S3E1 - The Silver Blaze Revival - Part Eight: The Frame Job, A Ship in a Bottle
Title: The Silver Blaze Revival
Subtitle: The Frame Job, A Ship in a Bottle
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,053
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, violence
Sherlock paced the room irritably, muttering on about how "he needed help" and "he's clever, but not that clever."
"Sherlock," John interrupted. "Could you stop that? Please?"
Sherlock continued, lowering his voice.
John finally stood directly in Sherlock's path, causing a ridiculous collision of bodies and limbs. As they fell to the floor, they both tried to catch themselves, but instead they wound up struggling against each other, flailing like schoolboys in a tussle.
"What the hell are you doing?" John barked.
"Me? What the hell are you doing?"
They broke apart, John plopping onto his chair and Sherlock straightening his clothes out.
"What are you on about now?" John demanded.
"Clyde Burkhart needed to have an accomplice or a partner, but everything about him says he can't sustain a relationship," he mused.
"People said the same thing about you," John pointed out. "Yet here we are."
"Clyde Burkhart and I are hardly the same," Sherlock said.
"You're right. Burkhart hides from people. You repel them."
"Exactly," Sherlock said. "So who John? Who is the third wheel?"
John laughed. "You know when people ask, 'How did you get the ship in the bottle?' Because the neck of the bottle is too small to fit the ship through, obviously. But the answer is really simple. 'The ship wasn't put in the bottle. It was built inside, that's how.'"
"Meticulous," Sherlock said, perking up.
"I imagine it would be," John said.
An incoming text blinked on John's phone. "Do you have a minute, Dr. Watson? MH."
"Right, I'm going out," John announced. Whatever Mycroft had to say, at the very least it would prevent John from stabbing Sherlock with a pen.
Sherlock didn't notice when John left. His brain folded over the idea of a ship in a bottle. It was brilliant. Whatever the reason, John's intellect held these nuggets of wisdom wrapped inside of normalcy, and he dolled them out at the oddest little moments.
This entire time, Sherlock had considered that the plot was to frame Mrs. Fulmer and that the third wheel thwarted it. But what if the real plot was to lure Clyde Burkhart into committing murder and then send him away for his crimes? Then Clyde would be the third wheel, and Sherlock needed to find the second wheel, the mastermind of the murder.
Unfortunately, whenever he thought of criminal masterminds, he always came back to Moriarty. Sherlock hesitated. The other cases Moriarty worked were simpler and more elegant. Killing a boy by poisoning his lotion, making it look like an accident in a swimming pool. That was Moriarty's style.
What was he thinking? Of course, an elaborate frame job would come under Moriarty's belt! So, if he was the man behind this scheme, then how would he do it?
Sherlock shot up from the couch, grabbing his scarf and furiously putting it on. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed a large paper bag and folded the top down, then stapled a piece of paper to the front.
On his way out, Mrs. Hudson spotted him. "You're going out as well?" she asked.
"It's just you and John tonight!" Sherlock said by way of goodbye.
He managed to snag a taxi without issue. The ride felt like the longest in all of known history, which just couldn't be right. But he needed to test his theory, and he could only do that in person.
When the cabbie finally pulled over, Sherlock paid him and waved him off. He examined the building the Fulmers lived in. The security was such that not just anyone could walk in, so Sherlock walked in with his bag proffered.
"Hey, where're you going?" a man said as soon as Sherlock entered the front door.
"Delivery," Sherlock said, holding up his bag.
Apparently the long black coat didn't register to desk attendant, who waved him upstairs without a second glance. First assumption confirmed. Anyone could enter anywhere if they chose to do so at the right time. No doubt the residents of this building ordered in so much it that screening each delivery person would be incredibly tedious.
The second assumption needed to be tested. He went up the stairwell, avoiding the elevator, to the third floor where the Fulmers lived. With the bag out in front of him, none of the people in the hallway bothered to really look at him. He made it to the end of the hall and back. Second assumption confirmed. To attain invisibility, one simply must bear food before face.
The Fulmers lived nearest the far stairwell, so Sherlock turned into it. There wasn't a nook or cranny in sight, so he went down the stairs until he reached ground level. It was technically beneath the first floor, and it opened directly into an alley. Assumption number three confirmed: an easy escape route existed.
