Young Writers Society

"So what are we looking into?" Mark asked, making sure to keep his brown eyes planted firmly on the road.

"A suicide. A guy named, Marcus Reid. Hey I know that name! He works at Chef's." Eli said from the passenger side of the police car.

"Worked." Mark said.

"Right, I forgot about that."

"Well don't do again." he said seriously, "These suicide families upset easily. I need you to be the best you can be." Eli sulked in her seat, did everyone think she couldn't solve a case without Sheri?

Mark parked the car on the street in front of the little house. The two of them got up and walked to the door, trudging through layers of snow and old newspapers. "Geez." Mark said, "Did this guy live alone?"

"No, it says he has a wife and a kid." Eli checked the file again.

Mark knocked. There was no answer. He knocked again. But again, silence.

"Hey, Mark." Eli said.

"What?"

"Do you hear that?" they both strained their ears and kept silent.

"Is that...?" he started, but Eli was already pulling a bobby pin out of her pocket and ripping the ribber tips off. She shoved it in the locking mechanism. "Eli, you can't do that."

"I know how to pick locks." she insisted.

"No, I mean I'm a cop and you're breaking an entering." the lock clicked open and Eli walked in. The house was cold and a mess inside. A chair was tipped over in the living room, scratches covered the hallway wall. A pot sat broken on the floor next to a knocked over coffee table. The curtains were askew and the sweet smell of decay filled their nose. The baby cried from upstairs.

"I'll get the baby, you find Reid." Eli hurried upstairs. When she got upstairs she ran to the baby's room toward the sound of crying. The upstairs was mostly in place, including the baby's room which was filled with the smell of dirty diaper. Eli sighed in relief as she entered the yellow bedroom. The baby was still lying in its crib crying. She rushed to him and made sure he was intact. "I bet you need a change." she picked him up and went to the changing table. Once he was clean she held him in her arms and went down stairs, gently bouncing him to calm him down.

"Mark I found the baby." she whispered when she got down stairs.

"Good, 'cause I found his mom." Mark said from the kitchen. Eli wandered in and gasped as she entered the room. Mrs. Reid was a skinny blonde lady with a stained T-shirt and pink pajama pants. She was lying on the floor with a stab wound in her back where her heart should be.

***

They got back to the police station early that afternoon. People were rushing through the halls and panic spread like a virus through the station. "What's going on?" Mark asked when a tired looking forensic person bumped into him on her way to the lab.

"The cases from this morning, all of the witnesses are dead." she ran down the hall and Eli looked at Mark.

"Looks like everyone's case ended up like ours." The baby in her arms wailed and Eli tried to calm him by bouncing him, but he wouldn't be quiet.

"Shut up that baby." Mark said as they walked to Lestrade's office. His hands covered his ears.

"I can't, he's hungry."

"Then feed him." Eli just shook her head.

"Did you even take Biology? I'll be at the drug store down the street if you need me." she rushed out whistling "Shhh, shhhh, shhh." through her teeth as she went.

***

"Did I miss anything?" Eli asked, walking into Lestrade's office holding a bottle of formula to the baby's mouth. He was much calmer after being fed.

"Did I?" Lestrade asked, looking between Mark and the baby.

"The Reid baby was all alone in the house." Eli said, smiling at the baby. "I couldn't just leave him in the house all alone."

"Well, I'll look up the godparents later. In other news, all my guys have come back with dead witnesses, and dead relatives, anyone connected to these cases has come up dead."

"What about Sheri?"

"She'll be back in a few hours, it takes a while to investigate this many-" Lestrade was interrupted by the sound of screaming.

"LET GO OF ME!" some guy yelled.

"I got a witness!" Sheri said outside of Lestrade's office. Letrade jumped out of his seat and rushed into the hall, followed closely by Mark, Eli, and the baby. Sheri was smiling broadly with blood streaming from a cut on her forehead. In her hand was the wrist of a short man in gelled back hair and black clothes. "Okay, I lied, it's a suspect."

"Xavier Knight?" Eli recognized.

"What's with the baby?" Sheri asked.

"The Reid baby was sitting alone in the house, why do you have a midget?"

"I'm not a midget!" Knight yelled, "I'm just short!" Sheri kicked him in the shin and he fell over on the ground.

"Shut up midget!" Sheri smiled, "Who wants to ask him why he was putting gun powder and a bomb into Watson's fire-place?"

"What?" Eli said adjusting her ponytail with her free hand.

"And he poisoned my tobacco, and my sugar."

"I don't remember your tobacco being poisoned." Eli said, "You're two weeks clean, you got rid of all that stuff."

