Baker Street Irregulars

by Michael A. Ventrella

  Watson kept his eyes on the holo screen. “Can’t say that I do.”

  Sherlock righted a knocked-over chair and plopped down in it. “We need to get moving. The killer is laying low at the moment, but he’ll try to leave Armstrong very soon.”

  “Let’s just wait for the fireworks to stop outside, shall we? Sherlock Holmes,” Watson read. “A certifiable genius. Top of your class at Aldrin Academy.”

  “Yes?” Sherlock said impatiently.

  “No priors. No criminal infractions whatsoever.”

  “Not even a parking ticket. Now are you done wasting our time?”

  “You’ve made a great deal in the stock market, it seems. I’m sure your bank statements are very impressive.”

  “They are,” he said dismissively. “But I want to talk about the killer who’s about to escape your incompetent grasp.”

  “And how do you come by this arcane knowledge?” Watson asked.

  Sherlock squinted at him searchingly. “You are inscrutable, Detective.”

  Watson stepped to peek out the windows as another police bike fell smoking out of the sky. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  The boy cocked his head, still staring intensely. “Most people’s faces are an open book. But yours is shut.”

  “Answer the question.”

  Sherlock flung out his fingers from his hands. “Simple deduction, my dear Watson. He is waiting for the initial flurry of police activity to die down. He’s probably hiding in a derelict section of the city with a lack of surveillance or activity. Doubtless, he somehow learned of my involvement and sent these rebellious robots after me before I could solve your case for you.”

  Watson ignored the insult. “How do you know it’s a man?”

  “Logically it must be, in order to overpower the victim.”

  “There were no signs of struggle.”

  Sherlock stepped back to the window and craned his neck to look outside. “The killer would have been known to the victim, or at the very least there for a business deal.”

  “What kind of business?”

  “Surely you have deduced by now the nature of Mr. Drebber’s work,” Sherlock said haughtily.

  “We have. How do you know?”

  Sherlock smiled. “You’d be amazed what a civilian can learn about someone through the Plex.”

  Watson crossed his arms. “Let me guess. You Plex yourself once a day.”

  Sherlock cocked his head innocently. “Is that a euphemism?”

  “Never mind. May I ask what your interest in the case is?”

  “Why, solving crime, of course,” Sherlock said. “Normal life is so boring, don’t you think?”

  “A boring day is good for me. It means no one died.”

  Sherlock flicked his hand dismissively. “I need something exciting, and this is it. Would you believe this is the first time in my life anyone’s attempted to murder me?”

  Watson looked him up and down. “Not really, no.” His wristlet beeped and Lestrade’s voice sounded. “Watson, are you all right? We’ve taken out all of the rogue bots.”

  Watson tapped the device. “We’re just fine, Inspector. Be right out.”

  Sherlock jumped to his feet and rubbed his hands together. “Now then. I must see the crime scene immediately, before your inept compatriots taint the evidence.”

  Watson slowly spread his hands apart. “What makes you think I’m not just going to toss you in a cell? Someone is trying to kill you, after all.”

  Sherlock’s voice was as cutting as a laser beam. “Because, my dear Watson, regardless of your personal dislike for my habits, you want to solve cases, catch criminals, and save lives, and I am the means to do it.”

  Watson looked out the window at the hovering police units outside. “You’re not going anywhere until you explain about the glyphs.”

  “It’s his signature, Detective. He’s creating a new language, a new culture, written in the blood of his victims. I shudder to think what will happen when he completes his alphabet.”

  “Have you seen these letters before?”

  “Everyone has,” Sherlock exclaimed with a wide grin. “He’s lined the city with them. But no one can see it. They’re jutting out in plain view. Written in graffiti on the buildings across Armstrong. They’ve been there for months. Examine your intensely invasive street surveillance, and they’ll leap right out at you.”

  Watson stood up. “Fair enough. We’ll just pop into the precinct so I can check in with my superiors.”

