Summer Knight (The Dresden Files #4) - Jim Butcher Page 0,50
Im almost proud."
I turned to the folder Mab had given me and went through the newspaper clippings inside. "Any idea who the Winter Knight is?"
"Nope. Sorry," Bob said. "My contacts on the Winter side are kinda sketchy."
"Okay, then," I sighed and picked up the notebook. "I know what I need to do."
"This should be good," Bob said dryly.
"Bite me. I have to find out more about Reuel. Who was close to him. Maybe someone saw something. If the police assumed an accident, I doubt there was an investigation."
Bob nodded, somehow managing to look thoughtful. "So are you going to take out an ad in the paper or what?"
I went around the lab and started snuffing candles. "I thought Id try a little breaking and entering. Then Ill go to his funeral, see who shows."
"Gosh. Can I do fun things like you when I grow up?"
I snorted and turned to the stepladder, taking my last lit candle with me.
"Harry?" Bob said, just before I left.
I stopped and looked back at him.
"For what its worth, be careful." If I hadnt known any better, Id have said Bob the Skull was almost shaking. "Youre an idiot about women. And you have no idea what Mab is capable of."
I looked at him for a moment, his orange eyes the only light in the dimness of my frenetically neat lab. It sent a little shiver through me.
Then I clomped back up the stepladder and went out to borrow trouble.
Chapter Eleven
I made a couple of phone calls, slapped a few things into a nylon backpack, and sallied forth to break into Ronald Reuels apartment.
Reuel had lived at the south edge of the Loop, in a building that looked like it had once been a theater. The lobby yawned up to a high ceiling and was spacious and pretty enough, but it left me looking for the velvet ropes and listening for the disorganized squawking of an orchestra warming up its instruments.
I walked in wearing a hat with an FTD logo and carrying a long white flower box under one arm. I nodded to an aging security guard at a desk and went on past him to the stairs, my steps purposeful. Youd be surprised how far a hat, a box, and a confident stride can get you.
I took the stairs up to Reuels apartment, on the third floor. I went up them slowly, my wizards senses open, on the lookout for any energies that might yet be lingering around the site of the old mans death. I paused for a moment, over the spot where Reuels body had been found, to be sure, but there was nothing. If a lot of magic had been put to use in Reuels murder, someone had covered its tracks impressively.
I went the rest of the way up to the third floor, but it wasnt until I opened the door to the third-floor hallway that my instincts warned me I was not alone. I froze with the door from the stairway only half open, and Listened.
Listening isnt particularly hard. Im not even sure its all that magical. I cant explain it well, other than to say that Im able to block out everything but what I hear and to pick up things I would normally miss. Its a skill that not many people have these days, and one that has been useful to me more than once.
This time, I was able to Listen to a half-whispered basso curse and the rustle of papers from somewhere down the hall.
I opened the flower box and drew out my blasting rod, then checked my shield bracelet. All in all, in close quarters like this, I would have preferred a gun to my blasting rod, but Id have a hell of a time explaining it to security or the police if they caught me snooping around a dead mans apartment. I tightened my grip on the rod and slid quietly down the hall, hoping I wouldnt need to use it. Believe it or not, my first instinct isnt always to set things on fire.
The door to Reuels apartment stood half open, and its pale wood glared where it had been freshly splintered. My heart sped up. It looked like someone had beaten me to Reuels place. It meant that I must have been on the right track.
It also meant that whoever it was would probably not be thrilled to see me.