Murder with Lens: A Sherlock Holmes Case (221B Baker Street Series) (7 page)

Sherlock turned at the door and strode back to her. “Listen closely, Ree.” Holmes tugged his gloves on with quick angry motions, and then swung a hand at Lestrade and the handlers. “First rule of working with them: Learn the system. Work the system. Also, don’t shout at me. I don’t like to be shouted at.” He glanced around the deli in a quick read of the employees.

Reese glared up at him, her eyes glittering with fury and other stewing emotions. Very softly, she asked him, “Whose side are you on? Answer.”

“That’s enough, Sherlock,” John schooled Holmes. When he put a hand on Sherlock’s back, he found it stiff. “Come on.” John didn’t look back on his way out. He knew Holmes was no fool. He would reach for the only life preserver in the storm.

A second or so after, John could hear Sherlock follow.

This had gone much better, much better than with Sofia. John was relieved. Sherlock pushed the door so hard it snapped against the padded stop and slammed back into place. But the glass held.

Holmes huffed air, his coat flared, reflected in the glass. He started walking. He went several blocks without summoning a cab. John gritted his teeth and hunched along behind his friend’s long strides. When he could take no more, he signalled a cab and had it pull even with Holmes, “Sherlock, you’re wet through – come on!” he shouted from the window.

The rain was so heavy that he was the only poor sod on foot. As the downpour hammered the road and sidewalk, it bounced back up at Sherlock. Passing cars had soaked him. Finally, saturated and angry, he submitted and got into the cab. John reached into his pocket and rescued Sherlock’s phone, just to save it from the rain.

“Where too,” the driver eyed Sherlock unfavourably.

Everything Sherlock wore was stuck to him. He was drenched. “We’re 221 B Baker’s Street.”

Sherlock put his head down, uncommunicative for the entire trip.

***

“What’s happening?”

Sherlock peeled his sodden shirt off and dropped it on the floor of his bedroom. John tossed him a towel. His hair was drenched. In the lamplight, his skin shone wetly, all gooseflesh.

“Would you talk to me, Sherlock?” John gave his own face a rough rub, like feeling for stubble, only he did it out of frustration. “Come on. You’ve got a case. You should be chuffed. You should be-”

Holmes reached down and threw the sodden shirt at John, who narrowly ducked it as it shot into the hall and made a wet sploshing sound against the wall. Sherlock, when he looked back, sat with his back against his bed, elbows draped over his knees and his head down. The towel covered even his bowed head. His fingers knit together gently.

John was momentarily at a loss. Sherlock, in his twenties, was unquestionably an adult. But then there was Sherlock emotionally. In that sense, he was very raw and inept. It was to that unfledged part of Sherlock that John found he had to respond.

So John ambled into the densely packed room – full of all manner of gear and oddities – and sat on the bed beside Sherlock’s left shoulder. And the injured arm. Shortly, he got up and went to the dresser. It was covered in bottles, and chemicals, and beakers, and among the collection sat his painkillers. John opened the cap and looked into the bottle, coming to the immediate realization that Sherlock hadn’t taken a single one. Dammit. He held his temper. There was such a thing as being too strict. Okay, he’d been an addict. That didn’t mean he didn’t deserve to fight pain.

But… now wasn’t the time.

He sat back on the bed, reached out, and rubbed the towel against Sherlock’s hair, underneath. John was at a loss, so he said the only thing that made sense to him. It was the only objective thing he could offer on the situation. “You’re okay. You’re doing okay… actually, better than okay. I’m going to take the school pin out to the laptops – figure out what school we need to go to in the morning.”

“Goldsmiths, University of London.” Sherlock said from under the towel.

“Then I’m going to make tea.” John decided. “Look, I can’t imagine what meeting this girl is doing to your self-perception… for lack of a better word. But to the rest of the world, you’re handling her very smartly. Okay? That’s why this knocked me for six. Dry off, get your head together, and come out for tea.”

John hoped that had been enough. He walked out with a glance back at Holmes from the doorway. Emotions had to be exhausting for him; so inconvenient. Such a virtuoso, and such a child.

