A/N: I am SO sorry for the delay in updating guys! Please be patient with me. I hope to update regularly from now on. Thank you for all the lovely support I've gotten from you guys!
I'd gotten the call first, Dispatch knew Korsak was the senior member of the team but for years they'd always called me first. Despite this fact, it was easy for me to spot both Korsak and Frost's cars sitting around the perimeter of the crime scene. I'd gotten the call first, but I'd arrived last. I parked off to the side, toward the edge of the barricade, trying to steel myself up, spackling the cracks with a new coat of "I've got myself together."
Today, the process was harder than usual.
But I emerged from my car maybe twenty minutes later with a twice applied polish of professionalism and a pair of blue surgical gloves tucked into my back pocket. I was walking toward the scene, trying to contain myself when a young officer came running up to me.
"You can't park your car there, ma'am."
I smiled at him, must be a rookie if he's working perimeter and doesn't know his own detectives. I'll admit it's hard, there's a lot of us and not all homicide. The scene has probably been crawling with detectives. "It's okay, I'm a detective."
He stopped and frowned at me. "Ma'am, all of our homicide detectives are here already. I'm going to have to ask you to leave."
And just like that, all my professionalism was gone. Now I was mad, irrationally so. Who the hell was this kid and where was his leash? "Look boy, call me ma'am one more time and see what happens." I pulled my shield up into his face, the metal making contact with his cheek. "See this badge? I'm a cop, I'm a detective and you're preventing me from examining my scene. Now get the hell out of my way."
The officer just stood there, completely immobile. Some of my sense was coming back, his behavior wasn't part of any academy training, this man had known abusive personalities and how to survive. My anger was beginning to dissipate as another officer ran up to us. I knew this one, officer Blayke was a Mexican female with short curly black hair. She was always friendly and knew how to stand her ground, we were on a first name basis, Anita and I.
"Jane, what the hell is going on?" She snapped at me. I knew what I must've looked like to her- a detective who'd snapped and was taking a power trip out on the rookie because I could.
There was a reason every homicide detective took mandatory psych evaluations every two years and at least four psychologist visits every six months. We saw the worst of the worst, the violent crimes. The small, petty reasons people were driven to kill so brutally always astounded me. But it did not surprise me in any way to know that most homicide detectives rotated out every five to six years averagely.
Warning signs of emotional instability are taught to every officer at the academy. We train our officers to watch out for our homicide detectives when they go crazy. To officer Anita Blayke, I must've been showing all the signs.
"He...I...the car..." My brain was starting to regain composure. I was losing my sanity and taking it out others. I looked at Anita, confusion in my eyes. She stepped closer and touched my wrist, pulling my badge away from the officer's face.
"It's okay, Jane. Everything is okay." She was pulling the shield out of my palm and placing herself between me and the other officer. "Jacobi, I want you to walk away now."
The officer looked at her incredulously. My badge was imprinted in his cheek, I was a detective on the edge of losing my sanity and she wanted him to just walk away? "Blayke, I don't think that's..."
"Jacobi." It was harsh and sharp. Louder than it needed to be. "Walk away. Now." Anita pulled me in for a shallow hug as Jacobi disappeared around the corner. In the deepest reaches of my mind I was hoping he wouldn't do anything to my car.
"I'm so sorry, Anita, I don't know what's happening." She released me, her hands still on my shoulders.
"It's okay, Jane. Take some time to cool off okay? I'll cover for you until you're ready."
I mumbled a thank you as she walked toward the crime scene tape, making sure no one came looking for me. I took a couple of deep breaths, paced for a couple minutes and then I walked into the scene.
The crime scene was a parking lot underneath a commercial building. Frost and Korsak were already inside looking at the body, compiling clues. I took a deep breath and hobbled down the incline to the small security outpost where I spotted my partners.
"What do we got?" I asked as I adorned gloves from my back pocket, and then rolled up my jacket sleeves.
Korsak looked up at me from his notepad. "Building security guard, his replacement found him at about five this morning. Looks like one shot execution style to the head." I leaned down to inspect the wound. "Looks about a .38 but you know Pike. He won't confirm it until tomorrow."
Hearing Pike's name brought me up short. It had been two years since Maura came to a crime scene, two years since Pike had been named as her replacement, but two years wasn't nearly enough time to adjust. I took a deep breath before I returned to my investigation. Looking through his pockets, I glanced at the name badge clipped to his shirt. "Declan Ryan."
"We're checking the security cameras but, as of now, it looks like they were disabled around one am. Most likely our kill window," Frost said as he walked over to us. "The building houses a software company called Storr-Up. They do professional hard drive backups and store them on site."
"So we're looking at a possible security breach. Somebody wanted one of those hard drives." I said as I stood up.
"I spoke with the new guard and it doesn't look like anyone actually entered the building. So far, it's looking like something personal against Mr. Ryan over there."
I nodded. "Korsak and I will check out the vic's family. I want you to stay here and wait for the CEO. I want them to do a full inventory check. If anything is missing or tampered with, I want to know immediately."
