"What the hell was that all about?" I asked him bewildered.
"We've got an appearing and disappearing camera, a group of unknowns deposing of a body, and a cryptic message. And to top it all off, no one knows where this DVD came from," Lestrade said taking the silver mystery between his long fingers.
"Surveillance cameras?" I asked him.
"Wiped clean," Anderson told me with the sound of annoyance dripping from his words.
I stared at the silver disc as it caught the light from the window and repelled it as Lestrade flipped it this way and that in his hands. Keep your eyes fixed on me. Sherlock's desperate plea resounded in my mind as clearly as if he had just said it. The fact that it was now written across the video was a mystery to me. "Pick my skull. Pick my skull." I murmured to myself.
"What the hell does it mean?" Lestrade asked me.
"It sounds like him, doesn't it?" Donavan's asked quietly. We all turned to stare at her and she lifted her eyes to ours briefly. "This has 'freak' written all over it." If it hadn't been for the fact that it almost sounded endearing, I would have chewed her out.
"It had to be some kind of inside job," Anderson offered. "Who could just sneak into a guarded station, drop the DVD into your mailbox, get into the security room and then distract the guard long enough to wipe the cameras clean?"
Lestrade seemed to loll it over. "Even if it was an inside job, how did they get the video to begin with?" Anderson shrugged his shoulders and pursed his lips.
While they threw ideas around I stared at Donavan. Something about what she said was bothering me. "It sounds like him?"
She shrugged. "Cryptic. Unsolvable. Curious."
After a moment of deep thought I had to agree with her. "It does. But we both know that's impossible."
"What about 'pick my skull?' What could that mean?" Lestrade asked me.
"Depends on who made the video I guess," I told him. Suddenly a string of thoughts blazed through me that made the hair on my neck stand up. It really did sound like him. But he couldn't have had anything to do with the disc. But if he did... Pick my skull... then in a sudden rush of understanding I cried, "SKULL!" The other three stared at me dubiously and I wondered if that was what Sherlock felt after revealing a mystery. "We have to go to Baker Street."
Mrs. Hudson answered the door enthusiastically and wrung me around the middle. After a few words, she led us up the seventeen steps to the door I had not passed through in almost three years. After she unlocked it for us she hobbled back downstairs to prepare some tea. I stopped dead in my tracks in the doorway. The rooms were exactly as I had left them. The chemistry set sat abandoned on the table, Sherlock's violin was perched on the windowsill by the music stand, and our arm chairs sat facing each other like we had for so many hours. But my eyes were only for the mantle piece. Sherlock's other best friend, as I liked to call it, stared back at me with it's forever grinning teeth. I strode across the threshold and picked up the skull that served as his idea bouncer. I flipped it this way and that until my fingers felt a protrusion from inside the left eye socket. I peeled it away carefully and found a small piece of paper. On it were the words: Death is boring. I dropped into my old chair and examined the tiny slip of paper. Lestrade sat down in Sherlock's chair across from me. Something must have shown in my expression because he got up and sat on the arm.
"Death is boring," I read out loud.
"In times like this I wish he were around to give some answers," Lestrade sighed.
Sally peered at the queer little note over my shoulder and her eyes opened wider by a fraction. "What if he is..."
"What are you talking about?" Anderson asked her curiously.
"Hear me out before you guys jump down my throat," she requested holding up her hands. "What if... what if he's the one leaving these clues?"
Lestrade gaped at her. "Are you seriously suggesting that he's alive?"
"Let's be honest," she said defensively, "he's done stranger."
"Did you forget I was there?" I asked her. "I saw him fall. Saw the blood. I watched them wheel his body away!"
"John, you of all people should know what he's capable of," she told me sternly.
I chuckled darkly. "What's this Sally? Now that you've had proof shoved under your nose, you're trying to make yourself feel better about being the first one to spread the lies?"
Her face flushed scarlet and she adverted her eyes from mine. "Yes. … If you must know." I watched as she sank away from me and busied her eyes around the room.
As hard as I tried to push the idea from my mind, the harder it fought to remain. I mean, the idea was simply absurd. Sherlock had been dead three years. A bit of odd occurrences doesn't bring the dead back to life. But a nagging sensation tugged in the back of my mind.
"This isn't his handwriting," I told them with as much certainty as if it were my own. "But only he would hide something in that skull. And only I would know what the message on the tape meant."
"But if it were meant for you why would they send the tape to us?" Lestrade asked me.
"Maybe they want the police involved? No, that doesn't sound right," I waved the thought away. "How did you find it exactly?"
"It was in my mailbox in the office sealed in an envelope addressed to me," Lestrade told me.
I thought about it for a moment. "Not the police then. Just you Greg. Someone wanted your attention."
"Maybe they'd known I would call you which is why they left that message for you at the end of it," he offered.
"Someone is playing us like a fiddle," I said replacing the skull on the mantlepiece. At that moment Mrs. Hudson slid through the door with a tray of tea. She set it down and began dealing out wafers on her good china.
"Has anyone been through this room Mrs. Hudson?" I asked her curiously.
"Just me- cleaning, you know. Mycroft pays me good money to keep it tidy. So I do a bit of dusting here and there."
"Mycroft?" I asked her curiously.
"Oh yes. He pays me double what you two did just to keep things exactly as they were and obviously not to rent it out. He likes to come up here sometimes and just sit by the fire. I think it comforts him, the poor dear."
Lestrade snorted thoughtfully. "I didn't think Mycroft was the sentimental type."
"He's not," I said giving him a meaningful look. Then I flicked my eyes at Mrs. Hudson and then back to him. He nodded in acknowledgment and we silently agreed that she was not to know about our dealings.
We stayed for an hour more until the sun began to set, turning the sky into a pallet of reds and purples. Then we bid Mrs. Hudson goodbye after promising to visit again soon. We sat in Lestrade's car for a while and talked things over.
"What's next?" Anderson asked. "Death is boring. That doesn't give us a lead."
When I examined the words in my head they meant nothing specific. But when I imagined the words coming from my friend's mouth it turned into something else entirely.
"Death is boring," I said my eyes widening.
"What about it?" Lestrade asked.
"Think," I implored, "what was the one thing Sherlock couldn't do?"
They thought collectively for a moment and finally Sally said, "Sit still."
I cracked a half-mad grin at her. "A coffin would be Sherlock's worse nightmare."
Lestrade started the engine and raced off into the darkened night. "Then let's go pay him a visit. But first we have to stop and get some shovels."
