Lock & Mori

by Heather W. Petty

  “That’s part of it. You can’t go living high and mighty when you pull off a con as big as we did. You have to stash the money and draw on it slowly. ‘Live your best life, not the misery of the wealthy.’ That’s what your mom used to say. She was the preacher, and we were her choir.”

  “What was the con?”

  Alice shook her head like she wasn’t going to tell me, then sighed. “We took down four of the largest targets in London—a bank, a jeweler, a museum, and an airport warehouse. We did them all in teams of three, all in one month, and then we were done. Always the same MO, but always different teams of three, so the eyewitness accounts were always different heights and voices and colorings. And best of all? We were all each other’s alibi—well, us and the fifty or so your mom invited to the parties she’d throw on the nights of the heists.”

  “You got away clean?”

  “Clean and with twenty-one million pounds.”

  “Million? That’s impossible.”

  Alice laughed and shook her head. “Nothing’s impossible when it comes to your mom, kid. She was—well, the best I’d ever met. Like I said.”

  “And you never got caught? Never questioned?”

  “They didn’t know what to look for.”

  That sparked something in my mind. A memory of reading words on a screen about robberies and a clover. “The library,” I said. “I read about your crimes. That was you?”

  “God, you’re like her. I can see it in your eyes.”

  “But you haven’t said what the letters are.”

  “We all hid our money in different places, and the deal was that if anything happened to one of us, letters would be sent out to the survivors to let us know where the money was stashed. We all promised to take care of any family and then to resplit whatever was left.”

  “And that’s what’s in the letters.”

  “Coded, of course. Couldn’t have any of it getting out by accident. But your dad shouldn’t have been able to stop the letters from mailing. It was all automatic.” Alice shook her head. “How did I not see this earlier?”

  “Didn’t you think it was odd that you never got a letter from my mom?”

  Alice shook her head. “No, she sent me her letter. It was right when she found out she was sick. I figured she sent them to everyone then, but now I have to wonder.” A flash of fear returned to Alice’s expression. “I may be the only one who knows where all her money is.”

  “You’re the only one left,” I said again. I felt like it was all I could say to her.

  She shook her head. “No. It’s you and me. You’re in it now.”

  We stared at each other just long enough for me to compose myself, and then I nodded. “You and me. But that means you let me help you, too.”

  “We help each other,” she said. “And that means I come to London.”

  “That’s insanity. You’ve got to hide.”

  Alice smiled. “He won’t find me, but I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

  I should’ve argued with her, but I found I couldn’t. It was a kind of relief to have one other person know and offer help. As she made promises to be in London at the end of the next week and started planning how and where we’d meet up in the city, I felt more and more at ease.

  Alice grabbed the picture of the church off the table, the one my mom had left for me in her hidey-hole. “But before you go home, we’ll set you up for real.” She smiled widely. “This is the fun part.”

  Chapter 18

  Sherlock was in a mood when I finally got back to Lewes. He scowled down at the floor tiles of the train station and didn’t even bother to look at me when I walked up to him, which suited me fine. I had enough to think over on my own. My bag felt heavy with the money Alice had stuffed into it. Evidently, she and Mum had shared one of their getaway hiding spots in the cemetery near St. John’s in Piddinghoe. It was a bigger hiding spot than the one in Regent’s Park and held quite a bit more cash.

  “In case you need to get out of that house before I can get to the city,” she’d said when I’d protested carrying a brick of money in my handbag on the train. “Southern Rail’s got a first-class compartment. Now you can afford it.”

  Having Alice’s help opened up more contingencies than I knew how to plan for, but still a plan started to form. I took advantage of the quiet, but quick, ride to Brighton, where we had to change trains. Sherlock grabbed my hand and wouldn’t let go until we were inside the first-class compartment to London. And when he did let go, he practically flung himself into the seats on one side of the table.

  “How was your herb walk?” I asked, sliding into the aisle seat on the other side.

  He barely shrugged and turned to stare out the window.

  “You’re quiet. Did something happen?” He didn’t answer, so I tried again. “What are you thinking about?” Again, no answer. I slid over into the window seat to place myself in his direct line of sight, but he looked away as soon as I did, then stood and walked to the other side of the compartment, his back to me.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  His voice was soft but strained when he answered. “There is nothing wrong with me.”

  I stared at his back for as long as it took me to decide it wasn’t worth indulging this new mood. “Fine. You want to pretend you’re the only one in here? You don’t have to pretend.” I started to gather my things, but I didn’t even stand before he relented and spoke.

  “I know.”

  I’d lost patience with his cryptic nonsense, and my tone portrayed that perfectly. “What do you know?”

  He turned to stare straight into my eyes. His were blazing. He’d never looked at me like that before. “I know.”

  “What do you know?” I repeated.

  “I know!” he shouted, stomping over to his bag and tearing a piece of paper out, slapping it on the table in front of me. It looked like the killer’s page from his wall map. The giant question mark stared out at me, with “Police” scribbled next to it in green marker. “I know. I KNOW!” He shook the page at me, then slammed it back onto the table. “And I know that you know it too.”

