CHAPTER 11:THE BEST LAID PLANS…
"Sherlock Holmes, I will be fine. Go to work, dork." Kristy gave him a gentle shove towards the door with the arm not holding six-month-old Violet.
"Are you sure? You've been in bed barfing for two days."
"Babe, I'll be fine. It was just a stomach bug."
Violet made a happy cooing noise and grabbed Kristy's key necklace.
"I'll be fine, Sherlock." Kristy reassured, untangling her necklace from Violets tiny fingers. "Go to work. I was gonna take Violet for a walk anyway." She stepped closer and kissed him. "Bye. I love you."
"I love you too." Sherlock sighed, giving in. He kissed her cheek, kissed Violets head, and left.
It was a long, boring day at work, full of paperwork with only a domestic disturbance case to occupy his time.
He complained of this through text to Kristy, but after a while she had stopped answering, saying she was stretching her legs and taking Violet on a walk around the block.
He was so incredibly bored that he practically skipped out of the precinct when the day was over. Sarah rolled her eyes at him from her desk.
"Geez, Holmes. Turn down the excitement, people will think you're actually glad to leave." she called after him.
When Sherlock opened the door to his apartment, he knew immediately something was wrong.
Kristy didnt respond to his "Im back. Feeling better?" but Violet was screaming down the hall in her room. He ran to scoop her up and soothe her.
"Hush, Violet, hush. Daddy's here." He looked around the room, mystified. "Where's your mummy?"
Maybe Kristy had to go to the store or something last-minute, or ran over to a neighbors while Violet napped. Or maybe she was asleep in hers and Sherlock's room. That was far more likely.
Violet was still fussy, so Sherlock decided to calm her down so he wouldn't wake up Kristy. He carried Violet towards the kitchen in search of a bottle.
What he found was so much worse.
Kristy lay sprawled on the floor of the kitchen, her eyes wide and glassy, her blue T-shirt and gray sweatpants soaked with blood still slowly oozing from a wound in her stomach. A small pool of blood was forming on the tile beneath her body. Her hair, which had been held in a ponytail, was wadded beneath her head. A huge purple bruise was forming on the side of her face.
Signs of a struggle were all over the kitchen. Shattered glass littered the ground. A kitchen knife, red to the hilt, lay beside Kristy. Another knife was clutched in her hand. A bloody handprint glared sickeningly red against a cabinet door.
Sherlock staggered backwards, automatically pressing Violet even tighter into his shoulder. He dropped to his knees at the threshold, unable to tear his eyes away from his wife's body.
It took him a moment, but he realized he was crying, tears streaking down his cheeks and coating his lips in the taste of salt.
"No, Kristy, no please no, oh God please no, No Kristy no…"
He could no more have stopped himself saying the words than he could have let go of Violet or taken his eyes away from Kristy's glassy, terrified gaze.
He wasn't quite sure how, but somehow the police were called, and he was allowed to watch while they went through everything.
" Was she wearing her necklace today?" Sarah asked him. At his nod, she gave a grim sigh. "Well, we might have a motive there. The necklace is gone. It could be a robbery."
"This was no robbery." Sherlock stated numbly. His mind was working, piecing together the picture of what had happened.
"Then what was it?"
Sherlock stood up.
"He surprised her after she put Violet down. Over by her door there's a dent in the wall: he threw her against it. She must have gotten the bruise on her face there; he must have grabbed her ponytail and hit her. She shoved him away and ran here."
He pointed at the glass shards. "She must have thrown a glass at him when he got to the doorway, grabbing a knife to defend herself. There's blood on the knife in her hand. She stabbed him, somewhere low, because then he grabbed her arm, you can see the marks on her elbow, pulled her up, and…" he choked on the words.
"And stabbed her." Sarah supplied. "That son of a bitch."
Violet, who had been put in her room, started crying again.
Sherlock headed down the hall and mechanically scooped her up, bouncing her on his hip until she was happy once more. Then he reached into his pocket and made a call.
"Sabrina. Somethings happened…"
The murderer was never caught. Sherlock could deduce only his gender (male, deduced from the severity of the beating) his height (tall, about 6", deduced from the dent in the hallway where he had thrown Kristy and the dent where the glass thrown had hit the kitchen wall) and a few other things. (He had never killed before but knew how to beat someone, there was a distinct possibility he was drunk, and he would be wounded in one leg where Kristy had stabbed him.)
An empty bottle of cheap bourbon was found in the trash outside, still in its brown paper bag(hence the drunk murderer). But despite the blood on the knife and the virtual treasure trove of DNA the bottle provided, it couldn't help: the DNA wasn't on record.
Sabrina was incensed when she discovered what had happened. She came over to the apartment after Sherlock called her, saw Kristy's body, and came in to cradle Violet, her gold lipstick stark against her suddenly pale face. Somehow, the knowledge that they must care for a baby helped lift the cloud of grief a little.
It only got worse when the reporters showed up. The story was front-page news the next day.
And then the in-laws showed up.
"Oh, Kristen, oh my baby, oh what a tragedy this all is!" Naomi sobbed dramatically, bursting into the apartment with James and a policewoman hot on her heels. She stopped short when she caught sight of Sabrina, standing there in the middle of the living room, hair fuchsia and lips painted electric blue. Sabrina, seeing her parents, straightened, lifted her chin, and crossed her arms, brown eyes darkening under black mascara and lavender eyeliner.
"What are you doing here!?" Naomi spat. "What sane policeman let you in here?"
"I did."
Sherlock emerged from Violets bedroom, the baby on his hip.
"There she is!" Naomi cried. She headed for Sherlock, arms out. "There's my granddaughter!"
Sherlock shifted the baby out of Naomi's reach, his face blank. Sabrina and James were eyeing each other in the living room. Sarah, who was in the kitchen with a blood spatter analyst, peered around the young officer named Will Samson took a careful step forward.
"Leave. Now."
"But why?" Naomi puffed up the back of her hair. "My only daughters been murdered."
Sabrina barely blinked at the over-emphasised 'only daughter.'
"Leave. Now. You're trespassing."
Sherlock's tone was expressionless.
"She's here." James pouted, pointing like a scolded toddler to Sabrina.
Sabrina gave a sweet smile.
"I'm helping my brother-in-law. After all, his wife, my sister, my only family, has just been murdered. He needs time to get over that, so I'm helping to properly care for my niece."
James flinched slightly at the words 'only family' . Naomi was unaffected.
They had never taken any interest in Violet before now. But now, they had the chance to make trouble for Sherlock. And they reveled in it.
It was a very long, bitter battle, ending just before Violet turned one. Sabrina was granted full custody, Naomi and James were given visitation rights, and Sherlock was restricted to one weekend a month to see his daughter.
And if all that wasn't enough, a tiny memory kept tugging at Sherlock's mind.
At Kristy's funeral, he had been sitting off by himself, holding a sleeping Violet, when footsteps has paused right in front of him. He had felt intense scrutiny on his bowed head, but refused to look up. He couldn't stand to hear another fake, over-the-top condolence speech.
After a minute the steps had shuffled away, and Sherlock wished he had looked up.
Because he was pretty sure the owner of those steps was limping.