Lock & Mori (2 page)

I didn't respond, just stood still, trying to block his view of Sean.

“You're nothing like her, you filthy slag. She was an angel. You're nothing.”

I watched his gaze drift again toward Sean, who sat frozen in his chair, not whimpering softly enough.

I sighed. When it was just the alcohol, he'd go through a few of his favorite diatribes and then storm off to finish his bottle, usually without hitting anyone. He was always especially creative on “Memories of You” nights—like freeing his fists freed an arsenal of insults, too.

Evidently, I hadn't yet taken enough. I slid my hands up to rest on my hips and attempted to widen my infuriating grin before the next assault on my character began. But as
Dad called me a liar, a street bitch, and every other synonym of whore he had ever learned, unworthy to tread the same floorboards my mother's sacred feet had walked, my mind drifted to the last time I'd struck this very pose. Miraculously, my thoughts filled with tubes and flasks, with the long, thin fingers that adjusted flames to a lower setting, conducting his orchestra of drips and bubbles.

I thought of Sherlock Holmes and his ridiculous mop of hair sticking up in front, and I almost laughed. In fact, before I knew it, Dad was grabbing his bottle, mumbling something about how I wasn't worth his breath and he couldn't stand the sight of me. And finally he stumbled across the hall and into his room.

As soon as the door slammed, Freddie and Michael appeared from the shadows of the staircase and descended on the food. Fred met my eyes guiltily, and I shook my head as I wiped my shirtsleeve across my cheek. Dad turned the music up higher to mask his sobs, but it didn't work. This was the routine on “Memories of You”
nights. And, fitting with that routine, I went to the freezer to grab a sack of peas for Sean's face.

“Make a plate for Seanie,” I said quietly as my youngest brother snatched the sack from my hand.

“I'm no baby,” he snapped. “I'll get my own food.”

I resisted the urge to ruffle his hair as I walked by him toward the door to grab my coat.

“Where're you going, Mori?” Michael asked timidly. He glanced out into the darkness of the hall around Dad's door,
then back at me. But we both knew he wouldn't come out again—not after one of his crying jags. I'm sure he didn't want us to see him like that. Like hearing wasn't enough for us to realize how pathetic he'd become.

I caught myself staring past Michael and met his eyes with a reassuring smile. “Out.”

Chapter 3

The only true benefit of living on Baker Street was its proximity to Regent's Park, which provided acres and acres of escape. Unfortunately, even the short walk from our house to the Outer Circle was too long to keep my father's words from catching up to me. I tried to once more focus on the ridiculous boy playing alchemist in the basement of a school theater, but it wasn't enough to block out the echo of the hate in my dad's voice, the feel of the spittle that flew from his lips to my cheek. The disgust in his eyes.

I was thankful for the darkness as I crossed York Bridge into the park proper. I turned left and made sure to keep my head down and only wipe at my eyes when I was in the shadows between path lights. Nothing worse than a complete stranger asking what's wrong and having to come up with some stupid lie about how the dog's run off or a beloved goldfish died. Once my feet were on the grass, the tears flowed more freely.

I wasn't the only one there. I scanned the lawn down to the lake. There had been a murder in the park, according to Dad, but all the regulars were still about. The old woman who
looked like a globular thing because of all the bags she had strapped to her body. The man who had a wallet in each of his back pockets and always managed to drop one when he leaned into the rubbish cans to pick out his recyclables. I walked past them and a few silhouettes of people who didn't matter and didn't look up. Some kind of privacy bubble surrounds us whenever we leave civilized things like paths and lamps behind.

The bandstand was deserted, save for one shadowed figure, who almost always seemed to be leaning on the far side of the monument when I came to the park at night. I might not have noticed him at all except for the orange glow that backlit the silhouette of his head when he took a drag from his cigarette. I should've been afraid of him. I used to be afraid to be in the park at night, but that never stopped me from running to it. I was, perhaps, less bothered by a racing heart than a broken one.

