Secondary Exposure: 3
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
The woman was about thirty-five, and good looking. Her hair was black and straight, shorn into an austere bob that contrasted strikingly with her red lips, and a smile that was all teeth. Showy for a doctor, but for ambitious young professionals, the banquet at a medical conference was probably all the socialising allowed into their schedules. Not that John would know, never actually having been an ambitious young professional. And the army wasn't much of a social platform.
She was wearing a two piece, semi-formal evening set in burgundy, and naturally, she was surrounded by a set of equally ambitious young men, all vying for her attention. She had her sights set on the tall one, her head cocked coyly to one side. She knew exactly when to laugh.
John was seated at the far end of a long, empty table. Dinner had been a tedious affair, which was irritating not of itself, but because John had been determined to enjoy it. In fact, he had been determined to enjoy the entire conference, but instead had been thinking about Sherlock bloody Holmes the entire time, and while this didn't surprise him, the impunity of it made him angry; that after the altercation the previous morning, John should be the one to feel guilty.
Sherlock didn't do guilt. By his own assessment, he was clinically incapable of it. However, for all his arrogance, impatience, and foul tempers, he wasn't a cruel person, and John alone was in the position to observe that Sherlock's asperity was largely defensive. That he had resorted to caustic sarcasm yesterday had indicated that, in some bizarre way, John had made him feel threatened. John had nearly been murdered, and after twenty years that memory was being raked up, laid out, and dissected, and Sherlock felt defensive. That was so bloody typical.
John sipped his plastic cup of cheap Merlot. In glancing out the windows he observed a man, two seats to his left, whom he recognized from an earlier panel on acute medicine. He seemed to be engaged in much the same pastime as John, watching the crowd and avoiding conversation. In another twenty years, John reflected sourly, that would be him. The perennial, lonely bachelor, adrift in the limbo of pre-retirement: reaching the end of his career and yet unwilling to toss in the towel; no one at home and nothing to look forward to; an aging Nestor, excluded from the aspirations reserved for youth. Fantastic. This banquet had been a real pick-me-up.
John wanted to leave. He was exhausted, and he was also bored. It was as though these people existed on another planet, and John was struck with the thought not unusual to him, that he didn't belong here. He watched them mingle and chat, make eyes at each other and argue, laugh, demure. It was all so boring. Dull. Predictable. John's chest constricted and he didn't know whether to laugh or scream.
So, on what planet did he belong, then? Not on Sherlock's certainly. He was a planet unto himself, and a hostile one at that. If that were so, then John, if anything, was a moon, like a satellite or something. In terms of self worth, that was actually quite pathetic. It seemed to be a reoccurring theme in John's life. Really, who honestly got abducted by serial killers? It was humiliating. It was really something he could have happily never considered, ever again, for the rest of his miserable, lonely, satellite life.
For awhile John watched two people near the table of ravished hors d'oeuvres. The woman was slightly older, with a pleasant demeanor. Her hair had once been blonder than it was, and only because he was looking did John observe the pale narrow mark where her wedding band had been. Her jewelry was plain, but of a high calibre, and she had her back to the table, hips canted towards her companion.
If John wanted to be perfectly honest with himself (which he didn't, he ruefully conceded), the thought of leaving Sherlock now sickened him slightly. Supposing he got fed up and went back into medicine full time, where would that put him?
The man speaking with the older woman was roughly thirty years old, gawkishly tall, and obviously inexperienced with women. His blue jacket was wide in the shoulders, large to accommodate his long arms, and he was talking too much about all the wrong things, emboldened by the woman's attentions. Her mind was a long way from medicine tonight, and if he would just shut up, the man might even get lucky. John, on the other hand, hadn't gotten lucky in quite some time, not with Sherlock popping in on his dates and dragging him off to fight crime. John could never say no, and this fact had now put him below par with everybody here. He actually had lower odds of getting laid than Awkward McBlue-Suit. John Watson, setting new standards of pathetic all over the globe. He drained his cup of wine, and it tasted terrible.
