"But where do we go?" asked Elinor.
"I used to think there was a plan, a rough plan, but a plan all the same," the doctor admitted. "Now I believe there are a thousand plans. Every breath, every decision, influences the plan, expands it, shortens it, twists it all around. It's always changing. Those of us lucky enough to make it through the multitude of possible diseases and accidents get old. We get tired, we close our eyes."
"And then? Where are we then?" Silly to ask him as though he knew, but in fact the doctor didn't hesitate. He took Elinor's hand and placed it on his chest, in the place where he knew his heart to be.
"There."
Elinor smiled and thought at last. At last someone had told her the truth.
~ Alice Hoffman, The Probable Future
~x~
"Whose are all these ghosts?" She said, smiling at a flustered looking Geraldine.
"Oh, said Geraldine," I think they might be mine…"
~ Diane Hall
I.
She hadn't spoken to a soul all day.
Trolley wheels squealing across the tired linoleum and dripping taps punctuated the chilled, fluorescent air of the morgue. The huge wall clock ticked down the minutes into hours as her shift seemed to expand and grow like foam from a can, mocking the girl who didn't realise the holiday rota was out until most of her wretched colleagues had squirrelled away the choicest of dates. Families, outings, winter breaks that were simply too amazing not to book and suddenly her workplace was a one-man-band, punctuated by the sights, sounds and subterranean sub-culture of a city mortuary. Radios irritated since she was annoyed by the bright, shiny tunes they seemed to spew out during the midnight hours. Stations imagining night workers needed cheering during their lonely isolations irritated her too. So did the smug and sweeping serenity of most classical pieces. She was easily irritated these days it would seem.
So, her brown low heels clicked a staccato echo as she toured the semi-lit rooms and corridors. Everything still, everything quiet, everything closed down, as it should be.
But, nothing lasts.
"You let him just take Joey's kidney? Just like that?"
Peace interrupted all too soon. She sighed, pushing her slightly splattered goggles up onto her forehead and stilling the bone saw. She knew from experience how unlikely it was that a single comment would suffice, so she waited.
"Molly, I know you heard me."
"Bone saw." She waggled it, rather tactlessly on reflection she decided. "Couldn't quite catch what you said."
Molly Hooper found her voice to be a little cracked from lack of use: how long had this shift actually been?
"We've already talked about this Carl. I signed the necessary paperwork and tagged it. It was only on loan."
"So it's back now?"
The voice practically dripped with accusatory contempt (with a side of judgemental, just to be sure).
"Not yet." She lay the saw down, sighing into the inevitability of this conversation's trajectory - she had been here a few times before - thus it was of little surprise to hear the other, more kindly voice piping up alongside her accuser.
"Molly, it's fine, really it is. I don't need it anyway."
"Not really the point - " Carl the pedant.
"I'm just saying; Molly isn't the kind of person to take advantage of her position, are you Molly?"
She turned, giving her valiant defender the eye contact he deserved (bless him, he was so much more forgiving than Carl, despite recent events which would have given most a reason to be a bit … snippy) and smiled, her scrubs crackling as she peeled off a glove.
"Thank you Joey. It was only a loan, and, as I've already told the both of you, it was for a case; Sherlock is doing his very best to catch Joey's killer." She kind of hated the slight tremble of her voice across the syllables of his name, knowing Carl would notice.
"Well, if you could just send him the message that it was Alistair from the Flying Horse, it would save everyone a fair bit of bother."
Carl was taking great delight in his cocky sarcasm, but who was she to deny him? Fun times were few and far between down here, that much was certain.
"It probably was Alistair, but Joey isn't entirely sure - "
"All happened so quick, like - "
"Oh, come onnn!"
Three voices, overlaying each other, all pitched with different nuance and emphasis, all with a particular stance to take and all stopping dead as the firm footsteps of Frederick from security approached along the corridor, pausing a millisecond before pushing open the swing doors and popping his head in (he never quite inserted his whole body, understandably, she supposed).
"Everythin' OK Dr Hooper? Thought I 'eard a raised voice in 'ere." He stole a swift glance around the brightly lit room, managing to avoid the slab where Molly was standing. She grinned brightly (too brightly?) nodding her head towards the tiny DAB radio in the corner.
