Tuesday, 9:00 P.M.
Maura's barely restrained tears haunted Jane's consciousness throughout her mandatory efforts to secure the crime scene. As much as Jane wanted to make sure Maura was alright, there was no time; between keeping the remaining patrons from slipping out to their expensive cars and trying to keep the crime scene from being contaminated from curious lookey-loos, her focus was already wearing thin without factoring in her girlfriend's feelings in the mix. After ordering the bartender to replace the mood lighting with something more substantial, the brunette's eyes drifted over her shoulder, watching Maura's seemingly normal efforts to document the two dead women placed upon the stage. Her twitching fingers and shuddering shoulders were the only indication that something was amiss, given that her face was hidden behind golden waves of hair. Maura…I'm so sorry for getting you wrapped up in this.
Jane excused herself from another stalled conversation with a potential witness and walked to the stage. The two women displayed in the nude on stage gave the anxious detective a sense of déjà vu; their wrists and ankles showed evidence of black-and-blue bruising representative of being bound, eyes covered in a velvet blindfold, hair dyed burning red, and their hearts taken out in the same crudely efficient way. Heavy blood drops rained from the two messages displayed on the low ceiling, falling slowly upon the pale violated women before coagulating into dry brown puddles on the cold cement floor of the stage. Maura had since stood up from the bloodied bodies, covered in blood from her attempts to save the women from the inevitable.
Jane coughed to announce her presence. "Frost and Korsak should be here in about 15 minutes and I'll take you home."
"No," Maura said defiantly, her eyes erupting in fury.
"What…what's wrong? I thought you'd want to go home after everything?" Jane asked, knowing as soon as the words hit her mouth that she shouldn't have said them. "You don't need to be here, Maura. I've got it under control."
"Yes, Jane, I do need to be here," the blonde spat out. "I'm the head medical examiner, first responder to the scene, and I'm covered in blood. I can't exactly go home and forget about everything tonight."
A heavy silence developed between the two women. Never had Jane seen Maura so furious at anything, nonetheless her, before. Her hands travelled nervously through her loose brown curls, trying to come up with the right response to this new side of her best friend and lover. "This isn't your fault, Maura. If anything, I shouldn't have let you come with me on this idiotic baiting expedition. I could have waited but I wasn't patient. All I was thinking about was saving a life before the killer could strike again and not your safety. I know that I say this too often; but, I'm sorry."
"I really wish you would stop saying that. Stop being sorry for once, Jane. I made the decision to go." Maura screamed in frustration. "Instead of being sorry all the time, why don't you think about your actions for once? Think before you speak."
Looking over her shoulder, Jane quickly dragged Maura to the slightly concealed wings of the stage. "You're such a hypocrite."
"I'm a hypocrite?" she angrily replied back, making an effort to whisper. "Stop using big words that you don't understand, Jane."
"Every time I do exactly what you're doing right now, you get annoyed, but when Maura does it, everything is acceptable." Jane said, frustration making her words become jumbled. "If you don't want to talk about it, fine. If you don't want to talk to me about it, that's fine too. But don't bite me because I care."
Shadows danced in the dark from the bloody messages still dripping from the ceiling above the bodies, ignored by the two quarreling women. In a split second, Maura's anger snapped, leaving her slumped against the slim frame of her brooding girlfriend. Jane felt both her mind and body relax as the blonde's perfume played with her nose. She knew that her borrowed dress was now becoming evidence as the blood seeped from Maura's skirt, but that was the last thing on Jane's mind.
"I know that you care, Jane. It's just…I feel like if I had been just a little bit faster, maybe they would have been alive or I could have caught the killer in the act. Wishful thinking, I know, but I just can't stop myself from feeling at fault. I'm a doctor, a physician to the dead; I hate seeing my patients abused in this way. It makes me sick to know that I could have stopped this carnage, Jane," Maura shuddered before turning away, the tears finally falling down her cheeks.