  “Of course,” Sherlock said without concern. “Naturally, I do not consent to any invasive body scans.”

  “Naturally.”

  • • •

  Fifteen minutes later, Watson strolled into the interrogation room where Sherlock paced back and forth, chewing his fingernails.

  Watson sat down on the other chair and folded his hands in front of him on the table. “Well. The six renegade automatons came from a local PMC. They walked off the lot three days ago without the owners’ consent. They filed a police report at the time. Examination of the wreckage suggests they were remotely hacked, but we’re not making any headway on the source.”

  “And you won’t. I need to make water,” Sherlock said tersely.

  “We’ll get to that,” Watson said without sympathy. “First, tell me about the graffiti.”

  Sherlock shrugged and looked into the mirror, studying his reflection.

  “This man is no fool,” Sherlock began. “He obviously would never allow himself to be filmed making the letters. He would have arranged to have them made for him, doubtlessly by the local homeless population. I’m sure your cursory examination of the street cams proved this, but when you cycled back to track the origin of the underlings, you found them emerging from an area with no coverage.”

  Watson grunted. “Go on.”

  “The letters I’ve seen don’t seem to spell out words or phrases. I can discern no legible alphabet from them. They seem to be random symbols.” He pointed frantically to his skull. “But to our killer’s mind their meaning is very clear, and it will not be revealed to us until he is finished. The murder scenes will be the key to breaking his code. I must see the location.”

  “Do you have any suspects to name?”

  “I’m a genius, not a bloody psychic,” Sherlock scoffed. “It’s damn well impressive I’ve got this far as it is. I need to see the scene for more clues. And then we shall find your killer.”

  “What led you to me? What connection did you see between the graffiti and a random death in the news?”

  “As I said, it’s amazing what a civilian can pull off the Plex. Public usage cameras gave me a distant image of the escape pod. Magnification software showed strange letters in blood on the window.”

  “Ingenious,” Watson said dryly.

  “And of course, a simple search of recent arrest articles and police directories led me to you.”

  “Of course.”

  “Now may I please see the water closet?”

  Watson stood and dramatically gestured him towards the door. “We would be honored for you to christen it.”

  • • •

  “Are you sure this is a good idea?” Lestrade asked as Watson strapped himself into a spacesuit in the wardroom of the police hangar. “Going off alone with this stranger?”

  “One way or another, he’s going to crack the case,” Watson said easily without looking at him.

  “I’m sending patrol units with you.”

  “That’s fine, as long as they keep well back.”

  Lestrade crossed his arms. “Just remember. The last time you were wrong about a hunch, you ended up in hospital for a month.”

  Watson smirked. “How else am I supposed to go on holiday?” He finished his ministrations and headed for the door to the hangar.

  “Watch your back, Watson,” Lestrade called after him.

  “I always do.”

  Watson exited the wardroom and headed for the shuttle in the caver
nous hangar.

  “It’s about bloody time,” Sherlock groused. He stood leaning against the shuttle in a spacesuit, flanked by a pair of policemen. “I can feel my hair growing while I’m waiting on you.”

  “I’ll get you back in time for a haircut. You are familiar with EVA, I presume?”

  “I live on the bloody Moon, don’t I?” Sherlock answered rudely.

  • • •

  “This is exciting, isn’t it?” Sherlock asked fervently as they jetted towards the crime scene. He leaned over towards Watson to watch him working the controls, straining against the restraints of his seatbelt.

  “Not particularly,” Watson said without looking at him.

  “Oh, you’re no fun.”

  “So tell me, Sherlock, what led you to picking police consultant as your next bright new career path?”

  Sherlock leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling.

  “Playing with futures and emerging intersystem economies holds no challenge for me any more. I’ve always had a passion for mystery stories, but they’ve always been impossible for me not to solve. Finally, I realized there were real life murder mysteries I could be solving.”

  Watson grunted. “Nice to know your motives are so charitable.”

