Sheridan Holmes: Last One to Drop PART 26

"There's something odd about all that." Sheri said as Eli caught up to her on the sidewalk. Sheri was looking more like herself already. She let her hands fall from around her chest and let them sit in her pockets, and she stood just a little bit taller.

"What, you not insulting Mark? He totally smelled like alcohol." Eli rubbed her gloved hands together for warmth.

"No, the body." Sheri turned and looked around. She spun twice before going back to just walking forward.

"What about it, you cracked his code."

"A code he knew I'd be able to figure out." Sheri's hands came up to her lips. The black leather gloves pressed together in her signature thinking hand gesture. "Which means he didn't have the body put there."

"Why do you -eep- say that?" Eli asked, almost slipping on some black ice.

"Because Trevor is crazy, but he's not stupid. He only led us to him last time because the guys he brought were on the verge of being caught for a murder charge. He wouldn't purposely bring attention to his murders."

"Murder charge?" Eli asked, this was the first she'd heard of those goons Moriarty had, being suspects for a murder case.

"Yes, murder charge. I explained this last week when you were in the hospital getting your head checked out."

"You mean when I was getting my head checked out in the emergency room and you were in the waiting room?" Sheri nodded, paying no attention to her as she looked around the street once more. "Now how was I supposed to hear you then?"

"I can't help it if you're not listening when it's important. So," Sheri clapped her hands together, "What was strange about the body itself?"

"It had 'Moriarty' carved into the fingers."

"Not even close." Sheri said irritably. She stopped looking around the streets and clutched her abdomen again. "The wound." Eli gave looked confused, "Did you see one on the body?"

"No, but it could be under the body. You weren't exactly thorough in your investigation."

"Okay, but then you're also assuming that the killer was standing on the..." Sheri froze. "Oh, that's it."

"What?" Sheri smiled through the pain in her stomach.

"If they were on the wall, that would be very interesting..." Sheri pulled out her phone and began to type.

"What would be interesting?" Sheri ignored her and walked back to the yarn shop, watching the ground as she did.

"When did it snow last?"

"Yesterday. Why is that important?" Sheri stopped in front of the store and brushed her hand against the brick wall. She hesitantly kneeled down and dug through the salty snow until she found it. A footprint, from a boot probably, accented in red blood.

"LESTRADE!" Sheri yelled. He ran out, and saw the footprint after a few seconds.

"Officer Harris?" he asked, through the open door, "How good are you at extracting blood samples from snow?"

***

"I was right Mark." Sheri said, sipping a hot chocolate in the police station. She was sitting at a desk with one of the computers used to look up criminal records.

"About what?" he asked, leaning on the wall next to her. He was a little angry because Lestrade had asked him to baby-sit Sheri while she was looking at the criminal records. He was even angrier that she was talking to him.

"It was just a burglary-murder."

"What do you mean?" he asked tentatively.

"The criminal mastermind behind the murder, is a little known serial thief that I've been trying to catch for a few months now."

"A thief?" he asked, not convinced that she had been trying to catch a thief he didn't know about.

"Yes, an amazing thief. Never been caught on film, never been seen, and never leaves any evidence behind. We call her 'The Black Sheep'."

"Why-" Sheri didn't give him time to ask his question, but as usual she knew the answer.

"She only steals yarn." Sheri shrugged.

"You're just making this up, aren't you?" Sheri was known for sarcasm, but it was sometimes to subtle to tell if she was joking.

"Not kidding." she sighed, "Lestrade asked me to look into it a while back, but there just isn't enough evidence in the previous encounters. We're just lucky we know it wasn't a stocking error. People just don't protect their yarn like they should." she shook her head.

"You have got to be kidding."

"As I just said, I'm not."

"Why would you steal yarn?"

"I wouldn't The Black Sheep obviously has a purpose." Sheri stopped an officer who was walking past. "Richard, could you tell Lestrade to-"

The officer kept walking.

"Fine, I'll do it myself." Sheri got her phone out and began to type.

"Why are you texting him. He's literally down the hall."

Sheri muttered something rude and deleted the draft.

"If you're so into exercise than you can tell him to get all the patients in all of the hospitals, with a stab wounds, feet sized to pick out which one is the Black Sheep."

"Couldn't we just find whoever's blood matches the blood sample on the boot print?" Sheri muttered something else rude.

"If you want to do it the easy way. Then you can wait until results come back from the labs. Which since they're lunch break ends in half-an-hour, I'd get on the foot measuring right now." Sheri tapped the desk with the upper joints of her fingers.

"You are being absolutely ridiculous today." he said setting his coffee down on the desk. "More than usual."

