Her name was Charlotte Griffin, age 17. Orphaned at age 8 and was a ward of the state. She had been attending Wilson High School in Haverhill and was last seen with her friend, Danielle Davidson, leaving the school together by foot. As far as anyone knew, Danielle was the last person to see her alive.
Which is why she was currently sitting by Jane's desk with her stern looking father standing close behind.
Jane walked into the bull pen and her eyes immediately fell on the father and daughter. His hand placed firmly on her slumped shoulder as she dabbed at her eyes with a tissue.
"Danielle Davidson?" Jane asks in confirmation as she approaches them.
The young girl lifts her head and nods, her silvery blonde hair falling off her shoulders and down her back, with blue eyes that were rimmed red. "Is-is she really dead?" She asks quietly.
Jane's face softens, and she prepares her victim voice. "Yes sweetie, she is. I'm so sorry. I understand you two were close?" Jane notices the fathers hand grip her shoulder a little tighter, but Danielle pays no attention. Her lip quivers a little and she nods again before a single sob escapes her.
"She was my best friend."
"She was no good for you Danielle. You shouldn't have been hanging out with her in the first place. What if it had been you?" The fathers rough voice cuts through their conversation.
Jane looks up at him, "sir, maybe I could have a moment alone with your daughter?"
"No, I have a right to stay with her. I don't want her speaking to you alone." His voice rises slightly the detective notices Danielle flinch a little.
"Ok, fine." Jane agrees, and turns her attention back to the girl. "You two walked home together?"
"Y-yes. I usually drive my car, but I didn't have it today."
"Why not?"
"My wife was using it, hers was in the shop." The girl's father interrupts.
"Mr. Davidson, I really need to hear it from your daughter, and if you continue to interrupt I will have to remove you from the squad room for intimidating a witness."
He falls silent, but keeps an angry gaze on her as she turns back to his daughter.
"How long had you been friends?"
"All of high school. We met freshman year."
"Did anyone have any problems with her?"
"Not that I knew of, everyone loved Charlotte." At this statement, the girls tears return and she drops her head into her hands.
"That's enough of this, we're leaving." Mr. Davidson commands, grabbing his daughters and and pulling her up. She winces slightly at his grip, but says nothing, zipping her sweater up all the way to her neck and fingering the necklace around her throat.
Before Jane can get in a word of protest, they are gone.
"What are you doing?" Jane asks, popping her head into the medical examiners office.
Maura jumps, and drops the ultrasound wand on the ground, frantically pulling her black scrub shirt back down and readjusting her lab coat. "Nothing!"
Jane cocks her head.
The blonde sighs, "fine, I was using the morgues ultrasound machine on myself. I couldn't help it, I wasn't busy, and he hasn't moved for a couple hours so I just thought..."
"You'd check on him?" Jane says smiling. She walks in and takes a seat next to Maura on the couch. "Good idea."
Maura grins widely and pecks her on the lips. Jane takes the wand in her own hand and helps Maura with her shirt.
After about an hour of cooing over their unborn son, reveling in the rhythmic whoosh of his heartbeat pulsating through the room, they put the machine away and get back to work.
"You spoke with the friend?" Maura asks over the body.
"Yeah, she was really upset. They were best friends."
"She must have been devastated." Maura says quietly before turning her attention back to the corpse. "She was definitely strangled, but she put up a fight. I found scratches along her arms and almost all of her fingernails are broken. The few that weren't, however, had black cotton fiber embedded in them."
"Like regular cotton? The kind used for clothes?"
"Yes, but the density of the fiber leads me to conclude that it was from a glove."
Jane's shoulders slump a little, "so he was wearing gloves, great." She steels herself and takes a quick breath. "Anything else?"
Maura shakes her head, "no."
"She wasn't..." Jane looks Maura in the eye before continuing, "sexually assaulted, was she?"
"Thankfully not, although I did find presence of vaginal fluids. She may not have been raped, but she was certainly aroused." Both women particularly hated this part of the job, the part where you felt as if you were completely violating the victim in every way. Even if the goal is to bring them justice, a small part of you still feels like you have no right to know this persons business. Nothing is sacred in this line of work.
"Hm, that's strange." Jane said, "maybe Danielle lied to us then." When she is met with Maura's confused look, she clarifies. "The friend we talked to, she said they walked home together, but she didn't mention anything about meeting a boyfriend, or any guy for that matter. Maybe I'll go talk to her again."
Jane says a quick goodbye and walks back to the elevator, but as it dings and she takes a step forward, she suddenly halts as another body steps out.
"Danielle?"
The girl looks up, eyes still brimming with un-shed tears. She squares her shoulders and tightens the sleeves of her jacket in her fists before answering.
"I-I came back. I wanted to see her, can-can I see her? Please, I need to see her." The little confidence in her voice falters throughout her sentence.
"Um. Let me see what I can do, wait right here." Jane gives her shoulder a reassuring rub, and although Danielle doesn't flinch, her eyes close momentarily as if she is trying very hard not to.
Jane takes long, quick strides back into the morgue and calls out Maura's name. The ME spins around looking confused, "what's wrong?"
"Uh, Danielle is here. The friend. She says she wants to see the body, should I let her? I mean, they were best friends. And we can cover up everything but her face..."
But Maura is already on it, she carefully guides herself off the stool she was sitting on and waddles over to the body, pulling the sheet up to just below her neck. "Give me five minutes, I want to see if their is anything I can do about her bruises."
Jane takes a silent moment to appreciate the heart of Maura Isles, and gives her a chaste kiss before making her way back to the elevator doors.
Danielle is leaning up against the wall, head bowed, one hand slowly rubbing her side. Jane makes sure to stomp her feet a little louder than usual, not wanting the already fragile (and obviously jumpy) teenager to be startled. She lifts her head at the sound of Jane's footfalls and stands up straight.
