Martha was just about to start her explanation of the case when Owen cut her off.
"Not so fast, Holmes. I've been reading your website and John's and I know what you can do. We've all been dying to know. How did you find the Hub? C'mon...I'll show you mine if you show me yours." Owen wagged his eyebrows suggestively while he held a firm grip on the sheet covering the body closest to Sherlock and John.
Sherlock looked to John and rolled his eyes, but John knew the display of petulance was just for show.
"Go ahead, you know you want to." Said John. "You've left me in the dark all the way here so I wouldn't mind knowing myself" he added after another sip of coffee.
Sherlock's lip curled up on just the one side.
"I must admit you all have been very successful hiding in plain sight all these years. The internet chatter pins your base to somewhere in Cardiff, roughly in the waterfront area, but there's not much beyond that. Same thing with anything connected with Captain Harkness. You find his name here and there, but it's so much fact and fiction and fantasy intermingled that it's difficult to distinguish one from the other. It actually all came down to Mr. Jones."
"Ianto? How? We're in Wales! His name might as well be John Smith. And he has little to no life outside of the Hub!" asked Owen.
"It is true that the name is very common. However, using the Yard's ability to search public records, such as those of, say, civil employees, and then narrowing those results by age and general location..."
"Bugger" Ianto mumbled into his coffee mug.
"Ianto, what am I missing here? Are you moonlighting as a postal service worker or something?" Jack asked.
"No," Sherlock said. "He is the sole employee of the Mermaid Quay branch of the Tourist Information Bureau. May I now Dr. Harper?" Sherlock asked, wrapping an index finger around the edge of one of the sheets, the one covering the first victim that Tosh and Owen had discovered on a weevil hunt.
"Yeah, whatever," said Owen off-handedly.
Ianto saw all eyes in the med bay and of those leaning on the railing above trained on him. He sighed heavily. "A few months back a guy came into the Tourist Office. He was surprised to find it because, as it turned out, he was an administrator with the Tourist Bureau. He asked a bunch of questions about how long I had been there and how things were going. I fed him a few lines and sent him on his way. Well a few days after that, I get a letter delivered addressed to me via the tourist office address. It was employment paperwork. And things like requests for expense records, and procedures for ordering updated pamphlets. I guess the guy was so embarrassed at their oversight he decided to cover his tracks by making sure there was a paper trail. Rather than track him down with a dose of retcon and have to search their whole system for every email and not to mention the multiple hard copies circulating through their home office on the matter, I figured it was just easier to go along with it. I thought it would be good to have a more legitimate front to our fake front office." Ianto ended with a shrug.
"Wait, so you mean to tell me you are getting an actual paycheck from the Tourist Bureau?" Jack asked. "What do you do with the extra money?"
"Well, most of it goes right into education trust funds for my niece and nephew." Ianto said, finishing off his coffee.
"And the rest?" Gwen asked.
Ianto snickered. "Someone once told me that he preferred me in silk. It's not a cheap habit to keep up." He sauntered off.
"Right then!" Jack added with a quick clap of his hands while clearing his throat. "What have you got for us Mr. Holmes?"
Sherlock had perused both bodies and had flipped through the lab reports from the tests that Owen and Martha had conducted thus far. He handed off the medical reports to John.
"What do you make of the Ammonium Hydroxide, Doctor?"
"I think it's an odd way to kill someone. It's more like a system flush, as if they were covering something up."
"Very good, Dr. Watson." said Dr. Jones. "Owen and I came up with the same working hypothesis. But we don't have a baseline to start from because the victim's medical records were wiped so clean that even Tosh is having a hard time getting to the bottom of it. And then there is our third victim who got away from her attacker before he was able to inject her."
Martha handed Marie's file over to John. Sherlock crowded over John's shoulder to read the report. John didn't seem to mind.
"Everything with her test results checks out within normal parameters. Nothing seems to be amiss with her that would need covering up." John replied.
"Yeah, she's so normal she's abnormal." Owen added.
Sherlock's head snapped up from the reports. "Say that again." he commanded.
"She's so normal she's abnormal?" Owen repeated.
"Did you confiscate the attack survivor's clothing and belongings as evidence when you were at the hospital?"
"Yeah..." Owen replied.
"Give them to me, now. Did you even look through them? Of course not. A team of doctors and they think that they only way to find out about a person't medical history is from their medical records or by asking the patient." Sherlock mocked.
"Sherlock..." John warned.
"I didn't mean you, John. You would have had enough sense by now to not just trust what the victim says. Almost everybody lies."
Sherlock's eyes lit up as he found an appointment book in Marie's purse. He dove and flipped through pages. His eyes danced over the pages in a display of nearly super-human speed-reading. John pecked through Marie's clothing but didn't find anything of use, moved on to the rest of her purse.
"Ah!" Sherlock exclaimed with a gasp.
Before he could explain his discovery, Ianto interjected. "Jack, there has been another attack. Body was found in the a park, student, Barry Leonard. Medical records have already been wiped clean."
Almost simultaneously, Owen's cell phone chimed. He furrowed his brow "Text from the unit nurse I left my number with. Marie just had some sort of violent seizure."
"Okay, Martha, Owen, get to the hospital and check on your patient. Gwen, Ianto, go work your magic with the local PD and bring us back that body. Sherlock, John, crime scenes are your thing, right? Why don't you two tag along with Gwen and Yan to check out the evidence at the scene."
