The Bone Fiddle, Chapter 9/13
Dec. 7th, 2012 08:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
vulgarweedTitle: The Bone Fiddle
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
htebazytook and vulgarweed
Beta Read By:bethbethbeth THANK YOU!
Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Overall NC-17
Word Count: ~62,000
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Also featuring (in order of appearance): Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Irene Adler, several OCs (original characters) and OCs (original corpses).
Summary: Appalachian AU!
For full summary and warnings, see Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Download the fanmix
In this chapter: Sherlock has a breakthrough, and a date with Death. John appoints himself chaperone.
Chapter 9 - Nothing Satisfies Me But Your Soul
The drive back to Sherlock's house was uneventful. They saw some deer hovering away in a field, but none jumped out or even moved as they passed, and every unfortunate roadkill they came across had been considerately pushed off to the side. The very land seemed apologetic, silent and respectful and familiar.
They passed John's trailer, little more than a suggestion of white under the deepening shade of the hills just before sunset. They passed Mrs. Hudson's house with the windows glowing and smoke spiraling from the chimney. At length they reached the top of the hill where Sherlock's house kept watch, and the sudden release of so much sky and clouds – which were just normal sky and clouds – somehow took your breath away anyway, while far below them ran gentle, worn down mountains gone bluer and bluer with distance until they looked like another layer of the sky.
John followed Sherlock up to the front door through the maze of junk, not that he'd call it that to Sherlock's face. "Wait, is that a . . . a horse hair picker?"
"Yeah."
"And a bobsled?"
"Yeah. Are you coming or what?"
John was coming. Or walking through the door at least. But first he grabbed a clearly weeks-old notice nailed to the door and some of the mail from Sherlock's overflowing mailbox to bring in, too, since Sherlock clearly wasn't planning on doing it.
It was only as John walked across the threshold that he remembered he'd never actually been inside Sherlock's house. He probably would've been more surprised by its contents a few days ago, but what he saw as he looked around seemed about right, given the state of the yard and, good God, the hearse, which didn't shock him at all anymore. There were a few more theoretically functional pieces of furniture and a few fewer pieces of ancient farm equipment, though. And, sure enough, there was the bone fiddle sitting menacingly on a table in the corner next to a jar of moonshi – wait, that was honey wasn't it?
"Sherlock," John said. "Do you know there's bullet holes in the wall?"
"Yes." Sherlock was plucking random objects off of shelves, eyes searching and searching. "Target practice."
"Ah. Keeping yourself in condition?"
"I was bored."
"Of course you were." John watched him. "M.S.L.?"
"Montani Semper Liberi."
"Heh."
Sherlock rummaged along in silence.
"Your house is a museum, you know," John said. "And, coincidentally, you really are a scre-am."
Sherlock stopped and turned around to say, "What?"
"The Addams Family?"
Sherlock stomped through the house, which creaked in protest, papers and inexplicable trinkets flying, and was that a human skull on the mantelpiece?
John approached him with caution. "You wanna tell me what you're looking for or just keep going till you rip out a support beam and we're both crushed under the weight of the house?"
"Book."
"Ah." John folded his arms. "You wanna tell me what book?"
"I don't know what book, otherwise why would I be looking?"
John opened and closed his mouth a few times before just giving up and helping him search.
"Anything to do with traditional songs," Sherlock mumbled, and John smiled to himself.
There really were an awful lot of books in Sherlock's house, none of which were contained by a bookshelf. "What about this?" John held up a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Sherlock rolled his eyes. John kept looking.
John thought he glimpsed a good-sized book under a pile of sheet music, and started digging through it: serious looking ones by Mendelssohn and Pablo something, interspersed with the odd compilation of more recognizable Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes or barely legible handwritten music.
"Sherlock."
Sherlock continued to tear unceremoniously through his belongings in answer.
"Sherlock."
"Yes, what is it?" Sherlock had cooled somewhat by the time he joined John by the pile of music. "Found something?"
"No, but . . . God, you know all these songs?"
"Songs without words aren't songs." Sherlock had noticed John was there all over again, and John was suddenly very aware of how close they were and how easy it would be to lean even closer, not that he was going to, but it was just. You know. Sherlock's mouth was parted very slightly and John could've sucked one or the other of his lips into his mouth but couldn't decide which was more appealing, because the upper one was a lovely shape but the lower one was sort of fuller and redder and closer. Sherlock stood too close for too long before retreating.
They searched in relative silence, John thinking sobering thoughts as he rifled through Sherlock's possessions and did his best to ignore how the entire house seemed to smell like Sherlock.
John noticed it when Sherlock stopped moving. He could sense it as much as he could hear it, like an unsettling lull in the buzz of conversation in an Army mess hall. In Vietnam it had definitely been cause for concern, and maybe that carried over a bit because John's heart jumped unbidden into his throat and he fought the instinct to race over to Sherlock immediately. He made himself walk at a normal pace. "What is it?" John asked, peering at what Sherlock kept turning over in his hand.
"I don't know where this came from."
"It's a pack of cigarettes," John sighed, feeling like an idiot for getting so worked up.
"I didn't buy this."
"No no, you did, remember? At that general store. You bought a lot of stuff there, if you'll recall. Like the bee tool."
"Hive tool," Sherlock corrected. "These aren't the brand I get."
"You probably just bought these because your brand was out of stock, Sherlock, it's not rocket science."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." He pocketed them and moved on.
It wasn't long before Sherlock found what he'd apparently been looking for and held a massive, ancient looking book aloft – The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Sherlock smirked as he leafed through the pages, then shut the book again and set it on the corner of an overflowing table, upsetting dust and making John struggle not to sneeze.
Sherlock handed him a stack of folders through the dust cloud. "Read over them while I take a look at the anthology. See if anything jumps out at you."
"Me?" Sherlock looked prepared to drop the folders if John didn't take them, so John plucked the top one from the stack. "These are police reports."
"Yes."
"How did you get these?"
Sherlock shrugged. "It was easy."
