Sheridan Holmes: A Cold Case PART 7

"This is humiliating." Sheri said across the iPhone camera. Eli and Lestrade were on the other side investigating the crime scene live, and Sheri was straight jacketed in the hospital.

"We gave you a stand." Eli said, butting her head into the screen.

"I don't mean the straight jacket," she rolled her shoulder as she tried to escape the canvas prison. "I was beat by you in a fight. My sensei is going to die laughing at me next time I see him."

"Sensei Tong is dead." Lestrade said in the shaky camera angle.

"Is he?" she pulled her arms free and began the pull the straight jacket off. "I hope it was painful, the guy was an idiot. You should have seen the stance he had me practice. Where's the body?"

"Hold on." Eli tapped the switch camera button and showed Sheri the body. Sipps was lying on a fence with his head through a hole in it looking up at the sun. There were several dents where his head hit against the wood over and over again. Blood was all over the other side of the fence where his head fell through. it was the most viciously mangled bodies Eli had seen yet. There were pieces of scalp resting on the ground like someone deliberately wanted to be disgusting as they were killing him.

"Yes! It's a bloody one." Sheri said gleefully.

"Sheri!" Eli scolded.

"Sorry, I mean poor soul. I hope his vicious beating was pleasant." she said sarcastically, "Blood is good, it tells us a lot of the missing pieces. Now I need you to give me a close up of the injury."

"But the blood..." Eli complained, her skin paling.

"I'd do it myself, but some people are 'concerned for my health'."

"Fine," she grumbled, holding Lestrade's phone up to the bloody hole in Sipps's head. "Oh my god I think I can see brain." Eli covered her mouth in disgust.

"Dare you to touch it." Sheri said coldly, "Now show me the face."

Eli held the phone over the face, ignoring the slosh of blood under her feet. At this moment she was wishing she hadn't worn crocs.

"Hands."

She showed Sheri both hands at all angles.

"What do his shoe soles look like?"

Eli showed her the bottom of the foot that was bent at an impossible angle for the knee cap and ankle.

"Interesting... Show me the surrounding ground." Eli walked around the grass for about ten minutes as Sheri studied it. "Road." Eli walked around the street, her feet trying to adjust to all the pot holes. "Fence."

This went on for a while, until Sheri had made he point the camera at every possible spot within a fifty foot radius, at all visible angles. Until finally Sheri said, "Okay, I have all I need." Eli walked back to Lestrade, who was leaning against a police car sleepily. His arms looked like they'd be burned in a few hours.

"Ready?" he said walking to the driver side door and starting the car up. Eli got into the passenger side and placed Sheri in the holder on the dash. "What do you got?" Lestrade began pulling the car onto the street, his eyes planted firmly on the road.

"The killer was hired. About six feet seven inches, cheap price, and young. Has a lust for blood that's for sure. All the non-cranial damage was made after he died. He picked at the skull a bit, from the camera I couldn't tell if that's what he wanted to do or if his employer asked him to. He was here in the middle of the night in a large vehicle. Any specific questions?"

"Do you recognize the handy work?" Lestrade asked, his eyes never moving from the road.

"No, he's new at this. Or at least not from around here."

"That was the most disgusting body I've ever looked at. What kind of monster would do such a thing." Eli looked like she was going to be sick just thinking about the corpse.

"The lust for blood," Sheri said darkly serious, "The desire for the cracking sound of bone, the love of the red lines running across your hands." Sheri smiled faintly.

"Sheri?" Eli asked nervously.

"Sorry." she shook her head out of it, "Anyway, the murderer wasn't quite that messed up. If he were a real psychopath there would have been a lot more blood and open skin. Who ever hired him asked him to make the body like that. You can tell by the bruises on the calves and arms. The breaks in the joints were made from a small hammer hitting them and then them being placed like they were broken by hand. We know they weren't broken before he died because there were two sets of footprints in the mud. One of those was Sipps the other was the killer. Kind of hard to break his legs like that if he were alive."

