The Case for Jamie

by Brittany Cavallaro

  It was clear that Leander thought I was taking a ridiculous series of precautions. I hoped very much that he was right.

  The restaurant was crowded when we walked in. I imagined it was always crowded; it was the sort of place where no one wore their wealth ostentatiously, but wore it all the same. Cashmere. Driving gloves on the table. That sort of thing. Leander pointed the way to a series of small private rooms, off past the bar where James Watson was drinking, alone.

  “You go on,” he said. “I’ll say good-bye to James, and you can go talk to Jamie, and we can leave. Ten minutes, yes? There’s a flight leaving LaGuardia at eleven. I mean to be on it.”

  I watched him as he walked toward James. It was voyeuristic to do so. But I thought I might learn something, maybe, about myself.

  He approached silently—that wasn’t hard to do in a restaurant this crowded, I deducted points—and sat down beside James all at once, as though he’d stepped through an imaginary door. It was the sort of thing that would usually get me a delighted smile, I thought. The show of effort, the neatness of it.

  James Watson looked up at Leander, and then he put a hand over his eyes. Was he weeping? The trick wasn’t that good.

  Oh, I thought. I should not be watching this.

  But I didn’t go to the table, either. It was a fit of vanity more than anything else that led me to the restroom instead. I’d told myself I wanted to make sure my lockpicking kit wasn’t showing beneath my dress. Wasn’t it interesting, the interplay between our verbal thoughts and the currents that ran beneath them? In actual fact I wanted to assure myself that I looked pretty before I saw Jamie Watson for the last time, and I knew that was why I was going. (Good-byes are difficult; let me have this one thing; qui multum habet, plus cupit, et cetera.)

  I looked passable for someone who suspected that the man trying to kill her was in the same restaurant.

  Fine. I bent to wash my hands.

  Noise from the other side of the bathroom wall, like someone beating a wet sack with their fists. More accurately, like someone was trying to kill someone else in the men’s.

  Watson.

  I didn’t stop to think about it. To consider the decision. It only took a moment to take the gun out of my evening bag.

  Twenty-Three

  Jamie

  LUCIEN MORIARTY HAD NO INTENTION OF KILLING ME. I knew, because he was telling me that verbatim.

  “But I want you to know,” he said, throwing another punch into my stomach, “that I have no problem hurting you until you listen to me.”

  He had his other arm against my throat, keeping me pinned to the wall. I’d fought against him at first, but I couldn’t get any purchase, my feet sliding on the tiles as he cut off my air. All I’d managed to do was claw some of the buttons off his shirt when he’d first grabbed me out of the stall.

  “You’ll do what I say,” he said, and pushed that arm harder against my neck. “If you don’t, I’ll stop. I’ll stop giving you orders. And I’ll start giving them instead to the people who have your sister. Do you understand?”

  “What’s your plan?” I croaked out.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know. Nod. Nod if you understand.”

  I couldn’t manage to nod. I croaked out a “yes” and watched his awful shiny face smirk.

  Ted. Ted with his charming accent, with the eyes only for my mother. Ted, bashful, brilliantly happy, Ted who had won everyone over.

  Ted with his arm against my windpipe.

  I took a shuddering breath. Then I pushed back hard and surged forward, shoving him down onto the floor. He skidded backward until his head hit the concrete wall.

  I’d been playing a lot of rugby this last year.

  “I want you to know that I’m not going to kill you,” I said, putting my knees down onto his chest. He was conscious, breathing, but there was blood spilling down his forehead into his eyes. “But I want you to know—I don’t have any problems hurting you until you listen to me.”

  His breathing was coming hard. “You little shit,” he gasped, and at that moment the bathroom door flew open.

  Charlotte Holmes was standing there in a red dress, pointing a pistol at Lucien Moriarty with both hands. The door snapped shut behind her.

  “Oh,” she said. “I didn’t know you had this covered.” She put the safety on and slipped the pistol into her bag.

  There was a commotion in the main dining room. One lone voice, yelling, I saw her, I saw she had a gun—

  Calmly, Holmes flipped the lock behind her.

