Coda
part sevenJohn was far from idle while the officers were out playing in the woods. Pint of ale sweating against a napkin, laptop buzzing on the table beside it, he found himself easily engrossed in the reports outlining the physical state of the late Charles McCarthy. He took a corner table in the bar so as not to bother the other patrons with close up photos of their neighbor's corpse. It honestly wasn't bad; a single blow to the right temporal lobe, a clear strike from a head-on attacker with a blunt object heavy enough to crack his skull. There was a strange interlocking indentation against his cheek just below the large impact bruise but all in all, for a dead man, Mr. McCarthy looked pretty good. With as many crime scenes and corpses as John had been privileged to see, this one rated an easy two on the squick scale. But it was still the face of someone's friend and he liked to be conscious of that much even if as evidence he was hardly concerned with secrecy. Small town, quaint villages like these, everyone knew everyone and he suspected not a soul was ignorant of so much as a single clue associated with the murder. He wasn't sure if ultimately that made their job easier or simply convoluted. Whatever gossip and opinion could be said about the circumstances around the murder, John was at least somewhat pleased to be given the one body of evidence that was indisputable. Knowing Sherlock's methods, he was more than adequately equipped to make several deductive assumptions of his own.
Assumption One - The murder weapon was something brought to the scene of the crime.
John could find no mention of trace flora or fauna reported when the wound was inspected by the coroner. A rock, a stick, any weapon found in the wild would have left dirt or moss or some sort of natural deposit imbedded in the body. The killer brought his weapon into the woods with him, in that case, and disposed of it after--likely in Boscombe pool or in the bush. John couldn't help but think back to his initial question to Sherlock: where was James McCarthy's luggage? He made sure to highlight that question to bring up again. He felt sure the missing presence of one was linked to the other.
Assumption Two - The victim knew his killer.
There was no bruising to Charles McCarthy's hands or arms to denote a physical struggle and to get close enough to strike him head on, there would likely need to have been some kind of relationship--otherwise he'd have turned to escape, the blow landing on the back of his head and not the front. By all accounts, he knew his killer and the strike had come as a surprise. There was a slight possibility that the murder weapon had been thrown at him from a distance but the lack of any such object found at the scene made such a scenario unlikely. Evidence from the field would likely support one conclusion over the other.
Assumption Three - The murderer was left handed.
This deduction was one of John's own and one of which he felt particularly proud. Standing face to face, a right handed man would swing and strike his opponent on the left--Charles McCarthy's wound was on the right. While it was possible for a right handed man to swing and hit someone on that same side, it was far less likely outside an opportunistic swipe in a brawl.
James Moriarty was left handed. John itched to know if James McCarthy was too.
While it seemed Sherlock felt the true mystery was how the almost obviously guilty man could possibly be innocent, John was much more concerned with their other purpose in Ross. Being Moriarty was a crime far more heinous than any single murder as far as John was concerned but was unfortunately not one recognized by the justice system. Even though Moriarty was suspected of being the leader of his own crime syndicate, there was no crime to connect him to that could put him in prison. Every illegal thing they had proof of--a list which was embarrassingly small--could be attributed to the dead man on the roof. They needed Charles McCarthy's murder to send the man to prison for the lives and money that had been lost within his professional capacity. John hated red tape and the thin line of legal prosecution. Even if he couldn't prove it yet, even as he failed to devise some way of knowing, John could not help but think of James McCarthy as the man he had tried to take down with him at the pool--as his Moriarty. The very least of what that man deserved was a prison sentence. He'd rather him share the fate of Prometheus.
He flexed his hand under the table before squeezing it around the cool glass of his pint, sipping his ale to wash the bad taste from his mouth that always accompanied thoughts of him. He recommenced scrolling down the medical report for any last details, puzzling over the imprints on the man's cheek when all else seemed cut and dry. If Billie thought leaving him behind with a coroner's report was akin to shifting him out of the case, she was going to be very disappointed when she came back. He was going to make sure of that.
A second glass of ale set itself on the table, painted nails flashing red in the blur past his reading vision. "Is this seat taken?" the woman asked.