I climbed up onto the platform and walked across to the side that faced the lake. The scent of burning cloves surrounded me as I tried my best to convince myself that nothing my dad said meant anything.

Problem was, he wasn't wrong. Not about Mum. She wasn't the pristine saint of our memories, but she was a good mom. Dad didn't drink when she was well. Seanie didn't get hit when she was alive. None of the boys did. And that was on me, because it was my job to take care of them now that she was gone. Even on nights like tonight, when I just wanted to get on a train and never look back. I only didn't because I
knew that bedtime would come soon enough, and I'd have to be back at the house to make sure Seanie brushed his teeth.

I sat up straighter and dried my cheeks with the sleeves of my coat one final time, then kicked my feet over the side of the bandstand platform to dangle freely. I could barely make out glimpses of the reflected moon through the long droopy tendrils of the giant willow tree that stood at the shore. The tree looked a little like I felt—weary and alone.

“You didn't tell me your name.”

I jolted when the shadowed figure spoke, then again when I realized who was speaking. Hearing Sherlock's voice out in the middle of Regent's Park was so surreal, it took me a moment to realize I wasn't just imagining it.

“Are you talking to me?”

He stepped into the moonlight and I almost didn't recognize him out of his uniform. He was like a different person in his gray peacoat and blue-striped scarf, as put together as he had been rumpled earlier in the day. He pulled a drag from his dark brown cigarette, just as a pack of wiggling dogs jostled past the bandstand, their owner struggling to keep hold of the leashes.

“I don't understand pets,” he said, loud enough for the poor grasping woman to hear. “People claim to love their animals but then hoard them in tiny little boxed yards or houses. They force them to act against nature in line with human conveniences. It's a bitter way to show love, yes?”

He didn't wait for me to answer, instead blew out some smoke and kept on with his tirade. “If one truly loved animals,
wouldn't she rather see them live wild and free? Not domesticated and caged and humiliated, as servants to be ordered about.”

When the owner walked out of earshot, Sherlock took another quick drag and blew it out after her, then turned back to me.

“Sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt your private moment, but I realized after you left my lab that I never asked your name.” When I didn't answer, Sherlock slid one hand in his pocket and with the other flicked ash into the breeze. “I've seen you here many times and never once wondered after your name until today. Is that terribly cold of me?”

“Probably.”

He raised a brow, the corner of his mouth quirking into an almost-grin, then dropped his cigarette and stepped on it. “Shall I guess your name, then?”

“You couldn't.”

“It doesn't suit you?”

I shrugged. “Maybe it does. You can call me Mori.”

“Ah, but that's not your actual name.” Sherlock leaned back against the closest post and looked up at the bandstand's concave ceiling. “Is it short for something?”

“Yes, but does it really matter? Isn't Mori enough?”

Sherlock continued his study of the space above our heads. “Short for what?”

“Moriarty,” I said with a sigh. I didn't have it in me to play his game that night. “And, before you ask, that is my surname. My given name is James.”

“James Moriarty.”

“It's a family name, and I don't want to talk about it.”

“Not Jaime or something more feminine?”

I stared at him silently.

“Yes, as you said. It's a fault of mine, always wanting to get to the truth of the matter.” He said it as though he didn't think it was a fault in the slightest. “But surely there must be a story.”

“Really?
Sherlock
wishes to discuss odd names with me?”

“And a point to Miss Moriarty.”

“Must everything be scored?” I asked, though it's possible I preened a bit internally. “Could we not merely be two strangers introducing ourselves in the park?”

“You started it.”

I held back a laugh but not my smile. “You're an idiot. Truly.”

Sherlock smiled widely, and it changed his whole face. He looked much younger when he smiled. “No one's ever called me that.” He stared down at the ground, still smiling, like he was suddenly self-conscious. “That's not the truth. My brother, Mycroft, uses the word ‘intolerable,' but I think perhaps the meaning's the same.”

“Your brother is named Mycroft?”

“Yes, James. Yes, he is.”

I made a face but refrained from rolling my eyes. “Did your mother despise you both from birth? Honestly.”

His smile dropped. “No, she did not.”

