Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  Interesting, but not the information for which I was gunning. "Did you two talk about the Army at all?"

  Instantly she returned to her book. "Some."

  Sooner or later, William was going to kill me. Even if it turned out to be all Sherlock's fault.

  "What are you reading?" she asked.

  I glanced over. Her book was open, but her eyes weren't moving any more than mine were. Actually, she appeared mesmerized by something within her own thoughts, a feeling with which I could certainly empathize.

  I tested her. "The Moor."

  She passed. "I hate that play! Othello didn't trust his wife at all. Why didn't he just ask her what was going on, instead of listening to Iago?"

  "It is pretty awful, isn't it?" I shut the book and set it aside. Even the Bard wasn't going to hold my attention after all the day's ugly revelations. "But people don't ask, do they?"

  She was silent for a moment, wheels turning almost audibly behind those oh-so-familiar green eyes.

  "I mean," I continued, speaking my thoughts to the air, "if I had asked Aunt Edith years ago, would she have told me the truth?"

  "About what?"

  I shrugged. "About anything. About being a blackmailer. About lying to my father, or threatening him, or whatever it turns out she did to him. About wanting children of her own but stealing me as a substitute."

  "She wasn't a very nice person, was she?" Lindsay closed her book, too. "I wouldn't know; I only met her a few times. Although she seemed really keen on the surface."

  That simply, Lindsay summed up everything I'd been thinking. "It doesn't seem I knew her all that well, either. And it doesn't seem she was particularly nice. You know, Lindsay, at one time I wanted to be just like her. But now. . . ." I could only trail that off.

  If I hadn't truly known Aunt Edith all that well, even if I'd grown up with her, watched her every movement, and copied her mannerisms, then how well had I known my father? my brother? or my mum, who was dead and beyond the reach of peacemaking?

  Lindsay set her book on the coffee table. "You must be careful choosing a role model, mustn't you?"

  That was my cue. I needed to tell her how hard William worked for her, how much he loved her, how he'd only lent her to me for safekeeping. To make certain she understood just how important her family is.

  I said nothing of the sort.

  "I suppose you do."

  "Dad wants me to be a barrister."

  I closed my eyes and settled a pillow beneath my head. "And what do you want?"

  "I don't know yet. But that's not it."

  "It wasn't for me, either." I closed my eyes. The lack of sleep was catching up with me.

  "So how did you escape?"

  "Mmm, interesting way of phrasing it. I didn't escape, Lindsay. I was exiled. I misbehaved once too often, I swore I'd never be what my family wanted me to be, and my father sent me over here to live with Aunt Edith." It was interesting that I didn't mind discussing the subject with Lindsay; it was almost like talking with myself.

  "And that's why I never got to meet you before?"

  "You're stuck on that notion, aren't you?"

  Her voice was suddenly cool. "It's a fair question."

  I opened my eyes. She hugged a pillow to her chest. Spots of color brightened her peaches-and-cream English cheeks and her green eyes were sullen for the first time since we'd met. Again I'd underestimated her. I seemed to be repeating the same actions, and the same mistakes, too often these days.

  "You said the last time you and Dad fought, you lost really badly. Well, there's fights, and then there's fights. What sort of fight was that?"

  She deserved the truth, the same way my own dad did. I sat up and gave it to her.

  "It was a physical fight. William wiped the sidewalk with me."

  "Oh." Her voice was small, now. She actually sounded fifteen.

  "He snapped one of my ribs and cracked three others. I was black and blue and then green and yellow for weeks. I hurt in places people aren't supposed to hurt. And to answer your question, I took that to mean I wasn't welcome. So I stayed away."

  She took some time to consider my words. "Dad's that good?"

  That wasn't the moral I'd expected nor wanted her to withdraw from that lesson. "You've seen his trophies."

  But she shook her head. "Dad doesn't have any trophies."

  I blinked. "Your father has dozens of trophies from boxing, horseback riding, rowing, cricket, academics, you name it. They used to be in a big glass case in the main vestibule."

