In spite of it being a crime scene, Sherlock, John, and Emili weren't immediately kicked out of the apartment when technicians from Scotland Yard arrived. Neither Anderson nor Donovan were among the first responders, but, dare she say it, the team that came to catalog evidence and document the scene were faster and more efficient than the group Emili had been consulting with on and off.
"Do you think he'd lost a lot of money?" John asked Sherlock, his arm around Emili's waist while the pink-haired girl sipped on a half-empty bottle of water. Her tremors were under control after a few minutes and a little forced chatter. "I mean, suicide is pretty common among city boys."
Sherlock gave John a long-suffering stare. "We don't know that it was suicide," he told his flatmate sternly with a lecturing tone. Sherlock very rarely actually lectured, but the way he spoke and the way that John and Emili both knew he was incredibly smart made it easy to feel patronized by just one sentence.
"Come on," John snorted, arguing quietly. "The door was locked from the inside."
Em swallowed hard and played with the top of her water, screwing it on and off and then on again. "I used to lock my sister out of my room by twisting the lock and then shutting the door behind me," she recalled quietly, glancing up to the right side of the apartment, where she knew a corpse laid in the small bedroom. "A killer could've done the same."
Sherlock paced in front of his neighbors. Emili surveyed him worriedly. His aggravation wasn't too alarming in itself, but sometimes it did concern her when he acted so short and snappish. It usually preceded him saying something mean to someone. Typically, the recipients were an annoyed John, a furious Emili, or an offended and hurt Mrs. Hudson. Emili still didn't know how to calm him down from his moods, so more often than not, she tried to bother him into snapping at her to save her friends the trouble. Em knew not to take it too personally.
"He's been away three days, judging by the laundry." Sherlock nodded off towards the bedroom as he turned around and started to pace away from it. "Look in his case. There was something tightly packed inside it."
"Thanks, I'll take your word for it." John answered irritably, smiling politely and thinly at a CSI member with a long ginger ponytail.
Sherlock stopped, held his wrists behind his back, and leaned his head forward, peering at John closely. "Problem?" He asked, looking to John's hand at Emili's waist and then back up to the blond's face.
"Yeah," John bluntly replied, giving Sherlock an exasperated and frustrated scowl. "I'm not exactly desperate to root around some bloke's dirty underwear."
Sherlock sniffed, as if such concerns were beneath him for the sake of discovery, and started to walk back and forth again. He resembled a cage cheetah. Although breaking in had been her idea, Emili was beginning to wish Lestrade would hurry up, arrive, and shoo them all off. She had always thought dead bodies were no big deal, but she found very quickly that seeing them in person was different from seeing photographs.
The detective brought his left hand to his face and rubbed his chin, then scratched down his neck. It looked painfully forceful. "Those symbols at the bank, the graffiti," Sherlock complained. "Why were they put there?"
John glanced up at the ceiling but played along. "Some sort of code?" He guessed.
Emili had thought that that much was obvious. "Well, it had to mean something, or he wouldn't have run home and gotten a gun," she pointed out.
Sherlock didn't acknowledge either of them, although John did blink and make an expression that strongly suggested he saw the teenager's logic.
"Why were they painted? If you want to communicate, why not use email?"
Em picked up her shoulders tiredly. Her curiosity hadn't been sated, but she wasn't enjoying the atmosphere of the apartment. Most of the investigators left them alone, but there was something about being in a dead person's apartment that made her antsy. She was fidgetier still because she knew that evidence was being collected off of the man's person just yards away and through a wall.
"Electronic correspondence leaves a trail." She offered. If it had been a threat, then she could see why leaving traces would be undesirable. But why go to the trouble of staging a break-in to Shad Sanderson if the only intention was to send a message? Why not use a courier, or the postal service? – Or even just slip a note under the door, since the killer clearly had Van Coon's address?
"Maybe he wasn't answering." John also indulged.
"Good, you follow." Sherlock sounded slightly relieved.
"No," John denied, making his roommate press his lips tightly.
"Are we sure he was killed by the same person?" Emili asked aloud, wondering at the coincidence.
