Loosely based on events in Tess Gerritsen's 'The Surgeon', morphed to better match the show-verse. In case it's not obvious, Gerritsen, Tamaro & TNT own it all.
Dedicated to the memory of Lee Thompson Young.
You will be missed.
Maura glanced up as Jane walked into the morgue, giving her a brief smile of greeting before returning her attention to the body on the autopsy table.
"Anything?" the detective asked, wrinkling her nose, but otherwise showing no signs of discomfort at the pervasive stench of decomposition that permeated the room.
"Level of decomposition and insect larval development indicate a probable time of death at six to seven days ago, and I've recovered the bullets. Senior Criminalist Chang is preparing to run them through the ballistics database. Identification is going to have to be confirmed through dental x-rays and DNA, but age, race and gender match your missing stockbroker. I should have confirmation tomorrow morning, and we'll know if the gun used was in the system then, as well."
Jane nodded. "Would you mind if we moved the movie and Thai to tomorrow night?"
"That's fine," Maura agreed readily, hazel eyes lifting to regard her knowingly. "Would this have anything to do with the vomitus that was covering the lower extremities of the deceased?"
Jane grimaced. "Yeah, Frost hurled. I tried to tell him not to get too close, but Crowe was there, being Crowe." The brunette scowled, then smirked. "Mind you, after he started razzing Frost for puking, Korsak was kind enough to share with us how Crowe pissed his pants once when he came face to face with a rottweiler in a drug house. That shut him up."
"I'd imagine so," Maura agreed, looking amused. "When you see Detective Frost, you can tell him that there was no compromise of any evidence." A pause. "That is where you're going, right?"
"Well, that and I gotta buy a box of diapers for Crowe's desk," Jane threw over her shoulder as she sauntered out.
He was sitting by himself at a booth in the back of the Robber. Jane walked in, a tilt of her head indicating her destination to Murray and two upheld fingers placing her order.
"Hey," she said as she dropped onto the bench across from him.
Brown eyes came up briefly from their contemplation of the nearly empty bottle of Rogue Mocha Porter, then dropped again. "Thought you and Dr. Isles were doing chick flicks tonight."
"Something came up," she lied smoothly as Murray set a second bottle beside Frost's and a Sam Adams Irish Red in front of Jane. "Chili cheese fries and wings," she told Murray. "Hungry?" she added to Frost as Murray walked away.
He gave a halfhearted shrug. "My stomach's empty, anyway," he observed resignedly. "I can't believe I did that. Again."
"I can't believe you let Crowe push you into getting that close," she chided him gently. "He's an asshole, he's always been an asshole, and he'll always be an asshole. You don't need to prove anything to him."
"Maybe not, but..." Barry looked up at her miserably. "I've been in Homicide for two years now. I ought to be able to deal with the sights and -" He paused, swallowed visibly, " - smells. Every time I think I've got it beat, I run into something like that guy." He sighed, drained the last of his first bottle and pushed it aside. "I probably contaminated evidence on the body."
"Maura said no," she assured him. "You know she can't lie," she added when he looked dubious.
"No, but you can," he observed, and if his smirk was faint, it was at least an improvement over the hangdog look he'd been wearing when she sat down.
"Ask her yourself tomorrow, then," she replied. "She said we should have confirmation on ID and ballistics back in the morning."
He nodded. "Another weekend shot to hell, then?"
She grinned at him. "Not like any of us have personal lives to disrupt, right? Besides, you know you love it."
"I do," he agreed earnestly, hastening to explain. "I mean, I'm not looking forward to telling the guy's wife that we've ID-ed her husband's body, but I know that when we come in tomorrow, Dr. Isles is going to have something to tell us, evidence that will give us a place to start from, and I know that there's a damn good chance that before next week is out, we'll be able to tell his widow that we've arrested his killer with enough evidence to nail a conviction. That's worth coming in on a Saturday for."
Jane nodded. "We've got a good team," she agreed. The Homicide unit's case closure rate was a major bragging point for BPD in general and Sean Cavanaugh in particular. "You're a part of that team, you know. An important part."
He looked pleased by her statement, and more than a bit surprised, and she realized that she probably didn't praise him often enough. He'd settled into the unit so smoothly, his initial friction with Korsak mellowing into an odd-couple dynamic that was amazingly effective, his tech-savvy skills blending with the older detective's encyclopedic knowledge of old-fashioned detective work, that it felt like he'd always been there, quiet and competent. The weak stomach that had been a source of concern to her in the early days of their partnership had faded into the realm of a quirk, like Korsak's fondness for animals: more than tolerable, in light of the advantages that he brought to the table.
The expression of shy elation quickly faded to doubt. "I don't know," he said, shaking his head slowly. "Sometimes I think it would have been better for me to have stayed in Robbery."
She stared at him in astonishment. "What? No! Frost, you're twice the detective that Crowe will ever be! You're a natural, and you care. That's something that can't be taught. You belong in Homicide!"
"I just..." He looked away uncomfortably. "You and Korsak, you've got your history. You've got each other's backs, and you know it. How could either of you ever have that kind of trust in a guy who can't even keep his lunch down around a ripe body? I mean..." He hesitated, then regarded her somberly. "We've been partners for two years, and you've never told me anything about what happened with Hoyt."
She bit back the reflexive swell of anger. How many times had she fielded that question from reporters looking for a sound bite, creeps looking for a cheap thrill, morbidly curious housewives who couldn't seem to separate reality from reality television? People who couldn't understand why she wasn't interested in reliving every second of what had happened, who seemed to think that she owed the world a story because she had survived an encounter with a sadistic freak like Charles Hoyt.