"Sweetie, you can't do this to yourself." Jane said, her voice wavering slightly as memories came back to her conscious. "It'll lead you down a bad path. I was a patrol cop, wet behind the ears and looking to make a name for myself. On the radio, me and my partner got a call for back-up with a robbery suspect and, the stupid cocky kid that I was, ignored the call even though we were only a block away because he said that he had it under control. I had been looking to get fast-tracked for the detective's exam so we went to an apartment of what we presumed was a rape victim. I knew that being a first responder to a rape case would give me some juice to work with and I needed all I could get, being a woman aiming for a detective's shield. When we got up to the apartment, there was no one there besides a bunch of giggling kids, prank-calling and wasting time."
Maura leaned back from Jane's embrace, her eyes searching the brunette's shadowed ones. "What happened to the police officer?"
"The suspect was armed with a concealed weapon and shot him before committing suicide." Jane said before sighing heavily. "No one blamed me, which nearly killed me because I wanted the blame to be on me. Blame…gets rid of guilt. I started doing things to get rid of the guilt that I felt, things that I'm not proud of, Maura. Finally, my commanding officer told me that if I didn't shape up and focus on the present, he'd discharge me from the force. I screwed up and nearly let guilt overwhelm my entire future but you…you didn't make a mistake. These girls were already going to die, whether it was here or somewhere else. You did the best that you could do with the inevitable. That's something to be proud of."
"Oh Jane," the blonde said with compassion, lifting her hands to caress the strong smooth lines of her girlfriend's face. Jane's response was lost as a loud assortment of noises came from the front of the club near the doorman's post. The remaining patrons of the club who had chosen to not leave jumped in excitement as the sight of patrol cops, crime scene techies, and detectives rampaged through the foyer of the club. Frost and Korsak were the first inside and were looking around earnestly for Jane.
"Jane?" Frost's voice billowed into their ears, the moment between the two lovers ruined.
Damn it, Frost. The brunette shrugged to her girlfriend, stepped out from the wings of the stage. "Frost, I'm here. Maura and I were just looking for some evidence behind the wings, but we came up empty. We've got two victims, both female with the same M.O. as the last victim, including the bloody messages. As much I hate to admit it, this is definitely a serial."
The two men walked toward the crime scene being hastily taped up by techies and Jane noticed Maura walk from behind her, away from the bodies. Korsak lifted an eyebrow in confusion upon seeing the blood covered medical examiner walk off from the scene, but Jane's eyes told him to leave it alone. "She's probably going to go change her clothes," the detective reasoned, watching Frost look up at the bloody messages on the wall with a look of disgust.
Korsak scratched his head bewilderedly, following the raining blood drops coming from the ceiling. "So what do we have here…Star-crossed lovers meet upon a balcony, their fate sealed with the kiss of time. No matter the thousands of tales spun by the loyal third, nothing could retell this tale of woe and tragedy. Hope lost, melancholy gained. Well, at least we know this guy is still committed to making absolutely no sense."
"It's our job to make this make sense, Korsak," Jane said while watching the crime scene techies hover about the crime scene. "There has to be a pattern, something we can manipulate to get the link between these murders and get this serial off the streets. Come on, guys. Let's think outside the box."
Frost turned from the bloody messages, his eyes subconsciously moving in time with the ideas floating in his head. "We've got three murdered women with similar body types; dyed red hair; hearts taken out of their chests; bruised bodies; and bloody messages. I know you're in love with this artistic director guy for this, but we were there all day, Jane. Unless he planned this beforehand, he couldn't have done it. So, in conclusion, we've got nothin'. It's kind of hard to put a pattern together with nothin', Jane."
Jane ignored Frost, pacing up and down the small expanse of the stage. She knew there had to be something between these three victims that linked them together besides the obvious. Serials like this one were cocky, they didn't think they could get caught and had no qualms about leaving evidence behind, making her job easier, but having excess evidence didn't help if she had no idea how it connected to the big picture. Hell, I don't even know what the big picture is. Jane hated to admit it, but she was absolutely at a loss. There was something here...she could feel it in her bones.
