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

by S. K. Lloyds

  She looked around for video. “There’s a camera inside. Like a building camera.”

  “I’ll get Lestrade.” John raced until he found the police on their way up the stairs to the second floor. “Reese found a video camera. We need to see if it caught them taking Sherlock on the way out of here.”

  Donovan rolled her eyes, “On the way – you don’t even know Freak was-”

  “Oh for God’s sake, will you please try to keep up?” John gripped the railing and barked down the stairs at the police. “Video surveillance! We need to find it and watch it. Now!”

  When he straightened, he saw that Reese had come to a stop at the railing beside him. She was smiling at him grimly, her face lined with worry. “That cuts it. He’s officially ruined you, John. You’re the worst ape ever.”

  “We’re going to get him back in one piece, Reese.” John was so determined as he said this that he worried much of the sentiment was based on the fact that not getting him back was unimaginable. The feeling he would claw through fallen bodies to get to Sherlock was starting to choke John at the throat.

  She looked at the ceiling for a minute. “Okay. Video.”

  John followed her almost blindly. He followed her, he realized about an hour later, as he usually did Sherlock. In doing so, he witnessed what had to be one of the most astonishing feats of mind-bending concentration he’d ever seen. In the video room for the building there was a panel of several boxy televisions running feeds from the cameras.

  “Lock the doors,” Reese told the officers. “No one comes or goes. I’m about to go off the recorded feed.” It took her about three minutes to get familiar with the equipment. She did this with the assistance of the Security Guard who usually monitored. Finally, 20 minutes in, she got word the building was locked down. Reese turned off the lights and started tapping on the laptop that controlled the screens.

  “Does she know what she’s doing?” Donovan asked Special Agent Young.

  The woman’s head rose a little. “Thirty years of the Brain Trust program, and we’ve had seven people who could master this technique.”

  “Yeah, well,” Lestrade crossed his arms, “we could use a miracle right about now.”

  Young opened a hand. “I give you Reese.”

  Reese got everything the way she needed it and got to her feet.

  “No one speaks,” Young whispered.

  All the cameras stilled at once, the numbers going stationary at 6AM across 12 screens. Reese braced herself and put her hands up to her temples, almost like a pair of blinkers. After about 20 seconds of standing so, she tentatively reached out and pressed the mouse. This was difficult, as she didn’t take her eyes off the screens to do so.

  The taped feeds started rolling at once, all of them, very quickly. Reese fell back into her blinkered pose and froze there.

  Lestrade began, “There’s no way she can-”

  Young laid her small hand across his mouth. She leaned in to whisper, “She can. And she will. If you and your people shut the hell up. It’s what we trained her to do.”

  Reel after reel went black. They rocketed back to life in self-tests. This was what had happened during the power outages. When they went to black next, it was at the time she’d cut the live feed to review the tapes. It felt to John that he might have started breathing again only after that happened. “What was that?”

  “A trick we’d like to teach Sherlock. He has, we believe… many predispositions. The things he does, naturally, others must be drilled for years to learn. His visual system…” she blew out air, “I believe he has what we call general hyperacuity,” Young said quietly. “Believe me, Dr. Watson, we want to get him back as much as you do. I’ve seen Mr. Holmes work in the wild. Can you imagine what he could do if he was trained?” She sucked in a deep breath to steady herself.

  Cameras snapped on again, going quickly. They died out at different points and Ree stopped the remaining six. “Got them!”

  “Good girl, Reese,” Young muttered as she walked deeper into the room to meet her Asset. More loudly she said. “Walk me through it.”

  The girl started rolling one external camera. “Watch this guy here, panhandling by the newspaper box. John and Sherlock go in; he gets up and goes down around the corner at a pretty good clip.” That camera stopped and others started. “John gets a table. Sherlock’s never set foot in this place before, look at him. He can’t settle down. He’s still reading the place 10 and 20 minutes later. He’s been in and out three times.” She turned to John, “It’s like you took him to some epic movie.”

  “Really?” John blinked.