For all that Sherlock was infuriating, John had to admit that he hadn't actually been out of line the other day; not any more than usual. It was being the object of his morbid fascination that had put John off, having the layers slowly peeled back from everything he had wished to conceal, his personal horrors laid out and examined. He refused to address the implications against his sanity that he would rather be there, flayed by Sherlock's exacting nature, than here.
John wasn't imaginative, and it was a result of this that others mistook him for brave, even the great Sherlock Holmes. John couldn't imagine all the horrific ways in which his escape could have failed: that was what had enabled him to do it. But later, huddled blindly in the crook of a fallen tree, each harrowing minute had compounded the odds in his mind that he would be discovered. At that time every bird call, every snapping stick, had been the sounds of pursuit, and John had entertained not the possibilities, but the single certainty that he would be killed, that he would be brutally brought to heel and slaughtered.
These thoughts didn't do him any good now, so he corralled them and put them away. Wasn't the case more important than John's petty hang ups?
Someone cut into John's line of vision, setting another cup of red wine before him, and one to the gentleman at John's left. John recognized the newcomer as another one of the guest speakers. Though John had attended his lecture, he couldn't now remember what it had been about.
"Don't you two make a miserable pair," the man said, lowering himself into the seat diagonally between John and the other solitary man. He had his own glass of white wine, and had probably had a few, if he was striking conversations with complete strangers by way of criticism. He was somewhat tall, grey; a full but well maintained beard. Married, John noted, as that seemed to be a singular preoccupation of the evening. Cartwright, John thought the name was. He could check the program later, but knew he wouldn't. John raised his wine in a vague gesture of salute.
"I have just extracted myself," the man began, "from a most insipid discussion on ethics. These young doctors think they invented controversy." He in turn raised his glass to the third doctor. "We're well quit of it, Harrington," and he shook his head. "Youth."
John nodded in his best impression of affability. He wasn't sure where he fit into this discussion. The third doctor, Harrington, nodded as well and sipped his wine. Their end of the table lapsed into awkward silence. John shifted and eyed the door. It was one thing to silently lament one's isolation, but this Cartwright fellow had had the effect of bringing it into excruciating focus.
"Have you heard about the Monroe murders?" the man began again suddenly. "Anthrax!"
John had in fact heard about the Monroe murders, aside from it having been in the news all week. A Kensington family had, over the course of the last year, one by one succumbed to a flu-like illness. Upon reading of the recent affliction of the youngest daughter, Sherlock had offhandedly listed the symptoms and asked John, "If this were deliberate, what would it be?" "Anthrax, probably," John had said. It was so seldom encountered in England that it could have hardly been the initial diagnosis, unless the doctor lived with a consulting detective whose thoughts were constantly mired in murder.
"Shouldn't have missed that," Cartwright continued. "Puts Dr. Holloway in a tight spot, to have done. And with a such a prominent family."
Well, it seemed everyone was a detective once the crime had already been revealed. John hastened to finish his wine. The evening had been bad enough, and Cartwright was setting his teeth on edge.
"Dull," Sherlock had said, when the Monroe case had played on the news. He had texted Lestrade with his suspicions against the Monroe's housekeeper, and the entire debacle had been brought to a head in under twenty-four hours. It was a bit dull, John had conceded. Tragic, yes, and reprehensible, but Sherlock had seen through it in a single news article; he hadn't even left the chair. And in doing so, he had saved lives, not that he appreciated that bit. That's what John was for, he surmised, to recognize its moral value. Like Jiminy Cricket. For Christ's sake. John finished the rest of his wine before he could make anymore disparaging observations about himself. Dr. Harrington was posing the question of where the housekeeper could have even procured anthrax, but anyone could get anything; anthrax, ether, arsenic; if they had a mind to, as John since joining Sherlock had been made increasingly aware.
John rose. "Gentlemen," he said, and nodded, determined to escape by tomorrow's first train to London. He would rather play satellite to something truly magnificent than lose himself amidst this banality. The two men watched him go, eyes dulled by drink and what John imagined to be despair. Buoyed by this call to action, John left the conference a happier man than the one who had arrived. All things considered, that didn't say much, but it was something.
