Where All Paths Meet, page 24
part #3 of The Adventures of Holloway Holmes Series
When I glanced over at Holmes, he was grinning like a little kid. The death and madness of Moriarty’s house seemed like it had been years ago, and here we were, the two of us, looking like a pair of morons as we stumbled and slipped and half-fell down the slope, and the sun was rising higher in the sky, warm whenever it touched me, and the air was sweet, and we were together.
When we reached the bottom, I got there first, and Holmes came down at a controlled fall-slash-run, so I caught him and steadied him, and he put his good arm around my neck and breathed silent laughter against my cheek. And I could have stayed there forever, like that, just the two of us.
It was easy to pick a path over the scree and around the stunted oaks and maples and pines that were trying to grow in the tumble of rocks. And it was easy, when we got closer, to see what had caught Holmes’s attention from above.
I only knew one person who carried a black leather doctor’s bag.
“What the hell?” I asked.
Holmes shook his head as he crouched next to the bag. He studied it for a moment, and then he looked up the sheer wall of the outcropping, up to where Moriarty’s house perched above us. The sun made it glitter now, and it was almost too bright to look at.
“Either someone planted this,” he said, “in an attempt to frame and perhaps discredit Tom—”
“Or option B,” I said, “he’s a psycho killer who’s obsessed with the Holmeses and decided to take matters into his own hands.”
Holmes let out an unhappy breath, but he didn’t argue. He opened the bag slowly, and he began to take out items. Prescription bottles, like the ones Tom had used to administer the local anesthetic before stitching up Holmes’s arm. A couple of them had miraculously survived the fall, and the tinkle of glass suggested what had happened to the rest. Prescription vials, the brown plastic kind, with pills that rattled as Holmes set them aside. I inspected some of these. Dealing to the Walker kids meant I knew my bennies, and Tom had been packing a lot. A lot of opioids, too, for a med student who couldn’t write his own scrips.
Then Holmes’s body changed—like a ripple passing through water, there and then gone. He drew out something else. Photos, a packet of them, the paper glued together where they’d gotten wet. Holmes considered them. His face was blank. And then he showed me.
In the photo, Blackfriar Holmes was walking through Lynnissa Baca’s condo garage, holding a light in one hand to blind the security cameras.
Chapter 24
What No Watson Has Done Before
I got Holmes back to the truck, and we drove out of the canyon.
On the way, an ambulance passed us in the opposite direction, siren wailing. Emergency services. I kept my gaze forward and tried to pretend everything was normal. Then I thought maybe a normal person would look, because it’s hard to ignore an ambulance under the best of circumstances. I glanced over as they drew even with us, just for a moment. I caught a glimpse of the driver: blond, twentyish, familiar. And then the ambulance was racing up the canyon. Maybe on an app, I thought. Maybe that’s why I thought I’d seen him before.
For lack of a better option, I routed us home. Holmes sat in the seat next to me, clutching the doctor’s bag in both hands. He’d returned everything to the bag, to avoid leaving additional evidence at the scene. I wasn’t sure what to make of that—it seemed like the police had a right to know that Tom had been blundering around Moriarty’s house before she died, especially since he’d been in such a hurry to leave that he hadn’t stopped for his precious bag. Another possibility occurred to me.
Holmes said, “Yes, he may be dead.”
“Jesus.”
“It’s a possibility we must consider.”
“Do you think he’s dead?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think he killed Maggie?”
“I don’t know.”
“He couldn’t have killed Maggie, right? I mean, you’ve seen him. The guy’s a klutz. He trips over his own feet, walks into walls. He couldn’t have killed her.”
“He might have.”
“H, come on. Maggie’s, like—well, she’s like you, and your family. She’s on a whole other level. There’s no way Tom sat down with her to play chess and tricked her into drinking poison.”
“As I said: he might have.” I opened my mouth, and Holmes said, “Jack, you are under the assumption that I, my family, the Moriartys, perhaps even the Adlers, that we are somehow different. I would think that your exposure to me would have convinced you that Holmeses are equally subject to frailties, sicknesses of mind and body, mistakes in judgment, etcetera.”
“I know you’re not Superman if that’s what you mean. But you are different, H. In a good way. You’re amazing. And even though Maggie was evil and sadistic, she was like that too. I’m sorry, but I can’t imagine Tom Watson getting the better of her.”
“Then you must work on your imagination. The Holmeses, the Moriartys, the Adlers—we are all human beings. No one is immortal, and even a genius, to borrow one of your favorite words, cannot predict or prevent every possibility. For all of us, there is always luck or fate or catastrophe, call it what you will.”
“Fine. Maybe Tom could have killed her. Maybe he discovered the one possibility she hadn’t counted on, and he got her. But honestly, H, do you think he could make it look like a suicide?”
Holmes didn’t respond, but he clutched the bag tighter and looked out the window, and that felt like answer enough.
