Chapter Text
Saturday morning was a busy day for Chase Holden, the chemistry professor’s TA. Sure there were just 2 classes to take over, but he had 6 groups worth of papers to grade, and a load of assignments to hand out in the coming week.
“Guys,” Chase sighed, looking through the notes he’d prepared for the day. “Professor Manning won’t be joining us for the day, but he will be available for follow-up questions tomorrow. Today, I will just demonstrate the different titration samples we discussed over the week.”
“We aren’t actually doing the experiments?” one of the Juniors demanded. Chase held back a sigh, feeling the lack of sleep hit him hard. His limbs ached enough as it was. He couldn’t deal with Priscella today.
“Manning will hold practicals on Monday,” Chase said, turning off his Macbook and wrestling the keys from his lab coat. He unlocked the lab doors and held them open for the students who now looked dismayed and bored.
“What the—”
A pungent choking smell assaulted them all. Chase clutched his Macbook tight, eyes watering. He clapped a hand over his nose, trying to breathe.
Several of the students bent over, gasping as well. They rushed past him, back into the corridor to find clean air.
“Oh god!” Priscella cried, both hands covering her face. She was looking at one of the last tables, behind the shelves.
“Everyone out!” Chase barked. “Don’t breathe it in! I don’t know what the smell is—Priscella, I said—”
Priscella began screaming. She was still staring at the table behind the shelves and Chase and another student had to rush back in to grab her.
And then they saw what she’d seen. Chase felt sick to his stomach.
Blonde curls were spread over the table, right in front of an empty distillation set-up. Someone was sitting on one of the tall metal bar stools, most of her upper body and hands leaning heavily on the table. The face was gone. Her skin, tissue, muscles, everything was melted, the charred remains of her facial bones on display for everyone.
If Marcus could have just one day off…
CSU patrolled the university lab, marking the crime scene tape all around the last table in the back, right by the shelf. Most of them gave the body a wide berth.
Marcus didn’t blame them. This was a gruesome one. The fumes were still strong even after they opened all the windows.
“Thoughts?” he asked one of the examiners who was placing a white sheet over the body, thankfully covering her corroded face.
“It’s a bad one,” Nicole of CSU said, shaking her head. “Parts of her flesh are still smoking.”
“So TOD is just before discovery?”
“Can’t be sure without the autopsy. But this is the beaker that had the acid.”
She pointed a blue gloved finger over at the broken pieces of a beaker left in the closest sink. Marcus glared at the shards.
“First look: it’s a mix of sulphuric acid and something else that I need to test. Fast-acting,” Nicole tilted her head to the side to crick it. “It’s a brutal way to go. We should be glad she was dead before this happened.”
“Killer might have wanted to hide her identity,” Marcus muttered, holding his breath.
“She fought back though. Bruises on the knuckles, but look at this.”
Nicole used a pen to raise the victim’s fingers. Marcus tried not to flinch. The tips of her fingers were boiled away and the stench was abhorrent.
“No chance of getting fingerprints,” he said looking away. “Dental records?”
“Her teeth melted,” Nicole’s face twisted as she spoke. “I’m not sure how premeditated this was, but it’s horrifyingly smart. We can still use her blood... though, if she’s not in the system, it could take a long time to just identify her. But signs say that the acid attack was done post-mortem.”
A pitiful saving grace, but he wouldn’t want such a death for even the worst of the gangsters he’d put away. Marcus exhaled, gritting his teeth. Not a good Saturday for anyone.
“What about her clothes?”
They looked down at the rumpled old sweatshirt she had on, over torn jeans. Her shoes were old, laces undone, with dirt smudged on the soles. No jewelry, no tattoos.
“She has a bump over her head, made before she was killed,” Nicole added. She pointed over to the back of the head, brushing the pale curls aside. “Nasty hit, would have knocked her out. Aside from that, her upper arms have some bruises like someone grabbed her.”
She raised the shirt sleeve. Marcus nodded. “Yeah. Medium to large hand, killer has to be at least six feet tall.”
“Detective?” another of the CSU members called. “We found the TA and his students.”
“Right,” he answered before looking back at Nicole. “Any identifying marks, keep me posted.”
“Will do!”