John looked up, forgetting for a moment that he was still sitting in a public place. The tin ale signs against the unfinished oak walls with the black knots brought him back, though. The young woman standing on the other side of the small table wore tight jeans and a ruffled, sleeveless blouse in lavender with a V-neck cut low enough to showcase the shadow of her cleavage and a long gold chain around her neck to make sure you knew where to look. John glanced around quickly to spy several empty tables all around him. He cleared his throat. "Ah, not taken. No. Sort of busy at the moment though."
The woman smiled demurely, taking her seat across from him. "You're with detective Holmes, aren't you? Doctor Watson?" she asked. "They told me you were investigating Mr. McCarthy's murder. I'm Patience Turner."
Billie was going to love this. John smiled and cleared his throat again to wipe it from his face. This was hardly the time or place for self congratulations. He closed the lid to his laptop. "You're the one who found the body," he said, the name uncommon enough to have settled nicely in his mental log of the case notes.
"Yes."
"And the one who witnessed the argument."
Patience nodded, sipping her ale as her eyes scanned the room. "I did, yes. I told the police everything but I thought... well, if Sherlock Holmes is involved, things must be more ...complicate." She took a deep breath, trembling on the exhale. "He's not going to get Jim released, is he?"
There was fear in her face. John licked his lips, saddling up closer to the table as he leaned across towards her. "Sherlock's only job is making sure the right person goes to jail for this. Could be Jim; could be someone else," he admitted, though she was far from alone in her desire for it to be him. "Are you worried something will happen if Jim is released?" It was a leading question but fortunately he wasn't a barrister.
Her flinch said more than enough.
With a long drink and a deep exhale, Patience settled in with her elbows on the table, clasped hands pillowing her chin. "There's probably not a single person in this village that doesn't remember Jim. Not fondly either. We used to play together when we were kids, though. Our properties were close enough that we ran into each other all the time. Practically our own little gang: the McCarthys, the Turners and the Morans."
John felt his jaw drop with the auditory equivalent of tunnel vision. "Wait, Moran? As in-"
"Sebastian?" Patience smiled. "What can I say? I've been following the news from London pretty closely these past few months. That's how I recognized you, Dr. Watson." Her smile faltered slightly. "He was a good kid. It was their fault he got mixed up in that sort of thing. James and Jim were... well, they were evil. You'd find dead things in the woods but they wouldn't just be dead they'd be... and you knew it was them. One of them, at least. James wasn't so bad sometimes but Jim, he was... he scared me. I'd tell the other boys--Seb and Patrick--but they just thought it was fun. Boys will be boys, yeah? Not Jim. Sebastian went off with James and Patrick to join the army after school, I got married and Jim disappeared but once in a while you'd see him in the wood and you could see in his smile that he was nothing short of the devil himself."
John glanced around the room, feeling watched and anxious even as his mind called to remind him that this was only news to him. Small village, tight community; everyone knew the score but him. "So you grew up with James McCarthy--you knew Jim Moriarty?"
Patience nodded, another long drink of her draft calming her obvious nerves. "I saw his face once on the news. I'd heard the name before but it didn't mean anything. I know that face, though. And I remember thinking 'I knew it. I knew he'd grow up to be a monster'. I thought he was supposed to be dead but then... there he was. In the woods."
"And you didn't hear what they were arguing about?"
Patience frowned. "If you were the father of a madman, what wouldn't you yell at your son for?" She spared a glace around the room, picking at the gold chain around her neck. "He was furious is all I remember. And Jim wasn't exactly taking it. He'd be all smiles one minute and then shouting right back at him in the next. I don't think they ever got along but this was.. it was different."
"So you watched them for a while, did you?" John asked.
"Long enough to prove to myself that I wasn't crazy. Soon as I saw it really was him, I ran. I was so flustered that I ended up running in the wrong direction though and I had to pass by again on my way back home. That was when I found them--only this time one of them was dead. I got on my cell and... well, here we are."
