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Description
Chapter Three

The cab ride over to St. Bart’s was a strange one for John, mostly because after he’d finished his phone call with Molly to have everything ready for them, Lestrade actually struck up a conversation. John was so used to Sherlock using this time to think or text or do something to further his progress on a case that hearing another voice in the cab was very strange to him. And while having a normal conversation for once was nice, John did miss the way he used to watch the detective as he fit the pieces of the puzzle together in his head.

“How is Molly? You’ve kept in touch with her?” John asked as the cab paused at a red light.

“More or less. I still need to make the occasional trip to the morgue for an assignment, a bit more now that I’m lower down on the Yard’s food chain.”

“How has she been holding up these past few months?” John hadn’t seen the mortician since the funeral. She’d seemed to be coping alright then, but John knew how smitten with Sherlock she’d been. He probably should have checked in with her afterwards, offered to take her out for coffee or something, but he’d had his own issues to deal with at the time. Still, he should have at least called her.

“Fine, last time I saw her,” Lestrade said. “A bit twitchy, but she’s always been like that, if you know what I mean. Good girl though, always had a solid head on her shoulders. Now if I could just keep her from making those corpse jokes.”

John smiled. Molly might be a little awkward sometimes (well, most of the time), but she could always be counted on for those late hours in the lab. If only Sherlock had appreciated her a bit more, the man had had so few friends as it was, and even less that he would admit to having.

“Do you ever see anyone from the old days?” Lestrade asked. “Molly or Sherlock’s brother . . .?

Mycroft. There was a vicious train of thought John didn’t dare delve into. He blamed a lot of people for what had happened, and Mycroft was right in the top three.

“I see Mrs. Hudson for the occasional cuppa,” John said, although this was only partly true. He had visited Mrs. Hudson every week or so after he’d moved out of Baker Street shortly after the funeral, but their meetings had grown less and less frequent as time had gone on and John tried to bury himself in the practice. Truth be told, he hadn’t seen her in about a month. John felt a small prickle of guilt at that realization. Mrs. Hudson had always taken such good care of them, and she had been so fond of Sherlock.

I don’t have friends, I’ve just got one.

Even you weren’t that obtuse, John thought. You knew there were people who cared about you and believed in you. So why--?

“Here we are,” Lestrade said, jolting John out of his thoughts as the cab slowed to a halt outside the hospital. He pulled his thoughts out of the past and focused them on what was important at that moment--the case.

“John! It’s so wonderful to see you again,” Molly said as he and Lestrade entered the morgue. The unfortunate Adair was already laid out on the table for them, a white sheet covering his body. “Detective Lestrade told me you were working on a case together, it must be so fun to do this sort of thing again. Not that dead bodies are fun, I just meant--”

“It’s good to see you too, Molly,” John said, cutting off her embarrassed stuttering. Molly gave him a small smile and turned to greet Lestrade. “Seems like they’re running you ragged at the Yard . . .”

A gentle hum of nostalgia filled the air as John looked around. The stainless steel tables, the white walls, and some, poor dead bloke lying in the middle of the room. It was just as if he were on a case again.

I am on a case again, John reminded himself. So I’d better get to work.

“What did you find in the autopsy?” he asked, approaching the covered figure on the table. Molly broke away from her conversation with Lestrade to join him.

“Everything that was mentioned in the police reports,” she said, pulling back the sheet to uncover Adair’s face. “The cause of death was a single bullet to the head. There was no exit wound.”

Adair had been a fairly handsome man in life, with light, blonde hair and a boyish-looking face that even death couldn’t manage to age completely.

So young, John couldn’t help but think. The news articles he’d found online said the man was forty but he didn’t look a day over twenty-nine.

Unless you plan on personally carving the man’s tombstone dates, I suggest you focus on what is actually relevant to this case, Sherlock’s voice nagged at him.

John turned his attention to the wound itself. The crime scene may not have yielded much to his untrained eyes, but this, this he could do. This was his speciality.

