Murder with Lens: A Sherlock Holmes Case (221B Baker Street Series)

by S. K. Lloyds

  John felt himself go pale. Why Reese’s being here should fill him with such dread, he wasn’t certain. He had the distinct feeling she was in danger out in the city far from her protectors. “Oh, hell.”

  Reese’s red lips screwed up a moment. “Who was prepping for a date?”

  Sherlock’s head rose a little. “Where’s your minder?”

  “Napping.” Ree stepped into the room and looked about her curiously. “I wasn’t joking. I mean, about the microscope, too, but we have to go, Sherlock. It won’t be a half an hour before they figure out I slipped Lewis some of my Ambien. They’ve got to have the wits to send someone to check here, don’t they? Even if they are apes.”

  Sherlock nodded. “Yes. Ideally, they’ll get here, find you, and take you to the Yard-”

  “Sherlock!” her red lips thinned aggressively, “Do you know how hard it is to slip those guys? I don’t throw away my stash of sleeping pills for nothing. I’ll lose privileges now, until I hit America again, you realize. But I need to go with you.”

  “You need to find a pattern from the maps I gave you.” Sherlock replied.

  “Hello. I have my iPad with me, genius. Besides, the array is random. I ran stats. Not significant. Lawrence didn’t have rich enough information. However, the little stick figure drawings are interesting. Looks like there are more, but they only come in two varieties. One is always sitting up or rampant; the other always has a little plus sign or cross under the extended front leg.” She walked into the room and showed him her iPad’s screen. “Two different forces at work here. Oh, and the infinity symbol stands for his CIA contacts in London. The Langley head offices of Think Tank, they use an infinity symbol over the ‘i’. He was to check in on this corner here. Lawrence only had to show up in front of the camera and wait for our junk mail to hit his phone. But that night, he missed.”

  “Two forces,” Sherlock’s eyes combed the map. His voice was quiet. “Thank you… and you should go back to Scotland Yard now.”

  She gave a very teenaged guffaw. “Sherlock, I’m not going. I just explained. I need to do this.”

  “You need to help us look for a professional assassin? Why?” Sherlock asked her. “The odds are excellent that he’ll try to kill us.”

  “CIA think tanks?” Sarah’s head turned so suddenly her sunny hair whipped. “A professional assassin? You’re doing what, John?”

  But John only shook his head and squeezed one of her hands.

  Sherlock closed his eyes and sighed. “You’re 19 years old, Ree. No. You cannot come with me.”

  “Us.”

  “John!” Sherlock exclaimed and got to his feet. He thought the better of whatever he’d been about to say and pointed at the door. “Ree, leave here and go back to the Yard. I’ll contact you.”

  “I don’t take orders from unaffiliated Assets.” Reese circumnavigated him and flopped down on the couch beside Sarah. “You make cookies too. God knows how you managed to spend the last couple of years unattached, Doc, though considering what a hound dog the last guy was, maybe you’re gun-shy. Well… unless… open the Tupperware already. Let’s have a taste.” Ree rubbed her hands together.

  Sarah stared at the girl, looked from her to Sherlock’s vexed face and back again. Slowly, she reached down and pushed the Tupperware container to Reese. “How did she know that?”

  John tapped his fork on the nearly empty plate before him. “This is Reese. She’s with the CIA, Sarah. In America, the government runs a program for people like Holmes. She’s one of their star pupils. She’s the CIA’s ‘Sherlock’ so to speak.”

  “I don’t have a cool job title like Consulting Detective.” She took out Holmes’ badge, which prompted John to feel about his person and then frown. He extended a hand to her and she placed the leather badge holder on his palm.

  Sarah brightened tremendously. “No jokes. You’re like Sherlock?”

  “Being smart,” Reese said around a cheek plump with date squares, “it’s not just for boys anymore. There goes my theory you weren’t able to cook. Now, if you could talk to him about taking me on this hunt for Delov, Doc Watson?”

  “I think he’s right.” John told her. “Reese, it’s very dangerous. You’re inexperienced. We’d have more of a job having to worry about your safety.”

  “Thank you, John,” Sherlock put his hands on his hips and stared down at Reese. She glanced over him and then looked at Sarah.

