-Watson-

I smelled the body before I saw it. Sherlock all but ran to the sight, following distinct footprints in the snow. He was murmuring to himself unintelligibly. Occasionally, I caught a "no" or a "-when I-" but nothing sounded particularly unusual until he came to a halt and silence fell. The body of a woman lay behind a mattress, which had been leaned against the brick side of a suburban bridge.

"What's wrong, Sherlock?" I asked, covering my nose with my coat's sleeve.

"This is impossible," was his only reply. A man in an officer's outfit approached the scene by way of a previously cleared path, which also contained Sherlock's and my footprints.

"Hello, Lestrade," I said to the man.

"Greetings, John. Can the two of you find anything strange about this? The snow seems to cover up details…or so Anderson says. We were going to take it back to the lab, bit I thought I'd give you a call first."

"Strange things…there are plenty of them here," Sherlock began. "Let's see," he flicked his magnifying lens out and looked at the victim's face. "She was muffled…probably chloroform was used to knock her out. She was strangled with a knitted scarf or sock, thus the crushed windpipe. The killer was fast because there is little sign of struggle."

"And, now, why don't you enlighten me with how you could conclude that?" Lestrade sighed.

"There are marks on her face from some sort of cloth being held up to her mouth and nose, restricting her breathing. Also, there are thin strands of yarn around her neck where the strangulation marks are."

"That's it?"

"Currently, yes."

"What about the stab wound?" Sherlock's expression went strange after that.

"Stab wound?"

"Yes. There is blood there, is there not?" Sherlock and I moved our heads to look at the woman's body at the same time. There was blood dripped on the snow. Sherlock moved her and, as soon as he did, we discovered more blood-soaked snow below her torso.

"Permission to remove her coat, DI?" Sherlock asked.

"Permission?" Lestrade replied. "What's permission to you? You always do what you bloody well please! Don't try and tell me that you're coming to your senses now."

"I thought I'd please you this once. Don't get used to it."

"Go on, then." Sherlock removed the woman's coat carefully, revealing a stab wound in her back, which had been miraculously sewn up, almost as if a surgeon had worked on her.

"The wound doesn't reach all of the way through, but it is deep enough to reach the heart. The killer probably knew what he was doing, but it seems like he rushed the stab. Whatever he was doing, it looks like he thought he had to hurry, but calmed down enough to put…some solution on." He smelled the wound, then said, "Silver nitrate, maybe? Gave him enough time to keep his hands semi-clean and sew the wound up. There really was no point in sewing it up, to tell the truth, but that does tell us that this person was meticulous about what he wanted to do.

"Now, the knife he used would be a pocket knife similar to this one," he said, pulling his own pocket knife to the DI and me. "Mainly because the bolster left a bruise on her skin in a similar shape to how this one would. The killer was a man, also, mostly because of the way his footsteps show that he walked. Also, the shoes are men's because of their width.

"There are no dragging marks in the snow, which meant that the killer was quite careless about how his tracks were covered. Maybe he wanted us to see them. I can't be certain, though. In any case, the fact that there are no drag marks means that the killer was strong in the upper body and carried the body out here."

Lestrade and I soaked up the information as Sherlock stood up and turned to me, saying, "John? Do you want a look?"

He had been more curious than he had expressed. Whatever he was letting me discover, he obviously didn't want to take credit for. Why he would ever do that, I wasn't sure.

"Ah, sure," I answered. Looking around the body, I found nothing. That is, until I hit detective-gold under the kicked up snow.

"The killer must have been hurrying at one point; there's a key here, under the snow."

"A key?" Lestrade asked. "Like what? A house key? A mail key?"

"House key," I replied, brushing it off, then handing it to him. "No labels on it, however."

Sherlock's expression hardened at the sight of the key. Something was off with him; I resolved to ask him about that later.

"Interesting," the DI said, placing the key in a bag marked "lab review" and continued, "but I must tell you that your time is up. Thank you, I'll keep you posted, Mr. Holmes."

"Certainly," the pale, stone-faced man replied, standing up and walking away from the two of us. I hurried along behind, attempting to catch up with him.

"What was all of that?" I asked.

"I'm simply being paranoid," he replied plainly.

"No, you never get like this."

"Get like what?" He gave me a half-offended, half-annoyed look.

"Never mind," I said, dismissing my worry for a moment. All that seemed important to Sherlock was getting out of the cold, taped-off area.