Suddenly, a flash of creativity hit Jane's overworked brain. "Wait…what was the last message written over the first victim, Alina Bobrova's body, Frost?"
"The Beauty slumbers peacefully awaiting the kiss that will set her free amongst the Sin." Frost read from his opened iPad. "Do you see something?"
"Yeah, but I may just be spinning my wheels. Maybe the messages aren't independent from each other. This serial is trying to tell us something, literally." The brunette shook her head, nodding briefly at Maura's barely noticed return. "His victims all relate back to the story he's trying to tell."
Maura, now clad in a pair of borrowed Boston Police Department coveralls used for evidence retrieval on clothing, looked at the pacing brunette with focused hazel eyes that had none of the weakness of earlier. "But Jane, everything in your theory hinges on what story he's trying to tell. If the victims are connected by these messages, it's vital that we focus on them instead of running around, trying to catch nonexistent leads."
"But that could end up narrowing our focus too much, causing us to lose sight of what's right in front of our faces, Maura. The more time we spend trying to figure out the meaning behind these messages could mean more deaths in the long-run. That's the last thing we need for this case," Korsak counterclaimed against Maura's own theory. "Our aim is to get this serial off the street, not understand his psyche and M.O. I say we focus on what we do know; the victims. The last thing Boston needs is another Boston Strangler scare."
Frost looked from Maura to Korsak and back to Jane's stoic demeanor, sensing the tension between the medical examiner and experienced detective. "Or we can do a little bit of both. Jane and I can focus on the messages and Korsak can interpret the victims. This doesn't have to be an either-or scenario."
Unaware of the others' expectant looks, Jane stopped pacing as another realization hit her. "Oh my god, don't you see? The beauty is slumbering coincides with the first victim and our new victims are lovers who shouldn't be together…the next victim is probably going to be the last. Goddamn it…"
"That's an assumption, Jane. You can't be sure of that-"
"Maura, I don't have time to use the scientific method to determine the validity of my hypothesis. What always happens to star-crossed lovers? They die, case closed. This killer isn't going to keep killing until we figure him out; once this guy is finished, he's going to hop on a plane and be out of our jurisdiction, forever. We have to find something that we can use to get him while he's still in our reach." Jane commanded before her phone vibrated in her clutch purse and with a hurried motion, she answered the call before the phone could ring twice. "Rizzoli. Yes…yes, I know, Lieutenant. No…yes, I can be right there. Twenty minutes, top, sir."
The anxious brunette exhaled with pent up frustration, looking up at Korsak. "Thanks, Sgt. Korsak, for calling the brass on me. Now Loo is on my ass, saying he wants me in his office, yesterday. This day keeps getting better and better."
Damn it, what does he want? If he takes this case from me at this critical point…I just might have to go rogue. It's too late to catch someone up to speed on this case, especially now. A growl emanated from the brunette's throat, anger evident in the stillness of her body. There was no time to sit around playing politics with the Loo, she needed to be working with Korsak and Frost.
Searching her pocket, Maura threw her Aston's keys in Jane's general direction. "I'll be a little bit longer with the bodies so take my car. You'll get there faster and I won't have to worry about getting someone else to drive it back for me."
"Man…can't I catch a break?" Frost muttered, lowering his head in misery upon losing his chance to drive Maura's Aston.
Jane rolled her eyes in response and raised a hand in thanks before walking briskly away from the crime scene. "While I'm getting chewed out by the brass; Frost and Korsak, I want you to look into these two women and see what you can find. Maura, do your autopsy thing and ask the techies to put a rush on all of the evidence with these murders, including the first victim. I'm tired of working without some kind of evidence to back our theories up. Call me if anything breaks in the case."
Frost, Korsak, and Maura sighed heavily and began to get to work. It was going to be another all-nighter for the homicide unit and the medical examiner.