  There were so many things I could have felt in that moment, but the only one I could muster was relief.

  I grinned at her. “Hi,” I said.

  “Hi,” she said. “What are you going to do about that?” She pointed her toe at Lucien Moriarty. He was struggling to get up, but he was still groggy enough that I could keep him pinned for another few minutes. I told her so.

  “Do you have a plan?” I asked, and then I blanched. The last time I let Holmes make the plan—

  She must have seen it. “No,” she said. “The gun was my plan. But—it’s not the plan anymore. There’s a window. A small one, up there.”

  “So we climb out it. Then what? Remember that he can hear us.”

  “Of course I can bloody well hear you—”

  I punched Lucien in the mouth. “That’s for my mother,” I informed him. “Or for my sister. For both.”

  Holmes raised an eyebrow. “That’s going to leave a mark.”

  “But the bleeding head wound, that’s just going to disappear.”

  “I didn’t say I wasn’t okay with your decision.”

  “You should be,” I said. “The head wound was for you.”

  There was someone hammering on the bathroom door. “Come out, we’ve called the police, come out—”

  “Get my phone?” I asked her. “I think it’s under the sink.”

  “Screen’s cracked,” she said, tossing it to me.

  “I’ll charge it to him.” I scrolled through my contacts. “Here. Hold on.”

  “Detective Shepard.”

  “Shepard,” I said into the phone. “I—”

  Lucien shoved hard against me; two seconds later, Holmes had her gun trained on him again. Check him for weapons, I mouthed to her, and she started patting down his legs. “Hi.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes. Well. No,” I said into the phone, as Holmes pulled a sheathed knife out of Lucien’s sock. “We’re in the men’s bathroom at Arnold’s restaurant in New York City. Lucien Moriarty married my mother, and now I have him pinned to the floor, and Holmes is here with a gun, and someone’s called the cops.”

  “You—you what?”

  Holmes darted in around me and yanked a gun out from inside his blazer. Then she pulled out his wallet and his mobile and his passport, one two three, with the clean skill of a pickpocket. Her other hand was steady on the gun.

  The hammering on the door was getting harder. “Police!”

  “Like I said. Listen, Shepard, I want you to know that we’re going to have to leave him here—”

  “Police!”

  “—but I can give you the full story when I see you.” Holmes made an all-clear sign with her hands. I nodded.

  “This isn’t my jurisdiction,” Shepard was saying.

  “I sort of thought you should know anyway.”

  “Fine—then get down to the station.”

  “Later. We’re kind of busy.”

  “Jesus, Jamie, get down there now—” But I’d already hung up. Holmes was stuffing Lucien’s things into her tiny bag.

  “Police! We’re opening this door!” Someone throwing their shoulder against it. A splintering sound.

  The adrenaline was starting to make its way out of my system. The glow of it, the sudden clarity, the confidence, it was going, and when I got up off Lucien Moriarty I had to wince when I kicked him to stay down.

  I was going to do jail time, I realized. It wasn’t eve
n a question anymore.

  Holmes nodded to the window. I clambered up onto the sink, then pulled her up next to me, and for a moment, she was flush against me, warm, her hair just under my nose, and I bent to make a cradle with my hands to hoist her up, the way I did when we first met, when I was helping her climb into Dobson’s dorm room. We were better at it now. On the first push up she had the window open; on the second she was out, and reaching a hand down to help me.

  The bathroom door cracked, like lightning striking a tree. Lucien Moriarty was stumbling to his feet. Outside, people were screaming.

  But I grabbed Charlotte Holmes’s hand, and I scrabbled up the wall with my shoes, and she pulled me out onto the corner of Broadway and Prince. The second we got to our feet, we started to run.

  Twenty-Four

  Charlotte

  WE NEEDED A BOLT-HOLE, SOMEWHERE WE COULD HIDE. They would check the trains. They would check the taxis and the toll stations and the rental cars. They would check the airports now too, and so I supposed if going to London tonight had still been on the docket, it wasn’t anymore.

