Molly rubbed her eyes blearily. It was five o'clock in the morning, and she had slept less than four hours the night before. Now she was being called in early to help clear up a 'brutal double murder'. She was not excited by the prospect of looking into it, and not just because she would have to straighten up the bodies and fill out all the forms, but because a brutal double murder meant that Sherlock Holmes would be there.
Molly hadn't spoken to Sherlock since John's wedding. While he usually switched back and forth between 'using-Molly-as-a-servant' to 'ignoring-Molly' quite frequently, for the past while he had been stuck in the latter. She often wondered what went through his head when he ignored her. Was he aware that he was doing it? Molly shook her head tiredly; of course he was. Sherlock was hyper-aware of almosteverything.
Molly finished her coffee and filled her cat Toby's food and water bowl. She sighed at the prospect of missing yet another day at home because of work. "You know," she said to Toby as he rubbed up against her legs, "I'm thinking of retiring and becoming a full-time cat lady."
Once in the mortuary of St. Barts, Molly pulled on some plastic gloves. She already had her lab coat on, and today had pulled her nut-brown hair back into a ponytail. She was inspecting the first body, that of a teenage girl, when she heard voices echoing through the quiet hallways outside.
She paused for a moment, listening. "- not allowed right now, it hasn't been publicised y - Sher - hey!" Molly cracked a smile; Greg Lestrade couldn't keep Sherlock out away, not even if he wanted to - which he didn't. Sherlock would be able to solve this case in minutes flat, and honestly, that's all Greg wanted. Quickly Molly returned to the body, leaving only a hint of a smile on her face. Mere moments later the door swung open and Sherlock rushed in with a dumbstruck Greg behind him.
Molly pretended to be taking notes as the two approached the table in order to look the body over. She sighed - she saw Sherlock almost every day and yet he never ceased to catch her attention with his spectacular jawline, icy blue eyes, and perfectly formed hair. "Molly," he said, and her heart jumped in her chest. "What are the facts so far?"
"A disabled teenager, named Maria Jones, was locked in a completely empty room in a flat on the third floor," Molly spoke softly. Her voice was a bit higher than usual, but Sherlock didn't seem to notice. Molly continued. "The door was barred, and the only other way out was a window. She was sitting in her wheelchair when she was discovered. Maria was covered in blood, completely soaked-there are the clothes she was wearing, over there-but there are no detectable wounds on her body, except a scar on her upper arm. Her wheelchair was completely clean. The window was broken, and we think that she might have-"
"Shut up," said Sherlock. Molly dropped her gaze and continued to inspect the body. Sherlock started speaking quickly. "The glass from the window was on the inside of the room, indicating that the window had been broken from the outside. However, there weren't any fingerprints on any of the shards of glass. Even if it had been broken from the inside, the wheels on the girl's wheelchair had been removed. She couldn't have broken the window." He paused and inspected the scar on Maria's forearm.
"Over ten years old. As I was saying, she couldn't have broken the window. No wounds on her body, but even one shard of glass could have easily cut her, and she was sitting amidst thousands. The person who broke the glass did a hell of a good job cleaning up after himself, which would have been made a lot more difficult if the girl were in there watching him. She wasn't in there when the glass was broken. All of this causes reason to suspect that, when she was put in the room, the girl was already dead or close to it, otherwise, she could have called out the window."
At this point, Sherlock paused and lifted a strand of blood-soaked hair from the girl's head. "This is her blood, but it isn't fresh. Whoever did this had access to her old blood." He turned to Molly and tilted his head. "You said uncle. Who's her uncle?" Molly nodded to the other bag. "There was a note," she said. "A confession." Her voice was much higher now, and Officer Lestrade glanced at her questioningly before asking Sherlock, "You said him - twice. Is it a man?"
Sherlock, obviously annoyed, turned to Lestrade and said, "No, Garren, it was a sparkling hippopotamus that eats rainbows. Yes, of course it's a man. And you call yourself the 'chief inspector' or whatever.." Molly pressed her lips together and unzipped the other bag, revealing a hairy, fat man whose face was a purplish color. "He hanged himself," she told Sherlock. "Left a suicide note admitting that he had killed-" Sherlock took one glance at the man and said, "Murder." He clapped his hands together and said loudly, "Someone murdered him and his niece, tried to make it look like it was a suicide. He left us a message, too. If that were all it was, he wouldn't have broken the window. There's something linking them. Why wasn't the girl with her parents? Why did he choose these particular victims? Where did he get the girl's blood? What did he do with the wheels off her wheelchair? Ah, finally a clever one!"
Sherlock clapped his hands together again and practically danced out of the room, singing Christmas carols under his breath. Greg hurried out after him, leaving Molly alone to clean up the mess and mourn the deaths of of Maria Jones and her uncle.