A killer clever enough to plant evident as efficiently as Clyde Burkhart was also clever enough to wash away or to remake evidence into something else. Normally Sherlock read everything in people's faces, their apparel, their mannerisms, and even their scents. Activity always left indelible marks upon the people who participated in it, like writing on the skin in ink. Clyde Burkhart, on the other hand, wrote on himself with pencil. It rubbed away with time.
If Sherlock couldn't read the man, then he'd read his plan. That was nearly as good. So if he was Clyde Burkhart, then he'd've come down to this place with his bag that looked like food delivery, but was actually filled with bloody clothes, a suppressor, and a gun. He went down this alleyway and planted Rachel Fulmer's gloves in the trash, where they would be uncovered in a matter of hours by the police.
That meant, though, that he couldn't put the real evidence nearby. No drains, no loose bricks, nothing. The alleyway was free of hiding spots. Sherlock imagined the routes around the building, tiny rivers of passage for anyone coming and going. Unlike inside the building, however, the roads were a risk. Passersby, homeless people, and patrolmen could take notice of your features, and with a face like Clyde's, it wasn't easy to hide. He'd need to pick a nearby place.
Of course! How could he have missed it before! Sometimes he worried the rush of new cases sucked up his intellect; after all, this was obvious enough that surely even John noticed it.
Sherlock ducked into every nearby restaurant, which included an Italian place, a pub, a place with odd French cuisine, and a Chinese place called the Dragon's Bowl.
"We're taking surveys, you understand?" he said to the managers. "Can I have the names of all the plumbers and electricians that you use?" Oddly, he met no resistance in his inquiries. Clyde Burkhart appeared on only one list: Daggers, the pub, which was literally around the corner from the alleyway.
Sherlock went back to the alley and followed Burkhart's movements. The pub's side door was only a few steps from his position. Walk down an unmanned stairwell with some packaged food, step into an alleyway, and then take the turn into a crowded pub.
John was right about the ship in the bottle. Sherlock had assumed the mastermind was needed to execute the crime, but the truth was, the crime was ready to happen, all it needed was a homicidal maniac to see that he could get away with it.
Sherlock ducked into the pub, his bag still in hand, to mark out his options.
"We don't allow outside food here," the bartender barked.
'Apparently there was a catch to this,' Sherlock thought.
"Sorry," he said casually as he stepped back outside.
That didn't mean that Burkhart didn't use this place. All and all, this case was thoroughly disappointing. The killer came here, used his job for access to the basement water heater or odd place to stash the evidence, then proceeded to plant the gun. The only questions of interest were how did the killer know about the row? And, of course, who returned the killer's gun?
The two must be connected. Sherlock had already looked for surveillance in the flat and came up empty, but a plumber would've had the means to plant a camera or wire with the gun. That was obvious. But causing the fight himself would be too dangerous, draw too much attention to himself.
He was just spinning his wheels. There was an easier way to find the third party; after all, Clyde Burkhart wasn't dead.
Sherlock had to wait till the next morning to meet with Burkhart, and the officer on duty, Charles Riley, only allowed Sherlock entry because of some devastatingly shameless flirting on his part. John might consider him oblivious to such things, but pupil dilation and minute fluctuations in skin color revealed more than enough. Admittedly, he took a few leaves from John's book, layering observations (such as "you workout at quite a lot") with pleasantries that were essentially meaningless (such as "it makes you seem very tone"). Still, it was effective, and Sherlock managed to gain a few minutes with Burkhart alone without too many questions.
"You're the man who guessed my safe's combination," Clyde said when he sat down.
"I didn't guess, I saw."
His entire demeanor was calm, as if prison was a temporary problem that would go away. Clyde sat back and relaxed. He didn't care about a single thing; nothing held him down. Some people would conclude that he lacked a moral conscious, but Sherlock saw something very different: Plan B.
"I found it, you know," Sherlock said.
"Found what?"
"Where you stored your bloody clothing and such while you planted the evidence against Rachel Fulmer."
"Is that so? You came here to celebrate?"
"No, I came here to ask you what went wrong."
"Wrong?"
"We were both there," Sherlock said in barely a whisper. "I saw your surprise. Someone put that gun back in your safe after you left it elsewhere."
