Molly rubbed her eyes blearily. It was five 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 all of it, not just because she would have to clear 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, where he had switched from his 'using-her-as-a-servant' mode to 'ignoring-Molly-Hooper' mode. She wondered how that worked, in his head. Was he aware that he was doing it? Molly shook her head tiredly; of course he was. Sherlock was hyper-aware of almost everything.
Molly finished her coffee and filled her cat Toby's food and water bowl. She sighed at the prospect of missing yet another day with her cat because of work. "You know," she said to Toby, "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 closely. "-can't go in right now, it hasn't been cleared to the public-" one of them was saying. Molly cracked a smile; Greg Lestrade couldn't keep Sherlock out of here, not even if he wanted to. Not that he did want to-Sherlock would probably be able to solve this case in minutes flat. Quickly she wiped the smile off her face-just in time, too, for moments later the door swung open and in walked Sherlock Holmes and Officer Lestrade.
Molly pretended to be taking notes as they approached the table in order to look Sherlock over. She saw him almost every day and yet he never ceased to catch her breath with his spectacular jawline, icy blue eyes, and perfectly formed hair. "Molly," he said, turning around. "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 seemed not to notice. "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, which indicates that 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 before asking Sherlock, "You said him. 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-it's Christmas!" He clapped his hands together again and practically danced out, Lestrade following him, leaving Molly to clear up the mess and become the mourner of Maria Jones and her uncle.