"Okay," John nodded. "And was it legal?"
"It was easy." Sherlock thrust the folders into John's arms. "Get to it." He settled in on a deteriorating velvet armchair that looked anything but comfortable and opened up the book, eyes roving over its pages obsessively.
John sat across from him, in a matching armchair that had fared a little better over the last, like, hundred years. "Didn't you already look at these?" John asked.
Sherlock flipped a page with a flourish. "A second set of eyes is very useful to me."
"Oh." John waited for the other shoe to drop. "Wait, seriously?"
"I've already applied a superior mind to the facts in each case, but there's no guarantee that the killer is as intelligent as I am. Therefore it may be beneficial to know what an average mind would do with the same information."
"And there it is."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
They stayed awake for so long that John lost track of time and even forgot to notice how uncomfortable Sherlock's Victorian furniture was. The gruesome details of the murders swam before John's eyes until he became as dispassionate about them as the verbiage of the reports themselves. Maybe this was how Sherlock had gotten the way he was, through prolonged exposure to the macabre.
Sherlock stood up with much ado, slammed the book down and started pacing. "This is pointless. I know everything about these ballads, already – they're all variations on the same tiresome tales of domestic woe. I know without even looking at them that it's all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude. There's nothing new under the sun."
"Hey! Here's an idea – why don't you look at these reports again? Or at least, I dunno, get them out of the way. I'm done with the pile on the table."
Sherlock seemed to consider glaring, then gave up and took the pile of reports anyway. John expected further bitching, but Sherlock had gone silent. When John looked over he was staring at the table.
"Sherlock?"
"You brought this in." Sherlock brandished the notice. "From the coal company. They're trying to get me to move out." He turned the paper over in his hands thoughtfully. "They do this all the time."
". . . Okay."
Sherlock stared straight ahead, which he always did, but the stare intensified in a way that signified yet another Information Orgasm – God, he was insatiable. He was already shrugging on his coat as he said, "I trust you can see yourself out."
"Sherlock?"
"Something I need to do." He stowed a questionably functional revolver in his belt like it was no big deal and put John on even higher alert.
"What the hell are you talking about? Can't I help?"
"No, on my own. John, pass me – "
"Uh, no," John said, standing and handing Sherlock the scarf he'd been reaching for anyway. "You can't drag me along for all of this and then leave me behind just when things are getting exciting."
Sherlock tied his scarf and watched John with guarded eyes. "Could be dangerous."
John shouldn't have smiled, but one tugged at his mouth anyway. "I'm actually a pretty damn good shot."
***
The sun was rising somewhere beneath the curves of the hills. You could sense it in the glow of the horizon, the otherworldly feel of stars caught in that brief green part of the sky. John watched the flash of reflectors on the side of the road, the line in the middle darting from solid to dotted to solid again and he should've been dead tired after a sleepless night following countless days of running around, shouldn't he? Hell, maybe this is all a dream.
"I'm guessing you're not gonna tell me where we're headed?"
"Mine shaft. You won't know it." John couldn't tell where Sherlock was looking under the splotchy blueness of early morning light. "I'll need you to cover me, though. Just in case."
"Just in case of what?"
Sherlock didn't answer. He made an especially sharp turn as if to ward off any future attempts at conversation.
They drove up to a clearly abandoned mine shaft. Underbrush swarmed the entrance, and you wouldn't even have seen it had it been another season. Around the mine shaft was a small, secluded clearing that relaxed into downhill slopes on all sides except the one where a little cliff loomed up out of the fog. John could just make it out as the predawn sunlight grew. Sherlock parked hastily beneath a ridge at the edge of the clearing. He was already out of the car and jogging toward the clearing, a steam of breath misting in his wake, and had disappeared over the ridge before John could even ask what was going on.
John stepped out of the hearse and onto the mottled autumn grass, frost crunching under his feet as he caught up to Sherlock, only to be stopped in his tracks by a decisive hand on his chest and Sherlock holding a finger up to silence him.
"Too late," Sherlock muttered, then turned on John and whispered rapidly: "Listen to me. Hide yourself somewhere on the cliff face and cover me. Do not shoot unless you have to, do not let yourself be seen, and above all, do not underestimate someone who's killed six people and gotten away with it just because I'm not an idiot and you're not a coward."
"Okay." They stood there. "Okay," John repeated, made to leave.
Sherlock caught his sleeve. "Something else."
"Oh?"
He pulled John into a kiss, abrupt and melting and John had almost forgotten how much he'd wanted this, but it all came crashing back in an instant.
A minute later it was just another memory, and Sherlock was walking away from him down the rocky slope.
John climbed up the zigzagging cliffside a ways, trying to find a spot to hide and do whatever he was supposed to be doing while still keeping Sherlock in his line of sight. It wasn't easy with the lack of leaves on every potential little copse he came across, but eventually he found a suitable nook behind a grassy chunk of rock. Sherlock was strolling nonchalantly around the edge of the mine shaft like it was something he did every day, while John was beginning to reconsider the wiseness of a vantage point this near to him when he heard a car pulling up.
Sherlock turned toward the sound, looking very smug and as though he'd predicted everything that was happening, which John seriously doubted.
But no matter how aware Sherlock may have been, he was also a bit of a sitting duck in the clearing below. John, however, could see the dark blue, dented pickup grinding to a halt on the other side of the ridge, the man getting out of it and the rifle he loaded and his purposeful stride. John tried to stay put, he really did, but the man was advancing on Sherlock and it just might be that bullets moved faster than Sherlock's mind did.
John didn't think. He had no trouble sneaking up behind the man, swiping his rifle from him and using the butt of to bestow a blow to the back of his head. It wasn't until after the man crumpled to the ground that John even recognized him as Tanner Greer.
"Why if it isn't Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself." The meandering female voice came from over the ridge, and John couldn't see from here. He slung Tanner's rifle over his shoulder and climbed as stealthily as possible along the cliff, didn't dare to look up.
