Alchemy

by Marie S. Crosswell

  This time, she searches the area properly, without a legion of police watching and standing in the way. She moves across the length of the lot, back and forth, until she's covered the entire area, eyes fixed on the ground. She squats down more than once to inspect the dirt, picking at objects and looking for something she missed. She searches the spot where the body was found, for blood dried into the earth, some indication of the struggle against death. She sees the dead woman as clearly now as she did when the body was here—but it doesn't speak to her.

  A metallic glint catches her eye, makes her stop and turn around. She moves to find the source of the flash, looking down at the spot on the ground and leaning over to inspect it. The rim of a silver object juts up out of the mud, and she grabs it between her thumb and forefinger, picking the thing out and rubbing it clean.

  She holds the two pound coin up to her face and looks at it in the light, standing tall. The queen's image is familiar in the dark gray center, with the gold-colored border surrounding it. When she flips the coin over, she finds an identical head, not tails. She feels the bottom drop out of her stomach, the breath rush out of her body.

  James Moriarty used to carry a double-headed coin. He would flip it over and over, catching it in his palm and rolling it over his knuckles sometimes. Sherlock assumed it was an ordinary coin, until he made her catch it, the last time they met in person before Reichenbach.

  Do you call bets on this, she asked him.

  He smiled and said, I'm not a betting man.

  Then why the two heads, she said.

  Because I needed an equal, Sherlock, he said. And it's you.

  She stares at the coin in her hand, the weight of it like a stone three times as heavy. Moriarty hasn't set foot outside of Belmarsh Prison in just over a year—but these two pounds belong to him. All of this belongs to him.

  *~*~*

  She's sitting at a steel table, under a lonely white light, in a cold room just big enough for a fistfight. She doesn't take off her walking coat or loosen her scarf, wearing them like armor. On her way to the prison, she was jittery, full of dread, but now she feels nothing. Her mind is blank, and she can't feel her heart. A second before the door opens, she realizes this is the nothingness she feels in her dreams.

  A guard leads him in, another one following him. She had imagined him in his typical attire—an expensive, tailored suit, a pocket square, a silk tie, designer shoes shined—but he's wearing the same jumpsuit as every other inmate in this prison, the same white loafers. He's in handcuffs, but he smiles as he sits down across from her. The two guards recede into the shadows behind him, standing with their backs against the wall.

  For a long beat, they stare at each other in silence, Sherlock and Moriarty. Him, with a smug hint of a smile, that ever-present twinkle in his flat, dead eyes. She, with a face as frigid as the black depths of the sea. Other women would tremble and cower in the presence of the man who almost killed them—but all Sherlock feels now is a frostbitten loathing. The same fearless contempt she felt that night at Reichenbach Lake, when she thought she would kill him or die trying.

  "How's my poppet?" he says.

  "How's prison?" Sherlock counters.

  "Not bad. I finally get to take some time for myself, catch up on my hobbies. It's almost like going on holiday. And speaking of holidays, today must be Christmas, because here you are."

  Sherlock glowers at him, stone-faced, her jaw set.

  "Are you going to tell me why?" he says. "Do you miss me as much as I miss you?"

  "I'm here because someone's been killing the homeless, and I want to know who."

  "You think I know?"

  "I think you're behind it," Sherlock says. "The one giving the orders."

  Moriarty leans back in his chair and looks at the walls on either side of them. "You know where we are, don't you?"

  "You are completely capable of operating from inside this place. I don't know how, and I don't care. But I know you can and you are, and I want to know if you're the reason for these murders."

  Moriarty looks at Sherlock, cocking his head. "Why would you suspect me?"

  Sherlock hesitates, unsure if she should give him the most important detail. If she's wrong and Moriarty isn't the mind behind the murders, sharing details with him about the case would be a dangerous mistake.

  He's watching her like she's behind glass, on display at the aquarium. But he's the predator, he's the one in prison, he's the thing that rises out of the dark deep when she's floating in the sea.