"And why do you think I decided to go clean?" Sheri said, squeezing Knight's hand until it was red. Eli rolled her eyes. There was always a reason beyond the reason with Sheri. If she put her clothes in the hamper it's because she knows a midget will be sneaking into her bathroom. If she says thank you it's because she needs to distract you for two seconds so she can finish whatever it is she was working on. "Are we gonna get some handcuffs, or am I going to have to break his wrist."

"Handcuffs, please!" Xavier said, trying to get his wrist out of her grip.

***

"Xavier Knight, you are the hired hand of Moriarty." Lestrade asked.

"I keep telling you I don't know who this Moriarty guy is!" Xavier tried to emphasize his point with a hand gesture, but his hands were held back by the handcuffs.

"And I'm supposed to believe you?"

Xavier sighed. "I'm not lying. All I know is that I was hired to put the poison in the apartment. I didn't know who this Holmes girl was or who was hiring me. I got paid by mail."

Sheri was poker faced behind the one-way glass. She was deep in thought. Eli watched her for a second, waiting for a response, but she was silent. Eli looked back to baby Reid. He was so oblivious to what was going on. He didn't even seem to realize that Eli was not his mom. His little chubby cheeks were curled into a grin. Eli gave him an exaggerated smile and he giggled.

"For the last time, yes I poisoned Sheri, and yes I planted a bomb in the apartment, and yes I stole Miss Watson's Netflix password-"

"That's why Walking Dead is on my Queue." Eli said feeling half violated and half glad that it wasn't Sheri who was watching zombie TV shows. She didn't need a repeat of Sheri's storage unit full of preservatives and guns.

"But I didn't meet with any Moriarty guy. And I didn't know about all those other murders." Sheri glared at him, then she walked out and into the questioning room. Xavier cringed in his seat a little as Sheri stood next to the table.

"Are you positive you've never heard of Moriarty?" She asked, keeping her eyes firmly on him.

"Well..."

"What?" she said with poison in her voice.

"There are whispers. In the background..." he leaned his elbow on the table. "About a guy with a crime web so intricate that only he knows it's boundaries. He's like a spider in a web and no one says his name. I always thought it was a ghost story, but..." Sheri stared at him firmly. He bit his lip back into his mouth. Finally she pulled her hands off the table and bounced back.

"Well, I believe him." she smiled.

"You do?" Xavier said astonished and relieved.

"You do?" Lestrade said not believing his ears.

"Of course, he doesn't know who Moriarty, so we are wasting our time. Of course he will be in jail for trying to kill me and Watson."

"What? Just like that?" Lestrade asked. Sheri shrugged.

"Well of course, if he had any information at all I trust that Xavier would let us know so we can better protect him for when Moriarty has him killed." she looked at Xavier, "And he will." Knight's eyes opened wide and his bottom lip disappeared behind his teeth. "No point in keeping him here. Tina!" she motioned to a female cop standing at the door to detach Xavier's cuffs from the table.

As Tina let Xavier out, Sheri walked cooly out of the room and into the hall. Lestrade followed her out.

"What do you mean when Moriarty comes for him?" Sheri turned on her heel, scuffing the cream floor slightly.

"As we've seen today," Sheri whispered, so Xavier could not here when he was dragged out of the questioning room. He gave Sheri a face, but she ignored him. "Moriarty is not likely to leave ANY loose ends, knowing or not-knowing about him. Because Xavier is here, he is a threat and not useful to him anymore. It is more than likely that the very men that lock him away will be shooting him in the next twenty-four hours. If Xavier knew Moriarty as well as we want him too he'd know this and tell us any information we need if only to help keep him safe. The only good reasons he'd have for not telling us anything are that he has an honor code, which is unlikely since he stole Watson's Netflix, or he really has no idea who Moriarty is. Either way I'd have extra guards protecting Xavier's cell tonight, he'll need it."

Lestrade sighed, "So you willingly brought him here, knowing that it would lead to his death?"

"I had to be sure he didn't know anything." Lestrade shook his head, "Give me twenty minutes alone with Xavier's cell and maybe I can protect him."

"Fine, but bring Eli along."

"Why?" Sheri said offended.

"To make sure you don't let Moriarty in out of spite."

"He did go through my dirty laundry to poison me, twice. Not to mention Watson's."

"Watson's what?" Eli asked, walking out of the one-way glass room with the little Reid baby.

"Watson's baby." Sheri said, "Did we contact the godparents?"

