Young Writers Society

As angry as Eli was the next morning, she still did exactly what Sheri had said. She'd not been wrong before. So Eli walked all the way, two miles, to the police station. It was a gray building with aging tile floors and dusty cream walls. Not that it had been her first time at the police station. There had been many occasions, already, where she had had to go and meet with Sheri there. Of course this would be the first time she was going in as Assistant Consulting Detective, a title she had come up on her own to replace Sheri's nickname "Apprentice Monkey".

"Um..." she said to the secretary in the front, "I need to speak with..." she looked down and checked the note Sheri had scribbled for her before she left. "Karen?"

She looked up, the man sitting there didn't look to impressed.

"My friend Sheridan Holmes sent me." He raised an eyebrow.

"I didn't know she had friends." he clicked an intercom, "Dr. Perri?"

"Yes?" a woman's voice answered.

"I have a friend of Holmes here asking to see you."

"What's the name?" The officer looked to Eli.

"Eli Watson." she told them.

"Eli Watson." he said over the intercom. There was a rustle of papers before she answered.

"Yes, Sheri must have called earlier. Send him up." Eli clenched her fist at the comment. The officer clicked the intercom off with a slight suppressed smile.

"Down the hall," he motioned to the hallway to his left, "Room 115."

"Thanks." she said halfheartedly.

Eli made her way down the hall, stopping at room 115. The names Dr. Short and Dr. Perri were stenciled on the window in black. She turned the knob and pushed it open.

Behind the door was a cream colored laboratory. A small, clean chemical lab to the back right and a set of two computers to the left. In the center was lab table, with a large boxy looking machine and a microscope on it. Sitting in front of the microscope was a woman in her early thirties with a ponytail of brown hair and a lab coat over her gray pantsuit. She was sifting through her notes at the moment. A large maroon binder with a manilla folder poking out the top.

Eli knocked politely on the door before speaking. The woman looked up from her notes and set them on the table next to the microscope. "Hi, my name's Eli Watson. I'm here with a few DNA samples."

Dr. Perri turned a little red, obviously realizing she'd called Eli a boy by mistake. "Dr. Perri." she introduced herself as.

"Sheri did most of it last night," she said pulling the two plastic bags out of her purse, "But I think she'd like a name to the samples." She handed to two bags to Karen.

"I'll do my best." she stood up and opened the bags and looked at the information Sheri's computer had given Eli the night before. "So, where is the private eye today?"

"Actually she's a consulting detective." Eli said looking at label of the manilla folder absently.

"More like a professional know-it-all."

"That I can't argue with." Karen smiled.

"So where is she? She usually never misses a chance to show off."

"I don't know, actually. She ran out last night in a real hurry." Karen nodded absently.

"That's right, she has that whole drop-off thing."

"What?" Eli looked up. Dr. Perri was inputing the information in her computer.

"Nothing, she just has this thing she does. It drives Lestrade mad."

"What thing?" Perri tapped the keyboard slowly, as to not put any wrong information in.

"Sheri has lot's of 'issues'," Eli nodded, "One of them is that she occasionally drops off the map. Used to be for months at a time, until just recently." Eli leaned against the lab table. Using her arms as a prop.

"And what does she do during that time?"

Perri shrugged. "Who knows, different every time I guess. My friend Dr. Short has theory."

"What?" Perri shook her head.

"It's stupid."

"What is it?" The doctor spun in her chair to face Eli.

"Well, he thinks Sheri's been lying to us the whole time. That when she disappears, she's setting up all these crimes she solves."

"But why would she do that? Solve her own crimes?"

"Maybe she doesn't solve it completely, leaves out the bits where she gets stuff out of it. I told you it's stupid." Perri spun back to work.

"But you believe her, right?"

"I think she can't possibly fake being so annoying all the time." Eli smiled, "Besides, you're smart, you'd notice if she was doing anything criminal."

"What do you mean?" Perri looked over the information on her computer.

"I mean obviously you finished this for her." Eli was stunned, "Sheri always draws her name in a double helix before she gives it to me. Clearly you were smart enough to figure it out on your own. So who are you?" Eli shrugged.

"Just a friend." Perri turned around again. Her face a frown.

"You don't understand, Sheri doesn't have friends. The closest thing she has to friends are her enemies."

"That's not the same thing."

"To her it may as well be." Perri turned back to the computer, "Okay, looks like the blood sample matches a Mr. Renee Minor." she scooted her chair over to the printer and grabbed the papers coming out and handed the to Eli.

"Thanks." Eli was about to leave when Karen stopped her.

