Peace Talks (The Dresden Files, #16)(16)

That made us accomplices to murder at least, as far as the law was concerned. And they weren’t wrong.

“Yeah, those injuries,” I told him. “So buzz off.”

“Or what?” Rudolph asked mildly.

“Or, unless you have a warrant to enter, or some kind of believable probable cause, I imagine Murph sues your department’s ass to kingdom come.”

“Maybe I’ll insist,” Rudolph said, smiling.

“I’d love to see that,” I told him, and I meant it. The mantle was talking to me again, advising me that if I wasn’t going to vent some of my built-up tension on a willing woman, then beating the arrogant stuffing out of Rudolph would be an appropriate substitute.

“Nah,” the second cop said in a bored, distant voice. “You wouldn’t, sir.”

I eyed the other guy. He was about five feet, six inches—in all three dimensions. I seriously couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a guy built so solidly. He wore a tailored suit, because I doubted anything fit him off the rack, but it was made of neutral, plain materials, meant to blend into the background of the business world. His salt-and-pepper hair was buzzed short, and his face was rough with beard shadow that I suspected appeared about ten seconds after he was done shaving. Something about the way he held himself, the way his eyes were focused on nothing in particular, put me on notice that he knew what he was doing better than most.

I wasn’t familiar with the cops in Internal Affairs the way I was with Special Investigations, or the beat cops in the neighborhoods I knew. “They partnered you with Rudy, huh?” I said. “Harry Dresden.”

“Detective Bradley,” he said. “Sir, it would be in Ms. Murphy’s best interests to speak to us now.”

“Or we could do it downtown,” Rudolph said. “I don’t care which.”

“Rudolph,” I said in a pleasant voice, “do you know how long it takes to wash dried blood from a broken nose out of a mustache?”

“Harry,” Karrin said from the couch, reproof in her voice. “Dial it down a notch?” She waved an apologetic hand at me, out of sight of the men at the door. “Let’s just get it over with, huh?”

I glowered at the men and said, “I reserve the right to kick—”

“Harry,” Murphy sighed.

“—ask you to leave if it looks like she’s getting tired,” I continued smoothly. I looked past Rudolph to the older man and said, “Okay?”

“Why, you—” Rudolph said.

Bradley the human tank put a hand on Rudolph’s shoulder. His fingers squeezed slightly, and Rudolph shut his mouth and then shot him a quick, hard look.

“Sir,” Bradley said, “it’s in no one’s interests to strain an injured woman unnecessarily. We’ll be brief.”

I growled and said, “Fine. Come in.”

They did and asked to sit. Whatever. I didn’t sit down. I went and stood behind Karrin, leaning against the wall with my arms folded.

“Murphy,” Bradley said.

Karrin nodded at him warily. I knew her enough to recognize some respect in the gesture, if no affection. “Bradley. Out with it, Rudolph. What are you doing here?”

Rudolph opened the manila envelope and tugged out several pieces of paper with color prints of photos on them. He tossed them onto the coffee table. I picked them up and gave them to Karrin without taking my eyes off the cops.

She leafed through the pictures, and I felt her tension growing as she did. She passed me the pictures.

One of them was a still from a security take on a Chicago street. I didn’t recognize the location exactly, but I did recognize the blurred shot of Murphy, in her little SUV, speeding down the street in heavy winter conditions.

The others were shots from outside the bank, and from security cameras inside. There’d been enough bad weather and enough magic in the air that the shots were all blurry and distorted, but one of them was of a couple of guys coming out the bank door. One of them was average height, and the second was very tall.

It was a shot of me and a mercenary named Grey during our egress of the heist, taken from a distance. The veil we’d been under must have flickered, or else the shot was from before it solidified and hid us from everyone. As it was, there wasn’t much but outlines. Our faces couldn’t really be made out in the distorted images. Still, there aren’t a lot of NBA-sized guys robbing banks in Chicago. Or anywhere. All of the other images were just as vague, or worse, but had the recognizable silhouette of the same tall fellow, though none of them showed my face, except the last one. In that one, I was sprinting down a sidewalk, and anyone with eyes, which is to say most people who might wind up on a jury, could recognize the image as me.

“That shot of you,” Rudolph said to Karrin, “came from the same day you wound up with your injuries. Hell of a coincidence.”

“How?” she asked calmly. “Rudolph, everybody in Chicago gets on a security camera or three every day of their lives.”

“They aren’t all speeding in dangerous conditions,” Rudolph said.

“Does Chicago have IA doing traffic stops?” Karrin asked. “Now that you’ve cleaned up all the corruption in town?”

“Speeding down main streets during an ice storm,” Bradley said. “Near reports of gang violence at the same time.”