A Rose By Any Other Name | Sherlock Holmes

Chapter 1

I got all I need when I got you and I. I look around me and see a sweet life...

The alarm rang right through the small flat which was supposed to signal its owner to wake up and start her day. Coming out of the bathroom with a toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, the already awake tenant silenced her phone and flicked through the various notifications that popped up on her screen. Most of the emails were junk from her office that she didn't have time for at that particular moment. The one text she needed was from her secretary that listed what time her train was supposed to leave Manchester and arrive in London. Finding it, she forwarded it to Greg Lestrade, tossed her phone on her unmade bed, and then continued to brush her teeth while returning to the bathroom.

It was unlike Lestrade to call her in on a case like this. She hadn't heard from him in years now that he was more successful in his division. She didn't mind, though. It gave her time to further her career in her own division. Getting pulled away to London by Lestrade to help with different cases had really slowed her down. In fact, she probably could have become a detective inspector a lot faster had she stayed in Manchester more often. Before now, she usually had a bag packed near her front door in case she needed to leave at a moment's notice. She was thankful that he hadn't called her in during her probation period because if she had left, there was no chance of her becoming a DI.

Rinsing and spitting, she wiped her mouth on the towel she had draped over the side of the sink. She reached for her hairbrush and began to untangle her brown locks and pull them into a ponytail. She straightened her white, three-quarter sleeve collared shirt and tucked it into the waist band of her black slacks. As she put on her watch, she noted the time and began to move at a faster pace. Her train was going to leave in an hour and it took twenty minutes to get to the station by cab from her flat. And who knew what kind of chaos would be happening at the train station on a Monday morning.

She jogged around her flat grabbing any last minute things: files, her pea coat, her favorite pair of Converse, socks. Clenching the files in her teeth, she used her free hand to grab her travel bag and sling it over her shoulder. Her other bag trailed behind her as she pulled it outside and locked the door. She hadn't even put her shoes on when she hailed the cab to go to the station.

+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+.+

The train ride was long. It had been some time since she made the nearly two and a half hour venture and she had forgotten how dull it could be. She had probably gone through the files Lestrade had sent to her office two or three times before deciding that there was only so much you could analyze about dead bodies in photos.

Leaning back in her seat and closing her eyes, she tried to go through the cases by memory. She preferred to do this method that way she wasn't slowed down during the deduction process. A friend had taught her to keep track of the little details because those were the ones that would matter when it came down to connecting all of the puzzle pieces. Not to mention this way she didn't need to bring all of those papers with her to scenes and risk either losing them or having them fall into the wrong hands. No one could steal her mind so she knew it was a lot safer that way.

Images flashed through her mind like a slideshow. In total there had been five deaths thus far. Three men, two in their 50s and one in his 30s, and two women, one in her 30s and one in her 70s. All five had been stabbed just below their left clavicle, the damage to the heart enough to be deliberate and painful (or at least that's what she imagined it to be). Entry wounds were very clean and meticulous, as if the killer took his or her time ensuring that they ended up in exactly the same place.

Each victim bled out within half an hour and police were anonymously tipped off about them within 24 hours of their deaths. When police arrived, the only thing they had on their persons beside their personal identification was a newly bloomed rose. None of them were from the same place, all of them had different jobs, and they didn't share any common acquaintances. Lestrade had even gone as far back as checking if they had all gone to the same schools, and they hadn't. On the surface, it seemed that there was nothing to connect these five people nor give a motive as to why they were all dead.