"What?" I asked.
He blinked, slowly. Then he said, "Harry. This is an X-ray I took two months ago. Notice the lack of anything wrong."
"So?" I asked. "It healed, right?"
He made an exasperated sound. "Harry, you are dense. Bones don't do that. You carry marks where they re-fused for the rest of your life. Or rather, I would. You don't."
I frowned. "What's that got to do with wizard life span?"
Butters waved his hand impatiently. "Here, here are some more." He slapped up more X-rays. "This is a partial stress fracture to the arm that didn't get shot. You got it in that fall from the train a couple nights after we met," he said. "It was just a crack. You didn't even know you had it, and it was mild enough that it just needed a splint for a few days. It was off before you were ambulatory."
"What's so odd about that?"
"Nothing," Butters said. "But look, here it is again. There's a fuse marker, and in the third one, poof, it's gone. Your arm is back to normal."
"Maybe I just drink too much milk or something," I said.
Butters snorted. "Harry, look. You're a tough guy. You've been injured a lot." He pulled out my medical file and thumped it down with a grunt of effort. Granted, there are phone books smaller than my hospital file. "And I'm willing to bet you've had plenty of boo-boos you never saw a doctor about."
"Sure," I said.
"You're at least as battered as a professional athlete," Butters said. "I mean, like a hockey player or football player. Maybe as much as some race-car drivers."
"They get battered?" I asked.
"When you go around driving half a ton of steel at a third the speed of sound for a living, you get all kinds of injuries," he said seriously. "Even the crashes that aren't spectacular are pretty vicious on the human body at the speeds they're going. Ever been in a low-speed accident?"
"Yeah. Sore for a week."
"Exactly," Butters said. "Multiply that. These guys and other athletes take a huge beating, right? They develop a mental and physical toughness that lets them ignore a lot of pain and overcome the damage, but the damage gets done to their bodies nonetheless. And it's cumulative. That's why you see football players, boxers, a lot of guys like that all beat to hell by the time they're in their thirties. They regain most of the function after an injury, but the damage is still there, and it adds up bit by bit."
"Again I ask, what's that got to do with me?"
"You aren't cumulative," Butters said.
"Eh?"
"Your body doesn't get you functional again and then leave off," Butters said. "It continues repairing damage until it's gone." He stared at me. "Do you understand how incredibly significant that is?"
"I guess not," I said.
"Harry, that's probably why people age to begin with," he said. "Your body is a big collection of cells, right? Most of them get damaged or wear out and die. Your body replaces them. It's a continual process. But the thing is, every time the body makes a replacement, it's a little less perfect than the one that came before it."
"That copy-of-a-copy thing," I said. "I've heard about that, yeah."
"Right," Butters said. "That's how you're able to heal these injuries. It's why you have the potential to live so long. Your copies are perfect. Or at least a hell of a lot closer to it than most folks."
I blinked. "You're saying I can heal any injury?"
"Well," he said, "Not like mutant X-factor healing. If someone cuts an artery, you're gonna bleed out. But if you survive it, given enough time your body seems to be able to replace things almost perfectly. It might take you months, even several years, but you can get better when other people wouldn't."
I looked at him, and then at my gloved hand. I tried to talk, but my throat wouldn't work.
"Yeah," the little doctor said quietly. "I think you're going to get your hand back at some point. It didn't mortify or come off. There's still living muscle tissue there. Given enough time, I think you'll be able to replace scar tissue and regrow the nerves."
"That..." I said, and choked up. I swallowed. "That would be nice."
"We can help it along, I think," Butters said. "Physical therapy. I was going to talk to you about it next visit. We can go over it then."
"Butters," I said. "Uh. Wow, man. This is..."
"Really exciting," he said, eyes gleaming.
"I was going to say amazing," I said quietly. "And then I was going to say thank-you."
He grinned and twitched a shoulder in a shrug. "I calls them like I see them."
I stared down at my hand and tried to twiddle my fingers. They sort of twitched. "Why?" I asked.
"Why what?"
"Why am I able to make good copies?"
He blew out a breath and pushed his hand through his wiry hair, grinning. "I have no freaking clue. Neat, huh?"
I stared down at the X-ray film for a moment more, then put my hand in my duster's pocket. "I hoped you could help me get some information," I said.
"Sure, sure," Butters replied. He went to his polka suit and started taking it apart. "Is something going on?"
"I hope not," I said. "But let's just say I've got a real bad feeling. I need to know if there have been any odd deaths in the area in the past day or two."
Butters frowned. "Odd how?"
"Unusually violent," I said. "Or marks of some kind of murder method consistent with a ritual killing. Hell, I'll even take signs of torture prior to death."
"Doesn't sound like anyone I've met," Butters said. He took off his sunglasses and put on his normal black-rimmed glasses. "Though I'm not done for tonight. Let me check the records and see who's in the hiz-ouse."
"Thank you," I said.
Butters knocked a few flyers off his chair and sat down. He dragged a keyboard out from under a medical magazine and gave me a significant look.
"Oh, right," I said. I backed away from his desk to the far side of the room. Proximity to me tended to make computers malfunction to one degree or another. Murphy still hadn't forgiven me for blowing out her hard drive, even though it had happened only the once.
Butters got on his computer. "No," he said, after a moment's reading and key thumping. "Wait. Here's a guy who got knifed, but it happened way up in the northwest corner of the state."