Korsak and I made our way through the scene. It was hard to push our way past the plainclothes detectives who weren't needed, the various officers standing around, the extra CSRU techs who always managed to come in groups of at least twenty. Crime scenes were always so damn crowded; there were too many people that didn't need to be here. I was fed up of pushing my way through people when I exploded. "Alright! Everyone NOT needed, needs to leave NOW." I screamed it loud enough for Jacobi to have heard outside.
Most of the people were surprised by the outburst, and were staring at me with open mouths. Those who were smart enough, were already making their way to the exits. I was known for keeping a tight ship at my scenes, sometimes I even let people who didn't need to be there stick around, make them pretend they were important. Today was not one of those days. Today, I wanted a small group of CSRU techs and my team.
"You okay, Jane?" Korsak asked as we approached his unmarked.
Glancing up at him, I nodded. "It's just been a rough week." We entered the car and he drove quietly through the streets of Boston.
"Gonna tell me what happened to your foot?"
"Nope." I pulled an extra pair of sunglasses from the glove compartment and turned away from him. I needed to stay focused, stay in work mode. I was not willing to crumble on the job again.
Korsak sighed heavily beside me. "Jane, you know I'm just worried about you. You're not the first detective I've seen lose their partner in the line of duty-"
I cut him off before he could dig his hole any deeper. "Maura wasn't my partner. She was my wife."
"You know that's not what I meant." He paused briefly, considering his next choice of words. "You're not the first person who's lost their spouse on the job. Cavanaugh is just one of the many I know."
"How many years did it take him to get over it? I know there's some timeline taped to a wall you all are following. Maybe I go against the odds." I looked at him sharply though I knew he couldn't see it behind the glasses. "Just leave it alone, Vince."
"Damnit Jane, no. I care about you, I won't sit back and watch you kill yourself over something you couldn't have prevented. This isn't what Maura would have wanted."
"Maura would have wanted to live, to grab beers at the Robber and exchange witty social banter she never quite grasped. But she isn't here anymore so there's no use telling me what she would have wanted. I know better than anyone the answer to that particular question, so just drop it. This is the last time I'll warn you."
He nodded and the car plunged into silence. He was doing his best and, on some deep level, I recognized that. But, listening to him tell me one day I'd be where Cavanaugh is, trying to date and marry again, was too much. And hearing him tell me what Maura would have wanted for me? No, that was not a place I was willing to go with him. His situation was different. You can get divorced as many times as you want, but you can only lose a life once.
Declan Ryan lived in a townhouse in a crowded suburban neighborhood of Boston. The exterior was a bright, happy blue with a white door and flower boxes. Children's toys lay scattered in the grass that surrounded the property. I let Korsak walk up in front of me, and he knocked twice before we heard movement from behind the door.
A woman in her thirties opened the door with a smile on her face. She was beautiful, long blonde hair so light it was almost white, big blue eyes matching the paint on the house. "Claire Ryan?" Korsak asked as she nodded. "Boston PD, can we talk to you inside please, ma'am?" Claire stepped out of the way and ushered us inside.
Immediately I saw even more toys spread throughout the lower level of the house. Claire pushed some out of the way with her feet, giving us a clear path to the living room. She offered us glasses of water and cleared some space on the couch. Korsak glanced at me hesitantly and I nodded at him, I'd be the bearer of this bad news.
"Mrs. Ryan, I'm terribly sorry to have to inform you that we found the body of your husband, Declan, early this morning." Her shock and despair was instant, palpable. I remember being just like her, able to feel the weight of the world crashing down around me. Tommy once told me that it wasn't gravity that kept us tethered to this earth but people, and I'd never realized what that meant until I was lost in space.
And I watched as Claire Ryan became untethered and as lost to the world as I was, being completely useless as to how to stop it.
"Mrs. Ryan? I'm sorry about your loss but we need to ask you some questions about your husband." She looked up at me with these horror filled eyes, I'd been the one who ended her world and now I had the audacity to question her? I wish I could tell her I understood, flash some badge of widowship so we could ban together. Maybe the club will pitch in for t-shirts.
"We have twin boys, just over a year old. They'll never know their father. H-how am I supposed to tell them about their father?" Claire became hysterical, sobbing into her hands. Korsak looked at me as if I'd be able to help pull her from this, as if my comforting touches and soothing words will make her forget that her sons no longer had a father and never would.
"I know this is an incredibly difficult time for you, is there someone we can call to help with the boys while we ask you a couple questions?"
"You know this is incredibly difficult?" She snapped her head up and stared at me as if she wished I'd be the body on the pavement instead of her husband. "How the hell would you know? You know nothing about my incredibly difficult time."
Claire Ryan was standing up by now, finding that anger inside of her that builds up shortly after the grief. Apparently there's five stages and I guess they happen linearly but I've found they come in waves. Short bursts of each aimed at everyone in the room. Small grenades you can't diffuse.
"I lost my wife not even two years ago, Mrs. Ryan." My hands started hurting even as I admitted it, bowing my head. But I could tell the anger began to diffuse from her body and she slunk to the couch. "I've been in your place, I know how hard it is to hear your world ended. But I never cooperated with the detectives investigating her death and we never caught them. So please, help us find who did this to your husband."
