Johnny Blue-Eyes
Chapter 2: How Rare is Heterochromia anyway?
"You texted me?"
Donovan looked up from her notes at Lestrade, who was standing just outside the door of the media room as if he were afraid to come in. His eyes flicked to the screen in front of Donovan, and he looked relieved when he saw that it was blank.
"Yeah. Come in and shut the door."
"I told you I didn't want to see any of this shit."
"You'll want to see this one." Donovan cued up the VCR, but waited until Lestrade was seated in the other chair before turning on the monitor. "Ready?"
"Do I have a choice?"
"No." Donovan aimed the remote at the screen, and it lit up with a picture of the boy's thin face surrounded by a cloud of dark curls. "Does that boy look familiar?"
She heard Lestrade give a small gasp and saw out of the corner of her eye that he had sat forward in his chair. "That's Johnny Blue-Eyes!"
Wait, what? Donovan swiveled her chair to look at Lestrade, but his eyes were glued to the screen. "Johnny Blue-Eyes? Who's that?"
"My first case after I made Inspector, ten years ago. Copy of homemade kiddie porn found in the flat of an MP. Videos of this little boy. We called him Johnny Blue-Eyes because of his eyes, of course. Don't know why I didn't recognize that sofa. . ." Lestrade sat back in his chair and shook his head. "This little chap, he never cried. He just stared into the camera the whole time the man was. . . well. It was unnerving. We knew the video was old because of the colors and quality. Spent months trying to track down the source. Kept finding copies of the video all over the country, finally found the distributor, but he died in lockup before he could tell us anything. We never found the kid. My son was about three at the time. Every night I'd go home and hug him, no matter how late it was. Get him out of bed in the middle of the night just to hold him and make sure he was all right." Lestrade gave a humourless laugh at the memory. "My wife thought I was off my rocker. Nearly did go bonkers with that one. Poor little chap."
Donovan raised her eyebrows incredulously at Lestrade. "Johnny Blue-Eyes?"
"Yeah, 'cos those eyes were so blue—"
"No, not blue."
"What? Yeah they are."
"No, look closely. They're only part blue. The top part is green."
Lestrade stood up and leaned in toward the screen to examine the eyes. A moment later he said softly, "Well I'll be damned. With the poor resolution of the copies we found, we never noticed that."
Donovan folded her arms and waited, but he didn't say anything more. Finally she prompted, "Who else do we know with eyes like that?"
Lestrade squinted at the screen for another second, then suddenly leaned back with eyes wide. "You don't mean. . ."
"That's Sherlock."
Now Lestrade had his head cocked like a dog. "No! Couldn't be."
"It is. He's got that disorder with his eyes. I looked it up." She held up her phone and Lestrade took it and squinted at it. "Heterochromia. Eyes two different colors. It's rare."
Lestrade gave up squinting at the phone and pulled a pair of reading glasses out of his pocket. He studied her phone for a moment then handed it back to her. "Not too rare. Six in 1000."
"Let's get him in here and find out."
Now Lestrade gave a scoff. "What am I going to say to him? Are you Johnny Blue-Eyes?"
"Just tell him you have a new piece of evidence on that double homicide you're stuck on. He'll be down here in a flash."
Since it was after teatime, Lestrade waited until the next day to call Sherlock in. He told himself he wasn't putting off the conversation. It was just that he felt better able to face it after a good night's sleep. Not that his sleep was peaceful that night. He kept seeing little Johnny Blue-Eyes staring at him unblinkingly through the telly screen. Accusing him. Just before he woke up, the boy spoke in a high-pitched, reproachful voice. "Why didn't you rescue me, Gary?"
In the morning, he waited until 9 am to text Sherlock. He made sure the wording was vague enough that Sherlock would think it was about the McClinchy homicide, without actually saying that. Plausible deniability. He had no doubt Sherlock would be upset when he found out what this was really about. No, not upset. Sherlock didn't do upset. He just went straight to furious, doing an emotional 0 to 100 kmph in under two seconds.
It was only twenty-two minutes from when Lestrade sent the text to when Sherlock showed up at his office door. He knew it was twenty minute cab ride from Baker Street on a good day, so Sherlock must have headed out the door immediately. And he didn't even look like he had dressed in a hurry. Shirt perfectly pressed, perfect creases in his trousers—Mrs. Hudson must still be doing his laundry, Lestrade mused.
"Well?" Sherlock demanded with a scowl. "What is it?"
"What is what?"
"The new evidence! Let me see it. Although I don't know why you couldn't just text me a photo of it."
"I don't know how to do that."
"Of course you don't," Sherlock said with a huff. "Well?"