I was amazed at how quickly his mood shifted from a
rather awkward warmth to cool indifference, and again at how guilty I felt for saying the thing that set him off. I hardly knew this boy. I really shouldn't have minded his moods. He stared out over the water, just as I had done before, and his fingers fidgeted in the pocket of his long wool coat. But then he pursed his lips and stood upright. “Come along, then. I've something to show you.”

“I have to get back. My brothers.”

He started walking toward the path as if he hadn't heard my protest. “You'll want to see this,” he called over his shoulder.

Inexplicably, I followed him. Maybe it was because I was curious what someone like Sherlock would think I'd want to see. Maybe it was because he made me smile on a “Memories of You” night. Mostly, it was because I didn't want to go home.

Chapter 4

Sherlock's long strides made it difficult for me to catch up to him but he never slowed, nor did he look back to see if I was there, not even when his path took us across Longbridge and up toward the zoo. I caught him before the circle of police tape came into view, however, and then stopped when we were still a ways from it.

“Really? We're to be gawkers at a crime scene? This is what you thought I couldn't miss?”

“We'll not be mere gawkers.” He kept walking, so I was forced to jog to catch him. “We will observe.”

“Semantics,” I insisted, following him into the trees that grew thicker as we progressed.

“No.” He turned on me, pointing back to where a growing crowd gathered at the perimeter. “Those people come to see a spectacle. I come for a purely intellectual pursuit.”

I glanced around us. “My father is police.”

“Police?” He briefly studied my face, as if checking to make sure I had the mark. “Everything about you is a surprise.”

“That's what it means to be a stranger.”

He tilted his head so that I couldn't see his eyes in the sporadic lights that filtered through the trees from the crime scene to where we stood. “Perhaps. But then I've met so few strangers in my life.”

I let that go for expediency, and because I was sure the more he spoke, the more home would seem preferable to his exasperating eccentricities. “Whatever. I can't be seen here.”

“Then you will not be seen.” He leaned forward to meet my eyes in a challenge and turned to resume his trek.

I had no excuse for catching up with him and every excuse to walk the other way. The futures that played through my mind all seemed to end with my father's livid ranting and my apologies, but I followed Sherlock's circuitous route, deeper into the shadows toward the far end of the crime scene. I hated myself for following, but I did it. Still, the third time his route took us through a bush that smacked at my shins, I gave in to my impulse to growl at him.

“For someone who doesn't want to be seen, you make an awful lot of noise.”

I glared at the back of his head but said nothing more. For a minute or so. I had just decided to complain about how far we'd wandered from the actual scene when Sherlock crouched down next to a tree and peered around it. I walked up behind him with my hands on my hips.

“What now?”

“Now,” he whispered, “I will wait for the constable, who is not twenty feet away from us, to light his next cigarette, and
we will sneak across while his eyes are still affected by the brightness of the flame.”

I refused to crouch down, but I did step closer to him to make sure I was well hidden. Sherlock stood too and, without a word, grabbed the sleeve of my coat to pull me along behind him. We wove through the trees, then around the back of the crime-tape circle, but that apparently wasn't close enough for Sherlock. Before I could stop him, he had slipped under the tape. Once more, I followed him, this time into a life of crime, as I was pretty sure it was against the law to breach a crime scene. I knew we had come to the spot Sherlock had in mind when he stopped short and sank into the shadows between two trees.

I glanced at the scene, which was no more than a bunch of men in suits and uniforms, with booties over their shoes, wandering around and taking photos. One of the men popped up from behind an open umbrella holding a poofy black finger­print brush and frowning. He tossed the brush into his kit and picked up the umbrella, which was glossy wet, despite the lack of rain, and had a gash in the top. He closed the umbrella and started wrestling it into a giant plastic sack, revealing a man's body behind him, slumped into a pool of blood that stained the ground beneath a tree.

