The call from operations had come in so early that both Jane and Maura were still in bed sleeping. Maura was on her back sleeping peacefully with Jane curled into her side, her left arm draped over Maura's stomach. Jane's phone started ringing first, two seconds later it was Maura's. In their sleepy hazes they reached for what was making noise closest to them and mumbled into the devices groggy, "Rizzoli." and "Isles" at the same time. A moment later they were exchanging phones and repeating themselves. Ten minutes after they hung up Jane was dressed and ready, pouring coffee into travel mugs while Maura finished getting dressed. Twenty minutes after they'd gotten the calls they were out the door and on their way to a new crime scene. It was cold as hell, the temp hovering just a touch above thirty-five, and there was fresh snow in the air. Maura shivered a little as she stepped out of the chair.
"I told you not to wear a skirt." Jane grumbled as she pulled her coat a little more snuggly around her lanky frame.
"Ninety percent of the time I always wear skirts or dresses to work, Jane." Maura said as if the notion of wearing pants to work was just silly.
"Well this should have been part of the ten percent." Jane grumbled.
Maura gave her a look. "You were impatient several nights ago and soiled the last clean pair of work appropriate slacks I had. There's a rather large stain on the thigh I really hope my dry cleaner doesn't ask about."
Jane blushed and shushed Maura quickly. Then she smirked as another thought passed through her not quiet awake yet brain. She wasn't going to say it out loud but Jane liked that Maura almost always wore skirts and dresses. It made being naughty in the work place that much easier and more enjoyable. "Yeah, well, you're the one with the freezing legs."
"It was just a sudden chill." Maura argued. "I'm fine now. I rather enjoy the cold and you know I love the snow."
As they walked up to the steps of the old orthodox church Jane's hand went out automatically to press against the small of Maura's back as the shorter woman walked up the snow and ice slicked steps in her heels. She was about to say something when Maura cut her off, "Not a word about my shoes, Jane." Jane just smirked. Maura knew her to well. When they reached the top they saw the body huddled in the corner near the closed doors. "What do we got?"
"Young woman, apparent gun shot, and a blood trail that comes up the steps and into the church." Korsak answered.
Maura knelt by the body of the young woman and after a provisional examination said, "Early twenties, gun shot wound, obvious blood loss." She had another look at the body, stood to walk over to the blood trail, followed it down, then up again with her eyes, and then went inside. The three detectives followed her in. "My primarily field assessment is that she bleed out. From the looks of the trail she walked here from someplace else."
Jane shook her head. "Shot and then struggled to come here? Why here?"
"Wanted to die in a church?" Frost offered. "Or maybe she came here looking for help thinking a church was safe and had to have someone who could help her?"
While Jane, Frost and Vince speculated Maura turned to go back to the body but stopped. She'd heard something. It was faint, muffled, and at first she wasn't even sure she heard anything. She walked into the Nave, the main part of the church and then paused to listen. Was that a cat? Slowly she made her way to the front, her head titled slightly as she strained to listen. No, no that wasn't a cat. Although she wasn't religious herself she understood things about several different religions and held great respect for all of them, so normally she would never cross into the Sanctuary of an orthodox church because it was reserved for clergy and the like but the sound was coming from just behind the iconostasis.
"Maura." Jane said, suddenly stopping her conversation with her partners. She watched the blonde walk off and then quickly followed her. "What are you doing?"
Maura was crouching down when Jane came up behind her. When the blonde turned she had a baby in her arms. A baby, no older then a couple of months, wrapped in blankets, and hidden behind the holy screen. Jane's big brown eyes went wide as she looked over the tiny bundle. The baby was covered in blood but what was most startling to everyone in the room was the bloody fingerprint on its forehead.
"Why isn't it crying?" Frost asked.
Maura did a quick check and then answered, "She's cold, lethargic, and she needs an ambulance quickly." She held the baby as close as she could while asking Jane to retrieve things from her medical bag. Maura wanted to keep the baby safe, to help treat her medically, as well as collect as much evidence as they could before the paramedics got there and contaminated it. She was extra careful about preserving the bloody thumbprint.
"The print's small." Jane mused as she handed swabs to Maura. "Most likely a woman's. Maybe our vic's."
"Or a man with effeminate hands." Maura said softly so as not to startle the baby. "Kind of like Detective Frost's."
"Hey now." Frost protested as he hid his hands behind his back while Korsak snickered.
Maura looked up at him and explained, "I only meant that they're more slender then say Sergeant Korsak's."
"Which are clearly more ham fisted." Jane teased.
