Chapter 16 - A Study in Pink

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It turns out that Rachel was Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter around fourteen years ago.

"No, that's...that's not right. How...why would she do that? Why?" Sherlock asks, looking confused.

"Why would she think of her daughter in her last moments? Yup-sociopath, I'm seeing it now." Anderson says.

Sherlock turns to him. "She didn't think about her daughter. She scratched her name on the floor with her fingernails. She was dying. It took effort. It would have hurt." He says with an exasperated look.

"You said that the victims took the poison themselves," John says. "That he makes them take it. Well, maybe he...I don't know, talks to them? Maybe..."

"He used the death of her daughter somehow." I finish.

"Exactly." John nods.

Sherlock turns to face John and I. "Yeah but that was ages ago. Why would she still be upset?"

Just then everyone stops what they're doing and falls silent. John and I stare at Sherlock. He glances around the room and looks awkwardly at us.

"Not good?" He asks quietly.

"A bit not good." John answers, and I nod, agreeing with John.

Sherlock shakes it off and steps closer to us. "If you were dying...if you had been murdered...in your very last few seconds what would you say?" He asks us.

"Please God let me live." John answers, and I nod, agreeing with him.

"Oh, use your imagination!" Sherlock says, exasperated.

"We don't have to." I answer, then clamp my mouth shut as soon as the words escape my lips. Damn it, Kate, what the hell were you thinking? Idiot. That is exactly what you don't say!

Sherlock and John both give me a questioning look.

"I meant 'he' not 'we'." I say. John turns back to Sherlock and shrugs his shoulders. Sherlock stares at me for a moment longer and then looks at John.

"Yeah but if you were clever..." Sherlock starts. "Really clever...Jennifer Wilson was running a string of lovers...she was clever." He starts to pace. "She's trying to tell us something."

"Isn't the doorbell working?" Mrs. Hudson, who's standing in the living room doorway, asks. "Your taxi's here, Sherlock."

"I didn't order a taxi." Sherlock replies, still pacing. "Go away."

Mrs. Hudson glances around the room. "Oh dear. They're making such a mess. What are they looking for?"

"It's a drugs bust, Mrs. Hudson." I answer.

"But they're just for my hip," She replies anxiously. "They're herbal soothers."

Sherlock stops pacing, his back to the door. "Shut up, everybody shut up!" He shouts. "Don't move, don't speak, don't breathe. Anderson, face the other way. You're putting me off."

"What? My face is?!" He says, not believing this.

"Everybody quiet and still. Anderson, turn you back." Lestrade orders.

"Oh, for God's sake!" Anderson says.

"Your back now, please!" Lestrade says.

"Come on, think. Quick!" Sherlock says to himself.

"What about your taxi?" Mrs. Hudson asks.

"MRS. HUDSON!" Sherlock shouts, turning to her.

She turns and hurries down the stairs. Sherlock stops and looks around, clearly he's realized something.

"Oh..." He smiles. "Ah! She was clever, clever, yes!" He strides across the room and turns to face the rest of us. "She's cleverer than you lot and she's dead! Do you see, do you get it? She didn't lose her phone, she never lost it." Sherlock says.

I get it now!

"She planted it on him." Sherlock and I say in unison. Everybody glances back and forth at us.

"See? She gets it!" Sherlock says, referring to me. "When Jennifer Wilson got out of the car, she knew that she was going to her death. She left the phone in order to lead us to her killer."

"But how?" Lestrade asks.

"Wha...? What do you mean, how?" Sherlock asks, stopping and looking at Lestrade, who shrugs in response. "Rachel!" Sherlock says.

Rachel?

"Don't you see? Rachel!" Sherlock cries out to all of us, everyone stares at him with blank expressions while I try to figure out what Sherlock means by Rachel.

Jennifer Wilson had a stillborn daughter fourteen years ago...

"Oh, look at you lot. You're all so vacant. Is it nice not being me? It must be so relaxing." Sherlock says as my mind puts together bits and pieces as fast as Sherlock can talk and make deductions.

When she got out of the car, she knew she was going to her death, she planted the phone on him. I don't remember seeing a laptop or anything indicating that she had a laptop in her suitcase. She must work off of her phone.

Does she have a smartphone? If she doesn't have a laptop she must have something to work  off of that has internet and...smartphones have GPS, that must be why she left the phone to plant it on him.

How do we track the phone? What do smartphones have? GPS (obviously), internet...

If smartphones have internet they must have e-mail on it! If someone loses their phone, they can go into their e-mail and find the phones location using it's GPS.

We would just need to know the password of the e-mail to find the murderer. Obviously the murderer has the phone, we texted him, he called from the same number.

Rachel.

But if must not be a name if I'm thinking what Sherlock's thinking.

Rachel! It's the password! That took me forever to figure that out.

"Rachel is not a name." Sherlock says sternly.

"Then what is it?" John asks.

"Password!" I shout out.

Everyone looks at me, all of them wearing surprised, yet blank expressions on their faces. Everyone except Sherlock, who appears to be thrilled at this.

"She does get it!" Sherlock cries out.

"Password to what?" John asks.

"John, on the luggage, there's a label. E-mail address." Sherlock says. John goes over to the luggage and reads the address out loud. As John's reading out the e-mail, Sherlock's already sitting down at a table, typing at his laptop.

"Oh, I've been to slow..." Sherlock says. "She didn't have a laptop, which means she did her business on her phone, so it's a smartphone, it's e-mail enabled." I walk over to him and stand beside him as he types the address as a username into the mephone website. "So there was a website for her account.The username is her e-mail address..." Sherlock continues, going to the 'Password' box. "And all together now, the password is...?"

He types the name of Jennifer Wilson's stillborn daughter as the password, and logs into the website.

"Rachel..." John finishes, standing on the other side of Sherlock.

"So we can read her e-mails." Anderson says. "So what?"

"Anderson, don't talk out loud. You lower the I.Q. of the whole street." Sherlock says. "We can do much more than just read her e-mails. It's a smartphone, it's got GPS, which means if you lose it you can locate it online. She's leading us directly to the man who killed her."

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