"Beyond a reasonable doubt. The break-in at the tower had all the same hallmarks as this, minus the smoking gun, so to speak." The young woman just blinked, so the detective explained slowly. "Both locked, both high enough to be seemingly impossible to climb to the windows, both leaving no trace of whom was here. Given the immeasurable coincidence that both very conspicuous events would happen in the same morning, I conclude that the murder and the message are indeed connected." Her brother steepled his hands under his chin while he walked briskly back and forth. "What kind of a message would everyone try to avoid?"
Em thought back to that morning and remembered seeing John casting aside a bill about payments. "Taxes, bills, invoices…"
Sherlock stopped and reached down into his pocket. Those in his Belstaff coat were deep and carried a lot, but he usually kept them empty. Sherlock carefully pulled out a crumpled up piece of dark paper and held it out for Emili and John to see. John looked less impressed than normal. Now that it was out, Em saw it was folded like origami into the shape of a small, sharp flower.
"Yes… he was being threatened." Sherlock calmly explained, displaying the origami as if it explained everything. "This was stuffed inside his mouth."
Emili and John both looked at him in disgust, albeit for different reasons.
The latter objected, "You reached into a dead man's mouth?!"
"You disturbed the evidence!" Emili scolded. She couldn't be sure, but she thought she saw him smirk as he turned away and pocketed the flower again.
"Bag this up, will you?" A loud, masculine voice rang through the apartment after the door opened and shut out of sight. The newcomer was a stranger. "And see if you can get prints off this glass," he added as he walked into the parlor-slash-kitchen, shooting looks at the messy countertop.
The CSI member he had been talking to went to go get evidence bags from a supply box on the floor set up near the group combing the pure white furniture. The man who'd given the orders scanned the room with his eyes and then approached the trio of civilians, rolling his head on his neck as if gearing up for a fight. He appeared easily two decades younger than Lestrade. His hair was a little shorter and had a little more gingery color to the light brown, and his face looked rounder and youthful. He carried himself importantly, but his suit jacket was noticeably larger than his waist and the knot of his tie was up very close to his neck. While professional, he looked to Emili like he was trying very hard to come off as stern, severe, and serious.
"Ah, Sergeant." Sherlock greeted, holding his hands behind his back innocuously. He tried to smile pleasantly at the man who was definitely from Scotland Yard, but his expression was see-through and impatient. "We haven't met."
The man was much shorter than Sherlock and barely taller than John, which meant Emili was at a perfect height to look right into his eyes and see it as he braced himself to say what he had rehearsed in his head.
"I know who you are, and I'd prefer it if you didn't tamper with any of the evidence." He growled boldly at Sherlock, holding his chin high importantly and keeping his arms still at his sides to show confidence.
Too late for that, Emili winced apologetically but knew better than to rat out her brother.
He had no way of knowing what Sherlock had done already, so she thought it was mean of him to just treat them like that and assume that they were going to break rules. "I'm so sorry we've offended you by existing in the same space," Emili sarcastically commented, her tightening grip on her water making the plastic crinkle.
Sherlock's civil smile dropped faster than bricks out a window. "I've phoned Lestrade," he stated straightforwardly. "Is he on his way?"
"He's busy," the brunet responded quickly. "I'm in charge." He put his hands on his hips and used his left hand to push the hem of his jacket out of the way of his waist, just enough so that his badge showed where it was on his belt. "And it's not sergeant, it's detective inspector. Dimmock."
He put his right hand out stiffly to John, who looked from the man's face to his hand with a put-upon face. After a second, John used the arm not around Emili to shake the man's hand and get it over with.
Dimmock turned around and strode towards the bedroom, but he stopped right outside the doorframe and kept sending suspicious darts of his eyes towards the trio of independent investigators.
"I've known him thirty seconds and I already prefer Lestrade," Emili complained to John under her breath.
"We're obviously looking at a suicide," Dimmock announced.
John held off on making quick judgments. Emili and Sherlock had already made theirs, so it was up to John to be the voice of reason. "That does seem like the only explanation of all the facts," he cooperatively agreed.
"Wrong." Sherlock sent John a wounded, almost betrayed glance, then firmly went on to explain exactly why the two were both so incorrect. "It's one possible explanation of some of the facts. You've got a solution that you like, but you're choosing to ignore anything you see that doesn't comply with it."
Dimmock put his hands down. "Like?" He prompted, not expecting there to be anything.