  "Mum has her collection of ceramic doves in that case. Dad was in boxing?" There was wonder, and a new respect, in her voice.

  I turned away, punched the pillow, and resettled on the sofa, grabbing a spare pillow on the way down and cuddling it like a teddy bear. Perhaps stealing her from her father wouldn't be so easy, after all. "He was in everything. And he was good at everything."

  "So why did he put his trophies away?"

  "I don't know." Part of me wanted to know. But the bigger part of me had tired of the conversation. "Look, it's going to be a long and busy night. Mind if I catch a nap?"

  She managed a few steps toward the door, but slowly. "Did you have trophies?"

  I thought of Langstrom's family photograph and the other paltry and adolescent items I'd given that name. But they didn't seem to count any more. "No."

  "Neither do I. Trés has all the trophies in our family. I guess we do have a lot in common, don't we?"

  She left. But it took me a long time to forget her words and drop off to sleep.

  Archive Twelve

  nine years earlier

  A formal higher education, it seemed, was not for me. I left school for the last time, a confused, disillusioned, and angry nineteen-year-old with no goals, no ambition, and no sense of fulfillment beyond my trophies, ten articles of no monetary value that I kept hidden and protected like the Crown jewels.

  With the allowance Aunt Edith gave me, I returned to Boston, found a flat on the waterfront, and fell in with a fast social set, many of whom I knew during my abortive undergraduate days. All right, I'll admit it: I went looking for a fast set. I was tired of the refinement of Aunt Edith's Cambridge. I'd found nothing that suited me amongst the art and elegance with which she surrounded herself. It smothered me and left me feeling stymied, the way I'd felt as a child in Wiltshire when I had to measure up to the family honor rather than my own sensibilities. I was ready for a sea change, for a touch of mayhem.

  My tennis game was good enough for me to be a sought-after doubles partner, particularly with women my age, who seemed to rather fancy my accent although it was now as confused as Aunt Edith's and no longer the crisp and clean English they considered it. They also seemed to go for the air of roguishness that trailed behind me like a cloak, and it wasn't only tennis where I didn't lack partners.

  With more diligence than I'd ever shown in school, I studied drinking, smoking, and necking in the controlled riots that passed for parties, although I at least had enough sense to give a wide berth to the dark and smoky rooms behind the clubs where harsher drugs were available.

  Aunt Edith welcomed me back to Boston, of course, without a word of judgment, and I stayed with her until I found my waterfront condo. But during my two years on two campuses, I had grown accustomed to a rowdier life than she would tolerate. After I moved out, I stopped by on Tuesdays and Thursdays for tea and told her the milder exploits of my set, such as Jason being arrested for driving under the influence and then appearing in court in a similar state to demonstrate his self-control for the judge, or Debbie dissecting her first corpse in medical school and becoming so enamored thereof that she took him home to keep in her mother's freezer, to her mother's distress.

  When I saw tension lines forming about Aunt Edith's narrow lips, I kept coming by but ceased speaking out. At first I found it difficult, remembering to guard my tongue against the woman who was my closest friend. But as I'd always guarded myself around Patricia, the woma
n who was my second-closest friend, this became merely an extension of that self-protectiveness. Of course, at heart it meant I had no one with whom I could speak openly.

  Aunt Edith saw through my meager defenses, of course, but as much as she valued honesty — and in a warped sort of way, that was her only non-negotiable requisite in the people she considered her friends — she never called me on it. At first I thought this was because she respected my privacy and right to live my life as I chose. It was more than my family allowed me, as William had proven, and I appreciated her tact and showed her every attention.

  But in truth, I believe she realized how fragile her restraint over me had become. Rather than risk a resentful severing of our ties, based on our pact as the Ellandun family black sheep, I believe she preferred to keep intact what rein remained to her. As the years passed, that became weaker and weaker. Her garret came between us as a lie of omission after Uncle Hubert's death. My PTSD followed.

