Olivia knocked on the door to Lestrade's office, holding the file of Tony Loughin, a twenty-six year old junkie who decided to rob a bank on the west side of London and went out in a blaze of glory by the smoke of an officer's gun, tucked under her arm. She and Schmidt had chased him on foot for nine blocks before he trapped himself in a dead end alley, earlier that day. His back was to them, he looked up to the brick wall that stopped him when they caught him at the end of the alley.
"You're under arrest," She yelled to him and gave further instruction to slowly turn around and to put his hands on his head as she stood with her gun at the ready. Schmidt, flanking her right held a reflection of her position and they waited for Loughin to move.
Loughin slowly turned around, but didn't move his hands. His eyes shifted, brown orbs keeping track of an invisible tennis match, sizing up the officers before him, weighing his options. Even if he was able to climb the wall he wouldn't make it before they could shoot him in the leg and they were standing in front of the only other way out.
"Put your hands on your head!" Schmidt shouted over the traffic that was beginning to stir and the sirens of police cars that were catching up to them.
A wind picked up making Loughin's worn, brown jacket flip as it caught small gusts, the fringe of his dark hair brushing his forehead. He was looking past them now with a blank expression and a glimmer of intent in his eyes. He slowly raised his arm out by his side, stopping when it made a horizontal line with his shoulder. Olivia narrowed her eyes when he swallowed hard and let out a sigh.
He had every intention of getting out of this - one way or another.
Loughin whipped his arm behind his back and before she could shout in protest a loud crack echoed off of the walls and into the city. Loughin dropped to his knees and fell to his chest. She looked to Schmidt, his gun was lowered a few degrees and he stood wide eyed as Loughin began to slowly pool blood around his shoulders.
"Yeah, come in!" Lestrade shouted through the door.
She opened the door and walked into his office - instantly regretting her decision to do so. Donovan was seated in a chair in front of his desk, "I'm not going, Greg! I'm not going down there." She was not happy.
"It's bad enough I'm a man down with Anderson gone for the week, don't make it two." He opened his desk drawer pulling out his badge, shoving it in his inner jacket pocket, and his keys.
"I'm. Not. Going. Down. There. Not if you have to call him."
"Unless you can tell me right now who's doing this - I'm calling him." Lestrade stared at Donovan for a few seconds, waiting for an answer. When he didn't get one he made one last attempt, "Get in the car."
She crossed her arms over her chest and placed a leg over the other with a furrowed brow and a tilt of her head, her dark curled hair slightly bounced, dotting her actions with an exclamation point. Lestrade sighed and shook his head, his gaze wandering to the wall.
"Uhm, sorry," Olivia began awkwardly, "here are the statement reports on the bank job." She held the file out to her boss.
"Thank you, Olivia; at least some of my force does their job." He made a dig at Donovan, taking the file from her and plopping it on his desk.
Olivia smiled, though it felt more of a forced grin, and moved to leave his office. She did her best to avoid looking at Donovan - she was rarely friendly with Olivia anymore, best not to give her a reason to never be friendly ever.
"Olivia," Lestrade called stopping her at the door.
"Yeah?" She turned to face him, standing in the doorway she held on to the doorframe.
"Are you working anything else yet?" He took his turn at crossing his arms over his chest.
"Not yet, sir."
He grinned and picked his mobile up from his desk. It made annoying blip noises as he typed out a text. When he finished he shoved his phone in his pocket and looked at Olivia as he walked past, "Ride with me." He instructed as he walked out of the room.
Unsure she looked to Donovan who was glaring straight ahead of her and let out a deep sigh, she looked like a child being punished. When she didn't move Olivia rushed out of the office to grab her coat and caught up with Lestrade at the parking lot exit.
She followed him to his car and got in the passenger side as he got in on the driver's side. Why was Donovan so reluctant on continuing this case? Who was she about to meet? She looked over to Lestrade from the corner of her eye while she pulled the seat belt over her shoulder and clicked it into place.
"So where are we headed?"
Lestrade's seat belt clicked in and he followed the motions of a driver, sliding the key into the ignition and giving it a twist. The engine roared to life.
"We," he shifted into gear, holding the break for a moment, "are going to a crime scene. You've read the papers?"
"Yeah."
