Chapter 4

It had been three years since she last set foot inside the building. It hadn't changed. It looked exactly the same like it had done when she walked out of the main entrance doors three years earlier, ready to embrace a different part of her life. Now she stood on the sidewalk, her winter coat securely buttoned up to protect her from the bitter cold December wind. Winter was well and truly here and overnight the first flakes of snow had fallen.

Maura took a deep breath, climbed the three steps to Boston's Police Department Headquarters' front door and stepped inside the pleasantly warm building. She removed her gloves, pushed them into her pockets and crossed the lobby towards the uniformed desk officer. She didn't recognise him but when he looked up he instantly flashed a smile.

"Doctor Isles."

She didn't correct him on the fact she had taken on her husband's name. She was too surprised that this unfamiliar officer knew who she was but then she realised that for many years she had been a household name around BPD. In a way she shouldn't be surprised that even those who arrived after she left knew about the Queen of the Dead.

"Yes," she said with a tentative smile. "Doctor Maura Isles. I'm here to see Sargent Vince Korsak."

He nodded, handed her a visitor's badge that she clipped onto her white cashmere sweater once she had removed her coat and then pointed towards the elevators. "You know the way."

The sound of her heels clicked against the grey lino floor as she walked to the elevator and pressed the 'up' arrow. As she waited for the doors to open, her eyes drifted around the lobby and came to a rest on the small cafeteria on the other side. A handful of uniformed officers just walked out clutching cups of coffee and a couple of detectives enjoyed what looked like a late breakfast. Maura searched for a familiar flash of brown hair but she didn't see Angela Rizzoli. Her heart sank a little and she was snapped out of her thoughts when a soft 'ping' announced the elevator had arrived. The doors slid open and to her relief it was empty. She stepped inside and rested her back against the wall when the door slid shut.

Her heart pounded in her chest with such force that she almost believed it would burst through her ribcage. The palms of her hands became sweaty as she watched the numbers above the elevator doors light up. When the light hit the number four, the elevator stopped and the doors opened. Maura hesitantly stepped out onto the corridor and realised immediately that it had been painted.

The dull, boring shade of magnolia that had covered the walls when she still worked here had been replaced by a warmer shade of blue, giving the corridor a much more airy feel. Posters warning people about pickpockets and advertising phone numbers to call in times of crisis were plastered across a large bulletin board. In the distance she heard the sound of a phone ringing and she took a deep breath before starting towards the large double doors that separated the hallway from the Homicide bullpen.

When she reached the doors Maura held still. She'd lost count of the amount of times she had walked through these doors. It had always been to see Jane. Whether it was work related or just because she wanted to see her. It had been so natural once, so normal. Now it didn't feel like that at all. It felt frightening; as if stepping through these doors meant confronting something she wasn't ready to face.

Her departure from BPD had been sudden and unexpected. In the weeks after her wedding she and Ethan visited England and she was offered a rotation in one of London's finest hospitals. She accepted, desperate to change her views of the world. It was only short, twelve weeks, but in that time period she sent in her resignation. Although she and Ethan continued to travel between London and Boston, she never went back to her old job as an ME.

The memory of her wedding brought her back to Jane. Jane hadn't been there at her wedding. In fact, she had no idea where Jane had been that day but it wasn't at the church or her parent's summer house on the outskirts of town. By then they had drifted too far apart, had been too broken, to be able to look into each other's eyes and wish for happiness.

She missed Jane. She missed her with every beat of her heart. She missed everything they had once been. She even missed the nights where they had been drawn to each other after the darkness of their job took hold, slowly strangling them unless they found some kind of safety and release. She remembered those moments vividly and often, no matter how hard she tried to store them in the back of her mind. The moments where she had slept with Jane weren't moments she could forget. They were always there. Jane was always there.

Maura took a deep breath and pushed the doors open. Immediately the sound of voices and phones ringing and fingers across keyboards reached her ears. She looked around the bullpen. Nothing had changed. Three years later and the layout was exactly the same. The desks were still in exactly the same position and almost immediately her eyes were drawn to the spot where Jane used to sit. The desk was cluttered with paperwork, and an empty cup of coffee. The chair had been abandoned almost in what looked like a rush. Someone else had sat at that desk. Jane wasn't here.

