Inside A Genius’s Brain (3/?)
So this part of @chitarra10 ‘s fic was a bit longer than I had expected it to be so I may make the word count after all. But finally, here is a new part with Greg trying to balance a conversation in his head with a conversation in person!
Inside A Genius’s Brain - After musing that he would like to figure out just what makes Sherlock tick, he finds he has somehow been able to do just that...and he learns so much more about his consultant than he had ever thought possible.
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He had assumed when Sherlock said he would live his life that Sherlock had meant his life, but almost as soon as he’d made the decision to leave his flat his mobile rang with Sally on the line. “This one’s messy,” she said. “I don’t know if we want it.”
“Of course you do,” Sherlock said. “The messy ones are the most interesting.”
“Define interesting,” he said.
“Pardon?” Sally said on her end.
“I meant messy,” he said, mentally berating himself for not thinking at Sherlock as he had before. “Define messy.”
“Gun violence, for one, but there seems something odd about it, like the guns weren’t...right.”
“Oooh, this will be a good chance to show what I can do through you,” he said. “Tell Donovan we’ll take her messy case.”
“Give me a location and I’ll be there as soon as possible.” Lestrade paused. “Is this one of the lose your breakfast type cases?”
“We’ve seen worse. A lot of brain matter sticking to the bodies.”
“And that’s a clue there, that it’s on the bodies and not the walls,” Sherlock crowed. “Oh, she’s dropping gems like Hansel and Gretel dropped breadcrumbs.”
Honestly, Greg didn’t like this back and forth and it was already giving him a headache. “You, hush,” he said to Sherlock. Then he turned his attention back to his mobile. “Fine. Location?” She rattled off an address and he realized it wasn’t far from the NSY offices. He could get a quick bite and then get to the scene around the time he would normally clock into his office.
“No time to eat, don’t eat on a case. Best to keep your stomach empty to keep your mind ready to absorb everything in one fell swoop,” Sherlock said.
Lestrade grit his teeth. “I’ll skip breakfast and get there quickly. Twenty minutes or so, depending on traffic.” He hung up and then said out loud, “Happy? No food for me.”
“The body is quite similar to a machine. You’ll get food soon enough, I promise. But hunger puts things in sharp contrast. You notice all the details.”
“Wonderful,” he murmured. He slipped on his coat and grabbed the keys to the vehicle he was using from Scotland Yard and then got in.
“Sirens?” Sherlock asked, his voice almost boyish with hope.
“No need,” Greg thought.
There was a long enough pause that he assumed this inner Sherlock was pouting when Sherlock said quietly, “Please?”
That alone caused him to smile. “I suppose I could, just this once,” he said with a soft chuckle. He flipped on the sirens as he pulled out of his assigned spot in the car park and then made his way to the scene, turning the sirens off just before he arrived. Sally was out there, a frown on her face.
“Did you use your sirens?”
“Prats at a light,” he said. Have to use the perks sometimes. And it’s not like it was a personal matter. We have a messy case.” He rubbed his hands together, and action he usually didn’t do. “Show the way?”
Sally gave him a look but she lifted up the tape and they went to put the crime scene suits on. She gave him the rundown and surprisingly, Sherlock stayed quiet in his head. There were a group of five men and an abandoned poker game. No sign of a gun but no sign of money, either, and from what they had been told, this was a high stakes poker game with plenty of cash on hand. The people coming in to look at the body before deciding where it was to be sent were baffled. Greg listened and nodded, taking it in.
Finally, Sherlock spoke. “Send it to Barts. If it is what I think it is, Molly’s seen it before and can confirm.”
“Oh?” Greg thought.
“Wax bullets. Worse than blanks but they don’t do quite the same amount of damage. But she’ll know if the damage is from a wax bullet or a blank, which is the other potential cause.”
“Can people really die from blanks?” he asked, forgetting to think the question.
“Brandon Lee did,” Sally said. “On the set of ‘The Crow’? There was a malfunction and the prop gun killed him. Supposedly the scene where he died is actually in the movie.”
“That’s rather morbid, even for my taste,” Sherlock thought. “But it’s true. Though it depends on if there’s damage where the muzzle would have been pressed to the head. Prop guns are easier to obtain than unlicensed handguns.”
“Have the body sent to Barts and make sure Molly sees it,” Greg said.
“Alright,” Sally said, heading over to the bodies with Greg. Greg knelt down to examine one of the bodies and its head wound.
“Yes. Definitely a wax bullet or a blank. Hard to tell without a pocket magnifier to tell the specific damage. You should carry one.”
“When I can just call you?” Greg thought.
“But one day I might not be there,” he said. “One never knows. There’s the continued game with Moriarty. We don’t know where that will lead.”
Greg conceded the point to himself. This game, whatever it really was all about, had put everyone on edge with the bomb scare. There was no telling what else the sociopath would do, or who else he would target. And with that maudlin thought, he stood up. “Let’s get uniforms to start canvassing for witnesses while we work on identifying each of the victims and looking into their backgrounds,” he said to Sally. She nodded and went to tell the people handling the bodies to take them to Barts. “I will owe Molly for this. Five bodies with everything else on her plate?”
“She’s fond of you. And you don’t manipulate her like I do,” Sherlock said.
“So I should start doing that?” Greg thought.
“No.” The way Sherlock said it sounded as though he might murder him on the spot if he attempted to do any such thing, and seemed to place another puzzle piece in place about the type of relationship he had with the specialist registrar.
“I won’t then. But I’ll still owe her.”
“Chocolate, coffee, and lunch,” Sherlock said. “That should do the trick. Have Sally give her bubble bath and Epsom salt for tonight. Her stores of both are low.”
“And just how would you know that?” Greg asked, murmuring the question out loud. But Sherlock stayed resolutely silent at that.
Figured.
