The Baker Street Letters

by Michael Robertson

  This voice transformed Ramirez into a vehicle of perfectly focused intent. His back seemed to straighten, and he turned to face the direction of that voice as if guided by a laser.

  He leaped toward the platform and started to climb it.

  “Stop there!”

  Now an exit light flickered at a back corner of the mezzanine, partially illuminating one end of the platform but leaving the other dark.

  In fitful, strobelike bursts, it revealed Rogers, standing by a cement column at the south exit of the platform. He was holding Mara tightly, with one arm twisted behind her back. And he had some sort of implement—in the shadows it was impossible to discern just what—stuffed in his pocket.

  Ramirez froze in place, his hands gripping the edge of the platform as he glared across at Rogers.

  “Let her go,” growled Ramirez.

  “Not a problem,” said Rogers. “I’ll send her right down. Just show me the map.”

  “Don’t move, baby!” shouted Ramirez. “Daddy will come get you.”

  “Stay where you are,” said Rogers. “Or I throw her down there with you.”

  Ramirez hesitated. “Told you he’d play it this way,” he whispered to Reggie.

  “And you were right,” said Reggie. “So what’s your plan now?”

  “My plan?” said Ramirez. “You’re the fancy lawyer. You want out alive, you negotiate this. But my daughter stays up there no matter what—I’ll light you and me and the whole damn tunnel up before I let him send her down here with us. Look up there.”

  Reggie looked up. The fans in the tunnel hung silently by their disconnected wires. But the fans in the platform ceiling were whirring madly.

  “They only come on when there’s gas,” said Ramirez.

  Reggie stepped forward and shouted up at Rogers. “He hasn’t got the map. I do.”

  “Show me.”

  “We’ll bring it to you,” said Reggie, “when I see my brother.”

  “Done,” said a voice.

  At the opposite exit from Rogers, barely distinguishable in the shadows, a figure fell to the ground from behind the center support pillar.

  “It’s Nigel,” whispered Laura. “And he’s hurt.”

  He was. Nigel stirred slightly, lying on the floor of the platform, and reached a hand back to touch a blood-wet patch on the back of his head.

  Now a tall, broadly built man with a bald head stepped out from behind the column. Reggie knew he had seen him before, his sweaty forehead flashing in the sun, as Reggie looked up from the chilly water of the Hollywood Reservoir. And somewhere else, too—without the cap it was obvious: The man had been on the flight from Heathrow.

  But now the flickering light from a dying tunnel lamp caught the glints of a gun.

  “Just toss the map up here,” said the man.

  “Do that, we fry,” whispered Ramirez.

  “Would do,” said Reggie to the man with the gun, “but this is not the map.”

  “I don’t believe you,” said Rogers.

  “All I brought is Variety in a bag,” said Reggie. Then he pulled the newspaper—with the map still folded deep within it—out of the bag and held out both the empty bag and the Variety for viewing. “See?”

  “You’re lying,” said Rogers to Reggie. “You did bring the map.”

  “The map proves two murders. Murders you committed. You really think I’d bring it with me?”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Rogers.

  “She was your own student, you bleeding wanker,” said Laura.

  “Your fault,” said Rogers toward Reggie. “You shouldn’t have gotten her involved.”

  “Stop talking,” said the tall man to Rogers.

  “And his clerk,” said Laura.

  “I didn’t touch the clerk,” said Rogers. He tightened his grip on Mara, and she winced noticeably. “You can look to your own for that.”

  “You are getting to be a very annoying little man,” said Laura.

  “Look to my own—,” began Reggie.

  “Shut up,” said the man with the gun. “Keep your mouth shut, Rogers.” And then to Laura, “Everybody shut up.” The gun was leveled at Reggie. “I want the map, now.”

  “It’s on its way to Reggie’s secretary,” Laura lied defiantly. “She knows everything, and she’s surprisingly reliable.”

