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unlettyrdeTitle: Boston Marriage
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Words: 75,000
Pairings/Characters: Jo Watson/OMC, Sherlock/expensive violins, ensemble cast & original characters
Spoilers: Through "The Great Game"; also for several of the early ACD stories
Rating: Teen (see warnings)
Warnings: Armchair psychology; discussion of suicide in the context of a murder investigation; murder investigations, abductions, violence, and a great deal of associated unpleasantness
Summary: In which Jo Watson tries to take this therapy business into her own hands, London produces enough crimes of interest to satisfy even Sherlock Holmes, and the Bechdel test doesn't know what hit it. Game on.
Back to Part III, Chapter 1
Part III, Chapter 2:
Boston Marriage
Part III: The Long Game
Chapter 2
The days after Moriarty followed one after another with a desperate slide into something perilously close to normalcy. Once explanations were delivered, Sarah sent a bouquet so enormous she must have meant it to be funny and a note saying Jo wasn’t to show her face at the clinic for at least a week. She stopped by every so often to be certain Jo was following doctor’s orders, which aside from her nights with Scott she actually was. This was due to the fact that Sherlock hadn’t stirred from the flat even once since that first evening.
Instead she holed up in their sitting room and surrounded herself with the detritus of a hundred cold cases, from crime scene photos to witness interviews to the occasional murder weapon, whatever Lestrade would send over. “He’s here,” she told Jo. “I think he’s had his hand in half the crimes I’ve ever investigated. What we’ve seen barely scratches the surface.”
“And you think looking at old files will help you find him?”
“Far faster than interviewing explosives experts, but Lestrade does so love his protocols.” Her short, inky curls shone with the oil of missed showers. Jo had taken to getting takeaway whether Sherlock expressed an interest or not. She would eat if the food was set right on the table beside her, and Jo did not intend to let her lose weight over this, though she said she’d gone without on long cases before. “He’s been careful. The only physical evidence he’s left so far has been what he needed to lure me into the game.”
“You’d think it would be easier now that we have a face to go with the name.”
Sherlock didn’t reply to that. She just leaned over the files and kept reading, stopping every so often to fire off a round of texts or look through old news articles online. There must be a pattern, she insisted. Somewhere she would find a connection, and it would all come clear.
Jo went to see Dr. Ginzberg. Her injuries required an explanation, but she kept it as sketchy as possible and turned the conversation to Scott, who was wonderful, and to Harry, who was now an extraordinary six weeks sober. There the conversation stayed, and though Ginzberg must have noted the telltale tremor of Jo’s left hand she was evidently waiting for Jo to bring it up herself. That suited Jo just fine.
Cases started coming in, cases that bore no apparent relation to Moriarty, cases that Sherlock ignored when they came from her website and cases to which she responded with increasing scorn when they came from Lestrade. Jo got herself a back brace and refused to use the cane, even temporarily. She went to the clinic and considered looking for full-time employment in earnest. Her back got better, aside from the odd twinge. Things with Harry approached a bearable equilibrium, but they never talked about Clara.
Then came the afternoon when she returned from lunch with Scott to find Sherlock gone. Jo was elated at first, thinking it meant a shaking-up of the routine that was fraying her nerves, that Sherlock had decided to take an interest in the world around her. Then she was a little put out that Sherlock hadn’t texted. Then the day wore on into evening, which wore on into night, which wore on into the cold still hours of the morning, and by the time light crept into the sky Jo was frantic. She tried Mrs. Hudson, who hadn’t seen a thing. She tried Lestrade, who hadn’t spoken to Sherlock in days. She tried Molly and everyone else at Barts she could think of, even a bemused Phil Sutton. When evening fell she was ready to try Mycroft and deal with the consequences when Sherlock came stalking back into the flat, alive and undamaged and smelling faintly of fish.
“Good morning,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. She swept right past Jo, who was standing frozen in the sitting room, and made for the kitchen. “Is there tea?”
“It’s dinnertime,” Jo said.
Sherlock must have sensed something was amiss, because she turned and gave Jo a quizzical look. “So it is. Are we eating tonight?”
“You’ve been gone more than twenty-four hours. Have you got any idea what I’ve been thinking?”
“I try not to imagine your thought processes in great detail.”
She’d picked the wrong time for a casual insult. The blood pounded in Jo’s ears. “Have you got any idea,” she said, her voice now so cold even Sherlock looked taken aback, “how terrified I have been? How inconsiderate and selfish it is of you to disappear without a word only a few weeks after I was kidnapped and strapped to a vest of explosives? Somewhere out there there’s a brilliant madman who wants nothing more than to burn you alive, Sherlock, and I need to know that he hasn’t got round to it yet. Where have you been?”
Sherlock eyed her like one of her experiments, the kind that had a tendency to explode at odd moments and rarely yielded satisfactory results. “Out,” she said.
“Not good enough, Sherlock.”
“I’ve been out. Of my own free will and engaged in activities that did not require your participation, much as you’ve gone out over the last few weeks on a more or less regular basis.” She shrugged out of her coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, even I find it a strain to go more than forty-eight hours without sleep. I gather your back is improved. Perhaps you can go to the effort of walking up a few stairs so I can regain the use of my own room.”
Jo watched her go down the hall, and then she let her face drop into her hands to push back the sudden threat of tears.
*********
Three days later, their doorbell rang and Mrs. Hudson ushered Lestrade upstairs. Their good landlady eyed him warily, clearly suspicious that he was bringing something into their home that would interfere with her charges’ recovery. Jo, on the other hand, had rarely been so glad to see anyone in her life.
“You have a case?” she asked, careful not to sound too eager.
Lestrade glanced in the direction of the couch, where Sherlock was flat on her back with one arm dangling limply over the side. She had not stirred when he came in. She’d been there for the better part of the evening after dropping three cases’ worth of notes to the floor, declaring herself on the verge of a breakthrough, and collapsing into what Jo could only assume was a thoughtful reverie.
Lestrade hesitated. “Do you think—” Jo nodded emphatically. “I do have a case. It’s an odd one.”
“A murder?” Murders were usually good. Raise the stakes, raise Sherlock’s interest.
“Not exactly.”
A twitch of the fingers that rested on the floor. Jo cleared her throat. “A suicide, then, but you’re not quite convinced.”
“No,” said Lestrade. “This is definitely a criminal matter. Shot with a handgun from a moving vehicle. It’s the victim that makes it less cut-and-dry.”
Jo didn’t have to look at Sherlock to know they’d played their hand well. The reluctant interest rolled off that side of the room in waves. “What’s the address?”
“It’s in Knightsbridge,” he said, “but we can give you a lift.”
“No,” Sherlock said clearly.
“Or you can take a cab.”
“No. I’m not coming. I am, as I have said on multiple occasions, far too busy for your little problems.”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade started, but Jo just sighed and stood up.
“Let me get my coat.”
“I said,” Sherlock put in, her voice low and biting, “that I am not coming.”
“Fine,” Jo said. “Do what you want. I’m going. I’m not interested in sitting around anymore watching you think yourself to death.”
Sherlock’s eyes opened just wide enough to glare at her, but if Jo had been hoping for any more reaction than that she was disappointed. She shook her head and held the door for Lestrade.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked on the drive over.
She wasn’t at all sure, but it was an excuse to get out of the flat. “I may not be Sherlock, but I won’t get in the way.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said, quietly enough that she wasn’t certain she’d been meant to hear it. Jo didn’t ask what did have him worried.
The corpse lay on the front porch of a well-kept house, a little puddle of its blood dripping horribly down the steps. Jo bent over to examine the bullet hole. It was typical of a small-calibre handgun, not unlike the one she carried, but that wouldn’t narrow the field much. As crime scenes went, it wasn’t all that remarkable except for one rather important fact: the victim was a dog.
A bulldog, to be precise, and of better than average breeding if Jo was any judge. “Do you know why?” she asked, utterly nonplussed.
“I was hoping Sherlock could tell us,” said Lestrade. “We’ve spoken to the owners, of course. They’re in shock.”
“They must have some idea why it happened.”
“They couldn’t think of any, but why bother with a drive-by unless you’ve a reason?”
“What sort of car was it?”
“A black sedan with tinted windows.”
“Doesn’t sound like kids joy-riding.”
“No, it was too deliberate for that. We have witnesses. The car came up the street right at the limit, slowed just a little at this house. Then the shot, and it left the neighbourhood without picking up speed. It didn’t even squeal the tires.” He brought his right hand up to scratch the inside of his left forearm, and Jo had no doubt she’d see a nicotine patch there if he pushed up his sleeves. He looked desperate for a smoke. “We ran the registration plates, of course. They were stolen off another vehicle two weeks ago. We’re comparing notes on the cases, but no luck so far.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “He was an excellent shot, from a car at that distance. But—”
“Why. I wish I knew.” Lestrade shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his frown to Jo. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?”
Jo stared moodily down at the bulldog, willing a deduction to present itself. You’d think after months of living with Sherlock something would have rubbed off, but all she had to show for it at the moment was a headache. Her left hand gave a treasonous little shiver. “I’ve no idea.”
“I talked to the owners myself,” Jo said several hours later. She was making beans on toast, which that was all they had, and talking to Sherlock from the kitchen. This was preferable to being in the same room, because at least this way she could preserve the illusion that Sherlock might be paying attention. “Nice couple. Reminded me of my mum and dad.” She paused for what would have been a response, if this had been a normal conversation. “They were terrified, of course. Thought it must be some kind of threat, only what’s the point in threatening someone if you don’t tell them why?” The toast popped up with a merry ding. Jo turned to take it out, forgot about her back, and was thrown off balance by a painful twinge. That set off the leg, and she had to clutch at the counter to stay upright. All her injuries, psychosomatic and otherwise, were coming out to play.
She bit down on her lip and waited for her breathing to even out before saying, “You should have a look, Sherlock. It’s an odd case, and Lestrade’s stumped.”
When no cutting remark about the frequency of that particular event wafted back into the kitchen, she slammed the plate onto the counter so hard it rattled. Childish, stupid, and ineffective. Jo pulled the pan off the stove and began piling beans on with a vengeance.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Sherlock said when Jo came limping into the sitting room. She was in the same position she’d been in when Lestrade had arrived. Evidently the expected breakthrough had not yet occurred.
“Neither do I,” Jo said, sitting in her chair with a weary thump. The beans were tasteless, and her leg hurt like hell.
She made another appointment with her therapist.
********
The limp was no better the next week. “What would you like to talk about today?” Dr. Ginzberg asked, eyeing her as she settled awkwardly into a chair.
Jo gave her a wry smile. “It looks bad, doesn’t it?”
“You haven’t gone back to the cane.”
“I don’t need it.” Yet.
“All right. You don’t seem as upset about it as I might have expected.”
Jo crossed her arms over her chest, thinking. “I’m angry.”
“With Sherlock?”
“What? No. Well, not about this. I’m frustrated with myself. I don’t want to be so easy.”
“Meaning?”
“A few weeks without a case, and I’ve gone right back to the way I was before.”
“Have you?”