Maura did everything she could to warm the baby up and as she did so the baby became a little more alert and started to cry, which Maura encouraged. When the paramedics arrived she gave them her medically detailed assessment while they began on scene treatment. Because the baby was more or less evidence someone had to stay with her so Maura volunteered. Jane said she'd send Frankie over so Maura could return to the morgue and get started on the autopsy as soon as she could. Other then being cold there was nothing else wrong with the baby and once she was safe and warm in a crib with heat lamps she was much more alert and active. Maura stood over the crib looking down at the baby who had a death drip on her finger, smiling softly. Something about babies always soften Maura, bringing out a side of her she hardly knew she had.
With the exception of another case that involved a baby Maura hadn't really put a lot of thought into motherhood. Like her own mother she didn't think she'd be very good at it, but the more time she spent as a kangaroo volunteer, the more time she spent around babies and children in general, the more she wondered if perhaps she'd been wrong about herself. Maybe she could be a mother. Plus, now she had Jane, and she knew Jane would be a wonderful mother.
"Uhoh." Frankie said as he stepped into the room. "You got that look."
Maura looked up at her uniformed brother-in-law and titled her head ever so slightly as she asked, "What look?"
"That look Ma gets when she starts daydreamin' about grandkids." Frankie teased. "Are you and Janie thinkin' bout…"
"No, no Jane and I haven't even brought up the topic." Maura answered with a shake of her head. Then she looked down at the little baby girl who was looking up at her with bright eyes. "I was just wondering about this little one. Just a few months old and she's already witnessed the worse human's have to offer."
After leaving Frankie with their youngest witness ever, Maura headed back to headquarters. After changing into her black scrubs she walked into her autopsy room where the young woman's body was prepared and waiting for her. She began by taking fingerprints and blood, hair, and tissue samples knowing that her techs had already taken photographs. Then she collected scrapings while going over every inch of the body with a critical eye and sensitive touch. It was methodical work but Maura knew that the smallest of things could turn into case breaking leads. It was Maura's eye for detail, her desire to uncover the smallest clue, that had boosted the department's success rate when it came to cases like this, and that rise in success had lead to more funding. Her older, male, colleagues might have moaned and groaned about her but they couldn't argue that she was damn good at what she did and that trickled down to them when it came to having money and equipment.
Picking up her scalpel Maura moved her overhead light and then began making the Y incision that would open the young woman up, exposing her to Maura in a way that went far beyond intimate. After retrieving the bullet from the young woman's body Maura texted Jane to let her know she had it before going back to work. This was one of those cases where Maura wasn't going to stop until she'd exhausted all the help she could be to her detectives, and even then she would linger in the background offering what she could.
Because she'd been out canvassing the area and talking to a potential witness Jane didn't get to Maura's domain until a couple of hours later. When she walked in Maura was just finishing up a few things, the young woman's body still open on the table. "You got something for me?"
"Bullet." Maura said as she nodded towards what she recovered.
Jane nodded as she picked up the little plastic jar and shook the bullet from a 9mm inside. When she looked up at her wife there was something about the look on Maura's face that let Jane know there was something happening that Maura didn't quite get or was puzzled about. "What's up, Doc?"
Maura rolled her eyes at Jane and gave her head a little shake. "Have you been able to find out much on her?"
"Not yet." Jane said. "It happened so early in the morning no one saw anything. Got a few people who might have hurt something though. Why?"
"Because you're going to need to figure out who that baby is as well." Maura said as she looked into dark eyes. "This woman's never been pregnant, and she's a lot younger then she looks."
"Great." Jane said with a groan. "How much younger?"
"Mid to late teens at least. I've asked for blood samples from the baby." Maura said. "I'll run DNA on both of course."
"Sibling, sitter, kidnap." Jane ranted.
"Jane." Maura said crossly. "You're guessing. This is a no guessing zone."
Jane chuckled. "Ok, ok, I'll save all my guessing for upstairs. Have you taken a break since coming back?" When her wife shook her head she said, "Come on, we'll grab coffee and lunch up in the café."
"I'll meet you upstairs in a hour." Maura said. "I want to close her up first."
Jane nodded. She hoped that if she ever needed these kinds of medical services whoever it was doing it was as respectful as Maura was. "Alright."
When a child was involved in any way, be it as the victim, or a witness, or even a perp, it was hard to get the case off their minds. As Jane and Maura sat at the little round table that had become their table in the café, they were both lost in thought. Jane was going over what she knew, Maura going over the medical facts, neither saying a word to the other or anyone else. They didn't really need to. Just being close, being in each other's presence, was all they needed. It was comforting to them, and it helped them to focus and relax. Even before they were a couple they had that effect on each other, the absolute reality of what yin and yang was, two complete opposites balancing each other out in perfect harmony.
They were both half way through Angela's chicken pot pie when Jane got a text from Korsak saying there was a hit on the print taken from the baby's forehead. Leaving their half eaten lunches on the table Jane and Maura made their way upstairs to Brick where Frost was sitting behind his computer and Korsak was standing off to the side with a cup of coffee. "So who is she?"