This early, this far out, the drive was quiet and green and peaceful. A few people still ran cattle up here, and we passed a ranch where a herd of black-and-white cows were standing in a field, munching their breakfast. The sun had cleared the mountains, and I felt like I could see to the end of the world.
We hadn’t even made it to Park City before Holmes’s phone buzzed. He drew it out of the joggers and spoke quietly for several moments. When he disconnected, he said, “I need to return to Reichenbach.”
“What?”
“Noneley is…missing.”
“Wait, are you serious? When? How?”
“Sometime last night.”
“You didn’t ask when?”
“I asked. The answer seems to be…contested.”
The tires thrummed against the asphalt before I said, “What the hell does that mean?”
“If you can’t take me, then I’ll get an Uber or rent a car. Park City—”
“Knock it off; you know I’ll take you. H, what’s going on?”
“A family council. There are matters to be discussed. One of us must be dispatched to recover Noneley; God only knows what she’s gotten herself into.”
“What about Maggie’s murder?”
“I will tell them.”
“If they don’t already know.”
He turned a look on me.
“Come on,” I said. “Your dad was released from police custody last night. This morning, we find Maggie dead. She’s dead the exact same way Lynnissa Baca died; don’t tell me you didn’t notice that. And Tom, who’s obsessed with your dad and follows him everywhere, somehow dropped his bag right outside Maggie’s house.”
In a voice like ice, Holmes said, “I assume you mean something by all this.”
“Are you kidding me? H, what about the photos?”
“What about them?”
I risked a look. His face was marble—composed, chiseled, unyielding.
“Fine,” I said. “You don’t think it means something, that we’ve got photographic proof of your father breaking into Baca’s building, blinding the security cameras so nobody would know he’d been there?”
“It may mean many things.”
The laugh tore its way out, leaving my throat raw. I shook my head and settled my hands on the steering wheel.
“Something about this amuses you?”
“No. None of it’s fucking amusing. It’s sad, that’s what it is.”
Air hissed from the vents in the dash. My eyes were dry and gummy.
“Park City will be far enough,” Holmes finally said and settled back in the seat as though we’d decided the matter.
“No. No fucking way.” And the universe was kind and open to me making dramatic statements in that moment, because the on-ramp was right there, so I merged onto the highway headed back to Salt Lake.
“I said—”
“I heard you. What are you going to do? Throw yourself out of the truck? You already used that threat on me, remember?”
“And it worked,” Holmes said coldly.
“God damn, H, what is going on with you?”
“I’m sorry, I have an aversion to being treated like an idiot, especially by—”
“By a Watson? By a brown kid who’s poor and can’t finish his chemistry homework?”
“I was going to say by my boyfriend,” Holmes said sharply.
A horn blared, and I jerked the truck back into our lane.
“But I did not say it,” Holmes said in a more level voice. “Because it is not something we have talked about, and I realize it would have been precipitous.”
I opened my mouth to say—what? Yes, obviously. But I wanted a way that didn’t sound quite so desperate.
Before I could, Holmes said, “You believe my father killed Baca. And now you believe he killed Maggie. And you tell me that he all but admitted to killing Sarah, and I cannot believe, Jack—cannot believe—that you didn’t tell me sooner.”
“I didn’t tell you because he was going to take you away. He was going to find another prison, H, a worse one than Walker, and he was going to stuff you there. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to lose you.”
His throat moved once, reflexively, but when he spoke, his voice was unchanged. “Regardless, you are wrong. My father is many things, but he is not a killer. If nothing else, for the simple reason that there are more expedient, and less legally complicated, ways of resolving problems.”
We drove a quarter mile, and I could feel my heartbeat in my face. “All right,” I said. “You explain it.”
“Explain what?”
“I don’t know. The photos in Tom’s bag for a start.”
“I can’t explain them.”
The laugh ripped free of me again.
“What do you want me to say?” Holmes asked. “I have no idea why he was there or what he was doing. It seems likely that he broke into Baca’s house. Fine, I will give you that. But he didn’t kill her, Jack.”
“How can you say that? You’re the smartest person I know, and I don’t understand how you can sit there, defending him, while all this evidence piles up.”
“Because he is a great man!” Holmes shout echoed in the tiny space of the cabin. He had twisted in his seat to face me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see the fury contorting his features, the corner of his mouth trembling because he wanted so badly to bite his lip. “There is no one else like him in the world, and because people do not understand him, they are frightened of him, and because they are frightened of him, they are quick to believe the worst. I did not think you would be the same.”
I nodded. I wondered if he knew who he was talking about, if he knew he wasn’t talking about Blackfriar, not really. The truck rocked when we went over a slight irregularity in the road. My cheeks, my forehead, my mouth—they felt numb and buzzing, like I’d stuck my head in a swarm of bees. “He hurts you.”
Holmes went still.
“You think I don’t know,” I said, and my tongue was thick too, thick with those invisible beestings. “But I know. He hurts you in so many ways. He’s filled your head with—with batshit stuff like ‘A Holmes must always be in control,’ like telling you not to bite your lip, like all the tests and games, all the things he’s taken away from you because he thought they’d be a weak spot or a distraction.”
