The Final Step

by Ridley Pearson

  Sherlock slowed the car.

  “Hers will not be a survivable accident. Do we understand one another? This is not a twisted ankle, young man. Your act, and your act alone will account for whatever happens to her. You will have to live with that. I’m afraid she will not.”

  Sherlock stopped the car.

  It took Hildebrandt a moment to realize they’d returned to the entrance to his own driveway. Three figures approached the side of the car from the back, while in Sherlock’s rearview mirror, distant treetops flashed with the blue light of a police car or ambulance.

  James, Lexie, and I stepped up to the front passenger window as Hildebrandt again struggled to open the child-locked backseat doors. Sherlock rolled down only the passenger window.

  “I see you got my text. Good! Get in,” Sherlock said. “Climb through the window.” The light in the trees grew wider and brighter. “And hurry it up!”

  James scrambled through. I approached next.

  “No!” Sherlock said. “Only James.” He started the electronic window up.

  I saw the lights coming quickly toward us. My fingers hooked over the edge of the rising window, I tried to slow its ascent. “Come on, Lock! We’re part of this!”

  Sherlock looked directly at me. He wasn’t known as a cheery boy, more like thoughtfully quiet. But he wasn’t sullen or sad either. Not gloomy or moody. Just different. Our connection was intense, his look deeply sorrowful. It was as if he were carrying the weight of the world. Seeing him behind the wheel I immediately understood that he’d anticipated the worst: that Hildebrandt would get free of James’s and Ralph’s plan and that he would run away. Sherlock couldn’t have predicted that both guards would abandon the car, yet I knew he’d somehow known to get behind the wheel regardless. Lock didn’t miss much, which is why his look sickened me: he was afraid.

  Just before my fingers were broken by the window closing, I yanked them out and pounded on the glass.

  “Sherlock!! OPEN THE DOOR!!”

  The car sped away.

  My heart sank. I felt faint. Sherlock had chosen sides. He’d burned me.

  James looked over the front seat into the back. “You’re going to pay for this.”

  “You are very much out of your league, young man. If you have any sense at all—which I’m beginning to doubt—you and your English butler will return me to my residence. This car is GPS tracked. By now my team is in pursuit. Good luck with that.”

  “You killed my father.”

  “I did not.”

  “Mr. Carlisle?”

  “I cannot speak freely in front of your . . . driver, but you are mistaken. Again.”

  “It’s a trap,” Sherlock said, anticipating James dismissing him. “If I pull over his goons will catch up. He’s trying to buy time.”

  “Drive,” James said to Sherlock. To Hildebrandt: “You can talk or not. It’s up to you. I trust Sherlock.” James turned around and faced front. “You killed my father because of the direction you wanted to take our society. Or, actually, you arranged for Colander to do it for you, which is about as cowardly as it gets.”

  “You’d be smart to turn around, boy.”

  “Not going to happen,” James said.

  “It’s kidnapping.”

  “It’s murder.”

  “Your father, as brilliant as he was, turned a blind eye because of heritage. Legacy. History. He clung to the past. You know this, don’t you? You saw it too.”

  “Shut up.”

  “He didn’t approve of any new thinking. If anything, he was a man who wished for the ‘old days’ more than tomorrow.”

  “Why were you there the night my mother left?” James barked. “Across the street in the car.”

  Hildebrandt required time to recover from the question. “Did your mother leave? She most certainly did. But only because your father was protecting her. It was his idea, James. His solution.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Fine. It’s not true. You know what else isn’t true? Had your father been more flexible he’d be alive today. Knowing our society, do you think it was me, James? Me alone? You’re too smart for that.”

  “Don’t try to compliment me,” James complained. “You know who’s smarter than both of us? The kid behind the wheel. My friend who’s driving.”

  Sherlock didn’t deny it. Instead he told their captive, “For an FBI agent, you miss a lot. James bugged your apartment. He has video—and audio—of you. That’s called evidence.”

