Hi all! So... I'll be interested to hear what you think of this chapter. I have begun to show certain things and I wonder if they will be picked up on. Well, enough speculating. On to the chapter!

Chapter Twenty-One

"Who the hell is this guy?" Jane raged, standing up so quickly that her chair shot backwards forcefully, hitting the desk of the detective behind her. "Sorry," she said quickly, her gaze already focused on Korsak. "Okay, have we gotten anywhere with the medical angle that Maura brought up?"

Korsak shrugged. "There are quite literally thousands of people that have been to medical school in Boston alone. Countless more outside Boston. It's..." he raised his hands helplessly before dropping them to his desk again, "it's quite literally like trying to find a needle in a haystack."

Jane shook her head, walking over to the blackboard they were using to map out their progress. "It's scary, isn't it?" she asked quietly, staring at a picture of the first victim. She could feel his terror in the photo... even though he was obviously dead, the terror that he would have felt in his final... what? Minutes? Hours?... was apparent. Not only for himself... no, he would have been more worried for his wife. Watching her getting tortured... raped... seeing her fear, hearing her scream... Jane shuddered. If it had been Grace... Jane didn't know what she would have done. What Beatie would have done.

"What's scary?" Korsak asked, and Jane started, turning around to look at him. It was apparent by the look on his face that he had asked before... perhaps numerous times.

"Sorry... I just... it's scary thinking of this guy in the medical field. I mean," Jane slowly turned, returning to her desk, "you go to a doctor thinking 'this guy will help me. He's sworn to do no harm.' But... what if those were just words to him? What if the only reason he wanted to learn... was so that he could do as much harm as possible?"

Korsak pursed his lips and shook his head, looking down at his hands. "Jane..."

"What?"

Korsak looked at her beadily for a few minutes and Jane began to feel the familiar squirming sensation of being read thoroughly that she had always felt from Lieutenant Michaels. "Look... I've been in this field for a while now..."

"Yeah?" Jane asked, sitting up and crossing her arms in a defensive posture. "So?"

"So..." he sighed again, "look, it's just... being... doing this... it can begin to jade you, you understand? Can make you think things..."

Jane uncrossed her arms and ran her fingers through her hair. "I know, I know. Look, I know I'm young. I know I'm a woman. But," she continued when Korsak tried to protest, "I am also damn good at my job. I'm not about to think that everyone out there is a murderer, okay? You need to have a little more faith in me than that. I just... I just think it's scary. That's all. Am I going to stop going to the doctor? No. Am I going to stop trusting everyone? No. I just think that the idea that this guy has been to medical school..." Jane trailed off suddenly, her brain suddenly kicking into overdrive. Maura never said this guy was actually a doctor, had she? She simply said that he had had medical training. Medical training... that didn't necessarily equate he had finished his study. What was it Maura had said, back before the whole Gretel incident? She had said that serial killers rarely just started killing on the spur of the moment. There were usually signs. Well hidden, of course... that's why they were so hard to catch... but there were definitely signs. Tortured animals, bullying that went just a little bit beyond normal playground stuff... "What if he didn't finish medical school?" Jane asked slowly.

Korsak blinked. "What?"

"What if he got kicked out?"

"Well... okay, but Jane, that's still a lot of people when you take into account that we don't know where this asshole is from... and sometimes people drop out due to health reasons... they change their mind... they can't afford it..."

"No," Jane replied. "No, I'm thinking something will stand out about this guy. And," she added, jumping to her feet and patting her belt for her phone, finally glimpsing it half buried under papers on her desk, "we're only gonna look in Boston."

"In Boston? You're taking a pretty big leap there..."

"Most serial killers like familiar territory. I think he's moved around a bit... we'll probably find those victims if we look... but I think that this is his home base. It's why he came back." Quickly dialling Frost's number, she ignored the look of incredulity on Korsak's face. He was just going to have to get used to her, that was all. And he was going to have to stop doubting her.

Jane glanced out the window as she waited for Frost to pick up. Only three hours till nightfall.

I'll get you, you fucker.

R&IR&IR&I

"I heard you are now looking for medical students that did not complete medical school," Maura greeted Jane as she pulled up behind the morgue van and got out of the car.

"Yeah, news travels fast..." Jane replied, looking at Korsak who looked both guilty and unapologetic. "Right, so you going to tell me it's a waste of time too, then?" she asked Maura roughly, who looked somewhat taken aback.

"No. No, actually, what I was going to say was that I thought it was quite a good idea, particularly only looking in the Boston area. He has been to this area before, and serial killers generally..."

