Mind Games

by Heather W. Petty

  “Riva Durand.”

  “And your age?”

  “Fourteen.”

  I nodded once and turned to Lock. “A parent leaving her child at home for an extended period of time is what police call ‘child neglect.’ And because Riva is too young to stay by herself, they’ll toss her in a group home, where she’ll stay until they decide whether to charge the mother or not.”

  Lock had stared at me for a few seconds.

  I lowered my voice. “Or you can help her before anyone else finds out.”

  Lock frowned, but he pulled a chair over by mine for Riva and then plopped into his rolling chair and glided over to us. “Tell me everything you remember about the day she left.”

  He hadn’t solved this one from the comforts of his lab, but he’d found the girl’s mother pretty readily. She had crashed on the couch of a friend, sleeping off the aftereffects of a too-long weekend, and lost track of the days—or some other excuse that really meant she’d wanted to forget she had a daughter to care for. It was the first time one of Lock’s cases stayed with me well after it was over. I’d even waited outside Riva’s house the next couple of nights to make sure her mother came home, which is when I found out that Riva had younger siblings, just like me, only hers were all under the age of five.

  Lock, however, had solved the puzzle, and that was that. And when I found him in his lab the next day at lunch and suggested we do something to make sure it didn’t happen again, Lock’s only suggestion was to report Riva’s mother to the police. Of course it was.

  “We already discussed that option and why it is an asinine one.”

  “That’s what the police are for.” He’d only realized his mistake after the words had left his mouth, but he couldn’t apologize, because he didn’t think he was wrong—only wrong to suggest it to me, apparently.

  “We barely got my brothers placed with Mrs. Hudson. What do you think will happen to Riva and her siblings? What if they don’t have a friend who still keeps in touch with his fifty-year-old nanny?”

  “She’s not our nanny,” Lock said. “Not anymore.”

  “Yes, that is the important point here.”

  Sherlock had frowned and gone back to his study of ash. He’d moved on to pipe tobacco since Riva’s visit. “Suppose they don’t have a way to stay together. Either we are satisfied with doing our part, or we call the police and think they are better off separated and cared for than together and neglected.”

  I’d stared at him, begging him to take back what he’d said. But he wouldn’t. Not even if I’d reminded him that if he’d been as flippant with me, my brothers would be in the system at that moment. That if I were Riva’s age, if I were even one year younger, I would have been in a group home instead of free to stay at my own house, because his precious law decided that being sixteen meant I could take care of myself as long as I had a suitable place to live, but being fourteen meant Riva couldn’t.

  I would never remind him of any of that, though. It would’ve been a waste of time. No, he wouldn’t even think of anything but those ridiculous piles of ash. So I’d said, “If you’d use your giant brain for something that matters for once.” And then I’d stormed out of the lab, sure I was done with his pathetic law-and-order ideals for good. But he’d shown up outside each of my afternoon classes and followed me onto the bus home, until I no longer had the energy to ignore him.

  We’d only just resolved everything two days ago, and I was bringing it up again. For what? To make him see how much what he did could matter to a person?

  “It’s not just pets and baubles,” I said. “Finding someone’s guardian hardly equates to a bauble.”

  Sherlock scowled out the bus window. “That puzzle barely took me a day to work out.”

  “She now knows where her mother is.”

  “Wasn’t it you who suggested we needed to do more?”

  I sighed and bit back all the things I wanted to say. I wasn’t about to rehash our argument over something so stupid. Instead, I decided to start a new one. “I thought it was all about the puzzle for you.”

  Sherlock looked back at me, and I kept my eyes on my booklet. When he spoke, his tone was softer than I expected. “We could still call the police.”

  I shouldn’t have been surprised, really. But sometimes that boy was so clueless, I had to wonder whether he had any thoughts in his head at all. “The police.”

