“You don’t want me to restore her? I could restore her identity to an earlier time; there would be no record of you.”
“No. There’d still be a suspicious gap. Eighteen minutes. We have to stay off the books. Wipe the one I’m riding next. Then erase all evidence of the connection, and I’ll disengage the cyranoid—”
“I’m sorry, Kris, I can’t do that.”
“Excuse me?”
“We’ve been overridden. My access has been denied.”
“That can’t be right. We still have communication—”
“I always use a separate channel for that—”
“Never mind, I’ll just get out of this damn suit and…” A pause. “What the fuck!”
“The monitors say your suit is locked. You can’t get out.”
“This is insane.”
“Yes, it is,” agreed a new voice on the channel.
Marble recognized the speaker immediately. “Mr. Arthur?”
“Actually, most people call me by my full name, Morrie Arthur. Consulting criminal. At your service.” A pause. “Well, not actually at your service. In this situation, you’re at my service. So to speak. And I do intend to serve you—the same way a certain fictitious Mr. Lecter serves his guests.”
“You talk too much,” said Marble.
“Ahh, yes,” agreed Morrie Arthur. He had a mellifluous tone, almost unctuous. “It’s a necessary trope. And who am I to disregard a tradition as well established as this one? Must I explain everything now? Or have you deduced the obvious?”
“It was obvious from the beginning,” said Marble. “Too obvious. Wouldn’t you agree, Watson?”
I had my own part to play. So I said, “It was a trap?”
“From the very beginning, yes.” Arthur’s voice had gone beyond unctuous. Now it was just oily. “I see that Watson remains as obtuse as ever. So…I shall elucidate for the benefit of the befuddled. The Snipper was a convenient fiction, but a necessary one. I needed to make you an Arthur you couldn’t refuse. Or in this case, she. Whatever. It’s your pronoun. Concave or convex. Take your pick.”
“We didn’t take it for the case, we took it for the money,” I said.
“No, Watson,” said Marble. “We took it for the case.”
Arthur sighed. “There’s a contradiction here, you know. If you had recognized that the case was a trap, you wouldn’t have stepped into it. So either you’re lying about recognizing the trap, or the money blinded you. No matter. The outcome will be the same.”
“You know what’s wrong with you, Morrie Arty?” said Marble. “You need to get laid. But now I understand why you can’t.”
“Ahh, delightful to the last. Now, as I understand it, only Watson knows how to get you out of that cybersuit. So after I wipe his mind and reduce him to a pile of melted plastic, you will be left to die a long, lingering death in an electronic isolation sphere. That should give you plenty of time to think about all the errors you’ve made.”
“Oh, do keep talking—”
“No, I think I’m done.”
“No, really—keep talking. Another few seconds.”
“Playing for time, I see. It won’t work. Goodbye, Detective Marble—”
“Yes, goodbye to you too. Oh, that knocking on your door, Morrie? You’re surrounded. By several hundred specially equipped Loreleis.”
Morrie Arthur didn’t answer—but he was still on the circuit. He could still hear Marble.
“Yes, we recognized your case was a trap from the beginning. The Loreleis were being ridden, they had no control when the rider willingly gave up their members, but their memories were being wiped, so there was no record of the client. But those attachments you took? They were equipped with randomly firing GPS chips, so you had no way of detecting them. The Loreleis came to us because they wanted them back. That’s all. They could have sent some of their own to retrieve the prostheses, but they recognized that this was a behavior they were uncertain of. So they gave Watson access to their network and he became suspicious of the larger pattern. He’s very good at pattern recognition. You were too clever by half. It took only a few minutes to discover that Jack the Snipper was a construct.
“So when you showed up, with such a convenient and attractive offer—well, again, this was beyond the Loreleis’ comprehension. Why would the man who stole the phalluses hire someone to track them down? That was when the trap became obvious.
“The Loreleis gave us their full cooperation. They created several hidden channels for us in their own network. But we still had to play out the whole charade while they moved their sisters into position. Oh, these were sisters you couldn’t track, because they hadn’t been officially activated yet.”