  My heart lurched so hard, I lost my breath a moment. “What do I know?”

  “That a policeman was killing people. That he was altering the reports, like that coroner’s report with a sentence that left off and was clearly tampered with. I knew it was police, and I knew you were acting weird. I just didn’t know it was for one and the same reason until you brought me here.”

  He flipped the page over. The other side was the flyer for his nature walk, but at the bottom, where he was pointing, was the name of the shop: White’s Herbalist, with an address in Lewes. White’s Herbalist in Lewes. Reading those words brought the entire text back to me, the obituary of Todd White, the Striped Man from the picture of my mother, whose surviving family ran an herbalist shop. All my secrets undone by a nature walk.

  “Neither of us remembered that he was from Lewes,” Sherlock said. “I didn’t even put it together until after the walk, when they dragged us into the shop to pitch their snake oil. They had a shrine to Mr. White on one of the walls, with a table of candles and baubles and snapshots. His face stirred my memory, but it wasn’t until I saw her face that I knew.”

  “Whose face?” My voice came out as shaken and drained as I felt. And it was a stupid question. I knew who—he’d seen her face on the cover of her memorial program. He’d stared at it for minutes. He knew that I knew as well, which is why he didn’t answer.

  “All of them in one photo. All dead but one. I’m fairly sure that’s who you were going to see today. That’s who you couldn’t tell me about? Some woman from an old photo you’d tracked down to the middle of Sussex. Did you know them all then? Recognize them from the first?”

  His tone held more rough, bitter edges the more questions he asked, and somethi
ng about that made me angry. Defiant. It was just a stupid game in the park to him, and he had no right to grill me now. “What if I did?”

  That gave him pause. “Did you?”

  “Does it matter?”

  He offered me all the sarcastic bewilderment he could paint across his features. “Yes. Yes, it matters. It all matters.”

  I looked up at the ceiling and then slid back into my seat. “I didn’t know who any of them were, as it happens. I didn’t know what it meant or how my mother was involved. I didn’t know anything for a long time.”

  “And you’ve known who the killer is for how long?”

  I crossed my arms. “Ages.”

  “Tell me how long.”

  “Never mind.”

  “TELL ME!”

  The train’s attendant chose that moment to peek his head into the compartment. “Everything all right in here? Miss?”

  I nodded. “We’re fine.”

  “You both get a choice of tea service, fair-trade coffee, or a mineral water.”

  I took a breath in a vain attempt to calm myself, but still I spoke through my teeth when I said, “Tea, please.”

  “And for you, sir?”

  Sherlock waved off the attendant, which only made me want to smack him.

  “He’ll have tea as well. Thank you.”

  The attendant smiled at me weakly, said, “Tea for two, coming right up,” and then thankfully left.

  I glared at Lock’s back. “You’re angry with me. You dare to be angry.”

  “You broke the RULES!” he exploded.

  “Rules?” I might have laughed if my voice wasn’t already trembling.

  “Yes, rules. One rule, actually. We had one rule, that we would tell each other everything, and you broke that rule.”

  I stood up to face him down. “This isn’t a game, Sherlock. This is my life! It stopped being a game the very moment it became about my family.”

  “It’s not about the game, Mori.”

  I took a breath and clenched my teeth to keep from screaming at him. “Do tell. What is it all about, Lock?”

  “It’s about us.” He straightened, so that he towered over me, and still he seemed so young to me right then. Just another little kid looking for me to protect him from the truth.

  “No. No, it’s not. It’s about dead people in a park, and my world shattering into a million chunks of iron that are falling down all around me, and I’ve got no one to help me dig out. That’s what it’s about, Lock. It’s about me fighting off the avalanche all by myself. And I’m so sorry I couldn’t fit your rules and your games into the mix this time.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was speechless in exasperation or just had nothing else to say, but he threw himself back into the seats. I felt suddenly exhausted and might have slumped back into mine if he’d kept his mouth shut. But as always, he was incapable.

  “You weren’t alone. Because I was always there, ready to fight with you. You chose to be alone. You chose it.”

  I shook my head. Had I actually expected him to understand? “You’re right, aren’t you? Always right. And here you can be right again. You and your pathetic mind games. How brilliant is the ever-right Sherlock Holmes.”

  I turned toward the door to stop looking at him, and he reached for my arm. It was such a small space, I couldn’t seem to get far enough away to escape his touch. But the very moment his fingers closed around my wrist, I shook him off and turned on him.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  He lifted his hands in the air and leaned back, but his expression fell to nothing. He was blank again, even in his voice. “Don’t leave.”

  “What do you want from me? Do you want me to say it aloud? My father is a killer. A serial killer who hunts down my mother’s old friends and slaughters them in Regent’s Park. Does that make it better for you?” I wiped at my cheeks and slid into my seat again, careful not to allow our knees to touch. I couldn’t stand the thought of any part of me touching him right then. “Did you just need to hear me say it?”