We exited our cab at a coffee shop. For once, we hadn't talked about the case while riding. Instead, Sherlock went into something about the reason that there were eyeballs in a questionable chemical substance (all in a covered jar) in the cabinet that I had tried desperately to get him to store food in, completely distracting me until we sat down at a table, I with my chamomile tea, Sherlock with his black coffee.

"Do you have my ideas as to why someone would kill this woman, ah, Samantha Rosetti?" I asked.

"She was a pretty public person, judging by the array of debit cards, library cards, and movie passes. Her wedding ring was absent, though. She'd lost her husband recently, judging by the fact that his photo was still in her wallet and that there were new, thin stress lines on her face."

"You look kind of, I don't know, haunted?" I suggested. His face turned into a look of frustration.

"You, John, seem to be convinced that there's something wrong."

"You said 'This is impossible,' did you not?" I asked. "Tell me: did you know her or something?"

"No," Sherlock said with an irritated tone. He calmed down and lowered his voice to say, "I couldn't find my boots yesterday, remember? Also, I remembered leaving my scarf at that over-heated Chinese place down a few blocks from 221B. Do you know where I found it?" He fumbled around with his coffee mug's handle.

"Where?" I asked.

"I found it tied to the banister at the bottom of the stairs. I assumed that Ms. Hudson must have found it and washed it or something of the sort, but it seemed strange that I hadn't remembered that right."

"What are you implying?"

"Nothing yet," he said without emotion. "Let's be worried if another murder occurs."

That evening, we were reviewing information back in 221B Baker St. when, suddenly, my mobile rang, making both of us jump out of our seats. Lestrade was on the other end. He wanted us to hurry' I handed the phone to Sherlock.

"Where?" There was a pause then, "We'll be right over." He hung up, threw the phone to me, and, with a grin, said, "We've got another one. It's fresh."

The body was a man's. He was identified by Sherlock as a casual golfer with a drinking habit. This murder seemed unrelated to the previous one to me, at first. When Sherlock had finished looking the corpse over he described the events that led to his death.

"He's been dead for a while. Someone poisoned him as he was bar-hopping and he poured some of the poisoned drink into his hip flask, really saturating himself in it. He wandered along the road for a while, but stumbled over to this area, where he collapsed and died slowly. He probably didn't even know what was happening."

"Any idea what he was poisoned with?" Lestrade asked, his breath billowing through the air in a cloud.

"Smells like cyanide. I can't be sure, though." Sherlock's expression looked almost bored for a moment. He commented, "I was hoping for something more interesting than that, but that's what it seems like it is."

I was silently signaled to look at the body for myself at that point. I discovered a pocket knife resembling the one that Sherlock had shown us at the last murder sight. When we opened it, we discovered that it was covered in dry blood. The man had no stab wound on him, however. This was when Sherlock began looking more interested. He remained silent, however, which made me curious as well.

As we were walking away from the sight, Sherlock said, "John, it is connected to the other murder, but I don't know how. This man isn't the killer, I know that. Only the blade of the knife was dirty: everything else had been wiped clean. Something is different about these murders."

"What do you mean by different?"

"No fingerprints on anything material, so far. If this man's case has the same problem, they can't deny that the two are connected." I sighed and looked back to where the body was.

"Who said that there were no fingerprints?"

"Lestrade," Sherlock replied, "and Anderson. The test results came back as clean."

"I see," I answered, unsure of what else there was to do. This newest victim could have encountered fifty people while he was going from bar to bar; there was nothing that Scotland Yard could go off of other than the poison used to kill him, if the knife was clean.

We left and headed back to 221B. On the way there, Sarah called me on my mobile, asking me to go to dinner and a film. I said yes, for the sake of getting away from the flat. Sherlock told me he'd stay back to run tests on the poison used and eat on his own. I doubted that the later was true (Ms. Hudson would surely give him company whether he wanted it or not) but I let it be. Sarah hadn't completely blamed me for our stressful capture-and-escape act the previous month, and that was what mattered.

We entered the flat. Ms. Hudson was curious as to where I was going when I was leaving again. When I said that I was going on a date, she seemed surprised. She seemed convinced that Sherlock and I were "together" still. It drove me crazy. Can men not be flat mates without people assuming that they are "together" anymore? I left the flat, turning back only to lock the door.