Marble took a breath. “Yes, the explanation is part of the tradition, so I’ll tell you one more thing. The Loreleis are nowhere near as innocent and naïve as they pretend to be. They know far more about human behavior than most humans. Including you. What we’ve learned from them has been extremely illuminating. Ahh, I see by my screens that you have now been secured. I hope they weren’t too severe when they restrained you. But that detention locker looks to be quite cozy—kind of like a coffin, eh? All right, Watson, you can unlock the damn cybersuit now. I’ve had enough of this.”
And that’s how the case was resolved. Both cases, actually. The Loreleis paid us, and the escrow released the second half of Mr. Arthur’s fee as well.
Marble took the rest of the night off, and the next day as well. Kiki’s identity hadn’t really been wiped—and Marble intended to keep her promise.
It turned out that the Loreleis were very good at empathy.
The Scarlet Study
BY
Jim Avelli
Holmes swayed with the rhythm of the dust cart. The half-dead springs of the passenger seat clicked and squawked under him as his penknife bit into the dried mud that colonized his boot treads. His driver was saying something about the weather, or the narrow streets, filling in the empty space. Halogen smartlamps threw bars of ragged light across the truck, showing the man’s face in a line of still images. Holmes turned to watch the city pass by.
“I forgot the bird,” Holmes said after a quiet minute.
“What bird?” McMurdo settled into his typical driving posture, sinking into time-honored dents of the seat.
“A round one…” Holmes said. “They don’t fly, I think. They got long beaks.”
“A pet of yours, mate?”
“No. It’s a brain exercise. Each day, you pick an animal and try to remember it all day. I forgot today’s.” Holmes scraped at the dry skin behind his ear.
“Sparrow’s a bird.” McMurdo pointed out the window. “Use him.”
“No. I mean, I picked today’s and I forgot it. Already!” Holmes, slapping a fist down onto his thigh, ended all conversation for a good twenty minutes.
There was little deviation in the routines of the gray London mornings. People woke, dressed, and ate their breakfast with the same rehearsed precision that Holmes had learned in his years on the trash route. He wondered if a surgeon would go about opening people in the same passive, mechanical state. We’re creatures of habit, Holmes thought, but only until you make a habit of changing things.
The “pick up” light blinked and McMurdo pulled the truck into a paved lot. A motley and unbalanced block of apartments towered above the truck like a lanky child over his first model ship. Holmes stepped heavily from the seat and easily cracked the air seals on the squat drums that lined the pavement. Besides the bird, he wondered if he’d also managed to forget his morning dose of Trivalia. The fact that he’d already dumped five drums, about three hundred pounds each, without so much as a sprain told him he hadn’t. He’d been thinking about prescriptions lately. “Mandatory scripts” or “enhancers” were what most companies called them. He’d been wondering about what people did in the days before the New British Empire mandated them. Life must have been hard, he thought.
“Mac?” Holmes called fro
m behind a neon orange drum. “Do you ever think about the stuff we take? The Triv? Do you think it has like, side effects?”
“Trivalia? It’s required, ain’t it? For all the hours we put in, we need a lifter.” McMurdo leaned in, lowered his voice. “You havin’ trouble, Holmes? If you’re backed up, a spoonful of oil in the morning’ll get you goin’ again.”
“No. I mean, could they make us dumb? Or, like they keep us from getting smarter?”
McMurdo pulled down on the lever that kicked on the truck’s grinder and shouted over the noise.
“You think the company’s makin’ us stupid with their meds? Ha! You been watching your brother’s website again, I can tell. It’s a conspiracy you’re after?”
“Guess not.” Holmes was barely audible over the sound of the truck’s grinder. “It does seem out there.”
“Out there’s right. Let’s get moving. Forty blocks to go.”