"Just a DJ waffling on," she breezed, fastening on a new pair of gloves. "Had to turn it off in the end. Annoying."
Frederick nodded, shooting her the ghost of a grateful smile. He really couldn't wait to leave.
"Yeah," he agreed, alreading backing out. "Sometimes it's grand to just be alone with your own thoughts."
And the subdued glow of the flickering tubes seemed to fizzle and dim as his footsteps retreated. Carl and Joey had clearly elected to adopt the quietus most usually assigned to folks in their position and Molly Hooper sighed once more.
Alone with her thoughts?
Chance would be a fine thing.
~x~
II.
John's footfall was light (carefree?) but without its usual decisiveness, and his key had been inserted with slightly less certitude than was usual. Combined with the pleasant warmth of the evening (John loved a beer garden) and the furtive texting earlier (as if he cared whether his flat-mate and Lestrade drank tepid lager together in an overpopulated, overpriced and undersized London pub), Sherlock Holmes deduced his friend may indeed be a little tipsy and therefore more likely to indulge in some 'humorous' post-prandial mockery.
He closed his laptop swiftly and threw himself casually across the sofa, holding a recently discarded paper on kidney calcification in sheep above his head in apparent absorption. He'd been caught out too many times recently and it always needled when John found an achilles heel beneath his carefully positioned armour.
"On that site again, Sherlock? Who'd have thought you'd be following crime blogs in your old age?"
Or:
"You realise it's probably some little old lady from Solihull, tired of Bingo and crocheting tea-cosies, so she's making up penny dreadfuls and passing them off as real crimes."
Or:
"Sherlock, I've at least four real cases on my Blog which could require your attention if you wanted to get back to reality for a bit."
The trouble was too, that John was annoyingly correct on all points, bar one:
As bizarre and gothic as his new obsession was, Sherlock was becoming increasingly convinced that the cold cases on Medico de los Muertos were not merely the fiction of bored suburban grandmothers. There was something there, a kernel of truth within.
There was always something.
The cool night air brought in the strangely attractive scent of hops and stale tobacco. Sherlock inhaled gratefully, half casual and half hoping John would be too tipsy to notice the incriminating whirr of the laptop's fan in its cooling down throes.
"Interesting evening?"
John's distinct lack of tipsiness was evident in the scouring glances around the room as he boiled the kettle. That man was becoming a little too beady-eyed decided Sherlock, conveniently forgetting his own involvement in the matter.
"That paper looks particularly enticing."
So distracted was he, Sherlock had momentarily forgotten the subject of the paper he held across his chest and searched desperately for a diversion.
"Lestrade's salsa dancing classes are largely attended by Mrs Hudson's sewing circle and other lonely divorced men from his demographic."
John cocked an eyebrow, stirring in sugar without comment.
"Statistically, he is more likely to meet a sexual partner crossing the road on Giltspur Junction than cavorting with septuagenarians and middle-aged stockbrokers on a Thursday evening, and much more likely to retain his dignity."
John walked from the kitchen slowly, stirring his tea with a steady (sober) hand and a distinct lack of chit-chat.
"I dunno," he said finally, sitting down at the table (disturbingly near to Sherlock's laptop) rather than in his chair. "He seemed quite chipper- seems to have romantic interests elsewhere as a matter of fact."
Sherlock shrugged, feigning disinterest, but feeling an odd tug somewhere from within.
"Did you get a chance to look over the Bathurst case? Greg really is of the opinion it's the work of a serial killer - "
"It is."
John put down his cup (right next to the laptop. Inches away…), staring at his friend. "So you have looked at it?"
"I've made cursory inroads." The Blog had been very interesting in the case of the seven disappeared women and their pet dogs. Names had been changed, but the details were altogether too similar to be coincidental. The writer was either the killer (possible) or completely unaware of the truth of the matter.
"I'm looking into some leads tomorrow. Or Wednesday." In reality, the details provided by Medico de los Muertos were so very precise and particular, Sherlock had immediately discounted any police leak or tabloid speculation. There were snippets of information only a killer could know - or the victims themselves.