In the kitchen, John started the kettle going. His nerves were rattled, so he wished he could call Sarah. But it was after 1 AM now. John watched rain sluice down the Baker’s Street windows, thankful for the fire, and glanced in the fridge at last. No more avoiding it. He was surprised to see that Sherlock had boxed up the samples that dominated the bottom shelf. He’d helpfully drawn little skulls on the boxes in Sharpie pen. John supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the drawings were so good, but it still made him smile. He put milk in his tea and sugar in Sherlock’s, and then brought the cups to the front room.

Sherlock sat in his favourite chair, with his legs folded under him. He’d been watching John in the kitchen. He wore a dark blue cotton tee and what looked like satin pajama bottoms. Not going out again. John noted he’d set the trays of samples aside and turned up the fire. He glanced at John. “There are seven more of me in America.”

“No. There are seven kids with unusually high IQs trained to use deductive reasoning in America,” John set the cup of tea down beside his flatmate’s left hand. “There isn’t anyone else like you.” It was because Sherlock never gave his internal mechanisms a second thought – beyond being able to think properly to begin with – that he was having trouble with his slippery identity.

Sherlock sucked a deep breath and exhaled. He picked up his tea mechanically. He didn’t want tea. John had made it for him. John was trying to help. He blew on it and sipped. The familiarity of the activity took hold of him.

“You want to talk to her,” John sat across from him. “Why don’t you just do that?”

“Because I can’t just talk to her,” Sherlock sipped again. Colour bled into his lips. Heat.

“I just talk to you.” John pointed out.

“You aren’t,” Sherlock gestured in air, “one of them.”

“Us.” John corrected him. “When you say it, it should be, ‘you aren’t one of us’, Sherlock. Reese gets that much about this right. Now, I get that you hate being treated like you’re this incomparable phenomenon type thing, but there it is. That is what you are. Your coping skills are for dealing with the people she calls apes and suits, I mean, right or wrong, so, yeah, you’re going to be a bit out of your depth with her. Relax. I honestly admired what you told her back there.” It didn’t help matters that she was a young woman. He avoided those.

“A bit out of my depth?” Holmes said slowly. He shook his head, unable to calculate.

“She’s grown up with people just like her. You have to understand the insular mentality. She expects you to think like them. You’re throwing her curve balls she’d never expect out of one of you. I think that has her feeling betrayed.” John looked at the fire. “And you’ve been isolated. You don’t know any better. I don’t suppose you thought what it would be like to meet someone else like you.”

“Mycroft is like me, and I don’t know how we manage to breathe the same air.” Sherlock said.

After consideration, John realized he didn’t consider Mycroft to be very like Sherlock at all. John didn’t bother saying so, but he knew where his loyalties lay. But there was one thing he was starting to recognize. “You thought it would be easy. Like something would click, and there you’d be.”

Sherlock set down his cup. “I had hoped.” He shut his eyes and actually seemed to drift off in the firelight as John finished his tea. Then he sighed. “I have to learn her system. Work her system.”

John grinned. “Yes you do. It never just clicks, mate.”

“It does, John.” Sherlock didn’t bother to open his eyes. “It did with you.”

That knocked whatever John had been about to say out of his head. For a long time, John watched the fire draw shadows on Sherlock. What had happened to him tonight, well, Sherlock Holmes, in his unapproachable way, was crestfallen. But he’d worked out that he wasn’t alone. It wasn’t precisely a chummy man hug, or chuck on the shoulder, but, unless John had missed his guess, Sherlock had just called him a friend.

John finished his cup and stretched to soak up the fire.

***

The phone rang at 5:30 AM.

Sherlock’s cell. Holmes was out of his chair and on it before John had really come awake enough to realize he’d knocked his empty tea-mug to the floor during the last few hours.

Sherlock was taking off his shirt over his head on the way into his room. “Excellent. Hanging up now. Things to do.” He chucked his phone on the bed. The shower cut on before John had even stood up.

John was a little slower to stir, in fact, and stumbled aimlessly for the coffee maker before diverting back to get his cup. He accomplished neither.