  “You disagreed with Father about the Eastern European problem.” It was not a total guess. It had come up at the meeting of the Directory. “It’s why you felt you had to win the vote for Kennedy Wilkes to be our attorney. Wilkes is one of yours, isn’t she? You already own her.” James didn’t make it a question. “But there was Father in your way. Let Colander take out an enemy and let his ignorant son—me—take his place and you’ll be able to use your power to get what you want.”

  “It’s money laundering,” Sherlock blurted out, as if he knew. “What else do the Eastern Europeans prize more than American dollars? They want cash. That was the proposal, wasn’t it? Start doing business with your so-called European partners? Launder their drug money. Their gambling money. All their dirty money.”

  “Father would never agree to do business with anyone selling drugs.”

  “Dreadfully narrow-sighted of him,” Hildebrandt said. “You, I would think better of, James.”

  “I told you: no flattery.”

  “You wanted the truth,” Hildebrandt said. “You tell me. Truth or we wait out the ride, providing my men don’t catch up to us. I’m afraid it’s bad news for the both of you if that happens. They won’t be kind, you know? They don’t care how old or young you are, only that you took the man it’s their jobs to protect. They’ll gladly kill anyone who comes between them and me.”

  “Truth,” James said.

  “Yes, I proposed to sell American dollars to overseas criminals and, more importantly, the terrorist organizations they represent. Yes, your father objected. For such a brilliant man, he oddly missed the bigger picture. Mr. Holmes, since you’re so brilliant, do you care to speculate?”

  “No one but a lunatic would do business with terrorists,” Sherlock said. “It doesn’t require much speculation.”

  “You see? No imagination. What was my prior job, young man?”

  “FBI director,” James answered.

  “Correct. And, in that role, how often do you think I had to deal with terrorism?”

  “Weekly? Daily?”

  “Hourly,” Hildebrandt answered. “All hours of the day. Every day. Why did I resign? And what did I do immediately after?”

  James answered. “I don’t know why, but you joined the Directory.”

  “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em,” Sherlock said.

  “Something like that. Yes. Sure: make a little money for all those years I wouldn’t take a single bribe, not so much as a free dinner. True. But it goes much deeper than that. Much!”

  “Terrorism,” James said. “But if you care about fighting terrorism, why leave the FBI?”

  “Cheese-Its!” Sherlock cried out. “That is devilish,” he said, looking into the rearview mirror. “Did you explain it to Mr. Moriarty, or was he supposed to figure it out on his own?”

  “I explained everything,” Hildebrandt said.

  James badly wanted to ask what it was they were talking about, but didn’t want to appear stupid. So he listened.

  “He refused on principle,” Sherlock said, speculating. “No business with terrorists.”

  “He was a principled man,” Hildebrandt said.

  Sherlock eased his phone toward James, who saw the phone was recording. James set his phone to record as well.

  “It’s bril,” said the Brit. He was playing to Hildebrandt’s ego. “If you, the Scowerers, played hard to get, but eventually agreed to launder their money, some of those funds would come from terrorists. With a little c
yber spying, one could then trace the funds back to the terrorists themselves.”

  “You see,” Hildebrandt said. “A silver lining.”

  “‘Follow the money,’” Sherlock said. “You’d be able to tell your former fellows in government who and where the terrorists were and how they were being funded.”

  “And, with each effort, make this world a little safer,” said Hildebrandt. “Bravo, Mr. Holmes. Please tell your friend here that it’s all I want. A few votes within the Directory, a good attorney to protect the organization, and with some careful work we end the funding of terrorists. We do the things that our government can’t do. There are laws, you know. We do what’s necessary.”

  The idea hit James blindingly. “The Scowerers act like a bank. We exchange dollars like those booths in the airport. We trick them, follow the money back to who’s trying to exchange, and expose the terrorists.”

  “All that’s required,” Hildebrandt said, “is to think bigger. Is it illegal? Most certainly. But that’s never stopped the Scowerers. Is it wrong to launder drug money? Arms dealers? Terrorists? It is, and it’s awful in so many ways. But if it means we catch the terrorists? One man, a single man, a great man, stood in the way of that. His loss is great, James. There is no denying that. One does what one must do for the greater good.”

