or so. Said they were removing asbestos. The owners had hired them.”
“Nuevo Verita, Inc., owns the building. As insurance scams go, this isn’t a great one.”
“It isn’t about insurance,” I said.
“Then what is it about?”
“Revenge.”
Tilly tilted his head to one side and studied me intently. “You did something to this company?”
“I did something to someone far up the food chain in the corporate constellation that Nuevo Verita belongs to.”
“And what was that?”
“Nothing illegal,” I said. “You might look into the business affairs of a man calling himself Paolo Ortega. He was a professor of mythology in Brazil. He died several years ago.”
“Ah,” Tilly said. “His family is who is after you?”
“That’s a reasonably accurate description. His wife in particular.”
Tilly absorbed that, taking his time. The room was silent for several minutes.
Finally, Tilly looked up at me and said, “I have a great deal of respect for Karrin Murphy. I called her while you were resting. She says she’ll back you without reservation. Considering the source, that is a significant statement.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Considering the source, it is.”
“Frankly, I’m not sure if I can do anything to help you. I’m not in charge of the investigation, and it’s being directed by politicians. I can’t promise that you won’t be questioned again—though today’s events should make it harder to get judicial approval to move against you.”
“I’m not sure I understand your meaning,” I said.
Tilly waved a hand toward the rest of the building. “As far as they’re concerned, you’re guilty, Dresden. They’re already writing headlines and news text. Now it’s just a matter of finding the evidence to support the conclusion they want.”
“They,” I said. “Not you.”
Tilly said, “They’re a bunch of assholes.”
“And you aren’t?”
“I’m a different kind of asshole.”
“Heh,” I said. “Am I free to go?”
He nodded. “But since they’ve got nothing remotely like evidence that you were the one to plant the explosives, they’re going to be digging into you. Your personal life. Your past. Looking for things to use against you. They’ll play dirty.”
“Okay by me,” I said. “I can play, too.”
Tilly’s eyes smiled. “Sounds like. Yeah.” He offered me his hand. “Good luck.”
I shook it. I felt the very, very faint tingle of someone with a slight magical talent. It probably augmented Tilly’s ability to separate truth from fiction.
I got up and walked wearily toward the door.
“Hey,” Tilly said, just before I opened it. “Off the record. Who did it?”
I stopped, looked at him again, and said, “Vampires.”
His expression flickered with swiftly banished emotions: amusement, then realization, followed by doubt and yards and yards of rationalization.
“See,” I said to him. “I told you that you wouldn’t believe me.”
14
I came out of the doors of the FBI building to find a ring of paparazzi surrounding it, waiting with predatory patience to get more material for their stories. A couple of them saw me and hurried toward me, beginning to ask me questions, thrust microphones toward me, that sort of thing. I winced. I was still pretty tired, but it was going to play merry hell with their gear if I got too close to it.
I looked around for a way to get down the sidewalks without messing up anybody’s equipment, and that was when they tried to kill me.
I’d been the target of a drive-by attempt once before. This one was considerably more professional than the first. There was no roar of engines to give me a warning, no wildly swerving vehicle. The only tip-off I had was a sudden prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck and a glimpse of a dark sedan’s passenger window rolling down.
Then something hit me in the left side of my chest and hammered me down onto the stairs. Stunned, I realized that someone was shooting at me. I could have rolled down the stairs and into the news crowd, put them between myself and the shooter, but I had no way of knowing whether the shooter wanted me bad enough to fire through a crowd in hopes of getting me. So I curled into a defensive ball and felt two more heavy blows land against me: one of them on my ribs, the second on my left arm, which I’d raised to cover my head.
There was an exclamation from below, and then there were several people standing over me.
“Hey, buddy,” said a potbellied cameraman in a hunting jacket. He offered me a hand to help me up. “Nasty fall, there. You still in one piece?”