Lock & Mori (8 page)

Lock did a rubbish job of stifling a laugh in a slurp of his tea. But Mycroft wasn't discouraged. He stepped in and snatched a biscuit from the plate, ruffled Sherlock's hair, and said, “I like her.”

“As long as Mycroft approves,” Sherlock said, stretching out his arm to clink our tea mugs together.

“So relieved,” I said, drinking deeply.

Mycroft winked at me in his clueless way, and strode from the kitchen to take the stairs two at a time up to the second floor.

“Did you bring it?” Sherlock was grinning at me when I looked back.

I nodded. “It's in my bag.”

We finished our tea in giant gulps, and Sherlock grabbed the open package of biscuits from the table before he led me up the stairs to his room.

I'm not sure what I expected to see behind the door, but what surprised me most was how normal Lock's bedroom was. Freddie could have lived in the room, or even Seanie in a few years. The bed was mussed; there were clothes everywhere and even a few posters on the walls. Everything I'd known of Sherlock Holmes was extraordinary. Here was a strange and vivid reminder that, in the end, he was just a boy from London after all. My feeling of letdown meant it was a reality I needed to face.

I dug in my bag for the file I'd pilfered. “I brought the—”

He interrupted me with a kiss, and I smiled, even as I pushed the file between us and pulled free of him.

“Police file,” I said, to remind myself why we were there. I didn't want to meet his eyes, so I looked past his head to the brown walls.

And once again Lock found a way to entrance me. The entire back of his door and the door-shaped wall space next to it was covered in papers, in pushpins, and in bright blue yarn. He'd created a map of our crime, and it was amazing. A neat row of our victims' photos was pinned across the middle, each one with a blue string that led to the site of his death on a map of the park, then to the newspaper clipping of his death, then up to a more random jumble of words and the victims' vocations and schools. I stepped past Lock in a trance,
my eyes tracing every path, some from the articles he'd shown me before, some new. Some led nowhere, but most ended at a blank page with the word “police” scrawled across it, followed by a hastily added question mark in a different color, which could only be for my benefit.

“What's all this?” My tone held the hush of the sacred, which might have embarrassed me if I wasn't still so amazed.

I could hear the satisfaction in Lock's reply. “You didn't seem to believe my theory, so I thought I'd show you how I came to it in a different way.”

The work and persistence it took to create such a map didn't go unnoticed, but what astonished me most was how close it was to the way I saw things in my mind. It was like a translation from my thought patterns to the real world. It was perfectly and completely me.

I realized I was making a spectacle of myself and forced my gaze away, which was when I saw Lock's room in a new light. There were piles of clothes, as I'd noted before, and strange smells that might have been old plates of food but weren't. Because under the piles were the flasks and tubes of his lab, some permanently burned out on their rounded bottoms, some still full of an unidentifiable sticky residue. He had corked bottles of ash and soil stuffed between falling-over books on his bookcase. A box with various locks on four sides sat on his desk, lock picks piled like jackstraws beside it. Little hints of the extraordinary peeked out from every corner.

When my eyes focused again on Lock, who stood a little awkwardly in the same spot where he'd kissed me, I realized
they'd been there all along. He'd been there all along, and I couldn't see him through the mess.

I wanted to tell him everything just then. I wanted him to know about my mom, about her coin, her friends, the photo. I wanted him to know about “Memories of You” and to meet Sean, Fred, and Michael. But more than any of that, I wanted to kiss him and to keep kissing him until one of us ran out of air. So I did.

He surrendered first, leaning back just enough to rest his forehead against mine. Out of breath, he asked, “What about the file?”

“Bugger the file.” I grabbed the front of his shirt in my fists and back-stepped toward his bed, pulling him along with me. It took him maybe three full seconds to dead-drop the file to the floor and fall down with me on his crumpled covers.

x x x

When I fell asleep, Sherlock was curling a lock of my hair around his finger and explaining some ridiculous theory of his that had to do with surviving a fall into water by shaping his body as he slipped beneath the surface. I felt like I'd slipped beneath the surface as well. I was completely relaxed in his bed and in his arms in a way I shouldn't have been with anyone, much less this boy who talked physics in between kissing me and studying my face, in the lazy, contented way I studied his. My last thought had been something about how much bluer his eyes seemed when they lit up with discovery—and how they darkened when they looked down on me.

