Author's Note: Hey All, I want to thank you for all the reviews, favorite's and follows. I'm having a blast writing this and that in and of itself would be enough but it's great to see that others are enjoying it too. Plus I'm alway's open to ideas and or constructive criticism.
Along that vein, I want to ask if you think this should be bumped up to an "M" rating because of the mention of violence in this chapter. I don't think it is overly explicit but I'd be interested in what you all think.
Since I don't think I mentioned it in the last chapter. I do not own Rizzoli and Isles and I make no money from this story. I just enjoy playing with Jane, Maura and the whole BPD gang!
Bernie gave her a searching look, clearly trying to decide if she could trust her. Finally, she just asked "Can I trust you? Really trust you? With my life and Bobby's and Bryleigh's lives?"
Jane thought it an odd question but she could see how serious Bernie was so she gave her the best oath she could think of. "I swear on my honor as a police officer that I will protect you and your brother and sister with my life if necessary."
Tearing up again Bernie replied, "It might just come to that. There's something I have to tell you."
Just then there was a knock at the door and Bernie grabbed Jane's arm in a vice grip of terror. "Don't let them get us!"
Jane had locked her gun in the gun safe in the entry hall closet as soon as they had come in the house but seeing Bernie's reaction to a simple knock at the door she wondered if that had been a bad idea.
Removing the girl's hand from her arm and giving it a gentle squeeze, Jane said. "Stay here, everything will be fine I promise"
She hurried down the stairs. Maura was sitting on the couch in the living room. Hearing her wife come downstairs and unaware of the scene that had just taken place up stairs, she said. "Oh good, can you get the door Jane? I am otherwise occupied." Her tone was odd and glancing over to the couch Jane realized Maura was pleased with herself and rightly so. She had both Bobby and Bryleigh with her on the couch and they were both sound asleep. If Jane wasn't so concerned about what had just happened with Bernie she would have taken a picture with her phone.
She was about to tell Maura to take the children up stairs and wait there until she said it was okay to come down when she heard a floor board creaking behind her. She spun around ready to confront whoever might be preparing to attack but pulled back her counter strike at the last moment. "Damn, Bernie, I thought I told you to stay upstairs."
"Bobby and Bryleigh are down here!" She exclaimed, assuming that was justification enough for disobeying Jane.
Jane was about tor disabuse her of that notion when the knock came again. "Help Maura get you brother and sister upstairs and stay there until I say it's safe to come down!"
"Jane, what's going on?" Maura's voice betrayed her fear. She handed the baby to Bernie, who had come around the couch to help her, and she stood with Bobby in her arms.
"Later Maur, I promise. Just get the kids up stairs now."
Maura considered insisting Jane explain what was going on but reconsidered when she realized she had children to consider now. Nodding she headed upstairs with Bobby in her arms and Bernie and Bryleigh following behind.
Jane waited until they were all upstairs before she approach the door. She considered getting her gun but whoever was on the other side of the door knocked again, louder this time and Jane was afraid if she didn't answer the door they might kick it in.
Approaching the door quietly she leaned forward, looking through the peephole and relaxed. Pulling open the door she layed into her brother. "Dammit, Frankie, you scared the crap outta me."
Frank looked puzzled, "What, why? And its 'Frank'".
"Never mind, what took you so long? I thought you'd be here two hours ago." Jane led Frank into the living room. "Hang on a sec," she said then walked to the base of the stairs and loudly stated, "It's okay, it's just Frank."
Maura appeared at the top of the stairs. "Bernie and I are putting the younger kids to bed. I'll be down as soon as I can."
"Okay."
Jane walked back into the living room. "You eat yet? I can heat up some of Ma's lasagna?"
"I'm starving that would be great, thanks. I haven't eaten since lunch."
"No problem." They headed into the kitchen. "You want a beer?" Jane asked, heading for the fridge.
"Better make it a Coke. Technically I'm still working. I've got to interview the kids."
Jane placed a can of Coke in front of her brother, who had taken a seat at the kitchen island, and went back to the fridge to get the lasagna. Putting a huge portion on a plate she covered it and put it in the microwave.
Turning back to her brother she said, "Maura's putting the younger ones to bed. You'll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to Bobby. He was out like a light so I don't think you'd have gotten anything from him tonight anyway."
"Okay, what about the older girl? What was her name Bennie?"
"Bernie, short for Bernice."