“Well, there’s the limp.”
“Which you’ve taken as proof that it’s a withdrawal symptom. Stop feeding your addiction to danger and it comes right back. I see. How are the nightmares?”
“I never told you—”
“No, and you should have. How frequent are they?”
There’d been a particularly bad one a few nights before. She’d been at Scott’s, and if she’d ever thought it would have helped to have someone there in the bed beside her she’d been proved quite wrong. She’d fled to the shower soon after, the slap of scalding water much easier to face than his uncertainty and concern. “Maybe three times a week. Not so often when it started, but they’ve got worse.”
“When did it start?”
“The night after the pool.”
That had been several sessions ago, and Jo hadn’t mentioned the dreams since then. Not very clever of her, really, but Dr. Ginzberg didn’t comment further on that. Instead she said, “That’s suggestive, but not of what you were saying. If it’s the danger you need, I’d have thought being kidnapped and caught in an explosion would have kept you satisfied for a while.”
That was a fair point.
“I know you resent hearing the words Post-Traumatic Stress, Dr. Watson. No, hear me out. I’m not offering it as an explanation for everything, but it’s time you stopped flinching from a label you don’t like and accepted that you’ve been through experiences that are causing you problems now. It isn’t just the excitement you’ve lost.”
“What else, then?” Jo’s eyebrows had shot together, but she tried to keep her face impassive enough to indicate she was willing to listen.
“There’s still an investigation on, even if it hasn’t involved any foot-chases. Have you had any part in it?”
Jo scowled. Ginzberg gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s not anything I could help with,” Jo said.
“And Sherlock? She’s just letting the police get on with it?”
“I can’t talk about her ongoing cases.”
“Of course. I won’t ask for details. I’m merely suggesting that if she did in fact have an investigation on but wasn’t involving you, you’d find that difficult to deal with. What your injuries and your psychological discharge took away from you, what that man whose name you can’t tell me took away, was control. She’s denied you the opportunity to take it back.” Ginzberg regarded her with calm assurance. It was hard to argue with a face like that. “So I’ll ask you again. Are you angry with Sherlock Holmes?”
She wasn’t, she told herself, not even when she gave up and dragged the cane out from the back corner of her cupboard. She wasn’t angry, at least not until she woke sweating and trembling a few nights later and came stumbling down the stairs to an empty flat. The couch was empty of its usual six feet of consulting detective, there were no experiments brewing over the Bunsen burner on the kitchen table, and when Jo steeled herself to go down the hall and peer in Sherlock’s door she found that too deserted. It was four in the morning.
She made herself tea, went back out to the sitting room, and sat down to wait.
Just after six, the front door opened so softly she wouldn’t have heard it if every nerve hadn’t been straining for some sign of Sherlock’s return.
Sherlock came up the steps in near silence. When she saw Jo, she straightened, outwardly relaxed, but Jo didn’t believe for a second that she’d meant Jo to know she’d been gone.
“Morning,” Jo said. “There’s tea.”
Sherlock pulled off her gloves one after the other, watching Jo all the while.
“I’m getting breakfast with Harry before work,” she said. “I’ll be out most of the day.”
Sherlock unwound her scarf and folded it with great deliberation. Her eyes followed Jo as she stood with the aid of her cane and drained the last of her own tea.
Jo went to rinse the mug out, then came back through the sitting room on her way to the loo. Sherlock was still there. “You know,” Jo said, “you can tell me what you’re investigating. You have done before.” When Sherlock said nothing, Jo shook her head. “Fine. I’ll see you later.”
*********
Her phone rang just after she got back from the clinic that afternoon. Sherlock was, once again, on the couch.
“Hello?” Jo said.
It was Lestrade. “Are you busy?”
“No,” Jo said with a glance at Sherlock, who looked as though she’d forgotten what busy meant.
“There’s been a shooting in Bethnal Green. Not a dog this time, but it’s the same calibre handgun, and this one was also from a distance.”
“You think it’s related to the last one?”
“I do. I know it seems unlikely, but people don’t just get shot without good reason.” His frustration was obvious. “Guns usually mean gang violence, and there’s no sign of that here.”
“Give me the address, I’ll come right over.”
“Just you?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Jo tried, but in the end she arrived at the crime scene alone. The victim was a man in his late thirties, a banker who’d been shot in his first floor office from the window of the vacant flat across the street. The shattered glass made the shooter’s location obvious, and Jo raised an eyebrow as she peered out of the office. Lestrade hadn’t been exaggerating about the distance. It wouldn’t have been an easy shot, even for her. “He knew what he was doing, I’ll give him that.”
“That’s what worries me,” Lestrade said. “On top of that, there’s a CCTV blind spot. We have a good view of the bank, but none of the window opposite. We spoke to the owner of that building, but he said the empty unit’s been unlocked for weeks. Anyone could have got in, and the place is full of prints. We’ll have to run them all, of course, but I don’t expect anything to come of it.”
The victim was a man in his mid-thirties, rather plain and with sandy hair about the same shade as Jo’s. He’d been shot full in the chest and pronounced dead at the scene. Jo spared little attention for the gaping entrance wound, as it was obvious enough what had killed him, but she did note the cane lying under the desk beside him.
Her hand twitched.
Jo levered herself down onto the floor and pulled up the left leg of his trousers. The damage was immediately obvious: a knee so mangled it was a wonder the leg below had survived. “That’s an old injury,” she said. “Gang related, maybe?” It would lend some credence to the theory that these shootings were threats.
“No such luck,” said Lestrade. “Car accident three years ago, according to his coworkers. It killed his wife and two children. Doesn’t sound like he ever got over it. Painful, but probably not relevant.”
Probably not. “He was epileptic,” she said, turning over the medical tag that hung from a thin chain on his wrist. “That could have caused the accident.” Not that they’d have missed it, but Jo felt obliged to make an effort.
“I’ll look into it.”
“Just to humour me?”
“Have to look into something, don’t I?” He looked tired, all his usual wry humour quite evaporated. “I’m damned good at my job, Dr. Watson.” She’d never questioned that. Some people carried an air of quiet competence with them, and none more than Greg Lestrade. “On cases like this, that doesn’t seem to matter much.”
She left half an hour later without having contributed anything other than a sympathetic ear and the promise to talk to Sherlock, much good that would do.
Jo couldn’t get the sight of that body out of her head, try though she did. That evening she got up halfway through a tasteless dinner, walked to the kitchen under her own unsteady power, and shoved her cane right into the bin. She could do without.
She’d limped all the way back to her chair before Sherlock so much as looked at her. Then Sherlock let the file she was holding fall to her chest, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. “A software programmer, a retired army colonel, and a Cambridge professor of theoretical mathematics,” she said.
Jo glanced up from her casserole. It was Mrs. Hudson’s speciality and deserved a better appetite than she could provide. “Is that from the crossword?”
“You wanted to know what I’m working on. Those are the pieces. I need to connect them.”
“What’ve they got to do with Moriarty?”
“I don’t know,” Sherlock said. “There must be something, but I can’t work it out. He’s like a ghost, Joanna,” she said, “and every time I reach for him he…dissolves.”
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like my blog.”
She scrubbed her fingers through her curls. “You see what it’s doing to me. It should be exhilarating, but it isn’t, it isn’t at all. He went to the trouble of engaging my interest and then disappeared.”
“He’s playing hard-to-get,” Jo said with mock sympathy. Sherlock snorted, unimpressed.
Nothing had changed, not really. She was as little help to Sherlock as she had been before, and her leg wasn’t any better. Still, she could feel that little knot of resentment in her chest begin to ease, and at this point Jo would take her victories where she could get them.
**********
Scott went out of town for a week to visit his sister in Bristol. Sarah’s family were in town, and meanwhile Harry was swamped with work and cancelled their dinner plans. This coincided with an extended period of health and productivity in the regular staff at the clinic, and since Jo still hadn’t found other employment that left her with approximately nothing to do. Her leg was killing her. Mrs. Hudson had offered to teach her knitting.
It came as a relief when Lestrade finally rang her. She told him she’d be there in half an hour, shoved the phone in her pocket, and limped heavily into the sitting room. “There’s been another one.”
Sherlock had been in one of her fugue states. The fact that she snapped out of it to answer was indication enough that she was ready for a distraction. “Another what?”
“Shooting. Same type of weapon, no connection between the victims. This one was a break-in, but nothing was taken. That’s three now. You know what that means, Sherlock. We have a serial killer.” When that didn’t get a response, she added, “A serial killer who started with a dog. Explain that.”
“Escalation from animal victims is a common feature of—”
“Oh, come off it,” Jo said. “There’s nothing common about this case. It’s too clean for a mad killing spree and too impersonal for your garden-variety serial murderer.” It was a bit alarming that Jo now felt she could distinguish between relative degrees of homicide. “We’ve got an expert marksman choosing random victims.”
“Not random,” Sherlock said, sitting up. Jo resisted a smile. “Lestrade’s inability to find a connection doesn’t prove anything.”
“So find it,” Jo said. “A few hours at most, Sherlock. Come and tell them what they’ve missed and you can get right back to whatever it is you’re doing here.”
Sherlock knew perfectly well that her buttons were being pushed. On the other hand, serial killer.
They ended up at a very nice flat in Bloomsbury. The victim, an athletic woman in her mid-forties, had lived alone and had been found when the cleaning lady arrived at noon.
The body wore a thin black halter top and soft grey pyjama bottoms. Probably shot getting into—no, getting out of bed, Jo decided. She’d need better tools to determine time of death with any real accuracy, but it wasn’t more than eight or nine hours ago.
She said as much to Sherlock, who hadn’t given the victim more than a cursory glance. She seemed far more interested in the contents of the bureau drawer. Jo gave up and turned to Lestrade. “There wouldn’t have been major organ damage. She died quickly of the blood loss.”
“There’s certainly enough of it,” he agreed. Two great, dark pools were spread around the body. The hardwood would never recover.
“Shot at close range, obviously. Sherlock, are you listening?” No response, but Jo had learned not to let that discourage her. “The murderer used a handgun. You’ll call this theorising before the facts, but I’d lay money it’s the same weapon. The others were, ballistics proved that. Why so close by, though? There’s a nice plate-glass window right here with open curtains and a convenient office building just across the street. Our killer can’t have started worrying about his aim so recently.”
“Yes, worry is the wrong word,” Sherlock said, not glancing up from whatever fascinating clues she was no doubt finding among the poor woman’s panties. “He was placing his shots. Obviously.”
Jo frowned, then finished her examination and got back to her feet. Funny, her leg had stopped hurting. Small blessings, she supposed. “First bullet in the shoulder. She’d have needed extensive surgery on the clavicle, but from the blood stains I’d say the bullet missed all the major veins and arteries. That’s not the one that killed her. That leg, on the other hand—hard not to hit something important. She’d have been unconscious within minutes with that kind of a bleed. Prompt medical attention might have saved her, but as it was—”
She stopped. It wasn’t like that, though, not at all as though she’d just stopped talking. Instead the words themselves ran out and were replaced by a mouthful of thick cotton, and even the dark stain on the floor had gone grey. Jo blinked and the clean lines of the room shifted to a hundred impossible angles. She blinked again, or at least had a difficult time seeing anything for a moment, and the next thing she knew someone had an iron hand under her left arm, which was very helpful given that her legs didn’t seem to be working at all.