This feeling lasted until about noon the next day, when, fifty yards up the street, John heard the caterwauling of Sherlock on his violin. He was actually quite an accomplished violinist, but he drifted in and out of sinuous melodies, interspersed them with the most horrible sounds, as though the catgut had been strung and tuned with the animals still attached to their viscera. His hand on the handle of 221, John closed his eyes, either to steel himself or to enact a retreat, he hadn't yet decided. Another dissonant howl arose from the first storey, and John plunged in, tromping heavily up the steps.
The violin ceased immediately, and when John entered the flat, it was nowhere to be seen. The fact of the matter was it could have been anywhere, because the flat was in an absolute state. It reeked of stale cigarettes. Newspapers, documents, bits of coloured string were strewn about everywhere, covering every surface from floor to table, table to wall. Sherlock bounded over a stack of files, hands poised in the air, head tilted conspiratorially.
"John," he said. "Come." He grabbed John's elbow and steered him into the sitting room, to the large map of Greater London he had erected above the mantle. It was dotted with thumb tacks. "Look."
John had nearly had time to hang his jacket, but he instead had to drape it over one arm. He looked. The tacks were yellow, closer to Central London, and red as they radiated out into the rural areas. There was one green tack at on Coppice Row, out in Theydon Bois. That one must be him. John noted the highlighted route connecting it to his yellow tack in North Finchley.
"Found a few more, then," John said. There were several more red tacks than could have been placed on Friday, though not quite as many to match the yellows. "Wasn't on the news."
"Of course it wasn't on the news. I hushed it up," Sherlock said, somewhat breathlessly. His eyes glittered as he surveyed his work. "If the killer realizes we're onto him, he'll go to ground."
John considered this. "That would be good, though. Wouldn't it?"
"No, it wouldn't be good John, obviously!"
"I just meant he wouldn't kill any-"
"I know what you meant." Sherlock turned away abruptly and paced a carefully erratic route through the papers on the floor. He was thrumming with nervous energy, and he sawed one thumbnail into the pad of his forefinger. "We don't have enough evidence."
"So," John said dubiously, an edge creeping into his tone, "he has to kill someone else before you can catch him?"
Sherlock didn't answer, but spun around and returned to the map. He gestured to the several pairs of red tacks. "In these areas there is or has been a derelict structure suitable for his method of strangling victims. Each is within a forty minute drive from the point of abduction. The original bodies were found here - " he pointed to the southernmost tacks - "and you were up here. I was able to deduce these other two areas as likely locations for him to dispose of the bodies." John glanced closer at the map. There was another tack, a blue one, north of Theydon Bois.
"It hasn't turned up anything yet, but I'm convinced it's only a matter of time." Sherlock then rested his finger on John's green tack. There was a red one there, within an inch of his. "The remnants of the structure you described were discovered, but it collapsed years ago. We've discovered the body of what we presume to be his first victim, but of course you were the last he would have brought there. You weren't too far from the road, really. Pity. You could have gotten to the police much sooner. And I was correct in surmising the first murder to have been considerably more brutal."
"Right. Good," John said. He decided to straighten up the flat a bit.
"Sevoflurane wouldn't have produced such a notable odor as other ether anesthetics. Rapid onset, though it would have worn off in five minutes. That might account for the blow you sustained to the back of the head."
"Have you taken up smoking?" John asked. A small saucer on the table protruded cigarettes from every inch of its surface, taking on the appearance of a tar-stained sea urchin.
"Mrs. Hudson exercised her executive privilege as landlady, and forced me to quit. If he found it necessary to concuss his second victim, it's probable he was unfamiliar with the short term effects of inhalational anesthetics. Led astray, no doubt, by the negligent inaccuracies of the media. Are you sure you don't remember how that happened?"
"I'm sure," John said shortly. He cleared the cigarette creature into the trash.
"No," Sherlock mused. "You wouldn't if you were just coming out of it. Facts!" he bellowed, and grabbed his hair. "I need facts, John!"
The kitchen seemed the most innocuous place to begin cleaning. There were no ongoing chemical experiments, though there were what looked to be several culinary disasters. As long as John kept his hands in motion he could ignore the tremor that had been steadily returning since Friday. Luckily, there was a mountain of dishes to be done, and if he made enough noise washing them, he couldn't hear Sherlock's yammering at all. Viewed in this light, it was quite fortunate that his flatmate had no domestic inclinations whatsoever.
