Holmes moved closer to Griffin’s desk, rather grandly. He relished these moments of revelation to us astonished plebeian philistines. “The nameplate on your desk indicates that you are Darryl Griffin Junior, and this envelope leaning against your lamp has the return address of a Detroit plumbing firm operated by a man with the same name. Therefore, I deduce that the correspondent is your father.”

  Holmes lifted the envelope and showed it to Griffin. “Your father’s secretary spilled a bit of cocoa on the envelope before sealing it—see? The flap hides part of the spill so we know that she did it—and a touch of her lipstick on the envelope indicates her gender.”

  Holmes replaced the letter and stood back up smartly. “Your military bearing, well-polished shoes, combined with your earthy style of speech attest to time spent on the force in the streets, whilst the tidiness of this office suggests meticulous habits.”

  Griffin was clearly impressed, while also put off by Holmes’ erudite, confident attitude as he continued, “When I entered, you were reading a paper by holding it at arm’s length, stubbornly denying the spectacles you obviously need but are too vain to admit needing even though they are there on your desk within easy reach. Your marksmanship, obviously, is indicated by that trophy.” He indicated a small brass figure of a man firing a pistol with Griffin’s name on the base. “And I observed that when you tossed that wad of trash as I came in, you used your right hand, but aimed with your left eye.”

  Holmes sucked in an expansive breath, rolling toward home. “There’s a Wet Paint sign on the door of room 304, which I passed en route to see you, and the color matches a fleck of still-damp paint on your right elbow.”

  Griffin looked down at the spot of paint.

  “Your helpfulness to short people is made clear by the commendation from them framed on your wall,” which Holmes indicated, then pointed his long, lean index finger at Griffin’s chest. “A tiny piece of pasta clings to your lapel, and the cup, of which I can see a portion in front of you, has your nickname, Noodles, printed on it. The ceramic sculpture of a slice of watermelon atop your filing cabinet there—”

  “And why don’t they like me in Detroit?” Griffin interrupted gruffly.

  “Ah.” Holmes smiled, indicating the wall behind him without looking. “The framed newspaper headline: griffin leaving; loss to no town.”

  “That’s mo-town, Jack!” Griffin bellowed. “You got it exactly backwards, asshole. They loved me in Detroit. And that commendation is from my Little League team. That’s baseball, in case you haven’t heard, not Wizard of Oz munchkins—” His eyes narrowed, “And nobody calls me Noodles! That’s what I ate for lunch!”

  He rotated what Holmes had thought was a personalized cup to reveal the full imprint: Cup o’ Noodles. Holmes realized, uncomfortably, that it was a commercial product’s brand name.

  “As for the watermelon, that’s called irony, man. It’s a joke. A freakin’ joke—Hello?—Jesus, what the hell time zone are you from anyway?”

  That gnawing in Holmes’ stomach that had begun when he saw the police laboratory had now twisted into a knot.

  Griffin stared at him a moment, furrowing his brow upon a closer examination of Holmes’ odd clothes and generally peculiar demeanor. Griffin was a smart man who had risen to his current position by listening to people and never refusing their help when needed. But he was also nobody’s fool and could spot a wacko across Oracle Park, and Holmes was just across the desk. Griffin went brusquely back to business, saying, “Now, they said you had something for me on Jimmy the Gimp Booth, so what is it?”

  Holmes was struggling to regain his mental balance as he uneasily took a seat in the wooden chair opposite Griffin. “Uh, yes, that is correct. Actually, I’m hoping for information about him from you, as well. I was robbed by him.”

  Griffin grabbed a pen and note paper, “Okay, what’d he take?”

  “My identification papers—and about a million dollars in precious stones.”

  “Really?” Griffin whistled, making notations. “When did this occur?”

  “About sixty years ago.”

  Griffin stopped writing. He slowly raised his dark brown eyes, his expression blank. “Say again?”