"... like familiar territory," Jane finished absently, watching as morgue technicians began unloading the expensive equipment that would light up bodily fluids like Christmas lights in the dark. "Do they need a hand?"

Maura glanced over, frowning. "I'm not s... Shawn, Lucas, are you alright?"

When the two men replied in the affirmative, Maura turned to Jane and smiled. "As I was saying, the fact that you think our perpetrator has had previous transgressions is almost certain to be accurate as well. While it's not unheard of for these people to just suddenly start killing others without warning..."

"... it's far more likely that they'll have started living out their fantasies at a young age by animal cruelty, or going above and beyond in playground bullying," Jane finished once more, still watching as the two men unloaded the rest of the equipment. She began to follow behind them, still aware of Maura whose jaw still hung open, her gaze focused on Jane's retreating back.

"You listen to me? And remember what I say?" Maura asked suddenly, almost tripping over in her efforts to catch up to the other woman. Jane smiled, instinctively reaching out a hand to steady her; a hand Maura gratefully accepted.

"Yeah," Jane shrugged. "You know your shit, Maura. I respect that."

Jane could feel Maura's gaze on her for several seconds after that, but she kept her eyes pointed ahead, trying to remain focused on what they were here for. "Thank you," Maura finally said softly though, and Jane couldn't help herself: she shot a small smile at her. Maura's gentle smile in answer was somehow the best thing Jane had seen in her whole life, and as she unlocked the front door to the house, she felt a flutter in her chest that had nothing to do with the job that lay ahead.

R&IR&IR&I

"Okay, so talk me through this."

"I've never used this technology before," Maura began, and even though Jane couldn't see her face in the deliberately created absolute blackness of the room, she could still hear the excitement in her voice, "but it's supposed to be absolutely awe-inspiring. What it does, is make bodily fluids glow..."

Korsak laughed, not unkindly. "I would hope so, Maura."

Jane felt a surge of irritation towards her new partner, especially as the next time Maura spoke, she suddenly sounded a lot more hesitant. "I... well, yes. But this," she began again, the excitement creeping back into her voice, "is supposed to be able to differentiate between bodily fluids. You see, it's all to do with the light... semen, saliva and vaginal fluids are all naturally fluorescent, so the use of a UV light source enables a unique method of finding them. Of course, bodily fluids can be transferred other ways – for example, forgetting to wash your hands after using the toilet-"

"Ew," Jane interrupted. Maura ignored her.

"... can lead to bodily fluids being placed on surfaces by a process known simply as 'transfer'. So, it's necessary to eliminate the accidental fluid spillage from the incidental... which is why this..." she patted the equipment next to her, "is so good. It allows us to tune to specific wavelengths of colour, which will almost completely eliminate these background interferences."

"So..." Korsak began slowly, "do we need to tune it to different settings to see different types of fluid?"

"Yes," an unfamiliar voice piped up and Jane frowned for a few seconds before she placed it as Shawn's. "I'll show you the blood spray first..."

"This room will light up like a Christmas tree," Jane said mirthlessly.

"Blood actually darkens to enhance its contrast, Jane," Maura corrected, and Jane rolled her eyes.

"I know, Maura," she said, smiling as she spoke so that her words were softened. "It's a figure of speech."

"Oh."

Shawn continued as though he had not been interrupted, "then vaginal secretions, then semen. We can look for saliva and urine too, if needed."

Jane glanced to her left, forgetting that she couldn't see Korsak until she had already turned. She rolled her eyes at herself. "Alright, sounds good. Let's do this thing."

A small torch lit up the control panel of the equipment, and Jane watched interestedly as he began setting it all up.

"Does it allow us to see," she asked suddenly, "the age of the blood? You know, the order in which it... came to be?"

"No," Maura said regretfully. "That sort of technology is not present yet. But occasionally by looking at the patterns, I can form a hypothesis as to the order of blood spillage. Not always though. And that is in circumstances where..." she hesitated, and Jane could see by the dim light provided by Shawn's flashlight, her looking around the room, "where the blood has not been cleaned up. Truthfully I'm..." she lifted a shoulder helplessly, "I'm not sure what's going to happen here, nor how useful it will be."

Jane nodded thoughtfully, but was distracted by Korsak when he spoke up. "He's not that good, Maura. You heard Jane. We'll still find something."

Jane could see that Korsak's words had induced a smile, and she suddenly felt a wave of affection towards him. He wasn't perfect, for sure – lately Jane had found herself battling more often than not against certain prejudices that he held firm, and she found it very difficult to talk to him or even share ideas for that very reason – but he seemed to truly like Maura, and for that, Jane was grateful.