"Come on," Sherlock sneered disappointedly. "You're a detective and this student's figured it out already!"
He pointed at Emili as he talked. She took her free hand and pointed at herself, too. "I have?" She questioned, thinking back to everything she'd said. What had possibly given Sherlock the impression that they were on the same page?
She joined the ranks of the bitter disappointments with one single look from Sherlock. She shrugged apologetically. More annoyed than interested now, Sherlock emphatically reminded, "The wound was on the right side of his head."
Dimmock rolled his eyes. "And?"
"Van Coon was lefthanded," Sherlock said very slowly. He picked up his own left arm and tried to point a finger gun at his right temple, first by going behind his head and then by holding his arm before his face and twisting his wrist. Neither way looked comfortable. "Requires quite a bit of contortion!" And, now that it was pointed out, Emili could see why it would look even weirder – Van Coon's body was posed in a very normal position, not like he had dislocated his shoulder just to commit suicide. Still, that didn't discount that he could've just chosen to use his other hand.
"Lefthanded?" Dimmock repeated skeptically.
Emili's eyes went wide as she looked around again. She noticed how the glass was on the left side of a plate on the counter, how there were leftover condensation rings on the left corner of the coffee table, and how the chargers were plugged into the surge connector by the wall, even though it made them look more awkward.
"That's why the things look odd," she realized. "They're on opposite sides."
"Yes, clearly," Sherlock confirmed dryly. "I'm amazed you didn't notice, Inspector. All you have to do is look around this flat. Coffee table on the left-hand side, coffee mug handle pointing to the left. Power sockets: he habitually used the ones on the left. Pen and paper on the left-hand side of the phone because he picked it up with his right and took down messages with his left. Do you want me to go on?"
John's grip on Emili grew tighter. She wiggled her hips a little bit to get him to notice without her having to say anything, and John quickly loosened his arm enough to drop it from her waist entirely. She still remained close, shaken from the discovery of the body.
"No," John tersely interrupted, growing more embarrassed by the minute as Sherlock showed up the police. "I think you might have covered it."
Missing the cue entirely, Sherlock went on, already on a roll. "Oh, I might as well, I'm almost at the bottom of the list." John's jaw tightened and his cheeks turned faintly pink. Emili watched their neighbor, intent to hear, but admittedly concerned that he would be forced into her apartment overnight after John locked him out of theirs. "There's a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade because he used it with his left. It's highly unlikely that a lefthanded man would shoot himself in the right side of his head. Conclusion: Someone broke in here and murdered him." In the silence that followed from Dimmock, the CSIs, and John and Emili, Sherlock allowed the briefest flash of a satisfied smirk. "Only explanation of all the facts."
Dimmock floundered for something to say. He was so clearly out of his depth that he grasped for anything to hold onto. "But the gun," he stammered. "Why-?"
"He was waiting for the killer," Sherlock finished the story grimly, rolling his shoulders back archly and stalking authoritatively past the inspector, seemingly absorbing all of the latter's depleted confidence. "He'd been threatened."
Dimmock's face was confused for about five seconds. In that time, Sherlock crossed to the bedroom door, looked inside to check something, and leaned back out. Still self-assured and certain, he returned across the room to regroup with his co-conspirators.
Finally, the inspector realized his own crime scene was being overrun by a Holmes. "What?" He balked, starting to laugh condescendingly.
This was when John and Emili both decided to speak up. John looked genuinely contemplative as he considered everything once it had been explained, piece by piece, and although normally he discouraged Sherlock's social approaches, he seemed just as surprised as Dimmock. John just handled it better.
"Today, at the bank," he filled in. He piped up quietly, but it was unexpected to hear his voice, so everyone listened to it.
"A message was left at his workplace, and whatever it was made him panic." Emili corroborated, nodding earnestly.
"He fired a shot when his attacker came in," Sherlock established to account for the gunshot residue.
Dimmock started to storm forwards, but he halted after one step and raised his arms over his chest. "And the bullet?" He interrogated, raising his eyebrows and reluctantly listening.
Sherlock had a very prompt answer for that, too. "Went through the open window."
The crossed arms fell. "Oh, come on!" The inspector scoffed, insulted that someone was trying to pull something over on him. "What are the chances of that?!"
