“Two isn’t a pattern,” I said, though my mind was already weaving together too many ways that it could be.
“Correct, 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’s Park, 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.
“Three 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?”
“You ask this? After the endless incompetence we saw the other night?”
“Not 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.”
“None in Regent’s Park. These all happened within the past six months. But I went back three years.”
“None in the park in three years? That can’t be right.”
“Lots in the alleys and streets surrounding the park, and one man beaten pretty badly, but none in the park that I could find in the papers. Of course, if we want to do a thorough search, we’d need access to police records.”
“I can get that,” I said without thinking. By the time I realized what I’d decided to do, I looked up and Sherlock was smiling. “Why so smug?”
“I thought you might quit our little game. In fact, I was pretty sure you’d do it today.”
“And maybe I still will.”
Sherlock shook his head. “You’re hooked. But never mind that. I’m hooked as well. It’s compelling work, this.” He leaned back, his elbows resting on the prow of our little boat. His smug smile lingered as he stared out across the lake.
“Truly, Lock, just when I find a way to tolerate you.” I attempted a burdened sigh to accompany my words, but Sherlock sat up again, his eyes alight. I thought perhaps he’d come up with another clue.
“‘Lock.’ You called me that earlier. I like it. Never had a nickname before.” He leaned back again, this time crossing his arms behind his head and closing his eyes.
I slid the pages off the seat and read the story of Todd White, ex-con-man turned cabdriver. He’d been off the police radar for fifteen years before he was found dead—stabbed cleanly in the heart, his body sprawled across one of the large planters on a central walkway in Regent’s Park. He’d been the first, actually. The second page of the article had a picture of the planter. I’d walked past it a few times in the past six months. I even remember wondering what had happened to the flowers on the one side, never for a moment imagining they’d been crushed under the weight of a dead man or ripped out to remove blood evidence for the police.
The crimes were starting to feel too close. One dead man in a photo with my mother could still have been coincidence. Four dead men felt like it meant something. It suddenly felt imperative to know my mom’s part in this group. Were they merely friends at university? Did they work together?
“What do you see?” Lock asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been staring at that page for minutes. It’s not nothing.”
I didn’t really want to admit that I’d just been lost in my own thoughts, so I let myself really study the planter for a few seconds before answering him. It looked like an old fountain with two tiers that had been filled in with soil and then lush plants. It even had a large finial at the top. But I kept coming back to an ornament on the side that I could barely make out in the pixelated reprint of the original photo.
“There’s something here on the planter where the first one was found.” I held the page up and pointed to where I meant. “Can you see what that is?”
“It’s a four-leaf clover,” he said, without looking closely at all.
I looked again. “It could be, I suppose.”
“No, it is. I went by there earlier today. There’s a clover on one side and a tree on the other.”