Marcus saw three people standing outside the lab, just by the window, the ones who saw the body. He looked back at his notepad. “Holden?”
A young man in his late twenties raised his hand. Marcus walked over to them. “I’m Detective Marcus Bell, in charge of this investigation. Your names, please.”
“Chase Holden,” the man said, tugging on the cuff of his wrinkled shirt, nervous. “These are my students, Priscella Munfi, and Tony Sullivan. We saw the… we saw her.”
Tony shuddered and Priscella’s eyes darted over to the lab. The body was strategically placed out of sight from the entrance. Clearly by design.
“You were the first people in the lab today?” Marcus asked, pen at the ready.
“Yes,” Chase nodded. “The doors were locked, all the windows were shut, just like we always close them at the end of the day.”
“How many people have access to the lab?”
“Umm… well the Chemistry department has three sets of keys to the labs on this floor,” the TA answered. “It doesn’t actually belong to anyone in particular. All the keys to the main door and every shelf are on each ring. Nothing’s missing.”
“Janitors?”
“Cleaning happens at 11 am and 5 pm every day,” Chase recalled. “There was one class that Manning held after 6 yesterday… I called him, but it went to voicemail. Today is his day off.”
“Do you have the lab keys?” Marcus clicked his pen.
“Yeah.” Chase handed over the keys to him. “I picked them up from the office before the class this morning.”
Marcus checked the sixteen keys on the ring. None of them stood out particularly oddly to him.
“Do you have any clue on who she could be?”
All three witnesses shook their heads.
“The smell was the worst,” Priscella whispered, shrugging helplessly. “I couldn’t even think at first… but there are quite a few students who are blondes with a beach tan.”
“And legs for days,” Tony mumbled. Marcus narrowed his eyes. Chase and Priscella glared at him.
“What?” The gangly man defended. “I didn’t want to stare at her face, okay?!”
“You can give your names and contact information to one of the officers here before leaving,” Marcus closed his notepad. “We’ll reach out if we need to talk to you. And you can call us on this number, here’s my card.”
Marcus sent the three out of the lab and nodded toward the consultants who were making the turn on the corridor.
“Clues abound,” Sherlock announced, raising the yellow tape for Joan and himself. “Detective, we heard the distasteful news.”
“My money’s on a psychopath for this one,” Marcus said, looking over at the covered body. He led them to it.
“Her entire face is gone?” Joan asked, nose wrinkling against the smell.
“The whole thing. No chance for prints, cheek swab, dental records… let’s hope blood is a hit—”
Sherlock suddenly crouched down. He tried to open the locked cabinet doors under the table and then lay belly flat on the floor. He was sniffing wildly. He hadn’t even looked at the face yet.
“I don’t see any major splashing on her arms,” Joan said, taking a more curated approach. “She was completely still while the acid was poured or thrown.”
“CSU’s preliminary observation confirms the same,” Marcus sighs. “But we’re going to need a leg up on identification, or this is going to lead us nowhere.”
“Excuse me, detective,” Sherlock piped, snatching Marcus’s pen and laying on the tiles again. He extended his arm under the table cabinets, just managing to fit there, his face scrunched up as he searched for something.
“Find something?”
"Just a bit,” he grunted. “She was murdered at home. The killer lugged her body into the university building, inside this specific lab; trying to make it look like she came here on her own. They placed an already attached distillation unit on the table so we’d assume that she was working on something after hours. It was someone very familiar with the layout of the lab and with easy access. I’d put time-of-death sometime after midnight and before 5 am. But this was a rushed job, meaning it was a cover-up for something else the murderer must have done.”
Marcus, Joan, and Nicole stared as Sherlock finally straightened up his spine, having managed to drag out a small blue laminated card from far beneath the table.
“Library card,” Joan said and Marcus’s brain jolted from the silence.
“No photo ID proof,” Sherlock said, turning the card over with a scowl. “Her name’s Annabeth Chase and she was a Freshman at the university.”
Joan’s first few semesters of medical school had made her mostly desensitized to the horrors that the human body can go through. Her first years of residency had given her insight into the human psychology that happens behind such horrors.
Her years of detective work gave her a stronger sense of detachment and stringent need to compartmentalize her sympathy for the victim and the family and her relentless need to pursue the culprits.