“Chair,” said a voice in her ear, and then she was sitting in one.
The voice and hand were Lestrade’s. The man had a grip like a vice, but it was surprisingly gentle when guiding her head down toward her knees. She was vaguely aware of someone crouching in front of her.
“I’m all right,” she assured the floor between her shoes. “Never fainted in my life.” She did have some experience with
hypovolemic shock, but that didn’t count.
“First time for everything,” said Lestrade. He sounded almost cheerful. “Sherlock, we could do with a glass of water.”
“Anderson,” said Sherlock, from the approximate location of Jo’s parietal lobe, “get Joanna some water.”
Anderson sputtered in the background, but all Jo’s attention was on the pair of long, cool hands that had wound themselves around her wrists. She lifted her head. It sent the corners of her vision sliding out of focus, but by that time she’d been caught by a clear blue gaze that anchored her in full consciousness.
“What is wrong with you?” Sherlock asked. It was neither exasperation nor sarcasm. She was simply demanding information.
There were any number of things that could cause a person to come over all weak at the knees. Jo considered her options before choosing the most innocuous. “Low blood sugar, probably.”
“Skipped a few meals?” Lestrade suggested.
“You had coronation chicken on a baguette not three hours ago,” said Sherlock, who hadn’t been around for the coronation chicken but was of course perfectly correct. “And you’re not diabetic. Better try again.”
“People get squeamish at crime scenes, Sherlock.”
“Don’t be an idiot. One more chance.”
The answer was that this was wrong, horribly wrong. Of course it was wrong, Jo told herself. It was a murder investigation. There were few things more horrible than that. But she’d seen at least several of those things, and if she couldn’t even convince herself that was the answer, she certainly wasn’t going to be able to convince Sherlock.
Who was still waiting. Jo closed her eyes. “The second bullet went in a few inches above her knee. Probably nicked some rather important blood vessels.”
“Causing severe blood loss and eventual death. You said she might have survived?”
“With immediate medical attention, yes, there’s always a chance you might live. I did.”
Jo cracked her eyelids to find Sherlock sitting back on her heels, looking pensive. “And the other shot was to the left shoulder. Is that all?”
“What, a sudden, overpowering identification with a murder victim isn’t enough?”
“Coincidence,” Sherlock said. “People get shot.”
“You don’t believe in coincidence. Now you want me to start?”
“No. I want you to work out what is wrong with this picture. You are capable of feeling empathy without forgetting who you are, and whatever aftereffects of trauma you may experience I’ve never seen you lose control like this. You’ve seen something, Joanna, something that’s upset you. Tell me what it is.”
“I’ve only seen what you have.” Wrong, wrong, her gut chanted at her, and she swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. “It—you’re right, it’s horrifying, but I don’t know why. Call it intuition. But if you haven’t worked it out, how could I possibly do it?”
“You have some piece of data that I don’t. Think. What do you know?” Joanna shook her head, and Sherlock let out a long, hissing sigh of impatience. She stood, looming impossibly high, and took a few quick steps to the window, bringing her hands up to seize her head as though she might shake the truth out of it. “Intuition,” she said, rapidly and half to herself, “is also called a leap of logic, which is far more accurate. When people claim to have had a premonition that was borne out by ensuing events, more often than not they’re only being stupid and self-important, but sometimes it’s no more than the truth. The brain often makes connections that pass the conscious mind straight by, it’s how we’ve survived all these millions of years, we don’t need to put them into words or work out why things are true if we simply know them to be true, that’s not the point if all you want to do is stay alive—and what I do, Joanna,” she went on, scarcely stopping for breath, fixing Jo once again with those eyes like twin scalpels, “what I do is the same, it’s many degrees faster and I see all the steps in between, but it’s the same principle. You’ve done it, too. Don’t call it intuition. See the steps in between and tell me what you know that I don’t.”
What did she know that Sherlock didn’t? How to give herself to something other than the relentless search for distraction, for a start. The taste of the skin below Scott Morstan’s lower lip. The number of planets in the solar system. What it felt like to hold a man’s life together with her bare hands. The colour of the wallpaper in her grandmum’s dining room. And—
She swallowed. “When I was little, my dad raised bull pups.”
Lestrade made a small noise in objection to this apparent non sequitur, but this was one of those rare and heady occasions on which Joanna had Sherlock’s full attention, so she paid him no mind.
She skipped the middle part, with Harry’s birthday and the three months of warm fur and soft tongue, and went straight to the part that mattered now. “The day before I turned nine, the boy next door shot one of them with an air rifle. The dog dragged himself through the garden and died on the front step.”
Lestrade saw it now, or part of it. Jo wasn’t sure she could see it all herself. Sherlock, though, Sherlock’s eyes had gone hard and brilliant. As Joanna had explained, the layers had been stripped away, reducing Sherlock to her fundamental parts. Someone had thrown a switch, and the woman standing before them was composed entirely of angles and edges and neurons firing.
She gestured at the body on the floor. “She’s a doctor.”
“How did you—oh, never mind,” Lestrade said. “Emergency medicine at St. Thomas’, according to the landlord.”
“And the last victim, Joanna, why was he chosen?”
Of course, it was all so obvious. “He had a cane.”
“Bad leg,” Lestrade said. “It was from an auto accident two years ago. What’s that got to do with anything? You don’t mean to say there’s a connection here after all.”
Jo’s stomach had stopped roiling. Now it sat cold and hard within her, and her hand had never been so steady in all her life. “It’s me. I’m the connection, aren’t I?”
“It would seem so.” She didn’t have to look so thrilled about it. Jo would have been nettled if she’d had any room for mundane emotions.
“That’s ridiculous,” Anderson said. “I didn’t realise narcissism was contagious.”
Lestrade shook his head. “A dog, a cane, and a pair of bullet wounds don’t add up to a conspiracy, Sherlock.”
“You wanted an answer,” Sherlock said. She eyed the body like a child presented with a gift-wrapped package.
Jo put one hand behind her to grasp the top of the chair, then levered herself up with a heave. The edges of the room stayed in focus, which she took as a good sign. She looked past Lestrade, ignored Anderson and Donovan and the woman on the floor, and turned to Sherlock. “Why, though? Is it a threat?”
“A game,” Sherlock said. “He’s been toying with me. I knew he wouldn’t keep away for long.”
“Toying with me, not with you,” Jo said. You self-centered ass, she didn’t say. “It’s because you’re still investigating him. You heard what he said. He’s going to burn you, Sherlock.”
“Sorry, what?” The creases in Lestrade’s forehead had just grown deeper. “What are we on about?”
“Moriarty. Obviously.” Sherlock didn’t spare him so much as a glance. “What he said doesn’t matter. He’d never have expected me to stop.”
“He said he’d burn the heart—”
“You’re fine. So is my heart, along with any other organ of mine you’d care to name,” Sherlock said. “In the meantime, he’s killed two more people. Do you want me to stop?”
And let him kill God only knew how many more, because the police were never going to find him? Sherlock had turned that queer blue gaze on her, the excitement of a moment ago funnelled into a calm and deadly focus. Jo had never yet said no to that look. At moments like this, when it was directed at her and her alone, she wasn’t sure she could. “Of course not.”
Lestrade coughed. “I don’t suppose you’d care to fill the rest of us in on what you’re on about.”
“You’ll catch up. Or not, I don’t particularly care, but I want copies of the photos and autopsy reports for the other two.”
The DI had crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought you weren’t interested.”
“Give her what she needs,” Jo said.
“What I need at the moment,” Sherlock said, “is her diary, which if we are all very lucky will contain the number of the person who took her to dinner two nights ago.”
Lestrade said, “I think I saw it in the kitchen.”
“You think you saw? In a single phrase you’ve encapsulated everything wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service.”
He ignored that. “You’re saying she went for dinner with her murderer.”
“I’m saying this was obviously not a break-in. She knew him, Lestrade, but not well.”
“And you’re certain it was a he.”
Sherlock narrowed her eyes. “The murderer was a man of above-average height and powerful upper body strength with military training and a controlled temper. She did not invite him here this morning and was uninterested in pursuing a sexual relationship, but when he turned up on her doorstep unannounced she felt secure enough to let him in. She asked him to wait in the kitchen and came back to the bedroom to change, but he surprised her as she was opening the drawer. She stepped toward him and he shot her in the shoulder. She stepped back, fell, and then he placed the shot to the thigh. All quite elementary if you consider the angle of the shot, the pattern of the killings so far, the matchbook on the dresser, and the contents of this open drawer. In addition—”
Sherlock stopped when one of the officers came back into the room bearing a leather-bound diary. She flipped through the pages, then paused.
“They’re torn out,” Lestrade said, leaning over.
“Astute deduction. The page for this week and the one after—of course, the pen left an indentation in the page beneath. Have you checked her mobile?”
“What for?”
“The messages, Lestrade! He’s made a mistake, left his fingerprints all over this one.”
“Moriarty?” said Lestrade.
“Not personally. He sent someone else to do this, but it’s a start. We’ve a solid lead at last. Joanna, with me. We’re for St. Thomas’.” She started for the door, coat flapping dramatically about her thighs.
“No,” Jo said.
It was almost satisfying to discover that a single syllable from her could stop a hurricane in its tracks.
Sherlock turned, for once just a little off balance. She blinked, then subjected Jo to an evaluation that raked her head to toe. “You’re fine,” she said, though it sounded more like a question. Then she gathered herself, drawing her usual air of mastery like a cloak about her. “You’re better than fine. Look at your hand. Now come along.”
“I’m not fine,” Jo said. She was something quite other than fine. Her blood pulsed with a cold, steady rhythm in her chest, and she had never felt so alive, but she could not go with Sherlock now. She quailed at explaining this. Instead she let her shoulders droop and drew a shaky breath. She was far from Sherlock’s equal when it came to dissimulation, but she thought the others at least would buy a further show of weakness. “I need some time, Sherlock. Just a few hours, then I’ll catch you up.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You’ll take a cab,” Sherlock said. Was that concern?
“I’ll take her.” This came from Donovan, of all people. Sherlock’s head whipped in her direction. Donovan lifted her chin a bit and met Sherlock’s stare. “Run along, freak.”
Jo wasn’t sure what to do with this unexpected show of support. “Thanks, really, but I don’t need a lift.”
“Yes you do,” Donovan said in a way that implied she needed a lot more than that. “It’s on my way.”
“Where are you going?” Sherlock demanded.
“To make those copies you wanted,” Donovan said, as though she offered to run Sherlock’s errands on a regular basis and as though Baker Street wasn’t in quite the wrong direction for New Scotland Yard. Donovan nodded to Lestrade, then gave Jo a wave. “I’ll meet you out front,” she said, and left them.
“All right, then,” Lestrade said. “Back to work, people. Sherlock, I need more than you’ve given me.”