  Possibilities:

  Return to the Green apartment.

  Fall on my sword in front of Hadrian Moriarty, ask for sanctuary.

  Locate an empty Airbnb, break in.

  Hide temporarily and call DI Green for assistance.

  Leander might be back at the Green apartment; we might lead the chase back to his door. I didn’t dare contact him in case he was currently being questioned. The second option was suicidal, and the third, if we misjudged even slightly, would involve us waking up vacationers by breaking into their rental. That meant more police. The fourth—the fourth had possibility.

  I dragged Watson into an alley, down behind a Dumpster at the far end. A moment passed, and then a police car raced by. The next one got stuck behind a snarl of traffic. Its siren bayed on and on, like a hound.

  “I’m calling the Yard,” I whispered. Watson nodded.

  It was the middle of the night in London, but DI Green was awake. “Hi, Stevie,” she said.

  “Yes. Hi. I need a bolt-hole in Lower Manhattan.”

  “What did you do to Lisa’s apartment?”

  “Nothing. We just—we had a physical altercation with Lucien Moriarty in a public restroom in SoHo.”

  “We who?”

  “Watson and I.”

  “Yes. Brilliant. Well done.”

  “Help or don’t,” I hissed, “but spare me the smart remarks.”

  “I hear sirens,” she grumbled, but I could hear her typing. “Fine. Listen, I meant to speak to you anyway. We made contact today with a new source.”

  “Who?”

  “Merrick Morgan-Vilk. He’s in your area. I’ll call him to say that I’m sending you to him. Here, I have an address, do you have a pen handy?”

  Watson made a horrible strangled sound. A rat had made its way out of the Dumpster and was now crawling across his shoes.

  “No,” I said. “But I have a fairly good memory.”

  Twenty-Five

  Jamie

  I REALIZED, AS WE WERE USHERED IN THE BACK ENTRANCE of the Morgan-Vilk residence, that my shirt was covered in Lucien Moriarty’s blood. Or maybe my own. It was hard to tell. Holmes, who was always so fastidiously clean, was filthy. Her red dress had gone brown and ragged at the bottom, and her legs below it were all-over cuts and dirty-looking bruises. She and I stood together in the kitchen like a pair of murderous orphans in the thick of the Black Plague.

  The kitchen itself was unremarkable—cabinets, table, a stainless steel sink. From what I could tell from the stairs leading upstairs, Morgan-Vilk was renting the bottom two floors of a brownstone.

  The girl who let us in eyed us warily. “Mr. Morgan-Vilk has just gone to get some documents.”

  “Yes,” Holmes said. “Fine. Who are you?”

  “My colleague,” said Milo Holmes, sitting at the kitchen table, as his assistant exited quietly. I jumped about a mile. I hadn’t seen him there. From the way that Holmes’s eyes widened, then narrowed, she hadn’t seen him either. Which was a first, as far as I could tell.

  Maybe it was because Milo looked nothing like himself. A tracksuit. A massive beard. No glasses, and his hair long, tied up in a knot on the top of his head. An empty glass in front of him, and a bottle.

  “No,” Holmes said, edging back toward the door. “No, absolutely not,” and for a hysterical moment I thought she was talking about his man bun.

  “Sit,” he said, and I was shocked to hear a slur on his words, as though he’d been drinking. “Sit, or I’ll drag you back into this house and tie you to that goddamn chair.”

  I’d always been afraid of Milo Holmes—it would be stupid not to be—but in that moment I was terrified.

  Holmes was impassive, but she sat down across from him slowly, as though he might lunge at her. “DI Green sent me. I’m here for Merrick Morgan-Vilk.”

  “You always assume I don’t know these things,” Milo said. He splashed more whiskey into his glass. “You never learn, do you.”

  I swallowed. “Why are you here, Milo?”

  “Jamie,” he said, with extravagant scorn. “I’m being so rude, forgive me. Perhaps you’d like a change of clothes? Either of you?”