"So why'd they have him break his legs?" Lestrade asked

"Good question. My guess is to either disguise a scent with blood, or to make it look more like someone else's handy work."

"Are we sure this guy's not just messed up?" Eli asked.

"I'm messed up." Sheri pointed out, "That doesn't mean I'm going to kill you in your sleep." the two didn't look too convinced, "Look, I know what I saw. Just because your tiny brains can't process the same information doesn't mean that it isn't true." Eli looked at the phone annoyed. "Oh you know what I mean."

"Lestrade is there a mute button on this phone?"

"Oh come on!"

"No but we could try this." he tapped the power button on the phone and Sheri blinked off.

"Much better."

***

"So how was your day?" Eli asked sitting down in the visitor chair by Sheri's hospital bed. Her left hand was handcuffed to the bar at the top of the bed and there was a curious stain on the hospital gown she was wearing.

"Oh you know the usual. A nurse came in trying to get me to eat. I retaliated. She started crying. Then some buff doctors came in and force fed me chicken broth, and here we are."

"Ah." Sheri twisted her hand in the cuff, "You need any help with that?"

"No I got it." Sheri pressed her left hand a few times then squeezed it out of the cuff. With a few cracks of her hand she flexed her digits and smiled. "Made that trick myself. It's a lot easier than picking the lock... Okay you have a question." Sheri sat up and looked content to listen. For once in her life.

"Why was it so easy for you to look at the body? I couldn't and I've been training to be a doctor for eight years." Sheri didn't look that surprised, but she looked at least a little like she didn't see that question coming.

"It's quite a simple answer actually. There is a collective power of our childhood traumas that guides how we see the world when we're older." Eli moved foreword in her chair.

"But what about me, I have no parents and no family." Sheri smiled.

"Yes, but after all that tragedy did once in all that mess did someone neglect to make you feel at home." Eli frowned.

"I guess not, but no one's life could make looking at that body okay." Sheri's eyes darkened.

"I'm the product of a gold-digger and her lover, seven years younger than my half sister, and the first time my mother ever talked to me was when I was eleven." Eli lowered her gaze nervously, "What does that tell you about my childhood?"

"I had no idea..." Eli swallowed sadly.

"It doesn't matter to me. Right now we're on a case."

"Sheri, if you ever want to tal-" Eli started.

"Geez!" Sheri said, her cheeks turning red. "I'm fine. I don't care. That's the past! Right now is what matters. I honestly only care about solving the cases." Eli nodded nervously. "Good. Now Sipps goes missing from his class. His office is trashed and his research is missing. His friends try to find him, calling in the police for help. Two days later his body shows up in Clarence. The injuries are bad, but he didn't feel a thing because he was already dead." Sheri paused as if she were waiting for Eli to add something. After a while she just continued. "The killer had to be someone who didn't want his research out in the world. Someone who has a large amount of money in the medical world." Sheri paused again to let Eli think, but when she didn't respond Sheri continued. "Someone that sells a lot of cold relief medication and Burn cream...that you use every morning."

"MoLanders!" Eli shouted out finally.

"Took you long enough." Sheri muttered.

"But why?" Eli rubbed her neck, suddenly irritated.

"Money. No more colds means no more tissues and advil, I bet that didn't sit well with Mr. MoLander." Sheri paused, no doubt dotting her i's and crossing her t's. Eli had seen her do this enough by now to know not to speak. "Right now we need evidence. Eli you'll need to visit Sipps' office tomorrow. See if you can dig up anything there."

"What, you mean alone?"

"Well obviously. I'm not allowed to leave this room and besides you need the practice." Sheri pulled out her iPhone and began typing.

"There's no way I'll be able to do what you do."

"While I firmly believe that is true, you need to use your brain power sometime. Now go, I have work to do." Sheri immersed herself in pixels as Eli left. Almost as if she were really going to be working here all day. But as soon as the door slammed shut, Sheri went to work on her escape.