Sherlock was not paying attention to him. Jo made to move past her and was stopped by a hand to her elbow. “Joanna.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“This has probably occurred to you, but—” Her voice dropped until it was pitched for Jo’s ears alone. “You will be certain to keep that very useful weapon with you at all times.”
It had occurred to her, not because she was concerned for her own safety but because her palm had been itching to close around the familiar handle for the last several minutes. No point in bringing up her precise reasons. “Of course.”
Sherlock gave her a satisfied nod and let her go.
The ride over was a study in determined silence that went unbroken until they pulled up outside the flat. “It suits you,” Donovan said.
“Sorry?”
“Being a target. You look better than you have in weeks.” She was as serious as Jo had ever seen her. “I told you to get out while you had the chance.”
“I remember.”
“Fishing, I said. Not getting blown up and shot at. Not getting other people killed.”
“Thanks for the lift.” Jo reached for the door.
“Wait. Dr. Watson—Joanna, be careful. And if you ever want out, give me a ring.”
As offers of help went, it was blunter than most. Jo had no intention of taking her up on it, but she was willing to acknowledge she might not have given Sally Donovan enough credit. “Thank you.” She smiled, not the reassuring doctorly smile or the easygoing one for pub nights but the grim once-more-into-the-breach look she’d last exchanged with Murray just before that last round of sniper fire. She got out of the car and watched Donovan drive away.
Jo went straight up the stairs to her room and pulled her gun from the bedside drawer. She removed and checked the magazine, slid it back in, and clipped on the waistband holster she’d bought the day after she moved into Baker Street. Then she reached for her mobile. Her fingers punched in a number she hadn’t realised she knew by heart.
The man at the front desk was not immediately inclined to be helpful. “Dr. Ginzberg is booked through Wednesday. We do
have something Thursday morning, if you’d like to reschedule next week’s appointment.”
There was a cold pounding behind her eyes. “No, it has to be today. It’s important. It’s—could you just tell her it’s Joanna
Watson, and it’s an emergency?”
Jo breathed through a few minutes of irritatingly soothing classical music, and then he came back on the line. “She’ll see you. How soon can you be here?”
She could be there, it turned out, in half the time it usually took, now that she had sufficient motivation. Once she was seated in the familiar office it took only a few minutes to explain the situation. Thank God Dr. Ginzberg was such a good listener, because Jo was certain the whole thing sounded as nonsensical now as it had at the crime scene. She finished and swallowed hard. “And now I want to kill someone.”
Dr. Ginzberg didn’t hesitate. “Not an unnatural reaction.”
“No, you don’t understand. I want to kill someone. I’ve killed before, and I’ve always had a reason. One death to prevent another, and it’s felt—” Easy. Easier than it should. “But I’ve had a reason, and it was never the death itself I wanted. Do you understand?”
“I do. Go on.”
“I want it now. I want him dead. If he was here, unarmed, sitting in that chair instead of you, I would make it happen, and it would feel better than anything I’ve done in my life.”
“Some people would call that a public service.”
Jo had said as much to Moriarty himself, but she’d been strapped to a vest full of explosives at the time, and that did make it different. There were regulations—laws, she reminded herself, because sometimes she still forgot she was a civilian now—and there were good reasons for following them. “I wouldn’t.”
“I see that.” Ginzberg was watching her, dark eyes warm and competent and with no intention to judge. “Your awareness of nuance doesn’t preclude your keeping to a very black and white set of principles, does it?”
“Principles are necessary, and sometimes they have to be black and white,” Jo said, struggling to put into words something she felt in her very bones. “It’s because there’s so much grey in the world that we need them.”
“And you’re afraid you’ll abandon those principles if this continues.” Dr. Ginzberg nodded. “I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. I’m going to tell you to stop being so hard on yourself. You are a fundamentally decent woman, Dr. Watson, with sound and moral instincts. You’ll do yourself more harm than good by trying to sublimate every baser urge you have. Let yourself feel how badly you want this. That doesn’t mean acting on that impulse.”
“I don’t think you understand how dangerous this is.”
“How dangerous you are?” Ginzberg smiled. “I have a better understanding than you probably realise. As your friend Sherlock so astutely noted on our first meeting, criminal psychology is a particular interest of mine. I’ve interviewed more than my share of murderers. You have as great a capacity to make terrible mistakes as anyone, but I don’t think you need to worry about that particular failing.” She leaned back in her chair. “I think it’s time we talked about your military service. I don’t mean your injuries, and I don’t mean the friends and patients you lost. Suppose you tell me what it takes, Dr. Watson, to make you kill a man.”
*********
When Jo joined her at the mortuary that evening, Sherlock didn’t ask where she’d been. She barely seemed to notice Jo’s entrance, absorbed as she was in an examination of the previous victim. It did occur to her to ask, “All right?”
“I’m fine,” Jo said, and she was. The pistol was at her side, and the cold fury had retreated to the back of her awareness. It would keep, much like a caged tiger would do. “What did you find at St. Thomas’?”
“Little of value. He played the clarinet.”
“Sorry?” It took her a moment to catch up. Sherlock was talking about Paul Griffiths, the man on the slab. Jo wondered why he was still there, then remembered the accident that had killed his family. Likely there was no-one to collect him with any urgency.
“The clarinet, for years. You can tell by the teeth.”
His hand looked so grey and empty that Jo had to fight the urge to take it in hers. This man had died on her account. “I played,” Jo said. “Not for that long.”
Sherlock looked up sharply. “Did you?” She frowned, then shook her head. “It may or may not be relevant. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Is that how this works?” Jo asked, folding her arms across her chest against the chill of the morgue. “He picks someone who has something in common with me, and they die.”
“I suspect there’s more method to it than that.”
“What if you’re wrong?” That got her a dirty look, but she had to ask. “What if it is just coincidence? They might not even be the same murderer.”
“All three victims were shot with a 9mm handgun that was old enough to have developed a distinctive fingerprint. I’ve just seen the ballistics reports. The patterns are nearly identical.” Sherlock picked up Griffiths’ left hand, turning it from side to side and examining the fingernails. “It’s not difficult to alter the barrel of a gun if you want to. So, Joanna, we have a person expert enough with firearms to shoot a man from across the street with a handgun, but he doesn’t take basic measures to hide his tracks. Conclusion?”
“He’s an incompetent criminal.”
“Or?”
“He wanted someone to connect his crimes.”
“There are other possibilities, but you’ll admit that is by far the likeliest.”
“Guesses,” Jo said stubbornly.
“Logic,” said Sherlock. “This was orchestrated to catch my attention. You see, you were right.”
“About what?”
“When you were telling me about the bulldog, you said threats were pointless unless they were understood.”
She hadn’t thought Sherlock was listening to that. “But Moriarty can’t have known you’d see these cases. It was pure luck Lestrade was assigned the first one and pure luck I decided to go with him.”
“The dog was a deliberate choice of victim. He had to know I’d hear about a case that inexplicable before long.”
Jo shook her head. “He wouldn’t leave so much to chance, would he? It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock. What are the odds I’d have come along on all three cases?”
Sherlock eyed Jo over Griffiths’ body as though trying to gauge her state of mind. Then she said, “They may not have been the only ones.”
Jo absorbed that silently. She was right, of course. London was a big city and Lestrade was far from the only detective the Met had to offer. There might well be other victims.
Sherlock didn’t give her time to wallow in the idea. “Then consider the method. His last victim was shot at close quarters, but that was only because he had to be certain to place the bullets correctly. The other two were shot from a distance. Could you have managed the dog?”
“From a moving car? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”
“There aren’t many who could. I know you could have shot Griffiths. So did his killer.”
That instant of fear and frustration as she realised she’d chosen the wrong building, the glint of light from the window across the alley, and the utter certainty as she raised her gun—“He knows I killed Jefferson Hope.”
“He knows a great deal more than that. The question is how.” Finished with Griffiths, Sherlock slid the long metal drawer back into the wall and closed the door. “The cabbie is obvious. Moriarty sponsored him, so he would have taken an interest. How could he have known about the clarinet?”
“I’ve no idea, unless he’s been chatting up my teachers from the third form.” Though Daniels had probably done his best in the years since to forget she’d ever picked the instrument up. It had not been the high point of Jo’s young life. She’d told Sarah, hadn’t she, joking about her many talents? Surely not Sarah. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“And the bull pup?”
“There’d be a police report, I suppose. He could have found out if he’d wanted to. Sherlock, I don’t know, and to be honest it’s not what I’m worried about. You called this a threat.”
“I was imprecise. It’s a message. An invitation back to the game.”
A love letter, no doubt, in Moriarty’s skewed version of reality. “And a threat.”
“He’s done that already,” Sherlock said with a wave of one elegant hand. “He’d never repeat himself. This is something new.”
“So you don’t think I should worry.”
“I did tell you to arm yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant. I can’t walk around with a target on my back. Someone else might get caught in the cross-hairs.”
“The thought had occurred. Fortunately Moriarty seems to have chosen a shooter with aim as accurate as yours. Any collateral damage will be deliberate, not accidental.”
“Really not reassuring.”
“If it’s your boyfriend’s life you’re concerned for, or your sister’s or one of your colleagues’, I wouldn’t worry. You’re not the intended recipient of these messages.”
“Right,” Jo said. “Somewhere in having my past written out in someone else’s blood, I forgot I wasn’t important in all this.”
“Important to me, not to him,” Sherlock said. She threw that out like it wasn’t an earth-shattering admission. Jo had known, of course, had seen the way Sherlock’s face had changed when Jo had stepped out into the pool, but hearing it made a difference. “It’s not like him to go after your nearest and dearest when it’s me he intends to hurt. I’ve thought it through. Tomorrow Mrs. Hudson will receive a letter saying she’s won an all-expenses-paid holiday in some sunny location, to be redeemed immediately.”
“How—”
“Mycroft, of course. It’s appalling the degree to which I’ve had to rely on him in this case.”
“And if Moriarty decides your family would make a convenient letterhead for these messages?”
Sherlock gave her the very familiar “Must you be so slow?” look. “If he imagines he can get at Mycroft, he’s not half so clever as I think he is.”
“That still leaves two people dead,” Jo said. “They might not be ‘important’ to either of us, Sherlock, but that doesn’t make them expendable.”
“If you think I can prevent him shooting any one of the thousands of Londoners who might conceivably bear some resemblance to you, then I’m far cleverer than you think I am. I can’t protect an entire population.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I plan to stop this at the source,” Sherlock said. “Are you with me?”
“I did say ‘we’.”
“It’ll be dangerous.”
“Not very clever at all, are you?” Jo asked.
Sherlock’s mouth twisted in the slightest of smiles. “Let’s hope I am.”
Forward to Part III, Chapter 3
Fandom: Sherlock (BBC)
Words: 75,000
Pairings/Characters: Jo Watson/OMC, Sherlock/expensive violins, ensemble cast & original characters
Spoilers: Through "The Great Game"; also for several of the early ACD stories
Rating: Teen (see warnings)
Warnings: Armchair psychology; discussion of suicide in the context of a murder investigation; murder investigations, abductions, violence, and a great deal of associated unpleasantness
Summary: In which Jo Watson tries to take this therapy business into her own hands, London produces enough crimes of interest to satisfy even Sherlock Holmes, and the Bechdel test doesn't know what hit it. Game on.
