The Return of Sherlock James

by Gary D. Snyder

Chapter 12:

As Cindy wondered how things would finally turn out, Sheen paced slowly back and forth in front of her, his head down and his hands placed carefully behind his back. This actually had a good effect on the others in the classroom, as the memory of Sheen's previous cross-examination led them to expect a brilliant second performance on his part. Cindy, unfortunately, knew the real facts of the situation and realized that Sheen was not formulating an ingenious strategy or deliberately building up the drama. Without the book gum to help him, Sheen was simply at a loss for what to do.

Even so, Cindy realized that Sheen had to so something to rebut the points Nick had raised, and patience had never been one of her virtues in any case. "Will you get on with it?" she muttered, just loud enough for Sheen to hear.

"What?" he replied, also in a whisper.

"You're supposed to be cross-examining me! So start asking some questions!"

"Not a good idea," Sheen whispered in a conspiratorial tone. "That's exactly what they'd expect me to do."

Sheen's logic was insane, but not insane enough to work. "Of course they'd expect you to do that. It's what you're supposed to do. So get on with it!"

"But -"

The no-nonsense tone of Cindy's voice was unmistakable and quite familiar to Sheen. "Now!"

"Okay, okay," Sheen mumbled unhappily. "You're the boss." He sighed heavily, squared his shoulders, and cleared his throat before speaking normally again. "So," he said amiably, "how are you doing?"

Out of all the questions Cindy could have anticipated in this situation this was definitely not one. "Huh?"

"Answer the question!" Sheen barked, looking suddenly fierce.

"Fine…I guess," Cindy answered hesitantly.

"Oh, really?" Sheen's voice was thick with undisguised sarcasm. "Considering that you're on trial for crimes for which, if convicted, you will be undoubtedly expelled and very possibly brought up on criminal charges, I find that response most suspicious." He tapped the tips of his fingers together with studied deliberation. "Most suspicious, indeed."

Cindy couldn't believe what she was hearing and her voice nearly shook with anger. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she hissed. "Your job is to defend me!"

"I beg to differ," Sheen replied in an unusually calm voice. "My job to determine the truth, wherever that truth may lie or whom that truth may harm." His voice suddenly took on an edge as hard and sharp as a blade of tempered steel. "And I want that truth!"

"You want the truth?" Cindy snapped back. "You can't handle the truth! You can't even handle fraction arithmetic in math class!"

At Cindy's disparaging remark Sheen became defensive. "You don't think so? Well, even I can add some things up. Like how no one heard anyone take Miss Fowl's pen. It's pretty obvious that whoever took it was sitting in the front row. And guess who just happens to sit in the front row?" He pretended to think hard. "Oh, I know. It's you!"

"That doesn't mean anything!" Cindy protested. "So do other students. Even your girl friend Libby sits up front. Why don't you accuse her?" While the other students appeared shocked at Cindy's attack Libby looked stunned.

Sheen's voice again became sarcastic. "Oh, of course. Libby testifies against you so you immediately accuse her of the crime. Well, save the acting for Willoughby's next lame play, lady." Sheen stopped and looked thoughtful. "Which I understand is something about Hamlet under the sea."

"I never accused -" Cindy began to say.

"And she sits right next to you. I guess that would have made it easy for her to have pocketed Jimmy's gold from your desk without anyone noticing. Very convenient." He leaned forward. "How very convenient for you, indeed. Maybe…" He stopped and gave Cindy another suspicious look. "Maybe a little too convenient."

"Anyone could have -" Cindy tried again.

"And I also suppose," Sheen continued, ignoring and interrupting Cindy's attempt to respond, "that she's the one who also planted those stolen items in your backpack as well. Maybe even when you two were so conveniently alone in the gym yesterday morning before school started."

Cindy looked startled. "What did you say?"

Sheen waved off her question. "Well, ha! And again, ha!" He turned stiffly and marched towards where the jurors were sitting, still expostulating. "Well, forget it, Vortex. Everyone knows that Libby is one of the most honest and ethical students at Lindbergh Elementary. To accuse or even suspect her of these heinous crimes is truly laughable." He paused briefly to laugh tonelessly to underscore his point. "And yet," he continued, swinging back to face Cindy again, "you expect anyone to accept or believe this flimsy tissue of speculation and conjecture as a believable defense?" He stopped, panting to regain his breath. "But, since it's the best we've got, I'll go with it," he decided. "No further questions."

"You may step down, Cindy," instructed Miss Fowl.

Cindy however, did not move. Instead, she gazed at Libby with a mixture of suspicion, wonder, and doubt. "It all fits," she said.

"I beg your pardon?" asked Miss Fowl.

"Sheen actually got it right. It all fits." Cindy stood slowly and walked towards Libby, who was staring back at her without any expression. "It would have been very easy for Libby to have taken that sample of gold from my desk when everyone moved to the front of the class. And just as easy to have taken Miss Fowl's pen without anyone hearing because her desk is only a few feet away and she wouldn't have had to pass by anyone."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Libby replied bleakly.