I woke up long before the sun rose and realized almost instantly how stupid I'd been. I had to get home before someone realized I was gone, and I didn't even know what time it was. I slipped out from under Lock's arm and used the light from his phone to find mine, the case file, and my handbag. Despite my rush, I stood at his door for two timeouts of my phone's light, memorizing as much of the crime map as I could. Then a third, watching how the shadows tumbled into the hollows of Lock's cheeks as he slept. And when I started to feel an ache within my chest, I left.

The door had barely clicked shut behind me when Mycroft's voice drifted down from the staircase to the third floor.

“He won't know why you left.”

I didn't exactly flinch at his words, but it took me too long to respond to what he'd said. Too long again to think of how one responds to a statement like that. “Have you considered wearing a bell around your neck?”

He was sitting on a step near the bottom of the stairs, like he'd been waiting for me to come out. Watching Sherlock's bedroom door like a proper stalker, and yet I was the one who felt like I was creeping about a stranger's house in the night. And he knew it. He was in no rush to answer my question and even took a moment to glance down at the fingernails of his left hand, which I noticed were meticulously manicured. “Once, but I found it clashed with my mysterious nature.”

“Your creepy lurker persona? Yes, I'm sure that does well with the ladies.”

Mycroft might have visibly shuddered. “As I said, I've given up women.”

“For Lent?”

“When I was fourteen and kissed my first boy.”

I nodded and stared at him. “That doesn't really make your lurking less creepy.”

Mycroft smiled in this almost straight-lipped way that I was pretty sure meant he was about to change the subject. “Don't leave.”

“He knows I have brothers to care for. He knows I have my studies.”

“And yet he will spend all of the morning deducing the infinite number of reasons why you didn't wake him to say good-bye.”

“You don't know what I said to him. And it's none of your business.” I thought I heard a faint noise from the floor above.

Mycroft must have heard it too, because his chin rose, despite the fact that he refused to look up. “He is my business.” We stared at each other for a few long seconds before he added, “I don't want him broken.”

It really was none of his concern. I had no reason at all to explain myself or to even answer his ridiculously dramatic accusation. And still I asked, “How do you know he is the one who will break?”

Mycroft's eyes didn't light up like his brother's, but his expression was tinged with an awe of discovery that seemed familiar, despite his droopy lids. He didn't say anything more, just nodded and turned to run back up the stairs, leaving
me to go the opposite direction. Once I reached the street, I found that I'd been clutching my shirt at my chest, like I was trying to hide from what I'd just exposed of myself in the house.

But it was too late. They'd both already seen too much.

Chapter 12

I was at the copy shop within the half hour, xeroxing and scanning the file so I could return it to Mallory's bag before sunrise. I thankfully made it back to the house before Dad was awake, and took it as another miracle when the bag was right where I'd left it. Though, in the light of morning, it became obvious to me that the inspector had more likely left the files for my father than for myself. Since Dad was in all probability barely capable of stumbling to bed when he came home the night before, perhaps the bag's continued presence in our hall was less a miracle than I'd thought.

After the boys were ushered off to their school day, I stood outside my house for a few minutes before making an important decision—I was not going to school. I had never skipped school before. Not even when my mother was dying. The week after she died, my choices were to stay in the house or sit in classes. That is to say, stay in a house filled with nosy neighbors, awkward policemen, and their cooing, tittering wives; or go to classes, where hardly anyone knew or cared my mother was gone, and all I had to tolerate were the crowded
halls, monotonous lectures, and an incompetent lab partner.

I didn't need to attend class to keep up my grades, or wouldn't need to if the professors didn't require attendance. But I enjoyed certain trappings of academia—the smell of old books, chemicals, and fresh paint; the facts and figures and symbolism; and most of all, the knowing. Knowing more about the things that mattered than almost everyone in the building.

