When they reached Callie's dorm room, Sherlock headed straight for the windows. He examined the two which opened partially. "Screws all bright and shiny- those have been freshly replaced," he noted. He pulled out a screwdriver he'd stopped to buy along the way, removed one of the metal track locks and opened the window all the way. Given that there was a ledge, Sherlock found it was pretty easy to climb out the window and step neatly onto the ground below. Still outside, he moved to investigate the window that wouldn't open at all.
"Jammed shut from outside," he called to the team staring at him from inside the room. He pulled out the jam, held it up for them to see, and found he was easily able to slide the window up and down; nothing prevented it from going up all the way. "Just as I suspected," Sherlock breathed smugly.
"Ok Sherlock, now you've proved your point, explain in human terms how Watson got in here," sighed DS Loman.
"Shouldn't do that. Leading investigators is one of the most problematic practices in the field of detective work. Our suspect will henceforth be referred to as 'the murder,' although feel free to spice things up with 'the killer' if that gets a bit dull for your easily distracted little minds."
"Hey-" Loman barked but was cut short but Lestrade.
"Just come out with it already."
Sherlock rolled his eyes. "Well, the murderer is someone who knows that Callie had her window stoppers out, so he knows getting in without being seen on camera will be easy. The problem is, how can he throw investigators off his trail? He wants to plan it so that he'll be able to make it look like he didn't use the windows. So his primary concern is jamming one of the windows, but he has to be careful with timing. He needs the incident to be reported to maintenance, but not fixed."
"If Callie doesn't report it, then the investigation doesn't pass the stuck window off as a coincidence and it becomes evidence. It helps us figure out how the Killer got in," Lestrade understood. "But if it gets fixed…"
"His plan falls apart altogether. He could jam it again, or jam one of the others, but that would definitely raise suspicion, especially if he kept doing it in ways which where obviously intentional. Fortunately for him, all goes to plan. On the night of the murder, he removes the jam from the third window and is able to enter through any of the three as none are blocked in any way. He has now completed step one of his mission, which is get into Callie's room unseen. Once he reaches step three, leaving unseen, he simply replaces the track locks on the first two windows, exits out of the third, and then jams it again from the outside, hoping to convince detectives that the locks and the jam have been there the whole time."
"Sorry- what was step two?" someone called from the back of the small group of detectives.
"Well, murdering Callie Rogers, of course!" Sherlock scoffed, finally climbing back into the room.
"We already know how he did that- he stabbed her."
"Mm, yes, but he somehow managed to do so without allowing her to scream loudly enough to draw the attention of her neighbors." Without warning Sherlock shouted, "Help! Please, somebody help me!"
"What're you-"
Sherlock silenced him quickly with a wave of his hand and motioned that they should listen. All around them, they could hear doors opening from the other rooms. "Go on then, look outside."
In the hall, at least fifteen students were staring at Callie's room, most muttering as though they were trying to make a decision, while a few were already heading directly for them. "False alarm," Loman assured the kids, and they shuffled away, confused.
"A woman in real distress could have screamed much louder than that. However, the tape shows that no one so much as opened a door at the time of the murder. Callie didn't scream for help. This is why I believe that she knew and trusted her killer. A stalker may have been able to pull off the entry and exit, but if a stranger comes through a girl's window while she's in her room, she would be able to scream and run out before he got his footing inside. No, Callie let her killer in through the window. From there, he presumably began acting erratically, causing her to try to leave the room. At this point he catches her, stabbing her in the back before she screams."
Lestrade and the other detectives were looking at him strangely. "Callie was stabbed in her stomach, with some shallow defensive wounds on her arms and a postmortem slash to the face."
"She fought him? That means she saw the knife- why wouldn't she scream?" he mused. "Was she gagged?"
"It's possible but we couldn't find any evidence- we checked her mouth for fibers and there's no marks on her face to suggest that anything was tied around her head."
"Strange…"
As he pondered this newest mystery, Sherlock began searching the rest of the room. He started with the boxes under her bed, which only contained some shoes and purses, moved on to the wardrobe, and finally ended up in her desk drawers. There was no obvious evidence, but he did find her day planner.
"Slashing her face once she was already dead- this murderer was angry. He may have planned carefully, but I'm not sure such a person would have the patience to plan this for a long time. He would have wanted to take action as soon as possible. You said she reported the stuck window nearly a week ago- what day was it specifically?"
After flipping through his notes for a few seconds, Lestrade answered, "Tuesday. The eighth."
"He would've needed to plan a bit- and she didn't necessarily report right away- I'd say our killer started planning this somewhere from Saturday to Monday," Sherlock said, mostly to himself as he flipped to the corresponding pages in her planner. "Let's see… Saturday she went shopping with someone named Katie?"
"Her best friend. The one who found her body yesterday."
"Sunday she stayed in and did homework for most of the day, but spent the night with Katie again as well as John, presumably Watson but we should check to be sure, and someone named Marcus."
"That'd be Katie's boyfriend- he came to comfort her at the initial examination of the scene."
"And on Monday, it looks like she progressed through a normal day of classes and stayed in for the rest of the night. I would guess that whatever incident caused the killer to begin plotting happened on one of these events. Saturday will be the hardest to investigate. I don't think a stranger did this, so we'll have to ask Katie if they ran into someone they knew, without ruling out that Katie herself could be the killer- as could anyone from the small party on Sunday night, which we'll also ask Katie about, and hopefully the other two as well. If you can get me a copy of her class schedule and the list of students enrolled in each, I will personally talk to as many of them as possible tomorrow."
"We can do that. Thank you, Sherlock."
Sherlock brushed off the gratitude, instead continuing with his plan of action. "Her planner also mentions a blog which she appears to have updated regularly. I'm assuming her computer has already been taken into evidence- please have whoever's put in charge of it find her blog and email me the link. What she wrote in her last days could prove crucial."
Night was falling now. Sherlock finished looking through the drawers, though still nothing stood out to him. She seemed like a fairly ordinary college student, and he could think of no particular reason anyone would want her dead.
Part of him was slightly annoyed that the police had brought him in for such an ultimately mundane case. Once they worked out that the murderer had simply come through the window, they would most likely find their answer in whoever had a motive- although hopefully a better motive than 'almost got him expelled but didn't.'
Still, another part of him couldn't shake the feeling that there was something deeper here. It wasn't just the simultaneous murders or even that they were both connected to John Watson. There was another connection now- neither Callie Rogers or Zachary Wells had screamed, despite fighting their killer before the fatal incident occurred. What had stopped them? Maybe it wasn't just a coincidence that John Watson was a suspect in both crimes- Sherlock had deduced he was generally nonviolent- had he been tricked? Was Watson a serial killer, one who had a way of keeping his victims silent?
As left the scene, Lestrade approached him. "Just got off the phone- we had to let Watson go. You were right, evidence is circumstantial."
"That's alright. I didn't get the sense that he was someone who would try to do anything so stupid as trying to flee. He'll stay around," Sherlock said, hoping he sounded more confident than he felt. He was a hard man to trick, but he was beginning to question himself when it came to John Watson.
If someone who appeared so unaggressive could murder, possibly more than once, what else could he fool Sherlock about?
A/N: Hope you enjoyed this chapter! I promise the next one will be back to actual interaction between Sherlock and John- I'm hoping to have it to you guys by Thursday night/Friday. And yes, this is the last part of Monday the 14th! Reviews always appreciated ;)