  “The pictures of the family and India on the walls alone, I would want time to look at it. He was just sucking it up.” She froze that camera and put it in high gear. “You talk to the server. Sherlock gets curious and watches in the picture’s reflection. Some kind of hand-signal to you,” she looked at John.

  “Oh that one,” John smiled bitterly. “That one’s kind of ‘You know what to do’. So I ordered him black tea with two sugars.”

  Reese nodded. “Now the server flirts with him. He retreats to sit with you, John. Outside of the proscribed roles he assigns them, he doesn’t do well with people at all.”

  “Poor socialization,” Young nodded as if this was expected. “He understands them on a macro level; can’t relate to them on personal levels.”

  “Considering what happened, it fits his profile.” Scott agreed with her quietly. John only just caught what he’d said, in fact, and he didn’t seem to be alone.

  Lestrade glanced. Neither of them had heard anything about a ‘profile’. John wondered what Scott meant.

  “Either way,” Reese slowed down the tape. “Watch the fire door here. I warn you the screen’s about to go black, but you see the beginnings of a shadow on the door before it goes. That’s the person called in to watch John and Sherlock, about to jack with the light above the door as soon as the power goes out. Simple thing, she did. She unscrewed the bulbs.” Reese tapped another screen. “Here she is coming in the front. See how lost she looks? This is another of the Club’s patsies, but at least we have a face this time. This one is a bit of a rush job. Sherlock must be getting under their skin somehow, or something forced their hands. We only get a tiny glance at Sherlock after this, but he’s alive and okay. This is him.”

  She rolled the only screen not faded to black forward. It went slowly. This was the camera from the downstairs hall. The freight elevator opened up and showed a glimpse of Sherlock’s shoulder in the lower corner. He was being supported by someone totally obscured in a hooded sweatshirt. However, Sherlock inexpertly lifted his head and squinted up until he saw the small domed camera.

  “He’s disoriented and not sure where he is… I don’t even know that he was sure any of this was real,” Young smiled tightly, “but he still spotted the camera. Outstanding.” She turned to Reese. “We need to find the man who watched the pair of them go in, and the girl who fiddled with the light-bulbs.”

  “Okay,” Reese nodded in agreement. “I need to be at my lab in the Yard, Young.”

  “Of course you do,” she gave Reese’s shoulder a squeeze. “Scott will take you.”

  “I want to go with John.” Reese glanced back at him. “He knows Sherlock best. That will help.”

  “That’s fine.” Young motioned in John’s direction. “Collect Sherlock’s coat and would you please do us the favour of watching Reese? I’m going to need Special Agent Scott.”

  John thought this a capital idea. He handed Reese Sherlock’s coat and folded into the car beside it. She held it on her knees, picked it up, and held it to her face a moment. When she laid it down again she leaned to John and whispered. “If they kill him… I mean, if they do that boy harm … they die.”

  As radical a thing, as chilling, as this was to hear, John couldn’t do anything but shut his eyes and agree with the sentiment.

  “Just get him back.” He said at last. Then he took out his phone and start
ed dialling Sherlock.

  ***

  It was 12 AM when they found the girl. They never found the man. There wasn’t much she could tell them. She was an addict looking for a fix. The lure of 100£ for unscrewing two light bulbs – quickly, mind you – before backup power could come on, well, it had been a no brainer. She’d taken the money, clearly, as she arrived at the Yard with two grams of coke in her possession. She gave a general description of the man who’d suggested she do this.

  The police headed out to search the area and find him.

  “God,” John sat back on Reese’s couch and looked up to check the clock. It was almost 2:30 AM. “Are you still trying to track his phone’s GPS?”

  “His phone is still off,” Reese said distractedly.

  “Then what are you doing?”

  “Following a hunch,” she switched through cameras across London in several windows, and checked the temperature in another. “It’s the Photography Club and he’s got a photographic memory, John.”

  “So did Lawrence Waters.” John wasn’t reassured by her logic.

