Proven Guilty

Chapter Fifteen

My Mickey Mouse alarm clock went off at seven, and buzzed stubbornly at me until I kicked off the covers, sat up, and shut it off. I ached all over, felt stiff all over, but that sense of overwhelming exhaustion had faded, and since I was already vertical, I got moving.

I got into the shower, and tried not to jump too much when the first shock of freezing water hit me. I’ve had some practice at it. I’ve never had a water heater last me more than a week without some kind of technical problem coming up-and that was the kind of thing you just did not want to take chances on when you have a gas heater. So my showers were always either cold or colder. Given my dating life, and the inhuman charms available to some of the beings who occasionally faced off with me, it was probably just as well.

But, especially when I had bumps and bruises and sore muscles, I wished I could have a skin-blistering hot shower like everyone else in the country.

And suddenly the water shifted from ice-cold to piping hot. It was a shock, and I actually let out a little yelp and danced around in the shower until I could redirect the shower head so that it wasn’t scalding my bits and pieces. After the initial shock of the temperature change, I leaned my aching head and neck into the spray for a second, and let out a long groan. Then I said, “Dammit, I told you to stop that.”

Lasciel’s voice murmured in a quiet laugh under the sound of the water. The sensation of phantom fingertips dug into the wire-tight muscles at the base of my neck, easing soreness away. “You should use the technique I taught you last autumn to block out the discomfort.”

“I don’t need to,” I said, and tried for grouchy. But the heated water and massaging fingers, illusory though they were, were simply delicious. “I’ll be fine.”

“Your discomfort is my discomfort, my host,” she said, and sighed. “Literally, as all my perceptions can come only through your own.”

“This isn’t real,” I said quietly. “The water isn’t really hot. No one is actually massaging my neck. It’s an illusion you’re laying over my senses.”

“Does it not feel soothing?” her disembodied voice asked. “Does it not ease the tension?”

“Yes,” I sighed.

“What matter, then? It is real enough.”

I waved a hand as though trying to brush off an annoying fly from my neck, and the sensation of those strong, steady fingers retreated. “Go on,” I said. “Hands off. I don’t want to start my day with a psychic cage match, but if you push me to it, I will.”

“As you wish,” her voice said, and the sense of presence retreated. Then paused. “My host, I note that you made no mention of the hot water.”

I grunted and mumbled something under my breath, ducked my head under the seemingly scalding water for a few seconds, and then said, “Did you pick up on what happened last night?”

“Indeed,” the fallen angel replied.

“What was your read, then?”

There was a moment of thoughtful silence, and then Lasciel responded, “That Karrin feels a certain distance between the pair of you is a professional necessity, but that she is considering that time and circumstance might someday render it irrelevant.”

I sighed. “No,” I said. “Not that. Stars and stones, I don’t want dating advice from a freaking helltart. I meant the things that attacked people at the convention.”

“Ah,” Lasciel said, with no trace of offense in her tone. “It was obviously the attack of a spiritual predator.”

Takes one to know one, I thought. I rolled a stiff shoulder under the hot water. “If that’s true, then the attacks weren’t about violence,” I said thoughtfully. “Which explains what I saw in that bathroom, where the old man had been attacked. Whatever did it was intent on causing fear. Causing pain. Then devouring the… what? The psychic energy it generated in the victims?”

“That is a somewhat simplistic description,” she said, “but one that is as close as I expect a mortal can come to understanding.”

“What, you’re a mortality bigot now?”

“Now and always,” she replied. “I mean no insult by it, but you should know that your ability to comprehend your environment is very strongly defined by your belief in a number of illusions. Time. Truth. Love. That kind of thing. It isn’t your fault, of course-but it does impose limits upon your ability to perceive and understand some matters.”

“I’m only human,” I said. “So enlighten me.”

“To do so, you would have to release your hold on mortality.”

I blinked and said, “I’d have to die?”

She sighed. “Again, you have only a partial understanding. But in the interest of expediency, yes. You would have to cease living.”

“Then don’t bother enlightening me,” I said. “I have plenty of would-be teachers already.” I rinsed and repeated my shampoo and made myself smell like Irish Spring. “The survivors of the attacks, then. They’re going to have taken a spiritual mauling.”

“If the theory is correct,” Lasciel’s voice responded. “If they are indeed wounded in spirit, it would seem conclusive.”

