Sheridan Holmes: A Cold Case PART 8

Sheri had been planning her escape from the hospital since she felt the effects of the poison that morning. Being as intelligent as Sheri, she often felt the effects of claustrophobia when she was trapped somewhere as bleak and lifeless as a hospital. Plus the fact that they told her she couldn't leave made her desperate to prove them wrong.

A medical institution, she inferred, should know better than to keep a genius locked in a room without something to entertain her. Aside from all that, she had work to do. She didn't have time to be normal and 'rest'. So she constructed a perfect escape plan. She could be out and back in before anyone noticed.

Using her brilliant talents for disguise and lock-picking, a swiss bank would be a day's work. A low budget hospital in the city? No problem.

***

Pulling her lab coat and scrubs off, Sheri locked her apartment door behind her. She was still wearing her hospital gown because someone vomited on her jacket while she was asleep. Though Eli thoroughly explained that Sheri herself had been very sick and soiled her own jacket, Sheri was convinced that Eli had been the one to soil the Italian leather.

Quickly she scooped up her fingerprinting kit from the pocket of the lab coat and went to work on the crime scene. Someone must have poisoned the food, and there was no way that they didn't leave a trace. From years of experience on the crime scene she had learned to distinguish sneaking prints from the domestic ones.

After dusting the fridge door, the shelve doors, and the wall she uncovered zero criminal prints. It didn't panic her though. She'd expected as much. You don't send a bunny into the lion's den. Who ever the murderer was they'd know enough to wear gloves just in case.

Next she looked closely at the windows. Though it wouldn't be unheard of for someone to be able to walk through the front door without alarming the other tenants, as Sheri had a tendency to wear disguises in and out of the building, a master assassin wouldn't leave anything to chance. The window would be the best bet. Low and behold, when she looked out of the bathroom window the plants that grew in the garden below were crunched and askew like someone had walked on them when they were, say, climbing through the open window.

So they came through the bathroom window and into the main room, did their job then left through the window again. Now she needed to prove where they added the poison.

She took a sample of the sugar and examined it under her bedroom microscope. In the slide she could see the crystal shape of the sugar, and the difference between it and the added poison. Of course this still wouldn't be enough for the police, as stuff in Sheri's house had a tendency to get covered in poisons without a break-in. Sheri knew, however, that she'd remember poisoning her own sugar.

Then she examined the sugar container. There is no such thing as a perfect crime. The killer would leave some sort of trace, and the longer they spend in one spot the more they leave. She stared at the paper bag, her hands folded like she was praying. She then examined the worn flap at the top, the bottom, the sides, and even sifted through the contents for a clue. Then she found it.

She grabbed a tweezer from pocket and plucked it from the poisoned sugar. A single, rather large, dead skin cell from the assassin's scalp. Otherwise known as dandruff. Sheri smiled as she bagged the skin in a plastic evidence bag.

***

Eli was sitting next to a screaming child. The subway was making him dizzy and nauseous. Sheri, however, refused to let her borrow the mustang. Ever. Which made her traveling distance very limited, she'd barely have enough to ride to the University and back. Which is saying something since it's the university at Buffalo and the subway is just a couple dollars.

She let her head fall down on the glass window, trying to ignore the shrieks from the little boy and the gum she was sitting in. Though she was used to the subway, as she had taken it everywhere when she was a kid, she still missed the relative comfort of Sheri's sports car. Even with the top down and Sheri driving.

"Mheysh jakjdqh uniedxecihh hihbop." the speaker said and Eli got up, pulling a wad of pink gum off of her dress.

When she made it to the surface, she searched her bag to make sure she had everything she needed. Plastic gloves, fingerprinting kit, tweezers, evidence bags, and her phone in case she needed Sheri's opinion. Which was almost guaranteed.

***

She stepped into the building that Sipps worked in. Key word being worked. As in use to. As Eli stepped into the office she remembered Sipps' beaten body and almost lost her breakfast.

The room was utterly trashed. The bookshelves and cabinets that used to line the walls were cluttered on the ugly carpet with their contents spilling out everywhere. And the desk that would have been in the back, so Sipps could greet his visitors face to face, was hanging out the window precariously.

Eli sighed, she had her work cut out for her. She looked around carefully. Sheri would look for something small that would be out of place. She observed the doorframe carefully, starting from where the break-in would have started, since Sipps was on the third floor.

In the wood were three scratches by the locking mechanism, suggesting that...they forced the door open? She took a picture of it.

Good enough, she thought. Next she looked at the desk. It wasn't just hanging out the window, it was broken through the window. A small amount of tiny glass shards littering the floor around it. She took another picture.

That didn't make much sense because they would have just searched the desk, not throw it through the window. That'd cause too much commotion. She looked around the glass covered floor. There was chair upturned with small drops of blood drying on the leather.