  “They killed Lawrence because he betrayed them, and to scare off the CIA; only half their plan worked as expected.” She said bitterly. “But they came to London. I mean, they set up shop in the same city as the guy we call ‘the Great Detective’ online, right after The Blind Banker case.” She looked back at him. “How can that make sense? How can that be smart?”

  “Because…”

  “Because they’re ‘photographers’,” she answered herself numbly. Reese was overextended, her reserves were so clearly depleted that John was tempted to coax her to the couch in the hopes she would go to sleep for a half an hour. Her exhaustion was impacting her thinking. “And Sherlock was blessed, okay, cursed, with general hyperacuity. He’s gonna be like a ‘super photographer’. So there’s a chance, like a miniscule chance… and if there’s any chance at all, I’m gonna-”

  A window, forgotten in the lower corner of her massive screen, began to blip. John’s phone chimed. He was suddenly wide awake, probably owing to the ice bath that had hit his heart and scudded into every cell of him.

  The text said: ‘Come get me.’

  Reese caught up her iPad in one hand, and Sherlock’s coat in the other. “Get yourself together.” She was very nearly breathless.

  “He’s texted me. Sherlock, he’s-” John felt woozy. His heart was pounding just behind his eardrums, like it had bifurcated and shot up his right and left common carotid at the same time.

  Reese backed up, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him roughly along with her. “We need to cab to the Victoria Embankment, and we should do it without half the badges in this place following us. I don’t know his situation, and they hate him enough as it is. You still have your gun, right?”

  “I do,” he admitted to her.

  “Well, I don’t think you’d hold anything that’s happened to him, or anything he’s done, against him, up to and including if he’s just killed someone to get free,” she said softly, “and if you have to kill someone to keep him that way, I know you will.”

  It wouldn’t be the first time.

  The cab ride was completely airless. Reese stared at her iPad, tight-lipped. John felt like he kept alive only by texting to Sherlock. He grew increasingly more distressed when he didn’t receive any answers. When it became too much, Reese stopped the cab and paid the fare. She climbed out with her iPad flashing alive to follow the GPS signal, and they ran. There was no discussion, and no real decision involved: they just shot off in the direction the GPS led them.

  “It’s too cold out here for no coat,” Reese shivered, even in her pink leopard faux fur.

  “How far?” John had his heart pounding in his throat. “I should have brought a torch.”

  “It would make us a moving target.” She told him. “Within 120 feet.”

  Forty yards.

  “Go left and go straight.” She raced along, dividing attention between where her feet landed, and her iPad. “About 100. That’s 33.3 yards to a Brit.”

  Within 20 yards, it couldn’t tell them any further detail. It indicated they had found their target. Frustrated, Reese threw the iPad down on the grass and trotted along the path before her without it. “They had to take a path. He’s a tall drink of water, Sherlock. Stay on the path.”

  John hurried along beside her. The path they were on opened to lovely cobbled mall John dimly recognized now that it was dark. He looked aside at the ornate street lamp and the benches. His heart dropped, “Behind the bench.”

  They raced to the still and curled figure leaned against a dead light. He was cold, insensate, and he didn’t react to their presence, but he had a strong and healthy heartbeat, wasn’t bleeding, and had all his fingers and toes by the looks of him. The designer clothes he wore weren’t thick enough for the unseasonable chill and his jacket was on the ground beside him, so John covered Sherlock in his coat at once.

  Reese, meanwhile, paced beside him. She waited for John’s pronouncement on his condition. John looked up at her. “Alive, strong pulse. No signs of damage. Not awake or aware we’re here. He may be experiencing hypothermia.”

  Finally, Reese dropped down beside Holmes. She was shaking badly and picked up his hand in both of her own, an action that stopped anything further coming out of John’s mouth. She examined first one, and then the other, rubbing a bluish fingernail until it turned pink. “Cold. Not hypothermic,” she said firmly, “he’s very cold.”

  She shifted her position and levered him up so that his back lay against her. His curls bumped against her jaw. Sherlock wouldn’t have allowed any of this, if he’d been awake. He didn’t like closeness.

