Dresden Files Reread - Fool Moon Chapter 12

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MacFinn's place is super fancy, with a bunch of sculpted hedges, and Harry feels like he's being watched. Carmichael meets him out front, and is reintroduced. He claims he still doesn't believe that Harry's a wizard, but he's polite, even cordial, a sharp contrast with his attitude in the previous book, and when he goes so fas as to ask whether the rumors about Harry's involvement with Marcone are true, he accepts Harry's emphatic denial. This is a pretty transparent effort to increase the emotional impact of Carmichael's death at the end of this book, but it's also effective, in part because it's actually a very reasonable progression from how Carmichael was in the last book. He's smart, a critical thinker who doesn't take things for granted, but not unwilling to trust his instincts. Also Murphy treats him like a punching bag, and based on how she's treated Harry so far this book, I'm guessing he's had a pretty bad time of it, and may be less reflexively inclined to take her side or defer to her judgment than he was during Storm Front. Combined with the fact that, however sketch the circumstances may have looked, Harry not only solved the murders on which he was called in to consult, but a whole other case as well, his change of attitude makes sense. Carmichael cares about results, to a sufficient extent that he keeps on doing the job in the afterlife, in Chicago Between, in Ghost Story. At this point, he has reason to associate Harry with results, regardless of what he believes about the supernatural, and Murphy's suspicions with abuse and, if her behavior towards Carmichael in Storm Front is any indication, embarrassment. 

The inside of the apartment is huge, and Harry can smell blood as soon as he walks in the door. Murphy looks pissed, although Harry doesn't pause to consider why that might be the case. She first takes him to a bedroom, which contains a Greater Circle done in chalk and incense, and Kim Delaney's corpse. There's blood everywhere, and her throat has been ripped out. Harry is validly freaked out, and tells Murphy he's not sure he can do this. Murphy pretty much blows him off, and starts describing what they know, and what she thinks happened. She figures Kim was trying to help MacFinn, whom she has correctly identified as a Loup Garou, something went wrong with the circle, he got out, killed her, and escaped through the window. Harry agrees with this assessment, and shared what he learned from Chaunzy, who is referred to in this chapter only as "the demon", which reinforces my instinct that Chapter 11 was written or revised out of sequence with the rest of this book. Murphy asks Harry to follow her, and leads him to the actual bedroom that people sleep in, with furniture and a carpet. Here, she shows Harry a picture of MacFinn and Terra West, and asks him to confirm that the latter is the woman he saw with the Alphas, which he does. I am immensely curious what the room that currently contains the temporary circle was usually used for. Ballroom dance, possibly? Rich people sometimes have a room for that, and it's often a large converted bedroom with hardwood floors. 

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Murphy tells Harry to follow her again, and he's finally processed through enough of what else is going on to notice that something is seriously up with Murphy. He asks her about it, but she just glares at him and keeps walking. Down in the basement, Harry sees the damaged greater circle, the permanent one made with silver and gemstones, and finally realizes what Kim Delaney has to do with any of this, why she wanted to know about the greater circle, and that he's basically responsible for her death. 

Harry wants to talk to Murphy, as a friend, about how he's feeling, but when he starts talking she shows him the circle diagram that she picked up off the floor at Mac's, and he finally realizes why she's mad at him. He starts trying to explain, but she punches him in the stomach, calls him a liar, and arrests him. 

Let's take a second to review the events that led us to this moment. In Storm Front, Murphy calls Harry in to consult on a murder investigation. She asks Harry to find out how to tear someone's heart out with magic. He says he's not sure he can do it, but isn't willing to get into the incredibly personal and sensitive reasons why he's not sure. 25 hours later, she calls him to yell at him for not already having finished the research, and forbids him to go talk to Bianca, threatening to have him locked up to stop him. When he does do the research, almost the first thing she does is ask if he's naming himself as a suspect, then gets mad at him for a) having gone to see Bianca, in defiance of orders she had no right to give, and b) having been physically attacked for his involvement with the case. (She does not, by the way, ask for a description of his assailant, or otherwise act like a responsible police officer responding to the information that a citizen of her city was physically assaulted while, and likely for, attempting to assist a criminal investigation. She just scolds him.) As soon as Harry finds out the killer is using the storms, he tells her, and her response is "why didn't you tell me sooner". Harry makes one (1) bad decision in not telling Murphy how Linda Randall got his card (while his motivations were mixed at best, it's worth noting that honesty here could have gotten him arrested, and thus dead, not because he did anything to justify arresting him, but because Murphy had already threatened him with "protective custody" twice). She goes to his office to look for clues, and when he calls to warn her not to go through the desk, she assumes she should go through it, and upon getting sting by the scorpion construct, decides Harry's warning was a clever setup to cause that to happen. Between books, Marcone puts out rumors that Harry is working for him. Murphy slow-fades Harry, while getting pressure from IA about said rumors, and makes no effort to talk to him about anything that happened. In this book, they do finally talk about it, and Harry agrees not to keep secrets. He abides by that agreement, does what she asks as far as research, and is for the most part pleasant and cooperative in spite of her ongoing hostility. And then...this happens. If Murphy genuinely thinks Harry is involved with this set of attacks, IA should be investigating her, because she is pathologically paranoid in a way that's interfering with her ability to do her job. If she's just having a bad time and trying to exert some control and work out her frustrations, it's professional misconduct on a level for which she should absolutely be fired, and a completely unacceptable way to treat someone who, in spite of everything, still considers her a friend. 

That's what I got for this week. Stay tuned for Chapter 13. Until then, be gay, do crimes, and read All The Things!