"I'm sorry if I can't focus today, but seeing as I've been brilliant every other day of the year, I can probably have a few days to be off my game." Sheri turned back to the computer and tapped the keys, halfheartedly.

"What is up with you today?" Mark finally asked. Sheri looked up curiously, "Not that I'm not happy about the 'not insulting me as much' thing, but it's not like you."

"I just don't feel up to being Sheri the brilliant today." she sighed, her abdomen were really killing her, but she wasn't about to show Mark what was wrong with her. It was too personal. It was her issue to deal with, definitely not his. Besides, if he saw that she was vulnerable, for the first time since she'd met him, could she ever act like she was better than everyone else again? She was bound by the laws of nature. And as much as she hated to admit it, all the hormones and signals running through her body right now affected her.

"Is this about that I.A., guy?" he asked. This brought Sheri right out of her self-pity.

"What do you mean?" he shrugged, but his ears were already turning a bit pink.

"I don't know, I read about him on Eli's blog. I figured that you were upset about his new girlfriend." he coughed to clear his throat. Suddenly it was really dry.

"Girlfriend?" Sheri tried very hard not to say anything she might regret.

"Yeah, it's all over the tabloids. Him and Taylor Swift. Tayrem? Is this ringing any bells?" Sheri shook her head.

"I don't read about celebrities." she said finally. Subconsciously she began plotting against Taylor and Irem's publicist. "Besides, I only dated him to get information. I have no romantic feelings toward hi-"

"I know you do." he smiled, sipping his coffee to help swallow that lump in his throat. "You're doing that thing you always do when you want to sound better than everyone else."

"I don't know what you mean." Mark laughed once.

"Whenever you get nervous or really focused on a case you start saying things like 'no romantic feelings' instead of 'I don't like him'."

"I don't do that." she defended.

"Yeah you do, every time you get nervous you start talking in broken Victorian." Sheri thought back on what she had just said a few seconds ago. It did sound different than her normal speech. "I don't know what's up with you today, but..." he didn't finish the thought.

Sheri looked back at the computer awkwardly. Maybe it was just the hormones and vulnerability talking, but she could swear she wasn't imagining the body language he was giving off.

Keeps swallowing, nervous about something.

Ears are turning pink. Increased blood temperature caused by nerves.

Eyes keep shifting away from directly at her. Obviously Sheri was the cause of the distress.

Pupils dilating. Hands crossing over chest. Straightening stance. And...blush.

As much as Sheri did not like the facts, they were there. Why had she never noticed it before? The way he talked to her was distinctly different than any other officer. Sheri mentally kicked herself for not seeing the obvious fact that Mark liked her more than he cared to admit. Three years and she hadn't seen it. Her? Brilliant her? For god's sakes, he practically sweated off a pound just now.

Sheri was not sure how she felt about that. Certainly she felt instant dislike for the emotion, but there was also the flattery beneath that. Sheri liked people noticing her intelligence. Like other pageant girls enjoyed boys complimenting their beauty, Sheri could not help but to feel the same way about people complimenting her intelligence.

Of course she also felt reality gripping the edges of the realization. She did not feel the same way about Mark. He was not intellectually stimulating on any level, and he was a satisfactory police officer at best. Out of all men in the world, she had fallen for only two men in her whole life. And 'fallen' being an exaggeration for both cases.

"Sheri?" Mark asked, as Sheri leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in front of her mouth. Sheri didn't respond for a second, but she gradually left her thoughts.

"Right, so I need to find the murderer." Sheri grabbed a paper off the desk and began to draw with someone's bitten up pen. She started with the floor plan of the shop. There were windows in the front on either side of the door. Two metal racks of yarn separated each side on the door into two dead-end passages that blocked the view of the windows.

Sheri drew a rough sketch of the main part of the shop. All the walls were lined with the same metal racks covered in yarn. In the center was a desk with a cash register and a table with knitting magazines for in-store lessons on the knitted arts. On the left side of the room, right in front of the register, she drew a little sketch of the old lady and the rack toppled on top of her.

"Okay, so first we need to know how to break into the shop." Sheri motioned a box on around her paper floor plan. "So, first the thief crawled through the air vents." she motioned an imaginary person down over the cash register desk. "Then she goes to the rack." she slide her fingers over from the desk to the dead body doodle.

"Old lady is in the back room." Sheri motions to an area just past the register and table just off the page, with her other hand. "Hears a disturbance in her shop, and comes out to investigate." she moves her hand from the table to the other hand. "There's a struggle, and the rack falls over on them. The rack was mis-weighted and crushes the poor woman." Sheri removes her hand that's symbolizing the old lady. "The thief is lucky, she manages to get out with just a long deep scratch from the cheap wire work of the metal rack. She bleeds a lot, but manage to keep the dripping to a minimum. The blood clinging to her boot washes off for one boot print on the snow outside."