Owen and Martha were already heading out the door, their respective medical bags in hand. Sherlock made a face at the notion of him "tagging along" with anyone. John knew that if they were back in London he would have done his usual "we'll follow in a cab" routine, but his curiosity got the better of him. Before heading out, Sherlock tucked Marie's appointment book into his coat pocket and thrust her purse at John to carry. Sherlock barely lifted his eyes from his iPhone as he scrolled through numerous websites.
When the detectives settled into the back seat of the Torchwood SUV, John let out a long whistle at all the tech that was loaded into the small space. Sherlock raised one eyebrow at the impressive display but then dropped his eyes fervently back to his own small screen again.
Gwen was chatting on her mobile with someone from the local PD, setting groundwork for their arrival at the scene. Ianto drove silently but at a good clip. John dug through Marie's mess of a huge handbag for a few minutes before finally unfolding one small paper and then passing it to Sherlock.
"Yes! Wonderful! John, call the pharmacy on the receipt and work your MD magic on seeing what Marie was taking and when she stopped picking up her prescriptions."
John nodded and rang up the pharmacy. After a few minutes of buttering up the pharmacy tech and giving his medical license number to access the information, John hung up. Just as he opened his mouth to speak...
"You are about to tell me that the medication was for serious and incurable illness and that Marie abruptly stopped picking up her maintenance medication just a few weeks ago." Sherlock said with a small wry grin.
"Yes! How did you..." John started.
"We're here boys." said Gwen. "Let me do the talking with the police. Ianto bring over one of our body bags and the stretcher. Sherlock and John, we need to keep this quick so do what you do but don't get in the way and don't mess with the local cops too much. They are often on edge enough when we roll up."
Gwen stopped to chat with a policeman, Ianto dutifully pausing a step behind her. Sherlock continued right past Gwen, snatching the earpiece coms link she wore on the way. The "Oi!" that Gwen sent after him did not slow Sherlock. He walked with such imperious authority (and arriving in a Torchwood car didn't hurt) that no one dared to stop him as he approached the area of the body, lifting the police tape for John to follow him.
He secured the link behind his ear and started swiftly examining the body of the young man in the dirt. "Owen Harper! Are you there?" Barked Sherlock in a tone that was reminiscent of speaking to an older relative whom one assumed was hard of hearing.
Across town, jogging down a hospital hallway, Owen tapped his coms link and replied with an incredulous "Holmes? What the hell are you doing on the com? Is everything okay?"
"Yes of course everything is fine. Gwen let me, umm, borrow her ear thing. Anyway, have you met with Marie yet?" Sherlock asked, followed by his gesturing to the nasal passages on the deceased young man to John with a "what do you make of it?" eye squint.
"Martha and I are one turn away from her room, why? What do you have for me?"
"Ask her about her HIV status and when she was cured."
Owen Harper came to a dead stop in the middle of the hospital hallway, resulting in Martha almost colliding with him. He took a steadying breath.
"Right then." he replied, then continued on to Marie's room.
Sherlock removed the coms link from his ear and chucked it over his shoulder to Gwen.
"Did I hear you just tell Owen that Marie was cured of her HIV?" Ianto asked as he unfurled the body bag.
"Yes, do keep up Mr. Jones. John, tell me what you see."
John straightened up from where he examined the dead man's face. "You were right Sherlock, signs of recent cocaine abuse damage to the mucus membranes in his nose. Looks to be only recent though, not significant long term damage. Smells of alcohol too, but looks overall healthy so not a long-term alcoholic. Oh, and the needle mark to the eye is unmistakable. He's one of our victims."
"So, recent drug and alcohol use onset. Maybe he received bad news? Took up the bad habits to deal with the stress?" Gwen ventured.
John had moved on to a cursory exam of the rest of the young man's body. When he lifted his shirt a bit, John noticed a small scar that was immediately familiar to him. He knew it because it was from something that he had installed for some of his patients before.
"I don't think it was bad news, I think it was good news. Sherlock you said Marie was cured of her HIV? Well if I'm not mistaken, I think our victim here recently had an insulin pump removed. Medical records wiped or not, scars don't lie."
Sherlock's smile grew, partly from the fun of the puzzle and partly for his vicarious pride in John's deduction. "Neat."
Ianto tapped the coms link on his ear. "Yes Owen?"
A second later he deftly slapped Sherlock's hand away from procuring his ear piece as the detective had done to Gwen earlier. He also fixed Sherlock in the ice-cold glare that he perfected that often was followed by threats of decaf.
"Ianto, Marie is dead." Owen reported, sounding winded himself. "She seized almost right after we arrived in her room. She did confirm Sherlock's conclusion of being cured of her HIV. She only got out a few more words before she flatlined. And then things got weirder. Meet us back at the Hub."
Author's Note:
So I am taking some liberties with the progression of the original plot of the TW episode "Reset". Some portions happened slower (to accommodate getting John and Sherlock from London to Cardiff) and some are now happening all at once. Oh, and I killed off Marie a few minutes early so Sherlock could show off. :)
Thanks all for reading and favoriting it so far! I have been wanting to write this bit about Ianto and he tourism bureau for a while now. Please do leave reviews or questions or constructive criticisms if you feel moved to do so!