leak out and get Murphy into even more trouble, and I didn't exactly want that on my conscience. For another, I was starting to feel not so hot, even with Elaine's warding... thingie... still doing its thing. I was beginning to suspect that, whatever it was she had done, it had something to do with why I couldn't sense the magical energy coming off the body. If she'd placed a sort of shield or ward around me, it might act like a kind of dampening field. It was unsettling, as though I'd had a limb paralysed or cut off. I should have asked her for the specifics on what she did, if only so that I could put a technical name to it, and maybe even reproduce it if push came to shove. Or explain to someone else how to reproduce it. Maybe. Better to amputate than die, right? I shuddered in spite of myself. This was new territory, and I wasn't exactly keen on exploring it, no matter how crappy I felt.
Not that I was about to say anything about feeling sick to Murphy. She had enough on her mind as it was, without having to worry about something over which she had no control. The nosebleed wasn't exactly reassuring, although it had stopped completely, and I was hopeful that it wouldn't come back. I followed her out into the rain, then clambered into the Blue Beetle. I heard the engine of Murphy's car grumble into life, and turned the key in my own ignition. Nothing. I cursed and tried again. Still nothing. I kept trying, but this time there wasn't even a flicker of life in the old girl. After five minutes Murphy got out of her car and came to tap on the window, her expression a mixture of amusement and exasperation.
"Need a lift, Dresden?"
I blew out my cheeks in a sigh of frustration. "If you wouldn't mind. I'll call Mike from your office."
"You need a better car," she said as we got into hers and headed out.
"The problem isn't the car. I've explained this already."
"Uh-huh." She looked dubious, until a moment later when her radio crackled loudly, gave off an unhappy-sounding whine of feedback, and then died. "You're costing me a fortune in electronics."
"Sorry." I concentrated on not making her car die, not that I had that much control over it. My little 'talent' of screwing up technology seemed to be acting up worse than usual: by the time we got back to SI, Murphy's engine was making a grinding noise that was definitely not normal-sounding. She didn't say anything, but then, she didn't have to. I just hoped that I wouldn't have to pay two mechanics' bills at the end of the day. My finances haven't exactly been in great shape lately.
We went in through the back door, so as not to attract too much attention. Murphy held up a hand to stop me before we stepped into the situation room. "Wait up. Let me go in and turn off the computers and projector first."
I fidgeted in the hallway while she did that, dripping rainwater into a puddle on the floor. I've never been particularly good at waiting for anything. I shivered, hunching my shoulders in my duster, and not for the first time wished that they'd turn on the heating in this building before January. I glanced into the room in time to see Murphy beckon to me, and followed her lead. The room was set up the way it always was in the case of multiple murders and serial killers: a map of the city on one wall, complete with pin-flags to mark the location of the bodies, photos of the victims in all conceivable positions tacked to a cork board on another wall, the third wall made of white board covered in notes written with dry-erase markers. I immediately recognized Murphy's neat cursive, as well as Stallings' illegible scrawl, and a number of other examples of handwriting whose owners I couldn't identify.
"How long have you been tracking these guys?"
Murphy grunted. "Not long enough. Three weeks, but the murders started the week before that -we just didn't connect the first one to the others until the second week of the investigation. The murders seem so random, you know?" she gestured at the boards in frustration. "There's no obvious link between the victims, the locations are so far apart that I can't think of a good reason for which they were picked. I feel like I'm grabbing at straws, here, and I don't know about you, but I can't help but feel we're running out of time."
"I know what you mean," I found myself staring at the map of Chicago on the wall, little red flags marking the locations of all four murders, and for the first time in well over a week things snapped into place. "I can't believe there's no connection. There has to be. Why go to all this trouble and leave evidence of what they're doing behind, unless it was absolutely necessary? What if... Murph, you got any tracing paper?"
She blinked at me, then got up from where she'd been perching on the edge of a desk. "I'll see what I can rustle up."
She returned a few minutes later with paper that was at least transparent enough to pass as tracing paper, and I pressed it onto the map, uncapping a felt pen with my teeth. I marked the four points where the murders had been committed, and added a fifth dot. Removing the paper from the wall I spread it out on the table. "Do you see it?"
"See what?" she bent over the paper.
I took the pen and played connect-the-dots. "See it now?"
"Christ," she breathed. "It was staring me in the face."
On the paper, I had traced an almost perfect pentagram.
Chapter 18