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"Wait, who are you?" Sally asked exhaustedly, for what must have been the hundredth time today. People seemed determined to make her life a living hell, as if standing guard at the security yellow tape wasn't enough of a bother. Just because she was new didn't mean she was less.
"Sergeant Lestrade." He flashed her a badge.
She raised an eyebrow. This was most certainly not Sergeant Lestrade.
"Seriously, I don't have time for hooligans –" and he certainly looked like one – long, messy curls of black hair clinging to his forehead and cheeks (god, how high were those cheekbones? They could bring down choppers) beneath a brown deerstalker, blown-wide pupils commonly seen in drug addicts, an air of madness about him, "so I suggest you stop loitering before I take you in for interfering a police investigation." She really, really wished she had one of those time machines like in that show, Doctor Who, so she could speed things up and be able to find her own bed and sleep for eternity.
The man, boy really, frowned at her and pursed his lips. He must have been, what, nineteen? Twenty? A teenage junkie was the least of her concerns at the moment. Waving him off was a good deed, as far as she was concerned.
"Your boyfriend thinks you're lacking in bed, he's going to break up with you this coming Friday," the boy blurted out, as if he couldn't stop himself. Probably couldn't, drugs tend to do that to you.
Then what he'd said sunk.
"What?"
Shocked – that's how Sally felt. Here comes this boy, with the audacity to make reference to her personal life. She wanted to cuff him, if only for the pleasure of seeing his extremely displeased expression.
The boy snorted. "Obvious, isn't it?" He seemed exceptionally arrogant, and immediately Sally hated his guts. So, yeah, she already hated his guts the moment he interrupted her Bubbles game on her mobile, but that applied to nearly everyone who had tried to sneak into the crime scene (which was a lot of people, naturally).
Sally was this close to calling security on this guy and having him arrested for verbally assaulting an officer. Wouldn't it be nice…
But she was lonely, and standing at the tape was boring. Who would blame her if she started a conversation with this bloke?
"What's with the hat?" she settled on asking.
The boy grimaced, ignoring her for a few seconds before sighing as if the universe had somehow wronged him greatly. "Unfortunate necessity. I can't be recognized."
Sally didn't get what he meant, but she had to admit that now that he wasn't mocking her, she was starting not to care so much that her trousers' leg was soaked from stepping into a puddle of muddy water earlier. And, yeah, that was a nice change.
"Well, I wouldn't worry about that, Sergeant," she teased playfully, flashing him a smile.
His eyes turned sharp, sharper, and sharpest, narrowing in a way that made her feel as if she was being taken apart by a pair of tweezers. It was an unwelcome sudden change in his behavior, but not altogether unexpected – he was a druggie, after all. Mood swings were part of the package.
"I find you particularly unattractive both in personality and appearance, it's tedious that –"
"Bloody what-?" she exclaimed, but he kept going.
"– you'd think you could ever hold a romantic relationship with me. Outlandish, absurd. Preposterous." He stopped for a fraction of a second, and Sally wondered if he was searching for more synonyms to haul at her.
Ludicrous, her mind provided unhelpfully.
"I am not. Bloody. Interested," he bit out between gritted teeth, nearly growling the words.
Sally blanched. "Me neither, freak," she spat, embarrassed that she had, in fact, considered how attractive she found him on a scale of 1-10, and gave him a 9.
His eyes darted around, as if he didn't know what to do next. "I need to enter that house," he said, looking above her head at the dilapidated structure containing the body, which the forensic team was working on currently.
"Well, you're not getting in," she replied firmly. She was the officer here, she was the law. The power was in her hands, not his, she tried to remind herself.
"Donovan, Klays' calling for you. I think he wants you to-" Lestrade, the real Sergeant Lestrade, approached them at the tape, stopping short when he caught sight of the unfairly high figure standing in front of Sally. "Sherlock?" he asked in astonishment.
"Lestrade," said the boy, straightening impossibly higher and, with a short glare in Sally's direction, marching right past the tape, lifting it above his head as he did, to Lestrade, who was frozen in place, stunned. "I've come to save you from any further idiocy concerning this case."
"What's with the hat?" Lestrade repeated Sally's earlier inquiry and she had to bite back a smirk.
"Forget the hat!" the boy, Sherlock, snapped, his arms rising and flaying.
"But it's –"
"Give me two minutes, I'd get you the killer," Sherlock cut him off.
"No," Lestrade answered simply. Sally really liked Lestrade at the moment.
Sherlock looked taken aback, probably not used to people denying him what he wanted. "You're not even close to finding her, don't pretend you can solve this faster than me."
"You're high. I told you that you can't consult me on cases when you're high. Her?"
Sherlock rolled his eyes with the practiced motion of someone who had been through this conversation many times before.
"It's obvious. There's a purse in the bin behind the house, the one your team has taken great care not to inspect. It's a woman's – peach coloured, obvious. High quality, new, why throw it away? There were no defects in the manufacture. The recently-fired gun inside was a give-away. Still warm, gun-powder at the edge of the barrel. There's not any prints, there wouldn't be. Don't bother to look for them. Otherwise, why leave the gun? No, this woman's smart. So, no prints. Obviously. The bins are emptied on Wednesdays, today's Tuesday. Anyone outside of this neighborhood wouldn't know this instinctively, and the bin she chose, that's just convenience. Due to its position one would assume that it's usually the bin emptied last, but I've been here last Wednesday. It's the bin that gets emptied first. She knew that. Only a neighbor, who shares those bins, would know that. She's in this house –"
Sherlock pointed at the identical house to the immediate right of the one they were swarming.
"Eating a late dinner with her romantic partner, though it's recent. They've not been together for long. He shares facial features with the husband you're questioning there –"
This time his finger was jabbed in the direction of a traumatized husband currently being interviewed.
"As did all of her previous boyfriends. She's got pictures of them facing the window so I was able to see. That's not stalking, that's observing. She's obsessed with the husband. Eliminating an obstacle on the way to him was rational to her." He finally stopped, taking a huge breathe that puffed out his chest and for a moment Sally was afraid he'd keep going, but Lestrade stopped him.
"Sherlock, where's the purse? Do you have it? Of course you have it. Give it," Lestrade ordered.
Sally stared wide-eyed as Sherlock reached into his coat and took out a small, pink purse, passing it to Lestrade, disgruntled.
Lestrade looked at it for a moment, before sighing and opening it wide to look inside.
"Well, there's a gun," he said.
Sherlock let out an impatient sound, his expression radiating a very cocky, very exasperated 'I told you so'.
Lestrade looked at Sherlock, who stared back with force behind his gaze. "Well," Lestrade finally said. "You consulted. Off you go."
As Sherlock turned to leave, looking rather pleased with himself, Sally turned to her fellow Sergeant angrily.
"You just let him go? He had a gun! He has your badge! Shouldn't we arrest him?" she fired questions one by one, overwhelmed and thoroughly baffled.
Lestrade shook his head, his eyes once again examining the purse in his hands. "Nah, Sherlock might be a bit mad –"
"A bit-?"
"– but he's no murderer. And he's real clever –"
"Too clever," she interrupted again, earning a silencing glare from the man.
"He's a great man. Don't you have somewhere to be…?"
Sally rolled her eyes. Klays could go jump of a cliff for all she cared. Actually, she would love it if he did. It would save her the trouble of trying to explain to him why she took nearly five minutes to call him on the radio transmitter.
She took out the ancient device, grumbling to herself about obnoxious men and stupid hats.