The bullet had entered Adair’s head through the near-center of his forehead and from there, well to put it bluntly it had made a right mess of his skull. But there was something off here. An entry wound of that size shouldn’t have been able to cause that much extensive damage.

“Has the forensics team identified the bullet?” John asked. “Or are they at least working to?”

“In the technical sense, yes,” Lestrade said, but his tone of voice made John look up with a raised eyebrow.

“And in the actual sense?”

“No,” Lestrade said. “Unfortunately for our man Adair here there was another incident over in Berkshire a few nights ago. Two men disappeared from their hotel room and haven’t been heard from since. The Yard is focusing all of its resources on that instead, since save for me everyone has written this case off as just another suicide, and therefore not worth the time investigating.”

Idiots.

John wasn’t sure if it was Sherlock’s voice or his own that time.

“I’ve seen this type of wound before,” John said, leaning over further to peer more closely at the bullet hole. “Did you see the bullet when they took it out?”

“Briefly yeah, when I delivered it to the station with my report,” Lestrade said.

“What did it look like, can you remember?”

“Well,” Lestrade rubbed at the back of his head, his eyes rolling upwards to stare at the ceiling as he thought back. “I remember it was a weird-looking bullet. Sort of, like half of it had exploded and peeled back. Like a flower.”

John nodded.

“An expanding revolver bullet,” he said, straightening up and facing the others, who were looking at him completely perplexed. John felt a brief surge of pride at being the most knowledgable person in the room for once. No wonder Sherlock loved showing off. “It’s a type of bullet we developed in the 1890s, originally to be used by the military in India. The nose of the bullet is designed to expand upon impact, creating that flower-like shape that you saw, Greg. It causes a lot more damage than a normal bullet, increasing the likelihood of a kill-shot.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Lestrade said, frowning.

“Probably because its use during wartime was banned at the end of the nineteenth-century,” John said. “It fell out of use in the military, although you will see it occasionally in independent groups or individual assassins, but it’s gotten rarer as time’s gone on.”

“So some enthusiast for antiques used it blow this guys brains out?” Lestrade asked. “Bit of an overkill isn’t it? With a crack shot like that, the man would have been dead no matter what type of bullet hit him.”

John frowned. Lestrade was right. This kind of aim could only have come from a practiced, well-trained hand. A true marksman. So why use this particular type of bullet? To ensure that there would be no need for a second one?

Or maybe it was to send a message. Only a select few people would recognize it, was that why the murderer had chosen such a specific weapon?

“Lestrade, can you run background checks on some of Adair’s acquaintances?” John asked. “There was a list on his desk of people he’d been exchanging money with, probably from gambling. Start with that, and let me know what you find. I’m not sure how much influence you have at the Yard right now--”

“Not much, but enough to get the job done,” Lestrade said. “Might take a few days though, I’ll have to keep it quiet. I’ve already gotten the official warning to file this case away and leave it be.”

“Right, well do what you can. Molly,” John turned to her, “do you think you could analyze this for me?” He pulled the bag of ash he’d taken from Adair’s study out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Molly peered through the plastic, eyes squinted slightly. “I’m not sure what it is, or if it’s important, but it’s probably a good idea to identify it. The smallest detail could be significant.”

“Amazing,” Molly said softly, but she was looking at John now. “You sound just like Sherlock. Oh, I’m sorry!” She covered her mouth with her hand, looking horrified. “I didn’t mean--it’s just that he’s always so direct and, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” John said, though his throat felt dry all of a sudden. Why did everyone keep comparing him to Sherlock? “But I’m not as strict a taskmaster as he was, I know you’ve got work from your actual job to deal with. Just, when you get a chance?”

“Of course,” Molly nodded.

“It looks like some kind of ash,” John said. “If so, I know a great website that identifies over 200 different types.”

They grinned at each other and John remembered why he’d always liked Molly, even if she was a bit awkward sometimes. She too, appreciated Sherlock’s eccentricities.

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Lestrade said, checking the clock on his phone. “I’m expected at the station in about fifteen. I’ll have those backgrounds to you as soon as I can, John. I was right then, wasn’t I though? This was murder.”