  “Seriously, I heard it on the way up to the flat. Who is Miss Banana Curls?”

  “Not your business.” Sherlock said coldly.

  Ree stood up, planted a boot on the coffee table and stepped over the top of it to face Sherlock. Her temper was frayed. “Quit doing that! I know you were raised ‘in the wild’ or whatever, but you seem ignorant of exactly how few of us there are out there. If we’re not each other’s business, we’re really screwed. I’ve been in contact with 13 people good enough, I’m reasonably sure, that they could have stood in and picked that guy out of seconds of blurry video. That’s it. By the way, trying to send me back to Scotland Yard kind of negates the idea we’re not one another’s business.”

  Of all the things Sherlock might have said – rude or reasonable – he blinked down at Reese and chose, “Only thirteen?” His tone had changed. That drew John’s attention at once.

  “You’re not the oldest of us either.” Reese told him. She opened her arms. “Just tell me?”

  “Sofia Rothingham. Why are you asking?” Sherlock cocked his head.

  Ree heaved a sigh at him. “Way to waste all that genetic potential, scout. Her name isn’t on the list of 13, and she’s not in the American group.” She circled him to drink in Holmes’ environment.

  “My God,” he said coldly, forced to turn to follow her movements in the flat. “The CIA has made you take leave of your senses. Or is a master race their next plan for your team? Soon they’ll try grafting. Be okay with that?”

  “Look, I’ve been around our kind my whole life, so maybe I’m not the one who’s taken leave of her senses,” Ree laughed and returned to her scrutiny of the room, but her focus landed squarely on Sherlock, as if that end had ever been in doubt. “We wake up in the morning in jigsaw-world, these traits and actions and oddities, and multiple dozens of other mad, fun, screwed-up things everywhere. The apes never see them. Even if you point them out, some apes just can’t. New things, everything, is a collection of symbols and infinite codes to our type. You and I were born with the tarnhelm, lets us be whatever we want, and makes us invisible when we need to be – we can do that.” She swung a finger up to his temple, almost gun-like, “This brain is a born codebreaker. It’s like breathing. You don’t turn off breathing and live, stupid. So, given all that, what does Sofia do?”

  His voice was quiet. “She’s an artist.”

  “Oh Christ,” Ree tipped her head back and laughed. “You’re such a romantic, Holmes. So naïve: running around free; slumming with your doctor friends; trying to connect with the apes. But will you think about it? This girl, she could never lie to you. She could never hide from you, not anything. The more you’d care for her, the more you’d cage her, and she’s an artist. They do badly in cages. Your attention would be keener than any razor blade, and you couldn’t turn it off. But to me, it’s normal. To your own kind, you’re sane. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you run off and get hacked up like Lawrence Waters. No way. I’ll be there. I’ll be your backup.”

  Sherlock kept his eyes fixed on the girl before him. His expression was, by now, unreadable. It was possibly his most polished technique; over on the couch, John was transfixed, but Sherlock betrayed nothing.

  “You’re not changing my mind.” he said.

  Her tone was level. “Will you just trust me?”

  “You’re a clannish, a cheat, and a thief.”

  “And so are you.”

  She snatched the coat out of his hand and held it fast. He couldn’t leave without it, and, therefore, without her. “Imagine a
world where you don’t have to explain every… single… thing, every time?”

  “I can’t.”

  “Then forget the apes. Trust me. I can handle myself, and if things go horribly wrong I’ll be your backup, even if it’s just to pull the fire alarm.” She stared up at him.

  John chewed his almost forgotten eggs, perfunctorily, as he watched. The tension in the air was numbing. The two were like opposite sides of the same tuning fork.

  “This is preposterous.” Sherlock told her. But he was calm when he took his coat back.

  “Okay, and I’ll go sit in the cab with Sarah if it comes down to that…. But, Sherlock, try to understand, I knew Lawrence for months. He used to just send me texts like ‘Good morning’ and ‘How’s it going’. I’ve never had texts like that. No one gives a crap how it’s going. I really want to get who did this,” she turned and carefully glanced through curtains at the street below, before adding, “but not at the cost of your life.”