"The past two weeks, every couple of days a body turns up, and there is only one small thing linking them together." He looked forward and let his foot off the break and pushed on the accelerator. "We've now got three bodies and no suspects and are running out of time to find one before another body turns up." He guided the car off of the lot, letting her know which case he was talking about.
"Right, so why isn't Donovan helping you? I'm not trying to be rude, but she does usually help you."
"We're a bit," he struggled to find a word, "stuck, so we've got to call for a helping hand in the matter. Sherlock Holmes."
She recognized the name, also from the papers. 'The Hat Detective' one had called him.
"Is he that bad?" Donovan wasn't one for sitting back from things nor would she let people she had a problem with dicate how she did her job in any form. It was more of a struggle to keep her in line than anyone they had in cells. Sherlock Holmes must have been some piece of work.
"No," Lestrade sighed as we pulled up to a stop light, "God help me, he's that good."
"Oh."
"And he knows it."
They shared a glance waiting for an opening in the passing traffic before them, a weary look graced his features, the ends of his lips pulled in tight, and his brow faintly furrowed. He looked back to the light as it changed and the car pushed forward. The rest of the ride was spent in a comfortable silence as she stared out the window long enough for the streets to blur together.
When they arrived at the scene the car stopped at a curb in front of a house, blocking off the driveway preventing unwanted visitors from driving through the open gate until the police tape was put up. Lestrade cut the engine and pocketed the keys, without a word they unbuckled themselves and got out of the car. Olivia hurried around the car, meeting Lestrade on the pavement, she wrapped her coat to be tighter around her body and crossed her arms to hold it in place. While Lestrade answered a text he had received on the way over, she took a look around.
The house was walled in with a four foot tall, red brick barrier; excluding the opening for the gate to the driveway and a doorway a foot or two from that. The building itself was an eyesore, it a two story structure, the left side was red brick and the right white siding locked unevenly to the brick like a game of tetris. There were three windows to the second floor and two to the ground floor with a dark brown door in between them. Just on the other side of the gate, where it would be normally closed to the street, instead of a traditional concrete driveway it was also red brick with holes every few feet where a brick had once been.
Olivia hummed in disapproval and Lestrade, now finished with his text, slipped his phone back into his inner jacket pocket, "Right, while everyone's on their way, let's go over more of the details." He walked by her and up the brick path to the front door.
She followed him inside grateful, if anything, that the house sheltered them from the wind.
Lestrade closed the door behind them and guided her through the house. The rooms were mostly empty with the exception of busted up wood piles in two of the ground floor rooms and a couch - minus it's legs - in the living room, facing away from the front windows. The house had been abandoned long ago and was, at her best guess, a smack house and still she couldn't stop herself from reaching out to the wall and flipping up the light switch. She wasn't surprised when nothing happened.
"Is this the house of the smack heads who pay their bills?"
"Oi," Olivia laughed and looked at Lestrade, "it was worth a try."
He joined her laughter, chuckling for a moment, "Come on then, while we still have daylight left."
The stairs creaked with age as they went up them and when they reached the top they noticed, as it was hard not to, candles, hundreds of them lined against the baseboard of the walls, flowing into, around, and back out of the rooms in one long line beginning and ending at the stairs. They were all unlit, but the middles were sunken in with crippled wicks, some had dried pools of wax at the bottoms where the wax spilled over. Lestrade stopped in front of one of the doors, holding onto the knob, Olivia stood behind him.
"The body was found by one of the regulars here." He gave the knob a twist and gestured for her to enter.
It was a bathroom with just enough room for the two of them to occupy it at once; a number of the candles on the floor had been knocked over in a struggle, the only light being let in by a small window, high on the wall, above the bathtub and - Christ, there's a body in the tub...
A man, fully dressed in black slacks and a red button down dress shirt, his right sleeve yanked up to his elbow, was laid out for his final rest. His feet were crossed next to the faucet, one arm laid across his stomach and the other over his chest.
"I don't want to alarm you," She knelt down to get a closer look at the body, holding onto the ledge of the tub, "but I think this man is dead."
Lestrade chuckled, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets, a leg crossed over the other, "The other victims were found like this one, not in the open, but not hidden, dead of different causes - and the only thing that ties them together is a burn mark on the back of their hands."