John could practically hear Sherlock's raised eyebrows. "My reputation has preceded me."
"Oh yes," the faceless woman cooed.
There was a long silence during which John crawled even more carefully through the brush to avoid detection.
Sherlock's voice: "So, what's a lovely young thing like you doing alone in a place like this?" It still sounded corny no matter how velvety-low his voice had gone.
"Hunting," she replied, and John heard a twig snap so loudly he thought for a moment it had been a gunshot. His panic was unwarranted, however – when he'd returned to his hiding spot Sherlock was still standing in the clearing below while a young woman advanced on him in a way that read as coy on paper but felt predatory somewhere deep in John's bones.
"And I'm not alone," she continued, with a sweet little laugh. "Well, I am by now. Your watchdog's taken mine out by now, surely." John stiffened at that, but neither of them looked at him, and why did John always feel like he was intruding when Sherlock talked to, well, anybody?
Sherlock's hands were in his pockets. He rocked back on his heels and tilted his head while speaking to her. It was odd to see him so animated. "All part of the plan?"
"Um, obviously?"
"Your accomplice, I take it?"
"I wouldn't say he's my accomplice, exactly. He just has a certain fondness for my age and my gender. And my willingness to dispatch of his long ex-girlfriend, Ms Josephine Bahr. God, spurned lovers are so predictable."
Sherlock laughed, brief and thoughtful. "Got to be too much of a hassle, huh?"
"They all are. These fucking yokels."
"Doesn't mean you get to decide who lives and who dies," Sherlock said, more reflective than accusatory. "That would make you God."
"So what?" she said, very quietly, and her whole demeanor changed with lightning speed, so frighteningly fast that John's hand was resting on his pistol, now. Then, her tone evening out and abruptly devoid of the fire she'd had mere seconds ago, she shrugged, "Someone had to kill them . . . "
It was only then that John remembered, even as Sherlock said:
"Jamie Rowe. That's your name, isn't it?" Sherlock hunched over, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. "Enjoying your Thanksgiving break?"
Jamie smiled, gone back to flirtatious "Starting to. You're gonna help me with that, though."
"Aw, you've been saving the ballad of Henry Lee for me, haven't you? I'm touched."
"Don't be. I always knew you'd need to be dealt with, sooner or later. You've been on my list from the start, actually. In fact I think you're probably on a lot of people's lists – everyone talks about how strange that Sherlock Holmes is, makin' moonshine or whatever else, all alone in his house on the hill. People talk about you all the time, and not in a good way. I know the feeling. Guess I'm just a big old softie, that way."
"Okay, but why me? It's because of my lily white hands, isn't it? Come on, don't lie . . ."
She laughed. "Yes . . . And killing two birds with one stone, too."
"Hm, yes. Efficient."
"Why thank you."
"Or it would be, if it weren't also disastrously ambitious and sloppy and much, much too impromptu to yield much in the way of results."
"Oh, on the contrary, Mr. Holmes," Jamie smiled. "This is far from impromptu, and I think you know that."
"One clumsily planted clue does not a master plan make."
"Worked, though, didn't it?"
Sherlock didn’t respond. He did shuffle closer to Jamie, towered over her and mirrored her sickly-sweet smile. "Well, you have me where you want me. It remains to be seen whether that's going to go in your favor, though."
Jamie leaned in closer, and John's grip tightened on his pistol and he should shoot, he should shoot dammit because there was no telling what she'd do and Sherlock –
What she did was step back, put distance between herself and Sherlock, and aim a gun right at him. Sherlock's gun, and Sherlock couldn't've actually let that happen, only he did, and goddammit, Sherlock. John should've shot her when he'd had the chance. Why did she have to be a woman? Stupid morals.
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "The song was pretty insistent on a pen-knife."
Jamie shrugged. "Can't have everything. I'll just have to make do with blowing your brains out."
"That is a good point," Sherlock said reasonably, and John had to stop himself from shouting Are you kidding me? "It'll all be the same if you're just going to throw my remains down a well, anyway . . ."
"Mine shaft."
"You're really not a stickler for details, are you? You've fallen short on all of the murders, in fact."
"How's that? Some of 'em come back to life?"
Sherlock smirked. "It was easy for the first few. I bet Rose Ewart gave you the idea in the first place – Rose Ewart, Rose Connelly. Perfect. She had a husband everyone knew was trouble. It wasn't a leap to assume he'd killed her, and he was much too thick-headed to defend himself very well. He did beat her, after all. The Knoxville Girl was even easier. Selena was from there, and it was like fate that way. Even better, she was black and an outsider. There was no shortage of reasons why someone might want her dead. Kelly Milligan was just that funny old widow from down the street, and nobody batted an eyelash when she turned up dead in such unusual clothes, in a graveyard of all places. She used to handle snakes, for God's sake – well, literally – there were scars on her hands and arms from old rattlesnake bites. Anyway, Long Black Veil isn't a traditional ballad. It's much newer, actually. Honestly, Miss Rowe, is this what they teach you up at WVU these days? Shoddy folklore?"
What exactly was Sherlock planning on doing anyway? Talking her to death? Then again, if anyone could do it, it would be Sherlock.
Jamie rolled her eyes, "Who cares?"
"Poor Ellen Smith," Sherlock continued. ''Or should I say Josephine Bahr? Easy as the others, what with her equally lowlife husband, and that one is actually a ballad, to boot. The husband was suspicious enough that nobody would think to look into, say, a spurned past lover like your good friend Mr. Greer. But then there was Terry McKenna. There was nobody convenient to pin that one on, was there? The best you could do was find a kid who was young enough and occasionally countercultural enough to earn his aunt's distaste. Not exactly unheard of. But you did get a little ambitious, didn't you? So much blood. Of course, the horror of it was what you wanted, anyway. The other murders were going under the radar, which was fine because you were too, but not fine because the point of this is the horror. So you used Terry for your Child Owlet and took care of that. Hannah Hartman's murder wasn't much different than his in execution – no pun intended – although you were having considerably better luck laying the blame on her sister. This time, however, you knew her, and that was different. Hannah was your friend."