"And yesterday," Cindy went on, almost as if to herself. "Yesterday you called me to come to school early to do some aerobics. But the day before that you were the one who spotted Jimmy following us in the mall. You were the one who told me about it."

"That's right," Carl put in. "I remember Libby saying that yesterday morning."

"You weren't interested in exercising. You wanted to find out how much Jimmy suspected and followed him to school to find out. And when you realized that he was getting close to the truth, you decided you had to ditch the evidence by planting it in my book bag when we were in the gym. You practically twisted my arm to get me to go with you."

Sheen sounded awkward. "Well, to be fair, you could stand to lose a pound or -" Cindy's vicious glare cut him off and he swallowed hard. "I think I'll exercise my right to remain silent at this time."

Cindy turned her gaze back at Libby and shook her head in disbelief and wonder. "And when you did plant those things in my bag, you added your own bracelet…just so you could pretend later that it was stolen and further incriminate me."

Libby shrugged indifferently. "So you say."

Cindy's face was a mask of fury and hurt. "Why?" was all she could choke out. "Why would you do this? To Jimmy…to Miss Fowl…and to me? You're supposed to be my best friend." She was on the verge of tears. "Why?"

Libby leaned back in her seat, looking innocent. "I really don't understand you, Cindy. I can understand why you'd grasp at any straw, but to accuse me of doing something like this? It sounds like you're the one not acting like a best friend now."

"Everything adds up," Cindy told her. "It had to be you. Everyone has to see that now"

Libby yawned and smiled. "It's too bad you don't have any proof."

"No," a voice said. "But I do."

So absorbed had everyone been in Cindy and Libby's exchange that no one had noticed Jimmy's arrival. He had had heard most of what the girls had said and was standing in the doorway pulling behind him, of all things, a red wagon covered with a tarp. This he pulled into the classroom and left at the front of the room while he walked to join Cindy and Libby.

"Where have you been?" Cindy demanded.

Jimmy looked apologetic. "Sorry I'm late," he said. "But the trip back took longer than I thought it would. But it looks as though I got here in time."

"You said you had proof that it was Libby and not Cindy who took all those things?" Carl asked him.

"Yes," Jimmy replied, "and I'll get to that soon enough. But first, I think I need to explain some things. First of all, why Libby would do this sort of thing."

"I still can't believe that she would have," observed Miss Fowl.

"Exactly. It's something Libby would normally never do. And I blame myself for not realizing what was happening sooner. If I really was a genius I would have picked up on it much sooner. As hard as it is to believe, it was Carl who really had the key to the solution all along."

"I did?" Carl asked in surprise, and then quickly recovered. "I mean, yes, I did. I mean, I can't help…" His voice trailed off and he looked suddenly offended. "What do you it's hard to believe?"

"Later, Carl," Jimmy replied. "Do you remember what you said after Miss Fowl's pen disappeared?"

Carl thought and shook his head. "No."

Jimmy sighed. "You wondered why someone had waited until then to take it. I mean, Miss Fowl's had that pen for five years. If someone really wanted to take it, why wait until that day to take it? And on the same day my quasi-gold disappeared? That was the first clue. Something had changed. But I completely overlooked it. I also missed the second clue."

Cindy asked the obvious question. "And what was the second clue?"

Jimmy looked solemn. "Does anyone recall what Libby said when I passed around the quasi-gold?"

"She asked you if it was real gold," Sheen answered after a few seconds thought.

"Right," Jimmy nodded. "But it wasn't what she said. It was how she said it."

"How did she say it, Jimmy?" asked Miss Fowl.

"She called me 'Neutron'," Jimmy explained. "Cindy calls me that all the time, but not Libby. She almost always calls me 'Jimmy', especially to my face. It's normally in her character to respect people. The thefts and the change in Libby happening at the same time were too much of a coincidence. I should have picked up on that right away."

Sheen looked puzzled. "But you haven't said why Libby would have changed like that."

Jimmy nodded. "And that's my fault," he admitted. He reached into his pocked and extracted a small gadget. "Remember this?"

"Isn't that your hypno-thingie?" asked Carl, adjusting his glasses to get a clearer look.

"Exactly. I was tinkering with it that morning before school. When I put it into my pocket I accidentally activated it without realizing it. And that's when I implanted the hypno-suggestion that started all this. I said -"

"You said," Cindy completed for Jimmy, "that there was nothing wrong with being unethical. And that's what affected Libby!"

"But all five of us were there," Sheen objected. "How did you know that it was Libby and not one of us? Or all of us?"

"It couldn't be all of us," Jimmy replied. "The device works on a single frequency of alpha wave so only once person would have been affected. I knew it couldn't be me. When Miss Fowl's pen disappeared I knew it had to be someone in the front row, which eliminated Sheen. Then, when the quasi-gold turned up in Cindy's backpack I knew that it had to be Libby."

The class, as a whole, said, "Huh?"