I shuddered. That kind of damage showed itself in a number of ways, and none of them were pretty. I’d seen men driven to agonies of madness by spiritual attacks. Murphy had been subjected to such an assault and spent years learning to cope with the night terrors it had spawned, until the spiritual and psychological wounds had finally healed. I’d seen some who had been subjected to a psychic sandblasting by vampires of the Black Court who had become nearly mindless bodies, obeying orders, and others of the same ilk who had turned into psychotic killing machines in service to their masters.

The worst part of it all was that almost the only way for me to see something like that was to open my Sight. Which meant that every horribly mangled psyche I’d come across remained fresh and bright in my memory. Always.

The top shelf of my mental trophy case was getting crowded with hideous keepsakes.

The not-truly-hot water coursed over me, a small but suddenly significant comfort. “Go away,” I told Lasciel. Then I added, “Leave me the hot water. Just this once.”

“As you wish,” the fallen angel’s voice replied, polite satisfaction in her tone. The sense of her presence vanished entirely.

I stayed in the shower until my fingers shriveled up. Or, more accurately, I stayed there until the fingers of my right hand shriveled up. The skin of my burned left hand always looked withered and shriveled, these days. The second I turned the water off, the full sensation of icy cold returned, and I shivered violently as I toweled off and got dressed.

I took care of Mouse and Mister’s various needs, ate several leftover biscuits from the fridge for breakfast, and opened a can of Coke. After a moment’s thought, I headed down to my lab and grabbed Bob’s skull from the shelf.

Faint orange lights flickered in the sockets. “Hey,” Bob mumbled in a sleep-slurred voice. “Where are we going?”

“Investigating,” I said. I went back upstairs with the skull and dropped it into my nylon backpack. “I might need you today. But there are going to be straights around, so keep your mouth shut unless I open the pack.”

“ ‘Kay,” Bob said with a yawn, and the lights in the skull’s eye sockets winked out again.

I strapped on the magical arsenal-my shield bracelet, the energy ring, and my silver pentacle amulet. I slipped my newly carved blasting rod into a side pocket of the pack, leaving the handle out where I could reach up behind my right ear and whip it out in a hurry. I picked up my staff and eyed my leather duster, hanging on its hook by the door. I had layered spells over the duster in an effort to provide myself with a measure of protection against various fangs and claws and bullets and such, and as a result the coat had effectively become a suit of armor.

But, like most suits of armor, it lacked its own air-conditioning system-and if I wore it around in the blazing summer heat, I’d probably die of heat prostration before anyone had the chance to bite, slice, or shoot me. Hell, even the blue jeans I was wearing would feel too heavy long before noon. The duster stayed on its hook.

That rattled me a little. I’m used to the duster, and the spells on its leather had saved my life before. It made me feel a little vulnerable to think of getting into some kind of supernatural conflict without it. So I grabbed Mouse’s lead, much to the dog’s tail-wagging approval, and clipped it onto his collar. “You’re with me today,” I told him. “I need someone to watch my back. Maybe to help me eat a hot dog later.”

Mouse’s tail wagged even more at the mention of hot dogs. He chuffed out a breath, nudged my hip with the side of his head in a fond gesture, and we went outside to wait for Murphy.

She pulled up and eyed Mouse warily as I opened the back door and he jumped up onto the backseat. The car rocked back and forth with his weight and sank a little.

“He’s car-broken, right?”

Mouse wagged his tail and gave Murphy an enthusiastic, vacant doggie grin, tilting his head back and forth quizzically. It was easy for my imagination to subtitle the look: Car-broken? What is that?

“Wiseass,” I muttered at the dog, and got in the passenger side. “Don’t worry, Murph. We did an insane amount of work on the whole bodily function issue as soon as I realized how big he was going to get. He’ll be good.” I glared at the backseat. “Won’t you?”

Mouse gave me that same grin and puzzled tilting of his head. I frowned at him more deeply. He leaned forward to nuzzle my shoulder with his heavy muzzle, and settled down in the backseat.

Murphy sighed. “If it was any other dog, I’d make him ride in the trunk.”

“That’s right,” I said. “You have dog issues.”

“Big dog issues,” Murphy corrected me. “Just big dogs.”

“Mouse isn’t big. He’s compactly challenged.”

She gave me an arch look as she pulled out and said, “You’d fit in the trunk, too, Harry.” Then she frowned at me and said, “Your lips are blue.”

“Long shower,” I said.

She gave me a sudden, swift grin. “Wanted to keep your mind on business? I think I’ll interpret that as a compliment to my sexual appeal.”

I snorted and buckled in. “You heard anything from the hospital?”

Murphy’s smile faded and she kept her eyes on the road. She nodded without looking at me, her face impossible to read.

“Bad, huh?” I asked.