  He folded his hands in front of him and stared at me, like he was forcing himself not to look away. “No.”

  “Then what do you want, Lock? If I had said it yesterday? The day before? Would that make it better?”

  He didn’t answer, and for some reason that made me unreasonably angry. “Do you think I want this? I live in that house. With him and my brothers. And every moment I’m with you is a moment that I’m not there to protect them. I’m the only one they’ve got left, and there’s nothing I can do about that or about him. So what would you have me do about it? Because I’m doing everything I know how to do and there are no answers. So you tell me, Lock. What do you want me to do?”

  He was so silent, we could only hear the train noises and the sound of my breathing, which was heavier than it should have been.

  The blank of his expression broke right before he spoke, and it pierced through me, so that I had to look away and couldn’t in the same moment. “I want you to trust me.”

  “I wanted to protect you.” I responded so quickly, I didn’t really have time to think about what I was saying. But it was true. “I had to protect you from this. I had to protect us all as best I could.”

  “By doing nothing?”

  His words slapped out at me and I had to pause until the sting of it faded. “Not nothing. I did everything I could. I found out who he was killing. I found the woman who was to be his last victim and warned her so that she could hide. And I lived in that house, even when I never wanted to step through the door again, even when every second I had to share the same bloody air as him was torture.”

  “You could have gone to the police.”

  “He is police!” I covered my eyes and slumped in my seat so that the backs of my hands almost touched the table in front of us. “The police won’t help. They never help. And they won’t believe it anyway. I’ve covered his tracks.”

  “That day you went to the park without me.”

  I ignored that. I didn’t want to think about what an idiot I’d been that day in the park. “I took the sword away from him. He can’t use it anymore.”

  “I saw you leave.”

  I dropped my hands from my eyes and made myself look at Lock again. I should’ve been surprised, probably. Mad, maybe. But I was just tired and sad. I was stupid enough to believe I could escape this moment, but it was always coming. “They will never believe he did it without even the weapon he used.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can tell them what you did. They can find it.”

  “I already told them I was with him when the last man was killed in the park.”

  “You gave him an alibi. Why would you do that?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t planned—”

  “Planned!” Exasperation must have made Sherlock forget himself, because he lifted his hand to rest it over mine and then stopped himself.

  A simple gesture, but it took its toll on me. “I didn’t mean to do it, is all.”

  “Well, it won’t matter either. We can still prove it. We’ll convince them with logic. I figured it out.”

  “And then what? If we do manage to convince the cops that all these killings have been done by one of their own—which will never, ever happen—then what?”

  “Then he is brought to justice. He is caught.”

  “Justice.” I paused to study his eyes. “Here is your justice. Tomorrow morning every paper will have his face, but tonight it will be on every telly in England. ‘Cop Serial Killer! Cop Kills! Tune in for details!’ His face will be on every news site and crime blog. And that is only tonight. By tomorrow afternoon my picture and those of my brothers will join his. We will either be the poor helpless victims of his drunken rage, or perhaps they will catch a side-glance in a photo, and we will be the freaks with the DNA of a madman. One of
us will surely follow in his footsteps.”

  Sherlock said nothing, and when I caught him studying my face, I turned to stare out the window at the landscape speeding by.

  “We will be separated, forced into the system, and our futures destroyed. That will be your justice. My ruin. And worse, the ruin of three beautiful boys who have lived through his beatings for almost a year now. Instead of help and compassion, they will get the suspicion of a nation, and it will not go away. The story will die off. Our father’s face will be forgotten as he rots in prison—if he rots in prison—and still his legacy will follow us forever.”

  When Lock remained silent, I moved my hand close enough to touch him, though I did not.

  “How is it justice for the deeds of one man to destroy those of us left behind? Why should justice punish the innocent? Is that true justice, after all?”

  “No,” he said simply. “You are right again. Mori.”

  The way he said my name was odd, but I continued my case, pushing my very real desperation into my pleading. “I have a plan, but I need your silence. At least for a little while. Can you do that for me?”

  “What is your plan, Mori?” He said it again, my name. More slowly than was natural. Like he wanted to hold it against his lips.

  “I have an aunt—Alice. She’s going to come to London, and my brothers and me, we’re going to live with her.” It sounded like such a fantasy to say it aloud. When I was with Alice, it had all seemed so plausible.

  “And your father?”

  “Leave him to me. I’ll take care of it.”

  “And he will stop?”

  “Of course.” I said the words too quickly, but Sherlock’s expression didn’t shake for even a second. He just stood, gazing at me with his most thoughtful eyes. “With no one else to kill, he will stop. He will leave us alone, and we will stay with Alice. All of us. Together.”

  Lock slid from his side of the table to mine, just as the train attendant reappeared with our tea. It was oversteeped and lukewarm, like the attendant had served every other person on the train before us. But we drank it all, stared out at the landscape together, holding hands under the table.