“This is still a crime scene, if you told the truth—”
“I did.”
Mallory continued on as if I hadn’t spoken. “—so, no, Miss Moriarty, you have no rights here. And I will ask my question once more. Do you or do you not have the sword that was used to kill citizens in Regent’s Park?”
I stared at the top of his head until he finally looked up at me, then I said, “I do not.”
Mallory nodded. “I see. Well, it has yet to be found. I suppose it will be a key piece of evidence in determining who actually committed those crimes.”
I crossed my arms. “As if you don’t know.”
Mallory stared at me silently.
“So, we’re pretending now that you didn’t stop him from killing his own daughter?”
“He was slashed across the face and chest. Some might think he had no choice but to protect himself.”
Lock’s hand came to rest on my shoulder, which was the only thing that kept me from screaming my next words. “I told you he did that to himself.”
“Yes. Using a knife that had your prints on it.” Mallory turned away from my glare and back to his papers. “You seem to think that it’s a small thing to make such giant accusations against a policeman. It is not. The Westminster Police Borough is a brotherhood, Miss Moriarty. When one of our own succeeds, we all triumph. When a brother falls, we all mourn. When one of our own sins”—he looked up to meet my eyes again—“we are all stained.”
“Then your hands are bloody, Detective Inspector Mallory, first with the blood and bruises of three innocent boys you failed to protect from the fists of your brother-in-arms.”
Mallory flinched, and I slammed my hand down on the table, drawing his eyes back to mine, and Lock’s hand back to my shoulder.
“Second, with the blood of the five from the park.” I lowered my voice and held out my hand to show him my clean palm. “You and I can share the stain of a girl who was strangled for bringing my brothers a pie. But, make no mistake, if you claim that man as your brother, your hands are stained, Inspector. They may never come clean.”
Mallory opened his mouth to speak, but I turned and stormed from the kitchen before he could, shouting behind me, “You won’t find what you’re looking for here, so get the hell out of my house.”
But my words were overrun by a bright-eyed uniformed officer who dashed through the front door and into the kitchen shouting, “Guv! We found something!”
A herd of officers converged on the entry and followed Mallory out the front door, leaving Lock and me to stare after them.
“What could they find?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Nothing out there but the rubbish bins.”
“Bins that have been on the street for how many hours?”
I didn’t know, but everything was too quiet for a beat, and then I heard Alice shout, “Kid, stay behind me!”
I was out the door before Sherlock and almost ran into the backs of two officers who stood guard on the bottom step. And while they wouldn’t let me pass, there was just enough space between them to see what an officer had dug from our trash.
It was a hand. A severed hand, mottled gray and slightly puffy with rot, stuffed into a large, clear zipper bag.
Someone from the crowd screamed, and Alice tried her best to hide my brothers out of view as a wave of flashes and camera lights overtook the front of our house. The world around us went to chaos, but still all the officers turned to look at me—the girl with a severed hand in her rubbish.
Sherlock moved faster than the officers, grabbing me around my middle and practically carrying me into the house. When we reached the kitchen, he was full of assurances that what they found had nothing to do with me, that it was probably all a mistake, but I knew he couldn’t protect me from what came next. I still ended up sitting in my kitchen, with Lock and Alice on either side of me while the inspector retook his seat at the head of the table.
After a very long pause, Mallory closed the manila file folder, looked up at me, and said, “You’re going to have to come to the station.”
Sherlock stood in protest, but I kept my eyes fixed on Mallory. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking, whether he was feeling triumphant or skeptical or bored, for that matter. I didn’t know what to think or feel myself. I could think of only one person who might try to call in a tip and give the police something to find when they got here, but he’d been in a jail cell for two weeks. And while my mind traced every possible way my father could have tossed this mess in my lap, my silence was making it look as though I were acquiescing to Mallory’s request.
“For what possible reason?” Alice, bless her, spoke up in my stead. “There’s n—”
“A body part was found when searching the house.”
“Outside the house,” Alice countered.
“In her rubbish bags.”
Sherlock slammed shut the lower cabinet door beneath the sink. “Not her bags.” He stared at the white bag in his hand and then set it on top of Mallory’s folder. “You of course noted that the bag the hand came out of was green, like those found in the park bins, not the white with red stripe provided by the City of London.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean—”
“And that the other items in the bag were clearly take-away containers, bags, and other rubbish from the zoo, shops, and restaurants in the park. You at least saw the smashed coffee cup that literally said ‘Feeding time at the zoo’ on it.”
When Mallory said nothing, Lock wandered behind him, to the far side of the table, then sat down in the chair directly across from me. His grin was subtle, but infectious. “Her bins have been left out front for hours now. Anyone in the city could have dropped that bag in there.”
Mallory swept the empty bag off his folder and started to speak, but my Lock wasn’t done. “Most important, however, you wouldn’t have had to watch Miss Moriarty grow up to know that she’s much too intelligent to cut off someone’s hand and drop it into her own rubbish bin, when there are public bins literally every thirty feet across the city.”
Mallory pressed his lips together. “Perhaps not.”