“The young man the paramedics carried off died. The girl who was already down when you came in is going to make it, but she’s in some kind of shock. Catatonic. Doesn’t focus her eyes or anything. Just lies there.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “I was sort of expecting that. What about the other girl? Rosie?”

“Her injuries were painful but not life-threatening. They closed the cuts and set the bones, but when they heard she was pregnant they kept her at the hospital for observation. It looks like she’ll come through without losing the child. She’s awake and talking.”

“That’s something,” I said. “And Pell?”

“Still in ICU. He’s an old man, and his injuries were severe. They think he’ll be all right as long as there aren’t any complications. He’s groggy, but he’s conscious.”

“ICU,” I said. “Any chance we could talk to him somewhere else?”

“Those doctors can be real funny about not wanting people in critical condition to nip out for a walk to the vending machines,” she said.

I grunted. “You might have to solo him, then. I don’t dare go walking in there with all the medical equipment around.”

“Even if it was just for a few minutes?” she asked.

I shrugged. “I don’t have any control over when things break down.” I paused and said, “Well, not exactly. I could blow out the whole floor in a few seconds, if I was trying to do it, but there’s not much I can do to keep things from breaking down. Odds are good that if I was only in there for a few minutes, nothing bad would happen. But sometimes things go haywire the second I walk by them. I can’t take any chances when there are people on life support.”

Murphy arched a brow at me, and then nodded in understanding. “Maybe we can get you on a speaker phone or something.”

“Or something.” I rubbed at my eyes. “I think this is gonna be a long day.”

When you get right down to it, all hospitals tend to look pretty much the same, but Mercy Hospital, where the victims in the attack had been taken, somehow managed to avoid the worst of the sterile, disinfected, quietly desperate quality of many others. The oldest hospital in Chicago, the Sisters of Mercy had founded the place, and it remained a Catholic institution. Thought ridiculously large when it was first built, the famous Chicago fires of the late nineteenth century filled Mercy to capacity. Doctors were able to handle six or seven times as many patients as any other hospital during the emergency, and everyone stopped complaining about how uselessly big the place was.

There was a cop on guard in the hallway outside the victims’ rooms, in case the whacko costumed killer came after them again. He might also be there to discourage the press, whenever they inevitably smelled the blood in the water and showed up for the frenzy. It did not surprise me much at all to see that the cop on guard was Rawlins. He was unshaven and still had his SplatterCon!!! name tag on. One of his forearms was bound up in neatly taped white bandages, but other than that he looked surprisingly alert for someone who had been injured and then worked all through the night. Or maybe his weathered features just took such things in stride.

“Dresden,” Rawlins said from his seat. He’d dragged a chair to the hall’s intersection. He was dedicated, not insane. “You look better. ‘Cept for those bruises.”

“The best ones always show up the day after,” I said.

“God’s truth,” he agreed.

Murphy looked back and forth between us. “I guess you’ll work with anybody, Harry.”

“Shoot,” Rawlins drawled, smiling. “Is that little Karrie Murphy I hear down there? I didn’t bring my opera glasses to work today.”

She grinned back. “What are you doing down here? Couldn’t they find a real cop to watch the hall?”

He snorted, stuck his legs out, and crossed his ankles. I noted that for all of his indolent posture, his holstered weapon was clear and near his right hand. He regarded Mouse with pursed lips and said, “Don’t think dogs are allowed in here.”

“He’s a police dog,” I told him.

Rawlins casually offered Mouse the back of one hand. Mouse sniffed it politely and his tail thumped against my legs. “Hmmm,” Rawlins drawled. “Don’t think I’ve seen him around the station.”

“The dog’s with me,” I said.

“The wizard’s with me,” Murphy said.

“Makes him a police dog, all right,” Rawlins agreed. He jerked his head down the hall. “Miss Marcella is down that way. They got Pell and Miss Becton in ICU. The boy they brought in didn’t make it.”

Murphy grimaced. “Thanks, Rawlins.”

“You’re welcome, little girl,” Rawlins said, his deep voice grandfatherly.

Murphy gave him a brief glare, and we went down the hall to visit the first of the victims.

It was a single-bed room. Molly was there, in a chair beside the bed, where she had evidently been asleep while mostly sitting up. By the time I got in the room and shut the door, she was looking around blearily and mopping at the corner of her mouth with her sleeve. In the bed beside her was Rosie, small and pale.

Molly touched the girl’s arm and gently roused her. Rosie looked up at us and blinked a few times.

“Good morning,” Murphy said. “I hope you were able to get some rest.”