  Watson was right. Sherlock never saw him in her dreams until this case. And the killer had to get that two-headed coin from somewhere.

  "My name," she says. "The victims have my name carved into their bodies."

  "So the killer knows who you are, he's lashing out at you through his crimes, and you think I put him up to it," says Moriarty. He grins at Sherlock just a little, the corners of his mouth twitching. "You find it more believable I reached out to someone on the outside from in here, just to torture you, than any one of the men you've crossed in the past deciding to get revenge? Mmmm. Sounds like you wanted an excuse to see me, Holmes. And you really shouldn't need one."

  Sherlock feels a desire to destroy him slither into her belly like a black snake, tongue darting in and out of its lips. She reaches into her coat pocket for the coin and throws it on the table, the metallic sound of it bouncing against the steel filling the room. "I found this at one of the crime scenes."

  He looks down at the coin, then picks it up with both hands and turns it over to see the two heads, the chain attached to the cuffs rattling. He drops the coin back on Sherlock's side of the table and smiles at her. "Do you know what I knew about you as soon as I heard of you?" he says. "You're the other side of the coin I was looking for all along. It's a disappointing to see you resist your potential, Sherlock. You could be better than me, if you wanted."

  "I am better than you," says Sherlock.

  He half-grins, his eyes glinting. "I meant you could be better at what I do than I am."

  Sherlock knew what he meant. She doesn't tell him that, just glowers at him from across the table.

  "You feel wrong for wanting to see me," Moriarty says. "Like there's something twisted about it, about you. You think you should forget about me, pretend I don't exist because now I'm in here." He leans forward, rests his arms on the table between them, the handcuff chain rattling against the steel tabletop. "But see, you are twisted, Sherlock. You are. There's a part of you that isn't any different from me, and that part of you wants to see me—because I can give you what no one else can. I can give you a reason to let all that darkness out. And it feels good to let the dog off the leash, doesn't it? I saw it in your eyes that night. That pleasure, that relief. You were finally going to kill someone, to become one with the thing you've been chasing all these years. You don't just hate me because of what I do or what I did to you. You hate that you see yourself in me. You hate me because I remind you that you're not pure. In another life, I could've been you, and in this one, you could still be me."

  Sherlock stands up, her chair scraping the floor as she pushes it backward. She looks down at Moriarty and says, in a voice like an icepick cracking bone, "I am nothing like you. I don't want to see you, unless it's to watch you suffer and die."

  He smiles, and she heads for the door.

  "Don't you want an answer?" he says.

  She stops. Turns around and steps back into the light. "Am I supposed to believe you?"

  "I've never lied to you, Sherlock. You know that, or you wouldn't be here."

  She does know he never lied to her in the past, but now, in this situation, any answer he gives could be a lie, each one serving a purpose.

  But she waits.

  "What price are you willing to pay, for a name?" he says.

  "The name of the killer?" she replies.

  He nods.

  "So you are behind this."

  "I needed to get your attention somehow," he says
. "You don't answer my letters."

  Sherlock resists the urge to seize him by his jumpsuit collar and throttle him against the wall. "Who is he?" she says.

  "I'm not going to tell you for free. Nothing's free, Sherlock. Not life or death."

  "What do you want?"

  "Same thing I've always wanted. You."

  She stands in his bloodthirsty gaze, looks into his black shark eyes, and doesn't flinch or shrink away.

  "Agree to visit me again, and I'll tell you what you need to know," he says.

  She pauses, weighing her own animosity toward Moriarty against the probability she figures out who the killer is before he slays another victim.

  "Fine," she says. "I'll come back. Now, tell me who he is and where I can find him."

  "Spencer Gray," Moriarty says. "I think you can look up his address on your own. You or your pack of dogs at the Yard."