Alice cleared her throat, bringing our attention back to her. “And the press will want to know why a detective inspector as bright as you would bring a teenage girl to a police station when she is clearly being framed. Do you have an answer for that, Mr. Mallory?”
He apparently didn’t, as his chin dropped to his chest. Then, without a word, he pushed back from the table and stormed from the kitchen. I followed him out and stood in the kitchen doorway to watch him call off his dogs. The officers slowly streamed out the front door under my watch, none of them bothering to say a word in my direction. Not that I would have answered. My mind was working too fast trying to figure out answers to the most important questions: What the hell was a severed hand doing in my rubbish bin? Who the hell put it there? And why?
My father was the obvious answer to all three, but then I got stuck on the how of it. My father. Two weeks behind bars and I was still not free of him. I closed my eyes against the surge of rage that burned through me and felt my jaw clench. I didn’t, however, realize I was trembling until Sherlock slid his fingers between mine and squeezed my hand.
“Almost over,” he said.
I’d only meant to free myself from his touch, but I jerked my hand from his with enough force that the final uniformed officer to leave paused and looked over at us on his way out. I took a deep, shaky breath before I turned away from Lock and headed up the stairs. I paused on the center landing. “Distract my brothers while I check their rooms?”
I saw Lock nod in my periphery.
At the top of the stairs, I walked straight to the end of the hall first, where the two youngest shared a room. It looked reasonably in order. The dresser drawers weren’t all fully shut, and the bedclothes were a bit mussed, but nothing had been seriously disturbed. I straightened things a bit and headed to Fred’s room next, which was in a similar state to Mic
hael and Sean’s, except for the bed. It was perfectly made, even though Freddie hadn’t properly made his bed one day in his entire life. The answer to how his bed had come to its present state wasn’t all that hard to ascertain. A blue envelope was placed on the very center of his quilt, addressed: To my son.
I snatched up the letter and pocketed it. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t explode were I to read it just then. So I pulled Freddie’s bedclothes free of their ridiculous corners and then headed downstairs.
About halfway down, I stopped on the landing once more and nodded at Sherlock, who jumped up from his spot reclining on the bottom stair and ran up to meet me. Alice stood in the kitchen doorway, tugging at her bottom lip and staring at the now-shut front door as if it were about to swing open and attack her. My brothers followed Lock up the steps and started pelting me with questions like, “Did you see what they found in the bins? No one would show us,” and, “Is it true dad killed people with a sword?” and, of course, “They didn’t take any of our stuff, did they?”
The last was Seanie, and I could have kissed that boy for giving me a way to escape what was bound to be well more than a hundred questions to answer that night.
“You’d better go check your rooms for missing things.” A trio of wide eyes was the only response I got before they all stomped up the stairs in a race of desperation. I called after them, “Check everything twice!”
“Well and truly distracted,” Lock said, leaning against the wall. “Am I next?”
I nodded, but with a smile. “You might as well go. I’m just going to tidy up—”
My mobile rang as I was speaking, and I answered it without thinking.
“Junior.”
“Detective Day.”
I’d successfully avoided calls from Detective Sergeant Day for more than a week now. And truthfully, the very last thing I needed that night was to be forced to speak to yet another policeman. I’d heard too much from DS Day since he’d tackled my father to the ground and cuffed his bloodstained hands behind his back. He mostly phoned with messages from my dad, but never forced the issue or acted upset when I summarily ended the calls. He seemed to feel guilty about having to contact me at all, leaving me to decide if he was still a subservient accomplice of the now-disgraced DS Moriarty, or if he was just acting as message boy out of habit.
But that night he was all business. “He wants to see you. Tomorrow morning at seven.”
I glanced at Lock, who was frowning.
“No,” I said. “In fact, you tell him that my answer isn’t just ‘no,’ it’s ‘never.’ ”
That seemed to brighten Sherlock’s mood. He’d obviously surmised what I was saying no to. This wasn’t the first summons I’d received to meet with my father, and while I’d refused every one, Lock still acted relieved when I did, as if he expected me to trot down to the jail at any moment.
I turned my back to Lock and lowered my voice.
“And you can also relay that his sneaky little mission was thwarted. I won’t let my brothers hear even one more word from that pathetic old man. Do we understand each other?”
DS Day, just as thick as he ever was, asked, “Well, are you going to see him or not?”
I paused to consider the various blistering ways I could answer that question, but decided to just end the call.
I suddenly didn’t want to be in the house anymore. After so many nights by myself in that place, it felt stuffy now that there were five extra bodies. Noisy. I should’ve made sure my brothers weren’t torturing Alice on her first night. I should’ve welcomed Alice and found out all that had happened and what we’d do next. I should’ve thought of a way to send Sherlock home peacefully. But all I could think was that I wanted out.
So when Lock stopped me from going upstairs with a hand on my wrist, I barely kept myself from slapping it away. “Come downstairs,” he said. “I’ll make us some tea.”
I looked from his hand to the door, then shook my head and pulled my hand free. “I have to go.”