Glass shards maybe hit one of the suspects? Could happen, maybe there was even more blood.

She was focusing her efforts on sifting through the mess on the floor when...

"Are you the officer they sent over?" said a man in the hall. Eli jumped a little before she looked up. A tall professor in an unbuttoned jacket over a dress shirt and pants was standing in the doorway with a stack of books in his arms. His hair was graying at the edges, but he was otherwise very young looking. His skin was tan, like he had just gotten back from vacation.

"Sort of." she said finally noticing that she was staring.

"Ah." he said with a sort of southern sounding accent and a wide smile, "You're that Sheridan character I've been hearing so much about." Eli smiled slightly.

"Actually I'm Eli Watson, Sheridan's my boss." He frowned slightly.

"Oh, I didn't know she had a...assistant."

"Well I am." she said her tone sounded like she was offended, "And who are you?"

"Dr. James Upperton." he held out his hand for her to shake. Eli tried to climb over the cabinets to go shake it, but she tripped over one and landed face down on the carpet. "Oh geez, are you okay?" he said, setting his books down and venturing over to help her up.

"Fine." she said pushing herself up, "Happens all the..." she stopped mid-sentence when something caught her eye. Under the book she narrowly missed was a small circular object. A ring with a skull on it. She reached under and pulled it out. It was sliver in color with the exception of the drying blood on it. "Hmm..."

"What did you find?" he asked as she stared at the ring while she stood up.

"A ring." she stared at it curiously for a second, "Did Sipps wear rings like this?"

"No," the professor said shaking his head. Eli smiled and pulled a plastic bag out of her purse and bagged the ring.

"Well that's good news." she whispered to herself.

"What?"

"It's nothing. Did you know Sipps well?" James nodded sadly.

"Everyone did. He was a great man. Always talking us up and laughing. He was brilliant too. I can't believe he's gone, I came back from spring break as soon as I heard." That comment caught Eli by surprise.

"Spring break?" James nodded.

"Yeah the whole school was gone on vacation, except the cleaning crew. And of course, Sipps was here working on his research." Eli thought for a second.

"Then who found the body?"

"Kyle Evans, his old colleague that helped him on the project. He said he came in to talk and the room was like this. He's probably in the labs if you want to ask him some questions." he motioned to the left.

"Thanks." she said, stepping over the last cabinet.

"No problem. And if there's anything I can help you with just ask." he grabbed his books then left, before Eli even had time to realize that she didn't know where exactly to go, he was gone down the halls.

***

Eli did eventually find the labs where Dr. Evans was. After searching the floor for twenty minutes she stumbled upon the room. It was a large classroom laboratory, not unlike the one she had used in her years at UB, in fact it was almost identical. Aside from the lack of students the only difference was the orientation of the room was opposite than what she was used to. The windows were always on her right side, in this room they were on the left because it was the other side of the hall.

Dr. Evans was sitting over a microscope at one of the lab tables, stopping only to write down notes on a sheet of paper.

"Um...hello?" she said, standing in the doorway. The Doctor looked up from his notes. He was about as old as Sipps with white hair and a lab coat over his 1920's style suit.

"Oh hello, can I help you with something?" his voice was deep and cynical.

"I'm looking for Dr. Evans." she said walking in and closing the door.

"That's me. Who are you?" he set down his pen to give her his full attention.

"I'm Dr. Eli Watson, me and my friend are investigating the Lane Sipps case."

"Come in then." Dr. Evans said motioning her foreword. Eli walked to the lab table and sat down on the stool across from him. "What do you need then, I already talked to the police." Eli nodded, opening up her flip-phone and punching in Sheri's number.

"If you don't mind, my friend here would like to ask her questions directly."

"Fine," he sighed, "How long is this going to take, I have work to do." he pointed at his notes.

"It usually takes just a few minutes." the phone rang twice.

"Okay, but-"

"Ah, Eli." Sheri said over speaker phone, "It took you long enough."

"Sheri," Eli said, "This is Dr. Evans, he was the one who discovered that Sipps was missing."

"Well, duh, did you even read the case notes?" Eli took a deep breath.

"You want to ask your questions, or not?"

"Okay..." she paused, "Well introduce me!" she snapped.

"Dr. Evans," she motioned to the open phone, "This is Sheridan Holmes."

"Of course, I've heard a lot about you."

"Brilliant, then you'll know that lying at all during this conversation will be futile." The professor looked a little nervous at that point, but he quickly covered it up.

"Ask me anything."

"How long ago did MoLander call him?" Dr. Evans' face became glazed.

"How on earth could you know that?" he asked.

"It was an easy jump. You seem surprised, did the police ask you their trivial questions, so you expect me to be just as simple?"