"As I explained to the class," Jimmy clarified, "quasi-gold is unstable so that it will revert to its original form if subjected to radiation. What no one knew is that I irradiated Cindy that afternoon just after class was dismissed so that I could still track her just in case I lost sight of her. If she had taken the sample and had it in her bag, the radiation would have turned it back into lead. But it hadn't, so I knew that Cindy couldn't have had it. That meant it had to have been Libby."

"There's still no proof of that," pointed out Nick.

"Yeah," added Butch. "You're being a Libby-accusing bully without proof. And that's the worst kind!"

"As I said, there is proof," countered Jimmy. "The contents of this wagon are the proof."

Libby sneered. "And just what do you have in there to prove I'm guilty?" she asked as Jimmy walked over to the wagon.

"Absolutely nothing," Jimmy answered, to the puzzlement of everyone. He pulled the tarp off the top to reveal an assortment of gadgets. "Carl, Sheen, and Libby, could you please come here and take get the transmutor prototype I told you about over to Miss Fowl's desk?" Sheen and Carl obediently rose to rummage through the wagon's pile of odds and ends, but Libby looked suddenly stricken.

"Got it Jimmy," Carl announced, holding up the odd-looking contraption.

"No, you don't," Sheen contradicted him, brandishing another strange device that looked like an electric toothbrush with an old-fashioned TV antenna. "I do."

"That's not the thing Jimmy told me about," argued Carl. "This is it."

Sheen shook his head violently. "It is not. This is it!"

Before the argument could go on Jimmy interrupted them. "You're both right," he said. "Before I left I asked all three of you to keep an eye on my lab because I someone that I suspected of being the thief breaking in. I told Carl that I suspected Sheen, I told Sheen that I suspected Libby, and I told Libby that I suspected Carl. I also told each of you to keep an eye out for a specific device that I knew the thief wouldn't be able to resist. I was sure that they would steal it while I was away, and be smart enough to keep me from seeing who got into the lab. But I made sure to tell each of you that a different object was the transmutor prototype. As everyone can see, Carl and Sheen found the devices I told them about."

Everyone turned to face Libby, knowing what Jimmy would say next.

"But," Jimmy concluded, "The device I told Libby about isn't here. I know. I've checked. But Libby already knew that…because she took it. Isn't that right, Libby?"

Libby's face changed from fear to defiance. She leapt to her feet, drawing something from a side pocket and pointing it at Jimmy. "That's not all I took," she spat out. "Recognize this?"

"Leaping leptons!" Jimmy spluttered. "That's my shrink ray!"

Cindy looked puzzled. "How dangerous can that be?"

"Very dangerous," Jimmy cautioned. "It was on my workbench because I was tinkering with it. It can shrink things down to subatomic size now. If that happens, good luck on anyone ever finding whoever got shrunk!"

Sheen began walking towards Libby. "Back off, Doll Boy! Ain't nobody taking me in!" she warned him.

"Sheen! Stay ba-a-ack!" squawked Miss Fowl.

Sheen shook his head but slowed his advance slightly. "No way, Libby," he told her. "Maybe Jimmy's hypno controller thing made you do some things. But the Libby I know would never really hurt anyone."

"I'm warning you," Libby snarled. "Back off!"

"She means it, Sheen!" Cindy called out. "Don't get any closer!"

"You don't want to do this," Sheen insisted. "You didn't even really want to take those things. That's why you tried so hard to get caught. That's why you took the risk of someone seeing you take Miss Fowl's pen. That's why you tried to frame the most unlikely person of all as the thief. That's why you fell for Jimmy's trap. The real Libby is inside, fighting to get back out."

Libby's voice quavered and she gripped the shrink ray with her other hand in a vain attempt to stop the shaking. "I don't…I don't know what you're talking about."

Sheen was only a few paces away now. "I don't know about a lot of science stuff like Jimmy, or artsy stuff like Cindy…" he began.

"Or llama stuff like me," Carl piped up.

Sheen rolled his eyes. "Yeah, whatever, Carl. Anyway, one thing I do know is that hypnosis can't make people do anything they really don't want to do. You didn't want to steal. You didn't want to get away with it. And you don't want to hurt anyone…not even me. But if I'm wrong…" He took a deep breath. "Well, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take a genius like Jimmy to see that the problems of two little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. I'd always believed that we had something special together, but if I'm wrong, well, then go ahead and shoot. If that's the kind of Libby that would be left in this world, you'd be doing me a favor." He stopped directly in front of her with the shrunk ray pushed into his chest.

In stark contrast to Sheen's almost serene calm, Libby appeared to be in utter torment. Her face twisted in uncertainty, changing from deadly intent to interminable indecision as her thumb hovered over the activator on the shrink ray. No longer able to endure the agony, her mind finally took the only recourse left to it. She fainted, falling into Sheen's waiting arms as the shrink ray dropped from her senseless fingers, a look of peace settling over her face as he held her to him.

"Case closed," he said softly as the class breathed a collective sigh of relief.

End of Chapter 12