Thirteen Authors With New Takes on Sherlock Holmes

by Michael A. Ventrella

  The video input cable let out a tiny snap as Holmes pulled it from the web terminal. The faint plastic clattering on the floor, he assumed, was the cable’s connecting tab that he’d just broken. Holmes fished through the pockets of his coat and lifted Irene’s hard drive out and kept it close. The video cable for the cafe terminal fit in nicely. Dozens of folders suddenly appeared on the screen against a background of solid blue.

  “Can I get you anything else, sir?” The pierced, bleach-blonde girl behind the counter spoke in a sing-song voice. The kind of tone that was meant to let one know that they were being observed.

  “No. Thank you. But I would suggest that you get your violin fitted for a new chin rest.”

  “Pardon?” The girl spoke with slitted eyes and a quickly furrowing brow. Holmes turned slightly in her direction but still avoided eye contact.

  “The chin rest you have is too large. It causes you to raise your bow arm too high, hence the tension I can see in your right shoulder. I gather that’s also why you keep rubbing the back of your neck. Your left forearm is slightly more muscular than the other, which exposes a musician, and the mark on your cheek would suggest a fiddler.”

  “A mark on my face?” Minor annoyance transcended into coiling anger. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Your smeared makeup, my dear. It looks like you slept on a bicycle seat.”

  “Old wanker!” she spat as she left the counter and stomped her way to the ladies’ room.

  Alone and unwatched, Holmes dug further into the layers of information that Irene had left behind. Looking over some of Baskerville’s financial records, he spotted regular transactions to a major banking institute called Reichenbach. Substantial and regular payments made from Baskerville to that bank happened only under Irene’s authorization. If there were a solid link to be made, Holmes thought, between Scarlett and this John Watson, it would be there. A muted television behind the espresso bar played to Holmes’s back. Had he been looking, he would have seen the news anchor’s captions jogging across the bottom of the screen. The report began to detail a break-in and an attack at Baskerville headquarters. A Scotland Yard inspector, a man named Moriarty, had taken the lead on the investigation.

  The Reichenbach Capitol building was perched on the edge of the Thames, overlooking a squalid and soot-coated industrial section of old London with all the motionless patience of a great spider. Reichenbach was one of the earliest investors in the workforce enhancement market. Holmes knew this as well as anyone who’d kept even half an eye on the news. As he rode the evening train out to the oldest parts of his city, it occurred to him that Reichenbach must have profited more from the mandating of the drugs than the developers had. According to the various sources on his brother’s conspiracy blog, institutions like Reichenbach handled the accounts and sheltered the profits of companies that did the work and, with subtle nudges at the elbows of Parliament, got those drugs made mandatory. Piece after piece of the problem fell together as Holmes made his way through the quiet streets, the fog still barely disturbed by Sunday’s movements, up to the Reichenbach building.

  His maintenance man disguise was still intact, with smudges, stains, and all. Avoiding the eyes of the sparse weekend security guards, Holmes was able to access the service lift with minimal disturbance. According to Irene’s personal notes, the part of Reichenbach that handled drug development took up the entire eightieth floor of the building. It seemed like an odd thing to note in a business file, but Holmes chose to proceed. The lift rode smoothly upon its tracks. Holmes felt some tension leave the space between his shoulders. Images of kiwi birds began to rise and dissolve behind his eyes, glimpsed from wildlife feeds on his TV, or from glossy photos in the yellowed pages of books. The kiwis themselves were long since gone. They had fallen victim, like many other parts of the natural world, to the industrial appetite of man.

  “Eighty.” The elevator’s voice was soft and very well replicated, almost human. The doors opened to a hallway, still and silent, very much like the last one, with the exception of the crime scene tape and the feel of recent death on the air. A light in his hand, Holmes glanced up and down at the names that were stenciled in black against clean glass on office doors. Reichenbach was said to take its record keeping very seriously, so the archive was not hard to find. One look at the lock on the archive door stopped Holmes immediately. A thin handle of stainless steel hung below a small block of silvery plastic. A deep groove ran across the length of the block, meant for some kind of key card. Holmes imagined the portion of the locking mechanism that was beneath the metal and turned the image around. The door was set on his side, only able to open inward. Holmes unclipped the dead man’s photo ID from his shirt.

