Free Lock & Mori by Heather W. Petty

house. Things are . . . different.”
    I knew we couldn’t go to Sadie’s dorm. Her dorm mother was the second coming of Stalin when it came to guests. That Sadie managed to regularly sneak in past curfew was a testament to her criminal tendencies.
    â€œLibrary, maybe?” I offered.
    â€œSay the London Library and I’ll be yours forever.”
    â€œSure,” I said with a grin. “London Library.”
    Sadie’s expression brightened again and she batted her eyelashes. “You do know the way to my heart.”
    â€œI can’t tonight. I’ve got to get out of this thing I said I’d do. But Thursday?”
    She prattled off a where and when we’d meet, and I wondered if she’d actually be there when I showed up. All I could do was try.
    x x x
    By the time Sherlock and I were in the middle of the lake in an orange boat with a light-yellow bottom, I had almost decided it might be easier to duck out of our little game and discover what I could on my own. But the minute he pulled a stack of papers from his messenger bag, all my thoughts of leaving shimmered from my head. Front and center on the very top page was the Man in Green from the photo, one of the three men Mr. Patel stood behind. FRANCISCO TORRES, FOUND DEAD IN PARK , the headline screamed above his head. I snatched the printout from Sherlock’s hands and skimmed the ­article, which pointed to the irony of an infamous bank robber, who’d been released on a technicality after serving only half his sentence, falling victim the very next day to the petty theft of a mugging in Regent’s Park.
    â€œWhat does this have to do with anything?” I managed to choke out. I forced myself to return the article with a smidge of disinterest in my expression, but not before memorizing the date and page number so I could find it later.
    â€œYou said Patel was in trouble with the law. So was this one.”
    â€œTwo isn’t a pattern,” I said, though my mind was already weaving together too many ways that it could be.
    â€œCorrect, which is why . . .” Sherlock slid another printout from the middle of his stack and handed it to me. A smaller headline this time, with a head shot of Mustache Man, who had been tried for some elaborate banking scheme but never convicted. He, too, had been stabbed to death in Regent’sPark, the apparent victim of a robbery gone wrong.
    Sherlock’s final printout was an obituary for Todd White, sparse on details other than a long list of family who’d survived him and now lived in Lewes, where they ran some kind of herbalist shop. It felt more like an advertisement for the shop than a write-up of his life. The obituary didn’t even have a picture, but Sherlock never did anything halfway. Stapled to the printout was what looked like a cabbie license picture of the Striped Man from the photo of my mother. All four of the men standing in a group were dead, as if the killer were using my photo as a check-off list for his victims.
    â€œThree more victims. All petty criminals not paying for their real crimes. All dead of stab wounds. All found in the park.”
    My eyes roamed around each of the articles as though some secret were hidden in the speckled margins. “How did no one see this before now?”
    â€œYou ask this? After the endless incompetence we saw the other night?”
    â€œNot every policeman is like those we saw.” Only Blue-Hair Girl and Stepdad were left, and their faces swam through my thoughts as I handed the pages back to Sherlock. “Were there no others? It can’t be so rare for there to be stabbings.”
    â€œNone in Regent’s Park. These all happened within the past six months. But I went back three years.”
    â€œNone in the park in three years? That can’t be right.”
    â€œLots in the alleys and streets surrounding the park, and one man beaten pretty badly, but none in the