  “Approximately sixty years back, give or take a year,” Holmes replied. “I’m aware, of course, that the statute of limitations has expired, but if you could provide me with some important information, I’ve no doubt I can be of assistance to you in capturing—”

  Griffin threw down his pen and glared at Holmes. “Let me show you something, man.” He angrily spun his chair to face his computer. “Check this out.” He tapped out his access code and opened a file on the screen. Photos of James Moriarty Booth at various ages scrolled past, the most recent showing him to be about age sixty-five or seventy. His face was broad and full, and his graying but still-ginger hair clearly reflected his Irish heritage. Pages of writing also scrolled past as Griffin popped a Gelusil tablet.

  “Booth has smuggled drugs, robbed, cheated, money-laundered, hustled, and killed all over this city for fifty years but managed to keep his hands just clean enough to avoid going down. He’s fenced all around with safeguards so goddamned cunningly devised we’ve never gotten any hard evidence that would convict him.” He gestured toward the outside office. “Just like that dickwad Enrique Pavon we dragged in here again today. And that son of a bitch has always walked too.”

  “Yes, I saw Mr. Pavon,” Holmes chimed in fraternally. “And actually, I must tell you there’s a good possibility that—”

  Griffin cut him off. “Whatever racket Booth doesn’t operate, Pavon does. They’ve been huge rivals for years. Their flunkies will never testify ’cause they’re afraid of getting whacked.” He leveled his eyes at Holmes. “I have personally been after Booth’s ass for twelve years. The only assistance I need is something airtight in the way of hard evidence.” He paused to glare full bore at Holmes. “Now, you got anything solid or not?”

  “Nnnnot yet.” Holmes drew himself up, readying to provide Griffin the incredible benefit of his extreme expertise. “But you may be keenly interested in my theory about the recent tiger and piranha murders.”

  Griffin closed his eyes. Then he opened them with a deadly smile. “Gee, Hubert—no. You may be Holmes, but you’ll never be Sherlock. Now get the hell out of my office!”

  As Holmes slowly walked back through the busy police headquarters lobby toward the exit, he later confessed to me in a moment of rare candor, there was a dark cloud over his head. His face was a tight mask. His insides churning. Not only had he been blocked from getting deeper information on Booth, he had been ridiculed. Ridiculed!

  But far worse, he’d been dismissed. That was an even deeper wound. His brilliant talents—of which he was so justifiably proud—had been blithely disparaged and disregarded.

  Holmes was infuriated over it all but didn’t know where to go with that anger. It kept swirling round and round in his roiling brain. When he’d given himself this challenge of solving mysteries of the future, he’d never even considered that the future might be unreceptive. He felt spiteful.

  And as he walked out the entrance of police headquarters, being brutally honest with himself in that moment, he was at a loss regarding what his next step might be.

  Holmes later said that Fate can sometimes smile, for had he exited the building a moment or two earlier or later, he could well have missed a valuable encounter. The rookie Faheem was standing on the wide entrance steps listening with rapt attention to an older cop who’d paused in telling a startling tale to take a drag on his cigarette. As Holmes was passing by unmindful of them, embroiled in his own troubles, a few words caused his ears to prick up.

  “Yeah,” the cop continued relating his story, “that tiger killing was plenty weird enough.” Holmes slowed down. The cop went on, “Then the one at the aquarium, shit. But this new one—whoa!”

  Holmes stopped.

  The rookie eagerly prodded the older, “What new one? Tell me!”

  Holmes stood silently nearby as the cop, whose name tag read Hernandez, rested his butt on the edge of a planter and went on. “You know that hot assistant DA, Jacob Weiss? Ortega’s buddy?”

  Faheem nodded, “Yeah, sure. I’ve seen Weiss and Ortega working through cases together. Heard ’em finish each other’s sentences a lot. Seemed like really close friends.”

  “Yeah, for years,” Hernandez confirmed. “So I roll in Code 3 to Weiss’s neighborhood street answering a 911 for a 243.”

  The rookie struggled to remember. “243 . . . isn’t that battery with a dangerous—”

  “Weapon. Right.” The veteran smiled, impressed by the young woman. Then Holmes saw his face turn dark. “But lemme tell ya, kid, I’d never heard of a weapon like this. A buncha neighbors were gathered around but were keepin’ their distance ’cause it was one weird crime scene. The eyewitness, a soccer mom who’d called it in, she ran up to me and described what’d happened.” Hernandez took a breath and said very slowly to Faheem, “Now, you’ve got to really try to picture this.”

