Dead Beat(27)

"Yeah."
He grunted. "Murphy send you?"
"Not exactly," I said.
"Why you here then?"
"Because I don't like things that put cops' teeth on edge," I said. "You guys have any suspects?"
"For someone who just happened to be walking by, you got a lot of questions," he said.
"For a beat cop in charge of securing the scene, you were asking plenty of your own," I said. "Upstairs, with museum security."
He grinned, teeth very white. "Shoot. I been a detective before. Twice."
I lifted my eyebrows. "Busted back down?"
"Both times, on account of I have an attitude problem," Rawlins said.
I gave him a lopsided smile. "You going to arrest me?"
"Depends," he said.
"On what?"
"On why you're here." He met my gaze directly, openly, his hand still on his gun.
I didn't meet his eyes for very long. I glanced over my shoulder, debating how to answer, and decided to go with a little sincerity. "There are some bad people in town. I don't think the police can get them. I'm trying to find them before they hurt anyone else."
He studied me for a long minute. Then he took his hand off the gun and reached into his coat. He tossed me a folded newspaper.
I caught it and unfolded it. It was some kind of academic newsletter, and on the cover page was a photograph of a portly old man with sideburns down to his jaw, together with a smiling young woman and a young man with Asian features. The caption under the picture read, Visiting Professor Charles Bartlesby and his assistants, Alicia Nelson, Li Xian, prepare to examine Cahokian collection at the FMNH, Chicago.
"That's the victim in the middle," Rawlins said. "His assistants shared the office with him. They have not been answering their cell phone numbers and are not in their apartments."
"Suspects?" I asked.
He shrugged. "Not many people murder strangers," he said. "They were the only ones in town who knew the victim. Came in with him from England somewhere."
I looked from the newsletter up to Rawlins, and frowned. "Why are you helping me?"
He lifted his eyebrows. "Helping you? You could have found that anywhere. And I never saw you."
"Understood," I said. "But why?"
He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "Because when I was a young cop, I went running down an alley when I heard a woman scream. And I saw something. Something that … " His face became remote. "Something that has given me bad dreams for about thirty years. This thing strangling a girl. I push it away from her, empty my gun into it. It picks me up and slams my head into a wall a few times. I figured Mama Rawlins's baby boy was about to go the way of the dodo."
"What happened?" I asked.
"Lieutenant Murphy's father showed up with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and killed it. And when the sun comes up, it burns this thing's corpse like it had been soaked in gasoline." Rawlins shook his head. "I owed her old man. And I seen enough of the streets to know that she's been doing a lot of good. You been helping her with that."
I nodded. "Thank you," I told him.
He nodded. "Don't really feel like losing my job for you, Dresden. Get out before someone sees you."
Something occurred to me. "You heard about the Forensic Institute?"
He shrugged at me. "Sure. Every cop has."
"I mean what happened there last night," I said.
Rawlins shook his head. "I haven't heard of anything."
I frowned at him. A grisly murder at the morgue would have been all over the place, in police scuttlebutt if not in the newspapers. "You haven't? Are you sure?"
"Sure, I'm sure."
I nodded at him and walked down the hallway.
"Hey," he said.
I looked over my shoulder.
"Can you stop them?" Rawlins asked.
"I hope so."
He glanced at the bloodied room and then back at me. "All right. Good hunting, kid."

     
 

