Dead to Dead

By Simahoyo

(This is one dark story. I borrowed Anne Fortier from my favorite Canadian police series, Fortier. Jane and Maura follow Anne Fortier's descent into mental illness trying to help. It becomes a descent into Hell when Anne comes into the BP station covered in blood and raving. Rizzilses)

Chapter One

July. Hot-brutal in a big city. Sun and heat bouncing off concrete, brick, cars...Clothes stick to people and the air is almost too heavy to breathe. This is not weather the police like to see. Tempers are short, and shouting matches turn to fistfights, to grabbing whatever is close to hand, to head bashing and murder.

Inside the Boston homicide division, fans tried to move the air around. Three wilted detectives sat at their desks–not speaking. Not moving unless they had to. Jane Rizzoli looked up as the familiar

sound of high heels tapped across the floor. It was Maura. How did she manage to look that good in this crappy weather? Oh yeah, the cold room. Jane smiled with some effort.

"Hi."

Maura didn't smile. She looked worried. They didn't have a case, thank god, God, Whoever. Jane was too hot to think.

Maura leaned over Jane's shoulder, asking quietly, "Have you heard from Anne Fortier?"

Which was a good question because Jane had. And didn't like what she had heard.

"Yes. Talk at home?"

"Of course." and Maura disappeared back downstairs.

Jane thought about their friend. She was a living cliche. A crazy psychiatrist. Not that Jane blamed her. Some violent trauma had unmoored her from sanity, and the question was, on any given day,

just how far from sanity she had wandered. Jane had made a real effort to help. She knew that Maura had also tried, in French no less. But despite their efforts, the woman seemed more convinced than ever that she was actually dead. And now she had emailed that she was moving to Boston. Well, frankly, that made Jane a bit nervous.

Rizzoli joked about her crazy family, but they were the very model of sanity compared with the good doctor. Jane was not happy about having to baby sit someone who was actually mentally ill...and it looked as if she was going to have to if Anne Fortier showed up in Boston. Yet, she could not leave the woman without someone to help her. "God knows what kind of mess she could get into on her own."

"You say something, Rizzoli?" Frost mopped his forehead with a handkerchief.

"It's too damn hot." Jane was the Queen of Deflection.

"Think the Doc would share that cold room?", asked Korsak.

Jane picked up the phone and all three were delighted to discover that she would, indeed, share.

Jane got home first. Jo Friday was asleep. The detective started the air conditioning and took a shower. Afterward, she was unwilted, in clean clothes and ready to face her computer. It was funny, after she had moved in with Maura, that they had set up their computers opposite each other, so that one turn in an office chair would allow them to share whatever they were working on, or work in complete privacy. No discussion, it just seemed right.

Jane looked for any more emails from Dr. Fortier. There was nothing in her inbox, so she went to the file of Anne's emails, and looked through them one more time. The first ones were friendly,

mildly joking–sometimes very funny. But they got increasingly darker. Anne was starting to describe her nightmare's and they were startling. It was as if she could not see herself as a living human being. She moved, ghost-like, through a world of violence at first familiar to any homicide detective, then, into sickening detail.

At one point Jane had dared to ask what had happened to Anne. She had told Dr. Fortier about her encounters with Hoyt, hoping that this would help. Anne's terse reply was pointed in its simplicity. "Rape, cutting, buried alive. Enough?" Jane backed off.

The door opened and Maura was home. This always made Jane happy. Even when they were sniping at each other, she was happy to see Maura. Jo Friday ran to her, wagging her whole body.

Bass was also making a much slower beeline to Dr. Isles. A beaming smile at Jane lifted the heaviness from her review of the Fortier file.

With a quick kiss, Maura was off to the shower and a change of clothing. Now she was sitting in her office chair with concern in her eyes.

"I don't like what I'm seeing from Anne. She needs help that I can't give."

"I thought you aced psychology. Doesn't that make you...?" Jane ran out of ideas and therefore her sentence.

"No. I'm afraid she may need hospitalization. This idea that she is dead has taken over. She can't hold a job. She's having trouble forming sentences. Especially in English. What is this? 'I move dead two death over corpse of self."

"That's just plain creepy. Is she better in French?" At Maura's nod, Jane continued, "She wrote me that she wants to move here. My God, I'm not even an amateur shrink. I can't handle this. What if I said or did something that made her really kill herself?"

Maura put her hand on Jane's shoulder, rubbing it in a comforting motion. "Don't take it all on yourself. Anne's sick. I just don't know what to do about it. Maybe, if she is here, we can report her as a danger to herself."