Every once in a while, there was a case that made her stop and take a moment. Watching CSU pack the corpse on a stretcher, gave her that moment.
Meanwhile, Sherlock was explaining to a few of the CSU members his deduction.
“It rained just after 5 am today,” he said before pointing at the exposed soles of the victim’s feet. “There’s no fresh wet mud on her shoes, yet there is one set of footprints here that show mud over these tiles. The killer realized that late and tried to scrub it out which led to mud residue on their gloves, most probably latex. They didn’t dally too long; instead opened the shelves on the side, searching for the acids that can take away poor Ms. Chase’s face. Mud mark left on this small door handle here. They, I should say ‘he’ since the killer managed to carry Ms. Chase from her room to this specific lab, and she’s quite tall and built herself. He used sulphuric acid in combination with something else to make the corrosive. He brought out the distillation set up from the cabinet below. Look at the attachments. This is simply a demonstrative experiment, used only for water processes. It hasn’t been cleaned for more than a week.
“He positioned her, facing up to pour the acid and obliterate every part that could have been used to identify her. Even her ears.”
Sherlock leaned back, frowning and bouncing on his toes. “He’s very knowledgeable on all these things but made erroneous errors in the method? The mud marks, the hurried acid creation, the scratch marks on the keyhole of the lab doors where he struggled to insert the key? If this was fully planned, he would have brought the acid concoction with him to her place of residence and tried to kill her there, dispose of the body somewhere nobody could find.”
“But he wanted us to find her,” Joan realized. “Because of a first crime that he might have wanted to cover up. She could have been a witness to something he did.”
“This library card could have been planted then?” Marcus held up the card which was now protected in its clear evidence bag.
“A lesser criminal would have placed the card somewhere fairly easy to see. No, this was under the cabinets, could have been missed, or could have been found sometime later…” Sherlock handed Marcus’s pen back to him (finally). “I can’t be sure if this should be dismissed.”
“You said the killer might have lugged her to this spot?” Joan added.
“The bruises on her arms,” Sherlock leaned over the body and lifted the sheet. He then pulled up the flimsy t-shirt and showed dark purple marks under her arms and around her upper torso.
“He had to drag her while bringing her here, he chose to not carry her, but just bring her along like this… some parts do not make sense.”
“How did you know she was killed at home?” Marcus asked, bracing himself for another diatribe.
“Her t-shirt,” Sherlock pulled the maroon cloth down to dress her properly. “It’s part of her night-wear, but these denim trousers, or jeans, were pulled up her legs in a hurry with no care. The button is nearly out of its clasp and there are creases in the material above her knees, not right over them. When youngsters wear skinny jeans, they need to adjust the crumples to make sure the denim does not restrict their knees. She did not put these pants on, someone did it for her. She had changed into her sleep clothes at home, but the murderer, likely also an intruder now, broke in, killed her, dressed her halfway, again shabbily done… before bringing her to this lab.”
Nicole nodded, her expression tight. “We’ll order a rape kit and fast-track this. This is gonna be high-profile.”
CSU wheeled the body away and Joan swallowed a vile taste in her mouth. Marcus’s cell rang and he stepped away to take it.
“What degree of crime would necessitate destroying the identity of a witness to this extent?” she said softly. “Killing them to keep them quiet is one thing, but this?”
“Makes you wonder what he wanted to hide in the first place,” Sherlock answered, equally subdued. “We need to confirm who she is, first. We won’t have any more answers here. Next stop is Annabeth Chase’s residence.”
The Chem TA pointed them in the direction of Annabeth’s room in the uni’s dorms. Sherlock faced some issues when the RA was reluctant to let him in, but Joan was hard-pressed to find anyone who wanted to stop them. News of the acid attack and murder was spreading quickly and there were several groups of women huddled around the corridors of the building.
Annabeth’s room was on the second floor. Joan and Sherlock stood on the grounds to observe the footprints in the wet mud below her window. She shuddered and a sense of coldness nipped her sides even though there wasn’t any wind.
“Can someone actually climb this?” Joan dubiously eyed the drainpipe running up the wall. “It might not hold up the weight of a six-foot-tall man. Or anyone equally hardy, really.”
