The Cold Read
The Nikki Heat books were good, but Watson was having a hard time convincing Sherlock not to write notes in the margins of his mystery novels. Finding the killers' name underlined in red ink on the fifth page soon lost it's novelty.
Sherlock read newspapers. All of them. Across the world. He had a subscription to all of the major papers. When the boredom made him completely manic, he couldn't even sit still long enough to read them. When the waiting began, he was scanning obsessively. When they displeased him or left him unimpressed he tore it up in frustration and went to the next one.
And so went their Sunday afternoon. Watson in his easy chair with 'Heat Rises', the third Nikki Heat Thriller, Sherlock sitting cross-legged on the floor in an ever growing pile of shredded newspaper.
"Huh." Sherlock commented suddenly.
Watson looked up sharply. "What? No!"
"What do you mean 'no'?" Sherlock demanded, still looking at the paper.
"You've noticed something. That's your noticing face. I have nightmares about that exact face." Watson was pointing at him. "Which paper? Because I am not going back to Turkey."
"Not Turkey. New York. And no, we're not going. Just interesting."
"Marginally better. I didn't think you cared about American mysteries."
"I don't." Sherlock said. "Too many car chases."
"We've been known to have a few ourselves." Watson pointed out.
"Ahh yes, but they're much more interesting when you're chasing them on foot." Sherlock shot back.
Watson tuned it out. It was all about levels with Sherlock Holmes.
Sherlock saw levels. His mind was an elevator between floors. He knew how the weather related to the cat-hair on your lapel, or how the revolution in Colombia affected the quality of star-bucks coffee.
And that was the horror of having such a mind. Without those levels, the world just wasn't worth looking at. Who could go to a static-y black and white after spending some time watching Blu-Ray? Who could possibly be content in a two dimensional world? Sherlock saw dimensions, all of them. He saw levels. All of them. The universe was a work of art that surrounded him and he hated it for not being permanent.
He was not unaware of these moments, and he knew full well that when the levels were not sufficient, the boredom was a noose around his neck. He hated the universe when those levels were absent. He hated everything.
A case provided levels to play with. A client came in with a problem they were too stupid and too blind to see through themselves. And though they were usually lying he didn't care, because lies could be fun to unravel too.
The mystery novels were of no interest. The details didn't match up, the forensics were all fictional, the characters two dimensional. If they were adapted into film it was worse. The characters would smoke a north-western tobacco when clearly the killer was using a south-eastern blend. Nobody would pick that up. Nobody but Sherlock Holmes. Movies and books were fictional. There was nothing there to find. More meaningless than day to day life.
TV mysteries were worse. They were formula. Sherlock could set his watch by it. The body dropped at the fourteenth minute, the clue was given at the half hour, the grand reveal with less than six minutes left in the show. Sherlock watched them obsessively and pointed out to Watson how the boom mike operator was mad at the star that day, or how the guest star's career was in trouble, or how two of the extras were having an affair...
John had been his roommate for the better part of a year now and had trained himself to tune it out. Sherlock would find something interesting in the paper, fire off an email, and either Lestrade or Mycroft would come and scream at him for something afterward.
Watson read mystery novels. He tried his hand at solving them, and was getting good at it. He wondered sometimes if Sherlock was just teasing him, or training him with those thrillers. A few years in the service had hardened him to the macabre, and made the novelized version of murder and mayhem more of a diversion than a thriller. If he wanted something really gruesome, all he had to do was see what his roommate had in the fridge today.
He'd bought the Derrick Storm novels, and Sherlock had told him that Derrick Storm would be dead by the end of the novel. Watson had laughed at him. Nobody killed off their biggest selling character, nobody killed the hero of an ongoing series. It just wasn't done.
Sherlock had been right of course.
Sherlock jumped up and whooped like he'd won the lottery. "New York Times! Just as the boredom was driving me into decline!"
Watson came over and looked. The New York Times article was about a triple homicide being solved, and the fourth potential victim, a New York socialite being rescued at the last possible second. The credit had gone to a homicide detective named 'Kate Beckett'. There was a photo of her escorting the socialite home, with her team surrounding her. Watson tapped the photo. "He looks familiar."
"Look at your book." Sherlock said quickly.
Watson picked up the book he was reading. The latest in the Nikki Heat Thriller series. The photo on the back of the dust jacket jumped out at him. "Richard Castle! Of course. I remember, this series was based on a homicide detective he knew." Watson turned back to the article. "So? What's wrong with the article? What did they miss?"
"Nothing. The detective caught the guilty party. They didn't miss anything. Well, not anything important. Well, not that I can tell from this article anyway." He tapped the photo. "I'm just wondering why he hasn't told her."
"Who?"
"Richard Castle." Sherlock explained. "I'm wondering why he hasn't told her about the new lead." Sherlock offered nothing more and stretched out on the lounge, uncaring.
Watson sighed hard. It was a setup. He knew the script by heart. He was expected to ask what the hell that meant, and then genuflect after Sherlock explained things in a dazzling display of self-aggrandizing rhetoric. It was their bit. It was what they did.
Watson sat down and opened 'Heat Rises' again. He wasn't going to play this time.
Sherlock turned his hawk gaze on Watson, waiting.
Watson didn't respond. He kept reading.
Sherlock returned to the chair opposite, and perched on it like a gargoyle, balancing on the cushion with his arms folded.
Watson ignored him, reading his book.
Tick. Tick. The clock echoed. Five seconds. Ten. Sherlock never twitched, never wavered that penetrating glare from the only man with enough strength to call him 'friend'.
Silence. Long silence. Tick. Tick.
Watson snapped the hardcover book shut hard, fed up. "Fine. Tell me."