  It takes a moment for the name to register, but Sherlock does remember the man. He was the suspect in a case she and Lestrade worked together, years ago. He went to prison for a short sentence. How the hell did he know about the connection between Moriarty and Sherlock? When Moriarty went down, the police made sure Sherlock's name never made it into the papers.

  "You told him to impersonate a homeless man," she says.

  "I did," says Moriarty, leaning back in his chair. "I gave him very specific instructions."

  "Was cutting my name in the bodies included in those instructions?"

  "No. That was his own, personal touch. If I had known he was going to do that, I would've picked someone else."

  Sherlock turns to leave without another word.

  "Give my regards to Watson and Lestrade," Moriarty says, stretching out in his chair. "And Sherlock—if you don't come back soon, there will be consequences."

  Sherlock pauses at the door just for a second, hating him with every part of her being.

  She leaves him behind the steel door and on her way down the hall, she calls her brother.

  "Mycroft," she says. "We need to talk about security at Belmarsh."

  *~*~*

  Spencer Gray lives in a rundown building in Brixton, the kind of place that looks abandoned from the outside. Lestrade, a few other detectives from her unit, and a host of uniformed coppers quietly roll their vehicles onto the street intersecting with the one of Gray's address, staying a block north of his. They park amongst the civilian cars lining both sides of the street, and some of the uniformed officers start quietly making their way toward the apartment building, led by the detective sergeants who answer to Lestrade. She's ordered them to stand by, across the street from Gray's building, and to stay out of sight.

  Lestrade, Sherlock, and Watson hang back next to Lestrade's car, their hair and the hems of their coats swaying in the wind.

  "Are you ready?" Lestrade says to Sherlock.

  Sherlock gives a slight nod. "Are you?"

  Lestrade and Watson trade glances, and Watson nods at Sherlock.

  "Remember, after we get a full confession, I'm only giving you five minutes," Lestrade tells Sherlock. "Just five—and we're going in to get him."

  "Five's plenty," Sherlock says. "Once he's said all he needs to say, I'm cutting you off. You can start counting the minutes when I do."

  "If you feel like you can't handle him, get out of there. Don't be proud, just get out and let us take him."

  "I'm not handing him over until I've had my piece."

  Lestrade looks at Sherlock with the authority of her police rank, tempered by the hint of tenderness she can never hide in her eyes when she's focused on Sherlock. Sherlock looks back at her with the stony, stubborn expression she so often wears, none of her usual excitement for action and victory, just a dark determination. Watson's expression is openly worried as she watches Sherlock. She put up a good fight when Sherlock insisted on going in for Gray alone, but in the end, she capitulated to Sherlock's insistence that this is personal to her. Lestrade folded in a similar argument with Sherlock beforehand, persuaded by Sherlock's strategy more than her right to vengeance.

  "Don't get yourself hurt," Lestrade says. "He's not worth it."

  Sherlock hears what the older woman really means: don't get yourself killed, it would devastate me.

  "I'll be fine," Sherlock says, looking at Lestrade and Watson. "He's the one you should worry about."

  She steps out into the open sidewalk and starts heading toward Gray's street, her hands in her coat pockets and her collar turned up against the wind.

  Last night, she stayed up until after three in the morning, too wired with anticipation to sleep. When she finally managed to pass out in her bed, she dreamed of the ocean again. She was floating closer to the surface than she had ever been before, like a corpse in the muted white light somewhere above her. There was no Moriarty, no one and nothing except herself in the deep blue silence, the shadows of unseen wildlife passing beneath her. She was no more than a silhouette herself.

  Sherlock climbs the steps leading to the apartment building's front door and goes inside without looking back. She pauses in the foyer, listening to the silence and looking up through the stairwell. There's a skylight in the roof directly above it, and it's too much like the sun in her dream, shining on the other side of water.

  She takes the stairs to the third floor, wondering if Gray can hear her coming. There's no sign of anyone in the building, no noise. She reaches the third floor and pauses again on the landing, looking down the corridor to where Gray's door waits. There's a large rectangular window at the end of the corridor, letting in that same anemic light.