  James hurt so deeply, felt so confused, he considered jumping out of the moving car.

  Headlights behind them.

  Sherlock pushed down the accelerator.

  James released the door handle.

  “Don’t do anything stupid!” Hildebrandt said, once again clipping into his seatbelt, something both boys had done from the start of the drive.

  “Call them off!” James said.

  “Do I look like I have a phone?”

  Sherlock drove faster. Hildebrandt put both hands down firmly onto the seat and leaned back, eyes wide.

  I should have figured that Lexie would know how to drive an ATV. It was like a motorcycle with four wheels. It was as if she knew she’d find one in the storage shed that sat under an elm tree at the end of the gravel parking area. She threw the shed door open and came out riding the thing and shouting for me to climb on.

  I told her, like it or not, I wasn’t leaving Ralph.

  As we were arguing, a black SUV with tinted windows whizzed by. This area of Connecticut being farms and orchards, I couldn’t imagine there being another car like that for many, many miles.

  “Hildebrandt,” I said.

  “But they took off going the other way,” Lexie countered.

  “I hate Sherlock!” I blurted it out. Sadly, it was all I could think about.

  Another car flew past, heading in the same direction as the SUV. Hildebrandt’s goons. “I gotta go,” she said.

  “And do what exactly?” I implored.

  “Something is better than nothing,” Lexie said. “Sure you won’t come?”

  I nodded.

  She zoomed away, headlights off, the rear tires throwing pebbles.

  “What do you think?” James asked Sherlock.

  Sherlock made eye contact with Hildebrandt in the rearview mirror. He heard my name echo inside the car. Inside his head. “Terrorism, the environment, and nuclear bombs are the three biggest threats to democracy,” Sherlock said, sounding like TV news reporter. “As much as I don’t want to say it . . .” He looked over at James. “I believe him.”

  James sat still.

  “It’s up to you now,” Sherlock said. “I don’t pretend to know the right choice. But . . . whatever your choice, do not overlook the power you have at this moment.”

  Hildebrandt did not like the sound of this. He sat forward.

  “Your mother,” Sherlock said. “This man must be made to pay for what he’s done to your father. To your family. His idea can continue to live. That is up to you.”

  “We know she’s at Gadwall,” James said, stunning Hildebrandt yet again. It felt good to James to finally know something Sherlock Holmes did not.

  “Interesting,” Sherlock said.

  A fast-driving car, headlights off, pulled alongside the SUV before Sherlock saw it.

  “Cripes!” Sherlock said.

  A gunshot. James ducked. Sherlock lost control of the wheel. “Tires!” Sherlock yelled as the car skidded off the pavement and into a thin band of dirt and weeds between the road and forest. The SUV plowed over a speed limit sign and a mile marker. They scraped the bottom of the car so loudly it sounded as if the car were coming apart. Sherlock slammed on the brakes. Too hard. The back of the car swerved and hit a tree. The SUV spun around sharply, now facing backward. It skidded to a stop in a cloud of dust. The other car stopped forty feet past them. Its white reverse lights blasted out of the dark.

  The SUV’s headlights were shining back in the direction from which they’d come. Through the dust, Sherlock imagined he saw an ATV, realizing he must have hit his head, must be seeing things.

  Then he saw Lexie behind the handlebars. He released both his and James’s seatbelt. Reached across James, pushed open the door and James with it. Sherlock followed outside.

  Hildebrandt’s guards were running toward the SUV.

  Sherlock dragged James toward the slowing ATV. They climbed on with Lexie.

  “Stop!” a guard shouted.

  Lexie tipped the ATV onto two wheels as she gunned it in the opposite direction. Sherlock lost his balance and was going off the vehicle as James caught him by the arm and hauled him back onto the seat.

  “Thank you,” Sherlock said. “Invigorating, don’t you think?”

  “Shut up!” said James, reaching tentatively around Lexie’s waist to hold on.

  CHAPTER 67

  COLANDER, A DANE WHOSE REAL NAME TURNED out to be Magnus As, was arrested for, among other crimes, Father’s murder, in what the news called, “a sweep of organized crime.” The US State Department claimed it was the biggest arrest of foreign nationals involved in a single criminal organization since a drug cartel had been shut down in the 1990s.