  The man at the platform stopped at that and looked over at Rogers, who looked back. But now Reggie saw Nigel—half standing—trying groggily to reach something behind the pillar.

  “Here,” Reggie called out, “see for yourself.” He stuffed the newspaper and all of its contents back into the bag and tossed the bag onto the platform—but just out of reach of the man with the gun.

  The man reacted and moved toward it.

  Then there was a solitary click of a sound—and all the lamps in the dig flickered once and went out.

  They were in pitch black.

  “Oww,” Mara said loudly.

  And now from somewhere—it sounded far away, but it was impossible to tell in this environment—came a painful, mournful, deep-throated echoing sound that Reggie could not at first identify.

  “What the hell is that?” he said under his breath.

  “What the hell was that?” said Rogers.

  “Let go of me, dammit!” cried Mara.

  This time, as soon as she spoke, that deep-throated sound came again, but now it was reverberating from everywhere, as if the source were right in their midst.

  And—in Reggie’s judgment—it sounded annoyed.

  “How solid a knot did you tie?” he said to Laura.

  “Only what I thought would do.”

  “Get on the platform quick,” said Ramirez. “Get on the platform if you don’t want to get lit up.”

  Reggie grabbed Laura by the arm, and they stumbled forward in the blackness. He found the edge of the platform sharply with his right knee, cursed, and boosted Laura up. He followed after her, took two quick steps forward in the dark—and then slammed directly into what had to be the large bald man with the gun.

  Reggie pushed forward as hard as he could, grabbing for the man’s arms.

  And then he heard—and half felt, it was so close—a heavy scuttling sound passing on the hard, smooth surface of the platform. From the cadence of it and his earlier encounters, he knew what it was.

  Someone was in trouble, and who it was just depended on how well Mara’s 150-pound dog could see in the dark.

  But Reggie was losing his grip on the gunman. The man was larger than he was, stronger, and apparently equally good in a scrum. He got one arm free and gave a hard shove.

  Reggie held on by the man’s collar, and they both fell back into the tunnel.

  Now there was a scream, in a man’s voice, from the mezzanine.

  And then the backup lights came on.

  Reggie looked into the mezzanine and saw Rogers, in a torn jacket with a bloodied arm, scrambling toward the lower portion of the platform to escape the dog.

  With his other arm, Rogers held a road flare. It was lit.

  Mookie, having protected his owner, now stopped his pursuit to look back at her for instruction.

  Rogers raised his arm to throw the flare into the tunnel.

  “Mookie! Fetch!”

  The dog leaped from the mezzanine for what Rogers held in his hand.

  But the animal had too much bulk to be that precise. His jaws seized on Rogers’s arm, knocking the flare loose and causing Rogers to fall into the tunnel.

  The flare slid across the platform, caromed off the side wall, and then, scattering sparks, continued rolling toward the tunnel edge of the platform.

  For an instant, no one spoke or moved.

  Mara, Nigel, and Laura were all on the mezzanine.

  Reggie, Ramirez, the bald man, and now Rogers were all in the tunnel.

  There was no hope of climbing out in time.

  “Get back!” Reggie shouted up at the mezzanine.

  “Run
,” said Ramirez, pushing Reggie ahead of him.

  They both managed three or four running strides headlong down the tunnel.

  And then there was the flash.

  All sound, light, and sense was subsumed in a burst of wind and flame.

  Reggie hit the ground with one knee and then with his face, and the gravel stung into his forehead, cheek, and chin. He felt the heat and light consume the air above him, and for a moment he wondered whether he was on fire.

  Then the inferno subsided.

  The air felt brittle, as though someone had left a pan on the stove too long. The skin on the back of Reggie’s head and neck felt as though it would break with the slightest movement. He raised himself cautiously, painfully, an inch or so from the ground.

  And then there was the second blast.

  Reggie’s mother was speaking to him. His father was at the table, too, the formal dark cherrywood dining table, and his brow was furrowed. This was evident, and Reggie knew of its importance, because his mother’s voice was saying, “Your father’s brow is furrowed.”