It occurred to me that I should probably be shocked or repulsed at the sight—or, at least, should compose my face to appear so—but when I looked over at Sherlock, he didn't seem to be much bothered either. In fact, yet another version of the boy came out while he studied the scene of the crime.
He appeared much older, his eyes keen and focused, shifting up and down and side to side. It was as if he were painting the view with his gaze, carefully, so as not to miss a spot. I thought perhaps I even saw a bit of color in his cheeks as he worked.

“Do you see it?” he asked me in a soft whisper.

I tried to see whatever “it” was, but all I saw was the body, and the only odd bit of the body was how the man was slumped over on his side. There was something about that . . . awkward, like he hadn't tried to brace the fall.

I knew nothing about solving crimes. I'd only ever associated that kind of work with my father, and we had never really gotten on, even before he became . . . this. But perhaps there wasn't any real trick to it after all. I supposed solving one thing was nearly like solving another. And if there was one thing I was good at, it was solving for
X
.

I decided to think of the crime as the steps in an equation, to sort how he could have fallen into that position. Equations were easy. Put a pin into each of the things you know and then write rules between the pins, like strings, connecting one pin to the next until you can solve for the missing parts. But in this instance, I couldn't seem to move along the string of the first unknown. After all, if what my father had said was right and the man did die the evening before, the bigger question was why in the world he would've wandered into the darkest part of the park at night. There was nothing to see where we stood. And while there was no bench where he fell, there was one just a few trees away, where a lamp would have offered some light.

I counted off the steps, starting with the man running from something. He could have seen his attacker coming and hoped to find a place to hide in the dark. But that didn't fit either, because of the way the body was positioned. It was as though he'd been leaning casually against the tree, and just slumped down and then teetered over. If he'd been running away, he'd have been tackled, sprawled out on the ground, not slumped. I started again with him running and hiding, somehow getting backed up against the tree. But even trapped, he would have tried to block the attacker with his hands. I tried to find his hands, to see if there were cuts or some other sign of his fighting back. I even traced the angles of his arm to a bright, golden watch, but that hand was tucked away. So was his other hand. His hands were still in his pockets.

I had no idea that was even possible, for a man to die with his hands in his pockets. It meant he couldn't have known he was being killed until the wound was already in his chest.

When I started my equation again, I had a few important pins. The dead man trusted his killer to get close and personal. The man had obviously come there on purpose. He wasn't afraid when he walked into the woods—into the dark to meet his fate. He leaned back against the tree, his hands in his pockets to show just how casual he felt. In contrast, his eyes were wide in death, surprised as the killer used his weapon.

“He knew the killer,” I whispered to Sherlock.

“The hands,” he said. It started to drizzle, and two uniformed officers carefully draped a bright-yellow tarp over the body. We'd come just in time to take our notes.

Some muttering in the crowd of police stole my attention, and the sea of suited men suddenly parted as a large, sandy-­colored man with a walrus-esque figure and demeanor stomped through the scene. All the men paid him deference, with “sir” and “guv” accompanying every nod and step aside. The Walrus Man ignored them all, making a beeline for a man clutching a clipboard. “Coroner come and gone?” asked the walrus.

“Not without that.” Clipboard man actually had to point out the bright-yellow tarp. My mind reeled at the lack of observance necessary to completely miss the central focus of the entire scene. That this man was apparently the senior officer forced an exasperated sound from me before I could stifle it. Sherlock tensed but didn't look at me.

“Taking his time, I see,” said the walrus. “So, what've we got?”

Clipboard held an evidence bag up to the lights. “Wallet, opened and empty next to the deceased. Stab wounds. Lots of blood. It's even on his umbrella and the tree.”

He was right. There was a darker patch on the tree that started just below a white gouge mark that looked wet, as wet as the umbrella, which seemed much more significant in that light.

“So, robbery gone wrong?” asked Walrus.

“Had to be something like that.”

Sherlock made a sound deep in his throat that was much louder than the one I had made, and when our eyes met, I widened mine, hoping he'd take it as an invitation to shut up. Still, it was obvious even to me that this was no robbery. I mean, the watch alone—

“Maybe he was out for a run,” Walrus offered.