"So?"
"Then there's me." Sherlock dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and brandished them like a weapon. "You swapped out my Camels for Marlboros at the general store. A cigarette – specifically, a Marlboro – started the coal seam fire that ruined this place for mining in the 50s. The government swears it's safe now, but that didn't stop it from driving people out of their homes. How fitting that we're meeting here, at the very spot the fire started, given that you're doing the same thing all over again, albeit with a bit more bloodshed. Tell me, have you been getting up at the crack of dawn every day and driving up here just in case I showed up?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Holmes. I've been watching you. I knew you were getting close."
"Oh, I know you have. And you may want to kill me and make me into your Henry Lee, but you wanted me here, first. You wanted me to figure it out, because it's insufferable being this clever and having nobody to even appreciate it. Believe me, I know."
"You're monologuing pretty hard there, Mr. Holmes," Jamie smiled. "I think you might've seen too many James Bond movies."
Sherlock smirked. "You clearly haven't seen enough of them. But it doesn't matter. None of this really matters, this little reign of terror of yours. However poetic you've been and however cleverly executed these people were, well, executed, none of that is the reason why. Every single victim owned land Easton-Bolan Coal Miners would have reason to be interested in. Oh the company hasn't purchased any of the properties that have, without fail, been put up for sale. Not yet, because that would be a little too suspicious and besides, not everyone's been taken care of yet. Fair warning – I'm not planning on making it easy for you."
John heard something, then. Rustling of leaves from behind him, and there were hands on him even as he turned around. He struggled with the man who'd jumped him for awhile but it was no good, something dangerous-feeling was pressed against John's neck and John didn't dare reach for his gun. "Got 'im, Jamie," came Tanner's voice in John's ear.
Sherlock and Jamie were both facing them, now, and Sherlock looked so quietly terrified that John forgot all about Jamie until she spoke again. She was laughing, in fact.
"Why thank you, Tanner," she said, beaming. And John felt Tanner's grip relax for a split second before a gunshot sounded and he fell limply to the ground beside John. John tried not to wince as blood spattered him. Jamie lowered Sherlock's gun and sighed. "I really had thought you'd taken care of him, doctor. Thanks for nothin'."
"Messed up your plan?" Sherlock asked, so complacent that John doubted he'd been worried for John's safety at all.
"Not really," Jamie said, fingering the trigger guard absently. "Way I see it, you two bozos discovered my boy Tanner was goin' around murdering people, followed him out here, and oh dear, things must've went wrong after that."
"And how do you propose to pin this mess on us, exactly?"
"I reckon I'll take care of that after I kill the two of you, too. Unless of course, you're willing to keep quiet."
"Oh, I don't believe for a second you're letting us out of here alive, no matter what we say."
"You," Jamie said, pointing her gun in John's direction. "Watchdog. Come down here."
John didn't take his eyes off of her, but out of the corner of his eye Sherlock nodded. John put his hands up as much as was possible as he clambered down the ridge and descended into the wispy fog collected in the clearing. It was like walking into hell, or at least purgatory.
He'd never got a good look at her, he realized. This murderer. This girl who'd barely even begun to live. She had a very youthful appearance, but her face was so, so solemn. It was an unremarkable face, otherwise. John could see why he'd overlooked her, and more than that, he could understand why her unremarkableness would be frustrating beyond belief to her. She was one of those people who reminded you of someone else, for a minute, before you forgot about her entirely. John wasn't likely to forget a single thing about her, this time.
"No, over there," Jamie said, once John had made it to flat ground. She waved the gun at Sherlock carelessly before pointing it back at John. "With him."
"If you think I'm gonna just give in and go quietly, you've got another thing comin'." John stopped pretending he didn't still have his pistol and aimed it at her, not to kill, of course, but that didn't mean it'd be pleasant for her if he fired. "So, what happens now? We just stand here staring each other down at fifty paces like a bad Western?"
Jamie didn't look perturbed in the least, just gave a little shrug and pointed her gun at Sherlock again instead. John's stomach dropped. "This happens now. So go ahead, 'Doc Watson'," she drawled. "Just shoot. I guess we'll see what happens . . . "
She'd kept her eyes on John the whole time, stupidly, while Sherlock was, equally stupidly, edging closer to her, stretching out his hand now and it was so hard for John not to look. John couldn't think of anything convenient and distracting to say and no no no now Jamie was turning her head . . .
Sherlock darted backward, having taken back his gun and hurled it down the mineshaft. Jamie looked surprised, then furious, then resigned. She was trapped by John and Sherlock on one side with the mine shaft yawning wide at her back.
"What are you going to do?" Jamie asked, very quiet.
"What do you think?" Sherlock said, delighting in the upper hand kind of sickeningly. "Expose you."
"I'll be arrested . . ."
"Well, that too, I guess. But it's – "
"No. You can't, though. No. Nobody can ever know I was behind this."
Sherlock shrugged. "Maybe you should've thought about that before you started murdering people. People do tend to go to jail once they're caught."
"NO," Jamie shouted. "I don't care about that. People can never know I did this. It won't be scary anymore."
"Not terribly scary now, if you want my opinion," Sherlock said.
She didn't even pause to snark, just ran her hands through her yellow hair obsessively and kept babbling: "People can't know. People can't know . . ."
"You never got to complete your set of ballads? Well, there's nothing you can do abou – what are you doing?"
John's eyes widened as she produced a knife out of nowhere. "Jamie," he said carefully. "It's okay, just take it easy."
She sang, listlessly, "Little Henry Lee . . . we'll throw him in this deep, deep well, more than one hundred feet . . ."
"Jamie," Sherlock warned. He took a step forward.
***
Chapter 10
Authors:
htebazytook and vulgarweedBeta Read By:
bethbethbeth THANK YOU!Fandom: Sherlock
Rating: Overall NC-17
Word Count: ~62,000
Pairing: Sherlock Holmes/John Watson
Also featuring (in order of appearance): Mrs. Hudson, Greg Lestrade, Sally Donovan, Mycroft Holmes, Molly Hooper, Irene Adler, several OCs (original characters) and OCs (original corpses).