  “No, thank you. Milo—”

  “Stop looking at me like a pair of frightened rabbits.” He brought the glass to his lips. “I wanted you here. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Holmes watched his throat as he swallowed. “Are you in touch with DI Green?”

  “Detective Inspector Green was the one who reached out to me, girl.” That, from a voice booming down the stairs. “Hold on, hold on. Yes, hello.” Merrick Morgan-Vilk was a bit out of breath. He had a document box balanced on his well-fed waistline, and he greeted us with a politician’s smile. By habit, I jumped to my feet. Holmes extended her hand up from her chair.

  “Merrick,” Milo said. “Miss Holmes would like to know what’s ‘going on here.’” The air quotes were almost visible.

  He dropped the document box down on the table. “Our friend Milo here—”

  Milo saluted.

  “—has introduced me to his friends on the United Nations Security Council. I’m here working with an exploratory committee.”

  “I see,” I said. I really didn’t see.

  “That’s neither here nor there,” Milo said. “I’m here because I don’t think the Americans will extradite me back to Britain. Well. They might not. Perhaps they will. Who knows! It’s a party, really.”

  Morgan-Vilk’s mouth tightened. “We’ve had some . . . new developments these past few days.”

  Milo took another sip. “Security footage. Of all things. Security footage from the camera on my property, that I set up, footage that I wiped so clean it was sparkling, and somehow it ended up on some idiot’s desk at Scotland Yard, someone who didn’t know the score—”

  “Footage. Of you—of you shooting—” I couldn’t make my mouth say the words. Say August Moriarty.

  For a moment, Holmes put her head into her hands. “And what? Now you’re feeling all the guilt that you’d been suppressing?”

  “Guilt?” Milo held his glass up to the light. “Is this guilt? I just don’t particularly want to go to prison.”

  Holmes looked like she was about to launch herself across the table at him, claws extended. I put a hand on her shoulder. “Hey,” I said to her.

  She stiffened, then relaxed. Then nodded.

  Milo watched this with some interest. “Disgusting,” he said, to no one, and drained the rest of his whiskey.

  Morgan-Vilk cleared his throat. “Charlotte,” he said. “We were talking about the UN?”

  “Right,” she said, her eyes still on Milo. “And your mistress, of course.”

  To his credit (or actually, maybe against his credit), Morgan-Vilk smiled.

  “What? Wait. I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m still sort of lost.”

  “Mr. Morgan-Vilk, in the interest
of time, would you mind terribly if I explained to Watson here your current situation, and what we’re all doing here?”

  Merrick Morgan-Vilk looked delighted. He would have liked my father. “Yes, go on.”

  “Where should I start?” Holmes asked, scanning him with her eyes.

  “Well, not to put too fine a point on it, my mistress isn’t my mistress anymore—”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “Your mistress isn’t your mistress anymore, she’s your wife. That’s easy, the wedding band. But she’s not here with you—I’ve noticed you turning it around on your finger, perhaps because you’d forgotten to call her today and now it’s too late to reach her in Britain. What was your district, when you were an MP? Is she back at the old family pile? No—that would upset your children. A flat, then, in London, because if anyone is avoiding the countryside and has your means, they’re there. And, by the way, you’re not running for office, so I’m not sure why you insist on calling whatever you’re doing here an exploratory committee.”

  “Oh?” he asked. “And how do you know that?”

  “You’re sleeping well, eating well, and you look like you’re at peace.” Holmes paused, her eyes tracking into the distance, and then she continued. “Any man who’s running for office again after a sex scandal wouldn’t be so comfortable. He also wouldn’t be in America. It would be absurdly stupid to raise American money to run for British office. You’re meeting with a member of the UN Security Council? You’re done running for office. You’re trying to drum up support for a nomination for an ambassadorship, which is not precisely legal but not precisely illegal, either. Hence the cloak and dagger.”

  Mr. Morgan-Vilk applauded. He had a wonderful, jolly smile. “Oh, excellent,” he said to Milo. “I like your sister. How fun.”

  Milo shook his head. “She’s missing all the important bits. Like telling us what on earth she’s doing here.”