“A l-little,” the girl said, her voice raspy. She looked around, but Molly was already passing her a glass of water with a straw in it. Rosie sipped and then laid her head tiredly back, then murmured a thank you to Molly. “A little,” she said again, her voice stronger. “Who are you?”

“My name is Karrin Murphy. I’m a detective for the Chicago Police Department.” She gestured at me, and took a pen and a small notebook from her hip pocket. “This is Harry Dresden. He’s working with us on the case. Do you mind if he’s here?”

Rosie licked her lips and shook her head. Her uninjured hand moved fitfully, stroking over the bandages on the opposite forearm in nervous motions. Murphy engaged the girl in quiet conversation.

“What are you doing here?” Molly asked me in a half whisper.

“Looking into things,” I replied as quietly. “There’s something spooky going on.”

Molly chewed on her lip. “You’re sure?”

“Definitely,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll find whatever hurt your friend.”

“Friends,” Molly said, emphasizing the plural. “Have you heard anything about Ken? Rosie’s boyfriend? No one will tell us anything.”

“He the kid that they took from the scene?”

Molly nodded anxiously. “Yes.”

I glanced at Murphy’s back and didn’t say anything.

Molly got it. Her face went white and she whispered, “Oh, God. She’ll be so…” She folded her arms and shook her head several times. Then she said, “I’ve got to…” She looked around, and in a louder voice said, “I’m dying for coffee. Anyone else need some?”

Nobody did. Molly picked up her purse and turned around to walk for the door. In doing so, she brushed within a foot or two of Mouse. Instead of growling, though, Mouse leaned his head affectionately against her leg as she went by, and cadged a few ear scratches from the girl before she left.

I frowned at Mouse after Molly had gone. “Are you going bipolar on me?”

He settled down again immediately. Murphy went on asking Rosie fairly predictable questions about the attack.

The clock was running. I pushed the question about Mouse’s odd behavior aside for the moment, and let Mouse watch the door while I reached for my Sight.

It was a slight effort of concentration to push away the concerns of the material world, like aches and pains and bruises and why my dog was growling at Molly, and then the mere light and shadow and color of the everyday world dissolved into the riot of flowing energy and currents of light and power that lay beneath the surface.

Murphy looked like Murphy had always looked beneath my Sight. She appeared almost as herself, but clearer, somehow, her eyes flashing, and she was garbed in a quasi angelic tunic of white, stained in places with the blood and mud of battle. A short, straight sword, its blade made of almost viciously bright white light, hung beneath her left arm, where I knew her light cotton blazer hid her gun in its shoulder rig. She looked at me and I could see her physical face as a vague shadow beneath the surface of the aspect I saw now. She smiled at me, a sunny light in it, though her body’s face remained a neutral mask. I was seeing the life, the emotion behind her face, now.

I shied away from staring at her lest I make eye contact for too long- but that smile, at least, was something I wouldn’t mind remembering. Rosie was another story.

The physical Rosie was a small, slight, pale young woman with thin, frail features. The Rosie my Sight revealed to me was entirely different. Pale skin became a pallid, dirty, leathery coating. Large dark eyes looked even bigger, and flicked around with darting, avian jerks. They were furtive eyes, giving her the dangerous aspect of a stray dog or maybe some kind of rat-the eyes of a craven, desperate survivor.

Winding veins of some kind of green-black energy pulsed beneath her skin, particularly around the inside bend of her left arm. The writhing strings of energy ended at the surface of her skin, in dozens of tiny, mindlessly opening and closing little mouths-the needle tracks I’d seen the night before. Her right hand kept darting back and forth over the other arm as if trying to scratch a persistent itch. But her fingers couldn’t touch. There was a kind of sheath of sparkling motes around her hands, almost like mittens, and she couldn’t actually touch those mindlessly hungry mouths. Worse, there were what looked almost like burn marks on her temples- small, black, neat holes, as if someone had bored a hot needle through the skin and skull beneath. There was a kind of phantom blood around the injuries, but her eyes were wide and vague, as if she didn’t even notice them. What the hell? I had seen the victims of spiritual attacks before, and they’d never been pretty. Usually they looked like the victim of a shark attack, or someone who had been mauled by a bear. I hadn’t ever seen someone with damage like Rosie’s. It looked almost like some kind of demented surgeon had gone after her with a laser scalpel. That pushed the weirdometer a couple of clicks beyond the previous record.

My head started pounding and I pushed the Sight away. I leaned my hip against the wall for a second and rubbed at my temples until the throbbing subsided and I was sure that my normal vision had returned.

