Something did not add up here.
If Luther had been a professional tough, a little guy like Curtis Black wouldn’t have a prayer against him. I had been around enough tough guys to size Luther up. I wouldn’t want to take him on in muscle-powered combat if I could avoid it, not even now with all the extra physical stuff the Winter Knight’s mantle had given me. Doesn’t matter how much you bench-press; some people are damned dangerous in a fight, and you’re a fool to take unnecessary chances against them. Luther struck me as one of those men.
Also, Tremont was way too young a kid to be pulling a high-profile murder case like this one. This was the kind of flashy prosecution DAs loved to showboat. Killers brought to justice, the system working, that kind of thing. They certainly didn’t hand the case off to some kid straight out of law school. Which meant that the old hands in Chicago thought that something about this case stunk to high heaven as well.
I didn’t know the law really well, but I have a doctorate in the parts of Chicago that never showed up on the evening news. If Luther was telling the truth, then Curtis Black couldn’t have been human.
Problem was, most humans didn’t know that. Even if Luther was telling the truth about Black, he wasn’t going to get a fair shake from Chicago’s justice system. Hell’s bells, the cop acquainted with him wasn’t even giving him much. Nobody was going to go to bat for him.
Unless I did it.
He was a father. For his kids’ sake, I wanted answers.
I glanced at the clock as I filed out with the rest of the jury. Nine tomorrow morning. That gave me just under sixteen hours to do what wizards do best.
I left, and began meddling.
“WELL?” I ASKED the rather large wolf after he had been casting around the alley for a while.
He gave me an irritated look. He sat, and after a few seconds, shimmered and resumed the form of Will Borden, crouched naked on the dirty concrete. “Harry, you are not helping.”
“Did you find anything or not?” I asked.
“This isn’t as easy as it looks,” he said. “Look, man, when I’m wolf, I’ve got a wolf’s sense of smell—but I don’t have a wolf’s freaking brain. I’ve been learning how to sort out signals from the noise, but it’s freaking hard. I’ve been doing this since my freshman year, and I could follow a hot trail, but you’re asking me to sift background. I don’t even know if a real wolf could do it.”
I looked around the alley where Luther had beaten Black to death with a bowling pin. It had been nearly a year to the day since the murder. There was nothing dramatic to suggest a man had died here, and the bloodstains had long since faded into unrecognizability with the rest of the grunge. We were far enough down the alley to be out of sight of the street except for a slim column of space that cars crossed in under a second. “Yeah, that was a long shot, anyway.”
“You going to wizard up some information?”
“After this long, there’s nothing left,” I said. “Too many rains, too many sunrises. Not even Molly could get much.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“Get furry again. We might be here awhile.”
He frowned. “Why?”
“I think the girl might come by in the next few hours.”
“Why?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “Let’s assume Luther’s telling the truth.”
“Sure.”
“This guy grabs a little girl and drags her into the alley. Luther jumps him from behind and gets thrown into a wall. Fights him hard, and beats him to death with a bowling pin. What can we deduce?”
“That Black was stronger than normal and tougher than normal,” Will said. “Some kind of supernatural.”
I nodded. “A predator. Maybe a ghoul or something.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So a predator, operating in the middle of a town? They don’t tend to openly grab little girls off the street, because someone might see it happen.”
“Like Luther.”
“Like Luther. But this guy did. He didn’t go after a transient sleeping in an abandoned building, or someone wandering down a dark alley to buy some drugs, a prostitute, any of the usual targets. He went with something dicier. He’s going to do that, he’s going to cut down on every random factor he can.”
“You think he stalked her.”
I nodded. “Stalked her, learned her pattern, and was waiting for her.”
Will squinted up and down the alley. “Why do you think that?”
“It’s how something from Winter would do it,” I said. “How I would take someone in a busy part of town, if I had to.”
“Well. That’s not creepy or anything, Harry.”
I showed my teeth. “Not much difference between wolves and sheepdogs, Will. You should know.”
He nodded. “So, we wait here and see if she’s still going by?”
“Figure if she still goes by here, she’ll do it fast and she’ll be worried. Should make her stand out.”
“You know what else stands out on a busy Chicago street? A timber wolf.”
“Thought of that,” I said, and produced a roll of fabric from my duster’s large pockets.
“You’re kidding,” Will said.
I smiled.
“And what’s in the guitar case?”
I smiled wider.
A FEW MINUTES later, I was sitting on the sidewalk with my back against a building, an old secondhand guitar in my lap, the case open beside me with a handful of a change and an old wadded dollar bill in it. Will settled down beside me, wearing a service dog’s jacket, resting his chin on his front paws. He made a little groaning sound.
“It’ll be fine, boy.”
Will narrowed his eyes.
“Just keep your nose open,” I said, and started playing.
I started with the Johnny Cash version of “Hurt,” which was pretty simple. I sang along with it. I’m not good, but I can hit the notes and keep the rhythm going, so it more or less worked out. I followed it up with “Behind Blue Eyes,” which gets a little harder, and then “Only Happy When It Rains.” Then I followed it up with “House of the Rising Sun,” and completely mangled “Stairway to Heaven.”
There wasn’t a ton of foot traffic on a weekday evening on this street, not in a fairly brisk late March, but nobody really looked at me twice. I made about two and a half bucks in change the first hour. The life of a musician is not easy. A patrol car went by and a cop gave me the stink-eye, but he didn’t stop and roust me. Maybe he had things to do.
The light started fading from the sky, and I was repeating my limited set for the fifth or sixth time when I started to think about giving up. The girl, if she was still following the same pattern, definitely wouldn’t be running around town alone after it became fully dark.
I was singing about how you’d get the message by the time I’m through when Will suddenly lifted his head, his eyes focused.
I followed the direction of his gaze and spotted a girl of about the right age getting off of a bus. She started walking right away, down the street, though she stayed on the other side, directly toward the El station a block away.
“There we go,” I said. “Kid walking a regular route alone gets jumped in Chicago, kid’s probably using public transit, running on a schedule. Makes her real predictable. Perfect mark for a predator.”
Will made a low growling sound.
“I think I’m kinda smart, yeah,” I said to him. “Get her scent?”
Will nudged me with his shoulder and growled again.
I frowned and looked around until I spotted a rather large and rough-looking man descending from the bus at the last second before it left for the next stop. He started down the sidewalk, in pursuit of the girl. He wasn’t maniacally focused on her or anything, but he wasn’t moving like someone coming home tired after a day of work, either. I recognized his pace, his stance, his tension, just as Will had. He was a predator in covert pursuit of his prey.
Worse, he had a smartphone. His thumbs were rapping over it as he walked after the girl.
“Damn,” I said. “Whoever Black was, he was connected. I’m on the creep. You stick with the girl.”
Will gave me one brief, incredulous look.