That was why I willingly walked into the embrace of the most monotonous institution on earth, using little tricks and games to keep me sane while reveling in the parts of school that were tolerable. But that day, holding a copy of the file on Lily's dad's death, with the photo of Mum and Mr. Patel in my pocket, I couldn't do it. Lock's game suddenly felt like one of the most important things I'd ever done.

So, I'd decided I wasn't going to school. But I couldn't stay home, either. I toyed with the idea of going to London Library, or to a pub or café, but something about having a copy of the file in my bag made me feel like everyone was staring at me, waiting to find me out.

In fact, it wasn't until I'd had lunch and was out in the middle of the lake, oars safely tucked inside my boat, that I felt free enough to take the papers out for a good read. Most of the file was boring and useless, testimonies by every officer on scene, all saying the same load of nothing. The forensics were minimal and equally useless, with the exception of a note that there were scratches in the tree bark above Mr. Patel's body that looked like four circles. There was a reference to an
evidence number but no actual photograph. Could be worth going back to double-check, but could also be some stupid vandal mark that meant nothing.

The coroner's report was interesting but didn't reveal much we hadn't already guessed. The weapon had been some kind of long knife or short sword that had pierced through the throat and into the spine, incapacitating him, then through the heart, killing him instantly. But the text was odd—like the thought wasn't complete. “Victim's wound is the same shape and angle,” and then nothing. Not even a period. It was almost as if the coroner had forgotten to finish his thought midsentence.

Maybe he'd seen the connection to the other murders. Maybe he'd thought the shape and angle were the same, but they didn't match in the end. Maybe a million reasons, and I was inflating the oddity in my mind like Lock would've done. I was suddenly very glad he wasn't there.

That wasn't true. I looked around the lake and felt very alone.

I lay back like he had done and closed my eyes against the brightness of the sun through the clouds. I pictured Sherlock's map, and filled in the details from the file, following the strands of information up to the blank page, willing it to fill in with a face. But my mind kept stalling around useless data. Like the way the coroner's sentence had trailed off without warning. Like how the file had been left splayed on Lock's floor, despite our urgency to see it, all so he and I could kiss and talk about nothing and kiss some more.

I sat up with a start when a few drops of water scattered across my face, and almost collided with a giant goose that had chosen a flight path directly above my boat. I'd drifted up against a bank without realizing, and when I looked out at the lake, the light seemed muted, the shadows different. I'd fallen asleep.

I was late.

And, as happens when one is late, it took most of a year to row back to the café, and apparently everyone in London turned in their boat rentals at four thirty-five in the evening. So, by the time I got through the queue and started home, it was nearly five, and I was sure I'd walk in on World War Brothers or something worse. I never imagined another bad night would come so soon.

I heard the strangled sounds of “Memories of You” when I was still two stoops away from ours and suddenly wished I'd stayed lost in time out on my boat. I didn't start running until I smelled smoke. I was up the stairs in two giant strides and left my keys in the door so that they clinked together like chimes after the door slammed open. No smoke in the house, but I dropped my bag and followed the scent down the hall and past the stairs, where it suddenly overwhelmed me. By that time, a steady trail of papers and photos led me straight to the French door that opened to our tiny patio garden.

There, squished into the only corner that couldn't be viewed by our neighbors on all sides, stood my dad, huddled over our largest stockpot, which was smoking and flaming for some reason. He shoved his hands into the box that held
Mum's mementos and pulled out pages by the fistful to scatter over the flames, then went back for more before I could scream, “Stop it!”

His eyes were red and his cheeks were wet, but his expression was almost animalistic. “Go to your room.”

“What are you doing? Why are you burning her things?”

“They're
my
things,” he growled back. “My
private
things. And I won't have your filthy fingers touching my things. I'd rather they were gone forever.”

“Those aren't yours. They belong to all of us.”

“THEY ARE MINE!” He threw the box to the ground, and I watched as it tipped over, spilling the contents across the concrete of the patio. A picture of Mom as a child slid into a small puddle near one of the planters Michael had meticulously cultivated into something beautiful. I wondered briefly if he'd been out watering when Dad had started this mission.