Clyde bit hard into his lip, and his pupils became tiny pinpricks. "Is that so?"
"You tell me," Sherlock countered. "I imagine you would want revenge of sorts. I would, certainly, if a partner double-crossed me."
"Partner?" Clyde repeated the word as if it were foreign. "This is a joke, isn't it?" His relaxed exterior became rigid and harsh. "Guards! I want to go back to my cell!"
Sherlock met Clyde's eyes as he stood up, defiant and angry. This was Moriarty, somehow. This was Moriarty waving a truth in his face and then wiping it up before he could get to it.
"Sherlock?" John said when he answered his mobile. "Are you there?"
"Yes, John, it's me," Sherlock replied. "You've been calling incessantly."
"You texted me over an hour ago to come to some ridiculous antique fair!" John said. "Where the hell are you?"
"Oh, right, the Burnsider case," Sherlock said idly. "I'm still at the prison."
"What?"
"Don't fret, I'll be there soon. While you're waiting, you should take note of all items marked with a purple tag."
"Sherlock, what - "
"These smuggling operations are flawless, John, and it all comes down to those purple tags!"
Sherlock waved down a taxi and continued to explain to John, as quickly as possible, how Aaron Burnsider used his fraternal - and nearly identical - twin Erin Burnsider to obfuscate the illicit trafficking business they ran under the title "Antiques." Unlike a gang with operatives, essentially loose ends that could split and spill the truth at any minute, this brother-sister business kept everyone that worked for them in the dark. The police never caught them because they ran their operation like a magic trick: while everyone was looking in one direction, the product changed hands. Of course, they made a mistake with the purple tags; it was all so obvious, Sherlock didn't understand how the last bust didn't take these people out.
He became so caught up with recovering the Burnsider artifacts that Burkhart being double-crossed by Moriarty became a distant fragment of a thought. Clever smugglers that were still at large took precedence over a killer who was already behind bars. For now. He made a quick note on a napkin from the Dragon's Bowl for memory's sake and tucked it back into a pocket.
<<< Previous Part:
Part Seven: Revelations
Next Part: >>>
Part Nine: Unwilling Allies
The Silver Blaze Revival - Series 3, Episode 1 - Primary Post
Subtitle: The Frame Job, A Ship in a Bottle
Author: dracox-serdriel
Word Count: 2,053
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: language, violence
Sherlock paced the room irritably, muttering on about how "he needed help" and "he's clever, but not that clever."
"Sherlock," John interrupted. "Could you stop that? Please?"
Sherlock continued, lowering his voice.
John finally stood directly in Sherlock's path, causing a ridiculous collision of bodies and limbs. As they fell to the floor, they both tried to catch themselves, but instead they wound up struggling against each other, flailing like schoolboys in a tussle.
"What the hell are you doing?" John barked.
"Me? What the hell are you doing?"
They broke apart, John plopping onto his chair and Sherlock straightening his clothes out.
"What are you on about now?" John demanded.
"Clyde Burkhart needed to have an accomplice or a partner, but everything about him says he can't sustain a relationship," he mused.
"People said the same thing about you," John pointed out. "Yet here we are."
"Clyde Burkhart and I are hardly the same," Sherlock said.
"You're right. Burkhart hides from people. You repel them."
"Exactly," Sherlock said. "So who John? Who is the third wheel?"
John laughed. "You know when people ask, 'How did you get the ship in the bottle?' Because the neck of the bottle is too small to fit the ship through, obviously. But the answer is really simple. 'The ship wasn't put in the bottle. It was built inside, that's how.'"
"Meticulous," Sherlock said, perking up.
"I imagine it would be," John said.
An incoming text blinked on John's phone. "Do you have a minute, Dr. Watson? MH."
"Right, I'm going out," John announced. Whatever Mycroft had to say, at the very least it would prevent John from stabbing Sherlock with a pen.
Sherlock didn't notice when John left. His brain folded over the idea of a ship in a bottle. It was brilliant. Whatever the reason, John's intellect held these nuggets of wisdom wrapped inside of normalcy, and he dolled them out at the oddest little moments.
This entire time, Sherlock had considered that the plot was to frame Mrs. Fulmer and that the third wheel thwarted it. But what if the real plot was to lure Clyde Burkhart into committing murder and then send him away for his crimes? Then Clyde would be the third wheel, and Sherlock needed to find the second wheel, the mastermind of the murder.