  “I just mean—”

  “After everything you’ve witnessed.” He had nothing to say to that, so we stared at each other while the bus slowed and came to a stop. I stood, rolling my booklet into a tube as I stomped down the steps and off onto the street. He chased after me and fell into rhythm with my stride. Then he reached for my hand, which I let him hold without realizing until it was too late to pull it back without looking like a pouty child.

  “Can you really not see past your father’s version of the law to what it is supposed to be?” he asked.

  I scowled. “The law is not absolute. Laws are ever wavering, affected by the good and bad of those in position to create and enforce them, which leaves some citizens more subject to the law than others.”

  “Are you speaking of wealth?”

  “Of course. Wealth, race, gender, disability, orientation—anything that breeds prejudice also breeds injustice.”

  “And the law is the only thing that can fight those injustices. Do you really think corruption and prejudice will lessen without the authority of law?”

  “Are you so afraid we would all become monsters without the law?”

  “Not all.”

  “Who then?”

  He looked at me, then away. Me? Was he afraid of what I would become? I studied his profile for a few moments, then glanced down at our still-clutched hands. I tried to slide mine free, but he held fast. He was right to be worried for me. He was wrong that the law would stop me, however. It never would.

  But I had to know what he really thought. “Are you such a believer in the law? Or are you just afraid of who I might become outside of it?”

  “You . . .” Lock paused just long enough to let me think I was right. Then his expression went blank. Was he actually afraid of me? I’d never even considered the idea, but it was possible. Probable, even. He’d seen me at my most vulnerable and most dark—all within the span of a single day. I’d have to wonder if he wasn’t afraid of me, really.

  “I don’t know,” he said at last. “Am I afraid of what you might be? Or am I afraid of what I know for certain I would be without the constraints of law?” He looked me straight in the eyes and asked, “Am I more afraid of you or myself?”

  I hadn’t expected him to say that, and I could tell by the sudden furrow of his brow that he hadn’t expected to say it either. But he quickly recovered. “So, let us say that you are right, and there is no justice in the world. Then all we have is the law!”

  “What is the point of law without justice?”

  “It is still the law. It is a contract between the people in a community on how to live together peacefully.”

  “But without justice, the law is empty. Why follow something that has no benefit?”

  Sherlock tightened his grip on my hand. He didn’t say anything else until we crossed to Baker Street. “It still applies, whether it benefits you or not.”

  I shook the hair back from my face and gazed up at the starless sky. “Then should I say that the law does not apply to me, because I choose not to accept it?”

  “We are to be anarchists then?”

  I sighed. “Anarchy is chaos, as is the law. They belong together. Anything that arbitrary is useless. . . . Do not smile at me, Sherlock Holmes.”

  He didn’t even try to heed my words. “I can’t help it.”

  “You can. You choose not to.” I bumped his side with my arm and he started to laugh, but the sound of it died away sooner than was natural. We took only one more step before we stopped walking.

  My house was surrounded by people, with two cars in fro
nt—one dark sedan and one gray police car with blue flashing lights. Officers were coming in and out of the front door. We started running up the street, and when I got a little closer, I saw a blond woman standing at the bottom of the steps, her arms protectively surrounding my younger brothers, Michael and Sean. Freddie, the oldest of my brothers, stood just in front of them, his arms crossed to face down the uniformed officer who was peering at him over his notebook.

  “This is a restricted area,” an officer said as I ducked under some police tape that formed a lazy barrier around the cars and our stoop. But his slight smirk told me that he knew exactly who I was.

  “This is my house,” I said. I instantly labeled him as one of my father’s. It was a little game I had played in the long hours spent at the police station giving statements. I sorted every officer I came into contact with as “father’s,” “not father’s,” or “worthless regardless of loyalties.”

  I started forward and he reached out to block me again, but Lock intervened and I left him behind to explain things. The officer facing Freddie was almost sneering when I finally reached them.

  “You say she’s your auntie?” the officer asked. “She’ll have to prove it.”

