Jane was sat at her desk at Boston Police Department. Her watch told her it was half past two and she was running low on ideas that could keep her at her desk. Usually, she was not the kind of woman who would be contented to sit at a desk all day, unlike her colleague, Vince Korsak, who could quite easily sit at his desk all day, chuckling at YouTube videos of small animals (which Jane assumed that he was doing right now).
Today was a different day, however. This was the day that the new Chief Medical Examiner began their position at the Police Department and Jane knew who would be waiting down there for her. It hadn't been confirmed to her officially, but that did nothing to quell her certainty. It wasn't as if Jane did not want another encounter with Dr. Maura Isles, however she was at a loss whenever she thought of what she might say to her.
Jane knew that she couldn't stay sat down for much longer, and begun to realise that this behaviour was peculiar for her and would soon arouse suspicion amongst her colleagues. She turned to face Korsak;
"Hey, Korsak, have you seen the new Medical Examiner yet? Has she arrived yet?" Jane asked anxiously, and hoped that the nervous feeling in her gut was not traceable in her voice.
"I think so. I saw a woman go downstairs who I hadn't seen before. Carrying a few boxes. Light brown hair. Barefoot, oddly enough" Korsak reported to her as if he was describing a suspect caught on CCTV camera. "Say, how did you know it was a woman?" he probed. Maura was the only woman that Jane had met recently that was peculiar enough to be walking around without shoes on. No doubt she had read an article the night before that claimed that shoe wearing increased Cortisol levels or something of the sort.
"Musta' just slipped out. You know how I'd like to work with more women".
"I can't remember you saying anything of the sort, but go on, go and see her. See if she's made more progress with the finger prints than that damn Dr. Pike did".
"Gotcha!" Jane said as she virtually bounced out of her seat. She walked towards the doors and pressed the button for the elevator, which she took downstairs to the lobby. She wanted to speak to her mother before she went to see Maura. Thankfully the café was empty apart from an elderly couple who were silently drinking two mugs of black coffee. Angela spotted Jane the moment she walked in and waved at her, glad to see her daughter.
"Hi Jane! I'll make you a cup of coffee!" Angela greeted her.
"Hey ma', don't worry about the coffee, I've gotta go and see Maura about the fingerprints" Jane told her.
"Oh that poor man, I hope you find out who he is soon. His family must be worried sick. To think, he could be someone's son! Someone's father!" Angela always got too emotionally attached to Jane's cases, hence why Jane was reluctant to give her details. Jane remembered the first homicide that she ever worked on, which her mother was surprisingly inquisitive about. A few days into the case, Jane had discovered that Angela had been writing all of the details she had found out about the murder on a notepad, as well as theories as to who could have been behind it. Despite the fact that the victim was a nine year old girl, Angela had been adamant that she had been killed in a drug feud.
"Yeah, me too ma', me too. I was wondering whether you had seen Maura today. Is she in yet?" Jane enquired.
"I did see her this morning, yeah. She'd been carrying boxes and boxes of stuff down to her office and she looked so tired so I invited her into the café for a coffee on me! Well, you'll never guess what happened!" Angela looked scandalised as she prepared to tell Jane details of what had happened this morning, whereas Jane herself was simply perplexed.
"What happened?" Jane demanded to know.
"Stanley kicked her out!" Angela told her.
"What? Why?!"
"Well, Maura came in and she said that she would have some coffee so she sat down. That moment, Stanley walked in, about to start his shift here. Now, Maura wasn't wearing any shoes. I don't know why, something about being more comfortable walking barefoot, I can't really remember. But Stanley was having none of it! He came up to us and said 'hey you, if you're not gonna put on a pair of shoes, then you can get out!' Oh, she looked so embarrassed!"
"God that's awful! One day, I won't be surprised if he ends up on that morgue table downstairs". Jane felt terrible for Maura, hearing that she had to go through that on her first day. She decided not to mention it to her, however.
"Jane! You're a homicide cop, don't let anyone hear you say that or you might be in the interrogation room yourself!"
"Touché, ma'. It's Stanley though, anyone else who works here would probably sympathise with me".
"Well, on some days, even I might!" Angela chuckled as she said this, looking behind her to make sure that Stanley remained out of earshot.
"Alright ma', I'm going to see Maura now, I'll see you later!" Jane said as she walked from the café.
"Say hello to Dr. Isles for me!" Angela called after Jane as she walked away.
Jane pressed the button for the lift and tapped her feet at she waiting for it to get to her. After what seemed like multiple minutes to Jane, she stepped into the open lift and commanded it to take her to the morgue. Once the lift doors opened unto the bottom floor of the police department, Jane took a look around and saw that Maura was in the morgue, reading a file and occasionally observing the corpse laid out on the table. Jane decided to just walk in and get straight to business.
