Mortimer Lindquist

Mortimer Lindquist is a medium and psychic counselor. He is an Ectomancer. He first appears in Grave Peril. Also: Death Masks, Dead Beat, and Ghost Story.

Description
Morty was an expert on ghosts. He mostly conducted seances. He helped people contact the dead to settle unfinished business. and offered a prediction service to help clients make decisions. Harry went to him for information from time to time over the course of the series.

Evolution of Mortimer Lindquist
In Grave Peril, Mortimer was a con. He ran seances for people not really contacting the dead very often. In Death Masks, Morty has resumed contacting the dead and is slowly getting back into the swing of things. In Dead Beat, things had improved for Morty over the last couple of years. He was once barely able to crawl out of a bottle long enough to run a con. Now he's using his genuine ability to contact the dead rather than fraud.

Appearance

 * In Grave Peril, Mortimer is a little man with rounded shoulders and a shining, balding head.


 * In Death Masks, Lindquist is described as a "dumpy, balding man in his late forties", but well dressed.


 * In Dead Beat, Mortimer now bears a scar on his scalp from the last time he spoke with Harry. It was on the Larry Fowler show when the electricity went crazy around Harry's magic.


 * In Ghost Story, Morty had given up on the toupee and the "comb-over' style and has gone completely bald. and lost weight going from nealy obese to just stout. He's in his early fifties, and under five and a half feet tall.

Character
Harry thinks he plays on peoples' grief to take them for all he can. But when Morty gives him some valuable notes to fight the Nightmare though he didn't have to, Harry that maybe there still some of the person he used to be still in him.

Not only has Morty started using his genuine ability as an ectomancer rather than conning people, he's also protective of the spirits, not wanting use them to help Dresden find the Necromancers who wold destroy them. Morty stands up to Harry which surprised him—Morty has grown a backbone. He may not stand up for his fellow human beings but he would for the dead.

Morty is a self-admitted coward,  but when it comes down to it, he's much braver than he appears. He refused to let Corpsetaker take over his body, despite being tortured for a day.

He never had much courage or or strength, but he was smart and tough enough to survive a long career that had been very dangerous.

Mortimer proves to be brave and loyal to a fault, earning him Dresden's respect. When, in the end, Morty shields Murphy from the others seeing her cry, Harry thinks to himself that he wished he been bright enough to see what kind of guy he was while he was still alive.

About Mortimer as an Ectomancer
Morty was an expert on ghosts, a specialist on purely technical matters regarding spirits and shades, his opinion carries significant weight.

Details:

 * He calls himself a "Ghost Whisperer".
 * Uriel told Sir Stuart Winchester that he'd watched over his descendent Mortimer faithfully, and since he's grown so much in the last few years, he'll be just fine.

Published works

 * Ghosts of Chicago
 * The Spook Factor
 * They Shall Rise

and two or three other titles. Harry says Mortimer did good work there.

Mortimer's theory
He has a theory that the barrier between this world and the Nevernever is slowly being torn away. He says that the border has been waggling back and forth for the last two weeks. The instability has been making it easier to form bigger, stronger ghosts when people die.

Magic

 * Harry tells Morty that he thinks he is one of the most powerful ectomancers that he knows and that Morty could do a lot of good in the fight against the Red Court vampires having access to all kinds of informations via ghosts and spirits.


 * In Ghost Story, his true abilities as an Ectomancer are revealed, as he can control ghosts by letting them possess him and gaining their knowledge and power. In  this book Lea tells Harry that Morty has power easily equal to Harry's own, if of a different flavor, which is why the Corpse taker wants his body. Morty has simply been smart enough to dodge the White Council from noticing him, much as Elaine has done.


 * Mortimer tames Wraiths that go insane to prevent them from causing damage to Chicago and help them pass on.  They are later called the Lecter Specters.


 * Dresden acknowledged that he was White Council material. (ref?)

Biography
Twenty years prior, he was a good investigator. He has a sensitivity to spiritual energies and apparitions—ghosts. He was a good Ectomancer. He still has some sources in the Nevernever. The White Council had sent someone to visit him.

Mortimer's house
His home is changed several times throughout the series.
 * In Grave Peril, his house has a fake gothic look with plastic gargoyles, a black iron gate on a link fence and plater statues lining the walkway. The house itself was a white stucco with a red roof that looked more like it was from southern California. It looked more like a haunted mansion at Disneyland. The interior had lots of black curtains over walls and doorways. Red and black candles were all over and a plastic human skull on the book shelves. There was table with several chairs around it. The head chair was wooden, high-backed and carved with monstrous beings.