"Right. Let's go down the hall."
Sherlock's eyes narrowed, especially when Lestrade left the room without taking any of the file folders that littered his desk, but he followed without a word, for which Lestrade was grateful.
Lestrade stopped at Donovan's desk on the way and nodded to her, and she collected her notepad and file folder and joined them. Lestrade could feel Sherlock's eyes boring into his back as they headed down the hall to an interrogation room, but he made sure not to turn around. He didn't even intend to say anything: Donovan was going to handle it. Lestrade was just there as a mediator to make sure they didn't kill each other.
As soon as they were seated around the small table, Sherlock unbuttoned his coat and adjusted his sleeves with an air of affected unconcern. "So the McClinchy homicide was a ruse," he said archly. "What is this about?" He was looking at Donovan because she was the one with a file folder in her hand. Of course he had figured out this wasn't about the case they were working on. Lestrade knew he would, he just wasn't prepared for it to be this soon.
To her credit, Donovan said nothing. She pulled the screenshot of Johnny Blue-Eyes out of her file folder and silently put it down in front of Sherlock. It was a close-up of the boy's face, with a bit of yellow wall and corner of the yellow and green flowered sofa visible in the background. Sherlock didn't even look down at the photo, just glared at Donovan.
"Just look at the photo," Donovan said.
Sherlock glanced at it, then back up at Donovan with his eyebrows raised. "What do you want me to do?"
"You tell us." Donovan sat back in her chair and folded her arms while Sherlock took a closer look, first holding the photo up by the edges and studying it in the light, then setting it on the table and examining different areas with his magnifying glass.
"By the quality of the print, it's a photo taken from an old fashioned home videocassette. Printed here on the printer on your desk, Donovan."
Donovan started in surprise. "How did you. . .? Never mind." She scrunched back down in her chair again and he immediately continued.
"By the colors, it came from a home video made in the late 1970's or early 1980's. The video was shot in London or in the surrounding area."
"How do you know that?" Lestrade put in.
"That is a G Plan sofa, 1978 model. That particular model was sold only at JFS Furniture shops in London."
"So you recognize the sofa?" Donovan asked.
Sherlock turned a smirk on her. "Of course I do. My mother had one. I remember being dragged along on the shopping trip to purchase it."
"Who's that kid?"
"I don't know. How could I possibly deduce that?" Sherlock narrowed his eyes and looked back and forth between Lestrade and Donovan, obviously scanning for clues. "What's this about?" he said finally.
Donovan exchanged a glance with Lestrade, who gave her a minute shrug. She was the one who was so convinced that the kid was Sherlock, Lestrade thought. If she wanted to ask him about it, she was going to have to do it.
"We got some videos in the mail. Burglar found them at one of the places he burgled. He sent them to us." Donovan said.
"A burglar just. . . sent evidence of his crime to the police?"
Lestrade shrugged. "Yeah."
Sherlock turned the force of his deductive gaze on Lestrade. "And this boy is featured in the videos?"
"Yeah." Lestrade was feeling quite uncomfortable now. It was clear that Donovan was wrong, and Sherlock had no idea who the kid was or what this was about.
Finally Sherlock's chin went up and he took in a little breath. Lestrade recognized that sound. It was the sound of him putting the pieces together. "If this is a paedophilia case, I'm not interested," he said abruptly, pushing back his chair. "I'll leave it in your. . . capable hands. Now if you don't mind, I'm meeting John for coffee. If he doesn't get out of the house at least once a day, he's likely to become homicidal. Don't want to put little Alice in danger, do you?" Sherlock paused in the middle of buttoning his coat and looked into the distance with an expression of distaste on his face. "I hope he doesn't bring her in that little front pack again. It's so chav."
And with that he swept out, leaving the door to swing shut behind him. Lestrade stood up to go as well, glad that the conversation was over. They were obviously barking up the wrong tree. When he turned back to see if Donovan needed help packing up her paperwork, he saw that she was sitting back in her chair with her arms folded, a mulish look on her face.
"What?"
"He's lying."
"Oh, come on!" Lestrade exclaimed.
"Yes, he is! That's him!"
"You heard him; he didn't know what we were talking about."
"He was lying through his teeth."
"Didn't seem that way to me."
"It's a case! We're offering him a case, and he's not interested? Since when is he not interested?"
"He's already on a case." Lestrade pointed to the photo of Johnny Blue Eyes. "That's not him."
"Oh?" Donovan picked up the photo and waved it at Lestrade. "Ask him for a baby photo of himself."
"I doubt he's got one."
Donovan smirked. "Then ask his Mummy."
Lestrade shook his head firmly. "I'm not going to do that."