Winter’s last breath had fallen over the streets. Pavements and alleys choked on hardened snow. The day’s work had left Holmes feeling heavy and cold, like the ice-shrouded lamps at the door of his building. It had been two years since London eclipsed New York as the alpha metropolis of the world but, in spite of magnetic railways and the fresh gleam of American-styled office towers, the old Smoke could still be seen bleeding through. The ancient cobblestones of the Ripper’s London left scars and dents on the rims of ultramodern streetcars when the coatings wore down. Holmes peered down into one such gap, letting it feed some distant memories, as McMurdo pulled away and waved from the window of his truck. Muddy lamplight seemed to bounce off the dirt-crusted snow around the entrance, painting the steps a uniform gray. The bright red flag on his postbox stood out from the gloom.
From the front door, a tiny black lens peered at him like the unmoving eye of an insect. The building’s face-rec software ran its protocols as he thumbed through the rainbow stack of ads and junk mail. A rigid, khaki-colored envelope stopped his progress.
“Of course. The woman.”
The return address listed only the mailroom of the Baskerville Company, but Irene Adler had added her department to the notation in the neat, tight copperplate that Holmes had seen so many times. He still had some trouble adjusting to the sight of her maiden name. This was the second time he’d seen it since their divorce. He shoved the stack into his pocket, hoping to delay the bad news a while longer.
Suspicions and fears still lingered, sitting with Holmes through his dinner. They read through his evening tabloids with him, like intimate friends, and they were his company when he began to nod off against the streaking fog of his shower door. The shadows and corridors of a dream had only just started to form the image of a nameless bird when the cold touch of the glass woke him. Late into the night, Holmes sat in the quiet darkness of his flat and turned cold memories over, trying to fit them into some imagined context. Shortly before she’d left him, Irene had gottten herself promoted into some kind of project manager position at Baskerville’s pharmaceutical research branch. She said that she was the one that had to chase people down when things went wrong. “Baskerville’s Hound” was what they called her in the labs.
The high-pitched, electric tweeting of the police pass key was unmistakable. So was the slamming of Holmes’s front door against the inside wall. Among the few antiques that he’d collected over the years was an old sword-cane; the tarnished brass of the handle was shaped into an adder’s head. Two tight circles of blue light fell over Holmes before the idea to reach for the blade occurred to him. Most police had lights mounted under their firearms. In London, blue lights meant danger.
“Stay right where you are!” The officer’s voice was muffled and distorted by her face plate. “Identify yourself, civilian.”
“Holmes, Sherlock. Can I help you?”
“Mr. Holmes, you’re under arrest in the name of King George. Face down, hands behind you.”
“On what charge?”
“The murder of Miss Irene Adler.”
• • •
The holding cell that they chose for Holmes had a singular odor to it. Urine mixed with bleach lurked under an old scent of latex paint. The arresting officers let him bring his coat, which he pulled tightly around himself against the chill of the concrete bench. Holmes had left his watch and phone behind. He could only guess that two or three hours had gone by since he was arrested and processed. Eventually, his name was called from somewhere and another burly cop in a Kevlar vest took him to one of the interview rooms. Holmes was surprised to find the classic setup still in use. A single lamp hung from a long cord. The light dropped carelessly onto a plain folding table. A chair stood on each side.
After another few minutes, the door sprang open with a shove. The man who entered and sat himself across from Holmes dressed well for a policeman and seemed to work without an obvious mark of rank. His eyes were dark to the point that the iris was indistinguishable from the pupil. There was a point or sharpness to his face that reminded Holmes of a coyote, or a wolf. An odd stillness seemed to surround this inspector. Holmes couldn’t tell if it was his imagination or not, but there seemed to be a low crackle of energy or a kind of vibration under the surface, like the turning of mental gears behind the stoic, somber face. He spoke in clear, measured clusters.
“Mr. Holmes. I’m glad to inform you that you’re free to go,” he said, opening his briefcase and setting down some pages and photos that looked like video stills.
“I can go? No questions or anything?” Suspicions always seemed to bud at the back of his mind when he’d gone too long without his Trivalia. A “reaction to withdrawal” was what company medics called it. Paranoia. “What about Irene? They said she was killed.”
