Sherlock rides in the cab, staring out the window when his phone buzzes. He takes it out, and we see the caller is Lestrade. He looks a bit confused, as if wondering why Lestrade would call instead of text. His slight frown disappears and a fleeting smile takes its place, and his eyes gleam with anticipation. He flicks the phone open and puts it to his ear.
"Lestrade, what is it? Another case?" Sherlock asks with some eagerness, watching London pass by.
Lestrade is standing inside 221B, looking anxious, he says, "Not exactly... You need to get to 221B immediately." He hangs up the phone.
Fear flashes momentarily in Sherlock's eyes as he snaps his phone shut. "221B, Baker Street," he says to the cabby.
When the cab pulls up to 221B, Sherlock slips out of the taxi, looking up at the windows of the flat. Then he suddenly smoothly strides to the door, and runs up the seventeen steps. He stops at the top, in the doorway, looking frozen. He takes one more step and stumbles, just a little.
Lestrade looks over at him, concerned, and exchanges a glance with Sally.
"Mrs. Hudson called us…" Lestrade says.
Sherlock walks over to the body, lying near the window, between the table and the chair, and sinks to his knees, his emotional "veil" tearing apart.
"John…" he whispers.
He looks helpless, afraid.
John's body lies there, his clothes torn and completely red and soaked with blood, his body sliced precisely. His limbs delicately arranged, flawlessly symmetrical, his arms lying face up, perfectly balanced to one another, fingers curled in death, his legs perfectly straight in front of him, his head at an artful angle. His chest sliced deeply in two parallel arrows, pointing toward his face. His arms and legs carefully carved symmetrically with stripes of red, in a careful curving pattern, his face is also cut, with the same curving scratches, barely noticeable, lightly beaded with blood. His sides, too, contain the nonfatal wounds, in that artful curving pattern. His eyes rolled slightly upward, his expression holding a forgotten and ceased pain, yet otherwise vacant. Pools of wet blood stains the carpet, the ends of his hair wet with scarlet, and sticky with cold sweat. His hair a scraggly, chaotic mess about his head.
A single tear runs down Sherlock's cheek as he touches the bloody, cold chest wounds, his face full of anguish at the sight of his dead friend. He pulls his hand back and looks blankly at the blood dripping from his fingers. His face shows his inability to completely grasp what has happened. Then he looks at John's face. Suddenly, his expression goes harder and colder than ever before. He closes his bloodied hand into a fist, and with eyes made of ice, he stands.
"I will find you," he says with a quiet, deadly frostiness . He turns and seems to pull himself back together again. "Lestrade, what have you found?"
Lestrade silently hands Sherlock a wet, crimson piece of paper. "It's a note. We found it on the body. It's addressed to you."
Sherlock takes the dripping red paper without a word. On one side it has a symbol: 虎 and Sherlock's name. He flips the paper over and reads what it says:
Do you like the little present I left you, Sherlock?
Fair Tigri
Sherlock looks up, with a slight glare, as if thinking, deeply… and possibly darkly.
虎: Chinese symbol for Tiger
Tigri: Greek for Tiger
He strides, pacing the small room, with that same, small, deadly glare, his eyes slightly narrowed in concentration. He stops by the body of John, and kneels down again, this time, looking for clues as he slips his magnifying glass out of his coat pocket. He stares intently at the wound marks with his magnifying glass:
Knife. Most likely: Kukri knife, originating from Nepal
He looks carefully at John's wrists with his small glass.
Rub marks, less blood- hands had been tied.
He focuses on the carpet around John's body, careful not to disturb any marks made.
Slight heel indentations- about an inch and a half wide.
He glances over at Sally's shoes, which were flats, with no heels whatsoever.
"Have any of you walked in this area?" Sherlock demands, gesturing in the areas in which he himself had not walked.
Lestrade shrugs slightly and shakes his head, "No. We didn't want to contaminate it. It is a...crime scene." The words come out as if somewhat forced.
Sherlock gives a curt nod and stands up.
"What have you got?" Lestrade asks.
Sherlock immediately starts into his soliloquy "Given from the wound marks, and the precise work, it is most likely a Kukri knife, or an Nepalese fighting knife, they have the slight inward curve.
"There are slight heel indentations in the carpet, as if from high heels, and none of us have high heels or boots, so that must be from the killer's shoes.
"The leftover traces of pain on John's face..." he stops for a moment, closes his eyes, and then opens them again and continues, "most likely implies his arms and legs were sliced, to inflict as much agony before death as possible, before the chest was cut. From the deepness of the chest wounds it can be assumed this was what actually killed him.
"Given where the slight scratches on his face stopped, right above his mouth, he was most likely gagged. The rag was obviously removed and taken with the killer when they left after..." Sherlock takes a deep breath and looks away from the body of John, "he... was dead.'
"His hands were also clearly tied, from the rub marks on his wrists. There is also less blood in that area, assuming that it was rope, the rope would have absorbed some of the blood.'
"The killer is most likely female, given the high heel markings, the writing style. And that the signature implies an either beautiful or white, possibly both, tiger. Also, the fact that she has a set code name for a signature when she kills also means that she is most likely a serial killer."
He seats himself at the small desk and opens John's laptop, his face expressionless. He begins clicking away that the keyboard. He types Fair Tigri in the search box.
Did you mean The White Tiger?
Sherlock clicks it and skims over the results on the actual animal, until he finds one about a serial killer. "Confirmed serial killer"… "Her murder style found all over the world"… "Never been caught" … "Choice weapon is that of a Kukri knife" … "Carefully carves bodies to form stripes similar to that of the tiger she's named for" … "Always leaves a note, even if just her signature" ... "Tortures victims before killing" and on and on.
"So… if she is a major worldwide serial killer… how come I've never heard of the Fair Tigri until now?" Sherlock mutters to himself.
"What is it?" Lestrade asks.
Sherlock simply flips the laptop around and hands it to him. He stands and begins pacing the room, thoughtful.
"The White Tiger?" Lestrade inquires, "I thought we were looking for the Fair Tigri."
"We were…" Sherlock says softly.
"The White Tiger hasn't killed in over a decade." Sally says. "It was on international news years back."
"I've heard of her, and then she disappeared, went dormant, inactive." Sherlock mutters.
Suddenly, his eyes go wide, and he claps his hands together with a slight gasp, "It's the same person, she's only changed her name! It's the same killing technique, knife, everything. It's the same name, only different words .Synonyms! They are one murderer."
Sherlock stops speaking and folds his hands together, the fingertips resting flat against each other. "But why would she start again now…" he murmurs.
He looks up, and says, suddenly business-like, "Lestrade, Sally, get me as much information as you can on the places and people The White Tiger has killed. Who they were, what they looked like, everything. Whatever you can get on the White Tiger cases, I want."
"Okay." Lestrade says, then, looking troubled, he says, "Um... Sherlock... maybe we should get... John, to thee, uh, morgue."
Something unrecognizable, maybe pain, enters Sherlock's face. He looks away, and composes himself. "Yes, the body should be removed." he says indifferently, without emotion.
"Well," Lestrade says after a few minutes of silence and a phone call, "They should be by in a bit, Sherlock, we'd better get going, start doing some research."
Sherlock just nods. After Lestrade and Sally leave, he lies down on the sofa, folds his hands again, pressed flat against each other and stares blankly at the ceiling.
"Tiger, Tiger." The whisper of a thought slips from Sherlock's lips, and then he closes his eyes in contemplation.