  “Then you agree to listen to my every word and obey without question,” Sherlock said.

  Reese shut her eyes and tried to ignore the indignity lighting up her cheeks. “I do. I guess that’ll have to happen. It’s settled,” she turned toward Sarah. “And you’ll stay in the cab. With a First Aid kit. Better safe than sorry, right?”

  ***

  John frowned. “Sarah’s not coming with us, Reese. I’m sorry but-”

  Sarah slid into her coat and picked up her purse. She walked around the coffee table and reached out to link arms with Reese, in fact. “If we lose contact, or it looks dodgy, I’m phoning Detective Inspector Lestrade.” Sarah gave Reese a stunning smile. “I’m so glad to meet you, Reese.”

  “Then you’re seriously misinformed. But there’s no time to worry about that. Listen closely and you can hear-”

  “Distant sirens on the approach,” Sherlock agreed. “Shut the doors, John. Let’s go.”

  John just managed to dash out from the kitchen. He kept a comprehensive First Aid Kit there. He handed it to Sarah, and, if nothing else, it freed poor Reese from her feminine companionship. But, John saw before they hurried down the stairs, it also steadied Sarah’s nerves.

  The police arrived quickly. Sherlock led their number into Mrs. Hudson’s empty flat – the one she’d yet to rent out. They stood in silence until the sound of boots charging up the stairs died, and Sherlock’s phone began to vibrate. John scrambled to shut off his cell’s ringer, accomplishing it just in the nick of time, in fact. With the sound of boots overhead, Sherlock led them out onto the sidewalk, behind the tall, turned back of Scott who studiously scanned traffic, and all the way down, until they carefully rounded the corner and caught a cab.

  “That was crazy,” Reese giggled as soon as they set off toward the Isle of Dogs. John noticed it, because he’d never seen – or heard – her so animated. “That was… cat-like. You’re not just smart, you’re tricky. That’s cool.”

  “Focus.” Sherlock passed her Lawrence’s phone. “We know Delov was hired to kill your source as messily as possible, doubtless a message to you and the CIA to back off your investigation of the Photography Club. Tell me what the Club is doing. Not what the CIA thinks, or wants to think, tell me what you believe they’re doing?”

  “Oh,” she waded through her thoughts for a moment, pressing buttons on Lawrence’s phone. “CIA is convinced they’re up to some God-awful bad stuff to strike at the heart of the civilized world, and such. That isn’t sensible. The Club is way smarter than the average bear, and it stands to reason, they’ll naturally love technology. Technology is civilization. Tech makes the Club’s life easier. I mean smuggling people, money, art, just basically doing whatever feels right, that’s Club life: if that’s ‘liberating’ a few paintings stolen in World War II and returning them to their rightful owners, that’s what they do. They aren’t evil. Well, they aren’t just evil. They’re something new. The world’s unfair. And it’s like they decided they’ve been given their gifts in order to correct that disparity. Sometimes it takes the form of kidnappings, executions, and mayhem. Sometimes it looks like exposing corrupt government officials, freeing the wrongfully imprisoned, and playing Robin Hood. The Club is complicated and they don’t want the attention of the CIA.”

  Sherlock sank back in his seat to think about that. Reese continued to fiddle with the phone.

  “Is what they’re doing directed?” Sherlock asked.

  For a moment, she stared at him. Then she switched to Latin. “Not at first. But recently, it’s started to be. They’re through the smoke tests, and about ready to go live. I’m not always so sure I want to interrupt them.”

  Holmes smiled and replied in Latin as well. “John knows enough of this language for this to be problematic.”

  “I don’t mind him knowing. He’s not an ape. He’s only borderline, a great ape.”

  Sherlock laughed and looked in Sarah’s and John’s direction. Sarah was blank. She honestly didn’t know enough Latin. John’s brow was furrowed, indicating he was trying to follow, but was struggling. Holmes took this as a good sign. What was a bad sign – a very bad one – was Reese’s last statement. The Photography Club had just killed a person she alleged was her friend. “Why wouldn’t you want to interrupt them? They murdered Waters. I thought-”

  “I’m sorry,” she rubbed her pale face. “I want the murderer brought to justice. No doubt about it. But think what they want, Sherlock.”