“There are possible handholds on that ridge,” Sherlock surmised, taking in the mounts and bricks of the wall where a person could hypothetically scale it. “An experienced rock climber could attempt this. Someone with good grip strength in their fingers.”
“I see blood here,” Joan said, looking at a ridge just below the first floor window. There was a small streak of dark red smeared on the wall.
“Somebody cut their arm climbing up there,” Sherlock agreed. “Could be our murderer. Also look at the pane.”
Joan craned her neck. There were streaks of dirt on the second floor glass window, the curtains having been pulled to the side.
Sherlock frowned and squatted down to take a closer look at the ground. “Finger marks.”
Sure enough, there were shallow marks of fingers on the wet ground as though someone had reached down to collect a clump of mud.
“Someone threw mud on the window?” she asked. “Why would he want to wake her up?”
Sherlock pursed his lips. “She might have known him. The act of throwing pebbles—or in this case, mud—at a window has long been seen as a sign of secretive romance. But I make no conclusions until we investigate the inside of her rooms.”
The RA was Jennifer Melling. She was a short young woman who might have been the perky kind of leader every dorm would like, but considering the circumstances, she too was quite sombre.
“Is it really Annabeth?” Jennifer asked, worrying the inside of her cheek. She led the consultants up to the second floor and jangled the door keys to the victim’s room.
“We’re here to confirm if it is indeed her. What do you know of Annabeth Chase?” Sherlock asked, whipping his head around to face her.
Jennifer blinked, opening the door. “She’s quiet, new, very pretty, incredibly smart… I think she’s been tutoring a few Juniors.”
“She’s a freshman, though?” Joan asked, stepping into Annabeth’s quarters. It was a double bed area with the window placed in the wall, opposite the door. One door on the adjacent wall led to the bathroom, while another door was a small cramped closet.
“She is,” Jennifer said. “Was. I mean… yeah, like I said she’s really smart.”
“Double major in architecture and economics,” Sherlock noted, perusing her books on the unmade bed. “Where’s her roommate?”
“Marjorie? I dunno. Maybe the cops are interviewing her?”
Joan frowned as she picked up a small photo, framed and placed on the nightstand. There were two blonde girls posing in front of a statue in Central Park. They looked similar in build, nearly the same height, hair in curls.
“Which one of these is Annabeth?” she asked, spinning around to find Sherlock crouched, searching under Annabeth’s bed and bedside stand.
Jennifer, who’d been staring at him, looked up at the question. “Umm, this one. On the right. Annabeth has grey eyes, almost silver, you know.”
“Were they related?”
“No, that was just crazy. It looks like they were born at the beach or something, but no, they just got assigned the same room! Annabeth’s from Cali I think, and Marjorie’s from Santa Barbara.”
“Ha!” Sherlock exclaimed, carefully yanking out a dirty folded white cloth from behind the nightstand by Marjorie’s bed. “Chloroform. She was definitely killed here.”
“And knocked out with this,” Joan added, eyeing a hockey stick behind the main door. She crossed the room and could see dried droplets of browning blood clearly. “She was knocked out and then chloroformed… Jennifer, when was the last time anyone had seen Marjorie?”
The RA looked stunned at the sight of blood on the stick. “Yesterday, I think? She went out with friends… It was a Friday night. Curfew is at 11 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.”
“So she would have been back by 11?”
“I knock on all the doors of the freshmen right before lights out,” Jennifer confirmed. “Marjorie had said she and Annabeth were back and turning in for the night.”
“But you didn’t actually see either of them?” Sherlock tutted, pulling out a fresh evidence bag.
“No… but I know her voice, it was her.”
“And she sounded fine? Could someone have been inside, making her talk normally?”
Jennifer looked alarmed. “She seemed fine. I didn’t think anything was wrong… I mean, you’re supposed to get that gut feeling if something’s off? I didn’t get that.”
“Nobody heard a suspicious thud, loud voices, or any kind of noises, then?” Sherlock asked, hopping to his feet and leaning in to get a good look at the photo of the two seemingly identical girls.
“I wasn’t called down for any kind of disturbance…” she trailed off when Sherlock marched out into the corridor, startling a whole gang of girls who’d gathered outside to listen in.
