Sherlock had to wait much longer than expected for the next death- it was well into August by the time he received a text message from Lestrade stating, simply, to keep his eyes open.
He'd been quite busy in that time.
He'd covered the wall with a visual map of everything he couldn't fit into his head- a rather Hollywood approach to information organization, Sherlock thought, but it was also a concession: he didn't know what to make of these murders, and so he'd bring all of the evidence out in a space where others could look, too. If not to piece things together than to illuminate him on something he may have been missing.
Clumps of personal information.
Pictures of the fronts of houses screenshot from Google Maps.
Subtly suspicious Facebook condolences.
He didn't know where to stop, so he didn't- nothing was relevant to each other, and so everything was relevant.
Every once and a while, he'd pick at the plate that always found its way up to his room- once it was three home-cooked meals a day. Now Mrs. Hudson new better than to exert the energy; he'd be left a sandwich when the previous was eaten or spoilt.
Rarely, he'd take to the streets in search of some sort of evidence that didn't lie on the other side of a luminous screen; always in disguise, always spotted.
He couldn't remember the last time he slept. Closing his eyes for longer than four seconds was unpalatable.
He'd had few visitors- a daily Mrs. Hudson that had had forgone trying to speak to him, but often gave him a distracting squeeze on the shoulder. Lestrade once- no, twice- who stopped by to awkwardly stand in the doorway and look up at the wall warily before asking how Sherlock was doing, grumbling and leaving as he was heartily ignored. His brother, once, who participated in a silent glaring match before cocking an eyebrow, spinning on his heel and walking out the door.
No one stayed for more than they had to.
And now, a mouse-haired woman was gnawing on her lip as she sat on the couch, empty handed.
"It's been lonely at the morgue," she starts.
"Well, I mean, there's always someone to talk to, but, you know, they're…"
She plays with the ring on her index finger. Molly has a fear of being judged and so she usually surrounds herself with people that she knows are on a lower intellectual level than herself so she can if not inflate her ego than at least uphold some self-reassurance that she's useful, She takes a liking to me because
Because
Because…
She flipped her hands over, expressing her doubt at the joke she was trying to make.
"… Well, dead."
"Do you have the files for me?"
Sherlock looked up at her expectantly. Molly sighed.
"You know, it- it hasn't been easy for me."
"You don't have the files."
"To get a job, I mean. To keep my job. Being your-"
She moved onto the palm of her hand, rubbing it roughly.
"Being affiliated with you. I was a part of the investigation. They wouldn't let me work for two weeks. I didn't make rent, I-"
Her voice sounded strange. Tinned.
"I don't have the files, no. I came to, er. To see you."
Sherlock was in his blue bathrobe and the same ratty pajamas he'd worn the entire week. He swirled the fabric around his lanky self, turning his back to her.
"Well, now you've seen me. Are you satisfied?"
"No. I'm really not."
And she stayed.
Even after Sherlock didn't answer her dull attempts at conversation, even after his back remained pointed firmly in the direction of her face. She didn't seem to mind, even after hours had passed- the sun was setting by the time he had finished waiting for Lestrade's sign.
He had been keeping his eyes open- for what? He'd had the television turned on, his phone at his side, several tabs open to local newspages- there was no sign of the murder. Would it not be released to the public?
Sherlock was just about to reply to Lestrade when the afternoon news began.
He leaned his elbows against his knees, resting his mouth on his clasped hands as the news anchor detailed the latest murder.
Mark Cook. Lived in London his entire life. Forty years old, worked as a Dentist in Oxford all of his life.
He was shot in his home late at night- he was a divorced man who lived alone.
A picture showed a man tall and fat, with an obvious drinking problem that he would have died from in five years had he not been-
Burgled?
Really?
He threw his pen at the television, standing up to pace across the living room, pulling his hair.
"Ohhh, even you cannot be that stupid!"
He jabbed the remote control in the face of the screen, turning to several channels before flinging it at the wall.
He pulled open his phone, text Lestrade once, twice- the man was ignoring him.
He had too much pride to call him and knew better than to try and contact Donovan. He'd just have to wait, like everyone else.
He didn't want to wait like everyone else. He spun around, thinking- he didn't have to be the one to get the information. He could send a third party, collect the information, take pictures of the body, copy a file or four. He knew she would.
"Molly-"
But she'd already gone.
But the next day, she was back; with two coffees and a sack of donuts.
"Morning, Sherlock," She spouted, setting a coffee in front of him. In his surprised state his first instinct was to take a sip of it- black, two sugars.
She set a donut in front of him as well, on top of a napkin on a relatively clean portion of the table.
"Molly."
She smiled. It was not a happy smile- he narrowed his eyes.
"Yes?"
He said nothing, instead opting to bring the Styrofoam cup to his mouth, drinking the coffee in one sitting instead of trying to find a place on the table to put it.
She resumed her spot on the couch. She looked tired.
Sleepless night one of many she usually tries to cover the bags under her eyes but has stopped this procedure she feels as if she deserves this she feels guilty for something-
She kept watching him. She said nothing.
He kept forming half-completed thoughts about her. For the first time, she had defied him.
She wasn't even trying. It was infuriating.
She crossed her legs, settling into the couch as she fit an over-large bite of donut into her mouth, moving quick to try and catch the falling flakes of sugar as she bit down. She had given up on waiting for whatever Sherlock was about to say- must have known it was hopeless.