"Doctor Isles?"

She looked up at the sound of a familiar voice and looked straight into the kind, warm eyes of Sargent Vince Korsak.

The first thing she noticed was the extra grey hairs and the few extra lines around his eyes. The next thing she saw were the dark circles around those eyes and the fact that he seemed to have lost weight. There was an old coffee stain on his shirt, betraying that he had been here a lot longer than he would like to admit.

"Sargent Korsak," Maura said, suddenly aware how her voice was shaking. She extended her hand but he ignored it, wrapping her up in one his bear hugs instead. She relaxed into him, feeling the unease and fear slowly fade away, and she rested her head against his shoulder.

"What are you doing here?" he asked once he had let go of her. He looked at Maura from head to toe.

She had cut her hair. It now reached down to her shoulders. Time had been kind to her, kinder than it had been to him. Dressed in her white sweater and a pair of designer jeans and leather boots she looked as stunning as he remembered her being. But when his gaze shifted back to her eyes he noticed the concern and he knew why she was here.

"I heard what happened to Jane." She swallowed the unexpected lump in the back of her throat away now that she spoke Jane's name out loud. A flash of anger lit up her hazel eyes and she looked at Korsak with determination. "I'm here to help."

Korsak smiled sadly. "I don't know what there is you can do, Maura." He switched to using her first name, something he done only a few times before. Defeat was etched across his face. "I don't know what there is that any of us can do. Jane…" He paused, his gaze drifting to the messy desk across the room. "She won't let us help her."

"Why?" Maura asked softly.

"This is Jane," Korsak replied. "You know how she is."

Maura wasn't too sure about that. Until three years ago she thought she knew Jane Rizzoli. They had been best friends. Jane was perhaps the only real friend she ever had and she couldn't have imagined living without her. Jane was part of her life. But somehow things changed. The lines between friendship and lust became blurred and what followed was a disaster she wished she could forget. They had been so broken that they had sought out each other's shelter but it had only ripped them apart.

The doors behind them opened and Frost walked into the bullpen, his face buried in several pieces of paper. He almost didn't see Maura but when she put her hand on his arm when he passed by her, he turned around. Almost immediately his face lit up and he wrapped his arms around Maura, pulling her close. When his face was close to her ears he whispered something only she could hear.

"I knew you'd come back."

Maura just gave him a puzzled look when he let go of her but he had already turned around and walked back to his desk. She then looked at Korsak.

"What can you tell me?"

"Come," Korsak said as he held the door for her. "I'll buy you a coffee."

They went back down to the lobby and walked into the small cafeteria. Maura froze in the doorway and when Korsak noticed she was no longer behind him he turned around. He saw the sudden fear and sadness across the doctor's face and sighed. "It's okay, Maura," he said. "Angela doesn't work here anymore."

She hesitantly stepped into the café and Korsak poured them two cups of coffee. He then found them the table furthest away from the door, gave Maura her coffee and watched how she fiddled with the lid. He realised that, until this moment, he and the doctor had never shared a drink in the café alone before. There had always been Jane. But now that she wasn't here the emptiness of the whole situation really hit home. Seeing Maura without Jane only made that feeling worse.

"How much do you know?" Korsak asked when Maura finally looked up at him.

"Not much," she admitted. "I arrived back from London only yesterday and when Ethan turned on the TV…" She swallowed hard as she remembered seeing Jane Rizzoli being led out of this building in handcuffs. She had looked so lost. "I saw Jane. The news reporter said she had been arrested on suspicion of murder."

Korsak nodded. "Did they say who she allegedly murdered?"

"Aaron McKenna."

"He is, was, a serial rapist. We caught his case from Vice not long after you left when one of his victims died from the injuries he inflicted on her. We busted him with DNA and he went to prison," Korsak said and peeled the lid of his coffee mug so he could add some Splenda. "Jane took the case pretty hard. McKenna was a monster so when he want to jail, Jane was relieved. But then the news came that he was going to be freed after only serving three out of his fifteen years."

"Why did they let him out when they knew how dangerous he was?"

"Overcrowding, good behaviour, you tell me." Korsak made a desperate hand gesture. "When Jane found out, she changed. She became withdrawn, almost secretive. In the two weeks that followed we barely saw her. Cavanaugh hauled her ass into the office to reprimand her but she told him she didn't care."