“Closest neighbors to Annabeth Chase and Marjorie…” his loud voice paused for a moment before Jennfier added, “Cremona.”
“Closest neighbors to Annabeth Chase and Marjorie Cremona, please step up! I have a few questions to ask, quite routine!”
After a few seconds of hesitance, six girls made their way to the front. They wore regular indoor clothes, most of them clearly preparing for a nice, casual Saturday.
“Odd noises, strange disturbances, anything outside the ordinary, discuss,” Sherlock fired at them.
They looked around nervously till one of them muttered. “I’m generally a heavy sleeper… but I heard something really early in the morning. Sun wasn’t even out. It was like a thump. I think it was from their room.”
“What kind of thump, muffled, sharp, heavy, light, electronic?”
“Light, but solid,” the girl said, gaining more confidence at the rapid fire round. “Not like a thud . I wasn’t really sure if it was from above or to the side… I just remembered being ticked off cause it’s a Saturday. I wanted to sleep in. So I got out of bed and looked out the window and at first I couldn’t see anything.”
“At first?” Joan raised her eyebrows. “What did you see later?”
The girl held her breath, shooting a worried glance to her friends.
“Teri, it’s okay,” Jennifer coaxed. “We need to help them.”
Teri swallowed. “It was a guy. He was on the grounds, below the windows, walking away. I didn’t see where he came from, just that he was leaving.”
“Description,” Sherlock ordered, flapping a hand in the air.
“Um, tall, I think. Lean. Green hoodie with the hood up. I couldn’t see his face. It was still dark out, but I’m sure it was a guy.”
“You have cameras around the building?” Joan asked, texting a note to Marcus. “We’ll need access to all the footage. And we need to bring CSU up here since this is the primary crime scene.”
“I’ll ask the security guard,” Jennifer mumbled.
“Thank you and if you could be so kind, please step out and herd your students away from this room. There has been a murder here. Good day,” Sherlock said, escorting her outside. The other girls were now whispering loudly.
When CSU combed through the room, Sherlock and Nicole were packing in the blood remains on the hockey stick.
Joan walked up to Marcus who was kneeling by Annabeth’s bed, next to the window. “Strong trace of chloroform over her pillow. But you said you found the rag near Marjorie’s side of the room?”
“By her night stand,” Joan confirmed. “It couldn’t have been enough for both girls, unless he had a bottle of it.”
“Their phones are here,” she sighed. “The killer might have taken Marjorie. Or left her body elsewhere.”
“Both girls were from out of state. We’ll need to contact families, see if they knew anyone else in the city,” Marcus said, examining the array of photos from a polaroid tucked away in one of Annabeth’s many books.
She used old diaries as books for her rough notes. Marcus counted the diaries: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2012…
“Missing diary,” he called out, before picking up the one marked 2012 and handing it to Sherlock.
There were more photos scattered behind the books. Most of them showed Annabeth huddled happily with a guy with black hair, donning bright orange t-shirts. The black print on their shirts were oddly blurred.
There were other photos of different people. Annabeth was quite popular it seemed.
“Could be laser tag teams?” Joan hedged under her breath. Sherlock always turned his nose down on guesses. “Orange versus purple shirts.”
“How bad is the photographer if I can’t read anything on the shirts,” Marcus whispered.
Joan pointed at a blonde boy. “Look at his tattoo. The ones in purple have similar lines on their arms.”
“Not a laser tag team then.”
“A laser tag cult is closer to the truth than your guess,” Sherlock said, turning the pages of the book.
He turned it around and displayed a page spread. It contained long running passages in handwritten… Italics ?
Marcus frowned. “Is that Latin?”
“Yes!” Sherlock was very delighted with this find, flipping through the pages. “Annabeth Chase was very well-versed in Archaic Latin. This is not the classical or even Ecclesiastical versions. But more to the fact, do you see her notes in English?”
He offered them a different book and Joan opened the pages to look at a paragraph on crenulation design.
“She was dyslexic,” Marcus noted, surprised.
“And had Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder or a variant of ADD,” Sherlock said, impatiently. “She wrote as fast as her thoughts were formed, making several mistakes, further exacerbated by her dyslexia. High functioning ADHD, I would say. But look at her Latin.”