If he had been trying to shoot someone who came through the window, then Emili guessed that those chances would actually have been decent. "I'd like to introduce you to the man who hired us at the bank and let you see what the odds are that someone managed to pull off the break-in they have," she shared, growing a little more upset. If he knew who Sherlock was, then shouldn't he know how good his word was? "Wait for the ballistics report – it'll show that the bullet in his brain didn't come from the same weapon he had by his hand."
Dimmock looked at her sharply. He'd seen her before, but now he actually sized her up, checking out her clothes and making a miniscule face at the color of her hair before he reigned it in and realized from accounts of Sherlock who Emili must be.
"But if his door was locked from the outside," he slowly questioned, sounding triumphant. He was still hoping that he could stump Sherlock to prove how silly the theory seemed. "How did the killer get in?"
"Good!" Sherlock's eyes gleamed brightly. It was the only warning sign that Emili had before she screwed the top tightly on her water and prepared to follow him out suddenly. "You're finally asking the right questions."
With nothing more to say, and all the information that he wanted from the apartment, Sherlock passed and headed for the door. From one second to the next, he was in fluid motion. She envied him his grace, but was not delighted with his tendencies to take off without invitation or notice. Emili reached for John's hand thoughtlessly and was pleased when he wrapped his fingers gently around her wrist and let her pull him towards the exit.
Emili highly doubted she would ever know for sure how Sherlock pinpointed Sebastian in a trendy restaurant at seven at night, down to the exact round table he was seated around with business associates, and she doubted that he would ever share his secret. When John had asked, the detective merely scoffed and didn't explain. Emili privately thought he just wanted to keep some of his mystery to appear impressive.
This was the sort of restaurant where Emili would be embarrassed to eat – not because of its reputation, but because of herself. Without seeing the menu, she knew that she'd probably fumble over the pronunciation of half of the items. If she ordered anything less than filet mignon with a side of steamed asparagus, she feared that the server would deem her a classless buffoon. Not to mention that there was really no call to eat a meal that cost so much when there were perfectly good alternatives at much more economic prices.
Sherlock led the trio in a short, uncomfortable assembly line directly through the establishment, making a beeline for Sebastian and his associates. They all wore suits, they all had their napkins precisely folded, and they all had two different sizes of forks, a spoon, and a butter and steak knife each, which Emili thought was just ridiculous.
Sherlock's old "friend" was just in his element. He laughed brightly, his face crinkling handsomely by his mouth and eyes, leaning back in his chair with a hand over his belly. "And he's left, trying to cut his hair with a fork, which, of course, can never be done!"
The men he was entertaining (Em saw not one woman and tried not to read into that) guffawed. One of them stroked his goatee contemplatively, but the others were all laughing as jovially as was possible while still maintaining refined and polite public personas. One of them picked up the fork with the thinner and shorter prongs and stabbed into a crunchy bowl of greens, croutons, tomatoes, sliced ham, hard-boiled eggs, and cheddar cheese.
Sherlock stopped right at Sebastian's side, closing in on his employer without batting an eye at the apparently hilarious story being told.
"It was a threat," he said bluntly. John raked a hand through his short hair, looking around nervously. The man who'd been trying to stop them from barging through wrung his hands, looking faint. "That's what the graffiti meant."
Sebastian looked up at Sherlock and glanced around the table. The chuckles had stopped rather abruptly in light of such an announcement; in fact, several people looked alarmed and uneasy. Emili tried to smile at them.
Sebastian cleared his throat, smoothed the cloth napkin in his lap, and looked up to Sherlock, speaking in a low and consternating voice. "I'm kind of in a meeting," he stated, glancing meaningfully at the table. "Can you make an appointment with my secretary?"
The pink-haired girl was offended. She realized that interrupting the dinner wasn't chock full of manners, but Sebastian had come to them for help. If he had enough confidence in their abilities to entrust them with a break-in at Shad Sanderson, shouldn't he trust that they had the discretion to wait when the circumstances permitted? Someone's death was much more important than an evening out with the boys. If they had been talking business and incorporated the little mermaid's cluelessness about silverware, Emili wasn't sure how long their businesses were going to last.