“In wool trousers,” Sherlock whispered, derisively.

“An evening constitutional,” the other officer said. “That's good. I'll jot that in the report.”

“All sorted, then. Good, good.”

The men started down the hill toward the crowd as we backtracked toward the tape. The very moment we were out of earshot, Sherlock practically exploded with outrage.

“The incompetence! The base incompetence and absolute reckless idiocy!”

His eyes were full of fire again, and I couldn't help but notice how intriguing he looked with his eyes wider and his cheeks aflame. Passion. It had to be his passion. Everyone is infinitely more attractive when they're full of the stuff.

“Disheartening,” I added to his list of adjectives as we extricated ourselves from the crime scene. “To think our safety in this park is in the hands of two—”

“Actual jackasses!” Sherlock cried. “They could place actual donkeys in uniforms and get better deduction.”

“Technically, those two weren't in uniform, of course.”

I smiled when Sherlock continued on as though I hadn't spoken a word. He was clearly not to be distracted from his ranting. I can't say I minded. We were taking a much more direct route back to the park's inner circle path.

“The noises of beasts, Mori! I would listen to pack animals heaving out calls deep into the night before I'd lower myself to listen to even one more syllable.”

I took his hand in mine and tried my best to repress a laugh
when that simple action quieted him almost instantly. I'd done it without thinking, really, like I would to my brothers when they were younger and would be on about something. Sherlock stared down at our joined hands, then up at my face.

“Are you done?” I asked.

Sherlock sighed. “Probably.” A wry grin lifted his cheeks. He squeezed my hand gently, and then fidgeted a bit as we walked. Once we reached the path, he swung our hands a little, like he wasn't able to hold still. “Or perhaps not.” He released my hand and turned toward me. “We should take the case.”

“‘Take the case'?” I wanted to laugh openly at him then. “Do you think at all before you speak?”

“We could do it. We are clever. The swans on the lake are more clever than those detectives. Perhaps even the trees.”

“Yes, yes. They were morons. But it's not as though we are a part of the investigation. How do you propose we learn anything at all about the crime or who did it or why?”

“Observation. Deduction. Sheer mind power.”

“And when we've nothing left to observe?”

“You said your dad is police.”

“He doesn't even want me in the park right now. He would definitely not be okay with my investigating a murder.”

“So, you think it's more than just a mugging gone wrong?”

I pursed my lips.

“As do I,” he added hastily. “And with your cleverness and my reasoning, we could come up with an answer well before the police.”

“For what purpose?”

Sherlock offered me a half smile before he said, “Because we can.”

It was a very infectious smile. “You think I am merely clever?”

He shrugged. “I don't know you that well. Not yet.”

I shook my head. “‘Because we can' isn't good enough.”

Sherlock stepped closer. “How about we make this a bit of a game?”

I tried to roll my eyes and act like I wasn't completely intrigued, but I was a piss-poor actor on a good day, despite my years in drama. “Go on.”

“First one to solve the crime, wins.”

“Wins what?”

“Wins the game.”

“And what will be the rules?”

“No rules,” he said.

“All games have rules.”

“Fine. The only rule is total transparency. We must both know what the other knows.” I started to respond to that, but as usual, Sherlock interrupted. “But not tonight. I need some time to think.” He lit a cigarette and stared past me. I got the feeling he was already walking away from me in his mind. “Tomorrow after your play practice. My lab.”

He started to walk, and it was all I could do to keep a growl out of my voice when I answered his summons. “No.”

Sherlock turned, surprised. “No?”

I shook my head. “No, I haven't decided whether I want
to play or not. And besides, if I do decide to be part of this insanity, no one can know I'm part of this. I'm serious. If my dad finds out, I'm screwed.” I looked around and saw the lake off in the distance. “If I decide to play, we'll meet here. At the dock. We'll take a boat out and that way no one can overhear, and it won't smell of burning dust and spilled fake blood.”

Sherlock's lips tightened and then stretched in a grin. “How do you know it's fake?”

He didn't wait for an answer. He was already striding off when I thought of one.