Joan and Marcus checked the symbols, neatly etched page after page. There was rarely a mark or a scratch to hide the errors.
“Very precise and clean,” Joan said. “Almost as though a different person wrote this.”
“Various handwriting analysis and studies that include polylingual writers have similar results,” Sherlock said. “People generally find comfort in the language they are raised in. And they need to work harder at a secondary language. English was her second language. She’s far more comfortable in Latin which is clearly her first.”
“And why do you think it’s a cult?” Marcus asked, clearly remembering Sherlock’s opening statement. Joan was still engrossed in the Latin. It was quite gorgeous.
“The photos of the teenagers in purple,” Sherlock pointed at the array of photos. “Look at their arms.”
The ones in orange had cutesy beaded necklaces, but the others had dark marks on the inside of their left forearms. There was only one design clear enough to observe. It was on the arm of a dark haired girl, built like a fighter. She had a denim vest over her purple t-shirt, her smirk glinting just as brightly as the smiles of her friends. It looked odd, but Joan thought she had a silver halo around her form.
“Voldemort’s assembling a new team of Death Eaters?” Marcus muttered.
“Your reference to the popular young adult fantasy fiction book has no home here,” Sherlock fired back. “These letters and lines are brandings not tattoos. I have heard of cases like these, very high profile and secretive, closed very quickly.”
“They were tortured?” Joan asked, concerned. The children in the photos seemed fine, most of them posing with silly expressions. The dark haired one was the only one moderately serious. But Annabeth Chase, her beau, and the others had crossed eyes, tongues out, or holding up bunny ears behind the others.
“I believe it is self-inflicted,” Sherlock looked through the other photographs. “They have smaller designs unique to each individual, but the letters S-P-Q-R are common. The ones in the orange t-shirts do not have these marks though.”
Marcus found a sleek silver laptop with a Greek Delta symbol embossed on it. He switched it on and the screensaver showed Annabeth with the same black haired guy, obviously her boyfriend. Their beaded necklaces were much clearer to observe here.
“Beads are hell of a lot less suspicious than brandings,” Marcus agreed. He pointed at the boy. “This one’s bigger than Annabeth and Marjorie. He could have overpowered them with chloroform, killed his girlfriend, kidnapped her roommate.”
Sherlock shook his head. “You’re making guesses, detective. You need to observe. When Watson and I were on the grounds looking up the drainpipe, we saw good enough hand-holds for someone to climb alongside the drainpipe. If this young man had been dating the victim long enough, he’d know this.”
Marcus looked up. “You’re saying he could have cut his hand climbing up the pipe. We need to bring him in for questioning, check his DNA with any prints CSU lifts from the secondary crime scene.”
Joan shifted the laptop to look through the scenic photo. Annabeth and her boyfriend wore matching orange t-shirts, backs to the camera. His arm was around her shoulder as they watched the sunset from a gorgeous strawberry field. The ocean was ahead of them, serene as their side profiles.
“Very picturesque,” Joan sighed. Sherlock whipped out his phone and began typing madly.
“Those necklaces look homemade,” she noted, looking back at the photographs.
“I’ve seen his face before,” Sherlock whispered. Joan and Marcus raised their eyebrows.
“I think he has one of those faces,” Marcus said slowly. “Feels like I’ve seen him somewhere too.”
Joan squinted at the boy’s face. He had a strong tan, just like Annabeth and Marjorie. His eyes were gorgeous, an incredible mix of green and blue. She hadn’t known such a color was possible. It didn’t seem like contacts. He had a strong jaw-line just like Annabeth. In fact, the both of them looked muscled.
Sherlock’s phone pinged. He muttered, “Eureka,” and showed them what he’d found.
“Percy Jackson,” he explained. “One of my first unsolved cases in the States. He was a subject of a manhunt in June 2005. The beach video of the showdown had gone viral.”
The phone played an old video. Police cruisers were gathered on a beach where a tall body-builder, it seemed, had a gun shoot out with three kidnapped children and half a squadron of cops. It had made national headlines.
Joan remembered this. It was such a strong sense of odd nostalgia, seeing his face as a twelve year old and then now, as a nineteen-year-old.
