Jim Butcher - Side Jobs

Personally, I was more inclined to go with the cop’s line of reasoning than the kid’s. People in general tend to be selfish, greedy, and unreliable. There are individual exceptions, of course, but no one ever wants to believe that the petty portions of human nature might have come between themselves and someone they care about.

The kid seemed awfully sincere, but endearing, awfully sincere people, their decisions driven mostly by their emotions, are capable of being mistaken on an epic scale. The worse the situation looks, the harder they’ll search for reasons not to believe it. It seemed more likely that his girl left him than that someone took her away.

On the other hand, likely isn’t the same as true—and Mac isn’t the kind to cry wolf.

“How long you two been together?” I asked Braddock.

“Since we were fifteen,” he replied. An anemic smile fluttered around his mouth. “Almost ten years.”

“Making it official, eh?”

“We both knew when it was right,” he replied. He lost the smile. “Just like I know she didn’t walk away. Not unless someone made her do it.”

I stepped around Braddock and studied the high-backed booth for a moment. A keg sat on the table, next to a little cardstock sign that had a cartoon bee decked out with a Viking-style helmet, a baldric, and a greatsword. Words beneath the bee proclaimed BRADDOCK’S MIDNIGHT SUN CINNAMON.

I grunted and reached down, pulling a simple black leather ladies’ purse from beneath the bench seating. Not an expensive purse, either. “Not much chance she’d walk without taking her bag,” I said. “That’s for damn sure.”

Braddock bit his lip, closed his eyes, and said, “Elizabeth.”

I sighed.

Well, dammit.

Now she had a name.

Elizabeth Braddock, newlywed—maybe she’d just run off, but maybe she hadn’t. I didn’t think I would like myself very much if I walked and it turned out that she really was in danger and really did get hurt.

What the hell? No harm in looking around.

“I guess the game’s afoot,” I said. I gestured vaguely with the purse. “May I?”

“Sure,” Braddock said. “Sure, sure.”

I dumped Elizabeth’s purse out on the booth’s table, behind the beer keg, and began rummaging through it. The usual—a wallet, some makeup, a cell phone, Kleenex, some feminine sanitary sundries, one of those plastic birth control pill holders with a folded piece of paper taped to it.

And there was a hairbrush, an antique-looking thing with a long, pointy silver handle.

I plucked several strands of dark wavy hair from the brush. “Is this your wife’s hair?”

Braddock blinked at me for a second, then nodded. “Yes. Of course.”

“Mind if I borrow this?”

He didn’t. I pocketed the brush for the moment and glanced at the birth control pill case. I opened it. Only the first several slots were empty. I untaped the folded paper and opened it, finding instructions for the medicine’s use.

Who keeps the instruction sheet, for crying out loud?

While I pondered it, a shadow fell across Braddock, and a beefy, heavily tattooed arm shoved him back against the spine of the partition between booths.

I looked up the arm to the beefy, heavily tattooed bruiser attached to it. He was only a couple of inches shorter than me, and layered with muscle gone to seed. He was bald and sported a bristling beard. Scar tissue around his eyes told me he’d been a fighter, and a lumpy, often-broken nose suggested that he might not have been much good at it. He wore black leather and rings heavy enough to serve as passable brass knuckles on every finger of his right hand. His voice was like the rest of him—thick and dull. He flung a little triangle of folded cardstock at Braddock. “Where’s my keg, Braddock?”

“Caine,” Braddock stammered, “what are you talking about?”

“My keg, bitch,” the big man snarled. A couple of guys who wished they were more like Caine lurked behind him, propping up his ego. “It’s gone. You figure you couldn’t take the competition this year?”

I glanced at the fallen table tent. It also had a little Wagnerian cartoon bee on it, and the lettering, CAINE’S KICKASS.

“I don’t have time for this,” Braddock said.

Caine shoved him back against the booth again, harder. “We ain’t done. Stay put, bitch, unless you want me to feed you your ass.”

I glanced at Mac, who stared at Caine, frowning, but not doing anything. Mac doesn’t like to get involved.

He’s smarter than I am.

I stepped forward, seized Caine’s hand in mine, and pumped it enthusiastically. “Hi, there. Harry Dresden, PI. How you doing?” I nodded at him, smiling, and smiled at his friends, too. “Hey, are you allergic to dogs?”

Caine was so startled that he almost forgot to try crushing my hand in his. When he got around to it, it hurt enough that I had to work not to wince. I’m not heavily built, but I’m more than six and a half feet tall, and it takes more strength than most have to make me feel it.

“What?” he said wittily. “Dog, what?”

“Allergic to dogs,” I clarified, and nodded down at Mouse. “Occasionally someone has a bad reaction to my dog, and I’d hate that to happen here.”

The biker scowled at me and then looked down.

Two hundred pounds of Mouse, not acting at all friendly now, stared steadily at Caine. Mouse didn’t show any teeth or growl. He didn’t need to. He just stared.

Caine lifted his lips up from his teeth in an ugly little smile. But he released my hand with a jerk, and then sneered at Braddock. “Say, where’s that pretty little piece of yours? She run off to find a real man?”

Braddock might have been a sliver over half of Caine’s size, but he went after the biker with complete sincerity and without a second thought.

This time Mac moved, interposing himself between Braddock and Caine, getting his shoulder against Braddock’s chest. The older man braced himself and shoved Braddock back from the brink of a beating, though the younger man cursed and struggled against him.

Caine let out an ugly laugh and stepped forward, his big hands closing into fists. I leaned my staff so that he stepped into it, the blunt tip of the wood thrusting solidly against the hollow of his throat. He made a noise that sounded like glurk , and stepped back, scowling ferociously at me.

I tugged my staff back against my chest so that I could hold up both hands, palms out, just as the dumpy cop, attracted by Braddock’s thumping and cursing, came into the room with one hand on his nightstick. “Easy there, big guy,” I said, loud enough to make sure the cop heard. “The kid’s just upset on account of his wife. He doesn’t mean anything by it.”

The bruiser lifted one closed fist as if he meant to drive it at my noggin, but one of his two buddies said urgently, “Cop.”

Caine froze and glanced back over his shoulder. The officer might have been overweight, but he looked like he knew how to throw it around, and he had a club and a gun besides. Never mind all the other uniforms theoretically behind him.

Caine opened his fist, showing an empty hand, and lowered it again. “Sure,” he said. “Sure. Misunderstanding. Happen to anybody.”

“You want to walk away,” the cop told Caine, “do it now. Otherwise you get a ride.”

Caine and company departed in sullen silence, glaring daggers at me—well, glaring letter openers, anyway; Caine didn’t seem real sharp.

The cop stalked over to me more lightly than he should have been able to—no question about it, the man knew how to play rough. He looked at me, then at my staff, and kept his nightstick in his hand. “You Dresden?”

“Uh-huh,” I said.