I’d pushed out the front door before Lock or Alice could stop me, though they both called my name. Had I given it any thought, I might have realized that while the police cars and tape were gone, the crowd of onlookers, protesters, and press wouldn’t be so easily dissuaded. Thankfully, there were only a handful left, and only one cameraman quick enough to snap a few pictures before I started to run. Whether by luck, surprise, or laziness, no one seemed to follow me, and soon I blended into the busy sidewalk, though I didn’t slow my pace. Running meant leaving everything behind just that much faster. Running meant finally being able to breathe.
Chapter 4
I ran toward Regent’s Park, which, despite everything, was still my place of escape. I crossed the bridge and got away from the crowds of people on the street, but I was left with the same nagging parade of questions about all the chaos at home, now with added hows. Like, how I was going to deal with Alice’s and Lock’s questions about my dramatic runaway stunt. How I was going to survive another onslaught of police and press. And how I was going to figure out who was putting spare body parts in our rubbish.
A soft breeze blew around me, chilling my skin and my thoughts. I plodded on, trying my best to blend in with all the others who walked by on their way to a night performance at the amphitheater or home from the zoo, whining kids in tow. My feet took me to the bandstand first, like they always did. It used to be my place to hide from the world; now I came like a pilgrim paying homage to a religious shrine. Perhaps to ask for forgiveness.
I rubbed my thumb over the surface of Sadie’s locket—the one her grandmother had given her before she’d left America, which now hung around my neck. When Sadie had first shown me the insides, it held pictures of her and her grandmother, both at age fifteen, looking like twins through time. But when I’d received it via delivery two days ago, it had a picture of me on one side and Sadie on the other, both of us with daisies in our hair from the day we’d competed to see who could give out two bouquets of flowers first, one piece at a time. She’d won, which is why I had flowers behind both my ears. The locket had come with a note that said, “I understand yours is the face that replaced mine. I’m glad she had a friend like you.”
A friend like me. Would Sadie’s nana still be glad, I wondered, if she fully understood how I’d put her granddaughter in harm’s way?
I sometimes made myself stay at the bandstand, staring at the willow where my father had dropped Sadie’s body onto the muddy tree roots. It was a silly practice, but some days forcing myself to be there felt like a kind of remedy for my daily frustrations, where an injection of pain was the prescription. Wasn’t that the purpose of penance? To burn away the guilt with pain?
Still, the very last thing I needed that night was another dose of poison, so I purposely kept to the path that led toward the boat rentals. In the time since I’d lost my bandstand safe haven to Sadie’s memory, I’d taken to sitting by the fountain planter where Todd White had died, sometimes reaching up to touch the medallion that once hid my mother’s getaway cache, as though a bit of stone could hold the residue of her. But it was too public of a place for that night. I wandered—aimlessly, I thought—until I was unwittingly following the path where Lock had led me to our first crime scene, back when we thought it would all be just a bit of fun to make guesses about a killing in the park.
And then I was in the trees, in the almost complete dark, kneeling down by the clover carving that marked the place where my father had stabbed Mr. Patel with my mother’s aikido sword. My father had killed three times at least before he got around to Mr. Patel, but his death was the one I lived with day in and day out. In part, perhaps, because his was what started me down the path to discovering what a monster my father truly was. In part, because his was the only murder that seemed to matter to the people at my school.
It was getting harder and harder to face school. My family notoriety resulted in this odd mix of sympathy, scorn, and fear on the faces of the students passing by me
in the halls. Drama class was another mix altogether. Lily Patel and her pack of hyena-beasties couldn’t quite force themselves to hate me outright when my face still showed signs that the man who killed her father had tried to do the same to me. But now that the swelling and cuts and bruises had healed enough for me to cover them in generous amounts of makeup, Lily’s friends had started turning every class into either a proper and overt shunning or a minefield of not-so-subtle, passive-aggressive commentary on my family tree, accompanied by nasty looks.
Neither fazed me much, but there was a bit of fun in calculating which they’d choose as I walked the theater aisle to the stage. The odds tilted decidedly toward commentary. Perhaps they were merely bad at shunning.
I would have preferred a bit of shunning last Friday, after being hounded all the way to school by an unyielding reporter, who actually believed I’d give her quotes for a profile about me. Instead, Friday’s drama class was another opportunity for the hyenas to loosen their jaws. I was privileged to overhear how a person with even a shred of decency would have at least transferred schools by now instead of making herself a daily reminder of their poor Lily’s loss.
I offered the girls my thinnest smile to thank them for their wise words and then wandered into the circle of chairs on the stage, taking my usual seat, directly across from Lily Patel.
Lily was her own minefield. She didn’t seem all that bothered by my presence, despite her friends’ keening. She never spoke to me or about me, never joined the shunning sessions. Instead, she just studied me. Openly. Like I was as unfathomable as a Pollock painting. I preferred her stares to the dramatics of her friends, really, because she didn’t avert her eyes, even when I stared back.
We’d been studying each other every day of the six since I’d returned to school, sometimes through an entire class session. And the oddest thing was starting to happen, for me at least. I was beginning to feel like I knew her. Perhaps it was Lock’s influence, but with so much time on my hands and so little interest in Miss Francis’s end-of-term puttering about, I felt like I spent the span of every class taking in Lily Patel to the very last detail.
Mind Games Page 3