Maura smiled into the opened abdominal cavity beneath her. Her practiced hands were sifting through glistening loops of bowel, but her mind was on Jane. The detective had walked her to the doors of the morgue this morning and whispered, "I love you, Poindexter, mi hai reso felice come mai prima" before kissing Maura lightly on the temple and turning toward the stairs, no doubt taking them two at a time on those long, lean legs.
The doctor unconsciously licked her lips.
Detective Darren Crowe shuddered with revulsion. He hated autopsies, not in the visceral way that Frost did, but the smell got to him and sometimes made him retch. The thought of losing his lunch in front of his coworkers and the teasing that would follow was enough to keep him away from the morgue whenever he could avoid it. He also hated the Medical Examiner, hated her and wanted her in equal measure. The dyke bitch was spreading her legs for Rizzoli who was strutting around the squad room swinging her dick like it weighed ten pounds.
He looked up from the corpse just in time to catch the lustful expression that flicked across the doctor's face.
"Fuckin' freak." He muttered, jabbing his partner in the arm.
"Did you catch that? Playing with the dead makes her wet."
"Asqueroso." Martinez agreed. "Especially a pretty, young corpse."
Maura didn't hear them behind her full face mask with her dictation microphone clipped to her ear, but Susie Chang did. Her face grew red behind her oversized glasses and her neck grew hot.
"Excuse me, Dr. Isles." She said, gesturing with the stainless steel bowl she had been holding to catch the extracted intestinal coils.
"Do you need a moment, SC Chang?"
"Yes, please."
"Could you turn off the official recording, Doctor?"
Maura raised a questioning eyebrow, but did as she was asked.
Susie carefully rested the bowl on a rolling instrument gurney, a full three feet of intestines still tethering it to the body on the table. The tiny criminologist calmly walked around the autopsy table and without a word raised her leg and deftly kicked Detective Crowe in the groin.
Spinning on her heel, Susie delivered a second concussive strike to the same region on Detective Martinez. The two men lay panting on the floor, clutching themselves.
"If you ever insult Dr. Isles again, and I know this is the second time, I will personally report you to IAD, Lieutenant Cavanaugh, Captain O'Shaughnessy, the Police Commissioner and… and my father, City Councilman John Chang. You two will be lucky to have a job writing parking tickets."
The wounded detectives had staggered back to their feet and were leaning against the tiled wall of the autopsy suite, still recovering. The doctor looked back and forth between the men and her assistant, her mouth gaping in shock.
"Apologize to the doctor." Susie added.
"Sorry." They mumbled in tandem.
"Remember, three strikes and you're out, assholes." Susie lifted three warning fingers.
"Shall I turn the recorder back on, Dr. Isles?"
Maura nodded, still stupefied, and the autopsy continued without incident.
"I'm going to rule this a homicide, the blow to the umbilicus caused a rupture of a pre-existing abdominal aortic aneurysm. Exsanguination occurred within minutes."
She flipped up her mask and pulled off her gloves. Neither man met her gaze, but both muttered their thanks and quickly turned to leave.
"You know, detectives, Dr. Isles is a wonderful resource. If you would only avail yourselves of her knowledge, maybe your clear rates would be higher than they are. I believe Detectives Rizzoli and Frost have a rate nearly twice yours."
Susie Chang turned off the recorder and busied herself collecting the half dozen specimen slides that she would spend the balance of her morning analyzing.
Maura stared at the bustling little form of her assistant, unsure whether to thank her for defending her honor against what she could only imagine was a homophobic slur, or to discipline her for attacking two detectives during an autopsy.
What would Jane do?
She closed the distance to SC Chang and hesitating a beat, slowly placed an arm around the smaller woman's shoulder.
"Thank you, Susie. It means a lot to me to know that you have my back."
"Always, Dr. Isles."
She patted the shoulder once and removed her arm.
"Please call me Maura."
"I… I don't know if I could do that, Dr. Isles, but I appreciate the sentiment."
The morgue phone rang and Maura answered.
"We're wanted in the homicide squad room, Senior Criminologist Chang."
"Do you think Detective Frost will be there?" Susie asked shyly.
"I imagine he will since he was the one to request our presence."
"Maura!"