"They'll be here in a few minutes, I'll do the hand-off while you two go reinforce Knight's cell." Lestrade held out his arms for Eli to hand him the baby. She handed him the baby gratefully, for a baby he was very heavy.

"Knight's cell?" Eli asked, following Sheri down the hall.

"Yes we are going to make sure we get something out of bringing him here, other than privacy."

***

The cells were gray and small. Not that Eli didn't know what they looked like by now. It was just nice to see Sheri on this side of the bars. They stopped off at the cell where Xavier was to be brought after they made sure it was Moriarty proof. It was the same as the rest. Chipping paint and a hard, cold bed and toilet.

"Alright." Sheri said, pushing on the bars to make sure they were sturdy. She then kneeled to look into the locking mechanism on the door. She slid a keycard into the electronic lock and it buzzed open. "Shotty workmanship. I could break in that within seconds."

"And that's why they made a special cell just for you." Eli said, leaning against the bars, bored. Sheri frowned.

"It wasn't just for me. I locked Gregson in there once." she pushed the door open and twirled around on her toes slowly, trying to get a picture of the whole room. She pointed herself toward the walls and shook her head. Then the bed, and the toilet. She rubbed her eyes and shook her head very hard, like she was trying to get rid of a picture in her head. Then she looked back at the bars and door. "One entrance. Everything else would be too noisy."

"Good, so we know where the murderer will come in from." Eli said sarcastically.

Sheri rolled her eyes. Then she slowly walked from one side of the room to the other, looking at the front at all times. Then she walked over to the bed, stood on top of the mattress and slowly moved her head back and fourth. She jumped off and looked at the ceiling. A single, too small for a human, air-vent and a sprinkler. She pulled a small camera out of her pocket and positioned it behind the toilet, so that only the lens was poking out and pointing toward the front.

"That should do." Sheri said, leaving the room.

"That's it?" Eli asked, looking from the rapidly leaving Sheri to the cell. "Just a camera?"

"Of course not." Sheri stopped in the middle of the walkway between the cells. She walked around the hallway, back and forth, from one side to the other until she stopped. She looked directly at a security camera and made a face.

"What are you doing?"

"Annoying the security people." she said, then she pulled a note put of her pocket and taped it to Knight's cell. It read "Finished. Should be safe now. Holmes."

"Is that it?" Watson asked.

"As far as they know, yes." Sheri walked down the hall, opened the door, stared for a second, then walked to the other side and did the same. "I'm not giving up that easily, Watson." she walked back to Watson and grabbed her hand. The pale woman pulled Eli all the way down to a janitor's closet in one of the hallways on connected to the one holding the cells.

She walked in, pushed her arms against the walls, hitting several bottles of window-cleaner as she did.

"How bad is it to breath in," she paused to check the label on a plastic bucket, "Bleach?"

"Not too great-"

"We'll take our chances." Sheri pulled Eli into the closet by the arm and slammed the door behind them. Darkness surrounded them.

"What the-!"

"We're waiting for the killers." Sheri interrupted Eli's protests. Eli tried to pull the door open again, but Sheri slammed it shut again.

"Why are we in the closet?"

"You've heard of seven minutes in heaven?" Sheri couldn't see it, but Eli was deeply concerned by where this was going and she adjusted her ponytail nervously. "I call this two hours of hell since the last time I did this I spent two hours waiting for a Swedish crime ring leader in a closet with a leaky boiler. Shouldn't be that bad this time."

"Can't you just explain why you decided to wait for a killer in a janitor's closet?" Sheri sighed.

"Judging the extremes Moriarty is going to eliminate his witnesses I doubt he'll want to kill all the prisoners, so that means the only chance he'll have to get Xavier without being caught on camera is when they move him from dinner to his cell. They're moving him in first to make sure Moriarty doesn't strike in the cafeteria. But this hallway is camera-free so if he does have killers undercover here, which I highly suspect, he'll have them here in the hallway to kill Xavier and chloroform the other two guards."

"Other two guards?"

"Four guards leading him in. Two in front and two behind. The two in the back are Moriarty's and they'll make the front to unconscious, then Xavier, then each other. Clean of all traces... As long as they don't know we're in the closet." Eli squinted in the low light.

"And we'll jump out and save Xavier, right?" Eli squinted harder, trying to tell if Sheri was nodding. "Right?"

"I will assess the issue of what to do when I have adequate enough information to do so." Eli waved her finger at her.

"You're doing it again."

"Doing what?"

"You're talking in big words, you always do that when you're hiding something."