Claire nodded and took a sip of water from her glass, clutching a small blanket with car designs. "Declan has worked as a security guard since he got out of high school, he wanted to be a surgeon but couldn't afford med school so he took day courses at the community college and patrolled at night, usually studying for a test. Some weeks I wouldn't see him for a couple days because he was back to back. He was supposed to graduate next month, got a full ride into a surgical program."
She paused, unable to continue telling the story of her husband's ambitions in the past tense. It was still too soon to think of him as dead. "Did Declan have any enemies? Any disputes?"
"No. He was quiet, kept to himself. Work and school and then home, he didn't even have any friends. He was focused on me and the boys." She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue Korsak handed her. She mumbled a thank you at him.
"What about at work? How long had he been working for Storr-Up?"
Claire paused as she tried to recount the months in her head. "About two years. He was hired when they moved into that building, they came to Declan for their security. He was so excited, said they wanted him to come up with his own salary and security plans." Claire stopped and looked up at us. "Jean-Claude loved Declan, gave him raises that I didn't think the company could afford. No one had any problems with him, he was a kind, giving man. I don't know what else to tell you, detectives."
I nodded and stood up, practically dragging Korsak off the couch with me. "Thank you for your time, Mrs. Ryan. I am so sorry for your loss." Claire Ryan nodded and followed behind us towards the door.
"And I for yours, Detective Rizzoli." I smiled half-heartedly at her before leaving.
As I had suspected, Storr-Up declined our offer of help, but they had no qualms with our detectives staying around to supervise. Frost and Jean-Claude seemed to be getting along perfectly, as we walked down the hallway towards his office we heard them laughing. Probably some weird technical joke about the innards of computers.
Korsak and I rounded the corner, fully prepared to interrupt their newly developed bromance. I did not have time for this.
"When's the first date?" I asked sarcastically as I entered the rather large, elaborate office. The two men were sitting by the desk, the young CEO behind his, Frost leaning on the edge smiling at me.
"You missed it, the wedding invites are already in the mail." This retort came from Jean-Claude, surprising all of us. The CEO couldn't have been older than twenty-six, his dark brown hair slicked back even though it was cropped. He had the brightest blue eyes I'd ever seen and an intelligent smile about him.
I walked further into the office, taking a seat in one of the leather chairs facing his desk. Frost pushed himself up and walked toward the door, mumbling something about checking on the CSRU techs. "Do you mind if we sit?" This came from Korsak, trying to be polite after my first remark. It didn't seem to faze the young CEO.
"Of course not, help yourselves. Do you want anything to drink? Water, coffee, the souls of young children?" His smile warmed his face.
I laughed at that one. "Only if they're fresh."
"Wouldn't dream of serving Boston's finest anything else."
Korsak just frowned at us, this was a murder investigation, didn't we have any sense of professionalism? He should know the answer to that one by now. "Mr. McLoughlin, while I'm enjoying your witty banter with my partner here, we do have some business to attend to."
He held up his hands towards Korsak and smiled at me. "I apologize Detective Korsak, and please, call me Jean-Claude." He reached over for a black file folder and opened it on his desk. "Please, let us get to business."
Korsak opened his small notepad and looked expectantly at Jean-Claude. "Were any drives missing or tampered with?"
"Only one drive was missing from our archives, it belonged to one of our older members, let me get her name for you." He looked at the black folder and began to scan its contents. "Here we are, Myrtelle Canavan. She opened her account with us on May 1st, 2009."
It immediately dawned on me that the day she opened her account was the day after I married Maura. But this was a murder investigation and not in any way connected to my wife. "How many times has Mrs. Canavan accessed her drive?" Korsak's question brought me from my daydream.
"The day she opened the account, she brought in her computer to be scanned. She did the same on…" He flipped through the file again. "February 7th, 2012." Again, I connected it to Maura, that was the day she had died. "I remember that day, it was right before closing and I was the only one in the building. Mrs. Canavan brought it in a hurry, two computers actually, and demanded I back them up. She offered to pay double for the service."
"Do you have an address on file for her?" I asked, my throat dry with the tears I would shed in the car later.
Jean-Claude shook his head. "Unfortunately not, we only grab the addresses when a tech has to go and physically back up the drives. It became popular for clients to bring them in when we moved into our new building, we'd had to temporarily cancel home visits."
"What about a description or security footage of Myrtelle Canavan?"
"We didn't have cameras installed yet, all I can remember of her was that she was maybe 5'7", about thirty-four, I'd guess. I wish I could be of more help."
Korsak and I stood up, smiling and offering out our hands, thanking him for all his help and that one of the officers would let him know when they were done. I left my card on the edge of his desk, asking him to call if he or any of his employees could tell me anything else about the mysterious Myrtelle Canavan. And when I reached my car, I told Korsak I wasn't feeling well and was calling it a night. He smiled at me, just a small one, laced with understanding. And when he pulled away, I sat in my car and cried.
As always, thank you for your continued support. I look forward to hearing your thoughts!:)