 * In Dead Beat, Mortimer moved out of he stucco ranch house and into a converted duplex in Bucktown. He leases both halves and uses one side for hire office, the other side for his home. The entry hall was a small waiting room. His seance room was a richly colored room containing a large dark wooden table, polished, with matching hand carved chairs. Candles lined the room.


 * In Ghost Story, Morty's stucco house, which odd for Chicago, is in Harwood Heights and has a red roof. His front yard now has a Japanese garden that contained: some hedges, a koi pond with a wooden bridge, and bonsai trees made from trees native to America—that must be his own hand-work since few do that kind of work.  Morty's once staged seance room had been transformed into a living room with comfy sofas and chairs. The entire house was redecorated and renovated from dismal to beautiful. Mort's office was part library part office with a warm fire in the fireplace.

Grave Peril
In Grave Peril, Harry Dresden asks for Mortimer's help in tracking a mean nasty ghost that attacked St. Mary's. Morty is leaving town, he's is scared of some super ghost that is coming. He said that something crossed the border last night that he never felt before. It's big, it's angry and it's going to start killing. He calls it a "Nightmare". Morty doubts that Dresden or anyone can stop it. Just before leaving in his cab, Morty points Harry to a box of notes he has hidden under his chair so that he'll be better armed to fight what's coming.

Death Masks
In Death Masks, Harry meets Mortimer on the Larry Fowler Show. He ask Morty what he found out about Susan. Morty says that Susan is alive and in Peru and was blocked from finding out anything more. Morty would only meet Harry there because he was afraid to meet him on the street because of Harry's "unsafe" reputation.

Dead Beat
In Dead Beat, Harry visits Mortimer to learn what he knows about the threat of the Necromancers in town. Morty says the dead are nervous and are difficult to call up even so close to Halloween. Necromancers can enslave ghosts, control them, even destroy them. He didn't want to asks the ghost for Harry because they could get hurt. He changes his mind when he learns that one of the people under harm is Karrin Murphy—he knows her dad's ghost. The ghosts mark a map with red ink showing where Black magic, specifically Necromancy has been used.

Ghost Story
In Ghost Story, Jack Murphy's Ghost (Karrin's dad) drops Harry off at his house where he runs into Sir Stuart Winchester. At first Mortimer declines Harry's request for help and closes himself behind a door with Ghost Dust in the paint. After Harry helped save Morty from a gunman, he agrees to help him with Stuart's convincing. Morty, Harry and Sir Stuart go to Murphy's Home where he told Murphy about Harry's ghost. Though she doesn't believe him at first, he acts as a go-between for Harry, Murphy and the Chicago Alliance.

Later, Morty is abducted by the Grey Ghost and Sir Stuart gets Harry to promise to get him back with his dying request. Harry finds him at the Big Hoods hideout where she—the Grey Ghost is Corpsetaker—was torturing him in a pit full of Wraiths trying to force him to consent to let him have her body. Harry returned with a ghost army of soldier ghosts led by Sir Stuart Winchester and the Lecter Specters to save him. The Soldiers and Lecters fought their way to rescue him against Evil Bob's forces in the Nevernever and the Lemurs and Big Hoods in the hideout. But Morty was upset that Harry brought them there. He had been protecting the Lecters from Corpsetaker who ate them to manifest and didn't need Morty's body anymore. She orderd Boz to kill Morty. Morty warned Harry, who had manifested to fight Boz, that it will harm him. Harry untied him, and Morty borrowed Stuart to help him tie up Boz. In the end, he ordered the Wraiths to get the Corpsetaker off of Molly, saving her, and then they pushed Corpsetaker into a Southbound Train. The EMTs looked after his injuries but he refused to go to the hospital.

Mortimer's description of himself
"You don't know what it's like, Dresden. To speak to things that exist in the past and in the future as well as in the now. To have them walk up to you at the salad bar and start telling you how they murdered their wife in her sleep. I mean, you think you've got a hold on things, that you understand, but in the end it all falls to pieces. A con is simpler, Dresden. You make order. People don't give a flying fuck if Uncle Jeffrey really forgives them for missing his last birthday party. they want to know that the world is a place where Uncle Jeffrey can and should forgive them. That's what I sell them. Closure. Like on TV they all want to know is that it's all going to work out in the end, and they're happy to pay for it."

"I mostly conducted seances. I do what I can to helped those who have lost loved ones or who need to contact them in the beyond in order to resolve issues left undone back here o earth. I also offer a predictions service in order to help clients make decisions on upcoming issues, and to try to warn them against possible danger."

Quotes
"I am what I am, Dresden. A coward. I don't appologize for it."