Thank you for your follows and favs, and for reading! :) And thank you, my Guest reviewer, I hope you have a very good day too ;)
Disclaimer: 'Sherlock' belongs to all the important people that you know. Also, credit to Ariane DeVere for her series transcripts that had been extremely helpful.
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The fleeting good humor was quickly forgotten, at least on Joan's part, when Sherlock opened van Coon's apartment from inside, only to show her the cold corpse of its owner. She let him look around, while placing the call to report the dead body. Surprisingly, the forensics were quick to arrive, and Anderson wasn't even on the crew. Oh, happy day. Joan meandered back to the bedroom, where Sherlock was putting on latex gloves, intent gaze focused on the open suitcase by the cupboard. Not eager to be roped into this particular path of investigation, she discreetly shifted towards the bed.
The City boy laid spread eagle across pristine silk sheets. That must be expensive. The small gun glinted innocently in his left hand. Her eyes skimmed over the suit, wondering how much money was spent into this piece of clothing, just so the man could kill himself wearing something nice… Wait, left hand?
Chiding herself for the lack of gloves, Joan leant over the body. Yep. Bullet hole on the right, clean and clear.
"Been away three days, judging by the laundry" Sherlock informed her from his prime place by the suitcase. "Look at the case. There was something tightly packed inside it." He looked up to see her frown at the corpse instead of his findings. "Problem?"
"He didn't shoot himself" she stated, still examining the dead man without touching him.
"Oh, good, you follow." The man abandoned the case in favor of the poor bloke, pulling out a small magnifier.
Joan watched as the detective meticulously looked over every bit of van Coon's body. "But why?" Sherlock seemed to have discovered something in the dead man's mouth, she couldn't see from her spot.
"The graffiti. It was a threat." He jiggled a transparent evidence bag to her face, with a small black origami in it. In a way, it looked ominous. Considering the place it was found in, that is.
A commanding voice sounded from the hallway: "Bag this up, will you, and see if you can get prints off this glass." A police officer appeared in the room. He looks like a teenager who had been left home alone for the first time and gets to play the boss, Joan thought. The fact that the man looked very young indeed didn't help either.
"Ah, Sergeant. We haven't met" Sherlock strolled towards the newcomer.
"Yeah, I know who you are" replied the young man with barely veiled hostility. Teenager throwing a hissy fit then, Joan corrected herself. "And I'd prefer it if you didn't tamper with any of the evidence." She moved closer to them, in case there was a need for mitigation.
"I've phoned Lestrade, is he on his way?" Joan threw her flatmate a questioning glance. He didn't phone anyone, to her knowledge. Did he? The man is sneaky sometimes…
"He's busy, I'm in charge" announced the teen-officer. "And it's not sergeant, it's Detective Inspector Dimmock." They exchanged an incredulous look with Sherlock, because, seriously, the kid looked barely out of uni. Did he drink at the fountain of youth or something? While they were digesting the information, the walking curiosity left them in favor of bossing around his forensics team.
"We're obviously looking at a suicide" was heard in the living room.
"Wrong" Sherlock boomed, striding after the DI. "It's only one possible explanation of some of the facts." Joan recognized the petulant glare sent to the room at large as one of 'you-are-idiots' variety. "You purposely ignore anything that doesn't comply with your easy solution."
Dimmock wasn't impressed. "Like?"
"The wound on the right side of his head" Joan chimed in. "And the gun in his left hand. If it was a suicide, his body would not be positioned as it is."
The youngling sputtered, and Sherlock picked up, not before nodding smugly at the doctor. "Van Coon was left handed, that much is clear from his flat."
"What?" Dimmock blinked at him. Wrong move, kid. You just invited him to explain. Joan smiled, and let the show unveil.
"Coffee table on the left-hand side; coffee mug handle pointing to the left. Power sockets – 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. D'you want me to go on?" Dimmock blinked in bemused silence. "There's a knife on the breadboard with butter on the right side of the blade because he used it with his left." Joan was the one to blink in surprise here, because the level of detail had yet ceased to amaze her. "It's highly unlikely that a left-handed man would shoot himself in the right side of his head." He even accompanied the statement with some contortions to drive his point home. "Conclusion – someone broke in here and murdered him. Only explanation of all the facts" he hammered it into the poor man's face.
"But the gun, why…" Dimmock tried helplessly.
"He was waiting for the killer. He'd been threatened." Having delivered his findings and finding the audience lacking, Sherlock swept away to get his coat back on.
"What?!"
"There was a warning today, at the bank" Joan quipped in, thoroughly enjoying the scene.
"But the gun was fired!"
"The bullet went through the open window" Sherlock informed him from the door, already pulling on his scarf.
"Come on! How likely is that?"
"Wait for your ballistics report" the consulting drama queen replied, adjusting his scarf. "The bullet in his brain wasn't fired from his gun, I guarantee it."
Dimmock looked around for support, but was thoroughly ignored by his colleagues. "The door was locked" he finally tried. "How did the killer get in?"
"Good! You're finally asking the right questions" Sherlock drawled before disappearing from the room. Joan choked a laugh at the DI's face, and followed suite.
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After they have finally gotten home, with no new information available, Sherlock sank into the couch in a meditative state. Joan took that time to browse job adds online, not wanting to rely entirely on her flatmate's irregular income to pay the bills. There were several offers for permanent positions, but it was rather far from the flat, and she wasn't up for a routine job yet. One small message from a local surgery on LinkedIn caught her attention. They were looking for qualified casuals to replace some permanent staff on leave.