“Everything of hers is
mine
.” He squared his shoulders at me, like he did whenever he was ready to start on one of his tirades about my worthlessness. Only this time, I didn't smile. No hand on my hip. I couldn't take my eyes off the photo that was already curling as it waterlogged. I did see him wave his arm wildly toward the mess as he resumed his shouting.

“This is all I have left. I lost a wife, and all I have left is this box of garbage!” He clenched his teeth and ground out his next words. “And you couldn't leave that be. You couldn't even leave me that.”

It had been me. I had done this. I'd gone into the box and somehow he'd known it. I'd created tonight's version of the
hateful, bitter troll that once was my dad. It occurred to me that I couldn't remember what he was supposed to look like when he was being normal. It had been so long since I'd seen his normal self. Maybe that self no longer existed.

“That's not all we lost,” I whispered. Or maybe I said, because he went from stock-still to charging toward me in an instant.

It all happened so fast in that cramped space, and yet slow enough that I saw the change in his eyes. I knew without a doubt that he would hit me for what I'd said, but I still wanted to believe that he wouldn't. I had to believe it. He'd already destroyed so much with how he treated the boys, perhaps a part of me thought his refusal to touch me meant he recognized it was wrong, meant he could still somehow come back. Be different. I was the final line in the sand. The minute he crossed that line, there was no getting him back. So I stood resolute, watching him come at me, and forcing myself not to run.

Maybe we'd never had a chance of his coming back anyway.

I lifted my arms to guard my face, but he pushed me so the back of my head smacked against the brick of the house. I instantly felt wet on my scalp, but I couldn't lift a hand to feel for blood. I couldn't move.

“What did you say?”

I stared into his eyes, barely breathed, wondering if I'd survived the worst of it, if I could stop it, if it were inevitable or avoidable, if I could just work out the right thing to do. The music started to skip while we stood like that, too close for
too long, until I felt like I would faint if I didn't take a full breath. And then he turned his back on me and returned to his fire—his destruction of all we had left of her.

I couldn't stand helpless and just let it happen. I couldn't stay quiet.

“I said I lost more than a mother when she died.”

He spun on me, and I didn't realize he was going to hit me again until I was leaning back against the bricks of the house and wondering which hurt most from the blow, my cheek or my neck.

“Tell me,” he barked. “Tell me what
you've
lost.”

I couldn't speak, so he came at me again. I scrambled back, so only the tips of his fingers connected, leaving stinging scratch marks across my already swollen cheek.

“Tell me how much you love her, now that she's gone. Say it. I dare you to pretend you didn't hate her when she were here.” His next blow was a backhand to my other cheek. I tasted blood in my mouth, and realizing he'd hit me whether I spoke or not freed my words.

I ran my thumb along the side of my mouth to wipe away whatever it was that dripped from my lip, and blinked away the tears that fell. “I did love her. And you can hit me all you want, but it won't make me think I didn't.”

He raised his hand and I flinched away, so his open hand cuffed my ear. I felt sick and dizzy, suddenly wondering if spewing on him would make him hit me harder or leave me alone.

“And I'm glad she's dead,” I mumbled out, despite the
screeching alarms in my head that begged me to stop. “I'm glad she died before she saw you turn into this.”

He grabbed my hair and pulled back so hard, it felt like my scalp was ripping. He forced me to look at his ugly face. I hated his face. I wanted to shred it with my nails and stomp it from his body. But all I could do was return his raging hate with some of my own. If he was going to kill me, I wasn't going to let him see me afraid to die.

“You're pitiful,” I started to say, but his fist slammed into my stomach hard enough to steal my air and send me to my knees. He tossed me away to fall the rest of the way down, and I immediately curled into a ball, expecting his scuffed-up boots to finish me off. I gasped short breaths for longer than I expected—long enough for him to stomp off into the house. But I didn't move until the music was righted. The warbled piano. The sound track for my escape. I crawled my way into a hunched stand and ran from the house, barely taking the time to grab my bag and keys on the way out. Only one thought screamed through my mind over and over.

Never again.