Title: Fall in Slumber
Rating: T
Chapter 2 of 10
A/N: Whoa, thanks for all the story alerts and reviews! I really appreciate it. I hope that in the coming chapters, I am able to step up the interactions between Jane and Maura, but I had to get the exposition stuff out of the way to really get into the case itself.
The gray light of the morning casts a dreary shadow of the North End as their cruiser passes the shops and restaurants not yet open to the world at this early morning hour. His large fingers grab to straighten his striped silk tie and he stares out to the passing microcosms of homes and businesses. Barry Frost mans the wheel as they make their way to the parking garage behind the new gym in the district. If the younger man seems nervous, he doesn't show it. His face is steel resolve but Korsak knows he is worried about his partner deep down. He'd just never show it to anyone.
Police vehicles and a CSU van line the street and Frost has to park a decent walk down from the entrance to the facility. The doors slam to the car and echo into the garage. Voices rise like steam and filter into the street from inside. Korsak reaches into the breast pocket of his suit and withdraws his badge, holding it up to the young beat cop standing at the entrance. The man waves him and Frost through.
Up ahead, the blue of the pristine Toyota glints in the overhead lighting. A CSU tech, a blond in her mid thirties, squats beside the car doors and applies dust to the knobs. No doubt looking for prints which Korsak knows is a long shot. The athletic bag sits discarded on the ground and another male tech makes rampant clicks with his Nikon camera, shooting the scene from every angle.
He sees Lieutenant Anna Blake ahead, the newest female to the precinct and head of the Missing Person's Unit. The line between their departments is often blurred, a sad factor that many of her cases cross the barrier and enter into homicide territory. He's pulled a few jobs with her in the last four months of her new assignment but he can't remember a time when Rizzoli has encountered her.
The two women have a similar look, both tall with dark hair and brown eyes. Rizzoli's level of tenacity seems to be more encompassing though, with Blake's tone often skirting the quiet end. They're both young, respectable, and decent cops. The only difference being that Blake has never known the streets of Boston, never developed an affinity for them like he and his crew have. She's green and even looks like a walking picture of the San Francisco, Pacific lifestyle she left behind.
"Hey Lu," he tosses as she walks up beside him and gives him a look. He glances over his shoulder to see Frost hanging back, a look of worry finally entering his eyes. She follows his gaze and shivers, pulling her coat tighter to her body.
"It doesn't become real really until the scene," she sighs, a tired edge in her normally calm voice. She spins to face him fully and shoves her hands into her coat. "Why are you here, Vince? We've turned up no signs of foul play and nothing seems out of place enough to send this into homicide territory yet."
"I want point on this, Lu. I'm sure homicide won't mind loaning us out for a while. Stuff's been on the low end lately and I think Frost and I could offer some help on this."
"Well, I suppose I should find it comforting that people aren't being murdered. As for my department, we are churning in overtime and I don't have the man power to really devote to this like I should, as terrible as that sounds. You know politics, Vince. A missing state senator's child is going to take precedence because it's national news. Boston's own internal affairs get thrown by the wayside in the wake of this media madness."
"So let Frost and I run with this."
"I just worry you might be a bit close to this? I know you care for Rizzoli. You two have been through some dark times together, with the Hoyt murders and all. And I've heard that Frost has developed a rapport with her."
"Are you saying I can't look at this objectively?"
"No, no. I know you can. But what if this does cross the line from a missing person's case and we're too late?" Blake sighs. Her face grows troubled as she looks at him.
"Then I will do my job."
She nods and then huffs out a breath of cold air. "Alright, you and Frost are green lit for this. Keep me in the loop and make sure that if you run across anything, you don't go in with guns blazing. I want this handled with finesse. We already have a national headline. I'd hate to see "Dead cop and medical examiner stun city in double homicide." And for what it's worth, I have heard great things about Rizzoli. And I met Dr. Isles recently. She seems to be a lovely woman. I want them both back, safe."
He watches her walk off but then turn back to him. Her shoulders sag a little bit and he can see the dark circles under her eyes from this different angle.
"I asked the garage manager to get the security recordings from the camera," she points. "Dr. Isles parked her car in an unfortunate space, so it probably won't snag the act as it happened. The street view should provide us with a bit more. I'll have them sent over to you," she says and then turns to walk away again. A hand flicks up in a goodbye wave and he turns his attention back to the scene.
Frost walks up and begins to slide his fingers into the blue latex gloves. Korsak reaches into his other breast pocket and mimics the action. He moves to the pink athletic bag and picks it up. Frost stays immobile though, frozen. He watches the man flinch slightly as another cop walks up with a similar looking bag, only in red with a Boston Red Sox patch adorning the side. Jane's.
The man hands in to Frost, Jameson he thinks is his name. Frost doesn't move to open it. Jameson shifts on his feet uncomfortably, no doubt anxious to deliver news to the missing detective about his partner.
"We found this in the locker room. Dr. Isles had a set of clothes beside this. We bagged the clothing as evidence and sent it with CSU. Figured you might want to have a look through this on your own though," Jameson says tightly. He offers a consolatory nod and disappears behind the bodies of workers.
Korsak realigns his attention to the bag below him as he opens the zipper. Pretty standard fare, all things considered. Clothing, toiletries, shoes. He picks up the iPhone from the side pocket and deposits it into a baggie. Pulling phone records will probably be another long shot, but he aims to be thorough.