  Holmes, also listening carefully, did exactly that: mentally envisioning the crime as Hernandez described it. “She’s coming home from her morning walk on this residential street and notices a cement truck stopped in the right lane with its blinkers on. Weiss is coming outta his house. He sees soccer mom and trades a friendly wave with her. Then he gets into the old VW bug in his driveway, facing the street.” Holmes correctly assumed the cop was speaking of a car. “He starts the VW and slides the sunroof back. The neighbor says she’d seen him do the same routine every morning. He puts on his seatbelt and drives about halfway outta his driveway . . . when a big black SUV sweeps in and smacks his bumper, blocking him. The witness sees Weiss start to get out, but then he’s struggling with his seatbelt—which we later discovered somebody’d rigged so it wouldn’t unlock—meanwhile, the cement truck backs right up to the VW and dumps its load right through the sunroof onto Weiss!”

  “Holy shit!” Faheem’s eyes went wide.

  “Yeah. But guess what—it ain’t cement.” The older cop swallowed uneasily, then with a sickened expression said, “It’s beetles!”

  Holmes reacted sharply. As did the stunned rookie. “Beetles?”

  Hernandez nodded, “Yeah. Picture that.”

  Exactly what Holmes was doing.

  “The witness said it was like a waterfall of a goddamn zillion bugs! She says it was a horrible sight, one she’d never forget: Weiss screaming as these millions of creepy bugs fill up over his shoulders then his face and head. Finally, she sees his hands come sticking up outta that ocean of insects, clawing at the air like crazy, his hands crawlin’ with them. Then the cement truck and SUV both take off. The woman didn’t make any plates but called 911. I was there in less than two minutes with backup right on my six. When we finally got the seatbelt cut and pulled Weiss out, he was dead, drowned in bugs. They’d swarmed down his throat. Up his nose. Killed him.”

  “Oh my God,” the rookie said low, horrified.

  “And they were mean little bastards. Bitin’ the shit outta us too as we dragged him clear. They musta been starvin’ because they chewed Weiss up somethin’ awful. Shredded his face, his eyes. Right down to the bone.”

  “Geez.” Faheem grimaced. “Does Ortega know?”

  Hernandez shook his head. “We haven’t found Luis yet,” then he added grimly, “if he’s even still around to find.”

  He and the young cop shared a worried glance as Holmes spoke up, “What kind of beetles?”

  The older cop glanced over at the odd-looking Englishman. “How would I know, pal?”

  The rookie spotted something coming up the street toward them, “Jesus! Is that the car?”

  All three looked toward a passing police tow truck pulling the old VW bug, empty now, except for a few dozen beetles. Several dead ones fell onto the street in the vehicle’s wake.

  Faheem and Hernandez watched curiously as Holmes walked into the street and picked up one of the insects. He studied it with care before nodding as he muttered to himself, “Of course.”

  He glanced back at the tow truck as it pulled the VW into the station’s parking lot, driving past a tearful woman.

  Holmes recognized the distraught Karen Ortega, who was getting into her car. He saw her angrily wipe her eyes, clench her jaw, and gaze straight ahead into an uncertain future, fearful for the fate of her husband, Luis. Then she summoned just enough courage to start her car and drive away.

  Holmes observed her departure. He would have liked to offer his help, but there was nothing he could do for her at that moment. He sympathized with her, however, feeling as frustrated and stymied about his own problems as Mrs. Ortega did about hers.

  So he drew a breath, refocused, and took from his pocket a small gold snuff box. He carefully secured the dead beetle within it, then squared his shoulders and marched off.

  Since the police were unwilling to take his counsel, Holmes had decided it was time for him to take direct action.

  11

  It was getting dark by the time I arrived home from work that evening. I’d stayed longer than expected at the hospital because at the last minute a six-year-old ringlet-haired tomboy named Katie, suffering from a burst appendix, had been rushed into the ER by paramedics. She was trying to be brave but was tearful and terrified. We eased her under sedation, and I successfully performed an emergency robotic appendectomy, but I waited to leave until Katie had fully awakened in recovery so we could talk a little about her whole experience.