"All right..." Shawn said abruptly, and Jane turned to him quickly. "We're almost up and running... everyone has their protective glasses?"

Jane hurriedly searched her pockets, quickly finding the glasses and putting them on. Judging by the scrounging sounds around her, the others were doing the same. Once all had asserted that they were, in fact, wearing their protective gear, Shawn flicked his torch off and flicked the machine on. Almost instantly, the room was lit by a soft, faintly blue light, and on the walls...

"My God," said Lucas softly. "Is that all blood?"

"Yep," said Korsak grimly. "He cleaned it up to the naked eye... but not well enough."

Jane remained silent, looking around the room. The blood was everywhere, or so it seemed. Dripping down the walls, on the ceiling... yes, it was marred by the obvious cleaning motions of their killer, but Jane could easily imagine the gore before he had a chance to clean it up.

"Jane?" Maura said softly, and Jane felt tentative fingers touch her arm. She turned to look at Maura, who, somehow, managed to look anything but ridiculous in her glasses. Jane wished she could say the same for herself. "What are you thinking?"

Jane shook her head slowly. "I'm thinking... this guy... he's smart, right?"

"Some serial killers do have an exceptionally high IQ, yes."

"He's taunting us. Why else would he bother to clean up, but not do a proper job of it?"

Maura looked at her but didn't respond, instead simply getting her crime scene camera off the trolley and walking off to take photos. Jane followed close behind, looking at everything she could, trying to get a feel behind the crime.

After an indeterminate amount of time, Shawn's voice rang out again. "Are we ready to change our filters to show semen now?"

Maura clicked a few more photos with the camera that, Jane could only assume, took pictures of the room exactly as is, with the blood highly visible on the walls, then gave the signal for him to swap light filters. He pushed a couple of buttons, and the light changed slightly... it was barely perceptible, Jane thought, except that now, the carnage on the walls was invisible once more. The violence could not be seen, she thought with a slight shudder, but it could still be felt.

Oh yes, it could still be felt.

Lit by a similar, extremely dull gloomy blue light, Jane headed over to the couch. She gave its cushions only a perfunctory glance however; the dead man had been found sitting here, and from all Maura had said, he had likely spent his last minutes or hours in this exact place. There was a slight shine on one of the cushions – Jane looked at it for mere seconds before looking away. It was almost certainly guaranteed that that was from happier times... from the two victims having sex on the couch, rather than rape.

Rape? Was that what she was looking for? Jane hesitated only briefly. Yes, she thought, evidence of rape was exactly what she was looking for. How better for this asshole to torture both partners. To make the wife his victim... and the husband, a helpless observer. Jane pursed her lips and dropped to her knees, crawling forward slowly.

"Jane?" Korsak said, and Jane could almost feel his curious stare. "Uh... there's semen on the couch."

"Not his," Jane muttered, and kept crawling, her gloved hands making careful sweeps just above the surface of the carpet, trying to ensure she hit every single spot, that she looked at every single inch. Finally, she sat back on her haunches. "There's nothing," she sighed.

"Even if there was something, Jane," Korsak said, sounding impatient, "how do you know it wasn't... you know, this couple?"

"No," Jane said, stretching out her neck. "No, they've been married for, what, four years? They've been in this house for only one and a half... no, they'd be past the stage of having sex on the floor I reckon." Still stretching her neck, Jane leaned forward to brace her hands on the ground in anticipation of standing up.

"They had sex on the couch apparently," Korsak muttered, but Jane ignored him; as she had swivelled her head as far right as she could, trying to work out a kink that was building there, she had spotted a stain on the rug under the coffee table. "I mean, according to you, it wasn't..." he trailed off as Jane rapidly crawled forward, pushing the table out of the way. "What is it?"

Jane shook her head, looking at the mat. "He turned the mat around," she said softly, and shook her head. "This guy is smart."

"You found semen?" Maura asked, and Jane pointed to the patch that shone faintly silver under the carefully concentrated light. Maura knelt down beside her, examining the patch closely, and as she came down, Jane caught a whiff of her perfume, and closed her eyes against the sudden swooping sensation that went through her stomach. Huh, she thought absently, maybe she should have eaten lunch today. She did still have that sandwich Maura gave her... at the thought, Jane wrinkled her nose. She would be fine. "I'll take a swab of the substance and get the crime lab to analyse it," Maura said after a few seconds, taking Jane out of her thoughts.