"I think I hear them coming." Sheri said, avoiding the subject. But she was right. The sound of a door opening down the hall. Eli clamped her mouth shut, and Sheri squinted through the cracks in the door, it was one of those shutter style ones. With the rungs that let in light without being see-through. Not a very good one. Sheri could just make out the middles of the line of five people. One of them in an orange jump-suit and the other four dressed in police blue. They were just about in front of the door when the two back guys sped up and smothered the front two with rags. They struggled for a second, one of them trying to grab onto the janitor's closet door for leverage. But too soon they both fell limp. Then they turned to Xavier.

Xavier shrieked, his face was almost visible to Sheri, she could just make out his chin coming down. One of the men grabbed him and pressed his rag to his face, until he fell to the floor. The other grabbed a knife and stabbed the two fallen officers. Sheri couldn't be sure, but she suspected it was in the neck.

Then that same officer, still with the bloody knife in his hand, began to falter and fall to the ground. He must have drugged himself. The last officer grabbed the knife out of his hand and stabbed his recently fallen comrade and then Xavier.

Eli, who had been watching from below, and had a better view of the bodies, squealed. The sound of her hand clapping over her mouth followed closely. Sheri glared beneath her at the woman she could not fully see.

The last officer walked in front of the closet and paused for a second before he opened the door. Then it slammed open. The light blinded the two girls, giving the officer enough time to tackle them both and press the rag painfully against Sheri's teeth. Sheri felt Eli squirm from beneath her, but she could not move to get off of her. Before she knew it she fell limp on top of Eli.

***

"Sheri..." Eli whispered, and Sheri opened her eyes groggily.

"Uhhhhhh..." She groaned, pulling her head off of a rack and letting her bones snap as she rolled them around her neck.

"Sheri?" Sheri squinted into the darkness, she could still smell chemicals. They must be still in the closet.

"What?" She said, pushing herself off the ground unsteadily.

"I hear voices, the other officers must have found the bodies." Sheri tried to get herself off the ground, but in the small space and her legs being asleep, her hand slipped and she fell down, knocking cleaning chemicals off the racks as she did.

"What was that?" An officer said from outside. The door opened wide and Sheri had to squint through the light. She could just make out the shape of Mark, Lestarde, Gregson, and a female officer she didn't know.

"Well, well, well." Gregson said gruffly, "If it isn't Ms. 'All safe'." he held up a small piece of notebook paper, that must have been her note. Sheri looked past him to Lestrade.

"This is not at all how it looks." she said, standing up carefully.

"Really?" Mark commented, "Cause it looks like-"

"That's enough Stevens!" Lestarde scolded, but he didn't look at Sheri either. Eli saw Sheri's eyes fall to the ground from Lestrade's disappointed face.

"I know who killed him." Sheri said, stepping out and glancing at the bodies on her way out of the hallway, already flooded with police officers all buzzing for information on the deaths.

***

"So who did it?" Lestrade asked, trying to fit all five of them in his office. He still wouldn't look at Sheri.

"I'll say when I get to talk to the survivor." Sheri insisted.

"No, he's still recovering from being chloroformed, you're going to tell us exactly what you've been doing the last three hours." Sheri's head snapped up, turning from side to side, eventually falling on Eli.

"Eli, where's your phone?" she said frantically. Eli shoved her hand in her pocket, but she couldn't find her phone.

"I don't know, I must have left it at-" Sheri didn't wait for Eli to finish, she rushed to Mark, grabbed his left arm and stared at a watch on his wrist.

"Hey!" Mark said pulling his hand out of her grip.

"Sheri!" Lestrade yelled. Sheri pushed Mark aside and pulled the door into his back.

"I'm late!" she growled.

"Late for what?" Eli called after her, but Sheri was already down the hall.

"Just like her," Gregson grumbled, "Slack off then leave us when she doesn't have the answer."

"Gregson..." Lestrade said tiredly.

"She didn't slack off!" Eli defended.

"Did she even try to save Xavier? Or did she just set a camera down and call that good?" Eli's ears turned red, but she wouldn't let it go.

"She has other stuff on her mind, she knew exactly where he'd be and what would hap-"

"And she didn't save him!" Mark yelled.

"It was one of your officers!" she yelled back. The officers' mouths closed. "That's right Sheri wasn't the only one waiting for the killers! She wasn't the only one who saw four men murdered in front of her eyes! You know who shoved the chloroform in his mouth with her last conscious breaths? Cause that was me! And what were you doing? Leaving him alone in the hands of a killer!" Mark's eyes fell from her face. "You're looking for the survivor of the killings." Eli said shaking her head and leaving the room.

They were all silent for a minute after she left. All of them too afraid or ashamed to say anything.