Jane met her at the elevator, where it was clear she had been pacing, and pulled her forcefully across the hallway and into the homicide conference room.
"What took you so long? I texted you twice and then Frost called over 10 minutes ago."
"I was performing an autopsy, Jane. I can't just drop my scalpel and come running immediately upon being summoned. You three are not the only detectives that I work with."
"Yes, but you love me."
The M.E.'s irritation dissipated when she looked up into a pair of chocolaty eyes behind long black lashes.
"Yes… yes I do." She sighed.
Frost, Korsak, and Lieutenant Cavanaugh were sitting around a scarred walnut table, eyes focused on a LCD screen mounted on the wall. The image was of a dark green minivan, clearly taken on a dealer's lot.
"So this is what we will be looking for, a 2001 Pontiac Montana. I will print out a side, back and front image."
"Do we have a license plate, Frost?"
The youngest detective tapped a few keys and the image of the van disappeared and was replace by a stream of data on the Massachusetts RMV webpage.
"Yes 2BR-925."
"Dr. Isles, Ms. Chang." Cavanaugh half stood and nodded to the women.
"Korsak, want to fill them in on the latest bizarre twist in this ass-biter of a case?"
"Sure thing, Sean. Your hard work got us an estimate of the height of Phil Rigsdale's killer, so we ran that filter through the DCJS with a cross reference to the 1,400 people who had professional contact with Protein-B-Gone. We got two hits, neither panned out."
"Yes. Jane told me."
The M.E. sat on the edge of the table where she could see both the screen and Vincent Korsak. Jane allowed herself a quick look at Maura's ass, firm and round, deliciously showcased in an olive pencil skirt, pulled tight by the action of sitting.
"Janie thought that maybe our killer didn't have a record, that since this was a crime of passion, he or she may have never had as much as a traffic violation before. So Frost ran the names through the RMV database with a height filter and we got a list of 660 people."
"That's statistically high for that sample."
"Unless the group was heavily weighted toward females." Susie piped in.
"It was and many are resident aliens from Central America." Frost responded.
"Where average female height is nearly 4 inches shorter than the US average," Maura finished with a smile, glad to have that anomaly explained away or it would have niggled at her mind, pulling her attention away from the more important aspects of the case.
"When Frost ran the names against our own internal database of open cases, one name popped up."
Frost clicked another key and a photo rendered on the screen. Maura did not need to ask who it was as she had taken the picture herself. Deniece Smoot lay on the steel autopsy table in the building's basement. Her eyes open, pupils fixed on a spot above and to the right of the photographer. The very top of the Y-incision and Maura's precise stitching was just visible at the bottom of the screen.
"The woman is very obviously dead."
"Yes, but she was very much alive the night Phil Rigsdale was murdered."
"Did they know each other?" The doctor's brows were drawn together in thought.
"That's where you come in, Maur. I have a theory."
Jane had been striding back and forth across the back of the small room, covering the distance in four steps, turning and retracing her path.
My sleek jungle cat. Maura thought.
Now she stood behind Frost, her hands resting on his shoulders, willing her ideas to travel through her fingertips into her partner and through his computer prowess, onto the screen for all to see.
"Frost, call up the interview with Crystal Rigsdale. Good, fast forward. Okay. Play it."
Jane sat across from the full-figured black woman who was worrying at a can of Sprite held tightly in her hands. Only the back of Jane's head was visible, her ponytail dipping and swaying as she spoke.
"Where did you meet your husband, Mrs. Rigsdale?"
"At the Blackstone Pool. My uncle got me a city job; I was a towel girl and Phil volunteered there teaching poor kids to swim. He was a good guy, detective. Not handsome, but kind and sweet and he loved me, you know?"
"Pause it, Frost."
"Prescott Smoot was a champion swimmer, had a partial scholarship to BCU because of it. Wanna bet he learned to swim at Blackstone and his teacher was Phil Rigsdale?"
"That makes sense, Jane." Frost pulled up a city map onto the screen. With a tap of his skillful fingers, pushpins appeared scattered across the expanse of the city.
"Here's Holworthy Street where the Smoot family lived… and died. The closest pool is Melnea Cass which is where Prescott was doing laps right before his death, but the Cass Recreation Center was only opened in 2011."