"How on earth...?" Mark started to ask, then stopped himself.

"Now we just need Ms. Piper from the hospital." Sheri motioned to the computer screen. It was a medical record of a young lady named Terry Piper who, if you read the record, had just been admitted into a hospital not too far from Elmwood for a deep cut in her arm.

***

"Ms. Piper, would you describe the man who attacked you again?" Detective Hopkins asked the tall woman as the doctor checked to make sure she could move her arm. Cases like these took no time at all. You ask who attacked and find them, simple as that. Hopkins only agreed to meet her at the hospital because the cut on her arm was so deep she could not leave the hospital for a few days to keep it clean from infection.

"He was tall, and muscular. He was black. And he had a big scar on him hand, I could see it when he..." the thin woman broke into tears, "I'm sorry," she sobbed, "I didn't get a good look at his face."

"It's okay." Hopkins said, giving her a warm smile. Another trick he learned from years of experience. A sobbing witness does not remember a thing. He would really rather sigh loudly and complain, but that wouldn't help.

"Hold out your arm." the doctor said and she obeyed. On her right arm was a long clean scratch held together with stitches that looked like they were about to pop open. The skin around it was slightly red on her dark black skin.

"Do you remember what he was wearing? Any brands, identification...stains?"

She shook her head, her light, straight hair poofed out about as she did.

"Bull." someone said from behind the exact moment the door opened. Detective Hopkins looked over his shoulder to see Sheridan Holmes walking in and leaning against the back of his chair. Mark walked in behind her with Lestrade and Eli.

"Excuse me?" Hopkins said, annoyed. He remembered Sheri from her days on the force. How could he forget her? He saw her shooting up during one of their training sessions. In front of Gregson. She hadn't even tried to deny that she was using cocaine, just stared him straight in the eyes until he turned red with anger.

"You know, B.S., a common phrase used to say that one is lying." she smiled at Terry. "You know exactly what he was wearing, a lot of wool and a wire. You also remember exactly what he looked like." Terry stared blankly at her. "He was big and square, wiry frame, Chinese, and as white as they come."

"What are you talking about?" Hopkins asked, still looking up at Sheri.

"She wasn't attacked, she was stealing from a yarn shop and got hit by a large rack full of yarn. She was cut on one of the edges when she tried to get out and the blood pooled on the floor around the dead shopkeeper."

"Wh-"

"It's not a case of attack, it's murder." Terry's eyes fell to her arm. The doctor who was disinfecting her cut looked from Terry to Sheri and scooted away from the woman. "You crawled through the air vents into the store and when Susan saw you she came over to yell at you. Naturally you freaked and knocked over the shelf and it toppled. Her neck got twisted and snapped, but you managed to get out and escape."

"Yarn shop?" Terry asked making a very convincing innocent face.

"Yes, you want to see how you did it? I made a flip-book." Sheri pulled out a small pack of post-it notes and flipped through the corners to show a detailed cartoon showing Terry's yarn shop heist.

"The ride to the hospital wasn't that long..." Eli muttered under her breath.

"It was." Sheri said, looking straight at Terry, "Your blood is all over the crime scene. If you confess now we might let you off the murder charge. So long as we have the evidence to suggest it wasn't your fault."

"We have evidence to suggest that?" Eli asked. Sheri nodded, biting the corner of her lips. Her back started sweating in discomfort.

"Great." Lestrade said angrily, "Could we know what this evidence is, so we can arrest her?" Sheri sighed.

"Isn't it obvious, it's been right in front of your eyes this whole time!" They all looked at her confused, even Terry was wondering what she was talking about. "The yarn rack. How did that crush Susan Louis? Wire rack like that, the worst you could do with that is a small scratch and a twisted ankle."

"But, you said-" Lestrade started.

"I remember what I said, and I'm still right. Did you bring the file?" Lestrade nodded, holding up a leather murse where he kept the important documents when he wasn't in the offices. "Let me see it." Lestrade handed her the file, "Your's too." she nudged Hopkins' shoulder and he handed her his own file.

Sheri looked at them both for a second, then nodded and looked up. "The rack was tampered with." she pointed to a picture of the crime scene, specifically one of the legs of the wire rack standing over the body. "This leg is a few centimeters shorter than the rest, enough to make it wobbly. Weight it right and the next person to touch that rack's neck will be crushed under enough weight to break it."

"So, the whole thing was a trap?" Terry asked.