When Holmes spoke, his voice was stiff. “You have no idea what you’re talking about—”
“Give me a break.”
“—and so I’ll ask you this once never to speak of it again—”
“Can you even hear yourself? Can you hear what you sound like?”
“Did you hear me?” The shout hammered at me, the force of it something physical, like I ought to be pressed against the car door. “Do not speak of this again.”
I shook my head. I blinked my eyes, and then blinking wasn’t enough, and I had to peel one hand off the steering wheel to wipe my cheeks.
“Jack,” Holmes said, his voice broken and confused and hurting. When I looked over, blood stained the corner of his mouth; he’d bitten down too hard because he’d held himself back too long. “I don’t mean to—” He drew a breath. “Yes, my father is a difficult man. He is a hard man. But he is also a great man. He is hard and difficult because he is great. I understand that you do not agree, but in this matter, I do not need you to agree or approve, not when it comes to my relationship with my father.”
“You wanted to stop,” I said, and I could hear the tears in my voice. “Let’s stop.”
“Who would I be without him, Jack? What would I be? Tell me, please. All the things you prize about me, I owe them to him. To his training. Yes, even to the games. You say you love me; then be grateful that he made me who I am.”
You’d be happy, I wanted to say, but my throat had closed up. That’s what you’d be without him: happy.
Holmes said, “I understand your concerns, and I’m not passing judgment on you for drawing the conclusions you have. But it is a mistake to theorize without all the data—”
Unable to help myself, I mumbled, “It’s not the data that’s the problem.”
“Excuse me?”
I drew a deep, shaky breath and rewrapped my hands around the wheel. The vinyl squeaked.
“You had something to say,” Holmes said.
I shook my head, but more words tumbled out. “What’s it going to take, H? A bottle of pills with his fingerprints on them? A video recording of him dosing Baca’s wine? Even that wouldn’t be enough. You’d have to see him, standing there, with your own eyes, and I bet you’d still tie yourself up in knots finding a way to tell me he’s not a bad guy.” I knew I needed to stop. I knew I needed to hit the conversational brakes. But a dam had broken inside me, and the words spilled out now, a seething flood that had been building for the last nine months. “You know what I think, H? I think you can’t let him be bad. I think that’s what this is about. Because if he’s a bad guy, then what he did to you is bad, and that’s too much for you. And I’m sorry for what he did to you. I am, H. It breaks my heart, and I’d take it away from you if I could. But pretending it didn’t happen, pretending what he did to you is ok—that’s not helping you either. Nobody should have done those things to you, least of all your father. Anybody who tells you otherwise is full of shit.”
Silence avalanched down. We drove, and when I looked over, he was biting his lip, his eyes full of tears. He seemed to register me a moment later. He pried his jaw open—it looked like it cost him—and he blinked. Tears rolled down his cheeks. I have no idea what effort it took for him to speak, but for Holmes, effort was never the question. His will rose again, and his voice sounded close to steady.
“Anything I have suffered in my training has been my fault.”
I shook my head.
“Yes, Jack. Because I was too slow. Because I was too weak. Because I was stupid.”
“I can’t do this. If this is what you want to do, then let’s stop, because I can’t.”
“He blames himself, did you know that? My father is harder on himself than anyone else could ever be. He hates the demands that my weakness places on him. Do you think he likes it? My failures take their toll on him more than anyone else.”
I can’t, I thought. I can’t. But I heard myself saying, “None of this is your fault. How do you not realize that?”
His voice quickened, annealing into something harder. “Of course it is.”
“H, it’s not. You need somebody to tell you that, and I love you, so I’ll tell you. None of that was your fault. Nothing he’s done to you has been your fault. You’re not responsible for any of it.”
His breath came in short, broken bursts. He savaged his lip. When he spoke, his teeth were red with blood. “You were correct. I am done talking about it. It seems you will never understand—”
My own anger surprised me, almost strangling me. “What the fuck do I have to understand about watching him beat the shit out of you?”
Color drained from Holmes’s face. He swayed, and he put a hand on the dash to hold himself upright.
“I saw him!” It was like an infection being drained, the words rushing out of me, taking the anger with them, so that with every syllable I felt smaller, meaner, emptier. “Your mom made me watch that fucking camera footage as he tortured you! And you did it for me, H, and I am never, ever going to stop feeling like I want to die when I think about that. Don’t sit there and tell me he does it because he’s helping you. Don’t tell me it takes its toll. He loved it. He enjoyed it. I watched him, and he relished every fucking minute of it.”
Holmes stared at me for what felt like a long time. Then he turned forward, resting his cheek against the glass. He drew his knees up and held himself like that, making himself into a ball. The way animals do when they’re defending themselves, I thought. Or when they’re hurt.
“H,” I said. My throat burned. I wasn’t sure, I realized, if I’d been shouting.
His breathing was rhythmic, so even and perfectly measured it almost sounded mechanical.
