A.N. I know it has been a while since I've updated, but so you forgive me, this chapter is slightly longer than usual, we game?

Disclaimer: Once again, Sherlock is owned by the BBC and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I got the transcript from Ariane Devere.

"So now that we've seen Sherlock meet John and go to the flat," Lestrade looked over at his friend, "What's up next?"

John looked pointedly at the screen.

"Besides the crime scene," Lestrade corrected, "But seriously, what's next?"

"That would be spoiling it," Mary shushed them. They did not have the heart to mention that she was treating events that happened in real life like a TV show.

Lestrade leads the boys up a circular staircase. He and John are wearing coveralls together with white cotton coverings over their shoes, and latex gloves. Sherlock is putting on latex gloves as they go up the stairs.

John muttered something about a 'Stubborn idiot not wearing proper protection gear just to look cool'.

LESTRADE: I can give you two minutes.
SHERLOCK (casually): May need longer.

The whole room sat in silence, remembering that Sherlock Holmes was actually a human, sans John.
LESTRADE: Her name's Jennifer Wilson according to her credit cards. We're running them now for contact details. Hasn't been here long. Some kids found her.

"Why were kids even looking there?" Mary wondered aloud.
(He leads them into a room two storeys above the ground floor. The room is empty of furniture except for a rocking horse in the far corner. Emergency portable lighting has been set up, presumably by the police. Scaffolding poles hold up part of the ceiling near where a couple of large holes have been knocked through one of the walls. A woman's body is lying face down on the bare floorboards in the middle of the room. She is wearing a bright pink overcoat and high-heeled pink shoes. Her hands are flat on the floor either side of her head. Sherlock walks a few steps into the room and then stops, holding one hand out in front of himself as he focuses on the corpse. Behind him, John looks at the woman's body and his face fills with pain and sadness. The three of them stand there silently for several long seconds, then Sherlock looks across to Lestrade.)
SHERLOCK: Shut up

Some of their eyes widened in surprise.
LESTRADE (startled): I didn't say anything.
SHERLOCK: You were thinking. It's annoying.

John snorted at Sherlock's quick wit.

"I never got why he did that," Lestrade looked in-depth at the Sherlock on the screen, "It's not like he could actually hear me thinking,"

"Your facial expression?" Mary supplied, choosing a logical answer.
(Lestrade and John exchange a surprised look as Sherlock steps slowly forward until he reaches the side of the corpse. His attention is immediately drawn to the fact that scratched into the floorboards near the woman's left hand is the word "Rache". His eyes flick to her fingernails where the index and middle nails are broken and ragged at the ends, the pink nail polish chipped in stark comparison to her other nails which are still immaculate. The woman's index finger rests at the bottom of the 'e' as if she was still trying to carve into the floor when she died. Sherlock makes an instant deduction:

left handed

"What is this?" Anderson said, leaning forward in interest and surprise.

"That's how he does it?" Lestrade said, looking around for an answer.

Even Donovan was slightly impressed.

He looks back to the word carved into the floorboards and an immediate suggestion springs into his mind:

RACHE
German (n.) revenge

"I wonder how many languages he knows," Mary said, thinking.

Instantly he shakes his head in a tiny dismissive movement and the suggestion disappears. He looks at the carved word again and overlays the five letters with a clearer type. Next to the 'e' a rapid progression of letters appear and disappear as he tries to complete the word, then the correct letter settles into place to form the word:

Rachel

He squats down beside the body and runs his gloved hand along the back of her coat, then lifts his hand again to look at his fingers:

wet

He reaches into her coat pockets and finds a white folding umbrella in one of them. Running his fingers along the folds of the material, he then inspects his glove again:

dry

Putting the umbrella back into her pocket, he moves up to the collar of her coat and runs his fingers underneath it before again looking at his fingers:

wet

"I can't keep up with this," Lestrade sighed, "This is so not my division,"

"It's Sherlock's" John replied. He was excited because this is the first time he could actually see and appreciate how quick and clever Sherlock must have been in order to make his deductions.