She had trouble watching her mouth, and she knew that one day it was going to get her in trouble, but right then, she was brimming with spite. Someone had died, and Sebastian was rude to her brother, and all he cared about was what his friends thought of him. Van Coon deserved the respect of having his death investigated and treated courteously, not by being blown off and dismissed.
"Most of the time when you hire someone for their services, you don't just blow them off when they come to you with your results." Emili explained with faux patience to Sebastian, blinking her bright eyes flintily. "If it could wait for an appointment, we wouldn't be interrupting your meeting."
"One of your traders, someone who worked in your office, was killed this morning." Sherlock laid the details on further. John winced again and pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, looking around the seated gentlemen and giving apologetic smiles.
Sebastian swallowed hard. "What?" He hissed.
"Van Coon," John supplied, mindful of the setting. "The police are at his flat now."
"Killed?" Sebastian repeated, hushed and shocked.
Sherlock cocked his head at the slow uptake. "Sorry to interfere with everyone's digestion," he informed the table with a sardonic pleasure. He looked back down to Sebastian, clearly annoyed at being dismissed so quickly. "Still want to make an appointment? Would, maybe, nine o'clock at Scotland Yard suit?"
Sebastian excused himself from the dinner table and shooed away the staff that was trying to escort the investigators off of the premises. He took Sherlock, John, and Emili towards the restrooms in the back corner of the restaurant and pushed open the door to the men's room to go inside and talk with more privacy. John sighed, squared his shoulders, and followed after Sherlock, who breezed in behind Sebastian without pause.
Em looked at the sign on the door as it swung shut after the three males and bit her lip, then decided it was too inappropriate. She turned her back to the wall and slumped down, crossing her arms over her chest. The restrooms were closer to the kitchens. She could smell the delicious aroma of cooking seafood mixed with fresh-baked bread.
Sometimes, she reflected, it sucks to be the only girl. Other than Mrs. Hudson and Molly, everyone Emili recurrently saw was a man. She excluded Anthea because, although she knew the woman kept tabs on her for Mycroft, she rarely approached the teen. She also didn't count Donovan, because the sergeant got on her nerves so badly that Emili just tried to avoid her. Molly kind of made her uncomfortable, because whenever she was in a room with Sherlock, her crush was painfully obvious; she was rarely visiting Molly without Sherlock, so Emili was almost always being subjected to that bystander's perspective.
The men's room's door swung open partway and Sherlock stuck his upper body out, peering around until his eyes settled on Emili. "Have you gotten bored?" He asked disdainfully.
Emili dropped her arms. "I can't follow you in there, Sherlock," she pointed out exasperatedly. It was one thing to jimmy a simple doorknob, but she drew the line at waltzing into the public bathroom of the opposite gender.
Sherlock's brows and mouth pulled down in confusion and annoyance. "Why not?" He asked.
She stared incredulously and pointed at the generic sign representing a man.
Sherlock followed her finger and blinked at the plaque. "Oh, of course," he realized, bobbing his head briefly in acknowledgment. Then, without any further delay, he reached out, grabbed onto her left wrist, and gave her a hardy tug. Emili stumbled forwards after him while her brother pulled her into the men's room after him.
The first thing that hit her was the smell. There was a cloying scent from soaps that was strong enough to overpower the smell of urinals, but while the scented soaps weren't really offensive, there was just too much of it in the air. She wrinkled her nose and felt her face turning pink like her hair when she saw that there was a stranger using the facilities, as well.
"Sometimes I think you see signs and see them as what rules to break first!" She squeaked unhappily, pulling her wrist away from his hand and tucking her hands under her upper arms.
"Sherlock," John protested, looking towards Emili meaningfully.
Sherlock ignored him. "Where were we, Sebastian?"
The sound of a zipper caught Emili's ears, and the russet-haired stranger walked widely around Emili and Sherlock to get to the sinks. His eyes lingered on Emili, just as uncomfortable with her being present as she was, and she steadfastly refused to look in his direction.
"Harrow, Oxford." Sebastian rubbed antiseptic into his palms with rhythmic, repetitive motions of his thumbs and fingers. "Very bright guy. Worked in Asia for a while, so…"
"You gave him the Hong Kong accounts." John understood. Emili tried to catch up, hearing that she missed a few lines before Sherlock noticed her absence.