Sherlock pounced. "That book you're reading is the third in the series. The first was finished three years ago. There was a photo of him with the inspiration for the lead. Apparently he hasn't left the Precinct yet."
Watson waved at the photo in the paper. "If your inspiration looked like that, neither would you." He responded. "That's not mystery, that's eyesight."
"Not that."
"Wonder how Richard Castle would look in a deerstalker hat?" Watson needled. "Oh, excuse me: A Sherlock Holmes hat."
"I shall ignore that." Sherlock said. "But the press coverage about the solved mystery is not the interesting part."
"What is the interesting part?"
"Richard Castle hasn't told Detective Beckett that someone powerful wants her dead." Sherlock pounced. He seemed to relax marginally, glad to have gotten it out.
Watson sighed. "You got this from one candid shot in a newspaper from the other side of the world?"
"What's the distance got to do with it? It doesn't make the photo any harder to see."
"Suppose not." Watson conceded. "Okay. Time to ask the question then, is it?"
"Yes. I wish you'd hurry up and say it."
"Just a moment." Watson sat down, made himself comfortable, settling in. Sherlock waited.
"Okay." Watson sighed. "How do you kno-"
Sherlock exploded before the question was properly out. "She's young for a detective, which means she's driven. She carries no personal effects, except for the wedding ring she's carrying around her neck on a chain. It's a woman's ring, which means it either belonged to her or to someone close to her. I've never met a woman who would give a failed fiancee his diamond back, but if that was the case she wouldn't be carrying it. A sister wouldn't give over a ring, and a mother wouldn't if she were alive. If that's what drives her, then the fact that she's a homicide detective means the previous owner is a homicide victim. I suppose the victim could be a late fiancee of hers, but I doubt it because her badge says 'Katherine' Beckett, but she introduced herself in the interview as 'Kate' which means she still thinks of herself as the younger version of herself, having never really stepped out of her maternal figure's shadow as an adult in her own right. She doesn't mind dressing to accentuate her appearance, which means she's not above using her sex appeal as an advantage, so she is completely comfortable with it; which means her strongest female role model is one that she is not estranged with, to the point where she's built her up a bit in her rose-colored memory."
Watson wasn't even trying to keep up. He just looked at the photo a little closer, and yes, there was a ring visible on a chain around Beckett's neck in the photo.
"She should tuck it under her clothes, and she knows that, so the ring must have come loose while running or something similar during this case. So she keeps the ring with her always, probably as a sign of dedication, but it really shows the power that her case has over her, even now. But she isn't wearing the ring, because she likely feels she don't deserve to do so yet; which means the case is unsolved." Sherlock paused only long enough to draw a breath, and pointed to Richard Castle in the picture. "Her boy-toy over there comes from money, but he hangs around with policemen all the time, which means he wants to be there; but her Captain can't appreciate having a civilian around for three years, so he's not feeling the love from the rest of the precinct. Ergo, he's still there after three books, for her. She doesn't have any expensive watches or bracelets; in fact the most expensive thing the good detective is wearing are the spike heels, custom made so that she can run in them, no matter how impractical they are. Her mister isn't giving her a whole lot of expensive gifts, which would obviously be easy for him; so he's not her official gentleman friend. So he's looking for another way he can be of use to her and gain her approval, and given how comfortable she obviously is with having a civilian stand behind her every second, it stands to reason those two have been dancing like this for a while; so he'd know about her mother's case."
"Yeah. You know Sherlock, I could have-"
Sherlock launched again. "Now that's the photo, I haven't even started on the caption yet. The case they just solved has nothing to do with a cold case. It's a socialite homicide. If Beckett is not pursuing her obsession, then it means the trail has been cold for a while, and she's waiting for a new lead. But he's still looking because he wants to do it for her; and that is something he won't let go of; so it stands to reason that he must have something she doesn't." Sherlock turned his gaze on Castle's photo on the dust jacket of the book. "Why hasn't he told her about the other lead? Because he's scared. He wants to make her happy, and nothing will make her happier than this, so why isn't he telling her? Because the one thing he wants more than her to like him is her to be safe. He's a socialite, he's wealthy, he's famous, he's connected and she's a cop. What could they possibly be scared of?"
"A much bigger fish." Watson agreed. "Holmes, you astound me. But as usual, you've missed a bleedin' obvious solution." Watson interrupted.
"What's that?"
Watson went to the shelf and pulled down his copy of 'Heat Wave', opening it to the first page. The dedication was clearly visible. "For Kate." Watson read. "A dedication in a novel about a beautiful female NYPD detective who lost a parent to an unsolved homicide."
Long silence.
"Well… sure, if you want to be less brilliant about it." Sherlock said finally, derailed.
"So someone doesn't want the case pursued." Watson summed up. "Are we going to New York?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"I hate Cold Cases older than ten years. Getting data stops being challenging and becomes tedious; memories become inaccurate to the point of useless. Plus I'd have to fly to New York, then back again, total travel time fourteen hours, more if there's bad weather; and conspiracies are only fun when you don't know they're there. Boring."
"Yeah, but... it's her mother's case?"
"So?" Sherlock waved it off. "Besides, powerful people have powerful enemies. If they've been in touch with Castle, then us going there will upset the balance. Ordinarily, that would be fun, but it's still... Sentiment. No game, just him following her around like a three legged puppy. No thank you. I get enough of that here. It could take me less than a day to find out who was behind it, or it could take me a week to find someone who knows anything. Tedious. Tedious takes a long time. Boring."
"But-"
"BORING!" Sherlock bellowed, spinning around again.
Watson let it go. He had one kamikaze detective to handle. He didn't need to go to New York looking for more.
AN: Just a oneshot. I wanted to see what would happen if Sherlock did a Cold Read of Beckett and Castle. This is the result.