  “Not to you,” the woman said, her American accent bringing a smile to my lips. She turned to wink at me and a flood of relief washed away a few of the knots in my brain that I hadn’t realized were plaguing me. “I’m late, aren’t I?”

  Alice.

  In the days after my father was jailed, I’d had to fight through an exhausting pile of government forms and rules and protocols to keep my brothers together and out of a facility. Mrs. Hudson immediately filed to take them in herself and was granted interim care of the boys, which would last only eight weeks. I’d had no idea what we’d do beyond that. And apparently I wouldn’t need to know.

  “Aunt Alice!” I said. I managed to return Michael’s and Seanie’s questioning stares with a quick nod that seemed to put them somewhat at ease. Michael even reached over to take Alice’s hand, which made me desperate to ruffle his hair. Instead, I placed myself between Fred and Officer Sneery, who seemed to be eyeing everyone’s reactions a little too closely. “I didn’t think you’d make it until next month or I would’ve told the boys their auntie was coming.”

  “They were surprised,” she said, smiling at Seanie, who looked immediately at the ground. “But Mrs. Hudson helped introduce me. And Fred here even remembered me from way back.”

  Alice, of course, wasn’t our aunt. Our mother’s sister could’ve lived out of the country or around the block for all we heard from her, which was never. Alice had been Mother’s best friend and biggest fan when they were young. She was also the only member of my mother’s con-artist crew to escape death at my father’s hand.

  Alice turned back to the officer. “I have my papers in order and filed with Tri-borough Children’s Services. These children are now in my temporary care pending a full care order. So, if you’ll please vacate our house.”

  The officer cleared his throat and leaned between us. “I heard these kids’ aunt lives in Australia.”

  “You should be careful who you listen to, Officer”—I made a point of tracing his silver nametag with a hovering finger—“Parsons, is it?”

  “You must be the liar,” he said, looking rather pleased with himself as he sketched a word across his notebook. “Or, I meant to say, daughter. Slip of the tongue.”

  “Clever, our officer Parsons. Isn’t he clever, Aunt Alice?”

  “Ever so,” Alice said in her most sardonic American accent.

  A flash went off behind us and my heart sank. Someone had called the press. Still, I kept my voice light, even as I shifted my body to keep Freddie out of their view. “So what’s all this? Did you miss us?”

  “We got a tip—,” he started, but his words were drowned out by shouting.

  “Free Moriarty! Free the innocent! Free Moriarty!”

  “Send him to prison where he belongs! Clean up our police force!”

  “Free Moriarty!”

  Our protesters were back, both sides. One bald man calling for my father’s hanging in the town square and one tiny, curly-haired, red-lipped woman shouting the others down. She was our very own version of Sally Alexander, only instead of throwing paper packets of flour at Miss World candidates, our Sally had been screaming vulgarities at me and my family every day since my father had been incarcerated.

  Perhaps she didn’t deserve such a distinguished nickname, but there was something about her I liked. Maybe it was the way she jabbed at the police with her bony elbows to get them off her whenever they tried to take her away for disturbing the public decorum of Baker Street. Or the way she plied them with baked goods and a Thermos of tea the next time she saw them, like she’d known them forever. She was on the side of a monster, but she allowed no one to dampen her efforts to be heard. She would not be silenced. How could I fail to respect that?

  “Find the real Regent’s Park killer! Give us back our sergeant! Free Moriarty!”

  Her counterpart looked like nobody, and even though his message was the more righteous of the two, something about him was entirely off-putting. He always lifted his nose a bit when he looked at us, like he could smell our father’s genetic code wafting off our skin. He was a bit of a git, really.

  “Toss away the key! No tolerance for police corruption!”

  Still, he said all the right things.

  A heavy hand landed on my shoulder from behind. “Inspector wants to see you.”

  The hand was gone before I could see who’d touched me, but when I turned, Sherlock stood pointed nose to bulbous nose with what had to be London’s tallest, widest constable.