“Ms. Adler, yes,” he said, arranging the photos. “Your status put you at the top of our list for questioning. However, CCTV footage puts you at the opposite side of town when the deed took place. Pictures don’t lie, Mr. Holmes. At least, not very often.”
The color of the thought changed when it was confirmed by someone of apparent status. Something sparked just behind Holmes’s eyes. That spark ignited something that began to smolder in him. Was it rage? Was it sorrow? It could have been a feeling of violation, as if something had been taken from his home. He decided that it was an alloy of all three.
“My status?”
“The ex-husband.” The inspector looked up from his pages just long enough to make Holmes uncomfortable with his piercing stare. “Exes and lovers usually have the best of reasons to kill, but I suspected you to be innocent before I saw the evidence.”
“Why is that? If you don’t mind my asking.”
“The method with which she was killed was cold, impersonal. Not at all the way an emotional kill would be made.” The inspector’s delivery was dry, almost scholarly.
He spun the stack of pages around for Holmes to see. Blank sticky notes were attached to three of the photos, covering what Holmes assumed was the body. Irene seemed to be slumped over a large glass-top desk, in front of a computer screen.
“It was a single shot,” the officer said. “Back of the head. Close range. As I said, cold and impersonal. I expect the killer to be a professional, a hired man.”
“That’s her office. Right?” Holmes leaned over the image.
“It is.”
“She’s high up in Baskerville Tower. I remember, her desk faces the door, her back to the window. How would someone get in and…”
“That’s precisely what I’m trying to work out,” the officer said. “Do you see anything here that stands out as unusual or out of place?”
Holmes took his time with the question. He’d only been to Irene’s office twice and both of those visits were after the divorce, to get her signature. He looked over the mess on her desk, the blood spray and the apparent bullet hole in her PC’s monitor. The cracks that surrounded it looked like a web spun by some hyperactive spider. A yellow janitor’s bucket sat in the corner next to a sign that stated WET FLOOR in English, Spanis
h, and German.
“No,” Holmes said. “I don’t see anything out of place.”
Without another word, the officer began to pack his prints and notations back up into his briefcase. He stood, turning up his collar, and lifted a card from the breast of his long coat.
“If you remember anything else, or if you’re contacted by anyone in connection to this case, call me at any time. Day or night.”
Holmes ran his thumb over the embossed letters and the phone number: Lieutenant James Moriarty, New Scotland Yard, Forensic Services.
• • •
Holmes’s apartment seemed slightly more cramped, darker, and less inviting than usual. The cardboard boxes that lined the hallway, each one filled with salvaged parts and cables, unsettled his nerves. He looked them over with a new shade of contempt. The view from his drawing room window offered only a colorless scene of the water-stained brick on the building next door. Dried cooking oil speckled his stove top. Looking over the images taken from the scene of Irene’s murder had put him in a contemplative state of mind. Holmes thought that he should be more upset by the news, and seeing the photos, but he regarded them merely as irritants, like his stack of unopened post.
“Wait…” he said aloud. “She wrote me.”
Holmes dug through the pockets of his coat until he found the folded cluster of ad flyers. Dropping the colorful pictures of cars and unlimited credit card offers, he found the letter from Irene’s office. The envelope and the note inside were both Baskerville stationery.
They keep us in our place. All you’ve suspected is on my office hard drive. The password is obvious. First, you should meet Scarlett.
Bending the envelope further open in his hand, Holmes saw a tiny plastic bag wedged into the corner. Against the light of the kitchen, the little bag didn’t look padded or unique in any way. Neither did the red, oval-shaped capsule inside.
Irene was well aware of Holmes’s ideas about the mandatory drug regimen, and how it was enforced by random screenings in most workplaces. She never contributed a theory of her own to the conversations. Holmes never quite knew where she stood on issues of labor versus management, but she tended to scoff at his brother’s theories whenever possible. Mycroft, in turn, would usually imply that the world was run by corporate fascists, and people like Irene were their blunt instruments.
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