"Here we are." John repeated, licking his lips as he considered. "I'm guessing Jim knows you're the witness. If he gets out, if somehow it's proven he didn't do this--"
"--he'll kill me," she finished. "I know he will. He'll kill me and just up and vanish all over again and this time there won't be anything left here to bring him out of hiding."
John nodded, lips pursed. He doubted it would be any consolation to tell her this might not be the same Jim Moriarty as was spoken of in the news. The Jim she was afraid of was the man from her childhood. "Look... there's nothing I can do but present the facts but right now, I have to agree with the local police officers. I think he did it. But there's something I need to know and I think you're exactly the person I need to speak to about it. James McCarthy--the younger brother?--he was left-handed, yes?"
"Oh... now that you mention it, I think he might have been. I can remember playing cricket in the summer. He always stood left of the pitch."
A right handed person wasn't likely to shoot himself in the head with his left hand but still John had secretly hoped. "What about his older brother? Was Jim left handed?"
Patience shrugged. "Jim was whatever he wanted to be. I don't really know that I remember him favoring one hand over the other. Why, is it important?"
"Could be. I can find out through other means, though. Don't worry about it."
"Alright."
The conversation dwindled, silence resting in the limited space between them. John finished his drink and mimed for a pen. "Let me give you my number in case you can think of anything else."
Patience nodded, pulling her purse off the back of the chair by its long handles. She unzipped the front pocket and pulled out a blue pen, watching as John scribbled his number out on a napkin.
"Any time of day, alright? We don't normally get much sleep when we're on a case so I mean it, any time."
"Got it." She slipped the napkin in the front pocket with the pen and slid off the tall seat, leaving her own half-finished glass on the table. "I'm sure we'll be in touch, Dr. Watson," she said and waved with a wiggle of her fingers as she walked out of the Red Lion Inn.
John sat back in his seat, running his own fingers over his chin, as he ran their conversation through his head to try not to forget a single word.
It was late by the time Sherlock and Billie returned, mud caked onto their shoes and shoulders slightly wet from a sudden rain. Dry, fed on pub snacks, and reclining in comfort in his pensioner's suite, John let his smile stretch unencumbered across his slightly smug face.
"Have fun did we, then?"
Billie's face said 'piss off' whereas Sherlock had hardly paused as he strode into the room in a case-filled mania. He tossed his jacket on the bed and paced with fingers steepled at his chin while he moved in the limited space. He said nothing though his face was tight with concentration.
"He been like that long?" John asked.
Billie sighed, leaning in their open doorway. "Since we walked back from the crime scene. The whole time we were there he was nonstop but then he just clammed up and hasn't said a word since."
John smirked, shrugging his shoulders. "Yeah, he does that." Maybe it was the fact that she looked absolutely dreadful or that the rumble of her stomach carried right across the room. Maybe it was that he had gotten to speak to the only witness and had been building a pretty good case during the time she'd been sinking her high heels into the mud. Whatever the reason, John felt he owed the women some kindness. "Probably won't join us in the land of the living for a few minutes more if you want to get changed or grab a bite," he said. "I promise we won't solve it while you're out of the room."
Billie blinked in surprised regard. "Uh... that'd be great. Stall him long enough that maybe I can get a shower in there?"
"The way he is right now? Probably won't even need to be stalled. Do what you need to do; we'll wait here."
Her face warmed as she stood straight, rubbing at her forearm before pulling her purse around and fishing inside. "Well, while you wait, you might want to watch this." She held out her tablet, its leather case closed over the sensitive screen. "He had me record the investigation. Good thing too since it rained on us and the footprints probably were damaged afterwards. Probably more of a happy happenstance, though. I think what he really meant was to have a way to have you there."
John licked his lips as he took it, trying not to smile the wide, too pleased grin begging at the corners of his mouth. "I'll compare it to my notes from the body. Thanks."
Billie nodded, smiling as she backed out of the room. "I won't be more than half an hour."
"We'll be waiting," he promised. Whether he meant it before or not, he was certain he meant it now.
The assistant turned and headed to her own room, yellow flower charm dancing at the back of her key. John pulled the door shut behind her, eyes lost on the tablet to the beat of Sherlock's steps across the floor.