"Jane didn't care?" Maura arched an eyebrow. "Jane loves being a detective. Nothing could ever change that."

Korsak nodded. "We all knew that. Then one night I get a call saying Jane's shot McKenna in the head." His face darkened as he remembered that fateful night. It was late, almost midnight, and bitter cold. "When I got there she was still standing over his body with the gun in her hand. I have never seen someone look up to me with such dead eyes as Jane did that night."

Korsak felt a cold shiver creep down his spine when he remembered the moment he got the call. He'd driven like a maniac across town to find Jane and when he pulled up at the scene, yellow tape already cordoned off the area. Two uniformed rookie officers were watching Jane as she stood over the dead body of McKenna, gun still in hand. There was blood on her face and on her clothes from the moment the bullet had lodged itself into his head. The pool of blood across the sidewalk had spread and continued to grow bigger. When she looked up at him he saw the same broken woman he had found the moment he freed her from Hoyt. He had hoped, prayed, he would never see that haunted look in Jane's eyes again but there she was, looking at him as if everything she had ever been was gone.

"I thought the day Jane was attacked by Hoyt was the worst of my career," he said softly. The sadness in his voice was unmistakable. "Until I saw her that night. She looked so…so… broken."

Maura's heart shattered. The thought of Jane on the street, in the middle of the night, her hand quivering as it held the freshly fired gun, tore her soul apart. She could imagine the detective's face, hauntingly lit up by the blue and red flashing lights that cut through the darkness. She swallowed, trying to force the sudden wave of nausea to the background.

"So nobody saw her actually fire the gun?"

Korsak shook his head. "That is her only defence." He picked up his coffee. "If she would talk."

"Jane's not talking?"

"No. We called the best lawyer we can think off, called in a whole bunch of favours to give her the best legal representation we can find in the whole of Boston, but Jane hasn't said a word. Funny thing is, we tested her hands and clothes for GSR and although the test was positive, there was nowhere near as much as you would expect when someone shoots someone in the head at close range."

Maura leant back in her chair, her eyes fixed on the older detective. "So that means…"

"There is a chance that Jane did not fire that gun."

"If she didn't shoot him then why doesn't she say so? Doesn't she realise she can go to prison for the rest of her life? Lose everything she's ever had?"

"We're not allowed to talk her since Cavanaugh has managed to pull some strings allowing us to work this case whilst IAB is looking over our shoulder," Korsak answered. "Internal Affairs isn't happy about it and they're scrutinizing our every move but this is all we can do for Jane. The lab is doing everything they can but the gun didn't have prints on it. We can't help her unless she wants to help herself."

"Is she allowed visitors?" Maura asked softly. "Can I see her?"

"You'll have to talk to her lawyer. I know they're keeping her separated from the rest of the prison community," Korsak answered and looked up at Maura. He knew she was thinking the same thing he was.

It had only been a few years ago that Maura herself had been a suspect in a murder case. She was arrested, by Jane, and transferred to that same prison. But unlike Jane, she had not been separated from the prison population. The beating she suffered at the hands of angry inmates was something she would never forget and the thought of Jane trapped within those same walls, chilled Maura to the bone.

Korsak reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a business card. "Here. This is Jane's lawyer. He's a good man. If anyone can help her, it's him. Give him a call. I know he'll do everything in his power to get you into that prison."

"Thank you," Maura smiled as she slipped the card into purse. Warm hazel eyes looked up at the detective sitting across the table and her features hardened slightly. "Now what can I do to help you?"

The corners of Korsak's lips curled up. "When you resigned, they hired Doctor Pike as your replacement."

Maura's eyebrows shot up. "You have been stuck with that imbecile for three years?!"

"I can't get you into the morgue without comprising the chain of evidence but…." Korsak's eyes lit up a little. "I can get you a copy of Pike's autopsy report. Are you up for some of your old tricks, Doctor?"

Maura smiled but behind her eyes flickered all different kinds of emotions. "Anything to help Jane," she answered as she stood up from her seat and walked back to the elevator alongside Korsak. "If she really is innocent, I want to help you prove it."