He pulled a handkerchief out of his coat pocket and tapped Olivia on the shoulder. She looked back and took it from him, carefully placing it between her fingers, she used it in place of a glove as she grabbed the wrist of the unfortunate fellow in the tub.
She lifted his arm, getting a look at the brand; it looked like a spider web, but the curved lines that usually held everything together were broken in some places by small cracks and bowed in the opposite direction, connecting like semi-perfect circles. It was nothing she'd ever seen before.
She guessed the first thing that came to mind, "The black widow killer?"
"We haven't been able to make heads or tails of it; we've looked into every possibility we can think of - nothing but dead ends."
The sound of the front door opening made their heads turn, "Lestrade, are you in here?!" The voice echoed through the nearly empty house.
Lestrade left Olivia in the bathroom and descended the staircase and met Widmen at the door; who normally assisted Anderson at crime scenes, but for now he answered to Marcus Stonds, who was near retirement himself and was only called in on the lack of faith in Widmen that the Chief held.
The two of them standing side-by-side looked like the human representation of night and day. Widmen had a tall stature, nearly towering over the elderly next to him, with light brown hair that always got in his round featured face, brown eyes, and barrel-chested. Stonds stood with a small hump in his back, his hair made a horse-shoe around the back of his skull and was grey from time, his eyes a pale blue, and his chest fell and rose heavy as he breathed.
"Yeah, we need tape around the house and lights upstairs." Lestrade instructed.
Stonds broke the threshold of the house, tightening his grip on the handle of his case, "And where are we, dear boy?"
"In the bathroom, up stairs."
Stonds turned to face Widmen and gave him a light whap on his chest, "Why don't you go out and get the lights then help out with the outside business?"
It took nearly everything that Widmen had in him to keep from saying anything in return, instead he reminded himself that Anderson would be back in a week, and then he wouldn't have to be treated like second string. He knew what he was doing in his field, but veterans always knew more and apparently he needed to learn. His jaw locked, he mustered a forced smile and nodded as he walked back out to get the lights.
Lestrade took the stairs by two back up, "Now," He put his attention back to Olivia, taking his previous spot in the doorway, "Since we'll be working with them and it's your first time meeting them; I want you to go out front and bring Sherlock and John Watson in when they get here, if you would? The case has already gone public, there's no need for a delay."
He stared at her for a second or two before she nodded. She dodged and ducked around the familiar faces of the team and the swinging equipment case of Stonds, with a hearty laugh and an apology from the elder as she walked downstairs; for having two stories the house wasn't built for a parade of post murder excitement, the stairway itself was a narrow, straight shot connecting the two floors. She was nearly run over by two paramedics wheeling in a gurney at the front door. She jumped aside and let them pass, sending them the friendliest of glare/smirk combos as they went by.
Where the outside was calmer in officer foot traffic it was made up for in weather; the wind was still only a small bother, but clouds had rolled in and darkened. She stood on the stoop and pulled her hair over her shoulder in a ponytail. The ground beneath her rumbled softly with the sound of a rolling thunder from a town over. A commotion at the gate caught her attention; a member of the forensics team was arguing with two other gentlemen, though it was only a verbal exchange with the police tape separating them.
Olivia slipped her hands into her coat pockets and walked up to the disagreeing trio, "Is there a problem here, boys?"
The blondish man on the other side of the tape glanced at her and had even spared her a double take as the dark haired man next to him kept his eyes on the challenger before him. Olivia took to a space next to the man she recognized as Ross Widmen. When she had met Ross for the first time, he was like any other guy she had come across - a decent kid just starting out who had a good sense of humor and visited local pubs on the weekends if he wasn't on call. It had to of been all the time he had to spend with Anderson that had changed him over the years.
"These two civilians are trying to enter the crime scene. I told them to vacate the premises, but they refuse - trespassing on a crime scene - I'm sure that's more than enough of a reason to arrest these two, yeah?"
Olivia sighed, wishing she didn't have to have this conversation, "Ross, harassing people aside, what are you doing out here?"
"I was told to help with outside business, so I put up the police tape."
"So, you're finished then?" She glanced at the police tape, only taking her eyes off of him for a split second.
"Yeah."
"Well then," her lips pulled to a tight grin, "how about you go get the lights inside to the others and let me handle this?"
