Murder with Lens: A Sherlock Holmes Case (221B Baker Street Series) (4 page)

His American counterpart? John gave his head a few rapid shakes. Sherlock’s lips pursed slightly, but that was all there was in the way of reaction from him.

“I’ll be right back.” Lewis turned on his heel, huge. Sherlock was generally the tallest person in any gathering John frequented, but these guys had to be 6’5. Lewis walked stiffly away, leaving Scott looking like the front end of a Mack truck, seeing as he was so burly with muscle.

Agent Young opened the door to the meeting room beside them and stepped in. “For the past eight months we’ve been investigating the activities of-”

Sherlock bypassed the doorway to watch where Lewis went.

Agent Young paused beside her chair. “Mr. Holmes.”

“Sherlock,” Holmes said absently.

“Reese will take a moment. Please come and sit down.”

Sherlock looked up the hall in spite of this summons. In fact, John settled into his seat and watched the genius. He was excited. Then again, he was about to meet a special agent for the CIA who, apparently, was a big deal. His American counterpart? Did this woman have any idea what Sherlock was? John couldn’t conceive of any counterpart to Holmes.

“Sherlock,” Lestrade nodded.

“Oh, don’t fret, Detective Inspector. I’ve worked with three ‘Exceptional Assets’ in my lifetime. I understand how hard it is to control them. Your boy’s in his mid-twenties.” She picked up her compostable coffee cup from the table and added, “You aren’t going to change him.”

The look Sherlock gave her was unreadable, but it had absolutely no impact on her urbane exterior, which was every bit as smooth as her extraordinary hair. Her tone became firm but patient, “Please join us, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock eased into the room without taking his eyes off where Lewis had gone.

“For the past eight months the CIA has been investigating the activities of a collection of people who are something like you, Mr. Holmes.”

“Sherlock,” he said more slowly, with a soft click on the ‘k’, which was a sure sign his patience with her was wearing.

John sat forward. “It’s just Sherlock, Ms. Young.”

“Special Agent Young,” she said in that same too genteel tone – one part professionalism and one part scolding from one’s mother.

John sat back and blinked at her. “In my experience there aren’t that many people like Sherlock, in fact, I’d venture he has no peers. So I’m curious to hear what you mean. It should throw some light on what you think he is, precisely.”

“He’s an E.A.” she had yet to sit, and paced the long side of the table beside her coffee cup. “An Exceptional Asset, or Exceptional, and he’s not a unicorn, doctor. He has peers. We have eight of them with twenty four handlers.”

“Oh so many handlers,” Sherlock smiled a little.

“And another unicorn in the building,” John added onto this.

“Yes. Three a piece,” Young chose to answer Sherlock’s unspoken question. “I find it surprising that you’ve commented on that, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock almost rolled his eyes.

“You have three handlers, do you not?” Special Agent young indicated with one flattened hand. Her controlled actions went with her appearance, overall: trim and fantastic, like some model for Prada business clothes. “Likely they serve the same purpose as my team and I do. There is someone in charge of you, the Detective Inspector; for lack of a better word, there is a leash for you, I suspect that may be Sergeant Donovan; and you have a sitter to meet your personal needs.” She looked at John.

What the – John flushed. What the devil kind of personal needs did she think he met?

Sherlock’s lips thinned down for a moment, and he moved his hands from his pockets to join behind his back again, now he had something unpleasant to think about.

“Excellent,” the woman set her hands on her hips. “Of the eight Assets in the CIA, Reese is currently predominant. Moving Reese from Langley to here should tell you the seriousness of this situation. For the past eight months the CIA has been investigating-”

“Something it seems it will take you eight months to say,” Sherlock exclaimed.

She raised a hand with one finger extended. “Mr. Holmes, kindly don’t interrupt me. I promise you’ll be rewarded with something to think about.”