  Sherlock stops to check her wire in front of Gray's door, peeking at it where she pinned it to the inside of her blazer. Lestrade and Watson are listening in Lestrade's car—but Sherlock has no intention of censoring herself.

  She knocks on Gray's door and waits.

  He opens up after several seconds and just looks at her. For a moment, she suspects he doesn't recognize her, though her appearance hasn't changed since she testified at his trial six years ago. Prison shows itself in his face, though he has the same bald head peppered with silver fuzz. He's aged but also hardened.

  "Spencer Gray," she says.

  "Sherlock Holmes," he replies. "Are you really this cocky or just suicidal?"

  "Aren't you going to let me in?"

  Gray steps aside, pulling the door open wider, and Sherlock enters the flat.

  The sitting room is a mess, littered with empty bottles, newspapers, and other debris. There's a dirty ashtray and magazines on the long coffee table standing on short legs in front of the sofa. The wallpaper is old and dated, a brown and white pattern that makes the carpet look worse than it is even while matching it. An assortment of paper and photographs decorate a section of wall to the right of the sofa, and Sherlock quickly realizes it's a collection of information on her, not unlike the corkboards she assembles in her own sitting room when she's working cases.

  "You don't seem that surprised to see me," she says, staring at the wall with her hands on her hips and her coat peeled back behind them.

  "Should I be?" says Gray. "You're Sherlock Holmes, detective genius, aren't you?"

  "Yes, but miraculously, you didn't leave any identifying evidence behind at your crime scenes. I'm only here now because Moriarty gave you up."

  "I guess I should've seen that coming." Gray passes Sherlock on his way into the sitting room. As far as she can tell, he's unarmed.

  "Take it from someone who knows: bad men don't do loyalty," she says, watching him as he sits on the sofa across from her.

  "Why are you here?" he says. "Why aren't there a bunch of coppers kicking my door down instead?"

  "You owe me an explanation. And I don't mean whatever bollocks you're going to say when you're interrogated at Scotland Yard. You did this to me—and I want you to look me in the eye and confess."

  Gray looks at Sherlock with the hint of a smirk in his mouth, looks at her like she's some kind of fascinating animal on displ
ay. "You know I want to kill you, Holmes. Aren't you afraid?"

  Sherlock smiles. "Afraid of you? No. I've met men worth fearing. You aren't one of them."

  She's telling the truth. Standing here, alone in the flat with this murderer who hates her down to her blood, she is fearless. She feels the same cool stillness that possesses her in the boxing ring, just before a fight starts, when everything in her and around her goes quiet. She's floating in the sea, awake in the void.

  Sherlock starts to pace the length of the sitting room on her side of the coffee table. "So I have you convicted of kidnapping and abusing your girlfriend, help her disappear, and once you're done serving your prison sentence, you decide to get back at me. I know I've probably told you this before, Mr. Gray, but you're as stupid as they come. I already caught you once. Did you think you were going to get away with these murders? After calling me the way you did?"

  "No," he says. "I knew you'd find me sooner or later. I wanted you to. It doesn't matter what they do to me after today. Whatever happens, fucking with you was worth it. Killing you is going to be worth it."

  Sherlock stands still at the front of the room, arms crossed against her chest now, and smiles. She starts to pace again. "How did you end up in Moriarty's web?"

  "He called me. Right after I got out of prison. He wanted to talk to me about you."

  Sherlock knows what Moriarty has done, immediately: he ordered his operatives to identify every convict currently serving a sentence, whose case Sherlock worked, and he keeps the list, complete with projected release dates, so he can use whoever leaves prison against Sherlock if he wants to. He probably has the list narrowed down to the men most likely to want revenge against her or to reoffend. Men like Spencer Gray.

  "Did he tell you who he is?" Sherlock says. "Why he's got a life sentence?"

  "No," says Gray. "And I don't care. All I needed from him was inspiration, a plan."