  With a smile in his voice, but not at his lips, Lock said, “I must insist that you do not touch her. But do lead the way to the inspector. I’m fascinated to hear what he has to say.”

  The giant constable’s shoulders rolled back to better puff out his massive chest, but he didn’t retaliate further than that. With his eyes still on Lock, he lifted one sausage-like finger toward me and said, “Not you. Just that one there.”

  “Oh, what to do?” Lock lamented, not backing down one inch himself. “She’s a minor, so I’m afraid she must be accompanied by her guardian”—he gestured toward Alice—“who is rather busy at the moment caring for three young boys kept out of their house for reasons no one has shared with us yet.”

  The constable huffed and then started toward the house without another word. Sherlock shrugged at me and took my hand, and then we both followed along behind him.

  Chapter 3

  Detective Inspector Mallory sat at the head of our kitchen table, one long, slim leg draped over the other like he’d been invited for tea. As we approached, he took a gulp from a tiny cup without acknowledging Sherlock and me, then shuffled through the papers within the manila folder splayed open in front of him. Mallory cleared his throat and the two officers who had been snooping through our kitchen drawers and cabinets filed out of the room, leaving us alone with him—the DI who had pulled me out from under my father’s strangling hands.

  I should, perhaps, have been grateful for that at least, but I couldn’t seem to rid myself of past images of him and Detective Sergeant Day standing on our stoop and doing nothing to rescue us from the drunken monster inside the house, of their overly cheerful waves as they abandoned me and my brothers to deal with the monster on our own, of the way their eyes couldn’t seem to find the welts and bruises on my brothers’ faces. And if those weren’t enough reasons to despise the man, I could still clearly remember the dismissal in his eyes when I’d sat up in my hospital bed and accused my father of killing all those people in Regent’s Park, including my best friend, Sadie. I remembered each word he spoke, when the inspector looked me straight in my battered face, just hours after he’d stopped my father from killing me, and said, “Being an angry drunk does not make one a killer, Miss Moriarty.”

  Mallory kept us standing there in th
e silence for what felt like minutes, and when he did speak, his voice was quiet and calm. “Miss Moriarty.”

  My tone wasn’t as gentle. “Mallory.” I wanted to add a few dozen questions about who the hell he thought he was and why the hell he was in my house, but his continued silence could only mean that he wanted me to explode. I wasn’t about to do anything to fulfill that man’s wants.

  Mallory sighed and flipped over a page from one half of the folder to the other. “Do you have the sword that killed those people in the park?”

  “That’s what all this is about? You’re looking for my father’s weapon?”

  When Mallory didn’t answer, Sherlock spoke up. “The officer outside said you’d received a tip. Is that why you’re here? Someone said the missing weapon is here in the house?”

  I’d made several stupid mistakes in my dealings with my father and his crimes, but none were as dumb as throwing the weapon he used to kill all those people into the lake in Regent’s Park. I’d thought at the time I was breaking his serial killer ritual, stealing his weapon away to make everyone safer. But it didn’t stop him at all, and only aided his fight against the charges in the end. My father had kept what could have become the figurative smoking gun in his closet, and I had no one but myself to blame that it was no longer there as proof of his guilt.

  “A tip,” I said, suddenly very sure who had instigated our night’s chaos. “Was it an actual call? Or did one of my father’s loyal officers suddenly get a hunch?”

  Mallory flipped another page but did not look up. It was almost as if he thought I wasn’t worth the effort. “Your answer, please.”

  “Don’t you think I have the right to know why there are strangers snooping through all my private things before I subject myself to your questions?”

  “No.” He hit his fist against the table hard enough to make his teacup rattle in the saucer. Then he cleared his throat and softened his tone again. “You gave up those rights when you accused a police detective of being a serial murderer and then chose to remain living in his house.”

  “I am sixteen, which you know gives me every right to choose to live on my own, and this is my house.”