Summary: Appalachian AU!
For full summary and warnings, see Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Download the fanmix
In this chapter: Sherlock has a breakthrough, and a date with Death. John appoints himself chaperone.
Chapter 9 - Nothing Satisfies Me But Your Soul
The drive back to Sherlock's house was uneventful. They saw some deer hovering away in a field, but none jumped out or even moved as they passed, and every unfortunate roadkill they came across had been considerately pushed off to the side. The very land seemed apologetic, silent and respectful and familiar.
They passed John's trailer, little more than a suggestion of white under the deepening shade of the hills just before sunset. They passed Mrs. Hudson's house with the windows glowing and smoke spiraling from the chimney. At length they reached the top of the hill where Sherlock's house kept watch, and the sudden release of so much sky and clouds – which were just normal sky and clouds – somehow took your breath away anyway, while far below them ran gentle, worn down mountains gone bluer and bluer with distance until they looked like another layer of the sky.
John followed Sherlock up to the front door through the maze of junk, not that he'd call it that to Sherlock's face. "Wait, is that a . . . a horse hair picker?"
"Yeah."
"And a bobsled?"
"Yeah. Are you coming or what?"
John was coming. Or walking through the door at least. But first he grabbed a clearly weeks-old notice nailed to the door and some of the mail from Sherlock's overflowing mailbox to bring in, too, since Sherlock clearly wasn't planning on doing it.
It was only as John walked across the threshold that he remembered he'd never actually been inside Sherlock's house. He probably would've been more surprised by its contents a few days ago, but what he saw as he looked around seemed about right, given the state of the yard and, good God, the hearse, which didn't shock him at all anymore. There were a few more theoretically functional pieces of furniture and a few fewer pieces of ancient farm equipment, though. And, sure enough, there was the bone fiddle sitting menacingly on a table in the corner next to a jar of moonshi – wait, that was honey wasn't it?
"Sherlock," John said. "Do you know there's bullet holes in the wall?"
"Yes." Sherlock was plucking random objects off of shelves, eyes searching and searching. "Target practice."
"Ah. Keeping yourself in condition?"
"I was bored."
"Of course you were." John watched him. "M.S.L.?"
"Montani Semper Liberi."
"Heh."
Sherlock rummaged along in silence.
"Your house is a museum, you know," John said. "And, coincidentally, you really are a scre-am."
Sherlock stopped and turned around to say, "What?"
"The Addams Family?"
Sherlock stomped through the house, which creaked in protest, papers and inexplicable trinkets flying, and was that a human skull on the mantelpiece?
John approached him with caution. "You wanna tell me what you're looking for or just keep going till you rip out a support beam and we're both crushed under the weight of the house?"
"Book."
"Ah." John folded his arms. "You wanna tell me what book?"
"I don't know what book, otherwise why would I be looking?"
John opened and closed his mouth a few times before just giving up and helping him search.
"Anything to do with traditional songs," Sherlock mumbled, and John smiled to himself.
There really were an awful lot of books in Sherlock's house, none of which were contained by a bookshelf. "What about this?" John held up a copy of Grimm's Fairy Tales and Sherlock rolled his eyes. John kept looking.
John thought he glimpsed a good-sized book under a pile of sheet music, and started digging through it: serious looking ones by Mendelssohn and Pablo something, interspersed with the odd compilation of more recognizable Rodgers and Hammerstein show tunes or barely legible handwritten music.
"Sherlock."
Sherlock continued to tear unceremoniously through his belongings in answer.
"Sherlock."
"Yes, what is it?" Sherlock had cooled somewhat by the time he joined John by the pile of music. "Found something?"
"No, but . . . God, you know all these songs?"
"Songs without words aren't songs." Sherlock had noticed John was there all over again, and John was suddenly very aware of how close they were and how easy it would be to lean even closer, not that he was going to, but it was just. You know. Sherlock's mouth was parted very slightly and John could've sucked one or the other of his lips into his mouth but couldn't decide which was more appealing, because the upper one was a lovely shape but the lower one was sort of fuller and redder and closer. Sherlock stood too close for too long before retreating.
They searched in relative silence, John thinking sobering thoughts as he rifled through Sherlock's possessions and did his best to ignore how the entire house seemed to smell like Sherlock.
John noticed it when Sherlock stopped moving. He could sense it as much as he could hear it, like an unsettling lull in the buzz of conversation in an Army mess hall. In Vietnam it had definitely been cause for concern, and maybe that carried over a bit because John's heart jumped unbidden into his throat and he fought the instinct to race over to Sherlock immediately. He made himself walk at a normal pace. "What is it?" John asked, peering at what Sherlock kept turning over in his hand.
"I don't know where this came from."
"It's a pack of cigarettes," John sighed, feeling like an idiot for getting so worked up.
"I didn't buy this."
"No no, you did, remember? At that general store. You bought a lot of stuff there, if you'll recall. Like the bee tool."
"Hive tool," Sherlock corrected. "These aren't the brand I get."
"You probably just bought these because your brand was out of stock, Sherlock, it's not rocket science."
"Yeah, I guess you're right." He pocketed them and moved on.
It wasn't long before Sherlock found what he'd apparently been looking for and held a massive, ancient looking book aloft – The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. Sherlock smirked as he leafed through the pages, then shut the book again and set it on the corner of an overflowing table, upsetting dust and making John struggle not to sneeze.
Sherlock handed him a stack of folders through the dust cloud. "Read over them while I take a look at the anthology. See if anything jumps out at you."
"Me?" Sherlock looked prepared to drop the folders if John didn't take them, so John plucked the top one from the stack. "These are police reports."
"Yes."
"How did you get these?"
Sherlock shrugged. "It was easy."
"Okay," John nodded. "And was it legal?"