"A clever one at that. You see after you made your way out of the shop, Jackson Louis, Susan's husband, came in to get her to fall for the trap. Of course she had already set off the trap when you got crushed, so instead he took the chance to blame the murder on you. He removed the weights, set the rack back up and cleared out."

"It was her husband?" the doctor asked, he was really getting into the excitement of the mystery.

"Of course, who else would have a reason to kill a yarn sales lady."

"Okay," Lestrade interrupted, "But what does this have to do with Moriarty?" Sheri was quiet for a second, staring at the picture of the crime scene with a frown. Then she smiled, and laughed to herself. "What?" Lestrade demanded.

"Absolutely nothing." she smiled. She looked up at Lestrade, who was glaring at her. Her frown faded. "The only thing connecting this murder to Moriarty is the engravings."

"That's a nice way of putting it." Mark grumbled. Sheri ignored him and looked through the files again.

"Yep, right here." she pointed to a page of Lestrade's file. "A Mr. Jackson Louis called in reporting his wife had been murdered at 8:30 this morning, police arrived at the scene 8:32 AM." She flipped open the other file, "And here, Ms. Terry Piper, called in reporting her attack at 1:46 AM. That's a pretty big difference."

"So?" Lestrade asked.

"So, we know that Jackson waited until light to report her death, but we know he saw the body before then."

"Terry saw him enter the shop." Sheri said staring at her iPhone screen.

"How did you-?" Terry began to ask.

"Your description of the man who attacked you. Tall. Black. Muscular. Large scar. Same characteristics of Jackson." she showed them a picture off of Facebook, zoomed into him hand. It was large and black with a long pale scar in between his middle and ring finger. "You saw him when you left the shop and decided to blame the scratch on your arm on someone the police would believe did it." she looked to the police officers, "No offense, you're just really racist."

"None taken." Hopkins sighed sarcastically.

"Moriarty?" Eli prompted, not wanting an argument.

"Ah, yes. Thank you, Watson. Obviously one of Moriarty's men was watching Terry here and when the murder happened they marked Susan's hand to get our attention."

"Okay, but why?" Lestrade asked.

"Yeah, why?" Terry said, uncomfortable with the idea of people stalking her criminal activities. She shifted in her seat.

"Something to do with that countdown I would guess. What that's for, I suppose we'll just have to wait until the counter hits one." Sheri looked over Lestrade's frown and saw Mark mouthing the words "You're doing it again."

"I don't do that." Sheri mouthed back. Lestrade had to look over his shoulder from curiosity.

"Okay, so if you two are done flirting," Lestrade said and Mark shrunk, his ears turning red, "I need to catch this guy before more bodies pile up. So what you suggest we do, Consultant?"

Sheri shrugged, "I don't have enough information, but I'm sure-"

"Sheri, no offense, but we need this guy in jail now."

"I'm doing all that I can. It's not like he's calling me to say-" Sheri's phone rang. It was her tone for unidentified caller, "Call Me Maybe". Sheri paused and took her phone out of her pocket, carefully sifting through all her extra pads and tampons. "'Ello?....Who is this?" Sheri instantly put the caller on speaker phone.

"-But you may call me Hanson, if you like." Eli swallowed a gasp.

"I liked your puzzle Trevor. I don't think I'd even been assigned that case without you." Sheri glared at her phone.

"I have a knack for causing trouble. I thought you might enjoy a bit of stimulation this week. Distractions distractions." Sheri gripped her phone tighter and took it off speaker phone.

"Nice to see you've been keeping tabs on me. Worried about my health?"

"Quite the opposite actually. Of course I have my sources to make sure."

"How on earth-?" she said, walking out into the hall. She gave Lestrade the one minute sign and he groaned. "Are you're sources that deep?"

"Do you really want to know?" he said slyly.

"Yes." Sheri dared.

"Oh, so persistent for the facts. I would have thought you'd want me to answer a different question." Sheri sighed.

"Why the countdown?"

"Oh I have a point to all this." Moriarty assured her, "You see, I can get people to do anything. I could convince thousands of mercenaries to kill you, but what would the point be?"

"You get your criminal empire to yourself with no one able to stop you?"

"Yeah, but what's the point? So I have anything with a price tag. Whoopidy doo!"

"Are you suggesting that you're trying to impress me with all this?"

"Courtship? No. No... I want to destroy you." he said happily, like fairy-godmother. "One little piece at a time." Sheri

leaned against a wall.

"May I suggest a slow poison?" Sheri said dryly.

"Hah! Physical torture is much less painful than what I have planned. Sleep tight, madame Holmes." the call went blank, and Sheri clenched her teeth. Suddenly her phone sang again and Sheri looked at a text message.