Lock & Mori by Heather W. Petty Read Free Book Online

mocking, but he only said, “How kind of you.”
    â€œSo . . .” I looked out over the lake and watched the swans for a bit.
    â€œWe should probably get started.”
    â€œAnd how would we do that?” I tried to act bored, and then added, “Were I to decide to play along. Which I haven’t yet.”
    â€œAs you said.”
    My expression dared him to comment further. He did not. He was perhaps wiser than first impressions would indicate.
    â€œWe should probably recognize up front that this will likely be some sort of mundane puzzle.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause most puzzles are horribly mundane.”
    â€œThen why bother?”
    â€œBecause until we have the data to prove otherwise, there is still the possibility that it will fascinate.”
    â€œAnd what’s so fascinating about a stabbing in the park? I’m sure they happen all the time.”
    I knew the answer, of course. I knew it before he smirked and leaned in closer than I would have preferred. I could have mouthed the words as he spoke them.
    â€œHis hands were in his pockets.”
    The one clue that shouldn’t have meant anything, yet meant everything, because it didn’t make any sense at all. “It’s impossible.” I’d spoken aloud unintentionally, and couldn’t seem to stop once I’d started. “There must be some alternative explanation. Perhaps the killer put his hands back in his pockets after the fact. It has to be something like that.”
    â€œWhy in the world would he do it? There’s no reason.”
    â€œBut it has to be,” I countered. “There isn’t a single scenario where a person being attacked would leave his hands in his pockets.”
    â€œIf the killer was very close before he pulled out the knife, maybe Patel didn’t see it.”
    â€œAfter he was stabbed, then. It takes less than a second to rip your hands from your pockets. He would have tried to cover the wound. It’s in our nature to do it, even when we’re too late to stop the knife and it’s useless to stop the bleeding. We try. Until our last breath, we try.”
    Sherlock studied my face. Again. But I wasn’t willing to leave my train of thought, not even to indulge my irritation.
    â€œIt’s impossible. I mean, the man would have to have beendead almost the second the knife entered his body, and . . . oh.” I let the scene play out once more in my mind, the same that had played as I looked at the tarp-covered body that night in the park. At the blood on the tree, which had been at the man’s back. At the umbrella, which hadn’t been his at all. “If it pierced through to mark the tree, it wasn’t a knife.”
    â€œA sword, then? But if you don’t buy him hiding a knife until the last minute, how exactly would he hide the length of a sword?”
    â€œPerhaps along the handle of—”
    Sherlock’s brow cleared before I could finish my thought, and he stood up, swaying the boat rather dangerously. “The umbrella!” he cried out. Half the lake was staring at us by the time I pulled him back down to his bench. “We’re brilliant at this.”
    I refused to smile as I put my ideas together aloud. “If he was pierced through to the wood of the tree.”
    â€œIf it pierced through his heart and his spine.”
    â€œIf that could even be done with any length of sword without the man lifting his hands from his pockets.”
    â€œIt was dark,” Sherlock offered. “And perhaps it was a short sword.”
    â€œTantó,” I said, at the same time Sherlock said, “Gladius!”
    â€œRoman,” Sherlock offered.
    I countered with, “Japanese. Ten inches long, super sharp, and used in martial arts for demonstrations.”
    â€œAncient, two feet long, and most likely less widely available. You win.” Sherlock scowled. “It’s no