Sherlock’s phone began to ring again. John walked in his flatmate’s room and picked it up just to stop the bleating noise.

“Don’t hang up on me, Sherlock. It’s bad manners, for one thing, and-”

“Lestrade,” John yawned. “Your Consulting Detective is in the shower. Please call back at another time.” He hung up the phone and dropped it back on Holmes’ bed then staggered off for coffee and a shower of his own. When John came out of his bedroom, Sherlock was pacing in the front room. He really did look like a huge cat, one of those long, slinky ones. He texted impatiently and then answered the phone.

“About to leave for Goldsmiths. Stop calling me,” he smoothed the purple shirt he wore and snatched up his jacket, hanging up the cell with a jab of his thumb. Sherlock glanced back at John. “My coat’s by the fire. Grab it?”

“Mostly dry. In the lining, at least.” John said with some appreciation.

“I don’t care.” Sherlock pulled it on over his jacket. On his way down the stairs he tossed John his phone and fixed his scarf on his neck. Being handed the cell phone – which loomed like the One Ring in John’s mind – was a signal Sherlock wanted him to look at something. He’d never asked John to send a text or make a call on his phone to date. He scrupulously avoided using it in that manner, using other people’s phones, even random people’s cells, instead.

There were two texts. One was from Lestrade:

‘Come to The Yard. The girl found some solid evidence.’

“Good news,” John said of the first.

“Mixed news. Because he’s also getting annoying, and it’s hard to tell if the problem is the badge he foisted on us – me – or the rise he’s gotten out of working with Young and her fascisti.”

“Is he feeling a bit territorial, do you think?” John scratched his smoothly shaven cheek. “I mean, look at the structure the CIA has built around these young people. There are eight of them, for heaven’s sake. I suppose that sort of success is hard for someone like Lestrade to ignore. He knows what you can do. He can imagine what he’d be able to do with a team of you.” Well, provided they didn’t cause him to develop some kind of psychosis. Sherlock was a trial alone. Seven more? Apocalyptic.

“I’m not his-”

“Sniffer-dog, I know.” John nodded as they came out into the cool, dark of pre-morning, the street lamps still bright overhead – he loved this time of the day.

“Asset, John. I’m not his Asset.” Sherlock sucked a deep breath through the nose as if he needed to steady himself. “There’s no dignity in what Reese does. She’s been warped and it’s badly marred her thought processes. Daunting, considering she’s acknowledged to be the best of her lot. What can one expect of industrial geniuses, stamped out by the boot-heel of the Central Intelligence Agency?”

“She did pretty well for herself, I thought,” John countered. “Sure she didn’t like the smell or the scene. Lots of people would have fainted at the sight of that body.”

“Not that,” Sherlock’s tall frame was a silhouette against the lights of moving cars on the main thoroughfare ahead. “She withholds intelligence. She doesn’t question authority. Elements external to the case shouldn’t matter to her, but are important. Her environment has coloured her actions and her observations. She’s no longer impartial, no longer pure, because they twisted her out of the ground. And somewhere along the way, they made it clear to her what is and isn’t acceptable to see. I mean, real rubbish like that. It would take almost nothing – just subtle hints. A child is merely impressionable. A deductive prodigy would miss nothing.”

John caught up with him and walked shoulder-to-shoulder. It was a bit chill this morning. Holmes’ breaths painted air. John’s too, but as he watched the vapour trail of breath beside him vanish in the damp air, John realized he was glad he’d met Sherlock. He felt privileged to be there. “It’s doubtful Young and the others appreciate Reese, come to think of it.”

“Yes, well, it’s never good to be disregarded.” Sherlock looked at the walk before him and then glanced up at a cab that had seen them and pulled onto Baker’s street. “Oh, ideal. Now, see the second message, John. I get lightheaded when I’m away from my cell for too long.”

John grinned as they crossed for the cab, and read aloud. “Ree says: ‘Sherlock. Adeste. Ænigma habeo tibi.’ I think I got that right?” John blinked at this and struggled with the Latin classes he had to take while getting his Medical Degree. “She says… is it… I have a puzzle? Come here?”