"Eli wait." Eli turned to the Doctor still sitting in her chair with a worried face, "Whatever she's paying you, we could get you a job here. It's safer." Eli turned and opened the door. She barely caught the last words.

For some reason, that really bugged her. She'd heard a lot of people talk about Sheri like she was some sort of murderer, but for some reason Karen made her a lot angrier.

She made her way back to Maple street with the DNA results, and as soon as she was back in her own apartment she lit her fireplace and turned on her laptop. She settled herself on her couch and searched the internet for Renee Minor.

According to his police records he had three parking tickets, and one account of assault. She searched further and found that when he was twenty-seven he assaulted a guy named Peter Sparks in a bar. He was detained for 24 hours, and he paid a fine. Other than that he was clean.

Even his face was average. Normal blue eyes, short blonde hair, and a rather large nose. He was six foot two, and roughly 132 pounds according to his last check-up. Normal thirty-three year old man. The only issue was that he was currently employed as a custodian at UB.

Eli decided to set these sites aside and look at the dandruff suspect. Xavier Knight. A tiny little guy. Only five feet tall, but he was thin and muscular. Eli didn't have to search too far to find him. With the police database, that Sheri gave her access to, she pretty much had his entire life documented to the second. Apparently Knight had notable gang connections, but he'd only been put in jail for gang work within the last ten years, and had been released after eight years, and was still on parol. He had been in and out of jail in previous years for minor offenses such as possession of stolen property and vandalism. All in all a big jerk.

Suddenly Eli heard a door open and close. She checked her watch, it was 10:00PM on the dot. She set her laptop down and looked through the peephole. Sheri was walking in. Eli opened her door and called her over.

"Sheri." she said. Sheri looked up slowly. "Oh, my god!"

Sheri's entire face was covered in blood aside from a space on her left cheek. Her dark black hair was matted down in the front from a cut on her forehead, and the last traces of make-up was smeared by the red liquid.

She wiped some blood from her eyelashes as she looked back at Eli, "It's not as bad as it looks."

***

"I don't know what happened, but you are so lucky I'm a doctor." Eli said, wiping rubbing alcohol on Sheri's cut. Sheri was too busy biting on a towel to say or do anything.

Once her cut was clean, she began to slowly wrap her friend's forehead in gauze.

"I am very lucky. I'd hate to have to go back to the hospital." Eli smiled a bit, perhaps it was the happiness of seeing her friend alive, or the shear surprise messing with her emotions.

"Yeah, well you have to be more careful." Sheri shrugged, "What exactly were you doing?" Sheri began to wipe the crusty blood off her face.

"That's not important." Eli could hear just the tiniest of hesitations in her voice.

"It kind of is." Eli said, "I need to know if you'll be breaking into any hospitals for tetanus shots.

"I got hit." Eli paused in her wrapping.

"With what?"

"A rake."

"A rake?" Sheri nodded.

"A common household instrument," Sheri said in her most smart-alecky tone, "Used to-"

"I know what a rake is." Sheri shrugged, "How did you get hit by one?"

"Classified." Eli tucked the gauze in, and stared at Sheri.

"What do you mean 'Classified'?" Sheri paused to finish wiping her face off then proceeded to stand up and walk into the bathroom. "Sheri?" Eli got up after her and saw that the detective was inspecting her face in the mirror and washing her hands. "Sheri, what do you mean by classified?"

"I mean..." she dried her hands on her pants, "I am not going to tell you." Sheri went right past her on the way back into the living room.

"But we're partners now." Eli protested to the woman sitting on her couch, looking through her laptop. "Doesn't that kind of put me on the same level as you?" Sheri slammed the laptop shut and threw it on the couch beside her. In one fluid movement she pushed her self off the couch with one foot and lept across the room, right in front of Eli, with the other.

"Let's get this straight, shall we?" she said, she eyes glaring uncomfortably close to Eli's. "You are not my partner. I am not your friend. And at no point in time will I ever tell you about my private affairs. You are not me, you are no where close to me, and if you ever get confused about that little fact I hope that the doctors treating you are a lot better than you are."

Eli was poker-faced as Sheri seemed to growl at her. She could finally see why people said were so surprised when she said she was her friend. Sheri didn't see people the same way. All that talk about being raised by an uncaring mother and wanting to be as far from that as possible, it was just a front. When it really came down to who she cared for, Sheri was just another lie.

"You're right." Eli said with no emotion, "You're the genius, and I'm the helper monkey." Sheri half smiled and half sneered. Only her upper left incisors showing. "And think you're smart enough to find the door on your own."

Sheri turned on her toes and made for the door. Slamming it on her way out.

Eli stood there, pressed against the wall, with no emotion in her face for a full twenty seconds before she finally made her way to bed.