“Definitely,” John said. Lestrade grinned.

“Knew I was on to something. Always trust your gut.”

And with a quick nod to the both of them, Lestrade hurried out of the morgue.

What a ridiculous notion, Sherlock’s voice said. Cases are solved with the mind, not the stomach. The influence of instinct in success is highly overvalued.

Instinct is just the thing that tells you something is wrong before your brain can figure out what it is, John retorted.

“So is today your day off? Usually you’re so busy with the private practice,” Molly startled John out of his thoughts. He had to stop drifting off like that.

“Yeah, I’ve got the day to myself. Not entirely sure what to do with that much free time. This helps though,” he gestured vaguely at the corpse. Molly smiled.

“Um, you’re welcome to stay if you want. I’ve got a couple of autopsies to do, and they can be really interesting, almost like working out a puzzle--.”

“Er, thanks, Molly, really, but I think I’ll take off. I’ve been meaning to drop in on Mrs. Hudson and now that I’ve got the afternoon free--”

“Oh! Of course! Sorry, that wasn’t terribly classy of me was it? Go on, I’ll call you later about the sample.”

“Right, thanks,” John said. The bit about visiting Mrs. Hudson had been a lie to spare Molly’s feelings, but now that he thought about it John realized he actually wanted to see their old landlady. It had been awhile, and she might be interested to hear about the case.

It wasn’t until he’d hailed a taxi cab and given the driver directions to Baker Street that John wondered how Molly had known about his busy schedule at the practice. He hadn’t been in touch with her since the funeral, and he hadn’t even been looking at jobs then. Had Lestrade said something?

Focus on the case, John. Sherlock’s voice said. Remember, the tiniest detail could be important, you don’t want to overlook anything.

Yeah, John thought, even though he had the feeling that he was overlooking something important Molly had said. Or was it something she had done?

Ah well, no point in dwelling on it, John decided, and he spent the rest of the ride thinking about bullets and gambling debts.

Description
Chapter Three

The cab ride over to St. Bart’s was a strange one for John, mostly because after he’d finished his phone call with Molly to have everything ready for them, Lestrade actually struck up a conversation. John was so used to Sherlock using this time to think or text or do something to further his progress on a case that hearing another voice in the cab was very strange to him. And while having a normal conversation for once was nice, John did miss the way he used to watch the detective as he fit the pieces of the puzzle together in his head.

“How is Molly? You’ve kept in touch with her?” John asked as the cab paused at a red light.

“More or less. I still need to make the occasional trip to the morgue for an assignment, a bit more now that I’m lower down on the Yard’s food chain.”

“How has she been holding up these past few months?” John hadn’t seen the mortician since the funeral. She’d seemed to be coping alright then, but John knew how smitten with Sherlock she’d been. He probably should have checked in with her afterwards, offered to take her out for coffee or something, but he’d had his own issues to deal with at the time. Still, he should have at least called her.

“Fine, last time I saw her,” Lestrade said. “A bit twitchy, but she’s always been like that, if you know what I mean. Good girl though, always had a solid head on her shoulders. Now if I could just keep her from making those corpse jokes.”

John smiled. Molly might be a little awkward sometimes (well, most of the time), but she could always be counted on for those late hours in the lab. If only Sherlock had appreciated her a bit more, the man had had so few friends as it was, and even less that he would admit to having.

“Do you ever see anyone from the old days?” Lestrade asked. “Molly or Sherlock’s brother . . .?

Mycroft. There was a vicious train of thought John didn’t dare delve into. He blamed a lot of people for what had happened, and Mycroft was right in the top three.

“I see Mrs. Hudson for the occasional cuppa,” John said, although this was only partly true. He had visited Mrs. Hudson every week or so after he’d moved out of Baker Street shortly after the funeral, but their meetings had grown less and less frequent as time had gone on and John tried to bury himself in the practice. Truth be told, he hadn’t seen her in about a month. John felt a small prickle of guilt at that realization. Mrs. Hudson had always taken such good care of them, and she had been so fond of Sherlock.