“Wait a sec,” Marcus blinked. “That other kid. That’s Annabeth Chase. She knew Jackson seven years ago?”
“Along with the second boy,” Joan said, recognizing the spindly boy with brown curly hair, freckles, and a rasta cap from the photographs.
“I know for sure that Jackson has been a person of interest with the FBI for a while until last year. No case was ever made, he just seemed to appear wherever there was unexplained trouble stirring,” Sherlock added. “There was an incident at Westview Hall, a problem at Hoover Dam where witnesses saw him armed with a baseball bat, chased by strange guards . Certain records of the eruption of Mount St. Helens included his name, the widespread disturbance in Manhattan where people had dropped to the ground after some kind of gaseous disruption…”
“How can a volcano erupting be attributed to anybody?” Joan asked, flabbergasted.
“I remember the gas issue,” Marcus recalled. “It was in the summer, right? Thousands of people in Manhattan had collapsed. Apparently they all fainted at the same time. You’re telling me Jackson had something to do with that?”
Sherlock looked triumphant. “I’m telling you the FBI believes he may be involved in all these cases. His name has been attached to many of their internal documents. There are international instances too. He was at the scene when the ground caved in, somewhere in Greece. He disrupted the peace and broke a glacier in Alaska.”
Joan raised an arm. “How… how is any of this making sense?”
“It isn’t,” Sherlock grinned. “None of his previous problems ever led investigators anywhere. This is the first time we have a body directly attached to Jackson’s name.”
“Alaska isn’t international,” Marcus deadpanned.
“No, but you need to go international to reach there. Nevertheless,” Sherlock tapped the laptop which still had the screensaver. “He’s been mostly quiet for over a year.”
Marcus dropped his hands from his hips. “He may be back in the game then. I’ll get a team and pick him up. Meet you at the station?”
“I’ll check in with Dr. Hawes, find out more from the body. We still haven’t identified her officially,” Joan said leaving the photographs on the study table. “See you there.”
“I’m going with the detective!” Sherlock chirped, pocketing his phone and standing at attention, back straight, shoulders level and head up. “I have many questions for Mr. Jackson.”
Seabury Street, Queens had a row of apartment buildings, quiet in the late Saturday morning. The bright sunlight made the place look wholesome and fresh, definitely the last place you’d suspect a possible international criminal to hole up.
Marcus parked his car behind a dented Prius, bagging the only empty spot available. The second cop car stopped behind them, effectively blocking the entrance to the street.
Sherlock stepped out of the car, observing their surroundings. It was an open space, not too posh, but still suspiciously pricey for two college students to afford any kind of real estate. If this really was the home to the murderer and the victim, there was foul play involved (aside from the murder).
Marcus and the officers wore their bullet proof vests and followed SOP for breaking into a prime suspect’s house. Sherlock waited until they’d entered the building, listening to the officers climb up the stairs to reach the small flat.
A fire escape was visible to the side of the building. Sherlock kept his eye on it, waiting for Jackson to make a run for it. But nobody exited that way.
The responder on the nearest officers belt crackled to life and Marcus’s voice came, “Clear. Suspect is in the wind. Holmes, get up here.”
His voice told Sherlock that they’d found something, if not the murderer. After everything he’d researched on Jackson, he wasn’t surprised that he’d fled. It made him more culpable.
The door to the flat was not kicked open, to his surprise. Which means someone had been inside the place and had opened the door at Marcus’s knock.
A woman sat on the couch, opposite Marcus. Officers were searching the rooms in the tiny flat, looking for any clues. Jackson wasn’t here, but…
The woman was in her early forties, but it wasn’t easy to tell. Her eyes were sunken, exhaustion obvious. Her hair was dark and wispy, mostly dry. She had probably just showered a while back. Her sweatshirt was a faded blue with an ugly stain on the side which smelled faintly of vomit. Her hands shook as one of the officers questioned her about the suspect.
“You’re wrong,” the woman said, growing angry. “My son is not a murderer.”
Oh. This was Sally Jackson. Sherlock had been so curious to search the apartment, but now his attention was focused on her.