  When I received word my mum had been killed in a traffic accident, I didn't cry for her. I hadn't cried since my vow at the age of eleven — not even for Uncle Hubert — and I wasn't about to break it now.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  current time

  The first problem, of course, was that police stations never really close and there were lights on all over the building, even at two in the morning. We had to wait a while before Caren and Lindsay gave the all-clear from their respective street corners, then Sherlock cupped his hands and boosted me up. I grabbed the black iron railing of the fire escape, paused a moment while my arms adjusted to the strain, then pulled myself up, jackknifed over the railing, and swung my legs onto the second-floor landing.

  I paused again to listen, and triple-checked the equipment hooked to my web belt: locking karabiner, thin nylon rope, six feet of electrical wire wrapped into a coil, a thin-bladed dagger made from one piece of oiled hardwood, a narrow-beamed flashlight, my toolkit, a Dremel with a battery pack, an assortment of bits, and a small, loaded caulking gun. I had left the weaponry at the house and would go in unarmed. None of us had a taser or any other non-lethal weapon, and I'd almost rather be shot myself than use the lethal sort inside a police station. But of course I didn't say anything about that to Sherlock. I had enough on my mind without listening to him.

  "Charles!"

  That was Caren's voice. I peered over the railing. She crouched beside Sherlock, just beneath the fire escape, her hands braced on his shoulders, his hands cupped beneath her foot. As I watched, he boosted and she jumped, arms reaching for the fire escape.

  This was not part of the plan Sherlock and I had concocted at sunset in the parlor, and the sneak inside me rebelled at the thought of having a companion-in-crime along for this particular venture. But there was something wild and incredibly gorgeous in her shining face during the one second I had to make up my mind, and in my heart I never denied her. I leaned over the railing, shot my arm out, and caught her wrist while she clasped mine with both hands. She weighed so little, there was almost no effort required to lift her to the railing, where she grabbed iron and swung over.

  "No," I said in a whisper.

  "Right," she said ditto. "Coming?"

  She ran up the fire escape stairwell, footsteps muffled in sneakers. After a moment's thought I followed. Compromises were required in both love and war, and this seemed to be both.

  Caren beat me to the flat roof by seconds. I took her arm and tugged her away from the edge, back into the center near the emergency exit where we could talk.

  "You can't come," I said. "With two people along, we're bound to be caught. Our only hope of success is to be as inconspicuous as possible."

  "I know. I'm content to wait up here for you."

  "Did Sherlock put you up to this?" That sort of clumsy matchmaking would be just like him.

  In the dark, I felt rather than saw the corners of her eyes crinkle. "Well, he boosted me up — no, this was all my idea. I'll stay out of the way, I promise. I just want an idea of what it is you actually do."

  "This isn't exactly the perfect example. But come on."

  Earlier that day, Theresa and Bonnie had run a recon. of the police station, including a window-by-window examination via binoculars from several rooftops over. So going in we knew the precise location of Wingate's office window, on the east side of the building overlooking the city. I crossed the roof to that side and peered over the parapet, in time to see Sherlock and Lindsay round the corner of the block. Quiet banter barely reached my ears through the ambient city noises as they paused two-thirds of the way along. His hand went to his mouth and a fag end glowed. He rarely smoked any more but it seemed he was making an exception for the evening's adventure. That meant he wasn't quite as cool as he'd made out. Great.

  "They're standing below the detective's office window, right?" Caren asked.

  "Right. That's where I go down."

  One end of the nylon line I wrapped about a standing pipe and the locking karabiner kept it there. I measured out enough line from that end to reach the third floor — nothing for attracting a passer-by's attention like a length of rope dangling down the side of a building onto the sidewalk beneath — and tied up the remainder. Then I gave the arrangement a few exploratory tugs to make certain it would hold, unrolled the first few feet of line, and crouched on the edge of the building, back to the fall. That first step was always the worst.

  While I paused, preparing my stomach, Caren stepped close and kissed the tip of my nose. "Good luck."

