Chapter Three
"Hello, Mrs. Hudson." Sherlock threw over his shoulder as he near skipped up the stairs to the landing in front of their flat. John and Lestrade followed after him clumsily, bearing various sized boxes.
"Hell- Sherlock? What's going on here?" Mrs. Hudson questioned when she saw the defeated look on Lestrade's face and the resigned look on John's.
"I doubt you'd want to know, Mrs. Hudson, please don't talk to me right now. I'm thinking." Sherlock murmured, holding the flat door open for the other two men.
"I can't believe you've talked me into this!" Lestrade grumbled as he grudgingly placed the boxes he held on the floor and opened them. "You're sure you know exactly how to reconstruct this?" He picked up the skeleton's skull with carefully gloved hands.
"Of course I can, who do you think I am?"
It was a good two hours and a half later that Sherlock, John, and Lestrade finished fitting the entire skeleton back together on the kitchen counter. Sherlock ran a finger over a smooth patella. "There's just something... wrong with this." he murmured unhappily. "Why won't my brain find the inaccuracy?" He collapsed his full length on the couch, rapping his knuckles gently on his head. "John, my brain is rotting! I used to be able to do this!" he whined childishly.
"I think you'd better..." John turned to Lestrade with a grim, long suffering look. "... He'll call you if he finds something new." Lestrade shot a glance at the consulting detective and nodded.
"Right, see you then." He excused himself and left the flat, barely hearing Sherlock demanding John tell him why his brain wasn't working 'you're a doctor, arn't you?' He shook his head with a sigh. He was infinitely glad he wasn't Sherlock Holmes's flatmate.
"He claims his brain is rotting?" Sasaki repeated amusedly after listening to John's recounts of the day before. "A brain that big, is it possible?"
John grimaced. "He seems to believe so."
John had been surprised, to say in the least, when Sasaki had showed up at his clinic just in time for lunch break and the two of them were dining at a nearby Oriental restaurant. Sarah had been cautious of the place since the Chinese circus incident, and John never offered to bring her there. He always found it strange to eat in a restaurant alone and was genuinely glad that Sasaki had come along.
"Is he, like, not thinking at all? Or just thinking all the wrong things?" Sasaki asked him curiously.
"I'm not sure, I never got around to asking." John looked sheepish. "I forgot entirely in my desperation to keep him from taking his frustrations out at the wall again." Sasaki snorted in amusement as she picked at her chicken.
"You know, it would take about twenty-seven gallons of acid and several weeks for the flesh on the skeleton to dissolve in acid... does Scotland Yard know how old the body is?" John shook his head. "Figures, not much physical evidence is left on bodies left in acid baths."
"I suppose not." John murmured, stabbing his meat with his fork as he cut the bones away from it. He was all thumbs, he never did understand how people could cleanly pick meat off the bones.
Sasaki watched him with a grimace. "You know, there is a way to pick the meat off the bones without ripping it apart..." Then a look of sudden inspiration flashed across Sasaki's face as she watched his movements in silent awe, mouth hanging open an inch.
"You don't think... It couldn't be... But, it might be possible." She stammered and stuttered. "Can you get Sherlock on the phone?" John looked at her, then to his mutilated fish. Obviously, Sasaki was on to something here, and he really wasn't seeing it.
"Sure..." Sherlock was on speed dial, anyway.
The phone rang once before being snatched up by Sherlock. "John, what is it?" He sounded a little desperate, obviously he hadn't gotten over his brief lapse of mental thought.
John put the phone on speaker mode as he placed the gadget on the table between Sasaki and himself. "It's Sasaki." he informed the detective and motioned for the girl to speak.
"I heard about the case, Sherlock." Sasaki cleared her throat. "I was thinking that the body could've, maybe, been split between a few people?"
There was silence on the other end as hundreds of thoughts and ideas rushed like a raging torrent through Sherlock's mind. "A doctor, or professor..." he murmured, understanding what Sasaki was going with this conversation.
"Someone who would know exactly how to separate the skeleton, as well as reconstruct it without breaking bone." Sasaki chimed in.
"If several different people had charge of destroying each a body part..."
"The time it would take to dissolve the entire body would diminish greatly, yes."
"There were slight scrape marks on the Cervical and Lumbar Vertebrae..."
"No markings on the limbs, they were broken off by the cartilage and it's not unnatural for parts of the bones to erode."
"Easier to hide the body. Say, a week, or two, to dissolve the entire body."
"They all meet up at the cemetery, dig up the grave together, and bury the body together."
"They made it so that every single one of them would have a clear hand in the crime..."
"And now, you'll just have to find who the victim is, who wanted him dead, and round them all up in one fell swoop."
"Brilliant! My mind is firing up again! Where's John?" Sherlock suddenly demanded.
"Staring at his torn-up fish, which was the original inspiration to my epiphany... I don't think he's got the appetite to eat it anymore." Sasaki smiled sympathetically at the good doctor.
"Good, perfect! John, get back to Baker Street, now!"
"I've already called Scotland Yard, Lestrade is expecting us there." Sherlock greeted John and Sasaki, walking out of their flat as they arrived.
"I'll stay here, Scotland Yard probably wouldn't welcome the intrusion." John and Sherlock nodded at her, leaving her with Mrs. Hudson as they dashed off wildly in search of a cab.
"Lestrade said another body turned up, this one in a different cemetery. At first the gravediggers didn't pay the upturned dirt much attention, but Lestrade put out a notice to every cemetery in the area to look out for signs of disturbance and they dug it up." John grimaced.
"More eyes?" Sherlock nodded silently, inwardly excited, but not showing for John's sake.
"More eyes, green, this time."