"It was easy." Sherlock thrust the folders into John's arms. "Get to it." He settled in on a deteriorating velvet armchair that looked anything but comfortable and opened up the book, eyes roving over its pages obsessively.
John sat across from him, in a matching armchair that had fared a little better over the last, like, hundred years. "Didn't you already look at these?" John asked.
Sherlock flipped a page with a flourish. "A second set of eyes is very useful to me."
"Oh." John waited for the other shoe to drop. "Wait, seriously?"
"I've already applied a superior mind to the facts in each case, but there's no guarantee that the killer is as intelligent as I am. Therefore it may be beneficial to know what an average mind would do with the same information."
"And there it is."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
They stayed awake for so long that John lost track of time and even forgot to notice how uncomfortable Sherlock's Victorian furniture was. The gruesome details of the murders swam before John's eyes until he became as dispassionate about them as the verbiage of the reports themselves. Maybe this was how Sherlock had gotten the way he was, through prolonged exposure to the macabre.
Sherlock stood up with much ado, slammed the book down and started pacing. "This is pointless. I know everything about these ballads, already – they're all variations on the same tiresome tales of domestic woe. I know without even looking at them that it's all perfectly familiar to me. There is, of course, the other woman, the drink, the push, the blow, the bruise, the sympathetic sister or landlady. The crudest of writers could invent nothing more crude. There's nothing new under the sun."
"Hey! Here's an idea – why don't you look at these reports again? Or at least, I dunno, get them out of the way. I'm done with the pile on the table."
Sherlock seemed to consider glaring, then gave up and took the pile of reports anyway. John expected further bitching, but Sherlock had gone silent. When John looked over he was staring at the table.
"Sherlock?"
"You brought this in." Sherlock brandished the notice. "From the coal company. They're trying to get me to move out." He turned the paper over in his hands thoughtfully. "They do this all the time."
". . . Okay."
Sherlock stared straight ahead, which he always did, but the stare intensified in a way that signified yet another Information Orgasm – God, he was insatiable. He was already shrugging on his coat as he said, "I trust you can see yourself out."
"Sherlock?"
"Something I need to do." He stowed a questionably functional revolver in his belt like it was no big deal and put John on even higher alert.
"What the hell are you talking about? Can't I help?"
"No, on my own. John, pass me – "
"Uh, no," John said, standing and handing Sherlock the scarf he'd been reaching for anyway. "You can't drag me along for all of this and then leave me behind just when things are getting exciting."
Sherlock tied his scarf and watched John with guarded eyes. "Could be dangerous."
John shouldn't have smiled, but one tugged at his mouth anyway. "I'm actually a pretty damn good shot."
***
The sun was rising somewhere beneath the curves of the hills. You could sense it in the glow of the horizon, the otherworldly feel of stars caught in that brief green part of the sky. John watched the flash of reflectors on the side of the road, the line in the middle darting from solid to dotted to solid again and he should've been dead tired after a sleepless night following countless days of running around, shouldn't he? Hell, maybe this is all a dream.
"I'm guessing you're not gonna tell me where we're headed?"
"Mine shaft. You won't know it." John couldn't tell where Sherlock was looking under the splotchy blueness of early morning light. "I'll need you to cover me, though. Just in case."
"Just in case of what?"
Sherlock didn't answer. He made an especially sharp turn as if to ward off any future attempts at conversation.
They drove up to a clearly abandoned mine shaft. Underbrush swarmed the entrance, and you wouldn't even have seen it had it been another season. Around the mine shaft was a small, secluded clearing that relaxed into downhill slopes on all sides except the one where a little cliff loomed up out of the fog. John could just make it out as the predawn sunlight grew. Sherlock parked hastily beneath a ridge at the edge of the clearing. He was already out of the car and jogging toward the clearing, a steam of breath misting in his wake, and had disappeared over the ridge before John could even ask what was going on.
John stepped out of the hearse and onto the mottled autumn grass, frost crunching under his feet as he caught up to Sherlock, only to be stopped in his tracks by a decisive hand on his chest and Sherlock holding a finger up to silence him.
"Too late," Sherlock muttered, then turned on John and whispered rapidly: "Listen to me. Hide yourself somewhere on the cliff face and cover me. Do not shoot unless you have to, do not let yourself be seen, and above all, do not underestimate someone who's killed six people and gotten away with it just because I'm not an idiot and you're not a coward."
"Okay." They stood there. "Okay," John repeated, made to leave.
Sherlock caught his sleeve. "Something else."
"Oh?"
He pulled John into a kiss, abrupt and melting and John had almost forgotten how much he'd wanted this, but it all came crashing back in an instant.
A minute later it was just another memory, and Sherlock was walking away from him down the rocky slope.
John climbed up the zigzagging cliffside a ways, trying to find a spot to hide and do whatever he was supposed to be doing while still keeping Sherlock in his line of sight. It wasn't easy with the lack of leaves on every potential little copse he came across, but eventually he found a suitable nook behind a grassy chunk of rock. Sherlock was strolling nonchalantly around the edge of the mine shaft like it was something he did every day, while John was beginning to reconsider the wiseness of a vantage point this near to him when he heard a car pulling up.
Sherlock turned toward the sound, looking very smug and as though he'd predicted everything that was happening, which John seriously doubted.
But no matter how aware Sherlock may have been, he was also a bit of a sitting duck in the clearing below. John, however, could see the dark blue, dented pickup grinding to a halt on the other side of the ridge, the man getting out of it and the rifle he loaded and his purposeful stride. John tried to stay put, he really did, but the man was advancing on Sherlock and it just might be that bullets moved faster than Sherlock's mind did.
John didn't think. He had no trouble sneaking up behind the man, swiping his rifle from him and using the butt of to bestow a blow to the back of his head. It wasn't until after the man crumpled to the ground that John even recognized him as Tanner Greer.
"Why if it isn't Mr. Sherlock Holmes himself." The meandering female voice came from over the ridge, and John couldn't see from here. He slung Tanner's rifle over his shoulder and climbed as stealthily as possible along the cliff, didn't dare to look up.