  He would have to work quickly once inside. A silent alarm would surely react to him, Holmes thought as he wedged the rigid card through the tiny space in the doorjamb. A hollow clacking of metal on wood rang down the hallway.

  “Such a complex world,” he muttered softly to himself, “isn’t able to resist a simple solution.”

  The place that Holmes found offered testament to the endurance of an old world’s ways. It stretched out before him like the long entryway of some sacred place, the walls lined with bulging yellow folders, cardboard boxes with dates or names written neatly on their fronts with black marker, and brown folders that looked like swollen accordions. It seemed that what his brother, Mycroft, had said about the financial giant was true—they took their record keeping very seriously and relied on paper because of its inability to be hacked by data thieves. The ledgers and folders that coated the corridor ran about the entire width of the eightieth floor and, at the opposite end, Holmes saw a workstation, just large enough for one, that sat comfortably under a window. The desk had a small green banker’s lamp for the record keeper and an electric teapot. Holmes ran his fingertips over the precisely alphabetized contents of the archive until he found Baskerville, Ltd.

  The folder was about the width of an opened hand and heavy with reports, colorful charts, and other printed material. Holmes walked the folder up to the little desk and carefully unraveled the waxy red string that held down the cover. There was no hurry in his step, since the building was closed until the following morning. He propped one of the folders up against the window so that the light from the little banker’s lamp wouldn’t be seen, and began thumbing through the folder’s contents with care. Without putting forth a conscious effort, Holmes arranged some choice pages on the desk, in order of date, department, or some other unique factor. After a satisfying stack had been made on the desk, he set the folder down on the floor and turned his attention to his handpicked documents.

  It took nearly an hour of steady reading for Holmes to find even a trace of this doctor, this Watson. Most of the useful information was blacked out but, with some careful angling of the page against the green lamp, a portion of the original typeface could be seen like a jet-black watermark on a shadow. John Watson. He turned out to be quite the innovator in the field of biomechanics. According to the data that Holmes spread before him, Watson was one of the first to formulate a limited steroid-and-amphetamine mixture that was originally meant to boost the abilities of herding dogs. The cocktail worked so well, with neurological and cognitive damage in only 5 percent of the study group, that drug manufacturers began courting the good doctor and competing for his favor. At the end of a long debauch of expensive dinners, wines, travels, and contributions to Watson’s research facility, Baskerville had succeeded in winning his allegiance. Unimpressed thus far with his discovery, Holmes turned the next page in frustration and stared down into a bleak abyss that at once vindicated his suspicions and filled him with dread.

  After twelve years in their employ, Baskerville had paid Watson handsomely to begin work on “Scarlett,” and coerced him into keeping this work strictly off the record. The project lead was listed only as your faithful hound.

  “You’ll leave that right where it is, Mr. Holmes.”

&nb
sp; He knew the voice. It was on the news channels and internet broadcasts, and he recalled it from the police station. Holmes set the pages back down and turned slowly, unthreateningly. Lieutenant Moriarty stood back about twenty paces. A slick black service pistol was held steadily at eye level.

  “You’ve predicted my steps somehow?” Holmes said, standing carefully. “Calculated my options and waited for me to come to the same conclusion?”

  “Actually, no. I followed you.” Moriarty took a short step forward. “It’s the oldest trick in the policeman’s handbook and you left me an easy trail. You’re a smart one, Holmes, but you don’t seem very adept at all this cloak-and-dagger nonsense. Or is it just a lack of experience? Either way, you’re needed for questioning.”

  “Regarding what?”

  “The unidentified man that we found, crushed by a file cabinet, at the Baskerville building.”

  “Lieutenant…” Holmes could only raise his hand a fraction of an inch. Moriarty’s gun arm tightened, the muzzle rose just a bit.