"- in this area," Sherlock was saying. John turned the tap on full. It was more water than he needed strictly to clean the dishes, but on the other hand he had thus far maintained the resolution he had made on the train. He was calm. He was not yet throttling Sherlock. It was his problem, John reminded himself. Sherlock was just being his psychopath self.
"John," Sherlock called, had been calling for some time.
That wasn't right. John's stomach soured. Sherlock wasn't a psychopath, and in fact John was always rather defensive when Lestrade's staff insisted he was. John was ashamed to have entertained the thought, even in spite. It wasn't fair to turn on him just because he was inconsiderate, insensitive, arrogant, slovenly -
"John!" Sherlock said. He was standing right next to him. "Are you listening?"
"Nope."
For a moment, this had the unusual effect of silencing the incorrigible detective. Then he said sullenly, "It does concern you, after all. One would think you'd show a little more interest."
John shut off the water and dried his hands on a towel. "A little more interest." He looked at Sherlock squarely, weighing his words. "All of those bodies that you have so cleverly uncovered - you are aware that any one of them could have been me, right?"
Sherlock met John's glare, expression blank as alabaster. John threaded the towel through a cabinet handle to dry. "It would be my mangled skeleton you'd be pouring over in the lab, too thrilled to either eat or sleep, so you'll forgive me if I'm not enamoured with the idea of..of examining all the ways in which this could have happened."
Sherlock wrenched backwards, his countenance blackening. "That's irrelevant, John -"
"It's not irrelevant!"
"No, it is, because it didn't happen. Possibilities can exist only in the future. History is comprised soley of facts, and the facts - "
"Oh, for Christ's sake, Sherlock,"
Sherlock's face screwed up in a curious hybrid of disdain, confusion, and not a little disappointment. "How can it be that you are so unflappable until now, that you can suffer yourself to be abducted by smugglers, by Moriarty, be gift wrapped in Semtex -"
"Because I wasn't alone, Sherlock! You - No." John held up his hands in surrender. "This was a mistake." He retreated to the hall and slipped into his jacket. "I'm just going to let you handle this, because I'm not -"
"No!" Sherlock lunged after him, and with one broad, long fingered hand he slammed closed the door John had begun to pull open. He stared at John intensely, the taught silence extending far beyond the normal limit.
"I've upset you," he finally said. "I'm sorry."
Though tempted to fold in confusion, John kept his expression stoney. Sherlock's gaze flickered over his face, searching. "I'm sorry," he said again, quietly. John wavered. This wasn't the game Sherlock played with strangers, the false normality he extended when he wanted something from them. His eyes were rimmed thick with exhaustion. With a weary sigh, John gave in. His eye caught on Sherlock's wrist, exposed where he had his hand clapped to the door. John snatched it and pushed back the sleeve.
"How many of these have you got on?" he demanded. Sherlock's entire forearm was plastered in nicotene patches. John began tearing them off. "You'll kill yourself!"
Sherlock watched him, mildly. "Those are empty," he said, wrist limp in John's grip. "In fact, I think they may have been recharging." He tried to pull away when John reached the new patches, but John had them off, wadded up, and discarded in a moment. Sherlock rubbed his arm.
"I am going out," John said. "We need food. You need to eat, so don't give me a hard time, please."
Sherlock stood back and allowed him to pass. His shirtsleeve still up, he looked as though he'd been attacked by an octopus.
John picked up some soup and a couple of sandwiches at the corner deli. He might be able to coax Sherlock into eating the soup, but the sandwiches were a long shot. As he returned he saw Sherlock standing outside, looking up the street for a cab. He was nearly dancing with anticipation and he whirled about when John called his name.
"John!" he cried, and faltered, the eagerness in his thin face at war with an unusual hesitancy. He rocked as if to step forward, but remained where he was. "You'll come, won't you? I've just spoken with Lestrade."
John smiled wryly. "Of course."
Immediately the hesitancy was gone, replaced with the frenetic genius that defined Sherlock Holmes. "Good." He said, and returned a breathless almost smile. Turning away he said, almost too softly for John to hear, "I am lost without my Boswell."
Chapter Four