If I Were He

Created on 3/25/13, 12:01PM

"If I were he, I'd take the next step, and cause the world to weep."

Sally Donovan could only stare.

It felt as though the world had fallen still. Like the calm before the storm. The pond before the stone shatters the surface.

The moment when the world comes crashing down around your ears.

The man sat before her, watching silently as everything he'd just told her fell into place. He shifted, and the handcuffs she'd put on him made a soft clinking noise.

"…Why?" She asked finally, her voice hard, but not enough to hide the waver that seemed to have started to grow somewhere deep down in her heart until it was a struggle to keep her entire body still so that she did not betray the horror that waited like a beast with teeth bared in the back of her mind.

A small smile twisted the man's features into something she couldn't quite describe. Cruel? Thoughtful? Amused? "Because." He said simply, "I was paid to."

A memory flashed behind her eyes, and for a moment, she was staring down at two little kids, their faces smudged with tears and chocolate and fear. Once again, she stood in front of a table laid out with evidence, the terrified screams of a little girl ringing though her head as words spoken long ago fell as a whisper from her lips. One day it won't be enough. One day, we'll be standing around a body and Sherlock Holmes will be the one who put it there.

She'd been so sure she was right. Someone had to be punished for what happened to those kids. And he'd said it himself. Murder by remote control. The kidnapper could have been thousands of miles away by the time they found them.

So she'd blamed him. The only one who could have found those kids. Because he knew where they were. The bored man. The freak. The sociopath. The psychopath.

And then he'd died. Jumped. Killed himself. And it was just so damning that he might as well have signed his confession using his blood as the ink. Because an innocent man wouldn't kill himself just because he was accused of a crime. No. But someone who's secret were finally revealed, someone who had lost everything, someone who'd fooled everyone but would now play the fool…someone like that would.

"I was insulted." The man in front of her said, jolting her thoughts back to the present so quickly she almost stumbled under the force of emotions that were clawing their way through her heart. His eyes were narrowed slightly as he looked up at her. "I pulled off the perfect crime, made a perfect escape, got paid beyond my wildest dreams. And some freak gets to take a credit. That had been the plan all along—obviously," He jerked his chin to the long blue coat he was still wearing, and the lighter scarf that was wrapped around his neck.

The colors were so familiar, the coat so exactly detailed, that, for a single heart-stopping moment after she'd turned the light on to see the intruder in her house, she'd thought it had been Sherlock, somehow, miraculously returned from the dead. Or maybe a vengeful spirit come to haunt her from beyond the shadows of life and death. But only for an instant. Then instinct had kicked it, and she'd whipped out her gun and demanded that he put his hands where she could see them and turn towards the wall.

He hadn't fought as she cuffed him, and backup had been on its way before even a minute had passed.

Then he'd confessed to kidnapping those kids.

The man continued. "But after a while, I got fed up with someone else taking the credit for my accomplishment. I was bored. So I called up my boss and said, pretty please, can I turn myself in?" He laughed, baring his teeth as though his words were hilarious, and she was sure she was missing some joke. "At first, my boss wasn't too happy about it. Threatened to send someone after me if I tried. All that hard work, they said, gone down the drain because I was greedy. They hung up on me, and I wasn't stupid enough to try anything without their permission. I was bored and annoyed, sure, but that doesn't mean I want to die." He looked up at her, narrowing his eyes as though trying to figure out if she were still following his logic.

She had to resist the urge to shoot him right then and there.

"Then," He said, completely ignoring the way her fingers twitched toward the trigger of the gun she still held, "A few days later, my boss called me back. Said they'd changed their mind. Called me, 'the perfect villain'. Said my plan was brilliant. 'Just imagine it', they said. The whole world's convinced themselves that that freak was guilty. That his death was the final proof." The man lowered his voice, his face cracking into a smile so sinister and so full of dark and twisted glee that she found herself taking a step backwards.

He grinned up at her, his voice filled with laughter even as his voice came out as an almost whisper, held so low she almost couldn't hear it. "So what happens when they find out it was a lie?" He asked, looking her directly in the eye. Then, louder, "What happens when they find out that my boss, clever as they are, had me dress like that stupid freak, so that those kids would be sure to react when they saw him?" Her eyes fell to the coat and scarf he wore, suddenly feeling sick. The man continued on, with only a small grin to show that he'd noticed her reaction. "What happens when everyone find out they played directly into the trap my boss had planned, and they drove an innocent man to his death? What happens when they find out what really happened? What happens when they find out that snipers had had them in their sights that day, unless my boss saw him jump? What happens when they find out that he died to save them?"

He paused, inclining her head to her as though inviting her to speak. She remained silent. At that moment, she wasn't even capable of words.

"So," He said, "My boss told me to go ahead. Turn myself in. Tell everyone the truth. Do it in any way possible. Take all the credit. With only one condition. You want to know what it was?" He asked, still smiling that twisted smile of his. She didn't even have the energy to shake her head.

"The condition was," He said, "That I find Sergeant Sally Donovan, and make sure that she was the first to find out. Because she was the first one that fell. So she should be the first one to learn the truth. 'Her reward', my boss said, 'for falling so very easily into their plan.' It couldn't have been pulled off without you, Sally Donovan. So, from my boss to you, thanks for killing Sherlock Holmes."

When backup finally arrived ten minutes later, they warily entered the house…and walked into a disaster area. Books had been thrown from their shelves, papers, torn up and shredded, were scattered across the floor. Things had been knocked over, and broken glass was sticking up out of the carpet near one of the walls.

A man in handcuffs sat on one of the sofas, smiling to himself and humming cheerfully. Donovan was sitting in the far corner of the room, her knees curled up to her chest, her head clutched in her hands.

In an instant, Greg Lestrade lifted the man up by his collar and slammed him against the wall. It was only after he'd done so that he realized that the man was wearing Sherlock's coat and scarf. The shock of it almost made him drop the man, the ludicrous thought that it was somehow Sherlock in a disguise flashing through his mind for a moment before logic reasserted its dominance.

"What did you do to her?" He demanded, his voice a growl as he fought to ignore the striking resemblance the fiend held to his late friend. The man's dark curly hair and slight frame, combined with the scarf and coat, made the two almost identical at first glance. Except that Sherlock was dead. And if he didn't get an answer soon, this man, this intruder, this imposter would be joining him.

The man dressed like Sherlock laughed. He laughed. "I told her the truth." He said, "I told her the truth."

Finished at 4:08PM

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