The problem, mused Sherlock as John and 221B faded into the basement of his Mind Palace, was that updates (though fascinating) were rather nebulous and sporadic. A hint here, a glimpse there, but hardly useful when an ongoing case was snapping at his heels. Could he afford to wait or just forge ahead via his usual methods? Los Muertos insisted that the missing victim was the killer's final trophy, but the police hadn't found her yet. This was extremely alluring but frustratingly equivocal, and if it hadn't been for all of the other cases, Sherlock would have dismissed it all out of hand.
Just over a year ago, during a insomniacal trawl through the darkest recesses of the internet, the black and red sugar skull logo stilled his fingers and drew his jaded eye. Entirely anonymous and rather randomly sprawling, cases were numbered, or given odd titles ('the ebay killer') whilst comments were thready and almost nonsensical.
To most, anyway.
The Case of the Excedrin Murders:
Rosemarie Taggart was was both much poorer and more encumbered than she needed to be. A stout woman, well past middle age and her last shred of patience with a superfluous husband, Rosemarie had done a little research which had lead to a little murder. Apparently, cyanide added to the extra-strength Excedrin tablets he took for his prolapsed disc gave a pleasingly ambiguous recording of 'emphysema' on his death certificate, leading to a rewarding £71,000 collection of life insurance with no-one dictating how Rosemarie would be spending it. A terrible way to end a union that had once begun in a flurry of orange blossom confetti and the naivete of youth, but more than common in a world of dog eat dog criminality. Thus, all would have been over and done with but for those pesky life insurance brokers. Death, you see, wasn't enough in itself. Only a certain kind of death would suffice to bring an end to Rosemarie's reliance on food vouchers and early bird specials: the accidental kind. Since emphysema (even fake emphysema) could not be construed as accidental, the resourceful Mrs Taggart took matters a little further when she poisoned an entire shelf of extra-strength Excedrin with cyanide, killing a further two people in her hometown, and leading to mass panic and over one hundred and forty lawsuits. Death was verified as accidental, the drug company paid up and the widow was both merry and without further inconvenience, since no-one traced the library books on poison with their cyanide tainted pages back to her. And why? Because no-one had cause to; and the dead tell no tales, do they?
But Medico de los Muertos knew, and they told their tale deep in the recesses of the internet, the dark web where only those with minds and hearts as black and troubled would decide to enter.
The Secrets of the Murderous Novelist:
Jonathan Roebuck, part time college lecturer, aspiring writer and unconvicted killer of the man who slept with his wife whilst he himself was flirting with undergraduates half of his age in campus cafeterias. Once again, the murder remained unsolved and the killer free to enjoy his life, basking in the downcast eyelashes of his fresher's tutorial group and the grief-stricken glances of his bereaved spouse. How Mrs Roebuck would have delighted then, in finding the unpublished novel hidden beneath floorboards in the attic which detailed a 'perfect crime' with a murder she could hardly fail to recognise. Details which included the type of special knots used in tying the ligatures around a dying man's throat, or in explaining how the victim's phone had been sold on ebay shortly after his death; details only the killer himself would know. Such an egotistically elaborate method of confession which lay, gathering dust beneath reclaimed oak and years of heartache, and never to see the light of day but merely an Nietzschean exercise in superiority, hubris and cruelty. But it wasn't secret any more, was it? The Blog had gathered it up in its maw of unsolved crimes and unrepentant murderers and secreted it amongst its darkened virtual shelving, where it would gather no dust and await someone to find it…
Sherlock jerked into life, Mind Palace walls melting away as his companion's words broke through.
His eyes alighted on John, mouth closing on his most recently formed syllable as his soldier's hand rested still and steady upon the lid of Sherlock's laptop. Sherlock blinked, attempting to shake away old thoughts in favour of more pressing ones.
But John was smiling as he repeated himself and Sherlock knew the jig was up before a sound was uttered.
"It's still warm," said John.
A/N: The premise of this story was inspired by the wonderful artwork of meetingyourmaker on Tumblr, entitled 'Molly of the Dead.'
Medico de los Muertos - Doctor of the Dead