John could practically hear Sherlock's raised eyebrows. "My reputation has preceded me."
"Oh yes," the faceless woman cooed.
There was a long silence during which John crawled even more carefully through the brush to avoid detection.
Sherlock's voice: "So, what's a lovely young thing like you doing alone in a place like this?" It still sounded corny no matter how velvety-low his voice had gone.
"Hunting," she replied, and John heard a twig snap so loudly he thought for a moment it had been a gunshot. His panic was unwarranted, however – when he'd returned to his hiding spot Sherlock was still standing in the clearing below while a young woman advanced on him in a way that read as coy on paper but felt predatory somewhere deep in John's bones.
"And I'm not alone," she continued, with a sweet little laugh. "Well, I am by now. Your watchdog's taken mine out by now, surely." John stiffened at that, but neither of them looked at him, and why did John always feel like he was intruding when Sherlock talked to, well, anybody?
Sherlock's hands were in his pockets. He rocked back on his heels and tilted his head while speaking to her. It was odd to see him so animated. "All part of the plan?"
"Um, obviously?"
"Your accomplice, I take it?"
"I wouldn't say he's my accomplice, exactly. He just has a certain fondness for my age and my gender. And my willingness to dispatch of his long ex-girlfriend, Ms Josephine Bahr. God, spurned lovers are so predictable."
Sherlock laughed, brief and thoughtful. "Got to be too much of a hassle, huh?"
"They all are. These fucking yokels."
"Doesn't mean you get to decide who lives and who dies," Sherlock said, more reflective than accusatory. "That would make you God."
"So what?" she said, very quietly, and her whole demeanor changed with lightning speed, so frighteningly fast that John's hand was resting on his pistol, now. Then, her tone evening out and abruptly devoid of the fire she'd had mere seconds ago, she shrugged, "Someone had to kill them . . . "
It was only then that John remembered, even as Sherlock said:
"Jamie Rowe. That's your name, isn't it?" Sherlock hunched over, shoving his hands deeper into his pockets. "Enjoying your Thanksgiving break?"
Jamie smiled, gone back to flirtatious "Starting to. You're gonna help me with that, though."
"Aw, you've been saving the ballad of Henry Lee for me, haven't you? I'm touched."
"Don't be. I always knew you'd need to be dealt with, sooner or later. You've been on my list from the start, actually. In fact I think you're probably on a lot of people's lists – everyone talks about how strange that Sherlock Holmes is, makin' moonshine or whatever else, all alone in his house on the hill. People talk about you all the time, and not in a good way. I know the feeling. Guess I'm just a big old softie, that way."
"Okay, but why me? It's because of my lily white hands, isn't it? Come on, don't lie . . ."
She laughed. "Yes . . . And killing two birds with one stone, too."
"Hm, yes. Efficient."
"Why thank you."
"Or it would be, if it weren't also disastrously ambitious and sloppy and much, much too impromptu to yield much in the way of results."
"Oh, on the contrary, Mr. Holmes," Jamie smiled. "This is far from impromptu, and I think you know that."
"One clumsily planted clue does not a master plan make."
"Worked, though, didn't it?"
Sherlock didn’t respond. He did shuffle closer to Jamie, towered over her and mirrored her sickly-sweet smile. "Well, you have me where you want me. It remains to be seen whether that's going to go in your favor, though."
Jamie leaned in closer, and John's grip tightened on his pistol and he should shoot, he should shoot dammit because there was no telling what she'd do and Sherlock –
What she did was step back, put distance between herself and Sherlock, and aim a gun right at him. Sherlock's gun, and Sherlock couldn't've actually let that happen, only he did, and goddammit, Sherlock. John should've shot her when he'd had the chance. Why did she have to be a woman? Stupid morals.
Sherlock raised an eyebrow. "The song was pretty insistent on a pen-knife."
Jamie shrugged. "Can't have everything. I'll just have to make do with blowing your brains out."
"That is a good point," Sherlock said reasonably, and John had to stop himself from shouting Are you kidding me? "It'll all be the same if you're just going to throw my remains down a well, anyway . . ."
"Mine shaft."
"You're really not a stickler for details, are you? You've fallen short on all of the murders, in fact."
"How's that? Some of 'em come back to life?"
Sherlock smirked. "It was easy for the first few. I bet Rose Ewart gave you the idea in the first place – Rose Ewart, Rose Connelly. Perfect. She had a husband everyone knew was trouble. It wasn't a leap to assume he'd killed her, and he was much too thick-headed to defend himself very well. He did beat her, after all. The Knoxville Girl was even easier. Selena was from there, and it was like fate that way. Even better, she was black and an outsider. There was no shortage of reasons why someone might want her dead. Kelly Milligan was just that funny old widow from down the street, and nobody batted an eyelash when she turned up dead in such unusual clothes, in a graveyard of all places. She used to handle snakes, for God's sake – well, literally – there were scars on her hands and arms from old rattlesnake bites. Anyway, Long Black Veil isn't a traditional ballad. It's much newer, actually. Honestly, Miss Rowe, is this what they teach you up at WVU these days? Shoddy folklore?"
What exactly was Sherlock planning on doing anyway? Talking her to death? Then again, if anyone could do it, it would be Sherlock.
Jamie rolled her eyes, "Who cares?"
"Poor Ellen Smith," Sherlock continued. ''Or should I say Josephine Bahr? Easy as the others, what with her equally lowlife husband, and that one is actually a ballad, to boot. The husband was suspicious enough that nobody would think to look into, say, a spurned past lover like your good friend Mr. Greer. But then there was Terry McKenna. There was nobody convenient to pin that one on, was there? The best you could do was find a kid who was young enough and occasionally countercultural enough to earn his aunt's distaste. Not exactly unheard of. But you did get a little ambitious, didn't you? So much blood. Of course, the horror of it was what you wanted, anyway. The other murders were going under the radar, which was fine because you were too, but not fine because the point of this is the horror. So you used Terry for your Child Owlet and took care of that. Hannah Hartman's murder wasn't much different than his in execution – no pun intended – although you were having considerably better luck laying the blame on her sister. This time, however, you knew her, and that was different. Hannah was your friend."
