when there's a detective in your living room and he's too lazy to move

[proxysearch]

Who: caveatwalls, proxysearch and sittingtype.
When: Wednesday, December 21st.
Where: Re-l's apartment.
Summary: Sherlock's slunk into Re-l's apartment uninvited. John gets a nasty phone call.
Warnings: None.

Comments

[caveatwalls]

[Sherlock had been doing his best to avoid that cat. After the house where Luis the killer had been hiding in was full of them, he'd had his full of the bloody creatures for the next century or so. It only stared at him from across the room, making him scowl. Even Blackheath was better than that.

Still, when Re-l comes in, he's almost completely unfazed, continuing to page through the police files he found concerning Tifa Lockheart's murder. Naturally, the police were all wrong, though in this case they intended to be.]

About time you showed up.

[proxysearch]

[She scowls at him, stepping over the cat as he passes, mewling softly when she doesn't pay him any attention. She has a password on this apartment. She has locks on this apartment. How the hell did he still manage to get in? How?]

Why are you here? Couldn't you have called or...oh, I don't know... Maybe you could have not broken into my apartment?

[caveatwalls]

Oh, I thought I'd join the cadre of Newcomers who make it a habit to climb through your windows. [Sarcasm.] You're not exactly a cryptographer, you know, Officer Mayer.

[Sherlock closes the file and slips it onto the nearest end table by Re-l's sofa.]

Isn't this what neighbors do? Pleasant surprise visits over the holidays, bearing gifts?

[proxysearch]

I don't have anyone who climbs through my windows and I don't want anyone to start now, thank you.

[She glances at the file and raises an eyebrow. Tifa's case. Well, if he has some sort of news... But still, he could have called.]

What sort of 'gifts'?

[caveatwalls]

[Sherlock fixes Re-l with his cold gaze of concentration.]

Information. You asked for it. Consider that my invitation.

[He breaks that tenuous connection and looks away, slipping over to Re-l's sofa. In what seems like a single fluid motion, he takes his seat and folds his hands before him.]

That report is all wrong. Obviously. Mr. Merlotte obviously has limits on his powers of deduction, even if his sense of smell is uncompromising. Whoever did this didn't know Miss Lockheart at all. It'd be much more of a mess if there was a personal motivation.

[He looks over at Re-l again, giving her a skeptic look.]

You follow so far?

[proxysearch]

[She rolls her eyes. No information is worth this sort of invasion of her privacy. Still, she listens and finally sits on the far end of the couch, as it wraps neatly around the coffee table. The cat goes to join her on her lap and she scratches at him fondly.]

I didn't think it'd be someone who knew her personally. There was no evidence of that.

[But it's good to know Sherlock's on the ball.]

Keep going. I'm listening.

[caveatwalls]

[Sherlock takes that cue without missing a beat.]

Of course not. Execution style rarely denotes the frantic nature of a crime of passion. If it was someone who knew her, she'd be riddled with bullets. Maybe even stabbed to death.

Obviously, AGI's been stalking the bar for months now, but there's never been proof. This is their mistake. A body is proof. The connections are what matter.

[Sherlock takes out his NV, pulling up a few picture files he took at the bar. To him, the evidence is clear, but an untrained eye would see nothing. He zooms in on a single floor tile and changes the light settings. Across it are dotted tiny, almost indistinguishable shoeprints.]Whoever killed her had the ability to change in size. A man-- it's a cheap style of loafer. I did a search in a mile radius of the bar from the most likely exit the murderer took from the alleyway. I picked up the trail about a block from the bar. Same prints, normal size. That's hardly proof, of course. Hundreds of men must wear these shoes on the island alone. A lot of

[proxysearch]

[She leans in to take a look at the picture closely, scanning it for any possible extra things that he can show or tell her. She takes a long time on it, memorizing it, making sure she knows every detail in case it comes up at any point in conversation.

She needs to know how the investigation went wrong. Who headed it, who fussed it, and who made it worse.

She nods absently, listening to him.]

I'll run it tomorrow when no one's around. I'll have Jake check it afterward so I can compare. He wants feedback, after all.

[He could have called. But she's...grateful. Her gaze is calculating as she looks over the gun and the pictures.]

Thank you for looking into it. I can pay you.

[caveatwalls]

[Really, Sherlock hadn't even thought of the prospect of being paid when he started to look into the case. The police usually didn't offer him compensation like this. He slips his phone back into his pocket and looks up at Re-l curiously.]

And here I thought it was a charity case. [It's not a yes or a no, but it's an answer.] It would be unethical for a police officer to look into locked AGI files without a warrant, I suppose. Not for the unaffiliated. Keep that in mind.

[He reclines back on the couch, steepling his fingers beneath his chin as he closes his eyes to think.]

[proxysearch]

I wouldn't ask someone to do work and expect them to do it for free, no matter if they minded or not, Sherlock.

[And she feels uncomfortable to be in a debt with someone else, even if he's right. No money can transfer back to her. No one can know. It has to be this way.]

And, again, this couldn't have been a phone conversation because...?

[caveatwalls]

[Were he really paying attention, he'd just tell her to leave some cash slipped in an envelope under his door if she minded that much. Again, gifts between neighbors.

However, Sherlock is now too deeply invested in his own thoughts to acknowledge Re-l's presence in the room, let alone her speaking. He doesn't answer, looking still as a corpse. There's really no talking to him when he gets this way.]

[proxysearch]

[And...now he's ignoring her. Wonderful. She calls his name again but he continues to sit there in thought until she finally scowls and gets up. The cat continues to stare at Sherlock like he's trying to figure out what the man is doing, tail lashing back and forth.

Re-l, meanwhile, is calling John and telling him to pick up his detective.]

[sittingtype]

[ John's not particularly happy when Re-l summons him - he was stressing enough trying to find a bloody Christmas present for Sherlock and now he has deal with him squatting in her house? brilliant, just what he needed.

give him a good kick up the behind for me probably won't cut it, not with his latest case. it takes him a while longer than usual but eventually, he knocks at her door. ]

[proxysearch]

[She lets him in when she hears him, the cat calling for John as well as though to welcome him. She closes the door behind him.]

Sorry. I just... He's gone. Won't listen to me.

[Re-l leads him to where Sherlock is sitting on her couch.]

[sittingtype]

[ like Sherlock, John is starting to develop a slight aversion to cats and steps away from the feline that came to greet him. Re-l gets a far warmer reception though and he smiles at her apologetically. his annoyance is directed at Sherlock, not her. ]

No, it's fine, you did the right thing... what are you doing? [ he directs that question to his flatmate. ]

[caveatwalls]

[Sherlock is exactly where Re-l left him when John arrives, lost in some quagmire of a problem in his mind. He seems content on keeping it to himself for the moment. His eyes snap open, however, when he hears John's voice.]

Surrendering evidence to the police. Naturally.

[He looks from John to Re-l, giving her a skeptic half-glare. Wherever he was, he had to come all the way here on his crutches. Obviously, he doesn't see his own fault in this problem.]

Why did you call him here?