Saying anything to her would open conversation that, he assumed, he wanted nothing to do with- instead, he turned back to his work.
Four days had passed since Molly's first appearance, and every day thereafter she would pop in once in the morning to bring him some breakfast, and then once in the afternoon after she had gotten off of work. She said nothing to him most days, which was just as well for Sherlock- she had nothing useful for him and he preferred not to be disturbed. She was surprisingly good at that- she'd stay four, five hours reading or finishing paperwork, idly watching whatever television channel Sherlock had turned on for noise.
She watched as an outsider as 221B began to fill with paper- fragile newsprint, fading printed articles, glossy pictures in full colour. By the end of the week, she was forced to occupy the kitchen, with its slight, sour smell of some experiment forgotten and disposed of in the month of Sherlock's absence.
And- why?
Sherlock had not given up on figuring out why it was that she came to his flat every night to be wholly ignored- he could never just let something be- but frankly he had more important things to tend to. Moriarty had disappeared, obviously leaving no trace. These murders had not become clearer as time and more evidence built up around him- they were unprovoked, connected only by the murder weapon and lack of any real intruder.
But Molly had not left his thoughts.
Sherlock didn't have to wait as long for the next murder- three days later, the day that Molly had come over to make breakfast for herself in the kitchen before leaving for work. He received another text from Lestrade telling him to stay in waiting, and a few hours later on the news- more of the same thing.
The Met and the news were too afraid to tell the public that they were out of their depths without the help of Sherlock Holmes… Once again.
Michael Faulkner, thirty six. Divorced for over three years, lives alone in his apartment whenever his ten year old son was with his wife. He was alone when he was shot- earlier than usual, at dusk, in the head in the same manner as the other four.
They'd detained a woman that witnesses report seeing rushing out of the building around that time. She was a resident of the building and told investigators that she had been rushing because she had left her cell phone at the restaurant she had just visited.
Obvious dead end, and yet the Met were keeping on to her.
It infuriated Sherlock, their need to fabricate anything just for something to show to the public. Their need to try and make it seem like they were competent, just as competent without Sherlock Holmes as they were with him.
More of the wall had been taken up by the time Molly got back to 221B, a full corner on this new victim and the frustration he brought Sherlock.
"Heard about the new murder," she brought up an hour into a television show she didn't pick. He gave a non-committal grunt from his desk.
She was eating the pasta that Mrs. Hudson had brought up for the two of them, twirling it around her fork and trying her hardest not to slurp up the noodles that dangled from her overfilled fork.
He didn't find it difficult to ignore her- it came unsurprisingly easy, actually.
"Do you think that you've found anything that the police have missed yet?"
That- now, that earned her a glare. She gave him a spaghetti sauce half-smile; it hadn't been unintentional.
"I've found a lot of information on all of the victims."
"But nothing that the cops don't have."
He scowled.
"I didn't say that."
"You didn't deny it."
She gave him a smile, and returned to whatever was on her lap-
Wait.
"What's that?"
She became guarded- she'd lied before she'd opened her mouth.
"Sodoku puzzles…"
He stood up, stepping closer to her, circling her as she curled the papers closer to herself-
"Nice try, but no. You haven't written any notations. You've been writing in standard, linear, left-to-right format, but you've been skipping around. Look- see, I can see the printed field boxes, Molly, you're not hiding it. It's the paper work."
"It's not the paperwork you want-"
"Oh, nonsense. You work in the morgue, you're the youngest one who works there, you're the one they give the paperwork to so they don't have to do it at home because they know all you have to do each night is sit with your cat and watch musical television shows…"
He snatched the papers from her hands, tossing the irrelevant ones as he searched for what had to be Michael Faulkner's file. His autopsy would not have been completed yet, but she would still have the papers, filling out the preliminary information so a senior employee would not have to-
It wasn't there. There was nothing of any interest in here. Car accidents and drug overdoses.
"Sherlock!"
Molly jumped up, scurrying around the room to try and pick the discarded papers up in some sort of order. Sherlock stood as she orbited him, perplexed.
"These aren't your usual specimens."
Molly stood to face him, a disorganized stack of papers clutched in her hands.
When she remained silent, he continued.
"They still don't trust me. They're not sure what crimes may be affiliated with me and so they treat all of them as if they are. And they don't trust you, and so they don't give you any autopsy that may have-"
"They don't let me do autopsies at all."
He looked at her. At a moment when he expected her to turn away, her eyes stayed fixed on his.
"I'm not allowed to. For the time being, at least."
He looked down to the papers in her hands, trying to shuffle them into a pile. She gave a hollow laugh.
"Well. Hopefully for the time being."
"You feel badly about this."
"Well- I very much almost lost my job because a friend was accused of murders he helped solve-"
"It's not enough."
"… What?"
He swooped across the living room, performing one set of pacing before finally sitting down on the couch, staring up at her as intently as a biologist might at a skin sample.
Papers in a half- organized pile, she set them back in the folder she was using to store them in, waiting for his response. When he gave her nothing, she pressed onward-
"What's not enough?"
"You're-"
He closed his mouth. He didn't want to ask- he didn't want to know the answer to the riddle before he could solve it. Because he could solve it. Molly was just as simple as anything else he'd ever studied, as easy as every code he'd ever cracked- there was nothing particularly remarkable about her.
Except.