He hears Frost begin to move behind him and turns around with the contents of the evidence bag still in his hand. "What do you have?"
Frost rakes through and finds Jane's cell. Korsak's heart sinks a bit, realizing that being able to ping their location is now going to be impossible. Next, he pulls her badge from within and just holds it in his palm, like it is an injured bird at first. Then his blue fingers wrap around it tightly and he looks to Korsak with anger in his eyes.
"Her gun. It's missing," he tells him.
Before she can open her eyes, which feel excruciatingly heavy, she can only breathe in with labored breaths. Particles of dirt lodge into his nasal cavity and she huffs out harshly, feeling her throat constrict and a cough ravage through her wind pipe. Pin pricks of light begin to filter into her eyes, faint light with a haunting solitude to it. She tries to stand up but her head slams into something overhead and she falls to the ground again, cursing loudly. Trying to pick herself back up, palms raking along the dusty floor, her hands settle on a soft form. A groan escapes and she can barely make out the shape in the darkness.
"Maura, is that you?" she chokes out, stifling a cough with the back of her hand. She scoots closer and puts her hands on the form. It's a stupid question really because even in this small, dirty space, she can smell the faint traces of the doctor's perfume. The scent should be long gone from her body but it seems to cling to her, even in the wake of a brutally tiring workout.
The faint light above trickles in, from a loose floor board or crack, she is unsure. She still feels lethargic, drugged, and she absently reaches to her neck as she sees her friend shift to a sitting position. The strands of her hair fall in her face, obscuring Jane's view of any expression she might hold. Her hand goes to her head and she lets out a groan.
"Ouch," she sighs and backpedals into a corner.
"No, Maura, get over here," Jane commands, pulling her back into the light. Her fingers gently weave through Maura's hair, pulling it away from her face. What she sees makes her gasp. "What the hell happened? Did someone hit you?"
A long scrape covers the expanse of the right side of Maura's face. Specks of blood seep out in places and it looks raw and torn. Behind the tearing and redness, she can vaguely make out a purple-blue hue beginning to appear on the skin. She watches as Maura gently touches the wound and flinches. Jane tries to steady her hands on Maura's shoulders but she realizes they are shaking.
"I don't...know," Maura answers honestly. Dejectedly.
"Do you remember anything from back at the gym? Anything at all?" she soothes, going into detective mode. She glances around, trying to get a bearing on where they are, but fails.
"I went to the car and was going to put my bag in the trunk. Then I remember a jolt behind me. After that, I am finding it hard to recall events."
"Yeah, yeah. You went to the car and left me in the showers. I remember looking for you once I finished and didn't see you anywhere. Your clothes were still beside my gym bag and I began to panic. I decided to go to the garage to look for you," Jane recalls, putting together the fuzzy string of events from her pounding brain.
"Oh my God, Jane. Were we...injected with something?" Maura questions, a hand covering her mouth.
The questions chills Jane's blood even more than the temperature in the room. Her hands go back to the sore spot on her neck and she gets as close to the light streaming into the space as she can. Tilting her head, she searches the near darkness for her friend's eyes. It hurts to bend at the angle she is in but the crawl space can't be more than five by ten or so feet. Maura's fingers feel cold against her skin and the delicate touch sends a chill down her body.
"There is a small puncture wound on the flesh with minimal amounts of bruising," Maura tells her and Jane instantly turns the doctor's head to the side, seeing an identical mark. Her eyes fall. "I'm assuming I have it as well."
"What is going on here?" Jane spills out, exasperated and shaken. She sits down, pulling her knees to her chest and covers her face. "Where are we?"
"The laceration to my face must be from hitting the pavement after I was injected. Without a tox panel to examine our blood, it would only be pure speculation on my part as to what we are feeling the effects of," Maura tries to reason as she moves beside Jane, her shoulder brushing against her. "The same would go for knowing where we are."
"We only have time here, Maura. Our lives are on the line if we don't figure this out. So let's run through our options. First thing's first, what drugs cause sleep when injected?"
"It could have been a number of things, Jane. Perhaps flunitrazepam or midazolam . The effects of both would induce a deep enough sleep to where would would have no concept of the events unfolding. They would also create a languid feel upon waking, much like how hospital patients would feel after anesthesia."
"Much like I feel right now," Jane sighs, her head lolling back against the wall. She crosses her arms over her body and shivers. "It's freezing in here. Wherever here is."
She looks around but can see little, only dirt on the ground and large cinder blocks lining the walls. Above them, a heavy door of some sort covers them from the outside world. A cellar, she thinks. Someone has stuffed us in a damn cellar to get rid of us.
"This is bad, isn't it Jane?" Maura whispers beside her.
She has to be strong for her now, she knows it, but she fights back tears and the constricting feeling in her throat. She'd once asked Maura when she had ever known her to not step up. This time has to be no different. Her resolve must stay in tact, no matter how dire the situation seems.
But no words fall from her mouth, the question left to hang on the air and take on a rhetorical form. Maura's head comes to rest on Jane's shoulder and she lets her own face press against the soft curls. She reaches for her hand and twines her arm around her limb. She gives what she hopes is a reassuring squeeze to the fingers in her palm but feels hopelessness start to cloud her heart.