"So?"
"Then there's me." Sherlock dug a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and brandished them like a weapon. "You swapped out my Camels for Marlboros at the general store. A cigarette – specifically, a Marlboro – started the coal seam fire that ruined this place for mining in the 50s. The government swears it's safe now, but that didn't stop it from driving people out of their homes. How fitting that we're meeting here, at the very spot the fire started, given that you're doing the same thing all over again, albeit with a bit more bloodshed. Tell me, have you been getting up at the crack of dawn every day and driving up here just in case I showed up?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Mr. Holmes. I've been watching you. I knew you were getting close."
"Oh, I know you have. And you may want to kill me and make me into your Henry Lee, but you wanted me here, first. You wanted me to figure it out, because it's insufferable being this clever and having nobody to even appreciate it. Believe me, I know."
"You're monologuing pretty hard there, Mr. Holmes," Jamie smiled. "I think you might've seen too many James Bond movies."
Sherlock smirked. "You clearly haven't seen enough of them. But it doesn't matter. None of this really matters, this little reign of terror of yours. However poetic you've been and however cleverly executed these people were, well, executed, none of that is the reason why. Every single victim owned land Easton-Bolan Coal Miners would have reason to be interested in. Oh the company hasn't purchased any of the properties that have, without fail, been put up for sale. Not yet, because that would be a little too suspicious and besides, not everyone's been taken care of yet. Fair warning – I'm not planning on making it easy for you."
John heard something, then. Rustling of leaves from behind him, and there were hands on him even as he turned around. He struggled with the man who'd jumped him for awhile but it was no good, something dangerous-feeling was pressed against John's neck and John didn't dare reach for his gun. "Got 'im, Jamie," came Tanner's voice in John's ear.
Sherlock and Jamie were both facing them, now, and Sherlock looked so quietly terrified that John forgot all about Jamie until she spoke again. She was laughing, in fact.
"Why thank you, Tanner," she said, beaming. And John felt Tanner's grip relax for a split second before a gunshot sounded and he fell limply to the ground beside John. John tried not to wince as blood spattered him. Jamie lowered Sherlock's gun and sighed. "I really had thought you'd taken care of him, doctor. Thanks for nothin'."
"Messed up your plan?" Sherlock asked, so complacent that John doubted he'd been worried for John's safety at all.
"Not really," Jamie said, fingering the trigger guard absently. "Way I see it, you two bozos discovered my boy Tanner was goin' around murdering people, followed him out here, and oh dear, things must've went wrong after that."
"And how do you propose to pin this mess on us, exactly?"
"I reckon I'll take care of that after I kill the two of you, too. Unless of course, you're willing to keep quiet."
"Oh, I don't believe for a second you're letting us out of here alive, no matter what we say."
"You," Jamie said, pointing her gun in John's direction. "Watchdog. Come down here."
John didn't take his eyes off of her, but out of the corner of his eye Sherlock nodded. John put his hands up as much as was possible as he clambered down the ridge and descended into the wispy fog collected in the clearing. It was like walking into hell, or at least purgatory.
He'd never got a good look at her, he realized. This murderer. This girl who'd barely even begun to live. She had a very youthful appearance, but her face was so, so solemn. It was an unremarkable face, otherwise. John could see why he'd overlooked her, and more than that, he could understand why her unremarkableness would be frustrating beyond belief to her. She was one of those people who reminded you of someone else, for a minute, before you forgot about her entirely. John wasn't likely to forget a single thing about her, this time.
"No, over there," Jamie said, once John had made it to flat ground. She waved the gun at Sherlock carelessly before pointing it back at John. "With him."
"If you think I'm gonna just give in and go quietly, you've got another thing comin'." John stopped pretending he didn't still have his pistol and aimed it at her, not to kill, of course, but that didn't mean it'd be pleasant for her if he fired. "So, what happens now? We just stand here staring each other down at fifty paces like a bad Western?"
Jamie didn't look perturbed in the least, just gave a little shrug and pointed her gun at Sherlock again instead. John's stomach dropped. "This happens now. So go ahead, 'Doc Watson'," she drawled. "Just shoot. I guess we'll see what happens . . . "
She'd kept her eyes on John the whole time, stupidly, while Sherlock was, equally stupidly, edging closer to her, stretching out his hand now and it was so hard for John not to look. John couldn't think of anything convenient and distracting to say and no no no now Jamie was turning her head . . .
Sherlock darted backward, having taken back his gun and hurled it down the mineshaft. Jamie looked surprised, then furious, then resigned. She was trapped by John and Sherlock on one side with the mine shaft yawning wide at her back.
"What are you going to do?" Jamie asked, very quiet.
"What do you think?" Sherlock said, delighting in the upper hand kind of sickeningly. "Expose you."
"I'll be arrested . . ."
"Well, that too, I guess. But it's – "
"No. You can't, though. No. Nobody can ever know I was behind this."
Sherlock shrugged. "Maybe you should've thought about that before you started murdering people. People do tend to go to jail once they're caught."
"NO," Jamie shouted. "I don't care about that. People can never know I did this. It won't be scary anymore."
"Not terribly scary now, if you want my opinion," Sherlock said.
She didn't even pause to snark, just ran her hands through her yellow hair obsessively and kept babbling: "People can't know. People can't know . . ."
"You never got to complete your set of ballads? Well, there's nothing you can do abou – what are you doing?"
John's eyes widened as she produced a knife out of nowhere. "Jamie," he said carefully. "It's okay, just take it easy."
She sang, listlessly, "Little Henry Lee . . . we'll throw him in this deep, deep well, more than one hundred feet . . ."
"Jamie," Sherlock warned. He took a step forward.
***
Chapter 10