"Lala Malik." Frost answered. "Sixteen. She's from New York."
"Why are her prints on file?" Jane asked as they looked at a picture of their victim.
"NYPD arrest from a year ago." Frost answered as he pulled up the NYPD report. "You're never going to believe this one. She and her eighteen year old husband, she was fifteen at the time, were picked up for vagrancy and causing a public disturbance in a park, where they were squatting."
"Oh what the hell!" Jane groaned as she made her 'this is fucked up' face.
"Malik." Maura said, looking thoughtful for a moment. "That's a very old Eastern European name found in the area of the Czech Republic." She paused a moment to think and then looked at Jane. "She could be Romani. That would explain the adolescent marriage."
"Gypsies, great." Jane groaned.
Maura gave her wife a very disapproving glare. "Jane, they really don't like that term."
Before Maura could jump into a lecture Jane said, "Lets see what we can find on her family and her husband."
Dealing with a group of people known to be socially isolated didn't make the case any easier. Everyone was looking at long hours with this one. After checking in with her office Maura decided to head over to the hospital to check in on the baby. When she returned to headquarters she'd arrived just in time to join Jane for dinner at the Dirty Robber. Jane tried to get Maura to go home, she couldn't do more until she got her test results back, but Maura refused. As they climbed the steps of headquarters they stopped, and Jane groaned, at a familiar voice.
"Hey Vanilla." Rondo called out as he trotted up the steps towards them. "Doctor Honey lookin' good."
"What do you Rondo?" Jane asked, putting herself between her CI and her wife without thinking. It wasn't that Rondo was dangerous, annoying yes, but not a threat. It was just Jane's natural instinct to protect Maura, just like when she threw her arm out to stop Maura from walking across the street until she checked traffic, or when she had to slam on the breaks even though she knew Maura had her seat belt on.
"I got some information you might find appealing, Vanilla." Rondo purred as he eyed both women as if they were fine pieces of art. "Somethin' about a dead girl and a baby."
Rondo's information came with a witness and only cost Jane eighty bucks, worth it if anything panned out. The witness, a working girl on her way home after a night of steady business, saw a man shoot a girl after struggling to take a baby away from her. The good samaritan hooker managed to distract the guy, from a distance of course, but it gave the young woman with the baby time to run off; to a church, to hide the baby, before dying of blood loss.
Over the next few days if Maura wasn't at work with Jane or at home she was at the hospital. Jane couldn't help but think about the baby Maura had delivered at the spa and the emotions that little boy had triggered in her wife. She'd never seen Maura so fierce as she had been while trying to protect that baby from its crazy ass biological mother. She wondered if their current case and baby Jane Doe weren't bringing up some of those same emotions and desires. Maura hadn't said anything but Jane could tell something was her mind, so late one night while they laid in bed Jane asked, "Maur, how much are car seats running these days?"
Maura was tired, she was snuggled into her bed beside her wife, she was comfortable and dozing off. It was kind of a dirty trick. "The Britax Advocate CS is three hundred and seventy dollars but doesn't have a very high smart rating. The First Years True Fit Premier has a better rating and is only two hundred and thirty dollars."
Jane sat up and stared down at her wife. "Maura, are you thinking about babies again?"
Pretty hazel eyes snapped open as Maura shook her head. "No. Not really. Not really more then just a passing thought."
There was a long pause as Jane and Maura just looked at each other. Finally Jane said, "We should talk about it. But not now."
Maura nodded. "We should. At some point, yes, but not right now."
Monday morning a Cambridge couple reported their baby and nanny missing. They'd been out of town until then and as soon as they got home and found the house empty they'd called the police. DNA proved that baby Jane Doe was their daughter Magdala. Jane wasn't sure which she felt more sorry for, the baby's name being Magdala or her having parents who went so long without noticing something was wrong. As the case progressed they learned that Lala hadn't wanted to marry, it had been arraigned and in her community she hadn't had a choice. Her husband had been abusive, and there were even rumors of material rape. Lala, who'd changed her name after fleeing to Boston, had run away from her husband and his family. Apparently his father had encouraged the young stupid husband to forcibly make his young bride submit to him and his wishes, which including having a baby. The husband and his father found Lala, mistook the baby for hers and tried to force her and the baby to go back with them. When she refused, when she tried to tell them the baby wasn't hers, the husband shot her with the intention of taking the baby.
It was one really messed up case and Jane was more then happy when it was solved and done and in the hands of the D.A. It had left both her and Maura physically and emotional drained so neither were in a hurry to pick up where they'd left off that night in bed when Jane asked about the car seat, though it lingered in the back of both of their minds.
"Drinks at the Robber or at home?" Jane asked as she and Maura left police headquarters long after dark.
"At home." Maura said. "In the bath."
Jane smirked. "Sounds like a damn good idea to me."