I don’t have friends, I’ve just got one.

Even you weren’t that obtuse, John thought. You knew there were people who cared about you and believed in you. So why--?

“Here we are,” Lestrade said, jolting John out of his thoughts as the cab slowed to a halt outside the hospital. He pulled his thoughts out of the past and focused them on what was important at that moment--the case.

“John! It’s so wonderful to see you again,” Molly said as he and Lestrade entered the morgue. The unfortunate Adair was already laid out on the table for them, a white sheet covering his body. “Detective Lestrade told me you were working on a case together, it must be so fun to do this sort of thing again. Not that dead bodies are fun, I just meant--”

“It’s good to see you too, Molly,” John said, cutting off her embarrassed stuttering. Molly gave him a small smile and turned to greet Lestrade. “Seems like they’re running you ragged at the Yard . . .”

A gentle hum of nostalgia filled the air as John looked around. The stainless steel tables, the white walls, and some, poor dead bloke lying in the middle of the room. It was just as if he were on a case again.

I am on a case again, John reminded himself. So I’d better get to work.

“What did you find in the autopsy?” he asked, approaching the covered figure on the table. Molly broke away from her conversation with Lestrade to join him.

“Everything that was mentioned in the police reports,” she said, pulling back the sheet to uncover Adair’s face. “The cause of death was a single bullet to the head. There was no exit wound.”

Adair had been a fairly handsome man in life, with light, blonde hair and a boyish-looking face that even death couldn’t manage to age completely.

So young, John couldn’t help but think. The news articles he’d found online said the man was forty but he didn’t look a day over twenty-nine.

Unless you plan on personally carving the man’s tombstone dates, I suggest you focus on what is actually relevant to this case, Sherlock’s voice nagged at him.

John turned his attention to the wound itself. The crime scene may not have yielded much to his untrained eyes, but this, this he could do. This was his speciality.

The bullet had entered Adair’s head through the near-center of his forehead and from there, well to put it bluntly it had made a right mess of his skull. But there was something off here. An entry wound of that size shouldn’t have been able to cause that much extensive damage.

“Has the forensics team identified the bullet?” John asked. “Or are they at least working to?”

“In the technical sense, yes,” Lestrade said, but his tone of voice made John look up with a raised eyebrow.

“And in the actual sense?”

“No,” Lestrade said. “Unfortunately for our man Adair here there was another incident over in Berkshire a few nights ago. Two men disappeared from their hotel room and haven’t been heard from since. The Yard is focusing all of its resources on that instead, since save for me everyone has written this case off as just another suicide, and therefore not worth the time investigating.”

Idiots.

John wasn’t sure if it was Sherlock’s voice or his own that time.

“I’ve seen this type of wound before,” John said, leaning over further to peer more closely at the bullet hole. “Did you see the bullet when they took it out?”

“Briefly yeah, when I delivered it to the station with my report,” Lestrade said.

“What did it look like, can you remember?”

“Well,” Lestrade rubbed at the back of his head, his eyes rolling upwards to stare at the ceiling as he thought back. “I remember it was a weird-looking bullet. Sort of, like half of it had exploded and peeled back. Like a flower.”

John nodded.

“An expanding revolver bullet,” he said, straightening up and facing the others, who were looking at him completely perplexed. John felt a brief surge of pride at being the most knowledgable person in the room for once. No wonder Sherlock loved showing off. “It’s a type of bullet we developed in the 1890s, originally to be used by the military in India. The nose of the bullet is designed to expand upon impact, creating that flower-like shape that you saw, Greg. It causes a lot more damage than a normal bullet, increasing the likelihood of a kill-shot.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Lestrade said, frowning.

“Probably because its use during wartime was banned at the end of the nineteenth-century,” John said. “It fell out of use in the military, although you will see it occasionally in independent groups or individual assassins, but it’s gotten rarer as time’s gone on.”