"I remember." Jane nodded. "It used to be a hockey rink. Frankie and I skated in a league there for the Boston Bumblers when we were kids."
"When the Smoot boys were kids, the closest public pool was Blackstone, still an easy walk from Holworthy Street."
"Why would Deniece Smoot want to kill her kid's swimming teacher?"
Korsak stroked his goatee.
"I think I know where you're going with this, Rizzoli." Sean Cavanaugh nodded his approval.
"Maybe Crystal Rigsdale wasn't the only pretty black girl Phil charmed poolside."
"That's right, Lou. I'm thinking Philly-boy may have been Deniece Smoot's baby daddy."
"The boys were biracial and light eyed." Susie Chang volunteered.
"And both had Morton's toe, as did Phillip Rigsdale." Maura added.
She frowned and then spoke again, "Phillip Rigsdale… P-R...both boys had names that began with those letters, Prescott and Prior."
Lieutenant Cavanaugh turned to her.
"Dr. Isles, do you have enough of a sample to run a DNA comparison?"
"I do. I can have a definitive answer for you within 48 hours."
"Make it happen."
He turned from the doctor to the three detectives.
"I want Deniece Smoot's van in the forensic garage today. The title hasn't been transferred, so it's probably still parked out on the street somewhere. Get on it, Korsak. Issue a BOLO, then I want you to comb through everything you took from her apartment. Frost, Rizzoli, go back to Holworthy Street and dig through that apartment again. I'll personally call Judge Berkowitz and get you a warrant."
"Got it, Lou."
He stood and rubbed at his greying head.
"Good work on this, team, but let's see it through. Ms. Chang, could you go over your reports, see if any trace evidence may have been left on the Smoot woman's body? Make sure every drop of blood on her was her own."
"Yes, sir." She answered, but her eyes never left Detective Frost, where they had rested since she entered the room.
"Let's go." Cavanaugh clapped his hands and everyone stood and filed out of the room.
Maura walked Jane out of the building. It was warm inside during that brief time of year when air conditioners were not routinely switched on, but the midday temperatures approached the low eighties. Maura stood on the steps, breathing deeply to clear her head. Her eyes were involuntarily drawn to the spot where Jane's body had fallen in a slick of her own blood. The fact that it was years ago and Jane had survived her grievous wound did little to stop the panic that flitted through the doctor's mind every time she stood here. She had to reach out and touch the warm, living woman to steady herself. Jane squeezed the hand that clutched her forearm.
"You okay, baby?"
"Yes, of course. I just wanted to remind you to look for the murder weapon among Deniece's things. It has a flat edge and a sheepsfoot blade that curves in at a 6o° angle toward the hilt."
"Imagine if it had been there all this time and we had no freakin' clue. Santoku knife, right? Taken from the Rigsdale kitchen, missing from a set, stainless steel shaft and handle, brand name is Deglon. Got it, Maur."
She squeezed the soft hand once more and galloped down the steps to where Frost had pulled his blue Impala around from the parking garage.
"Jane!" Maura shouted from in front of the double glass doors. "10 inches."
She held her hands above her head, 10 inches apart.
A handcuffed woman being led from a squad car stopped in front of her.
"I don't know if you're talking about a man or a sandwich, but either way I'll take one."
Jane loped up the iron and concrete steps of the Roxbury 12-flat, a flight and a half ahead of Frost, who was politely keeping pace with the obese super who was stopping at every landing to catch his breath.
"Gotta stop the smoking." He wheezed.
And the eating. Frost mused.
"So everything should be exactly the way we left it, right? No one's been in the apartment since the crime scene tape came down?"
"Nah, church people've been back and forth. Some women came to pick out funeral clothes last week and then nothing until Sunday."
"What happened Sunday?" Jane called down the staircase from where she was waiting in front of Deniece Smoot's door.
"The place was crawling with churchies, kids running up and down the stairs, women frying chicken and making subs. They were singing gospel music and eating potato salad on the landings."
The man was sweating profusely, but finally made it up the last flight.
"The preacher or pastor or whatever said they was packin' up all her clothes, boys stuff too, for charity. No next of kin, so I told them to go for it. Less shit for me to do."