  A former director of the FBI being implicated in an armed robbery decades earlier made it into newspapers around the world. No one seemed to know if charges would result from the evidence supplied, but the damage was done: Hildebrandt’s reputation was tarnished for good.

  Three weeks had passed since the night of all the insanity. I hadn’t seen or heard from Sherlock since.

  Then, one morning I found myself sitting across from him in our Beacon Hill home’s downstairs library. Lois was tied up and gagged and locked in Father’s secret room. Technically, the legal firm responsible for James and me had fired her. We intended to go beyond technicalities. It had been Sherlock’s idea, of course, but I wasn’t giving him any credit.

  Sherlock looked paler and thinner than a few weeks earlier. His hair was a scruffy mess as always, lending me the impression he cut it himself with a pair of elementary school scissors. I tried to feel sorry for him. Sadly, I felt nothing at all.

  “I’m not sorry we let Hildebrandt go,” he said. “There was no sense in turning him over to the police. The way Ralph has handled it was the only way.”

  “Ralph was in an ambulance! You think that was well-played? You kept me from getting into the car. You left me and Lexie there. That’s unforgivable. I don’t get why you’re here,” I said.

  “Ralph and James offered for me to go with you,” he said.

  “That’s a stupid idea.”

  “If you want me to leave, I shall,” Sherlock said, in his Sherlockian way.

  “Don’t do that. Don’t put it on me!”

  “It is on you. I want to be with you, with you all. It’s your call. I will honor your decision.”

  Darn him! Hearts weren’t meant to hurt like mine did. It felt dangerous, destructive to feel your chest clamped in agony.

  He rubbed his spindly hands together, trapped between his knobby knees. I fought off a lump in my throat.

  “You’ve got to stop making arm slings part of your wardr
obe,” I told Ralph as he drove. The rented van remained a bit slower than other traffic. Lois had been moaning into her gag for an hour. We didn’t need to be stopped by police.

  We passed a sign for Manchester-by-the-Sea. I felt suddenly sick to my stomach.

  “Window,” I pleaded.

  The one-handed Ralph rolled his window down. He could have killed us! The sea air smelled sweet. I thought of a different James and me. The one where our best friend was the other person, the keeper of our secrets, the accomplice to our crimes. We used to have adventures together. I couldn’t read James anymore. Personally, I felt like two different girls: then and now. I thought back to Father, Mr. Lowry, Mr. Carlisle, Colander, Hildebrandt. Nightmare heaped upon nightmare.

  I’d been having a recurring dream of standing in front of a mirror, wearing a mask. Each time I took off the mask, another lay beneath it. No matter how fast I removed them I couldn’t reach my real face. I was having issues.

  When the truck rolled slowly onto and across quiet gravel, my heart leaped in my chest. I didn’t look out a window—there weren’t any in the back of the fish truck.

  But I could see the sign we’d just passed as clearly as if I’d had a window.

  GADWALL SPECIALIST CENTER

  James and I had once been so close to the truth here. I had to wonder what might have happened if we’d found it back then.

  CHAPTER 68

  I WOULDN’T HAVE WANTED TO GET ON RALPH’S bad side: he’d thought of everything. The fish truck. Our matching brown carpenter coveralls, so I’d look like daddy’s little helper when standing next to him. He even wore a baseball cap that read: Hippo Movers. No idea where he’d picked that up.

  He didn’t wear his sling, as it might have looked a little suspicious for a moving man to have his arm in one. But his theory—Sherlock’s, if I’m going to be honest; the entire plan was Sherlock’s, though I couldn’t bring myself to admit that—was that institutions like the Gadwall Specialist Center had “guests” (substitute “patients”) coming and going a lot of the time (substitute “dying,” “being hospitalized elsewhere,” “moving in”). A visitor might be questioned. A relative, like me, might be questioned. But no one would take a second look at a moving man, even one with his adorable (let’s face it) daughter by his side.