"I was just caught off guard." his ears were turning red.

"I am a professional, Kyle, I am not going to mess around with questions I already know the answer to." he nodded.

"It was two days before he went missing." Dr. Evans said coldly, "We had just announced press conference, and we got a call during lunch. He left to answer it, but I could hear him yelling through the wall. When he got back he told me that they wanted him to stop the press conference."

"And he refused." Eli said softly.

"Yes. I got a call the next day. Mr. MoLander wanted me to trash the research for him, said he'd pay me for it." Eli raised her eyebrows in surprise, "But I refused." he defended, "The next day he was gone." For once Dr. Evans looked genuinely sad for his friend, forgetting his stiff atmosphere for it.

"And all the research was destroyed?" Sheri asked.

"Of course."

"I find that hard to believe." she said coldly.

"What?" Eli asked.

"Two reasons." she said, "First, the killer would have had to had a reason to be on campus. On any other school day, it'd be easy to just blend in as a teacher, student, or staff. When it's deserted like it is now, people notice when someone strange appears. Right Eli?"

Eli had been asked a lot of questions since she got on campus.

"A plan like this had to have been much larger than you thought. A janitor would be the optimum disguise. Except a person like Sipps would know all the custodial staff, so the assassin would have been on the staff for longer than just two days. The kidnapper must be a professional. Someone who knows the ropes, someone who knows to not leave a trace especially not a desk through the window. That person was leaving a message. Like, perhaps, 'Give me the files or this is your head'."

"But why didn't they just kidnap me too?" Evans asked sourly.

"Why so upset?" Sheri asked coldly, "Feeling guilty that you didn't just accept the payment first?" Evans was silent. "Don't feel bad, you did the right thing. What happened after was their fault." And that was about as apologetic as she could get. "It's quite obvious though really."

"Not to us, Sheri." Eli told her. Sheri sighed.

"I apologize, sometimes I forget how slow your tiny minds work." Never mind, this is as apologetic as she could get. "They'd already searched his office. Both of them actually, uncovered the files in Sipps' office. But not in your office. Because you keep your copy somewhere secret."

"So then why'd they have to kill Sipps?" Eli asked.

"Kidnap." Sheri corrected, "They kidnapped him first. Sent a blackmail message to Ryan here. Then when he didn't respond... Well you know the rest." Dr. Evans stared silently at his microscope. "My apologies. It was your fault."

"I didn't know..." Evans said.

"What? You didn't know that he was still alive? That he was counting on your cooperation? That saving millions from a harmless virus meant killing someone?"

"That he wanted me to save him!" He shouted.

"What?" Eli asked.

"Look, Sipps was a great man, but he was depressed. Suicidal even. The only thing that kept him from killing himself was this research. If I had gotten him back alive there was no way he would have lasted more than a week." Evans sighed, "His wife died fifteen years ago from this 'Harmless virus', she was suffering from AIDS before they met. She couldn't fight it off. When she finally died, he was never the same. He devoted every second to this project of his. He said he didn't want anyone to go through what he did ever again."

"That's beautiful." Eli told him.

"I had to choose between letting him die or letting him die inside. You have no idea what that feels like! So just shut up!" he yelled at the phone. Sheri's end went quiet.

"I'm so sorry." Eli said leaning over to his side of the lab table and putting a hand on his shoulder.

"It's fine." he said emotionlessly.

"Are you sure?" she asked compassionately.

"Yeah, I'm-"

"What the heck are you doing!" A lady yelled from over the phone. On Sheri's side on the line, she muffled the speaker with her free hand and held her cigarette to her mouth, took a deep breath in and blew a large puff on smoke into the already cloudy atmosphere of the hospital room.

"Working, now please leave." she replied casually.

"I meant the smoke! You aren't allowed to smoke in here." The black nurse screamed at her. Sheri guessed 48 years old with two kids and she took the night shift yesterday.

"It's fine, I disabled the smoke alarm and put towels under the door to block the smoke from the rest of the hospital." the nurse walked right up to her and yanked the cigarette out of her hand. "I was using that." the nurse glared at her.

"Do you have any idea how bad these are for you?"

"Well I would smoke my own brand, but my pipe wouldn't fit in my pocket."

Back on Eli's end there was, what sounded like, a screaming walrus then Eli turned the speaker phone off and held the phone up to her ear. After she talked to the nurse for a minute she finally said... "M'kay, I'll be right over." she hung the phone up and shoved it in her bag. "Thank you for your time, Doctor."

"What was that?" he said referring to the sound that sounded like a walrus.

"I think it was Sheri throwing the phone on the ground right before she pushed the bed over. In other words I will be visiting the police department on the way home."

"Good luck then."

"Thanks." she thought for a second then said, "You wouldn't happen to have money for bus fare would you?"