  Reggie couldn’t actually see that himself; the entire room was filled with smoke, and the figures of his father and mother, seated with him at the table, would appear, then fade, and then reappear amid the haze.

  Reggie’s mother was saying something else, too, something Reggie could not make out, and as he struggled to make it clear, something still in contact with his conscious mind suggested that perhaps it was time to come out of this dream.

  Reggie struggled with that, but consciousness brought pain and pressure on both sides of his temple, and he sank back in.

  What was his mother saying? That part of his mind was working past hours; she had to be saying something. It would fill in the blanks.

  “What has your brother done now?”

  That was what she was saying. Wasn’t it? He tried again.

  “What have you done to your brother now?”

  Was that it? Reggie wasn’t sure. He tried to define the words in his mind again, but he was interrupted. Someone else was in the dream room, at the table with them now.

  It was Laura. Had she been there all along? How could he not have seen her?

  She was saying something, too, but she was not sitting now, she was rising from the table; she was wearing a flowing white scarf, and she was gliding from the room.

  Reggie woke.

  He was in crisp white sheets. A hospital bed. He knew it immediately.

  The left side of his face felt puffy. He touched it. It was bandaged. There was a light covering on the back of his neck.

  His right leg was heavily taped and supported by a hanging sling. He tried moving the leg gently, side to side.

  Well, at least there must be no nerve damage. That tiny movement hurt like hell.

  Where was Laura?

  Reggie tried to sit up, but too quickly. He became dizzy and fell back.

  After a moment, a cool hand stroked his forehead; someone said something soothing and then was gone. Some time went by, and there was a scent that was familiar but out of place. Then the scent was gone. Reggie slept deeply.

  Then he was awake again. Someone was standing by the bedside, demanding something, and not in a soothing voice.

  “Give me a minute,” mumbled Reggie.

  “Take all the time you need,” said Lieutenant Mendoza.

  Disappointed with whom he was waking to, Reggie began to drift again—but then his mind fixed on something, a question, and it wouldn’t let go.

  “Why two?” he mumbled.

  Mendoza said something unhelpful in response. Reggie sat up with a start—and then the pounding inside his head forced him back down.

  Yes, bloody hell, he was awake, Laura was not there, and Mendoza was sitting across from him.

  “Why two?” he said again.

  “Two what?” said Mendoza.

  “Explosions. First blast. Second blast. Why was there a second blast?”

  “Oh,” said Mendoza. “Fire marshal had an idea about that. First blast in the tunnel knocks out the power to the platform fans. With no fans, gas fills the platform area—and you get your second blast.”

  “Where is Laura?”

  “Who?”

  “The woman who was here. Before you came in.”

  “There was no one here,” said Lieutenant Mendoza. “Just the nurse who let me in.”

  “Who got out?”

  “From where?”

  Reggie managed to raise himself up and grab Mendoza by the collar. “Don’t be daft,” he said hoarsely. “Who got out before the second explosion?”

  Mendoza calmly pried Reggie’s hand loose and spoke in his most condescendingly professional tone.

  “Not quite sure yet,” he said. “We found one scorched and deceased adult male in the tunnel. Or maybe two; a little difficult to tell at the very center of the blast. But we’re not completely sure who got out, because we’re not completely sure who went in. Why don’t you tell me?”

  Reggie said nothing. He knew the detective knew more than he was saying.

  Mendoza shrugged. “My guess,” he said, “is that it’s all a sibling competition of some kind. And at the moment, you’re in a dead heat, if you’ll pardon the expression. I still like your brother for the body-in-a-basket thing under the overpass.”

  “My brother is in the clear. Ramirez confessed to it, as I’m sure you know by now.”

  “Ramirez has been unconscious since we pulled him from the tunnel. He hasn’t confessed to anything, so far as I know.”

  “He confessed to me prior to the explosion.”

  “Uh-huh. And I guess I have your word for that.”