Ross finally looked at her, snapping his head in her direction. His brow furrowed making him look much older than what he was and his eyes narrowed, almost judging her for what she said. He sighed as he looked back at the two men, slowly shaking his head in annoyance before walking back up to the house. She watched him walk up the drive and through the front door.
"Sergeant Vine, I don't believe we've met." The dark haired man spoke first and held out his hand, "This is my associate Dr. John Watson and I'm-"
"Sherlock Holmes, yes." She smiled and shook his hand.
The second her fingertips touched the back of his hand he took an opportunity to look at her. She had slight bags under her eyes - insomnia(?), anemic(?), working the job(?). A small, rounded indentation on her middle finger next to her nail - left handed - from when she pressed hard while writing - stressed, passive-aggressive - with no ring on the ring finger - unattached(?). Skin around some of her nails chewed and red from healing - anxiety. Stray red hairs on her arm - dog owner - right above her elbow - big dog owner.
Olivia leg go of Sherlock's hand and shook John's, "Sorry about all that, we get a high profile media case and suddenly everyone wants to play cops and robbers." She lifted the tape for the men. "Come on in, we've been expecting the two of you."
Sherlock and John shared a look, a confusion; Sherlock was right when he said they hadn't met, if they had, the men were sure that she would be using the same resistance the rest of the force normally had. Was she new or had they simply not crossed paths until now - either way the others would have warned her about him, like Donovan had John at first...where was Donovan? John clenched his fists and coughed, he normally did when Sherlock took too long in his thoughts, his face puckered for a second - were they going in or not? It was a mystery for another time, Sherlock decided, pushing it to the back of his mind. They ducked under the tape and followed Sergeant Vine inside.
The commotion in the house had settled for the most part, Widmen was pouting out by the vehicle he arrived in, watching the others look around the property for anything that could be counted as evidence; after being told by two different people to basically stay out of the way, he was fed up and took the lights in and waited to go back to the labs, Stonds was making his way back downstairs, and lastly the paramedics were arguing with Lestrade about taking the body now.
"I said not until Sherlock has had his look around, now go wait downstairs until I've said otherwise!"
The paramedics carried the gurney back down the stairs, letting their feet fall heavily and grumbling to one another.
"Oh, that's right," Olivia spoke up as they neared the bottom, "I was sent out to get Mr. Holmes and Dr. Watson - for the life of me, I don't know why I didn't tell you two."
They stewed in their aggravation not saying anything, but returning the look she had shot them earlier and moved out of the way.
Sherlock was knelt by the tub, much like Olivia had been earlier only he was leaning over the edge examining every inch of the body with a travel sized magnifying glass when a bright flash of light burst from behind him enveloping the room. He paused for a moment, blinking away the uninvited spots in his eyes, and sighed as he stood up. He turned on his heel - a crime scene photographer stood just inside the bathroom threshold, a camera in hand as he looked through his shots, the camera strap hanging from between his fingers.
The consulting detective took a step forward, reaching for the camera strap, he grabbed it and wrapped it around his fist. He yanked it from the man's hands and snapped a picture in his face. It happened so quickly the man didn't know what to do, but close his eyes and groan from the surge of light. The next thing he knew his camera was shoved painfully into his chest and Sherlock pushed him out of the bathroom.
"Idiot."
Sherlock ignored the man's groan as he took a torch from the hands of a woman looking at the candles in the hallway. She attempted a protest, not that she needed it with the light Widmen brought in only a few feet away from her, but Sherlock only returned to the bathroom and closed the door behind him with a not so quiet slam, that he hoped got the message across. He clicked the torch on and took his place by the body again.
The only thing Sherlock was able to get from the body was that he had died that day, his clothes were still soaked, the water had been drained, and any other evidence worth finding on the body had been washed away by the water. The other bodies were still in the morgue, he'd stop by there and take a look at them, there had to be something, anything that they missed - there usually (always) was.
Sherlock put away his small magnifying glass and walked back out of the bathroom, he handed the torch back to the unappreciative woman he took it from and decided to inform Lestrade of what he could.
Downstairs Olivia was eavesdropping on the conversation, between Dr. Watson and the very cross crime scene photographer.