Sherlock sucked in a breath and turned to Lestrade. The Detective Inspector was staring back in fascination, almost as if he was about to whip out a notepad and take notes. For her part, Donovan was smiling openly. No help there. John budged a little in his chair to draw Sherlock’s attention. He prayed that the look on his face said ‘Do not react’. He gave a soft nod and Sherlock straightened back and closed his eyes. He schooled himself and waited.

“How very unusual… does your Asset have visual perceptual difficulties, Detective Inspector?”

“Nah,” Lestrade said, “just limits to his patience.”

“Problems with impulse control then,” she said to Scott, who nodded. The woman set in again. “For the past eight months the CIA has been investigating the activities of a collection of exceptional individuals. The fact they’ve gathered together as they have is, in itself, alarming. Individuals of their intelligence are problematic at best, and need to be managed. The CIA made immediate moves to infiltrate them. We succeeded in making contact. Work was going well. We determined the rogue band of exceptional individuals was involved in criminal activity, but very quietly. They move people and goods around the world without consideration for the laws of any country in which they choose to operate, and are amassing funds for… something. And then, shortly after the affair called ‘The Blind Banker’, a number of them, perhaps five or six of them, congregated in London. We suspect they had some role in the smuggling operation you interrupted. However, we’ve had a setback. Our mole has gone dark. He missed his checkpoint on Friday.”

Sherlock glanced across to Lestrade.

The Detective Inspector patted air with one hand. “We’ll get you in on the scene. Anderson’s been informed and is waiting for you to arrive before anything more is done.”

“So far, it’s only been photographed.” Special Agent Young said. “Reese likes to work off of photos. As I said, it’s rare for us to move Reese from Langley.”

Sherlock motioned at Lestrade with his cell phone, “Grab leash and sitter. I’m off to see the body now.”

John actually chuckled aloud as he got to his feet. He followed Sherlock out into the hall without a backward glance. He could hear Lestrade and Donovan come out behind them, Sally already complaining that he showed no respect for authority.

The young woman who appeared around the corner from them stopped John in his tracks. Holmes, who was texting on his cell, kept going.

“Sherlock,” John warned. Holmes tucked the cell and his hands into his coat’s pockets, looked up to see what had caused the stir, and stopped.

Lewis stood behind a young woman with short, tight waves of black, almost 20s style hair. The look was shattered by two small, almost ornamental pigtails. Her eyes were so blue, that, framed in black mascara and generous liner, they were nearly colourless. Her skin, if possible, might have been a shade paler than Sherlock’s. She was taller than John, and slim. Her hands were sunk in the pockets of a plastic rain coat dotted, aptly, with the London rain John could now hear pocking the building’s windows. Underneath, just a black strapped shirt, and pleated plaid skirt – not nearly warm enough for the weather. She also wore knee-high, lace-up black boots that looked stout to John… but a tad too style conscious to be of military or police make. She had one gold ring through her red bottom lip. John put her in her early 20s at most.

This girl stopped in the hallway and flicked the hood from her hair with a jerk of her head. Her blue eyes passed over John and then returned to Sherlock Holmes.

The sound of the rain dominated the hallway’s sudden tension.

Special Agent Young and her coffee cup stepped out of the meeting room. She shut the door behind her and said, “Reese, I told you not to go outside.”

Reese said nothing. She continued to stare at Holmes in much the same manner as he levelled at her. It was like they’d both stumbled upon a species they suspected was heretofore unrecorded, or, very possibly, mythological – like they were two unicorns in London.

Special Agent Young’s heels clacked down the hallway. She came to a stop beside Lestrade and Donovan. “Reese, this is Sherlock. He’s the Asset-”

“Consulting Detective,” Sherlock said in an exasperated tone.

“-here at Scotland Yard. Say hello.”

Reese said nothing. She did, however, take her hands out of her pockets and begin to peel off her gloves. Her many bangles glittered in the overhead lights. She wasn’t as tall as Sherlock, but she was easily closer than John was, at, he estimated, 5’10 in the boots, and lean.