“We have a body in the morgue that says otherwise, Mrs. Jackson,” the cop disagreed, a little callously.
“What…?” Sally Jackson looked shocked. “No, that’s not possible! Annabeth’s not dead!”
She covered her mouth in disbelief, breathing heavily. Sherlock thought back to the photos in Annabeth’s bag, but couldn’t find Sally’s face there.
Marcus had pocketed his gun and jerked his head at Sherlock to have a side conversation.
“Jackson’s mother,” he muttered under his breath. “She unlocked the door for us. Apparently she wanted to see Annabeth and thought she’d be here.”
“Apparently our victim hadn’t told anyone that she hadn’t vacated her dorm room yet,” Sherlock whispered. “Jackson and Chase just moved in. There are empty boxes on the balcony that they’d unpacked a few days ago, judging by the dust on the carton. There are marks of photo frames on the wall, left by the previous tenants. Our happy couple moved in mere weeks ago.”
“Yeah, well Jackson’s not here,” Marcus sighed. “And his mother seems to have no idea—”
“—telling you, you got it wrong!” Mrs. Jackson was now shouting at the sour faced officer who was glaring at her. “Percy loves her! He would never hurt her!”
“All due respect, your word isn’t going to mean much in the report!”
“Officer Bailey, stand down,” Marcus warned him. Sherlock narrowed his eyes at the unruly rookie cop who seemed to have an agenda against the woman.
“You think she’s an addict,” Sherlock snapped at Officer Bailey.
All three looked at him, surprised.
“Prejudiced interrogation techniques aside, your observational skills are a disgrace. You take one look at someone who’s sleep-deprived and smells of vomit even after a shower and believe her word to be of less import without further analysis.”
The officer’s face went red. “It’s obvious, look at her!”
“I am,” the consultant responded coldly. He stepped up to Mrs. Jackson and said, in a calmer tone. “Colic?”
Her eyes went wide. “Huh?”
“Your baby,” he pestered. “How long have they been colicky?”
Mrs. Jackson dropped her shoulders. “Almost since we brought her home from the hospital really.”
“Three months ago?”
“Nearly. Two months three weeks.”
Sherlock nodded. “The stain on your clothes is regurgitated baby formula. Your attempt at a shower hasn’t achieved its desired results. You’re low on calcium, not uncommon for new mothers at an older age—”
“Excuse me?”
“You need to restock on your calcium levels,” Sherlock added. “I’d advise you to see your doctor as soon as you can to help with the lack of energy and tremors in your hands as well.”
Mrs. Jackson stared in silence. Marcus cleared his throat. “Officer Bailey…”
The man had an ugly expression but managed to squeeze out a disingenuous “sorry,” before stepping out of the apartment.
She leaned back on the old couch breathing deeply. Marcus took Bailey’s place and said, far more polite, “I apologize for the inconvenience, Mrs. Jackson.”
“It’s Blofis,” she huffed. “I remarried.”
“Yes, Mrs. Blofis, of course,” he said smoothly. “But we have a few very important questions for you.”
Mrs. Blofis rubbed her eyes, brushing away tears. “You don’t know Percy. He’d die before he’d let anything happen to Annabeth.”
“Still, we’d like to bring you down to the station to discuss the events,” Marcus said. His disposition calmed her enough so she nodded.
“I’ll just… get my purse. It’s in the bathroom.”
She left and Sherlock got a chance to look through the unopened boxes at the apartment.
“We’ll need someone to check when Jackson was here last,” he told Marcus. “They were in the middle of unpacking, but something happened and Chase left. The box cutter is still open, on the rug here, beside the crates.”
“We’ll put a BOLO on him, send a FINEST message,” Marcus agreed, dialing the captain to talk to him.
Mrs. Blofis emerged, wiping her face. She clutched a small purse, in the process of zipping it close. Her phone inside was still lit.
Sherlock nearly pushed aside Marcus, running toward her. She jerked back and shouted, “Hey!” when he pulled her purse away, fumbling for the phone.
“What are you doing?” Mrs. Blofis yelled, stunned for a moment before grabbing for the phone.
“Uh, detective?” Sherlock dodged her attempts, managing to open her message inbox to see the latest SMS. It was sent to her son.
Cops here. Run.