  “Keep still, for now. I’ll tell you when it’s time to move your hands. Step away from the desk. Toward me.”

  The lieutenant stepped back, matching Holmes’s own steps. There was no clear way for him to close the distance, if he wanted to get the gun. Holmes tried to think like he had at Irene’s office, but his mind stumbled. He couldn’t concentrate as easily.

  “It’s wearing off,” Holmes said to himself. Moriarty only raised an eye up from behind his pistol. “I can’t…I can’t remember. Lieutenant, listen to me. There isn’t any time left.”

  “I’ve heard enough from you for tonight. Get down, onto the floor.”

  “Aren’t you the least bit curious as to why I broke into this place?” Holmes dared to raise his voice. It seemed to help. “Are you interested in finding out why I killed that operative in my wife’s office? I’ve nothing to hide. I did it.”

  Moriarty stood in silence, expecting something. Holmes pressed on.

  “I got a message from Irene—Ms. Adler—and with it I got an enhancer called Scarlett.” Holmes faltered when he realized that his speech wasn’t quite so polished as before.

  “Never heard of it.” The gun didn’t move.

  “It’s still in testing. I think she meant for me to find out why she was killed but instead I found this.” Holmes tipped his head back, toward the desk that was strewn with pages.

  “I’ll play along,” Moriarty said, begrudgingly. “What is it?”

  “Proof.” Holmes straightened himself up, as if he were addressing an assembly. “Undeniable proof that the so-called career-enhancing drugs are laden with adverse effects. Adverse effects that are carefully designed to keep people in their respective roles.”

  “Ridiculous. Whom? What people?”

  “All of us.” Holmes’s voice sank to a chilling whisper. “You, me, the police, the janitors, the office managers, everyone. We’re all under control.”

  “Fascinating, but I’ll be arresting you all the same.” Exhaustion of his patience left Moriarty’s voice flat. “You’ve just implicated yourself in a murder.”

  “Aren’t you on them also?” Holmes went on, unhindered. “Roburall, is it? That’s what they give police?”

  “Yes. It improves performance, and it’s mandatory.” The lieutenant’s voice faltered just a bit.

  “When you’re late for a dose, do you ever start to see or hear things differently?” Holmes question was met with silence. “Have strange thoughts ever surfaced in your mind when your dose was late? Have you ever wondered what might happen if you skipped it entirely?”

  “I can’t say that I have.”

  “But you’re aware of some differences in your thought patterns when you aren’t on Roburall, yes?”

  “Obviously there’s a difference.” Moriarty’s aim began to drift as he was staking more thought on Holmes’s words. “If you stop taking a neuroenhancer, you’ll certainly be slowed down. You won’t recognize commands as efficiently and you won’t act on them with any accuracy.”

  “Did you hear what you just said?”

  Moriarty tightened his grip.

  “The merit of your drug,” Holmes said, “is that it allows you to recognize commands and act quickly. Too quickly for you to question the directive, I would think. Does that not fit what I’ve just told you?”

  Silence. Stillness. The kind of stillness that filled that hallway was no different from the kind that covers a playing field before a whistle blows. Holmes’s stance lost some of its confidence and the keen brightness faded a bit further from his eyes.

  “I’m…it’s wearing off now,” he said, turning toward the window. “I can feel it, like gears slowing, grinding down. I can’t remember why…”

  “I’ll remind you, then. You’re under arrest and I’ll be taking you in. Get down, on the floor.”

  “Lieutenant, I suppose Scarlett will never be in my reach again. My mind won’t ever be that sharp again, but yours is.”

  “Did you not hear me?” The ire was beginning to grate in Moriarty’s throat.

  “All the information, all the records, everything you need is right here. They’ll tell you it’s not real. That it’s just paranoia. It’s very real, Lieutenant. I didn’t believe it at first either. Now I have no choice but to believe all the twisted conspiracy theories I’ve heard, but I wonder if I’ll remember.”

  “One last time, Holmes! Get down, onto the floor with your hands behind your head!”