Back to Part III, Chapter 1
Part III, Chapter 2:
Part III: The Long Game
Chapter 2
The days after Moriarty followed one after another with a desperate slide into something perilously close to normalcy. Once explanations were delivered, Sarah sent a bouquet so enormous she must have meant it to be funny and a note saying Jo wasn’t to show her face at the clinic for at least a week. She stopped by every so often to be certain Jo was following doctor’s orders, which aside from her nights with Scott she actually was. This was due to the fact that Sherlock hadn’t stirred from the flat even once since that first evening.
Instead she holed up in their sitting room and surrounded herself with the detritus of a hundred cold cases, from crime scene photos to witness interviews to the occasional murder weapon, whatever Lestrade would send over. “He’s here,” she told Jo. “I think he’s had his hand in half the crimes I’ve ever investigated. What we’ve seen barely scratches the surface.”
“And you think looking at old files will help you find him?”
“Far faster than interviewing explosives experts, but Lestrade does so love his protocols.” Her short, inky curls shone with the oil of missed showers. Jo had taken to getting takeaway whether Sherlock expressed an interest or not. She would eat if the food was set right on the table beside her, and Jo did not intend to let her lose weight over this, though she said she’d gone without on long cases before. “He’s been careful. The only physical evidence he’s left so far has been what he needed to lure me into the game.”
“You’d think it would be easier now that we have a face to go with the name.”
Sherlock didn’t reply to that. She just leaned over the files and kept reading, stopping every so often to fire off a round of texts or look through old news articles online. There must be a pattern, she insisted. Somewhere she would find a connection, and it would all come clear.
Jo went to see Dr. Ginzberg. Her injuries required an explanation, but she kept it as sketchy as possible and turned the conversation to Scott, who was wonderful, and to Harry, who was now an extraordinary six weeks sober. There the conversation stayed, and though Ginzberg must have noted the telltale tremor of Jo’s left hand she was evidently waiting for Jo to bring it up herself. That suited Jo just fine.
Cases started coming in, cases that bore no apparent relation to Moriarty, cases that Sherlock ignored when they came from her website and cases to which she responded with increasing scorn when they came from Lestrade. Jo got herself a back brace and refused to use the cane, even temporarily. She went to the clinic and considered looking for full-time employment in earnest. Her back got better, aside from the odd twinge. Things with Harry approached a bearable equilibrium, but they never talked about Clara.
Then came the afternoon when she returned from lunch with Scott to find Sherlock gone. Jo was elated at first, thinking it meant a shaking-up of the routine that was fraying her nerves, that Sherlock had decided to take an interest in the world around her. Then she was a little put out that Sherlock hadn’t texted. Then the day wore on into evening, which wore on into night, which wore on into the cold still hours of the morning, and by the time light crept into the sky Jo was frantic. She tried Mrs. Hudson, who hadn’t seen a thing. She tried Lestrade, who hadn’t spoken to Sherlock in days. She tried Molly and everyone else at Barts she could think of, even a bemused Phil Sutton. When evening fell she was ready to try Mycroft and deal with the consequences when Sherlock came stalking back into the flat, alive and undamaged and smelling faintly of fish.
“Good morning,” she said, sounding pleased with herself. She swept right past Jo, who was standing frozen in the sitting room, and made for the kitchen. “Is there tea?”
“It’s dinnertime,” Jo said.
Sherlock must have sensed something was amiss, because she turned and gave Jo a quizzical look. “So it is. Are we eating tonight?”
“You’ve been gone more than twenty-four hours. Have you got any idea what I’ve been thinking?”
“I try not to imagine your thought processes in great detail.”
She’d picked the wrong time for a casual insult. The blood pounded in Jo’s ears. “Have you got any idea,” she said, her voice now so cold even Sherlock looked taken aback, “how terrified I have been? How inconsiderate and selfish it is of you to disappear without a word only a few weeks after I was kidnapped and strapped to a vest of explosives? Somewhere out there there’s a brilliant madman who wants nothing more than to burn you alive, Sherlock, and I need to know that he hasn’t got round to it yet. Where have you been?”
Sherlock eyed her like one of her experiments, the kind that had a tendency to explode at odd moments and rarely yielded satisfactory results. “Out,” she said.
“Not good enough, Sherlock.”
“I’ve been out. Of my own free will and engaged in activities that did not require your participation, much as you’ve gone out over the last few weeks on a more or less regular basis.” She shrugged out of her coat and dropped it over the back of a chair. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, even I find it a strain to go more than forty-eight hours without sleep. I gather your back is improved. Perhaps you can go to the effort of walking up a few stairs so I can regain the use of my own room.”
Jo watched her go down the hall, and then she let her face drop into her hands to push back the sudden threat of tears.
Three days later, their doorbell rang and Mrs. Hudson ushered Lestrade upstairs. Their good landlady eyed him warily, clearly suspicious that he was bringing something into their home that would interfere with her charges’ recovery. Jo, on the other hand, had rarely been so glad to see anyone in her life.
“You have a case?” she asked, careful not to sound too eager.
Lestrade glanced in the direction of the couch, where Sherlock was flat on her back with one arm dangling limply over the side. She had not stirred when he came in. She’d been there for the better part of the evening after dropping three cases’ worth of notes to the floor, declaring herself on the verge of a breakthrough, and collapsing into what Jo could only assume was a thoughtful reverie.
Lestrade hesitated. “Do you think—” Jo nodded emphatically. “I do have a case. It’s an odd one.”
“A murder?” Murders were usually good. Raise the stakes, raise Sherlock’s interest.
“Not exactly.”
A twitch of the fingers that rested on the floor. Jo cleared her throat. “A suicide, then, but you’re not quite convinced.”
“No,” said Lestrade. “This is definitely a criminal matter. Shot with a handgun from a moving vehicle. It’s the victim that makes it less cut-and-dry.”
Jo didn’t have to look at Sherlock to know they’d played their hand well. The reluctant interest rolled off that side of the room in waves. “What’s the address?”
“It’s in Knightsbridge,” he said, “but we can give you a lift.”
“No,” Sherlock said clearly.
“Or you can take a cab.”
“No. I’m not coming. I am, as I have said on multiple occasions, far too busy for your little problems.”
“Sherlock,” Lestrade started, but Jo just sighed and stood up.
“Let me get my coat.”
“I said,” Sherlock put in, her voice low and biting, “that I am not coming.”
“Fine,” Jo said. “Do what you want. I’m going. I’m not interested in sitting around anymore watching you think yourself to death.”
Sherlock’s eyes opened just wide enough to glare at her, but if Jo had been hoping for any more reaction than that she was disappointed. She shook her head and held the door for Lestrade.
“You’re sure about this?” he asked on the drive over.
She wasn’t at all sure, but it was an excuse to get out of the flat. “I may not be Sherlock, but I won’t get in the way.”
“That’s not what I’m worried about,” he said, quietly enough that she wasn’t certain she’d been meant to hear it. Jo didn’t ask what did have him worried.
The corpse lay on the front porch of a well-kept house, a little puddle of its blood dripping horribly down the steps. Jo bent over to examine the bullet hole. It was typical of a small-calibre handgun, not unlike the one she carried, but that wouldn’t narrow the field much. As crime scenes went, it wasn’t all that remarkable except for one rather important fact: the victim was a dog.
A bulldog, to be precise, and of better than average breeding if Jo was any judge. “Do you know why?” she asked, utterly nonplussed.
“I was hoping Sherlock could tell us,” said Lestrade. “We’ve spoken to the owners, of course. They’re in shock.”
“They must have some idea why it happened.”
“They couldn’t think of any, but why bother with a drive-by unless you’ve a reason?”
“What sort of car was it?”
“A black sedan with tinted windows.”
“Doesn’t sound like kids joy-riding.”
“No, it was too deliberate for that. We have witnesses. The car came up the street right at the limit, slowed just a little at this house. Then the shot, and it left the neighbourhood without picking up speed. It didn’t even squeal the tires.” He brought his right hand up to scratch the inside of his left forearm, and Jo had no doubt she’d see a nicotine patch there if he pushed up his sleeves. He looked desperate for a smoke. “We ran the registration plates, of course. They were stolen off another vehicle two weeks ago. We’re comparing notes on the cases, but no luck so far.”
Curiouser and curiouser. “He was an excellent shot, from a car at that distance. But—”
“Why. I wish I knew.” Lestrade shoved his hands in his pockets and turned his frown to Jo. “Don’t take this the wrong way.”
“What?”
“What are you doing here?”
Jo stared moodily down at the bulldog, willing a deduction to present itself. You’d think after months of living with Sherlock something would have rubbed off, but all she had to show for it at the moment was a headache. Her left hand gave a treasonous little shiver. “I’ve no idea.”
“I talked to the owners myself,” Jo said several hours later. She was making beans on toast, which that was all they had, and talking to Sherlock from the kitchen. This was preferable to being in the same room, because at least this way she could preserve the illusion that Sherlock might be paying attention. “Nice couple. Reminded me of my mum and dad.” She paused for what would have been a response, if this had been a normal conversation. “They were terrified, of course. Thought it must be some kind of threat, only what’s the point in threatening someone if you don’t tell them why?” The toast popped up with a merry ding. Jo turned to take it out, forgot about her back, and was thrown off balance by a painful twinge. That set off the leg, and she had to clutch at the counter to stay upright. All her injuries, psychosomatic and otherwise, were coming out to play.
She bit down on her lip and waited for her breathing to even out before saying, “You should have a look, Sherlock. It’s an odd case, and Lestrade’s stumped.”
When no cutting remark about the frequency of that particular event wafted back into the kitchen, she slammed the plate onto the counter so hard it rattled. Childish, stupid, and ineffective. Jo pulled the pan off the stove and began piling beans on with a vengeance.
“I don’t know why you bother,” Sherlock said when Jo came limping into the sitting room. She was in the same position she’d been in when Lestrade had arrived. Evidently the expected breakthrough had not yet occurred.
“Neither do I,” Jo said, sitting in her chair with a weary thump. The beans were tasteless, and her leg hurt like hell.
She made another appointment with her therapist.
The limp was no better the next week. “What would you like to talk about today?” Dr. Ginzberg asked, eyeing her as she settled awkwardly into a chair.
Jo gave her a wry smile. “It looks bad, doesn’t it?”
“You haven’t gone back to the cane.”
“I don’t need it.” Yet.
“All right. You don’t seem as upset about it as I might have expected.”
Jo crossed her arms over her chest, thinking. “I’m angry.”
“With Sherlock?”
“What? No. Well, not about this. I’m frustrated with myself. I don’t want to be so easy.”
“Meaning?”
“A few weeks without a case, and I’ve gone right back to the way I was before.”
“Have you?”
“Well, there’s the limp.”