"Uh, hey Maura" Jane said, more than a little awkwardly, attempting to greet Maura casually. Maura turned around from where she was standing to look and at Jane and smiled.
"Hello Jane! I suppose you're here to know what I have reviewed from the Dorchester John Doe?" Maura said, gesturing with the folder in her hands.
"Yeah, that would be useful, thanks" Jane said, finding it hard to make eye contact with Maura.
"Of course. I have mainly just been consolidating and checking the veracity of the notes that the substitute Medical Examiner made on the subject. It took me a while to decode the handwriting. Did you know that on average, men have far messier handwriting than women do?"
"Makes sense. Now, back on the subject?"
"Oh, yes, sorry!" Maura said, indicating that she hadn't realised that she had gone off on a tangent. "Now, the notes of my predecessor indicate that the wound in this man's neck is a stab wound, of course we will have to wait for further testing to confirm this. I must say that these notes are extremely imprecise!"
"I'm not surprised. Is there anything on the fingerprints? We could really do with finding out the identity of this man".
"There was nothing on the fingerprints, and the marks on each of his fingertips would suggest that there was on effort to make him unidentifiable. I suspect that it may have been performed by the victim" Maura informed Jane.
"Why do you think that?" Jane enquired curiously, wondering why anyone would want to remove their own finger prints.
"Well, removing the finger prints does make it a lot more complicated to identify a corpse, however there are many other ways that we can find out who they are, as you would know. Now, if they wanted to make a dead body completely unrecognisable, they could have it incinerated, disfigure the face with acid amongst other things that could mutilate a corpse beyond recognition".
"Right, and what about time of death, do we have anything established for that?" Jane continued.
"Well, I haven't had time to make any precise conclusions, but decomposition hasn't yet reached advanced stages. I imagine that he had been dead for less than twenty four hours before he was found. This leads into my theory further; I think that he was dumped on the shore, as opposed to in the water, which is why I think that the killer did not care about the possibility of him being identified".
"So, you think it's likely that the victim attempted to erase his own fingerprints?"
"The evidence would suggest that is the case". Jane noted that this wasn't a sure answer, but she didn't press it. "The crime lab are working on retrieving possible prints, but I'm not sure how much success they will have".
"Okay, if that doesn't work out, then we can run a search in our facial recognition database. If he's tried to erase his own fingerprints, then he's probably engaged in some kind of criminal activity".
"That sounds like a possible hypothesis. I'll let you know if I find anything else out".
"Thank you". Jane paused for a moment, unsure of what to say next. "Y'know, Maura, I didn't intend to be straight to business when I came down here". Maura looked inquisitively at Jane, trying not to make any inferences as to what she might be saying.
"What do you mean, Jane?" Maura enquired in the hopes of getting a response.
"Well, y'know, I guess I just wanted to apologise for what happened earlier" Jane said, retaining the sense of awkwardness that plagued her voice when she had first walked in.
"In the café?" Maura pressed.
"Yeah".
"Jane, that's not your fault. I should have been wearing shoes when I..." Maura started.
"Wait, what? No, not that! No, I didn't … I hadn't even heard about that!" Jane stumbled over her words and Maura didn't look entirely convinced.
"Oh, you mean the other day? With Angela? You don't have to apologise for that. You were probably having a busy day and for me to show up out of the blue like that, it was my fault!" Maura told Jane. She didn't believe it was Jane's fault, but hearing her apologise made Maura feel a sense of warmth.
"No, don't worry about it. I guess it wasn't either of our faults, it was just a bit of an awkward situation. Not helped by my mother admittedly!" Jane's tone made Maura laugh, and she turned to look at her.
"Well, maybe we can be friends? It'd be nice to have a homicide detective as an ally!" Maura told Jane.
"'Course. Maybe we can go out for a drink tonight? Get to know each other" Jane offered to Maura, without really thinking about it.
"I'd love to! Hey, why don't you invite Angela too?" Maura suggested excitedly.
"Uh... no. Dirty Robber okay for you?"
"Dirty Robber?"
"I'll take that as a yes". Once again, both women laughed at this remark.
"Alright, you're on, Jane Rizzoli".
"Don't make it weird! We can drive there from here". Jane hoped that the idea of sharing a car didn't seem to intimate for Maura.
"Sounds great to me, I'll see you later" Maura said to Jane with another smile. Jane debated whether it had actually left her face in the past few minutes. Either way, it was making Jane feel happy just seeing it.
"Alright, see you later" Jane said as she walked back to the lift. She had a tingling sensation in her chest and for the first time since yesterday, Kate Bush had stopped singing in her head.