Once the gloves were off, she tucked them into the pockets of the raincoat. Stopping about three feet from Sherlock, she held out her hands, flattened. She spread her fingers, and turned her hands over in air before him before tucking back in her pockets again.

Sherlock’s head tipped to one side. He made a circle around her. His coat swirling as he came to a stop before her again. Then he sighed, contained his impatience to be off, and held out his hands. He turned them over, just as she had, and stood as she walked a slow circle around him.

Finally, when she’d come around to the other side, she stopped. “Violin.” Her voice was actually kind of low and husky for a girl.

“Yes,” Sherlock said, and then added. “Suicide.”

***

Reese’s painted lips opened for a moment, and, as if on springs, her jaw clacked closed into the coldest and bitterest of expressions. She almost looked betrayed. The girl swung around and headed back up the hall the way she’d come.

Sherlock looked at the windows and gave a light little puff of exhalation. It was the acidic disappointment that caught John’s attention. He looked up at Holmes’ empty searching of the windows and desks and glass offices, and felt in those gestures the desolation beneath. It occurred to John that Sherlock had never met someone like him before. I mean, Mycroft, arguably, but… never someone outside of his own family. And like with Sofia, earlier tonight, whatever he’d meant, Sherlock hadn’t been able to establish a connection.

Then his green eyes fixed.

John looked up the hall to find that Reese had stopped in her tracks.

She turned and stomped back to Holmes, her expression now quite like the dark thunderhead rolling in beyond the windows. She reached him, grabbed both of Holmes arms and yanked them out toward her. Her husky voice went off. “Slight wince on the motion of your left arm, tendon or muscle damage high up makes you inclined to frame your shoulders stiffly and keep that arm closer to the body. It’s because you remember pain, maybe serious tissue damage there, and, mentally, you’re still dealing with the trauma. But that’s not even the good part. Slight inward turn on the right arm is even more telling. It was accompanied by a tiny shudder. Shivering isn’t pain. You’re not protecting it, you’re hiding it. You put your inner elbow almost against your ribs. You’d put your hands behind your back if you could, and hold that position. So – long term psychological damage. I’m thinking lefty got badly hurt recently, and that’s giving you flashbacks. But righty, I’m getting that’s self-induced. I’m thinking you’re left-handed, and that inner elbow is your favourite injection spot. So that’s where you shot whatever the hell you did so your eyes could go blank, and you didn’t have to deal with all of this shit.” She released his arms with a shove and spoke slowly to him. “Don’t you ever dis me again.”

With that, Reese turned on her heel and strode down the hall toward the elevators.

Sherlock tucked his hands behind his back. The left hand locked around the right. His expression was completely smooth and abstracted. He might have been a resin doll.

“Sherlock,” John said quietly. There was no indication he’d heard. “All right?”

In the elevator, Reese held the door. She looked up at Holmes wordlessly.

He started forward without hesitation, the cell returning to his hand so that he could browse the internet on the way. Special Agent Young followed closely, with Scott.

“What the hell was that?” Lestrade asked quietly.

Lewis lowered his voice, “Oh. Oh yeah. The big guns, the really smart ones, they have an adjustment period when they first meet. There’s always conflict. Reese is the best we have, so there’s been a lot of rivalry around her since she’s been about fourteen. I’m surprised he did so well. I didn’t think he’d get the little greeting ritual our Assets do.”

“Let me get one thing straight with you and your people,” John said softly. “He’s not an Asset. He’s not equipment. He’s just a man, and if you mess him about, I will seriously make you regret it.”

A moment after, John stepped into the elevator. He came to a stop beside Sherlock. Holmes leaned in the back left corner. Reese leaned in the front right. They stared at one another noiselessly, and even with the packed elevator, there might have been no one else there. As if nothing out of the ordinary were taking place, Special Agent Young pressed the G button. The doors slid closed.

“Why?” Holmes asked.

Reese raised her chin a little in challenge. “What did you shoot? I’m betting cocaine. Everything else is just so trashy compared to cocaine. Am I right?”