  "Love that distraction." I hopped backward off the lip of the roof.

  I hadn't played out more than eight feet of line so I knew I hadn't far to fall, but even with the preparation the sudden drop left my stomach up on the building's roof and set my pulse pounding. But before instinctive panic could set in, I hit the end of that eight feet and it swung me toward the side of the building like a pendulum. From long practice I had my feet up and ready. The first few times I'd rappelled, in basic training, I hadn't been quick enough with my feet. The training sergeant had called the resulting smack "kissing the wall," and it left bruises big and painful enough to be deterrents against such mistakes in the future.

  This time I was ready. I hopped down the side of the building, playing out the line through my leather-gloved hands. The night tightened around me, sucking me into its sultry depths, and the sounds of the city faded away. The tingle of the adventure expanded from within me to touch the night in turn. I descended past four rows of windows before I reached the one with the lights out on the third floor. There I fastened off the rope, holding myself at that height, and peered inside.

  It was Wingate's office, all right; there was no mistaking all that wood, nor the outline of those framed opera posters on the walls. The back of the desk faced me with the rolling chair tucked neatly into the kneehole and the visitors' chairs just beyond. The far wall was solid below, glass above framed with wooden molding, and the door was closed. The filing cabinet was in the far corner behind the visitors' chairs and on the opposite end of the half-glass wall from the door.

  From my external vantage point, I could see the magnetic contact switch on the upper doorjamb molding and the keypad mounted on the wall behind the door, where it would be hidden during working hours when the door was propped open. Wingate had wired his office for an alarm. Only an idiot would wire the door but not the window, even on the third floor, and I did not believe Wingate to be stupid. At least, not that much, and my silly little grin grew.

  Beyond the door was a big open work space crowded with desks, where the run-of-the-mill officers worked. The lights were on, about half of the desks were occupied, and said officers were working, bent over computer keyboards, leafing through files, talking on telephones and to each other, although from outside I couldn't hear their voices. From the moment I opened the window I would be in full view; one of them would simply have to turn around to see me clambering in. It was a pretty challenge.

  I glanced up. Caren leaned ove
r the edge of the building but only by the depth of one eye, and her hair was dark enough not to catch any light. A glance down showed Sherlock stepping on his cigarette butt, Lindsay leaning against the wall beside him.

  The lower window of six panes was well sealed. With the dagger's blade I rasped the caulking from the upper middle pane then pried it loose, propping it on the casing nearby. The voices in the far office became audible as distant murmurings.

  "Are you having fun up there?" Lindsay's voice called from below.

  Sherlock, of course, shushed her immediately.

  Actually, I was. This was the part of my job I enjoyed the most: sneaking sideways through someone's supposedly impregnable defenses. It was also, I knew, a skill I owed mainly to Aunt Edith's tutelage. Whatever else she had done to my life, she'd helped me become a professional sneak. And for that I would remain grateful, no matter how else my feelings about her might change.

  Sticking my arm through the empty spot, I felt along the inside of the lower window until my gloved hand fumbled across a plastic edge protruding beyond the wooden frame. Good, it was another magnetic contact switch, just like on the door, and easily bypassed. I noted its position, matched it with my finger on the outside of the wall, then marked that spot with a pencil. The big masonry bit on the Dremel made short work of the ubiquitous Boston red brick. I enlarged the drilled hole with the knife's blade, and the wiring of Wingate's burglar alarm lay exposed before me.

  This was the ticklish part. Using the wooden dagger, I scraped the plastic insulation from an inch of the exposed electrical wiring, being careful not to slice through the twisted strands beneath, which could short the alarm and set it ringing. Then I attached the ends of the wire I'd brought with me to the exposed inch and cut between the joinings. Sherlock had given me that dagger following a trip to the Far East. Being hardwood rather than metal, it couldn't short an alarm and set it off while I worked, unless I was careless, and it was one of the best gifts I'd ever received. Not that I'd ever tell him that.