  Talking personally to my young patients was important to me because lots of kids can be fearful of hospitals and doctors. That’s why my mom, also a pediatrician, liked to visit elementary schools. I was so proud when she came into my kindergarten classroom. The other kids were surprised when she sat right down face-to-face with them in a kindergarten-height chair just like ours. To the other kids it looked funny to see a grown-up sitting on such a tiny chair. To me it was typical Mom.

  She reached out and shook hands with the closest kids. “Squeeze firmly,” she said smiling. “Always shake like you mean it.” Mom never talked down to kids. She always talked to me or any kid like we were grown-ups. She’d confide that she used to be scared of doctors when she was our age, but she’d learned to trust them, to understand that all doctors wanted to help.

  Then she’d put her stethoscope on the ears of each kid and let them listen to her heart. Her sincerity made them comfortable. With her grace, her humor, and her professionalism, Mom was an ideal role model. I didn’t just follow her eagerly into medicine, but all the way to becoming a pediatric surgeon myself. Back when I was still a kid, she told me, “If you find a job you really love, Amy, you’ll never work.” That confused me till I realized she meant that if your job brought joy and fulfillment, it would never feel laborious. She was right. I’ve tried to pay it forward ever since, passing along to kids like Katie my mom’s lessons of sincerity, spirit, and “Always shake hands like you mean it.”

  I was smiling, thinking about Mom, as I opened my front door. I had given Holmes a key to the house, so he was already inside and pacing my living room with his brow furrowed, lost in thought as I entered—whereupon he sprang to life like my hybrid Accord after the engine’s been sleeping at a stoplight.

  “Ah, Winslow, at last!” he said, rubbing his hands together.

  “What . . . What?” I stammered as he put on a water-repellent Victorian coachman’s cape in a gray houndstooth pattern that went over his frock coat and extended below his knees. It had no sleeves, but armholes that were covered by a small winglike cape on the outside that fell below his waist.

  It looked strangely familiar, then I realized why: it was exactly like one I’d seen Basil Rathbone wearing in those old black-and-white movies.

  “I need you to accompany me on a little drive.”

  “Accompany you?” I said with an arched eyebrow. “Really? Did you get a driver’s license today?”

  “Well,” he backpedaled, “you, of course, would do the actual driving.”

  “Yeah. No kidding,” I said, not hiding my annoyance. I tossed down my bag and kicked my shoes off. “Listen, I will do my best to help you, Mr. Holmes, but we’ve already had quite a long day. I’m tired. I’m hungry and—”

  “Of course!” He headed directly into the kitchen and took something out of my fridge. “Allow me to prepare for you one of these bury-toes from the Trader Joe person. They’re quite delicious. Additionally, I have studied the instructions and now understand how not to explode your macrowave.”

  “Microwave.”

  “Right!” After punching in various beeps, he watched the burrito revolve inside the oven. “You can eat it while we’re driving.”

  My head collapsed onto my chest. “Please, Holmes, can’t it wait until tomorrow?”

  “For some investigations, Winslow, the cover of darkness is essential.”

  “It can also be useful for sleeping. I’m sorry, but I am just not up to—”

  “When you met Leftenant Ortega, you felt his grief and that he was a most worthy person, did you not?”

  “Of course I did, but what does—”

  “He has gone missing.”

  “What?”

  “Dangerously missing. I saw his wife at police headquarters this afternoon and—”

  “Wait, wait. You were at police headquarters?” This was the first I’d learned of it. He nodded smugly as I stammered, “How did you— What did they—”

  “It was . . . an enlightening experience, which I will expound upon hereafter.” There was an awkward flavor to his utterance of the word enlightening that I found worrisome. He was also dodging my questions while absolutely determined to plow ahead. “Far more importantly, Winslow, I witnessed firsthand why Mrs. Karen Ortega was appropriately distraught and fearful for her husband’s life.” He raised an index finger to emphasize: “I also spotted a clear connection between Ortega, the tiger murders, and an underworld chieftain named Pavon, who was just then waltzing out the station after avoiding arrest.”