Reaching into his pocket he takes out a small magnifier, clicks it open and closely inspects the delicate gold bracelet on her left wrist ...

clean

... then the gold earring attached to her left ear ...

clean

... and then the gold chain around her neck ...

clean

... before moving on to look at the rings on her left ring finger. The wedding ring and engagement ring flag a different message to him:

dirty

Sherlock blinks as a rapid succession of conclusions appear in front of his eyes:

married
unhappily married
unhappily married 10+ years

"That's obvious though," Donovan scorned, looking for something to make herself feel better.

"Then why don't you do it," John snapped, staring her in the eye.

She backed off.

Carefully Sherlock works the wedding ring off the woman's finger and holds it up to look at the inside of the ring. While the outside of the ring is still showing

dirty

the inside registers as

clean

As Sherlock lowers the ring and slides it back onto the woman's finger, he has already reached a conclusion about the ring:

regularly removed

Lifting his hands away from the woman, he looks down at her and makes his final deduction about her:

serial adulterer

"I miss him," Lestrade sighed, smile slipping off of his face.

Everyone looked down at that, a harsh reminder that they believed Sherlock was dead, and not the man on the screen. Even Donovan, who unlike Anderson, showed no interest in Sherlock after his death, felt bad and guilty about Sherlock's suicide.

Mary cocked her head at the screen, "Why are we even being shown this?" she looked at Donovan, "Obviously," John smiled,

He smiles slightly in satisfaction.)
LESTRADE: Got anything?
SHERLOCK (nonchalantly): Not much.

Everyone's mouths fell open, that was not much?
(Standing up, he takes off the gloves and then gets his mobile phone from his pocket and begins typing on it.)
ANDERSON (from where he is leaning casually against the doorway): She's German. 'Rache': it's German for 'revenge'. She could be trying to tell us something ...
(While he was speaking, Sherlock has walked quickly towards the door and now begins to close it in Anderson's face.)
SHERLOCK (sarcastically): Yes, thank you for your input.

Everyone snorted at that while Anderson looked at the screen embarrassed.

"You'd think you wouldn't miss that," Lestrade said, sadness taking hold of the room again.

"I don't," came Donovan's whisper.
(Slamming the door shut, he turns and walks back into the room. On his phone, he has called up a menu for "UK Weather". The menu offers five options:

Maps
Local
Warnings
Next 24 hrs
7 day forecast

He selects the Maps option.)
LESTRADE: So she's German?
SHERLOCK (still looking at his phone): Of course she's not. She's from out of town, though. Intended to stay in London for one night ... (he smiles smugly when he apparently finds the information he needed) ... before returning home to Cardiff.

"Cardiff?" Mary questioned looking around the room.

This was met with shrugs and blank stares, sans John, who knew how he found that piece of information.
(He pockets his phone.)
SHERLOCK: So far, so obvious.

"The frea- he really can't think that's obvious," Donovan stared at the screen with something akin to disgust, "He's just trying to show off,"

"Yeah," John met her, giving her a cold stare, "He does show off, that's half of the point in doing it, but you benefit from his 'showing off' so why don't you shut up," the fact that he wasn't yelling at her simply made it scarier.
JOHN: Sorry – obvious?
LESTRADE: What about the message, though?
SHERLOCK (ignoring him and looking at John): Doctor Watson, what do you think?

"He's ignoring you," Donovan pointed out, she didn't get any responses.
JOHN: Of the message?
SHERLOCK: Of the body. You're a medical man.
LESTRADE: Wait, no, we have a whole team right outside.

"Sherlock only works with people he likes," Lestrade shook his head as if wondering how much of an idiot he used to be.

"Still he should let us do our job," Donovan grumbled.