“Which you’ve taken as proof that it’s a withdrawal symptom. Stop feeding your addiction to danger and it comes right back. I see. How are the nightmares?”
“I never told you—”
“No, and you should have. How frequent are they?”
There’d been a particularly bad one a few nights before. She’d been at Scott’s, and if she’d ever thought it would have helped to have someone there in the bed beside her she’d been proved quite wrong. She’d fled to the shower soon after, the slap of scalding water much easier to face than his uncertainty and concern. “Maybe three times a week. Not so often when it started, but they’ve got worse.”
“When did it start?”
“The night after the pool.”
That had been several sessions ago, and Jo hadn’t mentioned the dreams since then. Not very clever of her, really, but Dr. Ginzberg didn’t comment further on that. Instead she said, “That’s suggestive, but not of what you were saying. If it’s the danger you need, I’d have thought being kidnapped and caught in an explosion would have kept you satisfied for a while.”
That was a fair point.
“I know you resent hearing the words Post-Traumatic Stress, Dr. Watson. No, hear me out. I’m not offering it as an explanation for everything, but it’s time you stopped flinching from a label you don’t like and accepted that you’ve been through experiences that are causing you problems now. It isn’t just the excitement you’ve lost.”
“What else, then?” Jo’s eyebrows had shot together, but she tried to keep her face impassive enough to indicate she was willing to listen.
“There’s still an investigation on, even if it hasn’t involved any foot-chases. Have you had any part in it?”
Jo scowled. Ginzberg gave her a sympathetic look. “It’s not anything I could help with,” Jo said.
“And Sherlock? She’s just letting the police get on with it?”
“I can’t talk about her ongoing cases.”
“Of course. I won’t ask for details. I’m merely suggesting that if she did in fact have an investigation on but wasn’t involving you, you’d find that difficult to deal with. What your injuries and your psychological discharge took away from you, what that man whose name you can’t tell me took away, was control. She’s denied you the opportunity to take it back.” Ginzberg regarded her with calm assurance. It was hard to argue with a face like that. “So I’ll ask you again. Are you angry with Sherlock Holmes?”
She wasn’t, she told herself, not even when she gave up and dragged the cane out from the back corner of her cupboard. She wasn’t angry, at least not until she woke sweating and trembling a few nights later and came stumbling down the stairs to an empty flat. The couch was empty of its usual six feet of consulting detective, there were no experiments brewing over the Bunsen burner on the kitchen table, and when Jo steeled herself to go down the hall and peer in Sherlock’s door she found that too deserted. It was four in the morning.
She made herself tea, went back out to the sitting room, and sat down to wait.
Just after six, the front door opened so softly she wouldn’t have heard it if every nerve hadn’t been straining for some sign of Sherlock’s return.
Sherlock came up the steps in near silence. When she saw Jo, she straightened, outwardly relaxed, but Jo didn’t believe for a second that she’d meant Jo to know she’d been gone.
“Morning,” Jo said. “There’s tea.”
Sherlock pulled off her gloves one after the other, watching Jo all the while.
“I’m getting breakfast with Harry before work,” she said. “I’ll be out most of the day.”
Sherlock unwound her scarf and folded it with great deliberation. Her eyes followed Jo as she stood with the aid of her cane and drained the last of her own tea.
Jo went to rinse the mug out, then came back through the sitting room on her way to the loo. Sherlock was still there. “You know,” Jo said, “you can tell me what you’re investigating. You have done before.” When Sherlock said nothing, Jo shook her head. “Fine. I’ll see you later.”
Her phone rang just after she got back from the clinic that afternoon. Sherlock was, once again, on the couch.
“Hello?” Jo said.
It was Lestrade. “Are you busy?”
“No,” Jo said with a glance at Sherlock, who looked as though she’d forgotten what busy meant.
“There’s been a shooting in Bethnal Green. Not a dog this time, but it’s the same calibre handgun, and this one was also from a distance.”
“You think it’s related to the last one?”
“I do. I know it seems unlikely, but people don’t just get shot without good reason.” His frustration was obvious. “Guns usually mean gang violence, and there’s no sign of that here.”
“Give me the address, I’ll come right over.”
“Just you?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Jo tried, but in the end she arrived at the crime scene alone. The victim was a man in his late thirties, a banker who’d been shot in his first floor office from the window of the vacant flat across the street. The shattered glass made the shooter’s location obvious, and Jo raised an eyebrow as she peered out of the office. Lestrade hadn’t been exaggerating about the distance. It wouldn’t have been an easy shot, even for her. “He knew what he was doing, I’ll give him that.”
“That’s what worries me,” Lestrade said. “On top of that, there’s a CCTV blind spot. We have a good view of the bank, but none of the window opposite. We spoke to the owner of that building, but he said the empty unit’s been unlocked for weeks. Anyone could have got in, and the place is full of prints. We’ll have to run them all, of course, but I don’t expect anything to come of it.”
The victim was a man in his mid-thirties, rather plain and with sandy hair about the same shade as Jo’s. He’d been shot full in the chest and pronounced dead at the scene. Jo spared little attention for the gaping entrance wound, as it was obvious enough what had killed him, but she did note the cane lying under the desk beside him.
Her hand twitched.
Jo levered herself down onto the floor and pulled up the left leg of his trousers. The damage was immediately obvious: a knee so mangled it was a wonder the leg below had survived. “That’s an old injury,” she said. “Gang related, maybe?” It would lend some credence to the theory that these shootings were threats.
“No such luck,” said Lestrade. “Car accident three years ago, according to his coworkers. It killed his wife and two children. Doesn’t sound like he ever got over it. Painful, but probably not relevant.”
Probably not. “He was epileptic,” she said, turning over the medical tag that hung from a thin chain on his wrist. “That could have caused the accident.” Not that they’d have missed it, but Jo felt obliged to make an effort.
“I’ll look into it.”
“Just to humour me?”
“Have to look into something, don’t I?” He looked tired, all his usual wry humour quite evaporated. “I’m damned good at my job, Dr. Watson.” She’d never questioned that. Some people carried an air of quiet competence with them, and none more than Greg Lestrade. “On cases like this, that doesn’t seem to matter much.”
She left half an hour later without having contributed anything other than a sympathetic ear and the promise to talk to Sherlock, much good that would do.
Jo couldn’t get the sight of that body out of her head, try though she did. That evening she got up halfway through a tasteless dinner, walked to the kitchen under her own unsteady power, and shoved her cane right into the bin. She could do without.
She’d limped all the way back to her chair before Sherlock so much as looked at her. Then Sherlock let the file she was holding fall to her chest, her gaze fixed on the ceiling. “A software programmer, a retired army colonel, and a Cambridge professor of theoretical mathematics,” she said.
Jo glanced up from her casserole. It was Mrs. Hudson’s speciality and deserved a better appetite than she could provide. “Is that from the crossword?”
“You wanted to know what I’m working on. Those are the pieces. I need to connect them.”
“What’ve they got to do with Moriarty?”
“I don’t know,” Sherlock said. “There must be something, but I can’t work it out. He’s like a ghost, Joanna,” she said, “and every time I reach for him he…dissolves.”
“Careful. You’re starting to sound like my blog.”
She scrubbed her fingers through her curls. “You see what it’s doing to me. It should be exhilarating, but it isn’t, it isn’t at all. He went to the trouble of engaging my interest and then disappeared.”
“He’s playing hard-to-get,” Jo said with mock sympathy. Sherlock snorted, unimpressed.
Nothing had changed, not really. She was as little help to Sherlock as she had been before, and her leg wasn’t any better. Still, she could feel that little knot of resentment in her chest begin to ease, and at this point Jo would take her victories where she could get them.
Scott went out of town for a week to visit his sister in Bristol. Sarah’s family were in town, and meanwhile Harry was swamped with work and cancelled their dinner plans. This coincided with an extended period of health and productivity in the regular staff at the clinic, and since Jo still hadn’t found other employment that left her with approximately nothing to do. Her leg was killing her. Mrs. Hudson had offered to teach her knitting.
It came as a relief when Lestrade finally rang her. She told him she’d be there in half an hour, shoved the phone in her pocket, and limped heavily into the sitting room. “There’s been another one.”
Sherlock had been in one of her fugue states. The fact that she snapped out of it to answer was indication enough that she was ready for a distraction. “Another what?”
“Shooting. Same type of weapon, no connection between the victims. This one was a break-in, but nothing was taken. That’s three now. You know what that means, Sherlock. We have a serial killer.” When that didn’t get a response, she added, “A serial killer who started with a dog. Explain that.”
“Escalation from animal victims is a common feature of—”
“Oh, come off it,” Jo said. “There’s nothing common about this case. It’s too clean for a mad killing spree and too impersonal for your garden-variety serial murderer.” It was a bit alarming that Jo now felt she could distinguish between relative degrees of homicide. “We’ve got an expert marksman choosing random victims.”
“Not random,” Sherlock said, sitting up. Jo resisted a smile. “Lestrade’s inability to find a connection doesn’t prove anything.”
“So find it,” Jo said. “A few hours at most, Sherlock. Come and tell them what they’ve missed and you can get right back to whatever it is you’re doing here.”
Sherlock knew perfectly well that her buttons were being pushed. On the other hand, serial killer.
They ended up at a very nice flat in Bloomsbury. The victim, an athletic woman in her mid-forties, had lived alone and had been found when the cleaning lady arrived at noon.
The body wore a thin black halter top and soft grey pyjama bottoms. Probably shot getting into—no, getting out of bed, Jo decided. She’d need better tools to determine time of death with any real accuracy, but it wasn’t more than eight or nine hours ago.
She said as much to Sherlock, who hadn’t given the victim more than a cursory glance. She seemed far more interested in the contents of the bureau drawer. Jo gave up and turned to Lestrade. “There wouldn’t have been major organ damage. She died quickly of the blood loss.”
“There’s certainly enough of it,” he agreed. Two great, dark pools were spread around the body. The hardwood would never recover.
“Shot at close range, obviously. Sherlock, are you listening?” No response, but Jo had learned not to let that discourage her. “The murderer used a handgun. You’ll call this theorising before the facts, but I’d lay money it’s the same weapon. The others were, ballistics proved that. Why so close by, though? There’s a nice plate-glass window right here with open curtains and a convenient office building just across the street. Our killer can’t have started worrying about his aim so recently.”
“Yes, worry is the wrong word,” Sherlock said, not glancing up from whatever fascinating clues she was no doubt finding among the poor woman’s panties. “He was placing his shots. Obviously.”
Jo frowned, then finished her examination and got back to her feet. Funny, her leg had stopped hurting. Small blessings, she supposed. “First bullet in the shoulder. She’d have needed extensive surgery on the clavicle, but from the blood stains I’d say the bullet missed all the major veins and arteries. That’s not the one that killed her. That leg, on the other hand—hard not to hit something important. She’d have been unconscious within minutes with that kind of a bleed. Prompt medical attention might have saved her, but as it was—”
She stopped. It wasn’t like that, though, not at all as though she’d just stopped talking. Instead the words themselves ran out and were replaced by a mouthful of thick cotton, and even the dark stain on the floor had gone grey. Jo blinked and the clean lines of the room shifted to a hundred impossible angles. She blinked again, or at least had a difficult time seeing anything for a moment, and the next thing she knew someone had an iron hand under her left arm, which was very helpful given that her legs didn’t seem to be working at all.