  “If you poke around a bit, I think you’ll figure it out for yourself.”

  “I expect I will resolve it, one way or the other. But we’ve also got a young woman thrown off the dam at the reservoir. She was just twenty-four, you know. I like you for that one.”

  “I shouldn’t have got her involved,” Reggie replied at first. But then he bristled, glared at Mendoza, and said, “If authorities here had paid better attention to things, it wouldn’t have come down to just me and her figuring the bloody mess out for you. It was Rogers that killed her. He realized he had a problem after I first went to see him. He had an ambush set up to take the map from me at the lake. But she tracked him down there first, thinking the wanker was actually going to help—and he panicked when she told him what we knew about the map.”

  “And now Rogers is dead. Convenient.”

  “There was a second man. At the reservoir, and in the tunnel.”

  “So I hear.”

  “You haven’t found him?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sure you will in time. If he was at the center of the blast, he might be a bit dispersed at the moment.”

  “Uh-huh. What’s the fellow’s name? I’ll check with missing persons.”

  “I don’t know his name. A white male, fifties, something above six feet, one ninety or thereabouts.”

  “Narrows it down to a million or so local suspects.”

  “Rogers forced Ramirez to alter the map, and this man paid Rogers to do it. His involvement stems from that.”

  “Ahh, yes, the map. Well, you may have something there. Motive, anyway, for someone, if you can prove this wasn’t just some colossal screwup.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Brilliant. Where is the map?”

  “On the tunnel platform, last I saw,” Reggie said reluctantly.

  “It was in the tunnel. With the great big fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “Uh-huh. Good luck with that one,” said Mendoza, and he stood. “I’d ask you not to go too far—but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.”

  Mendoza exited.

  Reggie sat up and made an assessment.

  The head pounding recurred only when he moved; when he was still, it receded to a generalized ache.

  So that was a plus.

  He knew he
’d have to lift his leg to get it out of the sling. He tried that tentatively, and his right knee responded with swollen, radiating pain.

  He was about to try again—but then the bedside phone rang.

  It was a single room; the call couldn’t be for anyone else.

  Reggie picked up.

  “Hello, Heath,” came Wembley’s voice, annoyingly and, Reggie presumed, deliberately cheery. “Are you well?”

  “Quite,” said Reggie. “Yourself?”

  “In the pink.”

  “Glad to hear it. How can I help you?”

  “I’d like to see the three of you back here for a little chat, Heath. Miss Rankin. You. Your brother.”

  “Not a good time,” said Reggie.

  “They tell me Miss Rankin is more than able to travel, and you and your brother can be moved in a day or two. From what I understand, you’re making rather a mess over there anyway. I’ll get extradition if I need to,” said Wembley.

  “Give us two days then,” said Reggie. “I doubt they’ll let Nigel out before that. I’ll see you myself day after tomorrow. If you still need to talk to Laura or Nigel after, you’ll know where to find them.”

  “Fair enough,” said Wembley, now sounding a bit suspicious. “Just be here.”

  “Thank you,” said Reggie, and he hung up the phone.

  He took a breath, clenched his teeth, and readied himself again to try to get out of bed.

  This time he managed it. He raised his leg cleanly up and out of the sling.

  And then his foot came down with a little more force on the floor than he would have preferred. He choked back a scream. He stood and waited for a wave of nausea to subside before finding his clothes.

  Reggie stepped into the corridor, then was dizzy again, and he leaned for a moment against the wall and tried to think.

  Wembley had revealed more than Mendoza had about the state of things. Laura must have gotten out cleanly, but Nigel must be injured.

  Reggie looked to his right, toward the nurses’ station. The attending nurse was busy on the phone, looking the other way. It was just as well. There was no telling what instructions Mendoza might have left.

  Reggie straightened, tried to ignore the pain in his knees, and began a stroll, or something like it, down the corridor. He pushed open the door of the first room. There was an elderly woman, sleeping, and an empty bed.