Jane gritted her teeth. They'd missed their chance by just a few days.
"So the apartment is empty?" Frost asked.
"Nah, still lots of crap in there. Churchies took the clothes, pots and pans, television, shit like that. Gonna get a dumpstah here next weekend and hire some Mexicans to toss the rest of this garbage."
Frost cringed at the man's blatant and apparently unrepentant racism.
The super finally recovered enough to dig through his pockets for the key. He unlocked the door and let them in.
"Do you need a copy of our warrant, Mr. Wisznewski?"
"Nah. I'm a good guy, tax payah, etcetera. I trust the police. Take whatevah you want, less for me to
do later."
Jane stepped forward. "Do you know anything about her personal vehicle?"
"Oh, her personal vehicle, as opposed to her chauffeured limo or her corporate caddy?"
"Funny." Jane lifted a dark eyebrow in irritation.
It actually was kind of funny. Even douchebags had their comic moments.
"She was the registered owner of a green Pontiac minivan." Frost prompted. "Ring a bell?"
"Yeah, yeah. I know it. The churchies took that too. One of them told my wife they was gonna use it for the Sunday school or something."
"Shit." Jane stamped her foot.
Frost was already on the phone with Korsak, who would send the forensic tow truck to the Charles Street AME church to recover the vehicle.
"I hope they haven't given it a good scrubbing yet."
"Alright, detectives, I'm going back to my shows now. Knock on my door if you need anything."
The super had been right, there was lots of shit here. The broken ceiling fan still lay in one corner of the kitchen, though the plaster dust had been swept up. A large stack of catalogs and magazines sat on top of the wooden kitchen table along with a neat pile of bills in unopened envelopes, several bottles of opened over-the-counter medicines, a few CDs with cracked cases, a BCU coffee mug, a globe that still showed a divided Germany and a unified USSR, and a cable box with remote.
Jane crossed to the counter and yanked open a random drawer: empty. The next: empty again.
"I guess the church folks packed up all the cutlery."
"Yeah. Call Frankie, Frost. Tell him to head down to Charles Street and sit on those boxes."
"If they're still there."
Now that she was aware of the connection, she saw the Mayflower everywhere. The same oil painting that was hanging above the mantel in the Rigsdale home was hung as a print in the narrow hallway leading to the two bedrooms. A leather book marker, embossed in gold with GSMD nestled between the pages of a paperback thriller on the night table next to Deniece Smoot's double bed. Before this case Jane would have guessed the acronym belonged to "Girls Scouts of Maryland." On the desk in the brothers' shared bedroom, a pack of playing cards bore the same stamp and an imprint of the ship at full sail. A snow globe resting on a bookshelf also featured the ship at anchor in Plymouth Harbor.
Jane returned to the kitchen and flipped through the mail with her gloved fingers.
Letters.
"Maybe Phil 'The stud' Rigsdale wrote some love letters to Deniece. Would she have kept them for almost 20 years?"
Sure she would. That's what women did.
Jane had never received a love letter and she doubted Maura had either. She vowed to write to the doctor at her next free moment. She smiled at the thought of Maura opening an anonymous letter tucked among her medical journals and utility bills and reading Jane's words of devotion.
Yeah, definitely going to do that.
"Hey, Frosty? Where do you hide your old love letters?"
"Ha! They were right where Frost said they'd be, under the mattress."
Jane pulled a rubber-banded stack of yellowing envelopes from a large ziploc evidence bag.
"I read a few on the spot and they are all signed, 'All my love, Philip.' He acknowledges his sons and promises her the world."
Korsak shook his shaggy grey head. "The bastard didn't deliver, though. Deniece worked two cleaning jobs to support those boys."
"Listen to this." Frost held a letter between his purple gloved fingers. He cleared his throat.
"Darling girl, Kiss my little man for me and tell him poppa will bring him a little sister or maybe a brother soon. I'll get away the first moment I can and come see you both. Forgive me for not making the appointment. Eyes were watching and I couldn't leave. Believe me that I would have loved to hear our dear one's heart beating below your own."
"What year was that?"
"1996, the year Prior was born."
"The fucker writes like a Charles Dickens novel… 'darling girl,' 'our dear one.' Rich people, they're not like us."