“Chair,” said a voice in her ear, and then she was sitting in one.
The voice and hand were Lestrade’s. The man had a grip like a vice, but it was surprisingly gentle when guiding her head down toward her knees. She was vaguely aware of someone crouching in front of her.
“I’m all right,” she assured the floor between her shoes. “Never fainted in my life.” She did have some experience with
hypovolemic shock, but that didn’t count.
“First time for everything,” said Lestrade. He sounded almost cheerful. “Sherlock, we could do with a glass of water.”
“Anderson,” said Sherlock, from the approximate location of Jo’s parietal lobe, “get Joanna some water.”
Anderson sputtered in the background, but all Jo’s attention was on the pair of long, cool hands that had wound themselves around her wrists. She lifted her head. It sent the corners of her vision sliding out of focus, but by that time she’d been caught by a clear blue gaze that anchored her in full consciousness.
“What is wrong with you?” Sherlock asked. It was neither exasperation nor sarcasm. She was simply demanding information.
There were any number of things that could cause a person to come over all weak at the knees. Jo considered her options before choosing the most innocuous. “Low blood sugar, probably.”
“Skipped a few meals?” Lestrade suggested.
“You had coronation chicken on a baguette not three hours ago,” said Sherlock, who hadn’t been around for the coronation chicken but was of course perfectly correct. “And you’re not diabetic. Better try again.”
“People get squeamish at crime scenes, Sherlock.”
“Don’t be an idiot. One more chance.”
The answer was that this was wrong, horribly wrong. Of course it was wrong, Jo told herself. It was a murder investigation. There were few things more horrible than that. But she’d seen at least several of those things, and if she couldn’t even convince herself that was the answer, she certainly wasn’t going to be able to convince Sherlock.
Who was still waiting. Jo closed her eyes. “The second bullet went in a few inches above her knee. Probably nicked some rather important blood vessels.”
“Causing severe blood loss and eventual death. You said she might have survived?”
“With immediate medical attention, yes, there’s always a chance you might live. I did.”
Jo cracked her eyelids to find Sherlock sitting back on her heels, looking pensive. “And the other shot was to the left shoulder. Is that all?”
“What, a sudden, overpowering identification with a murder victim isn’t enough?”
“Coincidence,” Sherlock said. “People get shot.”
“You don’t believe in coincidence. Now you want me to start?”
“No. I want you to work out what is wrong with this picture. You are capable of feeling empathy without forgetting who you are, and whatever aftereffects of trauma you may experience I’ve never seen you lose control like this. You’ve seen something, Joanna, something that’s upset you. Tell me what it is.”
“I’ve only seen what you have.” Wrong, wrong, her gut chanted at her, and she swallowed against the bile rising in her throat. “It—you’re right, it’s horrifying, but I don’t know why. Call it intuition. But if you haven’t worked it out, how could I possibly do it?”
“You have some piece of data that I don’t. Think. What do you know?” Joanna shook her head, and Sherlock let out a long, hissing sigh of impatience. She stood, looming impossibly high, and took a few quick steps to the window, bringing her hands up to seize her head as though she might shake the truth out of it. “Intuition,” she said, rapidly and half to herself, “is also called a leap of logic, which is far more accurate. When people claim to have had a premonition that was borne out by ensuing events, more often than not they’re only being stupid and self-important, but sometimes it’s no more than the truth. The brain often makes connections that pass the conscious mind straight by, it’s how we’ve survived all these millions of years, we don’t need to put them into words or work out why things are true if we simply know them to be true, that’s not the point if all you want to do is stay alive—and what I do, Joanna,” she went on, scarcely stopping for breath, fixing Jo once again with those eyes like twin scalpels, “what I do is the same, it’s many degrees faster and I see all the steps in between, but it’s the same principle. You’ve done it, too. Don’t call it intuition. See the steps in between and tell me what you know that I don’t.”
What did she know that Sherlock didn’t? How to give herself to something other than the relentless search for distraction, for a start. The taste of the skin below Scott Morstan’s lower lip. The number of planets in the solar system. What it felt like to hold a man’s life together with her bare hands. The colour of the wallpaper in her grandmum’s dining room. And—
She swallowed. “When I was little, my dad raised bull pups.”
Lestrade made a small noise in objection to this apparent non sequitur, but this was one of those rare and heady occasions on which Joanna had Sherlock’s full attention, so she paid him no mind.
She skipped the middle part, with Harry’s birthday and the three months of warm fur and soft tongue, and went straight to the part that mattered now. “The day before I turned nine, the boy next door shot one of them with an air rifle. The dog dragged himself through the garden and died on the front step.”
Lestrade saw it now, or part of it. Jo wasn’t sure she could see it all herself. Sherlock, though, Sherlock’s eyes had gone hard and brilliant. As Joanna had explained, the layers had been stripped away, reducing Sherlock to her fundamental parts. Someone had thrown a switch, and the woman standing before them was composed entirely of angles and edges and neurons firing.
She gestured at the body on the floor. “She’s a doctor.”
“How did you—oh, never mind,” Lestrade said. “Emergency medicine at St. Thomas’, according to the landlord.”
“And the last victim, Joanna, why was he chosen?”
Of course, it was all so obvious. “He had a cane.”
“Bad leg,” Lestrade said. “It was from an auto accident two years ago. What’s that got to do with anything? You don’t mean to say there’s a connection here after all.”
Jo’s stomach had stopped roiling. Now it sat cold and hard within her, and her hand had never been so steady in all her life. “It’s me. I’m the connection, aren’t I?”
“It would seem so.” She didn’t have to look so thrilled about it. Jo would have been nettled if she’d had any room for mundane emotions.
“That’s ridiculous,” Anderson said. “I didn’t realise narcissism was contagious.”
Lestrade shook his head. “A dog, a cane, and a pair of bullet wounds don’t add up to a conspiracy, Sherlock.”
“You wanted an answer,” Sherlock said. She eyed the body like a child presented with a gift-wrapped package.
Jo put one hand behind her to grasp the top of the chair, then levered herself up with a heave. The edges of the room stayed in focus, which she took as a good sign. She looked past Lestrade, ignored Anderson and Donovan and the woman on the floor, and turned to Sherlock. “Why, though? Is it a threat?”
“A game,” Sherlock said. “He’s been toying with me. I knew he wouldn’t keep away for long.”
“Toying with me, not with you,” Jo said. You self-centered ass, she didn’t say. “It’s because you’re still investigating him. You heard what he said. He’s going to burn you, Sherlock.”
“Sorry, what?” The creases in Lestrade’s forehead had just grown deeper. “What are we on about?”
“Moriarty. Obviously.” Sherlock didn’t spare him so much as a glance. “What he said doesn’t matter. He’d never have expected me to stop.”
“He said he’d burn the heart—”
“You’re fine. So is my heart, along with any other organ of mine you’d care to name,” Sherlock said. “In the meantime, he’s killed two more people. Do you want me to stop?”
And let him kill God only knew how many more, because the police were never going to find him? Sherlock had turned that queer blue gaze on her, the excitement of a moment ago funnelled into a calm and deadly focus. Jo had never yet said no to that look. At moments like this, when it was directed at her and her alone, she wasn’t sure she could. “Of course not.”
Lestrade coughed. “I don’t suppose you’d care to fill the rest of us in on what you’re on about.”
“You’ll catch up. Or not, I don’t particularly care, but I want copies of the photos and autopsy reports for the other two.”
The DI had crossed his arms over his chest. “I thought you weren’t interested.”
“Give her what she needs,” Jo said.
“What I need at the moment,” Sherlock said, “is her diary, which if we are all very lucky will contain the number of the person who took her to dinner two nights ago.”
Lestrade said, “I think I saw it in the kitchen.”
“You think you saw? In a single phrase you’ve encapsulated everything wrong with the Metropolitan Police Service.”
He ignored that. “You’re saying she went for dinner with her murderer.”
“I’m saying this was obviously not a break-in. She knew him, Lestrade, but not well.”
“And you’re certain it was a he.”
Sherlock narrowed her eyes. “The murderer was a man of above-average height and powerful upper body strength with military training and a controlled temper. She did not invite him here this morning and was uninterested in pursuing a sexual relationship, but when he turned up on her doorstep unannounced she felt secure enough to let him in. She asked him to wait in the kitchen and came back to the bedroom to change, but he surprised her as she was opening the drawer. She stepped toward him and he shot her in the shoulder. She stepped back, fell, and then he placed the shot to the thigh. All quite elementary if you consider the angle of the shot, the pattern of the killings so far, the matchbook on the dresser, and the contents of this open drawer. In addition—”
Sherlock stopped when one of the officers came back into the room bearing a leather-bound diary. She flipped through the pages, then paused.
“They’re torn out,” Lestrade said, leaning over.
“Astute deduction. The page for this week and the one after—of course, the pen left an indentation in the page beneath. Have you checked her mobile?”
“What for?”
“The messages, Lestrade! He’s made a mistake, left his fingerprints all over this one.”
“Moriarty?” said Lestrade.
“Not personally. He sent someone else to do this, but it’s a start. We’ve a solid lead at last. Joanna, with me. We’re for St. Thomas’.” She started for the door, coat flapping dramatically about her thighs.
“No,” Jo said.
It was almost satisfying to discover that a single syllable from her could stop a hurricane in its tracks.
Sherlock turned, for once just a little off balance. She blinked, then subjected Jo to an evaluation that raked her head to toe. “You’re fine,” she said, though it sounded more like a question. Then she gathered herself, drawing her usual air of mastery like a cloak about her. “You’re better than fine. Look at your hand. Now come along.”
“I’m not fine,” Jo said. She was something quite other than fine. Her blood pulsed with a cold, steady rhythm in her chest, and she had never felt so alive, but she could not go with Sherlock now. She quailed at explaining this. Instead she let her shoulders droop and drew a shaky breath. She was far from Sherlock’s equal when it came to dissimulation, but she thought the others at least would buy a further show of weakness. “I need some time, Sherlock. Just a few hours, then I’ll catch you up.”
“Where are you going?”
“Home.”
“You’ll take a cab,” Sherlock said. Was that concern?
“I’ll take her.” This came from Donovan, of all people. Sherlock’s head whipped in her direction. Donovan lifted her chin a bit and met Sherlock’s stare. “Run along, freak.”
Jo wasn’t sure what to do with this unexpected show of support. “Thanks, really, but I don’t need a lift.”
“Yes you do,” Donovan said in a way that implied she needed a lot more than that. “It’s on my way.”
“Where are you going?” Sherlock demanded.
“To make those copies you wanted,” Donovan said, as though she offered to run Sherlock’s errands on a regular basis and as though Baker Street wasn’t in quite the wrong direction for New Scotland Yard. Donovan nodded to Lestrade, then gave Jo a wave. “I’ll meet you out front,” she said, and left them.