It was less of a conversation really, John stayed silent mostly, staring ahead of him and looked to the ground every so often from running out of places to look. He didn't understand why everyone brought their Sherlock grievances to him, some of them even had the idea of John talking to Sherlock about it - as if it would do any good. He never did, he knew how it would go over; he wouldn't know where to begin and once he had Sherlock wouldn't even be listening, but looking through online cases or examining something through his microscope. John would press on about the matter only to see Sherlock's head do a double take with a furrowed brow in realization of what John was blathering on about just to shut it all down with a quickness in his words, not so gently coated with insults.
John made the decision shortly after moving in with Sherlock to pick his battles and that was never going to be one of them, "Right well," he cut in on the photographer's story, "you should try living with him." He walked over to the base of the stairs when the paramedics were finally able to bring down the body.
"Lestrade," Olivia called for his attention; he was one the phone, he held up a finger to her and quickly finished his conversation, "is he always like that?" She asked as he joined her side.
"Who? John?"
"No, Mr. Holmes and what he did to Wade."
"Oh, that - that's..." He looked away from her and glanced around the room as he tried to think of the right word for the situation. He didn't want her to be put off by Sherlock's actions; with Donovan's little moment of rebellion earlier, he was quickly running out of people who were willing to work with the consulting detective, "it's..." to his own disappointment he couldn't think of one, "it's fine, r-really, don't worry about it."
"Well," A familiar voice exclaimed, catching their attention from the doorway, "you made your point, Lestrade." Donovan walked through the doorway as she pulled on a pair of white latex gloves over her hands. The sound of her voice and the noise of her heels bounced around the room and carried up the stairs letting everyone know she had arrived.
Sherlock was making his way back downstairs when he heard her voice. He stopped just at the top of the stairs and listened.
"Donovan, what are you doing here?" Lestrade questioned.
"It was a test," Donovan crossed her arms over her chest, "you bring in a lower rank," she gestured to Olivia, "as a threat and then you wait and see how long it takes for me to get down here, right?" Her voice was coated with a patronizing tone that got under Olivia's skin in just the right way to bother her.
"We're the same rank." She stated, she couldn't believe that she had to, but Donovan was purposely ignoring her.
Lestrade checked his watch, "And you thought an hour and a half was a long enough test?" He crossed his arms over his chest, maybe Donovan was catching whatever it was that made Sherlock...Sherlock. "People are dying, Donovan, I don't have time to give tests or play games. I told you to help finish the case earlier, you refused since we had to call in Sherlock - now are you in or out?"
"I'm here aren't I?" Donovan looked over Olivia with dismay intended, "You can go now."
Olivia turned to face Lestrade, her eyes so wide they looked as if they were going to pop out of her head, and didn't say anything - what would she even say?
"No," Mr. Holmes descended the stairs.
Donovan let her attention snap to Mr. Holmes, his head turned at an angle of which Olivia had mostly seen on her dog, Clifford - on a dog it was a look of curiosity, on Donovan it was what the line between ego and a mental breakdown looked like. It wasn't everyday she had to deal with Sherlock, but every time she saw him it was always too soon. Her jaw locked as she put her hands on her hips and through her teeth she asked, "No?"
"That's alright, Sally. I don't expect you to know what it means to hear it from a man." Mr. Holmes sounded so casual as he said it.
Donovan turned to Lestrade, "You're sure he has to be here?" It was a final plea.
"You refused to show up, you're late to the crime scene, you don't want me to take the case; it's almost as if you don't want to catch the killer." Mr. Holmes reached the final step and began to replace the latex gloves with his own black ones, "So for the sake of my time being wasted,"
"Of course, because your time and saving people's lives carry the same level of importance." Dr. Watson chimed in, sarcasm bedded in his words.
"I will," Mr. Holmes glanced at Dr. Watson for a brief second, "report any findings to either you, Detective Inspector, or Sergeant Vine and no one else." He held his hands behind his back, straightening his posture.
He let his eyes sweep across the faces of the conversation, taking in the reactions of his condition. Lestrade looked like he always did; annoyed. Donovan was on the edge of breaking - good - that meant it was working. John's eyes narrowed and his lips moved to say something, though it looked as if he couldn't find the words. Sergeant Vine...well that's new. She was smiling and trying to hide it, forcing her pressed lips to any other shape but a smile and failing miserably, but she was smiling nonetheless. She forced a cough when she began to silently laugh to the point of her shoulders shaking, keeping her dark eyes focused on the floor. Was it something he said?