Unfortunately, whenever he thought of criminal masterminds, he always came back to Moriarty. Sherlock hesitated. The other cases Moriarty worked were simpler and more elegant. Killing a boy by poisoning his lotion, making it look like an accident in a swimming pool. That was Moriarty's style.
What was he thinking? Of course, an elaborate frame job would come under Moriarty's belt! So, if he was the man behind this scheme, then how would he do it?
Sherlock shot up from the couch, grabbing his scarf and furiously putting it on. Almost as an afterthought, he grabbed a large paper bag and folded the top down, then stapled a piece of paper to the front.
On his way out, Mrs. Hudson spotted him. "You're going out as well?" she asked.
"It's just you and John tonight!" Sherlock said by way of goodbye.
He managed to snag a taxi without issue. The ride felt like the longest in all of known history, which just couldn't be right. But he needed to test his theory, and he could only do that in person.
When the cabbie finally pulled over, Sherlock paid him and waved him off. He examined the building the Fulmers lived in. The security was such that not just anyone could walk in, so Sherlock walked in with his bag proffered.
"Hey, where're you going?" a man said as soon as Sherlock entered the front door.
"Delivery," Sherlock said, holding up his bag.
Apparently the long black coat didn't register to desk attendant, who waved him upstairs without a second glance. First assumption confirmed. Anyone could enter anywhere if they chose to do so at the right time. No doubt the residents of this building ordered in so much it that screening each delivery person would be incredibly tedious.
The second assumption needed to be tested. He went up the stairwell, avoiding the elevator, to the third floor where the Fulmers lived. With the bag out in front of him, none of the people in the hallway bothered to really look at him. He made it to the end of the hall and back. Second assumption confirmed. To attain invisibility, one simply must bear food before face.
The Fulmers lived nearest the far stairwell, so Sherlock turned into it. There wasn't a nook or cranny in sight, so he went down the stairs until he reached ground level. It was technically beneath the first floor, and it opened directly into an alley. Assumption number three confirmed: an easy escape route existed.
A killer clever enough to plant evident as efficiently as Clyde Burkhart was also clever enough to wash away or to remake evidence into something else. Normally Sherlock read everything in people's faces, their apparel, their mannerisms, and even their scents. Activity always left indelible marks upon the people who participated in it, like writing on the skin in ink. Clyde Burkhart, on the other hand, wrote on himself with pencil. It rubbed away with time.
If Sherlock couldn't read the man, then he'd read his plan. That was nearly as good. So if he was Clyde Burkhart, then he'd've come down to this place with his bag that looked like food delivery, but was actually filled with bloody clothes, a suppressor, and a gun. He went down this alleyway and planted Rachel Fulmer's gloves in the trash, where they would be uncovered in a matter of hours by the police.
That meant, though, that he couldn't put the real evidence nearby. No drains, no loose bricks, nothing. The alleyway was free of hiding spots. Sherlock imagined the routes around the building, tiny rivers of passage for anyone coming and going. Unlike inside the building, however, the roads were a risk. Passersby, homeless people, and patrolmen could take notice of your features, and with a face like Clyde's, it wasn't easy to hide. He'd need to pick a nearby place.
Of course! How could he have missed it before! Sometimes he worried the rush of new cases sucked up his intellect; after all, this was obvious enough that surely even John noticed it.
Sherlock ducked into every nearby restaurant, which included an Italian place, a pub, a place with odd French cuisine, and a Chinese place called the Dragon's Bowl.
"We're taking surveys, you understand?" he said to the managers. "Can I have the names of all the plumbers and electricians that you use?" Oddly, he met no resistance in his inquiries. Clyde Burkhart appeared on only one list: Daggers, the pub, which was literally around the corner from the alleyway.
Sherlock went back to the alley and followed Burkhart's movements. The pub's side door was only a few steps from his position. Walk down an unmanned stairwell with some packaged food, step into an alleyway, and then take the turn into a crowded pub.
John was right about the ship in the bottle. Sherlock had assumed the mastermind was needed to execute the crime, but the truth was, the crime was ready to happen, all it needed was a homicidal maniac to see that he could get away with it.
Sherlock ducked into the pub, his bag still in hand, to mark out his options.