  “Which is?”

  “To carve a place in this world for us to exercise power freely,” she motioned between Sherlock and herself, “instead of having to go the speed of the slowest among us, accepting the inefficiencies of the planet of the apes. They’ve been ruthlessly pursuing that goal.”

  “Idiotic.” Sherlock fiddled with a button on his coat. “The numbers are against us. It doesn’t take a genius to understand there is only one resource,” Sherlock told her, “our futures are inexorably bound.”

  “Why shouldn’t they try to fix things?” Reese’s brows drew up.

  “Because when they need a problem fixed, they hire assassins.”

  “So does the Israeli government.” She pointed out.

  “And I live in the U.K.” Sherlock replied. He sighed and switched to English. “Not much further now.” But it was also a world away. Reese was compromised.

  For his part, with the CIA and Met police abroad looking for her, John felt relieved when they made it into the Isle of Dogs, past newly developed towers of glass, past the expensive, upscale apartments, new to this area, and into the smaller, and old, stone affairs. This was the old Isle of Dogs. The apartment complexes looked cramped and aged. Sherlock had the driver take them right through to the park where he slipped out.

  John caught Reese as she tried to follow. “Hey! Where’s he going?” She complained.

  “He’s dropping a note,” John pushed her back to her seat and made her settle there.

  “With whom?” she frowned at him. “It’s not exactly a public library over here.”

  “Homeless network.” John nodded and looked at Sarah’s dubious face. “I’ve seen him do it. Drop a note, and in a few hours they’re hanging about outside with an answer.”

  Sarah’s nose wrinkled, “I hardly believe-”

  “The premise is sound, but we don’t have a few hours to be at this.” Reese sighed.

  “We do.” John reminded her. “You don’t.”

  *~ “Fine,” she sank back in her seat and looked around her. “God… I’m bored already. It’s such a pain in the ass. I bet either of you can just walk out the door in the morning. I have to pack half my media center – God.”

  Sarah brightened at the girl’s exuberance. “Uhm, maybe you can fix my phone?”

  Reese took the pink thing sourly, but fell into concentration in seconds. It took about three minutes for Reese to correct issues in the software. She handed over the phone to Sarah and smiled. “I put my numbers in there.”

  This charmed Sarah. “Did you?
”

  “For when Sherlock asks,” she nodded.

  Now Sarah spoke slowly, clearly dubious. “For when… Sherlock-”

  “You wouldn’t believe how hard it is to get a decent sounding board when you’re us.”

  Sherlock was back in less than five minutes. “Got him.”

  “Just like that?” John was boggled.

  “This isn’t a matter of speaking to a random node in the Network, John. This park is where you’ll often find The Doves.” He climbed into the cab and handed over a scrap of napkin to the driver. “Address.”

  Sarah shook her head, “Okay. Who are the Doves?”

  Reese glanced up from Sarah’s phone. “Like as in the Oracle of Zeus at Dodona? The three priestesses that answered questions there were called the Doves – the Peleiades.”

  “That exactly,” Sherlock told Reese. “Because they live in parks with stands of trees, they’ve come to be known as The Doves. So they wouldn’t let you read Grimm’s – great stuff, by the way, really ought to look into it – but they allow you to read Greek and Roman Myths?”

  “Not much they could do about it,” she grinned across at him. “After all, I had to learn Greek and Roman now, didn’t I? It’s what civilized people do.”

  He gave her a sidelong glance that became a lopsided smile.

  When they arrived at a particularly destitute looking corner and Sherlock demanded to get out, the cabby glanced back at the ladies and flicked the locks. His accent was thick, “Look ’ere, friend-”

  “They’ll be staying with you. Pull the car into the alley out back.” Sherlock told him seconds before he was out on the street and walking.

  “Don’t worry about the fare,” Reese told John as the man reached into his pocket. She laid her small, pale hand over his wrist. “I’ve got it. It’s no sweat.”

  “You’re sure?” he asked.

  “John, it’s no sweat, now get out,” Reese stared out the window. “Don’t let him go alone.”

  “Be careful,” Sarah squeezed him as he unbuckled. “Both of you – really careful.”