  Sherlock wrinkled his nose with disgust. “Oh, come now, Detective. We are all of us selfish creatures. Nature red in tooth and claw. All of this,” he gestured around him, “is mere pretense.”

  Watson shrugged. “You’re the expert.”

  They approached the vented escape pod and slowed to a halt. A small cloud of police drones marked a three-dimensional perimeter around the crime scene.

  “Ah! Here we are!” Sherlock exclaimed with glee.

  “Try not to drool in the suit. Are your seals tight?”

  Sherlock didn’t even bother checking his wrist display. “Of course.”

  “Venting atmosphere.” Watson pressed a covered button, and the side hatch opened to suck out the air in the shuttle. Sherlock hurriedly undid his harness and pushed off towards the open hatch. Watson followed after him.

  They were twenty-five yards from the pod. Flashing police sirens twinkled around them from the drones nearby.

  “Am I allowed to touch the evidence?” Sherlock asked him.

  “Absolutely not,” Lestrade’s voice came in on the radio.

  “If you must,” Watson answered.

  “Watson…” Lestrade said warningly.

  “On my authority, sir.”

  “Thank you, Watson,” Sherlock said. He used maneuvering jets to approach the pod. He gently laid his hands on the exterior and stared at the window with the bloody writing on the inside. “Ah, this is a much better view,” he muttered to himself. “The writing was done with a gloved hand, obviously. But you have no chance of catching this man red handed, Detective. He would have destroyed the suit quite thoroughly the moment he was out of it.”

  “Fiddlesticks.”

  “Language, Watson…” Sherlock said with a half-smile. “I’m going inside.”

  They both entered through the open hatch. Sherlock affixed himself to one side of the pod, taking in all details without paying particular attention to the marked position of the body.

  “Well? Have you translated the alphabet yet?” Watson asked.

  Sherlock did not bother looking at him. “Of course not. This is only the beginnings of a cipher key. There’s not a complete set yet.”

  Watson let out an annoyed huff. “Then why did I haul you out here?”

  “Patience, Detective. Murder will out, as they say.” He turned back to Watson. “The body. No signs of trauma, no suspicious cause of death?”

  “Just sucking vacuum.”

  “Hmm. Did you check under his fingernails?”

  “Of course. There was nothing there.”

  “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

  “No.”

  Sherlock mimed examining his own nails despite wearing a full EVA suit. “Perfectly clean? No particulate matter at all? Tell me, Watson, how clean do you think your nails are at the moment?”

  “We’re not here to discuss my personal hygiene…”

  “No matter how well you wash your hands there should be some contamination. A normal person’s fingernails will always tell the story of their day. But this man’s tells no story at all. Our killer wanted them to stay silent.”

  “And what would have we found there?”

  Sherlock shrugged awkwardly in the bulky suit. “Some clue leading us to our killer. His skin cells, or a particle of his clothing. A speck of dirt or food we could back trace. Clearly, this was not an ill-planned homicide borne of the moment. But then, we already knew that because of the language of blood.” He stopped and looked back to Watson with a mischievous smile. “The language of blood, I like that. When they make a movie out of this, there’s your title.”

  Watson let out a short, disbelieving laugh. “You think I’m signing my likeness rights over to you?”

  Sherlock waved a hand dismissively. “The negotiations can come later. So: Our killer is an intelligent man acting with foresight and planning. A hard man, probably sociopathic or psychopathic. He knew Mr. Drebber well enough to meet and surprise him. It’s possible he was using Drebber’s product.”

  “He sold SCC.”

  The boy nodded absently to himself. “Yes, of course. Like running a computer beyond its operational limits, SCC allows its users to overclock their own brains for a high of hyper-awareness and intelligence. One in ten users experience violent psychosis. Perhaps he is in that lucky minority.”

  “He probably became arrogant and deluded enough to think he would get away with murder.”

  “Doubtlessly,” Sherlock said while studying the glyphs again.