"I'd prefer to wait if.." Jane began then saw the look on her brother's face. Remembering her earlier conversation with Bernie and Bernie's reaction to a knock at the door she got a sinking feeling in her stomach. "What?" she demanded, "What did you find at the scene?"
Just then the microwave beeped and Jane pulled the plate of lasagna out sitting it in front Frank along with a fork and a napkin.
Picking up his fork and cutting off a chunk of the lasagna, Frank sighed, wishing he had better news. "I think she's right Jane, Bernie that is, she said the crime wasn't what it looked like. She said her father would never kill her mother or himself and the evidence backs her up."
Jane was not surprised. "What did the crime scene techs find?" she asked resignedly.
"That there was at least one other person in the room when the crime went down, maybe more," Frank replied. "Whoever it was they were good, techs almost missed it. They think whoever it was may know something about forensics or at least about forensic counter measures." Frank paused to wolf down a bite of his dinner, washing it down with a swig of soda.
"How can they tell that?" Jane wondered.
"Well, for one thing, even with all the blood at the scene they only found a couple of partial footprints that didn't match either of the Cliftons. And, the foot prints they found were entirely nondescript, probably made from a common brand of leather-soled shoes so there's no way to match the print to a specific brand of shoes and possibly find where they were purchased."
"Damn," Jane breathed pinching the bridge of her nose.
"Also, despite the presence of a good bit of arterial blood spray they couldn't find any voids in the spatter to indicated the presence of anyone else in the room. The only indication that there was someone besides the Cliftons in that house was those two partial foot prints."
Frank let that sink in while he continued to eat lasagna, then he continued. "There's more. It's pretty bad" he glanced up the stairs towards where he knew the children were. "When we realized we weren't dealing with a murder suicide I called Kent in. I stopped by the morgue when I was done at the scene. He was still working on the autopsies but he said the wounds on Theresa Clifton only looked like the act of an enraged husband. He said, aside from the fatal wound, they were all strategically placed to be extremely painful and or bloody but not deadly."
Frank pushed his plate aside, suddenly losing interest in his dinner. "He said he had seen similar injuries when he was in Afghanistan."
Before he could say more Jane said it for him, "They were questioning the Cliftons, torturing the wife to get her or the husband to tell them what they wanted to know. There had to be more than one, someone had to control the husband while the wife was being tortured. Were there any ligature marks on the husband?"
"I asked Kent the same thing. At first it appeared there weren't but then he used the UV light on the husband's corpse and it showed some peri-mortem bruising around the wrists and ankles. He says they must have used something soft and thick like a towel or something. If they used rope, or tape, or zip ties it would have showed up in a visual inspection of the body. Like I said, these guys were good."
"Damn!" Jane said again, angrier this time.
"Not that you haven't already figured it out but Kent said the husband didn't cut his own throat either. It was close but the angle and depth of the cut were just a bit off for someone cutting their own throat."
Jane puffed out a breath in frustration. "So the questions are, what were they looking for and did they get it? It seems likely they did, since they killed both of the Cliftons and left but I suppose something could have spooked them into leaving before they were done." Jane's expression said she didn't hold out much hope for that option.
"I hope they did get whatever it was they were looking for." Maura's voice coming from the kitchen door caused them both to jump.
"Jesus Maura! Don't sneak up on people like that." Jane exclaimed, putting her hand to her chest. "What do you mean you hope they got what they were looking for?" Jane's look of alarm morphed to one of confusion.
Maura's look said quite clearly she hadn't snuck up on anybody. "I mean, if they didn't get what they wanted from the Cliftons they could come after Bernie. We all know there's something she hasn't told us yet."
Jane nodded, Maura had a point. In fact, Bernie had been about to tell her something before Frank's knock sent her into a panic. "How much did you hear and where is Bernie by the way?"
"I heard enough to be worried about the safety of those three kids, especially Bernie since the other two are too young to know much of anything. Bernie's upstairs with Bobby. The process of preparing for bed woke him up and he's having trouble getting back to sleep. I offered to stay but she wanted to do it. When I left she was singing him a song about a mocking bird hill?"
Frank and Jane smiled despite the dire circumstances. Their own mother had sung them to sleep with Mocking Bird Hill when they were little too.
Frank gave Maura a quick recap of what she had missed and then the three began spitballing ideas about what the motive might be behind the killings. Well Jane and Frank were spitballing ideas. Maura still didn't like guessing and even if she were so inclined she would call it theorizing. Maura Isles had never in her life done anything she would call spitballing and she wasn't about to start.
