He leaned against the wall and folded his arms. "Because when I was a young cop, I went running down an alley when I heard a woman scream. And I saw something. Something that…" His face became remote. "Something that has given me bad dreams for about thirty years. This thing strangling a girl. I push it away from her, empty my gun into it. It picks me up and slams my head into a wall a few times. I figured Mama Rawlins's baby boy was about to go the way of the dodo."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Lieutenant Murphy's father showed up with a shotgun loaded with rock salt and killed it. And when the sun comes up, it burns this thing's corpse like it had been soaked in gasoline." Rawlins shook his head. "I owed her old man. And I seen enough of the streets to know that she's been doing a lot of good. You been helping her with that."

I nodded. "Thank you," I told him.

He nodded. "Don't really feel like losing my job for you, Dresden. Get out before someone sees you."

Something occurred to me. "You heard about the Forensic Institute?"

He shrugged at me. "Sure. Every cop has."

"I mean what happened there last night," I said.

Rawlins shook his head. "I haven't heard of anything."

I frowned at him. A grisly murder at the morgue would have been all over the place, in police scuttlebutt if not in the newspapers. "You haven't? Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure."

I nodded at him and walked down the hallway.

"Hey," he said.

I looked over my shoulder.

"Can you stop them?" Rawlins asked.

"I hope so."

He glanced at the bloodied room and then back at me. "All right. Good hunting, kid."

Chapter Fourteen

Wow," Butters said, fiddling with the control panel on the SUV. "This thing has everything. Satellite radio stations. And I bet I could put my whole CD collection inside the changer on this player. And, oh, cool, check it out. It's got an onboard GPS, too, so we can't get lost." Butters pushed a button on the control panel.

A calm voice emerged from the dashboard. "Now entering Helsinki."

I arched an eyebrow at the dashboard and then at Butters. "Maybe the car is lost."

"Maybe you're interfering with its computer, too," Butters said.

"You think?"

He smiled tightly, checking his seat belt for the tenth time. "Just so we're clear, I have no problems with hiding, Harry. I mean, if you're worried about my ego or something, don't. I'm fine with the hiding. Happy, even."

I pulled off the highway. The green lawns and tended trees of the industrial park hosting the Forensic Institute appeared as the SUV rolled up the ramp. "Try to relax, Butters."

He jerked his head in a nervous, negative shake. "I don't want to get killed. Or arrested. I'm really bad at being arrested. Or killed."