  Watson shrugged. “What I don’t understand is, why eject him from the shuttle and then vent the pod? Why not just kill him, leave his mash note, and leave?”

  The boy reached out to brush one of the gylphs with his gloved fingers. “Perhaps it was an affectation, an exclamation point to his statement. He is taunting you with the mystery of how it was done.”

  Watson jerked his chin towards Sherlock. “Let’s say you’re the killer. Show me how you would have done it.”

  Sherlock smiled distantly. “Well, that would be difficult, given the fact that he was killed on the shuttle and his body moved here post-mortem.”

  “We saw no signs of violence in the wreckage, or on his body.”

  “And what was the cause of death, Detective?” Sherlock asked tauntingly.

  “Asphyxiation.”

  Sherlock wiggled a gloved finger at him. “One can die from lack of oxygen in a room full of air.”

  “So the killer overpowers Drebber in a perfectly fine shuttle and smothers him to death?”

  The boy idly tapped at the flight console. “Essees overclock the body as well as the mind.”

  Watson watched the screen closely. “He tosses him in the escape pod, jettisons it…and then…what? How do you open the hatch from the inside?”

  “If our killer is as intelligent as I believe him to be, he could have written a hack into the pod’s programming, which then deleted itself upon completion. Granted, it would have been difficult to defeat the safety overrides, but the computer would have read an occupant in a spacesuit who wasn’t attempting to stop the door from opening. Perhaps the computer was told to ignore the missing helmet?”

  “Ingenious,” Watson said.

  “It is, actually. Our opponent must be remarkably intelligent. This shall be quite the challenge. I’m actually looking forward to it!”

  “In my experience, all criminals make mistakes.”

  “Obviously they made a mistake if you caught them. The smart ones you would never know about.”

  “Funny, someone just said that to me earlier today…but there’s no guiding hand behind the malefactor, no deep organizing power at the heart of the criminal underworld. Just a bunch of loons waiting to be caught. Anyway. So,
you’ve suffocated Drebber, tossed him in the pod, and used a hack to vent it. What did you do next?”

  Sherlock stepped away from the console and paced the chamber. “Exit the shuttle once it’s laid on its collision course, either in his own ship or in an EVA suit to transportation waiting nearby.”

  “Hmm, probably the suit.”

  “Perhaps,” Sherlock allowed.

  Watson tapped one of the glyphs. “But why bother with all this trickery?”

  “He is thumbing his nose at you, Detective,” Sherlock smirked. “What would be the point of all this if there wasn’t a little flair to it?”

  “And the glyphs?”

  “A wonderful bit of theater. I’m sure the press will love it. It should make him quite popular.”

  Watson sighed and leaned back. “Well, you would have been…if we hadn’t caught you on tape paying one of the painters.”

  “Excuse me? Are you having a laugh?”

  Watson’s pistol appeared in his hand. “You do realize you’ve just given me your entire recorded confession?”

  Sherlock’s smile collapsed. “Detective, if this is your unique brand of humor—”

  “Did you really think you could commit a murder and then help the police find your patsy for you?” Watson asked incredulously.

  Sherlock glared at him with quiet intensity. “If we’re really going to go through with this ridiculous charade, then you shall find I can be definitively placed at my home at the time of the murder.”

  “Oh, I’m sure you can,” Watson agreed affably. “After all, you were expert enough a hacker to convince the escape pod to open its door. And to send those PMC bots after yourself to prove how innocent you are.”

  Sherlock exploded with frustration. “This is a ridiculous waste of time! Every minute we waste here bickering is another minute the killer can be using to escape!”

  Watson raised his pistol slightly. “Don’t worry. I’ve got him right in my sights.”

  “What could possibly lead you to believe I am the murderer?” Sherlock asked in disbelief.

  “As you said, our killer must be using SCC.”

  “How insulting,” the boy said aristocratically. “Are you implying I’m juicing my intelligence?”

  “No, I’m flat out stating it. I scanned you in the interrogation room.”