Interested, she jolted down a private message to the account along with her updated resume (Ella made her work on it the week she got out of the hospital), and was rather surprised to get an answer half-an-hour later, requesting an interview tomorrow morning. Glancing at the immobile man in a dressing gown on the couch, she typed out a confirmation, clapped her laptop shut and went up to her room without a word.
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The morning started with a one-sided row. Specifically, with Joan finding out that her insomniac flatmate had used almost all hot water mere minutes before she got to the shower. There had been just enough left to fool her into emptying the shampoo bottle on her hair. Swearing non-stop in English and Farsi, with some German mixed in (joint seminars had taught her at least some vocabulary), and shivering under the freezing stream of water, Joan washed off the shampoo as quickly as possible, and practically leapt on her fluffy towel, sighing in relief. When the warmth returned to her body parts, she pulled on the bathrobe, and stormed out to confront the hot-water-thief. Despite her best efforts, Sherlock remained undaunted, completely absorbed in a staring match with the fireplace.
Joan was still fuming when she arrived for her job interview. She had managed to find a pair of dress pants for the occasion, along with a blue and white checkered shirt and a grey cardigan. It was perhaps a bit too casual, but after years in the army she had only a vague idea of what passed for professional dress-code these days, even less so for women. Even thinking about what Harry would say about her fashion sense made her shudder slightly. We'll compensate with a smile, her inner voice intoned joyfully.
Dr Sawyer was a soft-looking blond woman (one that knew how to wear a dress), a little overwhelmed by her daily duties, but cordial nevertheless. She appeared skeptical at Joan's appearance at first, but one look at the resume made her eyebrows fly high. "Just locum work" she said hesitantly.
Joan replied with a winning smile. "That's fine."
Fifteen minutes later, she had a job. It somehow lifted her spirits.
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"I said, could you pass me a pen?" greeted her at Baker Street.
"What? When?"
"About an hour ago." Of course. I clearly spend too much time around him, if he still talks to me when I'm gone.
"Didn't notice I'd gone out, then" she said, while looking for a pen under the rubble covering all surfaces of their flat. Eventually spotting the item and throwing the ballpoint in Sherlock's general direction over her shoulder, she continued: "I went to see about a job at the local surgery."
"How was it?"
"Great. I start tomorrow. Anything new regarding Van Coon?"
The man finally moved, pushing his own laptop towards her. "Here, take a look."
The rest of the morning and early afternoon were spent running around London, from NSY to a murdered journalist's flat, to a library, then back to the flat. One clue leading to another, like breadcrumbs, there was barely time to stop and think before lurching to the next stop. At least, it was the feeling Joan had. The impression of being included in the investigation rapidly dwindled back to nothing when the blasted git ran off along with his "artist" friend, leaving her to take the blame with Community Support Officers.
"Bit of an enthusiast, are we?" One of the officers kicked open Raz's canvas bag and was eyeing her with disdain.
Dropping the can into the bag, Joan arched an eyebrow at them. "Do I look like I'm into that stuff? I just stumbled upon the guy who drew this. Look, there's no paint on me!" She waved her hands at their faces to prove the point. It didn't seem to convince the pair though, who stepped forward with twin frowns. Ok, Watson, think fast. "Alright." Keep stalling. Think faster. "Alright, fine." She remembered seeing an old ID in her wallet the previous morning, that had been needed for some high clearance operations back in the day. It would check out suspended in the database, but CSOs shouldn't even have access to that. Good thing she had been too lazy to destroy it after her forced retirement as the procedure required. Start the bullshit. "Listen, I'm actually on some important business, here…" While they scoffed, she pulled out the useful piece of plastic, identifying her as a military liaison to a certain governmental agency. "And trust me, spraying obscure images over walls is not part of it."
Officers exchanged wary glances, examining the ID in her hand. "Your job doesn't give you the right to degrade public propriety." Oh, for goodness' sake…
"I wasn't degrading anything. Haven't you seen the two blokes sprinting away? One is my informant." Stretching the truth a bit here. Oh, who cares... Giving up on playing nice, Joan snapped the ID back into her wallet. "You know what? I don't have time for this. Report me if you think it's necessary. Have a good day." After delivering the classic rebuke in a clipped voice, she just turned around and walked away, silently praying that they wouldn't tackle her to the ground and drag her dumb arse to the nearest police station.
They didn't.
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While Joan was rather proud of herself for having talked herself out of custody (who said she couldn't act her way out of a school play?), she was furious with Sherlock. Being thoroughly ignored when she finally got back to the flat didn't arrange the matter, and she ended up shouting again (twice a day, it can't be healthy), with as much reaction from the man as from a concrete wall. Sherlock finally deigned to notice her when she slammed her hand on the fireplace, making some crime scene photographs fall off the mirror. "I can't place this symbol" he stated intently, perfectly unfazed by the violence threatened upon his person, and proceeded to manhandle Joan into her coat.
"Oi!" The glare she gave him would have sent her whole division run for cover, but apparently Sherlock Holmes had no survival instinct. The sheer audacity of his do-as-I-say-and-shut-up attitude never failed to shock everyone into compliance, though, including her temper. At least, that's what Joan grudgingly admitted to herself while the cab navigated through traffic towards Scotland Yard. It made her feel marginally better, knowing that the whole world didn't fare any better against her friend's moods.
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A/N: Sorry for any mistakes, this month is rough but I wanted to post it today. Next chapters should be better ;)