John did not expect Lestrade to be at his desk when Sherlock burst into his small office at Bow Street, (with John following sedately behind, of course), yet the man was there, reading through stacks of papers and mussing his short-cut salt and pepper hair.
"Good evening, Mr. Lestrade," John said as Sherlock stole the papers out of Lestrade's hand. Lestrade sighed resignedly and returned John's greeting.
Lestrade's eyes danced over the two of them: Sherlock's muttering, highly-focused demeanor; and John's good-natured grin as he made himself comfortable in the corner chair again.
"Yes, yes, clearly your advice worked, Lestrade. Stop gloating and start helping," Sherlock snapped.
"Advice?" John asked.
"Go through these," Sherlock directed, ignoring the question and dropping a pile of papers on John's lap. "Sort out any that fit the description." John nodded and started a 'no' pile and a 'maybe' pile for Sherlock to look through later.
Lestrade raised his eyebrows at the two men.
"Sherlock thinks one of the missing persons may have been… coerced into being an associate or henchman to a greater criminal mind," John clarified, since Sherlock didn't seem about to explain their intrusion.
"Coerced, how?"
John shrugged helplessly. "Killed and reanimated resulting in a highly suggestible mind."
If Lestrade had been drinking, he would have choked on it.
"Reanimated? You're pulling my leg."
"No, actually John has the right of it. It is possible that an unknown scientific genius has made a breakthrough in the mysteries of life and death. What his further purpose is, I do not have enough data to postulate. Now, if we can just sort through all the files again, removing the ones which could not possibly be our killer or henchman…"
"Killer?"
"The young boy from the morgue," John answered. "Sherlock concluded that the man from his attack last night and the boy's killer are one and the same."
"And that he's a reanimated corpse." Lestrade weakly attempted sarcasm failed miserably.
"Yes, Lestrade, do keep up," Sherlock said sharply, abandoning one stack of papers for another. Lestrade slapped his hand down atop them to keep them from spilling across his desk.
"I am not entirely convinced," John said with an uncertain tone.
"One thing I've noticed about working with Holmes is that the more outlandish his theory, the more likely that he's right." Lestrade did not sound too particularly excited about this particular outlandish theory.
During the ensuing silence, as Sherlock and John started glancing through the handwritten reports, Donovan rapped a meaty fist on the doorjamb.
"Oi, Lestrade, I'm supposed to tell you that a body washed up this afternoon near the King's Arm Stairs."
"Why are you supposed to tell me that?"
"Dimmock thinks you'd like to see the body. Said you were poking your nose into a lot of missing persons." Donovan shrugged in a 'why should I care?' way. "I see you've made up from your little tiff with the husband already, Holmes. Can't imagine how that happened. Or does a little slap and tickle make it all better?"
Donovan nearly danced with glee that Sherlock flushed red and had no response for him.
"Oh ho! You look like a fish, Holmes, with that gaping mouth."
John was the one who stood quite suddenly in front of Donovan, who was more than a head taller than him and nearly twice as wide.
"If your messenger duty is done, Mr. Donovan, then I suggest you leave." John's Captain Watson voice slashed through Donovan's crude crowing and the beefy man blinked down at his underdog adversary.
It only took ten seconds for Donovan to decide not to take his chances with the grim-faced, militaristic man standing chest-to-chest (sort of) with him.
When Donovan left without another word, Sherlock glared at Lestrade as if he would tear the man's tongue from his mouth.
The glare didn't disturb Lestrade. "Gregson," he said. "When would I have spoken to Donovan today? And why would I have done, if it wasn't necessary? The man is an ogre."
Sherlock sheathed his mighty glare with a bitter, "I know that," but still the papers he sorted through experienced a small amount of his wrath. His face remained flushed and he wouldn't look at John until he was distracted enough by the reports to put the incident aside.
"No likely candidates," Sherlock decided after another hour. "This one," he said, holding up a file on Charles Bellows, might have been a possibility if we had not identified his head in the night."
"Well, perhaps he was missing longer. How far back do these files go?" John asked Lestrade.
"Only three months. If this fellow was taken longer ago than that, or was never reported missing, we wouldn't have a file."
"Perhaps it was a natural death, or given the stitching on the neck, a convicted criminal. If our mystery scientist had been granted autopsy on a criminal, that would surely solve this with a simple inquiry. I know it would be unlike the others, but if it was a first try the madman is trying to replicate, perhaps he robbed a grave or, more likely, hired someone to do it for him like any other anatomist. We could ask around at the Fortune of War pub, see if there are any murmurings among the resurrection men."
Both Lestrade and Sherlock looked at John, surprised.
"What? I am a doctor. I'm not completely ignorant about where my lecturers got bodies for autopsy."
"There was no stink of the grave on the body, just that strange chemical odour," Sherlock mused. "Of course, he was relatively well-groomed for a walking corpse, wore well-made clothes. If the body had been exposed to the cold weather, slowing putrefaction, and the blood quickly replaced with this remarkable fluid, then perhaps that theory should not be completely disqualified. This will certainly open up avenues for investigation, though I had been hoping to be closing in on the culprit by now."
"Did he just say you could be right?" asked Lestrade with a gentle smirk on his face.
Sherlock had delved deeply into his own mind and wasn't paying attention.
"Yes, Mr. Lestrade, I do believe he did."
"John, Lestrade!" Sherlock barked, halfway out the door. "Are you coming to the morgue to check on the body?"