“So some enthusiast for antiques used it blow this guys brains out?” Lestrade asked. “Bit of an overkill isn’t it? With a crack shot like that, the man would have been dead no matter what type of bullet hit him.”

John frowned. Lestrade was right. This kind of aim could only have come from a practiced, well-trained hand. A true marksman. So why use this particular type of bullet? To ensure that there would be no need for a second one?

Or maybe it was to send a message. Only a select few people would recognize it, was that why the murderer had chosen such a specific weapon?

“Lestrade, can you run background checks on some of Adair’s acquaintances?” John asked. “There was a list on his desk of people he’d been exchanging money with, probably from gambling. Start with that, and let me know what you find. I’m not sure how much influence you have at the Yard right now--”

“Not much, but enough to get the job done,” Lestrade said. “Might take a few days though, I’ll have to keep it quiet. I’ve already gotten the official warning to file this case away and leave it be.”

“Right, well do what you can. Molly,” John turned to her, “do you think you could analyze this for me?” He pulled the bag of ash he’d taken from Adair’s study out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Molly peered through the plastic, eyes squinted slightly. “I’m not sure what it is, or if it’s important, but it’s probably a good idea to identify it. The smallest detail could be significant.”

“Amazing,” Molly said softly, but she was looking at John now. “You sound just like Sherlock. Oh, I’m sorry!” She covered her mouth with her hand, looking horrified. “I didn’t mean--it’s just that he’s always so direct and, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” John said, though his throat felt dry all of a sudden. Why did everyone keep comparing him to Sherlock? “But I’m not as strict a taskmaster as he was, I know you’ve got work from your actual job to deal with. Just, when you get a chance?”

“Of course,” Molly nodded.

“It looks like some kind of ash,” John said. “If so, I know a great website that identifies over 200 different types.”

They grinned at each other and John remembered why he’d always liked Molly, even if she was a bit awkward sometimes. She too, appreciated Sherlock’s eccentricities.

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Lestrade said, checking the clock on his phone. “I’m expected at the station in about fifteen. I’ll have those backgrounds to you as soon as I can, John. I was right then, wasn’t I though? This was murder.”

“Definitely,” John said. Lestrade grinned.

“Knew I was on to something. Always trust your gut.”

And with a quick nod to the both of them, Lestrade hurried out of the morgue.

What a ridiculous notion, Sherlock’s voice said. Cases are solved with the mind, not the stomach. The influence of instinct in success is highly overvalued.

Instinct is just the thing that tells you something is wrong before your brain can figure out what it is, John retorted.

“So is today your day off? Usually you’re so busy with the private practice,” Molly startled John out of his thoughts. He had to stop drifting off like that.

“Yeah, I’ve got the day to myself. Not entirely sure what to do with that much free time. This helps though,” he gestured vaguely at the corpse. Molly smiled.

“Um, you’re welcome to stay if you want. I’ve got a couple of autopsies to do, and they can be really interesting, almost like working out a puzzle--.”

“Er, thanks, Molly, really, but I think I’ll take off. I’ve been meaning to drop in on Mrs. Hudson and now that I’ve got the afternoon free--”

“Oh! Of course! Sorry, that wasn’t terribly classy of me was it? Go on, I’ll call you later about the sample.”

“Right, thanks,” John said. The bit about visiting Mrs. Hudson had been a lie to spare Molly’s feelings, but now that he thought about it John realized he actually wanted to see their old landlady. It had been awhile, and she might be interested to hear about the case.

It wasn’t until he’d hailed a taxi cab and given the driver directions to Baker Street that John wondered how Molly had known about his busy schedule at the practice. He hadn’t been in touch with her since the funeral, and he hadn’t even been looking at jobs then. Had Lestrade said something?

Focus on the case, John. Sherlock’s voice said. Remember, the tiniest detail could be important, you don’t want to overlook anything.

Yeah, John thought, even though he had the feeling that he was overlooking something important Molly had said. Or was it something she had done?

Ah well, no point in dwelling on it, John decided, and he spent the rest of the ride thinking about bullets and gambling debts.