"Well, that settles it then. Olivia, come back to the Yard and I'll give you the files on the case. Donovan, you come back to the Yard and I'll find something either on this case or I'll find another for you." Lestrade gave his orders and began walking out the front door.
"Is this a punishment?!" Donovan called out to him.
He stopped in his tracks and circled back, "You can consider this the next time you chose to be insubordinate." With a wave of his hand he motioned for Olivia to follow him.
Sherlock smiled at Donovan, it mirrored how his older brother Mycroft would often smile at him - smug and childish. He walked out of the house with John by his side, "What were your findings, John?"
John looked to Sherlock as they walked, "You're kidding," sometimes he just couldn't tell, "I couldn't get a look at the body in all that cramped madness. I'm going to catch a ride back to the mortuary."
They stopped at the gate, the cab they had arrived in waited for them, "That would be best, I have some stops to make." Sherlock opened the door to the cab when he heard his name being called.
"Mr. Holmes," Sergeant Vine approached the cab, standing on the outside of the opened door.
"Sergeant Vine."
"Olivia," she gently corrected him, "I'll be at one of two places; Scotland Yard or Barts. Let me know if you need anything."
She smiled weakly and with not having anything else to say she walked away. The men watched as she got into Lestrade's car and left with him.
Sherlock considered her words for only a fraction of a second before deleting them completely from his mind. He turned to his blogger, "John, you'll want to catch that ride back to the mortuary now. I need to think." Sherlock didn't wait for a response, but slid into the cab, "Brixton, please."
The storm clouds had finally broken and a heavy rain fell against the cab's windows. Sherlock fished his phone out of his pocket and began to scroll through his contacts. Broken spider web brand. He thumbed through until he found the one named Brixton and sent the number a text.
Barnardo's. -SH
He slid his phone back into his pocket and stared out the window, past the drops of water that were racing down the glass. The bodies have all been found in abandoned places, so it's inevitable that there's movement in the underground. He would need every inch of the Homeless network and Eliza could get word out the quickest. She volunteered at Barnardo's a charity used clothes shop, a place he put her for the fact that most of the network stop in there daily and this needed to be done quickly.
Dead bodies didn't alarm Doctor Watson - in fact the thought of the act of murder alarmed his good nature more than the bodies did, but that's just the outcome of war. Well, that and the intense hatred of hospital lighting. When he was deployed he didn't have the never ending hum of electricity to line his thoughts. How could anyone focus? He closed his eyes and tried build the focus for the corpse lying in front of him, for breathing, for the echos of explosions that he kept trapped in his mind. The harder he focused, the louder they fell.
He jumped when the door swung open.
"Oh, Doctor Watson, hello." Olivia greeted him, surprised that he was there. After she had left with Lestrade she has assumed that Doctor Watson and Mr. Holmes would be off together running the streets of London and chasing leads, but maybe that was just how people spoke of them. Who ever talked about the boring bits of an action movie? "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you." She slipped her coat off and hung it on a hook.
Doctor Watson took a deep breath, "Oh, no worries. I was just lost in my thoughts for a moment." He looked back down to the body, covered to the neck with a sheet, "and John -you can call me John." He smiled, a small line from his lips.
Olivia joined John standing across from him, looking over the body. It was her first case without Schmidt and she had only just met John about an hour ago. She wasn't quite sure sure what to ask or do. John was just the same.
"Have you found anything so far?" Olivia broke the silence for the sake of sanity.
John sighed. "Nothing but what I would call obvious, unfortunately." John looked over his notes, "Asphyxiation by drowning, no sign on defense markings, the branding on his arm was done post mortem and I'm still waiting on the toxicology results."
"He was found in a bathtub with no running water in a house in the middle of a drug region and there's three others like him."
"Right." There really wasn't much else and from what John could tell of Molly's notes, for all the two could tell the other bodies were just as clueless as this one.
The door chimed as Sherlock walked into the store, he closed it behind himself putting a mute on everything outside. The storm still had its way of getting in through the vibrations of its thunder and the pelting of rain against the windows, but what was he to do about that?