      Chapter Fourteen
Wow," Butters said, fiddling with the control panel on the SUV. "This thing has everything. Satellite radio stations. And I bet I could put my whole CD collection inside the changer on this player. And, oh, cool, check it out. It's got an onboard GPS, too, so we can't get lost." Butters pushed a button on the control panel.
A calm voice emerged from the dashboard. "Now entering Helsinki."
I arched an eyebrow at the dashboard and then at Butters. "Maybe the car is lost."
"Maybe you're interfering with its computer, too," Butters said.
"You think?"
He smiled tightly, checking his seat belt for the tenth time. "Just so we're clear, I have no problems with hiding, Harry. I mean, if you're worried about my ego or something, don't. I'm fine with the hiding. Happy, even."
I pulled off the highway. The green lawns and tended trees of the industrial park hosting the Forensic Institute appeared as the SUV rolled up the ramp. "Try to relax, Butters."
He jerked his head in a nervous, negative shake. "I don't want to get killed. Or arrested. I'm really bad at being arrested. Or killed."
"It's a calculated risk," I said. "We need to find out what Grevane wanted with you."
"And we're taking me to work …  why?"
"Think about it. What would have happened if they'd found you missing, blood all over the place, the building ransacked, and Phil's corpse lying in the morgue or on the lawn outside?"
"Someone would have gotten fired," Butters said.
"Yeah. And they would have locked down the building to search for evidence. And they would have grabbed you and locked you away somewhere, for questioning at least."
"So?" Butters asked.
"If Grevane cleaned up what happened at the morgue, it means he didn't want too much official attention focused there. Whatever he wants from you, I'm betting it's still in the building." I pulled into the industrial park. "We have to find it."
"Eduardo Mendoza?" he asked me.
"Offhand, I can't think of any other reason for someone to want to grab your friendly neighborhood assistant medical examiner," I said. "Grevane's got to be interested in a corpse at the morgue, and that one was the only one that seemed a little odd."
"Harry," Butters said, "if this guy really is a necromancer-a wizard of the dead-then why the hell would he need a plain old vanilla science nerd like me?"
"That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question," I said. "And we have another reason, too."
"The museum doctor guy, right?" Butters asked.
I nodded at him and parked in the lot next to Butters's ruined little truck. "Right. I need to know what killed him. Hell, any information could be useful."
Butters exhaled. "Well. I don't know what I'll be able to manage."
"Anything is more than I have now."
He looked around warily. "Do you think …  do you think Grevane or his buddy is out there right now? Watching for …  you know …  me?"
I pulled open my coat and showed Butters my shoulder holster and gun. Then I reached behind me and drew out my staff from the back of the SUV "If they show up, I'm going to ruin their whole day."
He chewed on his lip. "You can do that, right?"
I took a look around and said, "Butters, trust me. If there's one thing I'm good at, it's ruining people's day."
He let out a nervous little laugh. "You can say that again."
"If there's one thing I'm good at-" I began. Butters punched me lightly on the arm, and I smiled at him. "We'll get in and out as quick as we can, get you back under cover. I think we've got it under control."
I killed the SUV's ignition and pulled out the key. The truck shuddered, and a warbling, wailing sound came from the dashboard. For a second I expected someone to shout, "Red alert, all hands to battle stations!" Instead there was a hiccup of sound from the truck, and then a smooth, recorded voice reported, "Warning. The door is ajar. The door is ajar."
I blinked at the dashboard. It repeated the warning several more times, getting a little slower and lower pitched each time, then droned into a basso rumble, followed by silence.
"That was not an omen," I said firmly.
"Right," Butters replied in a faint voice. "Because stuff is always messing up around you."
"Exactly," I said. I tried to think of a way to wring positive spin from that last statement, but I wasn't up to the mental gymnastics. "Come on. The sooner we get moving, the sooner we get you out of here."
"Okay," he said, and the pair of us got out of the SUV and headed for the Forensic Institute. As we approached the door, I started limping and leaning on my staff a little, as if I needed the support. Butters opened the door for me, and I hobbled in with a pained expression on my face as we approached the security desk.
I didn't know the guard on duty. He was in his mid-twenties and looked athletic. He watched us coming, squinting a little, and when we were well inside his eyebrows lifted. "Dr. Butters," he said, evidently surprised. "I haven't seen you in a while."
"Casey," Butters said, giving him a jerky nod of the head. "Hey, I like the new haircut. Is Dr. Brioche in?"
"He's working now," Casey said. "Room one, I think. What are you doing here?"
"Hoping to avoid a lecture," Butters replied dryly. He clipped his identification to his coat. "I forgot to file some forms, and if I don't get them done before the mail goes out, Brioche will scold me until my eyes bleed."