"Let me," Anderson interrupted her, getting tired of her insulting his recent idol, "I personally miss all of the free time we used to have, now we're working overtime sometimes because we don't have this man's advice,"

"He's a psychopath,"

"High functioning sociopath,"

"Anderson," Lestrade interrupted with that 'Tired Parent' tone.
SHERLOCK: They won't work with me.
LESTRADE: I'm breaking every rule letting you in here.
SHERLOCK: Yes ... because you need me.
(Lestrade stares at him for a moment, then lowers his eyes helplessly.)
LESTRADE: Yes, I do. God help me.

"It's so much more difficult now that he's gone," Lestrade mirrored his expression on screen.

"Don't you have a person trying to learn how to do what Sherlock does?" Mary looked around at the Yarders.

"He wouldn't share," John said with certainty, "Last thing he wanted was for the Yard to not need him anymore because he taught someone else how to do what he does,"
SHERLOCK: Doctor Watson.
JOHN: Hm?
(He looks up from the body to Sherlock and then turns his head towards Lestrade, silently seeking his permission.)
LESTRADE (a little tetchily): Oh, do as he says. Help yourself.
(He turns and opens the door, going outside.)
LESTRADE: Anderson, keep everyone out for a couple of minutes.
(Sherlock and John walk over to the body. Sherlock squats down on one side of it and John painfully lowers himself to one knee on the other side, leaning heavily on his cane to support himself.)
SHERLOCK: Well?
JOHN (softly): What am I doing here?

"Didn't you say that you wanted to come?" Mary smirked, "What did you say when he asked, 'Oh God, yes.'?"

"Well..." John struggled for a word before just giving up.
SHERLOCK (softly): Helping me make a point.

"What point was he trying to make by bringing you there?" surprisingly this was Donovan who asked.

Everyone shrugged helplessly.
JOHN (softly): I'm supposed to be helping you pay the rent.
SHERLOCK (softly): Yeah, well, this is more fun.

"Freak,"

"Donovan, no one asked your opinion,"
JOHN: Fun? There's a woman lying dead.
SHERLOCK: Perfectly sound analysis, but I was hoping you'd go deeper.

Despite the situation and circumstances, everyone laughed once again.

"Was he always this witty?" Anderson asked between his laughs.

"Yep," came John's short reply.
( Lestrade comes back into the room and stands just inside the doorway, and John drags his other leg down into a kneeling position and then leans forward to look more closely at the woman's body. He puts his head close to hers and sniffs, then straightens a little before lifting her right hand and looking at the skin. He kneels up and looks across to Sherlock.)
JOHN: Yeah ... Asphyxiation, probably. Passed out, choked on her own vomit. Can't smell any alcohol on her. It could have been a seizure; possibly drugs.
SHERLOCK: You know what it was. You've read the papers.
JOHN: What, she's one of the suicides? The fourth ...?

"Sometimes I think it's a miracle Sherlock stuck around with me," John thought aloud, "I was awfully slow in the beginning,"
LESTRADE: Sherlock – two minutes, I said. I need anything you've got.
SHERLOCK (standing up, while John struggles to get to his feet): Victim is in her late thirties. Professional person, going by her clothes; I'm guessing something in the media, going by the frankly alarming shade of pink. Travelled from Cardiff today, intending to stay in London for one night. It's obvious from the size of her suitcase.

"There wasn't even a suitcase there," Donovan grumbled.
LESTRADE: Suitcase?
(John looks around the room but can't see a suitcase anywhere.)
SHERLOCK: Suitcase, yes. She's been married at least ten years, but not happily. She's had a string of lovers but none of them knew she was married.
LESTRADE: Oh, for God's sake, if you're just making this up ...

"He's Sherlock," John pointed out, "He had been doing this for years before you met him, and you're seriously doubting him?"

Lestrade just shrugged helplessly while Donovan and Anderson looked guilty, one more than the other, of their doubt towards Sherlock just before his suicide.
SHERLOCK (pointing down to her left hand): Her wedding ring. Ten years old at least. The rest of her jewelry has been regularly cleaned, but not her wedding ring. State of her marriage right there.

