Al Kratz.
Not memory. Here. Faint, as if he’d passed an hour or two ago.My address was in the phone book. I never saw the need for an unlisted number,even when I was on the force. Now, private practice, I wanted people to be able to call me outside of office hours if theyhad a problem.
And Al Kratz knew who’d nailed him the last time.
I stepped across to the outer door of the apartment building.His signature polluted the door knob. And you wouldn’t need to be a wizard toget through the electric inner lock. Just buzz apartments until someone hit therelease, a move straight out of a hundred detective novels.
He’d have more trouble getting into my place, but he could doit. Any security system, electronic or wizardly, just raises the price ofadmission, slows down or scares off the amateurs. Al Kratz hadn’t been anamateur since he was maybe six.
Like, when he ended up in an orphanage after butchering hisparents in a tantrum and burning the house down around their corpses. Ofcourse, we hadn’t figured that outuntil we reviewed the records with twenty years of hindsight.
I checked my left armpit, out of reflex, and found nothingthere. I’d pretty much quit carrying when I got off the force, even though Istill had the license. I kept one SIG at the office, another in the apartment.When Cash showed up, I hadn’t bothered to dig out the shoulder holster and loadup. She was a better shot than I’d ever be, and she’d made it plain we weregoing to a crime scene rather than a crime.
Now I felt naked. In a fight between two wizards, a 9mm slugcan tip the balance one way or the other. At times like that, a two-pound lumpof metal in your fist or at least hanging under your left armpit feels awfullycomforting.
My apartment faced the back of the building, faced the parkinglot. If I went back there to get the Lincoln, he could see me. I don’t drivemuch, anyway. When I retired from the force, I tracked down an office withinwalking distance of my apartment. I need to keep some muscles in working order.
I started hiking for the office and sniffing, watching out forKratz, thinking. I could call dispatch to have Cash swing back and pick me up.
And have everyone with a cop radio gossiping about how Idreamed up an excuse to have her come over to my place.
I could get another backup, even a beat cop to go in with meand cover my ass.
And add him to the body count. A beat cop, even a seasonedprecinct sergeant, against Kratz? Worse than useless. I’d need another wizard,at the least. I couldn’t pull . . . Pennington . . .off his crime scene. Didn’t know anyone else to call, except Sandy. Wasn’tgoing to drag her into this.
I tested the door of my office building. There he was again, aslight touch of that off-key vibration, older than at the apartment, stillenough to set my teeth on edge and make my ass-cheeks clench. Up the stairs,following his trail, my office sat quiet, shut, dark, no sense of tamperingwith either electronic or magical alarms, but he’d been there too, at least asfar as the door. I couldn’t feel him inside. I didn’t think I could trust thatfeeling very far, not with Albert Kratz.
I touched this and that before sliding my key into the lock,and still stepped to one side and into shadow when I opened the door. Nothinghappened. That was exactly what I’d hoped.
Three quick long steps carried me through the darkness and mydesk drawer slid open and I had the SIG in my hand, shoving a magazine home andjacking a round into the chamber and squatting behind the oak desk with itsKevlar panel armor and feeling foolish.
The empty room laughed at me. Foolish beat the hell out offeeling dead. Or maybe not — nobody has ever given evidence on what feeling dead feels like. I’ll try to let you knowwhen I get data.
The heavy 9mm auto with the high-capacity “cops only” magazinesettled comfortably into my fist and reminded me that I preferred to wait onfinding out. I switched on the light and checked all the corners and the toiletbefore I relaxed. I didn’t throw my shadow on the windows doing it. That’s howI’ve lived long enough to get fat and balding and retired.
He hadn’t been inside the office. The stink ended at the door,ended at his hand on the knob. I’d have bet good money he’d been checking tosee if he could feel me inside.
Or maybe he’d left the traces to taunt me. That’s the thingwith psychopaths. For some of them, like Kratz, it makes their day to play toan audience. Just being clever inside their own brains isn’t good enough.
I shrugged into the shoulder holster and anchored it to mybelt, the old routine of buckling a knight into his armor before battle. Ichecked the SIG before holstering it, and added a spare magazine to each frontpocket of the Burberry. And wished I had been paranoid enough to bid on aKevlar vest at the same time I bought that desk at a police-surplus auction.
Then I headed back downstairs, back out on the cold wet darkof the streets, back hiking through the blocks and turns and blocks and turns,to the side entry of my apartment building. I couldn’t feel any touch of Kratzon this one, even after I sniffed my best sniffs just in case he’d left anylittle presents waiting inside. I took a deep breath, settled my head, andmapped each step of my route through the door and up the stairs to find outwhat the hell the bastard had in mind.
I’d done that a hundred times, carrying a badge, but this timeI didn’t have anyone for backup.
III
I eased the building door open, sniffed some more,listened, and then slipped inside. I didn’t shield myself, because other magescan sense that. The vestibule yawned at me, empty, no sound from the stairwell.You had to hike through the length of the building to reach the elevator fromthis entry,