"We don't allow outside food here," the bartender barked.
'Apparently there was a catch to this,' Sherlock thought.
"Sorry," he said casually as he stepped back outside.
That didn't mean that Burkhart didn't use this place. All and all, this case was thoroughly disappointing. The killer came here, used his job for access to the basement water heater or odd place to stash the evidence, then proceeded to plant the gun. The only questions of interest were how did the killer know about the row? And, of course, who returned the killer's gun?
The two must be connected. Sherlock had already looked for surveillance in the flat and came up empty, but a plumber would've had the means to plant a camera or wire with the gun. That was obvious. But causing the fight himself would be too dangerous, draw too much attention to himself.
He was just spinning his wheels. There was an easier way to find the third party; after all, Clyde Burkhart wasn't dead.
Sherlock had to wait till the next morning to meet with Burkhart, and the officer on duty, Charles Riley, only allowed Sherlock entry because of some devastatingly shameless flirting on his part. John might consider him oblivious to such things, but pupil dilation and minute fluctuations in skin color revealed more than enough. Admittedly, he took a few leaves from John's book, layering observations (such as "you workout at quite a lot") with pleasantries that were essentially meaningless (such as "it makes you seem very tone"). Still, it was effective, and Sherlock managed to gain a few minutes with Burkhart alone without too many questions.
"You're the man who guessed my safe's combination," Clyde said when he sat down.
"I didn't guess, I saw."
His entire demeanor was calm, as if prison was a temporary problem that would go away. Clyde sat back and relaxed. He didn't care about a single thing; nothing held him down. Some people would conclude that he lacked a moral conscious, but Sherlock saw something very different: Plan B.
"I found it, you know," Sherlock said.
"Found what?"
"Where you stored your bloody clothing and such while you planted the evidence against Rachel Fulmer."
"Is that so? You came here to celebrate?"
"No, I came here to ask you what went wrong."
"Wrong?"
"We were both there," Sherlock said in barely a whisper. "I saw your surprise. Someone put that gun back in your safe after you left it elsewhere."
Clyde bit hard into his lip, and his pupils became tiny pinpricks. "Is that so?"
"You tell me," Sherlock countered. "I imagine you would want revenge of sorts. I would, certainly, if a partner double-crossed me."
"Partner?" Clyde repeated the word as if it were foreign. "This is a joke, isn't it?" His relaxed exterior became rigid and harsh. "Guards! I want to go back to my cell!"
Sherlock met Clyde's eyes as he stood up, defiant and angry. This was Moriarty, somehow. This was Moriarty waving a truth in his face and then wiping it up before he could get to it.
"Sherlock?" John said when he answered his mobile. "Are you there?"
"Yes, John, it's me," Sherlock replied. "You've been calling incessantly."
"You texted me over an hour ago to come to some ridiculous antique fair!" John said. "Where the hell are you?"
"Oh, right, the Burnsider case," Sherlock said idly. "I'm still at the prison."
"What?"
"Don't fret, I'll be there soon. While you're waiting, you should take note of all items marked with a purple tag."
"Sherlock, what - "
"These smuggling operations are flawless, John, and it all comes down to those purple tags!"
Sherlock waved down a taxi and continued to explain to John, as quickly as possible, how Aaron Burnsider used his fraternal - and nearly identical - twin Erin Burnsider to obfuscate the illicit trafficking business they ran under the title "Antiques." Unlike a gang with operatives, essentially loose ends that could split and spill the truth at any minute, this brother-sister business kept everyone that worked for them in the dark. The police never caught them because they ran their operation like a magic trick: while everyone was looking in one direction, the product changed hands. Of course, they made a mistake with the purple tags; it was all so obvious, Sherlock didn't understand how the last bust didn't take these people out.
He became so caught up with recovering the Burnsider artifacts that Burkhart being double-crossed by Moriarty became a distant fragment of a thought. Clever smugglers that were still at large took precedence over a killer who was already behind bars. For now. He made a quick note on a napkin from the Dragon's Bowl for memory's sake and tucked it back into a pocket.
<<< Previous Part:
Part Seven: Revelations
Next Part: >>>
Part Nine: Unwilling Allies
The Silver Blaze Revival - Series 3, Episode 1 - Primary Post