Jane felt a quick pang of guilt after her last proclamation. Maura was certainly not like them; she was better, made of finer stuff.
"Let's put these letters in chronological order and maybe we can come up with a timeline for this epic romance."
Several hours later Korsak stood in front of a murder board, adding the date of the final letter, January 5, 2002.
"Our boy was still burning hot, but nothing after that date."
"Maybe they switched to email." Jane suggested.
"We didn't find her computer so she probably didn't have one, just two laptops for the boys, and I combed through them. Nothing relevant; just some schoolwork, emails to friends, xtube videos…." Frost rubbed his temples.
"What year did loverboy marry Crystal Schaefer?"
Frost sighed, clearly exhausted, but rolled back over to his desk and dutifully tapped on his keyboard. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Public Records website appeared on the overhead LCD screen.
"June 3, 1998."
Jane frowned, tugging at her messy hair in frustration.
"That makes no sense. He's hot and heavy with Deniece Smoot, but woos and marries Crystal Schaefer at the same time. What the fuck?"
"Maybe she was pregnant. I know lots of guys who were in love with one gal and married another because she was in the family way." Korsak offered.
Frost typed some more and a birth certificate rendered on screen.
"Prudence Monique Rigsdale was born at Mass Gen on November 3, 2000. She wasn't pregnant."
"That's the older girl?"
"Yup. Paris Janelle was born August 26, 2003."
"No father listed on Prescott and Prior's birth certificates, right?"
"Right."
"If he was willing to risk disinheritance for marrying Crystal Schaefer, why didn't he marry Deniece Smoot, who he already had two kids with?"
"And why did she drive over to her ex-lover's house years and years after their relationship ended and kill him?"
"Did their relationship actually end?"
"And who killed their sons? One before and one after Phil's murder?"
No one answered.
"I give up."
Jane threw her arms in the air and picked up her iphone, her thumbs skittered across the tiny screen as she composed a text to Maura.
Don't wait dinner for me. It's going to be a late night.
"I don't know about you two, but I'm starving. Let's grab a bite and go over this again from the beginning with full bellies."
Korsak was up out the door before his partners could disagree.
Jane entered the house quietly on sock-clad feet; she had removed her heavy boots outside and tiptoed softly through the kitchen, careful not to trip over a dog-sized tortoise that had the run of the ground floor. Korsak had suggested a beer before going home, but Jane declined, prompting Frost to feel her forehead. Jane Rizzoli never says no to a beer.
She wanted to go home to Maura.
"Hey buddy, is your mom sleeping? Not much of a talker, huh?"
Bass had trundled into the kitchen and sat motionless on the white tiled floor like a lone rock on a sandy beach.
She leaned against the counter, drinking a bottle of water. There was a note on the table. She squinted in the dim light at Maura's tiny, neat cursive.
Jane,
There is a plate for you in the refrigerator, on the third shelf, left of the edamame and just in front of the arugula. I have covered it in aluminum foil and printed your name on it with a sharpie marker. There is another foil covered plate, but that is not for you. Knowing you, you will remove the incorrect plate to determine if it is more palatable to you than the healthy meal I have prepared for you. You will be disappointed, Jane, as the other contains "icky things" that your mother brought over for Jo Friday, namely the boiled viscera of a chicken. Please eat. Your mother says you are too skinny. I think you are perfect, but skipping meals has myriad negative consequences and you ought not to do it. It's late and I will probably be sleeping when you read this. I love you. Kiss me when you come to bed. Maura.
Jane smiled and put the note in her pocket. She opened the refrigerator and removed both plates, sniffing at Jo's first before wrinkling her nose and putting it back. Her own plate contained a small grilled chicken breast, a large pile of green beans tossed in some sort of lemony dressing and a medium helping of couscous with raisins.
"Meh. Glad I had a burger and fries at 7:00." She mumbled to Bass.
She ate every bite and left her dirty plate on the counter. She was at the foot of the stairs when she thought better of it and returned to the kitchen to place it in the dishwasher.
Ten minutes later she slid under the covers and wrapped herself around the warm, soft form of a gently snoring Dr. Isles. She placed the requested kiss just under the doctor's jaw and dropped off easily to sleep.