“Rosie,” I said, cutting into the middle of one of Murphy’s questions. “When was your last fix?”

Murphy glanced over her shoulder at me, frowning. Behind her, the girl gave me a guilty look, her eyes shifting to one side. “What do you mean?” Rosie asked.

“I figure it’s heroin,” I said. I kept my voice pitched to the barest level needed to be audible. “I saw the tracks on you last night.”

“I’m diab-” she began.

“Oh please,” I said, and let the annoyance show in my voice. “You think I’m that stupid?”

“Harry,” Murphy began. There was a warning note in her voice, but my head hurt too much to let it stop me.

“Miss Marcella, I’m trying to help you. Just answer the question.”

She was silent for a long moment. Then she said, “Two weeks.”

Murphy arched a brow, and her gaze went back to the girl.

“I quit,” she said. “Really. I mean, once I heard that I was pregnant… I can’t do that anymore.”

“Really?” I asked.

She looked up and her eyes were direct, though nothing like confident. “Yes. I’m done with it. I don’t even miss it. The baby’s more important than that.”

I pursed my lips and then nodded. “All right.”

“Miss Marcella,” Murphy said, “thank you for your time.”

“Wait,” she said, as Murphy turned away. “Please. No one will tell us anything about Ken. Do you know how he’s doing? What room he’s in?”

“Ken’s your boyfriend?” Murphy asked in a careful tone.

“Yes. I saw them load him in the ambulance last night. I know he’s here…” Rosie stared at Murphy for a second, and then her face grew even more pale. “Oh, no. Oh, no, no, no.”

I was glad I’d gotten a gotten a look at her before she found out about her boyfriend. My imagination provided me with a nice image of watching the emotional wounds open up as though an invisible sword had begun slicing into her, but at least I didn’t have to see it with my Sight, too.

“I’m very sorry,” Murphy said quietly. Her voice was steady, her eyes compassionate.

Molly picked that moment to return with a cup of coffee. She took one look at Rosie, put the coffee down, and then hurried to her. Rosie broke down in choking sobs. Molly immediately sat on the bed beside her, and hugged her while she wept.

“We’ll be in touch,” Murphy said quietly. “Come on, Harry.”

Mouse stared at Rosie with a mournful expression, and I had to tug on his leash a couple of times to get him moving. We departed and headed for the nearest stairwell. Murphy headed for ICU, which was in the neighboring building.

“I didn’t see the track marks on her last night,” she said after a minute. “You pushed her pretty hard.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because it might mean something. I don’t know what, yet. But we didn’t have time to waste listening to her denial.”

“She wasn’t straight with you,” Murphy said. “No one kicks heroin that fast. Two weeks. She should still be feeling some of the withdrawal.”

“Yeah,” I said. We went outside to go to the other building. Bright morning sunlight made my head hurt even more, and the sidewalk began revolving. I stopped to wait for my eyes to adjust to the light.

“You all right?” Murphy asked.

“It’s hard. Seeing someone like that,” I said quietly. “And she’s probably the least mangled of the three.”

She frowned. “What did you see?”

I tried to tell her what Rosie had looked like. It sounded surreal and garbled, even to me. I didn’t think I had conveyed it very well.

“You look terrible,” she said when I finished.

“It’ll pass. Just got this damned headache.” I shook my head and focused on taking steady breaths until I could force the pain to recede. “Okay. I’m good.”

“Did you learn what you were hoping for?” Murphy asked.

“Not yet,” I said. “I’ll need to look at the others, too. See if the injuries on them give me some kind of pattern.”

“They’re in ICU.”

“Yeah. I need to find a way to them without getting too close to someone on life support. I can’t stay around to talk. I’ll need maybe a minute, ninety seconds to look at them both. Then I’ll get out. Let you talk.”

Murphy took a deep breath and said, “You sure you should do this?”

“No,” I told her. “But I can’t help you if I don’t get to look at them. I can’t do that any other way. If I can stay calm and relaxed, it shouldn’t hurt anything for me to be there for a minute or two.”

“But you can’t be sure.”

“When can I?”

She frowned at me, but nodded. “Let me go ahead of you,” she said. “Wait here.”

I found a chair, and took it down the hall and sat down with Mouse and Rawlins. We shared a companionable silence. I leaned my head back against the wall and closed my eyes.

My headache finally began to fade away just as Murphy returned. “All right,” she said quietly. “We need to go down a floor and then use the back stairs. A nurse is going to let us in. You won’t have to walk past any of the other rooms before you get to our witnesses.”

“Okay,” I said, and stood up. “Let’s get this over with.”