Sherlock walked through the store, around the racks of clothes and the shelves of shoes, making his way to the storage room where he knew she would be; folding and sorting the clothes and shoes into their special piles made to make putting on display quicker. He pushed open the storage room door and found her sitting on the floor against the wall with her knees in front of her chest. There were small piles of clothes around the room waiting to be washed and put out on the floor - a stacked washer and dryer was tucked into the corner humming with its load use.
Eliza opened her mouth to a wide 'o' shape and a second later smoke rolled out from her black painted lips. She raised her hand, a joint between her fingers, and took a hit. She lowered her hand and as she held the smoke in her lungs she greeted him, "Sherlock."
"What have you heard?" He asked once the door was dome swinging.
She exhaled and began coughing as more smoke poured out of her, "You haven't - told me what you're - looking for." She mangled the words through her fit. She lifted her arm, holding the joint out to Sherlock as an offering.
He ignored it, "Oh, I'm looking for a party clown who accepts rowdy goats as payment. After knowing my line of work and seeing the recent headlines - if you need me to tell you what I'm looking for, then tell me, what's the point in having you in the network?"
She licks her lips before swallowing the dry lump that had formed in the back of her mouth, "The only thing I can tell you that's new is a drug that has been sought after - Jet Fuel, they call it. I don't know who's selling it, but people are looking for it. Whether it's connected to your dead bodies or not, well, that would be your line of work." Her tone settled in the defensive way Sherlock had grown accustomed too, it had made it that much easier to ignore.
He pulled out his mobile and began a search for Jet Fuel.
JET FUEL: aviation turbine fuel (ATF), or avtur, is a type of aviation fuel designed for use in aircraft powered by gas-turbine engines. It is colourless to straw-colored in appearance.
Density : 775.0-840.0 g/L Melting point : −47 °C (−53 °F; 226 K)
Boiling point : 176 °C (349 °F; 449 K) Flash point : 38 °C (100 °F; 311 K)
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World-Wide Civil Jet Fuel Grades
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Europe's airlines spruce up their jet fuel hedges
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Why you really shouldn't run Jet Fuel in your car...
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Searches related to "Jet Fuel"...
"Who's looking for it?" Sherlock asked directing his phone to its gallery.
"I don't know their names, I can find out and get back to you?"
The buzzer on the dryer went off, signaling the end of its cycle, "Don't be slow about it you should have already known them - and what have you seen of this?" He pulled up a picture of the brand left on the body from the bathtub.
She got up from the floor and stood in front of him, "I've never seen it."
Sherlock stood there for a moment, he should probably rotate his connections through the network, because this was getting him nowhere. He put his phone in sleep mode before pocketing it and walking out of the stockroom door.
Mr. Holmes; Mr. Holmes talk about the boring bits.
Olivia sat in a desk chair in the flat number 221B on Baker Street. John and herself had gotten the same text from Mr. Holmes saying to meet him back at 221B, that there was no actual reason to hurry, but they should be there anyway. They had walked into him playing a violin, a song she didn't recognize, and he had now just finished rattling off about the chemistry of jet fuel. She held her head in her hand, her elbow resting on the table and listened as he continued to go on about jet fuel companies.
"Mr. Holmes," She called for his attention.
The consulting detective didn't seem to hear her as he kept going on, staring at the papers he had taped and pin pushed to the wall. Pictures of the victims tied to each other by strands of yarn -all aligned to avoid covering the spray painted smiley face on the wall.
"Mr. Holmes," She stressed it a little louder.
He didn't turn to face her, but he did respond, "Oh, Sherlock, please."
"Sherlock, what does jet fuel have to do with the murders?"
This he turned around for, "Literal jet fuel, probably nothing, the pictures are just to fill the empty spaces, the maps are what's important." He turned back around to face his crime shrine.
John and Olivia stood and moved to stand behind Sherlock, looking at the markings he had made on the maps. He had drawn on the maps, lines and circles charting whatever information he need to keep track of - black circles, with red, blue and green lines following around certain areas of London.
Olivia leaned over to John, "What are the circles and lines for?" She quietly asked.
"The circles are for where the bodies have been found and each color of the lines is for a person in the homeless network and it surrounds the area Sherlock has temporarily assigned them."
"And the homeless network?"
"Pretty much exactly how it sounds."
Olivia nodded and put her focus back on the maps.