Chapter 522

"Are you interested in the theater square bombing?"

Evenson didn’t bother with small talk. He went straight to the point.

"Of course."

Holmes’s eyes lit up.

He was a strange man. Most investigators chased difficult cases because the rewards were lucrative, the recognition satisfying, or both.

Holmes simply enjoyed solving them.

To him, the investigation itself was the reward.

"Then how much do you know about the case?" Evenson asked, quietly pleased by his reaction.

"Me? How much could I possibly know?"

Holmes gave him an incredulous look.

"I’m only a civilian consultant for the NYPD. How much access do you think I have to something like this?"

Once the theater bombing had been classified as a terrorist attack, federal agencies would have descended on it.

The FBI and CIA would certainly be involved. Homeland Security was probably involved as well. The terrorist organization had explicitly threatened the President, which meant the Secret Service would inevitably have a seat at the table.

The NYPD?

They would get the privilege of handing over the crime scene, evidence, and witness statements before being politely told to stay out of the way.

If the police themselves barely had the authority to investigate, expecting a civilian consultant to know much was ridiculous.

"So I’d like to hire you to investigate it," Evenson said. "You’ll take the case?"

Holmes didn’t answer immediately.

Instead, his eyes narrowed.

"You said this had nothing to do with SHIELD."

Evenson raised an eyebrow.

Holmes had clearly reached his own conclusion.

After an attack of this magnitude, SHIELD had to be investigating. So why had one of their agents come looking for him?

Obviously, their investigation had hit a wall.

Obviously, they needed Sherlock Holmes.

And if SHIELD needed Sherlock Holmes, then perhaps Sherlock Holmes could afford to make them sweat a little.

Especially after the organization had rejected him so thoroughly in the past.

"No." Evenson stood and shook his head. "SHIELD has officially decided not to get involved. In fact, because I got mixed up in this mess, Nick Fury gave me an extended vacation that’s basically indistinguishable from suspension."

Holmes remained unconvinced.

Anyone could say that.

What if Evenson was simply trying to lure him into doing SHIELD’s dirty work?

"You expect me to take your word for it?" Holmes asked.

"Think about it."

Evenson spoke calmly.

"If SHIELD were handling this investigation, would I really need to come to you?"

Holmes’s expression darkened.

Evenson noticed, but continued anyway.

"I’m not insulting you. SHIELD may not have investigators as good as you, but they have enormous resources. Eyes and ears everywhere. Intelligence networks you can’t compete with. Sometimes they can combine enough information to skip the deduction entirely and put the answer directly in front of themselves."

Holmes considered that for several seconds.

"Very well."

He finally agreed.

If a case were a novel, Holmes thought, then the clues he uncovered amounted to a rough outline. His deductions were what turned that outline into a complete story.

SHIELD was different.

SHIELD’s investigation could amount to receiving the finished novel.

Not a serialized draft.

The completed book.

At most, there might be a few harmless typos left to correct.

Perhaps that was why they had rejected him so casually, Holmes mused. Even after he had been clean for a full year, they had still dismissed him without hesitation.

To SHIELD, his talents were useful but unnecessary.

He was decoration, not infrastructure.

Then Holmes’s attention returned to Evenson.

"And you?"

His gaze sharpened.

"Who exactly are you?"

Evenson blinked.

"What?"

"The way you speak about SHIELD. The way you say Director Fury’s name with such obvious impatience. You clearly hold a position of some importance within the organization."

Holmes studied him.

"So what exactly is your position?"

"Does that matter?"

"Of course it matters."

Holmes waved a hand toward the room.

"A terrorist attack. The most notorious terrorist in the world claiming responsibility. And a SHIELD operative who has supposedly been suspended."

He placed particular emphasis on the last word.

"You and I are ordinary people by comparison. If Watson and I are going to work with you, we need to know exactly what sort of person we’re working with."

His expression hardened.

"I’ve learned one thing from investigating criminals for this long. The arrow you never see coming from behind can be more dangerous than the murderer standing in front of you."

"Not a bad lesson."

Evenson slowly raised one hand.

"You want to know who I am?"

He snapped his fingers.

Click.

The Corruptor’s armor appeared around him in an instant.

The sleeveless armor settled over his body, dark and unmistakably supernatural. Evenson looked at Holmes through the mask.

"There. Now you know."

Holmes and Watson exchanged a stunned glance.

"The Avenger..."

Evenson’s armor dissolved into black smoke and vanished from his body.

Holmes’s surprise lasted only a moment.

"Excellent."

He clenched one fist in satisfaction.

"Now we’ve established a basic level of trust. We can proceed."

"Before we start, there’s something you should know."

Evenson’s expression became serious.

"The people behind this attack may not be ordinary humans."

He wasn’t warning them out of kindness.

He simply didn’t want Holmes and Watson approaching the case as though they were dealing with an ordinary criminal. If they assumed conventional rules applied, they might overlook something important.

"Mutants?"

Holmes practically lit up.

"That’s wonderful!"

Evenson stared at him.

"You’re not frightened?"

"Why would I be?"

"You’ve dealt with cases involving them before?"

"Similar cases? No."

Holmes looked almost offended by the question.

"But I’ve always wanted to investigate one."

His enthusiasm was bordering on alarming.

"It would be extremely valuable for developing my theory."

"Your theory?"

"My theory."

Holmes leaned forward, barely containing his excitement.

"Elementary deduction."

He spoke the words with the reverence of a man discussing a sacred text.

"The method of using available evidence to construct reasonable, logical deductions and arrive at the truth."

He paused.

"But the world is becoming stranger by the day. That makes the method increasingly difficult to test."

His eyes gleamed.

"So I intend to prove that it remains valid."

Evenson stared at him.

Holmes continued before he could respond.

"What difference is there between a mutant criminal and an ordinary criminal?"

He fixed Evenson with an intense stare.

"They still leave fingerprints. Footprints. Physical evidence. Even if they possess something bizarre, such as teleportation, they should still have motives, behavioral patterns, and other logical factors that can be traced."

His smile widened.

"The only difference is that their weapon is no longer a knife or a pistol."

Holmes pointed at Evenson.

"It’s themselves."

"I believe that if I can understand the patterns involved, I can deduce the truth. No matter what abilities they possess, no matter how strange the circumstances..."

Holmes’s voice settled into absolute conviction.

"...there is only one truth."

For the first time, Evenson found himself genuinely impressed.

Holmes was eccentric, arrogant, and apparently incapable of leaving a perfectly good mystery alone.

But his dedication to deduction was real.

"All right," Evenson said.

He turned toward the door.

"Come with me."