  “I can’t go back.” Fear, old fear began to twist in his stomach. “Now that I’ve seen what it’s like, I won’t go back.” As he spoke, Holmes’s hand fell slowly into a pocket. He could feel Moriarty grow tense and raise the sight of his weapon again.

  “Kiwi, lieutenant. Tomorrow’s bird is the kiwi. Don’t forget.”

  Holmes pulled his hand from his pocket and whipped his arm upward. Moriarty fired twice. Whether or not Holmes was struck with both rounds wasn’t clear because he staggered back almost immediately, the shots splitting the window behind him. Something dropped from his hand. Holmes’s weight shattered the panes as he fell against them.

  The safety glass was oddly quiet as it broke and redivided into thousands of glittering pearls that spun around the falling man as he twisted his way down eighty floors and vanished into the darkness below. Moriarty lowered his weapon. He stepped up to the edge and saw no sign of Holmes. Metal clicked against his shoe as he turned back. A small .22 sat on the floor, sealed in a plastic bag.

  The lieutenant was no more than a tiny figure, flipping through some loose papers in the flat green of the rifle scope. The center dot swayed just above his head and to his left to compensate for the wind. Irene Adler softly lifted the shortwave receiver from her vest and put in the call to Baskerville.

  “First of the human trials is over, sir. Success.”

  Delta Phi

  BY

  Heidi McLaughlin

  The knock on my door startles me. I sit anxiously, waiting to see if it happens again. It’s not often that people come to visit me and I’d rather not get excited by the prospect only to find out that it’s a student bumping their way down the hall, inadvertently hitting my door. I focus my attention instead on the crime scene report I downloaded from the local police server. I’ve been hacking into their system since I arrived in Burlington, Vermont, and quickly started offering them subtle clues to solve their petty crime cases. As morbid as it is, I’m waiting for a murder to occur so I can hone my craft in the field of investigation. Of course, being a college student, my work is never credited.

  Ron Smith is the local police chief. He considers me a thorn in his side. He’s not a fan of me, especially when my eighteen-year-old self discovers inconsistencies in his police work. More accurately, when my dorm was pranked as part of the Delta Phi fraternity initiation, his responding officer couldn’t find the offenders, stating that the evidence was inconclusive. The fact that Delta Phi was pasted to the outside wall by way of wet toilet p
aper apparently wasn’t a big enough clue. I bested the police department when I showed them the handprints left behind matched those of one Roger Stallworth, the center for our basketball team, who has the largest hands on campus.

  The knock sounds again, but this time it’s louder and more defined against the metal door. Closing my laptop and sliding the investigation report into my file cabinet, away from the prying eyes of whoever lurks outside, I open the door with luster, acting calm and collected as if I have visitors every day. The person on the other side of the concrete box that I reside in doesn’t need to know otherwise.

  “Lock Holmes?” she questions. I nod, but stand still against the doorjamb, preventing her from entering. My name is Sherlock, but I go by Lock. It’s more hip and easier to play off with my hippie parents. My mother, in all her peace-loving ways, couldn’t decide on a name for me, and ended up combining my grandmother’s name, Sheryl, with the nickname of Lock for the tiny tuft of hair I was born with. Sadly, my father never disagreed and forever branded me with the eccentric name that throughout childhood labeled me as an outsider.

  The lady in front of me, dressed in a pinstriped suit, is nervous even though she’s trying to maintain a professional look. She forgot her watch this morning when she dressed. The tan line indicates that she wore it all summer, not caring about sunblock or the odd white block of skin she’d leave showing if she were to forget it, like today. The imprint left on her skin says she wears a women’s Timex—cheap and easily found in every discount store in America.

  “I’m Professor MacAfee. Chief Smith suggested I come to you for some help.” Her dark hair rests on her shoulders and is curled forward, giving onlookers the illusion that she’s younger than she presents. She hides the gray hairs easily from those who aren’t paying attention. I rack my brain, trying to recall exactly who she is. My photographic memory never fails—her image reminds me that she’s head of Ecological Agriculture.