Sebastian nodded once to the ex-army doctor. "He lost five mil in a single morning and made it all back a week later." He chuckled humorlessly. His tone sounded flat and discordant. Emili shifted her weight, discomfited. Sebastian had struck her as a very sociable man, so hearing him sound detached was weird. "Nerves of steel, Eddie had," he reminisced impersonally. "Would've done six years for us this November."
"Who'd want to kill him?" John asked mildly, coughing quietly. It was obvious – to Em, at least – that John didn't really want to ask, but felt that the importance outweighed how much it put him off. No one could ever say that John didn't get things done.
The stranger left the bathrooms after tossing out the paper towels he'd used to dry his hands, and Emili felt some of the heat leaving her cheeks. Though she still wasn't comfortable, it was less awkward once they were alone.
The banker shrugged in lieu of saying that he didn't know. "We all make enemies."
While Emili agreed that she had certainly experienced a lot of people with their enemies, she knew that her life wasn't making many orthodox turns. "Most traders don't end up murdered in their homes," she hinted pointedly.
Sebastian looked at her like he was biting his tongue to refrain from saying something rude, but he relented and looked down to his shoes. "No," he laughed dryly, shaking his head. "Not usually." Something pinged, and the sound echoed. "Excuse me," the Brit shifted and took out his phone from his pants pocket. He checked the screen. "It's my chairman."
He checked his messages while the three from 221 Baker Street stood around. Emili looked to her fingernails and started to pick at her cuticles. She had to admit that the men's room was a big step up from dangling over the edge of a building, but she was still supremely uncomfortable in a way she hadn't been at Roland-Kerr. John was trying to avoid looking at anyone for longer than he had to – the discussion setting was getting to him, too. Only Sherlock seemed not to care, and he was watching Sebastian read his phone raptly.
When Sebastian cleared his throat, more of his tone was in place. Emili was relieved to hear him sound more like himself. "The police have been onto him," the banker stated, sounding agitated. He pushed his phone away and kept both arms down. "Apparently, they're telling him it was a suicide." He stared hard at Sherlock.
"They're wrong, Sebastian. He was murdered." Sherlock assured him without giving away any hint of uncertainty or deceit, but still, Sebastian didn't buy it.
He turned his nose up at the detective. "Well, I'm afraid they don't see it like that."
Before she could change her mind, Em responded. "Of course they don't!" She exclaimed in aggravation, throwing her arms up. John looked at her quickly in surprise. "They're not going to tell you he was murdered if it was less than a sure thing, and half of our conclusion comes from the invasion of your business, which you've completely neglected to inform the police of!"
She was ready to start pouring smoke out of her ears. It was stupid not to report a crime, especially one inside a bank. If a bank was penetrable, then the fiscal matters they handled were vulnerable. Scotland Yard should've been notified, even if charges weren't going to be pressed. Sebastian didn't have the experience or the authority of law enforcement agencies, and Emili was getting sick of his attitude and his treatment of Sherlock. He was buddy-buddy until he was embarrassed, then he was hostile until he wanted something. He needed to pick a demeanor and keep it, because the manipulation, no matter how see-through it was, was infuriating.
Sebastian took a step forwards. Just as quickly, John and Sherlock both moved. Each took a half-step closer to Emili, making it evident that Sebastian would have to get through them if he wanted to get any closer to the sixteen-year-old. Instead of pushing his physical boundaries, he glared at her between the two other men's shoulders.
"I hired you to do a job." He flatly scolded. Emili held her chin up indignantly. Sebastian did not have the right to scold her. "Don't get sidetracked, Miss… Mr. Holmes," he added significantly at Sherlock.
Sebastian left with a vigor in his gait. Em rotated on her heels to watch his back as he departed and she drew her hands up with an angry huff. She boxed at the air, imagining she was punching his shoulder before he could push open the door. John reached out across the space and pushed her left arm down, and her right obediently followed.
John narrowed his eyes. "Are all bankers supposed to be heartless bastards?" He asked, frustration ringing in his question.
Emili kept her hands balled into fists. "I really don't like him," she growled.
Whilst they aired their complaints, Sherlock stared off after Sebastian, seeing something that wasn't there as he concentrated. Without another word, he whipped out his mobile and stalked out after the banker, taking an abrupt swerve in the other direction to head out of the restaurant.