Frank thought one or both of the Clifton's had double crossed someone on a drug deal and made off with either the money, the drugs, or both. "That would explain the torture," he reasoned, "they were trying to get the Cliftons to tell them where their property was."
"I don't know," Jane replied. "They may not have lived in a great neighborhood but that house didn't scream drug dealer to me. Plus, I don't see anyone withstanding that kind of torture to protect money or drugs."
"Maybe they figured if they gave it up whoever was doing the torturing would just kill them. Maybe they figured it was their only leverage to stay alive," Frank came back, not yet ready to give up on his theory of the crime.
"Maybe," Jane said, "but this just doesn't feel like some gang banger drug bust gone bad to me. The method of torture isn't what I'd expect from a gang and the fact that the killers left behind so little evidence of their involvement isn't like a gang hit either. Gang's want people to know when they've done something like this. It keeps other people from considering double crossing them."
"Good point," Frank conceded.
Jane was about to offer up another idea when Frank's cell phone began to ring. He glanced at it prepared to hit ignore when he saw who it was. "Hang on, this is Nina, she was looking into the Clifton's for me."
"You called your pregnant wife into work on a Saturday?" Jane asked, scandalized.
"Of course not, duh!" Frank gave Jane his best I'm not as big of an idiot as you think I am look. "I called to let her know I wouldn't be home for dinner, like a good husband, and she volunteered to look into them for me. Said it would be a good test of her home access to the BPD servers." Nina had worked out a deal with Lt Cavanaugh to work from home part time in return for extended maternity leave. With her due date just a month away she had set up access to the BPD Servers from her home. This was the first time she had attempted to use the system.
Frank, answered his cell just before it would have gone to voicemail. "Hey Nina, how did it go?"
Nina said something Jane and Maura couldn't hear then Frank said, "Hang on, I'm with Jane and Maura let me put you on speaker." He pushed the button.
"Hey Nina," Jane said.
"Hello, Nina, how are you feeling?" Maura asked.
"Hi Jane, hi Maura. I'm doing good now that the morning sickness has finally slacked off a bit. I was getting a more than a bit sick of it, if you'll excuse the pun!"
Frank chuckled and Jane groaned. Maura, said "I have no doubt."
"Anyway," Nina continued, the smile evident in her voice, though the subject matter of her call soon turned the mood somber. "I haven't had time to do a real deep dive on the Clifton but I was able to do a pretty thorough initial background check; credit cards, bank statements, police reports, hospital visits, etc."
"What did you find?" Frank asked.
"It all looked pretty normal at first glance but then I noticed something. The last couple of years are pretty much what you'd expect a speeding ticket here and there, a visit to the emergency room when the baby had a high fever, normal purchases on the credit card. They don't go out to eat much, maybe once a month. Soccer equipment, probably for the older child. Apparently some one in the family likes building model aircraft. Your average family purchases tailored to the likes, dislikes of the family."
"Okay, that's not going to be very helpful," Jane said, clearly disappointed that Nina's search hadn't revealed anything useful.
"Hang on, I'm not done yet," Nina said. Jane could have sworn Nina was drawing the moment out for dramatic effect. "Like I said, that's the last couple of years. The records from further back though are different."
"Different how?" Maura asked, intrigued.
"They're…" Nina hesitated, searching for the right word, "vanilla."
"Huh?" this from Jane.
"They're too generic, restaurant charges once a week every week, groceries, gas for the car, no hospital visits, no parking or speeding tickets, nothing that shows any of them had any hobbies or interests. Like I said they're very vanilla."
"So what does that mean." Maura again, fascinated by Nina's discovery.
"To be honest," Nina said, "I probably wouldn't have even noticed if I hadn't seen something like this when I was a cop in Chicago. We ran a background check on a perp in a bank heist and his records were the same. For about six months back they were normal but before that they were generic, very similar, in fact, to the Clifton's older records. Like someone was trying to make the record as nondescript as possible so it wouldn't raise any questions."
Nina paused and once again Jane got the feeling it was for dramatic effect. It appeared her sister-in-law liked to put on a bit of a show. Jane couldn't blame her. She'd employed a dramatic pause or two in her time as well.
Nina continued, "Turns out the guy in that case was in…"
"WITSEC." Jane, Maura, and Frank all jumped at Bernie's voice coming from behind them.