This wasn't like that. This was Barry Frost. Her partner. Vince knew, because he'd been there. She'd told Maura, told Frankie. She'd never burden her mother with the worst of the details, but Angela had been around through the aftermath; she knew. That was it. Even the department shrink had never really been able to get her to open up. She'd fed him dry facts,skimming the surface without ever cutting near the bone. Barry deserved more than that. He'd been there in the years since, when Hoyt had played his games. He'd earned the right to know the full story.
She waited as Murray sat a heaping plate of chili cheese fries and another of crispy buffalo wings on the table and walked away. Neither of them made a move toward the food. "When I was promoted to Homicide, I was the first female detective in any Boston division," she began.
"And the youngest officer to make detective," he added with a little grin.
"By a month," she reminded him. Barry Frost hadn't been brought into the division to fill a racial quota. "But yeah. Youngest and a woman, which was two strikes, and as far as the rest of them were concerned, I was out. None of the guys wanted me around. Not even Korsak. Tampons in my water bottles, Midol on my desk, and I knew...I knew that if I got pissed, filed a complaint, that would be it. I might win a grievance, but I'd never make it as a detective."
"Korsak didn't do any of that," she added as irritation sparked in Frost's eyes. "He just blew me off, made it clear that he thought the only reason I was there was because BPD needed a token female in the ranks. I was green," she admitted ruefully, "and my temper got me in trouble."
"You?" Barry lifted his eyebrows, smiling faintly.
"Shut up." She pulled a fry from the pile, pitched it at him, sticking it to his tie in a chili-cheesy blot. He pulled it off and ate it.
"Anyway, yeah. I had a chip on my shoulder the size of Fenway Park. I was by-God gonna prove to those bastards that I could hack it. Then Charles Hoyt came along."
She took a long swallow of beer. "We knew there was a pattern after the second killings. Husband killed in the home, wife taken, raped, killed and dumped elsewhere. Hard to miss the similarities. The papers were going nuts, the brass was on our asses, and Korsak and I were front and center. We had a suspect, Derek Allen: an ex-con with a history of sexual assaults. We busted into his apartment, he took the fire escape, I followed without waiting for Korsak. On the roof, he turned, raised his hand. It was dark outside." She paused, drew a deep breath. "I would have sworn I saw a gun."
Frost was silent, his dark eyes watching her intently, the smile gone.
"I shot him," she said simply, "and they didn't find a gun. Or a knife. Or anything else that could have been a weapon. And without another witness on the roof, it was only my word that he'd raised his hand, even though Korsak did take my side, said it was dark, hard to see. Turned out Allen had been committing rapes in the Back Bay area, figured we were nailing him for those and was looking at life as a habitual offender." She shrugged. "With another detective, it probably would have been spun into what it most likely was: suicide by cop. But to the ones who'd never wanted me around, it was just the opportunity they were looking for. I was suspended, facing disciplinary action, looking at driving a desk for the rest of my career when Hoyt hit the Cordells. Richard Cordell was found dead, Catherine Cordell was missing, and the clock was ticking. We knew from the other murders that the killer kept them alive for no more than forty-eight hours, we knew that he had to have a safe place to take them. I'd been looking at the evidence, and I had a hunch. I'd tried to tell Korsak about it before, but he'd blown me off. I figured no way anyone would listen to me now, so I went alone."
She stopped again, studying the scars in the palm of each hand, feeling her heart speeding up. Not Hoyt this time, though. "When I opened the cellar door and saw Catherine tied to that bed, I wasn't thinking about saving her life, getting justice for her husband, catching a killer. I was thinking, 'This is it. This is my ticket back in.'" She'd never told anyone that. Not Maura, not Korsak, not the shrink. She looked up and met his gaze, waiting for judgement.
He nodded slowly, brown eyes understanding. "It was your dream. And you did the right thing."
She snorted softly, even though she felt a wash of relief at having finally owned up to it. "I did the stupid thing. I rushed down the stairs and got knocked unconscious with a two-by-four. I woke up when Hoyt drove the scalpel through my left hand." She felt the fingers curling in defensively at the memory. "Then the right, and I couldn't do a damn thing to stop him. He'd have raped and killed us both if Korsak hadn't realized I was gone, remembered what I'd told him and figured out where I'd gone. But because I was young and female, the news reports turned me into a hero. And because you can't suspend a hero, Derek Allen was declared a suicide by cop."
She leaned back in her seat and lifted her bottle to her lips. The beer had gone warm, but she drank it all anyway. "Korsak was the real hero," she said roughly. "He had my back. He still does."
"He blames himself for what happened," Frost replied quietly.
Jane nodded. "He told me, back when you two were having your pissing matches. He thought I'd requested you as a partner because I didn't trust him. I didn't see how he could trust me, how he could believe I could have his back after he'd seen me like that. Helpless."
"But he does." There was no doubt in Barry's voice. "He knows you're strong. He knows you've got his back."
She nodded again. "It took me a long time to believe that about myself, but I've got his back, just like I've got yours, and I don't care if you puke at every crime scene for the next ten years, because I know that when the bullets start flying, you've got my back, too."
"Yeah," he replied, with a steel in his eyes that definitely hadn't been there when she'd sat down. "Yeah, I do."
"Good." She waved at Murray for two more beers. "Now that's settled, let's eat, and then I've got a jumbo box of Super-Absorbant Pampers that needs to be delivered to Crowe's desk. Care to assist?"
His handsome face blossomed into a genuine smile. "You've got a deal, partner."