"Right. Thanks, Maura."

"You're welcome, Jane," Maura replied with a smile, and Jane felt another swooping sensation in her lower belly.

It was definitely time to eat.

R&IR&IR&I

"So... wait... how do you know so much? No, I'm being serious. How?"

Jane blinked, the familiar voice jarring her for a second before she placed it as her own... well, Beatie's anyway. She suppressed the urge to groan – could a person groan in dreams? Especially dreams that were actually flashbacks? – and glanced around. She was in familiar settings... the riverbank where Beatie and Grace had first kissed... and she looked around before sitting down impatiently. There was so much for her to do at work, she had no right to be sleeping right now! But experience had shown her in past experiences that attempting to wake herself up did not work, and in fact all it did was cause her to miss most of the dream. And she supposed... well, surely there had to be a reasonshe was getting the dreams? They weren't all that frequent for sure... only one a week, if she was lucky... but they were still present, and Jane supposed it was her duty to pay attention. For all she knew, it was Grace sending them to her somehow.

Jane thought about that for several seconds before wrinkling her nose and shaking her head. No. Unlikely. It was more likely to be... she frowned. There was someone... someone who was responsible for... something... "Ugh!" Jane moaned out loud, then hastily looked up at Grace and Beatie, who had not appeared to notice anything. Thank Heaven, Jane thought, then almost cursed again as her thought process went back to the same thing. What wasit that she couldn't remember?

And, most importantly, how could this dream help her to solve these murders and rescue the woman who might still be alive?

"...a virtue, I think, and..."

"What, you don't like my new name for you?"

Jane blinked, turning her attention back to the couple in front of her. If she was here, she better pay attention. Though she had a suspicion she had already missed some of what had been said.

"I... I don't mind it..." Grace was blushing slightly, pulling gently at the grass around her, gently enough, Jane noted with a small smile, that not a single blade was pulled from its home in the ground. "I mean, you have a nickname."

"I won't call you it if you don't like it though. I quite likeBeatie now. And plus," Beatie shrugged, looking slightly bashful, "you have a nickname already too."

"Saving Grace, you mean?" Grace asked and when Beatie gave a small nod, she smiled and curled herself further into Beatie's chest. "A person can have two nicknames."

"Great... so mine shall be Beatie... and yours shall be Saving Grace and Encyclo..."

"Jane! Jane, your neck is not going to appreciate sleeping in that position." Jane opened her eyes blearily and blinked them several times until Maura came into focus, her brow furrowed in worry. "You look exhausted. Let me take you home."

Jane sat up and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden pounding in her head. Rubbing her temples firmly, she squinted her eyes open to look at Maura. "You don't look much better."

Maura just waved a hand impatiently. "I had a short nap before we went to the house tonight. I'm fine. I'll drop you home and pick you up in the morning."

Jane gave up on her temples and instead pinched the bridge of her nose. She couldn't think of any good reason to not go with Maura, so she nodded. "Yeah. Okay. Thanks Maura."

"It's fine," Maura replied, waiting just long enough for Jane to collect her things before turning and walking towards the elevators. Jane followed, rubbing her eyes blearily. What had been the purpose behind this current dream, she wondered? 'Encycle' was all she had gotten from it (at least, that's what it had sounded like) as Grace's other nickname... what was that? Was it a type of bicycle that perhaps became briefly popular during that time period? Should she be looking for a cyclist?

"Did you know," Maura piped up brightly, bringing Jane out of her thoughts with a jolt, "that it's speculated that elevators have been around since around 236 BC? It was believed that the people of that time used hemp rope and a platform as a lifting device, and it was either powered by hand or by animals." Maura smiled brightly at Jane, who couldn't help but smile and roll her eyes fondly in return.

"Okay Googlemouth. Focus on the case, okay?"

Maura smiled brightly, turning as the elevator arrived and walking inside. Jane followed behind, still smiling wanly and thought vaguely that as far as recollections went, that one had to be pretty much bottom of the pile. Encycle... really?

Well, she'd just have to wait for the next one, and hope it provided better insight. For now...

"... 1886 is regarded as the birth year for the common car. Prior to that... and for many years later... horses, with or without carriages, were the preferred method for most people..."

For now, Jane thought she would be just fine.

END CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

It's my birthday today (seriously, it actually is). So you should all review because you love me and you love this story and and and... umm, you want me to shut up and stop being a review whore? (not gonna happen, sorry) HAHA

Nah, seriously, thanks for reading. Love to all, Katie xoxo