“All right, then,” Lestrade said. “Back to work, people. Sherlock, I need more than you’ve given me.”
Sherlock was not paying attention to him. Jo made to move past her and was stopped by a hand to her elbow. “Joanna.”
“I’ll see you later.”
“This has probably occurred to you, but—” Her voice dropped until it was pitched for Jo’s ears alone. “You will be certain to keep that very useful weapon with you at all times.”
It had occurred to her, not because she was concerned for her own safety but because her palm had been itching to close around the familiar handle for the last several minutes. No point in bringing up her precise reasons. “Of course.”
Sherlock gave her a satisfied nod and let her go.
The ride over was a study in determined silence that went unbroken until they pulled up outside the flat. “It suits you,” Donovan said.
“Sorry?”
“Being a target. You look better than you have in weeks.” She was as serious as Jo had ever seen her. “I told you to get out while you had the chance.”
“I remember.”
“Fishing, I said. Not getting blown up and shot at. Not getting other people killed.”
“Thanks for the lift.” Jo reached for the door.
“Wait. Dr. Watson—Joanna, be careful. And if you ever want out, give me a ring.”
As offers of help went, it was blunter than most. Jo had no intention of taking her up on it, but she was willing to acknowledge she might not have given Sally Donovan enough credit. “Thank you.” She smiled, not the reassuring doctorly smile or the easygoing one for pub nights but the grim once-more-into-the-breach look she’d last exchanged with Murray just before that last round of sniper fire. She got out of the car and watched Donovan drive away.
Jo went straight up the stairs to her room and pulled her gun from the bedside drawer. She removed and checked the magazine, slid it back in, and clipped on the waistband holster she’d bought the day after she moved into Baker Street. Then she reached for her mobile. Her fingers punched in a number she hadn’t realised she knew by heart.
The man at the front desk was not immediately inclined to be helpful. “Dr. Ginzberg is booked through Wednesday. We do
have something Thursday morning, if you’d like to reschedule next week’s appointment.”
There was a cold pounding behind her eyes. “No, it has to be today. It’s important. It’s—could you just tell her it’s Joanna
Watson, and it’s an emergency?”
Jo breathed through a few minutes of irritatingly soothing classical music, and then he came back on the line. “She’ll see you. How soon can you be here?”
She could be there, it turned out, in half the time it usually took, now that she had sufficient motivation. Once she was seated in the familiar office it took only a few minutes to explain the situation. Thank God Dr. Ginzberg was such a good listener, because Jo was certain the whole thing sounded as nonsensical now as it had at the crime scene. She finished and swallowed hard. “And now I want to kill someone.”
Dr. Ginzberg didn’t hesitate. “Not an unnatural reaction.”
“No, you don’t understand. I want to kill someone. I’ve killed before, and I’ve always had a reason. One death to prevent another, and it’s felt—” Easy. Easier than it should. “But I’ve had a reason, and it was never the death itself I wanted. Do you understand?”
“I do. Go on.”
“I want it now. I want him dead. If he was here, unarmed, sitting in that chair instead of you, I would make it happen, and it would feel better than anything I’ve done in my life.”
“Some people would call that a public service.”
Jo had said as much to Moriarty himself, but she’d been strapped to a vest full of explosives at the time, and that did make it different. There were regulations—laws, she reminded herself, because sometimes she still forgot she was a civilian now—and there were good reasons for following them. “I wouldn’t.”
“I see that.” Ginzberg was watching her, dark eyes warm and competent and with no intention to judge. “Your awareness of nuance doesn’t preclude your keeping to a very black and white set of principles, does it?”
“Principles are necessary, and sometimes they have to be black and white,” Jo said, struggling to put into words something she felt in her very bones. “It’s because there’s so much grey in the world that we need them.”
“And you’re afraid you’ll abandon those principles if this continues.” Dr. Ginzberg nodded. “I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear. I’m going to tell you to stop being so hard on yourself. You are a fundamentally decent woman, Dr. Watson, with sound and moral instincts. You’ll do yourself more harm than good by trying to sublimate every baser urge you have. Let yourself feel how badly you want this. That doesn’t mean acting on that impulse.”
“I don’t think you understand how dangerous this is.”
“How dangerous you are?” Ginzberg smiled. “I have a better understanding than you probably realise. As your friend Sherlock so astutely noted on our first meeting, criminal psychology is a particular interest of mine. I’ve interviewed more than my share of murderers. You have as great a capacity to make terrible mistakes as anyone, but I don’t think you need to worry about that particular failing.” She leaned back in her chair. “I think it’s time we talked about your military service. I don’t mean your injuries, and I don’t mean the friends and patients you lost. Suppose you tell me what it takes, Dr. Watson, to make you kill a man.”
When Jo joined her at the mortuary that evening, Sherlock didn’t ask where she’d been. She barely seemed to notice Jo’s entrance, absorbed as she was in an examination of the previous victim. It did occur to her to ask, “All right?”
“I’m fine,” Jo said, and she was. The pistol was at her side, and the cold fury had retreated to the back of her awareness. It would keep, much like a caged tiger would do. “What did you find at St. Thomas’?”
“Little of value. He played the clarinet.”
“Sorry?” It took her a moment to catch up. Sherlock was talking about Paul Griffiths, the man on the slab. Jo wondered why he was still there, then remembered the accident that had killed his family. Likely there was no-one to collect him with any urgency.
“The clarinet, for years. You can tell by the teeth.”
His hand looked so grey and empty that Jo had to fight the urge to take it in hers. This man had died on her account. “I played,” Jo said. “Not for that long.”
Sherlock looked up sharply. “Did you?” She frowned, then shook her head. “It may or may not be relevant. I’ll keep it in mind.”
“Is that how this works?” Jo asked, folding her arms across her chest against the chill of the morgue. “He picks someone who has something in common with me, and they die.”
“I suspect there’s more method to it than that.”
“What if you’re wrong?” That got her a dirty look, but she had to ask. “What if it is just coincidence? They might not even be the same murderer.”
“All three victims were shot with a 9mm handgun that was old enough to have developed a distinctive fingerprint. I’ve just seen the ballistics reports. The patterns are nearly identical.” Sherlock picked up Griffiths’ left hand, turning it from side to side and examining the fingernails. “It’s not difficult to alter the barrel of a gun if you want to. So, Joanna, we have a person expert enough with firearms to shoot a man from across the street with a handgun, but he doesn’t take basic measures to hide his tracks. Conclusion?”
“He’s an incompetent criminal.”
“Or?”
“He wanted someone to connect his crimes.”
“There are other possibilities, but you’ll admit that is by far the likeliest.”
“Guesses,” Jo said stubbornly.
“Logic,” said Sherlock. “This was orchestrated to catch my attention. You see, you were right.”
“About what?”
“When you were telling me about the bulldog, you said threats were pointless unless they were understood.”
She hadn’t thought Sherlock was listening to that. “But Moriarty can’t have known you’d see these cases. It was pure luck Lestrade was assigned the first one and pure luck I decided to go with him.”
“The dog was a deliberate choice of victim. He had to know I’d hear about a case that inexplicable before long.”
Jo shook her head. “He wouldn’t leave so much to chance, would he? It doesn’t make sense, Sherlock. What are the odds I’d have come along on all three cases?”
Sherlock eyed Jo over Griffiths’ body as though trying to gauge her state of mind. Then she said, “They may not have been the only ones.”
Jo absorbed that silently. She was right, of course. London was a big city and Lestrade was far from the only detective the Met had to offer. There might well be other victims.
Sherlock didn’t give her time to wallow in the idea. “Then consider the method. His last victim was shot at close quarters, but that was only because he had to be certain to place the bullets correctly. The other two were shot from a distance. Could you have managed the dog?”
“From a moving car? Maybe. Probably. I don’t know.”
“There aren’t many who could. I know you could have shot Griffiths. So did his killer.”
That instant of fear and frustration as she realised she’d chosen the wrong building, the glint of light from the window across the alley, and the utter certainty as she raised her gun—“He knows I killed Jefferson Hope.”
“He knows a great deal more than that. The question is how.” Finished with Griffiths, Sherlock slid the long metal drawer back into the wall and closed the door. “The cabbie is obvious. Moriarty sponsored him, so he would have taken an interest. How could he have known about the clarinet?”
“I’ve no idea, unless he’s been chatting up my teachers from the third form.” Though Daniels had probably done his best in the years since to forget she’d ever picked the instrument up. It had not been the high point of Jo’s young life. She’d told Sarah, hadn’t she, joking about her many talents? Surely not Sarah. That didn’t bear thinking about.
“And the bull pup?”
“There’d be a police report, I suppose. He could have found out if he’d wanted to. Sherlock, I don’t know, and to be honest it’s not what I’m worried about. You called this a threat.”
“I was imprecise. It’s a message. An invitation back to the game.”
A love letter, no doubt, in Moriarty’s skewed version of reality. “And a threat.”
“He’s done that already,” Sherlock said with a wave of one elegant hand. “He’d never repeat himself. This is something new.”
“So you don’t think I should worry.”
“I did tell you to arm yourself.”
“That’s not what I meant. I can’t walk around with a target on my back. Someone else might get caught in the cross-hairs.”
“The thought had occurred. Fortunately Moriarty seems to have chosen a shooter with aim as accurate as yours. Any collateral damage will be deliberate, not accidental.”
“Really not reassuring.”
“If it’s your boyfriend’s life you’re concerned for, or your sister’s or one of your colleagues’, I wouldn’t worry. You’re not the intended recipient of these messages.”
“Right,” Jo said. “Somewhere in having my past written out in someone else’s blood, I forgot I wasn’t important in all this.”
“Important to me, not to him,” Sherlock said. She threw that out like it wasn’t an earth-shattering admission. Jo had known, of course, had seen the way Sherlock’s face had changed when Jo had stepped out into the pool, but hearing it made a difference. “It’s not like him to go after your nearest and dearest when it’s me he intends to hurt. I’ve thought it through. Tomorrow Mrs. Hudson will receive a letter saying she’s won an all-expenses-paid holiday in some sunny location, to be redeemed immediately.”
“How—”
“Mycroft, of course. It’s appalling the degree to which I’ve had to rely on him in this case.”
“And if Moriarty decides your family would make a convenient letterhead for these messages?”
Sherlock gave her the very familiar “Must you be so slow?” look. “If he imagines he can get at Mycroft, he’s not half so clever as I think he is.”
“That still leaves two people dead,” Jo said. “They might not be ‘important’ to either of us, Sherlock, but that doesn’t make them expendable.”
“If you think I can prevent him shooting any one of the thousands of Londoners who might conceivably bear some resemblance to you, then I’m far cleverer than you think I am. I can’t protect an entire population.”
“Then what do we do?”
“I plan to stop this at the source,” Sherlock said. “Are you with me?”
“I did say ‘we’.”
“It’ll be dangerous.”
“Not very clever at all, are you?” Jo asked.
Sherlock’s mouth twisted in the slightest of smiles. “Let’s hope I am.”
Forward to Part III, Chapter 3