  Reese reached around and unbuttoned a shirt cuff. “You’re wrong about the blood. There’s a spot on his inner elbow. It looks like they’ve given him something else to think about.”

  John pushed up Sherlock’s sleeve. Track marks, some pale around the edges. Some not.

  He froze. “Why?”

  “He’s easy enough to discredit,” Reese settled back and held Sherlock to her chest. She rubbed his upper arm in a steady rhythm. “They did the same sort of thing to Lawrence early on, but with pills – barbiturates, or speed. I thought this was just the Club being careful how alert he was when he communicated with even their puppets, and Lawrence on his best day didn’t have a mind like Sherlock’s. This might be standard procedure. But they didn’t shoot Lawrence full of cocaine. Sherlock, who has a history of drug problems, and even arrests, him, they give cocaine.”

  ***

  “Oh my God. Could be a test.” John forced himself to slow his breathing, roll Sherlock’s sleeve down, and button it again. “How long should this last? I’m sorry – illicit drugs… not my area.”

  “Don’t know how much they gave him, what it was cut with, or how pure it is,” she said softly. “I mean, this is all wrong for a guy on coke. He should be wild. This is some kind of mix.” Reese rested her head on his curls and closed her eyes. “I’m keeping him warm. Just get us out of here. Make it happen, John. I’m done handling shit for tonight.”

  John sat back on his heels and watched them a moment. And then he tucked Sherlock’s arm back under his coat and made a decision. He woke up Sarah and asked her to drive into a high crime neighbourhood to meet them.

  It would do no good to go to Baker Street. They would take him to Sarah’s apartment.

  Sherlock didn’t wake in the 45 minutes it took for her to get to them. It took three of them to get him out of the park and into the waiting car. Sarah, kindly, didn’t ask any questions on the way home, good enough for John, who fell asleep almost immediately in the warm car next to her. By the time they were parked, it was evident that Reese had fallen asleep in the back as well.

  Sarah nudged John awake gently. “John, what the hell is going on?”

  “I’ll explain,” he told her and then added. “Thank you for the rescue.”

  She gave him a tired worried look and then je
rked her chin at the rear-view mirror. “They look like a pair of runaway lovers, fast asleep back there. Is that what this is?”

  “Not hardly,” John whispered and then shook his head. “Not tonight. Help me get him upstairs. There’s been bad business, I’m afraid. He’s been missing. We need to wake him.”

  “He’s warmer now,” Reese said tightly. She unbuckled and started working her way out of the car. This involved untangling from Holmes’ long limbs. John shot a pained look to Sarah, who pressed her lips together and got out of the car.

  Sherlock was tall and heavy. He was slender, but quite well constructed and solid. His eyes opened on the elevator, but there was little sense in them. He watched the numbers scroll. He looked up again at the apartment number as they opened the door. They didn’t make it to the couch with him. He slumped to the floor in the front room and started to curl up with a soft hiss of breath.

  “What’s happening,” Sarah started unbuttoning his shirt to give him air.

  “He’s been drugged,” Reese took off her coat, balled it up, and put it under his head. “He’s been missing for hours.”

  “He didn’t do this, did he John? He’s been confused. I mean-” Sarah glanced at Reese, unable to finish the sentence. He’d been confused about Reese’s arrival in London – a person not unlike him that he badly wanted to gravitate to, and fiercely wanted to push away.

  “See?” Reese sat back, opened her arms, and nodded at Sarah. She caught John’s coat and tugged him her way. “That’s exactly why you give him cocaine. It will discredit his side of the story before he opens his mouth. If we hadn’t caught the girl who fiddled the bulbs – I mean that’s just suspicious – this would look like he went off the deep end, walked off on you-”

  “He has a history of doing that,” John admitted.

  “-and then started slamming anything he could lay his hands on in the neighbourhood. This guy knows how to find drugs on short notice. It’s lucky we caught them moving him… and even that’s suspicious. But trust me. They orchestrated this. And it will hit home,” she looked at the floor for a moment, “if he’s as screwed up by me coming here as everyone seems to think.”