All the Yarders seemed to be trying to remember Sherlock's deducing tricks.

The inside of the ring is shinier than the outside – that means it's regularly removed. The only polishing it gets is when she works it off her finger. It's not for work; look at her nails. She doesn't work with her hands, so what or rather who does she remove her rings for? Clearly not one lover; she'd never sustain the fiction of being single over that amount of time, so more likely a string of them. Simple.
JOHN (admiringly): That's brilliant.

Everyone turned to look at the real-time John, who slowly put his head in his hands.

"But you have to agree," Mary said, "That was truly brilliant," she gave John a smile.
(Sherlock looks round at him.)
JOHN (apologetically): Sorry.
LESTRADE: Cardiff?
SHERLOCK: It's obvious, isn't it?

"No, it not," Donovan said with a hint of a grudge in her voice.
JOHN: It's not obvious to me.
SHERLOCK (pausing as he looks at the other two): Dear God, what is it like in your funny little brains? It must be so boring.

Everyone except for Donovan, who was still grumbling in her corner, bust out laughing at Sherlock's wit.

"I am so using that," Mary smiled, writing it down for future use.
(He turns back to the body.)
SHERLOCK: Her coat: it's slightly damp. She's been in heavy rain in the last few hours. No rain anywhere in London in that time. Under her coat collar is damp, too. She's turned it up against the wind. She's got an umbrella in her left-hand pocket but it's dry and unused: not just wind, strong wind – too strong to use her umbrella. We know from her suitcase that she was intending to stay overnight, so she must have come a decent distance but she can't have travelled more than two or three hours because her coat still hasn't dried. So, where has there been heavy rain and strong wind within the radius of that travel time?
(He gets his phone from his pocket and shows to the other two the webpage he was looking at earlier, displaying today's weather for the southern part of Britain.)
SHERLOCK: Cardiff.

John covered his eyes, knowing what was coming.
JOHN: That's fantastic!

"You do know he hates it when people do that," Lestrade asked.

John remained silent.
SHERLOCK (turning to him and speaking in a low voice): D'you know you do that out loud?
JOHN: Sorry. I'll shut up.
SHERLOCK: No, it's ... fine.

"Or...not," Lestrade finished, confused.

"Would you hate it when someone praised you?" John let that question hang in the air as they all continued to watch the screen.
LESTRADE: Why d'you keep saying suitcase?
SHERLOCK (spinning around in a circle to look around the room): Yes, where is it? She must have had a phone or an organiser. Find out who Rachel is.
LESTRADE: She was writing 'Rachel'?

"God, I was slow," Lestrade shook his head.

"Still are," Mary replied cheekily.

John laughed, remembering why he's falling in love with her.
SHERLOCK (sarcastically): No, she was leaving an angry note in German(!) Of course she was writing Rachel; no other word it can be. Question is: why did she wait until she was dying to write it?

"Dramatic effect?" Anderson suggested.

He was ignored.
LESTRADE: How d'you know she had a suitcase?
SHERLOCK (pointing down to the body, where her tights have small black splotches on the lower part of her right leg): Back of the right leg: tiny splash marks on the heel and calf, not present on the left. She was dragging a wheeled suitcase behind her with her right hand. Don't get that splash pattern any other way. Smallish case, going by the spread. Case that size, woman this clothes-conscious: could only be an overnight bag, so we know she was staying one night.

"We only got actual cases done when he was around," Lestrade sighed, head in a hand.
(He squats down by the woman's body and examines the backs of her legs more closely.)
SHERLOCK: Now, where is it? What have you done with it?
LESTRADE: There wasn't a case.
(Slowly Sherlock raises his head and frowns up at Lestrade.)
SHERLOCK: Say that again.

