Texting Sherlock

Case Book: #1

A/N: I'm trying out something new, it's going to be like a case book (cases that I make up, not description of the Conan Doyle stories).

The Riddle of the the Devil's Bridge

"Sherlock?" called John from the living room, "have you checked your e-mail in the past couple of days?"

221B has been fairly quiet the past couple of weeks, and Sherlock was starting to become restless from the lack of 'fun'. John was afraid that the younger Holmes would turn to drugs or shoot something.

In response to John's questions, he received a loud groan from Sherlock as he shuffled into the living room and plopped down in his chair. He tucked his knees closer to his chest and pulled his blue bathrobe over them.

"Why?" the detective finally said.

"I have honestly been bloody bored the past week and a half. We need a case Sherlock" John replied and threw Sherlock's Blackberry to him.

"Murder... Murder... another murder... a suicide... mass suicides... disappearance... yet another murder... glowing rabbit... missing horse... stolen helicopter. BORING ALL BORING" Sherlock threw the phone across the room to the couch, where it landed perfectly on the middle cushion, bounced up and then settled.

"Wait! NO! Fascinating!" Sherlock bounced up a couple of feet and leaped across the room to grab at his phone.

"Which part?" John followed suit, his eyes lighting up from the inflow of new information and the promise of a new case.

"The mass suicides!" Sherlock settled on the couch and opened the e-mail.

"Haven't we already had something like this? The Study in Pink? The pills? Remember that? Our first case together?" John smiled fondly at the memory, sitting down next to Sherlock.

"Yes, but this is different. These aren't forced suicides. Look at this e-mail" Sherlock shoved his phone into John's hands.

Dear Mr. Holmes,

My little town in north-western England is having a bit of a problem. I know you're not one for small talk, so I will get right to the point. We have a bridge here, a very tall one, with a raging river underneath, and the past month and half something strange has been happening here. Every other Monday a person would jump off the bridge. If that's not weird enough, here's this: a woman would jump one Monday, then a man would jump the other. So we had a woman and a man dead every month. As you can deduce, three people are dead right now. Two women and one man, and another man is supposed to die this coming Monday. To top even that: the first woman and man that jumped were a couple, and the husband of the recent suicide has been missing for four days. Please help us Mr. Holmes, this town is one of married people and if the pattern continues, we will be down to a population of 10 in no time.

Signed,
Jacob Powell
Wynbridge, England

"This is definitely new. But also, Sherlock, the Monday this next suicide us supposed to happen is in two days. It's Saturday" John glanced at his phone for the date.

"Then we've got to go" Sherlock beamed, and popped up off the couch to pack.

The two men packed in under twenty minutes and ended up with a small suitcase and a duffel bag which contained Sherlock's laptop and a couple handguns, owned by John.

It took three hours of Sherlock driving and John sleeping to get over to their destination.

"We're here, John wake up" Sherlock shook John awake.

They lugged all of their stuff into their crammed hotel room and headed out to find Jacob Powell, the man who sent the e-mail. Because it was a small town, they were able to find out where he lived fairly quickly and were soon knocking on his door.

"Mr. Holmes" Jacob opened the door, surprised, "I didn't know you were coming! Please, do come in".

Powell made Sherlock and John a cup of tea and sat them down on his couch to inform the about what has been happening in the town.

"Basically, you didn't miss much. The town has been awfully quiet, but no other killings have happened since the e-mail that I sent you" Jacob explained.

"Why do you say it's killings?" asked Sherlock.

"Because it's to weird to be suicides" he answered.

"Okay thank you. That's all we need. We'll be in touch" said Sherlock, getting up from the couch and squeezing John's shoulder to get his attention because he was staring off to the side, inspecting the framed photos that were hanging there.

After the duo was a far enough distance away from the house of their new friend, Sherlock finally spoke.

"That was not worth the trip. It was too easy" the detective scoffed.

"Wait, you solved it already?" John glanced at Sherlock, surprised.

"Easy really" he said right when they got to the bridge, "they were all suicides, and the fourth one isn't going to happen. It just happened to be so unfortunate that they all happend in a month and half".

"Okay, I'm still not getting it though, can you elaborate?" John asked, squinting his eyes and furrowing his eyebrows.

"The couple, Bradley and Jennifer, were an actual couple. Bradley cheated on his wife with Keira, another woman in town. However, this was a rare case of him not meaning to actually cheat, he was just to drunk to understand what was happening. Jennifer found out from one of her friends, gossip always spreads fast in small towns, and jumped off the bridge the next morning. She was deeply in love with her husband, they were high school sweethearts. The man, having realized what he did, also jumped off the bridge, to follow suit after his wife (but he wrestled with his feelings for two weeks until finally jumping). Keira's husband found out about her one night stand and ridiculed and beat her to the point of no return, and basically forced her to jump off the bridge" Sherlock blabbered out really quickly.

"Okay... but how do you know all of that?" John said.

"I researched the town a bit and got access to one of the yearbooks and found the couple that jumped fist. The cheating made sense to me. And I knew that she was beat up because I had called Molly while we were driving down here and asked her if she could find out about bodies that had come in in the past couple of weeks that looked interesting. She told me that there was a woman that came in one Tuesday with some water damage and extensive bruising. I had placed all of those pieces together and made that story. Make sense?" Sherlock grinned.

"Yes, actually that does. That was easy. Now let's go home? And find another case? One that's actually interesting" John smirked.

"I'll e-mail Jacob later and explain everything. Then he can tell everyone else in town" Sherlock explained and opened the car door for John.

[I <3 HEARING FROM YOU]
How did I do on the deductions? I'm fairly new to them so I tried to do my best at thinking like Sherlock does. It's also hard coming up with cases too. I had to do a whole mind map type of things haha.

I'm so excited for Season 4 omg.