"Why?" Donovan said in a defiant and arrogant tone.
LESTRADE: There wasn't a case. There was never any suitcase.
(Immediately Sherlock straightens up and heads for the door, calling out to all the police officers in the house as he begins to hurry down the stairs.)
SHERLOCK: Suitcase! Did anyone find a suitcase? Was there a suitcase in this house?
(Lestrade and John follow him out and stop on the landing. Lestrade calls down the stairs.)
LESTRADE: Sherlock, there was no case!

"How could a suitcase be so important?" Mary asked, eyes glued to the screen.

Lestrade and John held up a finger as if to tell her to wait a little bit.
SHERLOCK (slowing down, but still making his way down the stairs): But they take the poison themselves; they chew, swallow the pills themselves. There are clear signs. Even you lot couldn't miss them.

"I'm offended by that," Anderson leaned back into his chair.

"But you know it's true," John replied.

"Yeah, but..." he droned off with that statement.
LESTRADE: Right, yeah, thanks(!) And ...?
SHERLOCK: It's murder, all of them. I don't know how, but they're not suicides, they're killings – serial killings.
(He holds his hands up in front of his face in delight.)

"Freak," Donovan spoke with disgust.

Instead a flamboyant reaction like they were expecting, John simply raised a hand, and formed it into a fist. Some of his knuckles cracked, "I could always blame the PTSD," he said, directing that towards Lestrade.
SHERLOCK: We've got ourselves a serial killer. I love those. There's always something to look forward to.

Donovan's eyes narrowed.
LESTRADE: Why are you saying that?
SHERLOCK (stopping and calling up to the others): Her case! Come on, where is her case? Did she eat it?(!) Someone else was here, and they took her case. (More quietly, as if talking to himself) So the killer must have driven her here; forgot the case was in the car.

Mary made a little 'O' with her lips.
JOHN: She could have checked into a hotel, left her case there.
SHERLOCK (looking up the stairs again): No, she never got to the hotel. Look at her hair. She colour-coordinates her lipstick and her shoes. She'd never have left any hotel with her hair still looking ...

"We really need him," Lestrade sighed, yet again. No one had the heart to point out that Sherlock was dead.
(He stops talking as he makes a realisation.)
SHERLOCK: Oh.
(His eyes widen and his face lights up.)
SHERLOCK: Oh!
(He claps his hands together in delight.)

JOHN: Sherlock?
LESTRADE (leaning over the railings): What is it, what?
SHERLOCK (smiling cheerfully to himself): Serial killers are always hard. You have to wait for them to make a mistake.

"That much is obvious," Donovan grumbled in the corner the rest sent her off to.
LESTRADE: We can't just wait!
SHERLOCK: Oh, we're done waiting!
(He starts to hurry down the stairs again.)
SHERLOCK: Look at her, really look! Houston, we have a mistake.

"Isn't it 'Houston, we have a problem'?" Mary asked. They all nodded in confirmation.

Get on to Cardiff: find out who Jennifer Wilson's family and friends were. Find Rachel!
(He reaches the bottom of the stairs and disappears from view.)
LESTRADE (calling after him): Of course, yeah – but what mistake?!
(Sherlock comes back into view and runs up a couple of stairs so that he can be seen before he stops and yells up to Lestrade.)
SHERLOCK: PINK!

"I didn't get that at first," Lestrade admitted.

"Neither did I," John replied.

"Well," Mary straightened up in her seat, "Recently, the color pink has been used with association to females, even so, most of us don't have that bright pink of a case. That itself, should be a good pointer towards possible suspects,"

Everyone stared at her in shock, Lestrade leant over towards John and whispered, "Sherlock would've loved her,"

Chuckling quietly, John replied, "Yes, yes he would've,"

Just then, a bright flash filled the room.

A.N. Sorry for the slow update. My wifis been crappy and I wanted to work out when I wanted to incorporate the supposedly 'dead' Sherlock into the story. I hope you can forgive me.

Review!