"So...can I see her?" She asks quietly.
Jane nods, "our Medical Examiner is preparing her for viewing, are you ready? I think you should prepare yourself-"
"I'm ready," Danielle responds eagerly, wiping away a single tear with an angry swipe of her hand. "I'm ready."
Jane agrees, and after the allotted amount of time, guides her down to the morgue. She pokes her head through the door first. "Psst!" She hisses at Maura, "you ready?"
"Yes," Maura says, putting down the make-up brush in her hand.
Jane opens the door a little wider, and Danielle steps through, her hand automatically flying to her mouth to stifle her gasp. "Oh godd... Char." She whispers though her hand.
She slowly steps closer to the morgue table, tears beginning to flow. She comes to a stop at the edge of the table, and bites back a sob and she slips her hand into the cold, motionless hand of Charlotte Griffin. "How?" She whispers.
Maura answers, "She...was strangled to death."
Danielle squeezes her eyes shut, and drops to her knees beside the body, sill clutching the lifeless hand on the table. "I'm so sorry Charlotte," she cries. "I shouldn't have left you, I'm so, so sorry." Her body was angled strangely, and Maura noticed. She was slouched to the left side, avoiding putting pressure on her right.
"Jane," Maura whispers, and the brunette turn her attention to her. Maura nods in the direction of the other end of the room, and they both cross the morgue at the same time.
"What?" Jane whispers to her once they are close enough.
"Well, I wanted to give her a little bit of privacy, also I think she may have an injury. Her spine is angled oddly and she is bent at about 13 degrees."
Jane glaces back at the sobbing girl, trying to see what Maura sees. "I guess, yea. You're right." She nods, just as her phone starts to buzz. She glances down quickly at the message and groans quietly. "Frost says he's got something..."
"Go, I've got this." Maura insists with a smile.
Jane gives her hand a squeeze instead of her normal kiss of thanks, trying to remain professional in front of the girl, but she doesn't seem to notice anyway.
After Jane leaves, Maura gives the girl another minute or so before approaching her. "Danielle? Would you like to come into my office for a little while? I have some coffee if you'd like..."
The girl sniffles, but finally nods. Slowly getting to her feet and refusing Maura's helping hand. "I'm fine, I don't want to throw you off balance, you look like you're about to topple over as it is." Maura gives her a small smile as they walk into her office.
"How did you get here?" Maura asks, gesturing to the couch for the girl to sit. "To the precinct, I mean." Danielle pulls a set of keys out of her pocket.
"I drove, finally got my car back from my mom. She'd been borrowing it." She shifts in her seat, deliberately not leaning one shoulder on the back of the couch. Maura can't stand it anymore, this girl is obviously in pain.
She sets two mugs of coffee (one decaf) on her desk and takes a seat next to the girl, leaning closer to her. "Are you okay, Danielle? You seem to be hurting." Catching the sadness in the girls gaze, she adds, "I mean physically. Are you in pain?"
The girl opens her mouth to deny it, but suddenly find herself nodding slowly, Maura's unwavering and caring eyes making it impossible to lie. Even though she has gotten used to lying whenever anyone asks her this question. "It's nothing, just a bump. I'm okay." She whispers earnestly.
But her facial muscles move in a way that tells Maura that is not the whole story. The ME puts a gentle hand on the girls shoulder, and surprisingly she doesn't flinch. "May I? I won't hurt you, promise." She says quietly.
The girl doesn't respond, but she doesn't protest either. Closing her eyes tightly as Maura slides her jacket off her shoulder, unzipping it a little more so it falls off both shoulders and slides down the back of the couch.
Somehow, Maura manages not to gasp. But tears burn in the back of her eyes and she mutters, "oh, honey."
The bruise is about six inches in width, eight in length. Oval shaped and turning green, no doubt almost a week old. Maura has seen this bruise on victims on her slab before, almost always the result of an elbow to the shoulder blade. She pulls the jacket completely off, revealing hand shaped bruises on Danielle's upper arms, dark blue, and more recent.
When she pushes the girls blonde hair aside, exposing deep gash marks in the back of her neck, she feels the girl shudder. Danielle scoots away from Maura instantly and settles herself on the far end of the couch, trying to push herself as far away from the realization on Maura's face as possible. She pulls her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them. "P-please don't say anything, please." She begs, trying to control her breathing.
Maura reaches forward and puts her hand on the girls arm, "Danielle, someone is hurting you. Frequently, by the looks of it. I have to make sure you're safe, I have to tell-"
"Please!" Danielle all but shrieks, and Maura is slightly taken aback by the outburst. "If you tell, if you say anything it'll just get worse. I'm begging you, he's going to stop now. He's gonna stop."
"How many times has he told you that, Danielle? How many times has he said he's going to stop?" Maura has heard this line from so many victims it's almost a cliche.
"Never." Danielle answers seriously. "He has never said he will stop, but I know he will now." Her voice is barely a whisper.
"How?" Maura presses, "how do you know he will stop? Who is he, anyway? Is it a boyfriend?"
Danielle chuckles heartlessly, biting back a sob. "No, no it's not a boyfriend."
"Then who, sweetheart? Who ever it is deserves to be in prison, and if you tell me I can help get him there."
"His only reason for hurting me is dead!" Danielle finally explodes, fat tears rolling down her face as she clutches at her side. "She is laying on that table in there-"
But she can't finish, she covers her face with her hands in shame and weeps. Maura, still confused on the situation, can think of nothing to do but wrap her arms gently around the girl, her heart breaking as she clutches onto Maura's lab coat like it's a lifeline.
Patience, friends. The best is yet to come :)
As always, I love you all. Your reviews are always appreciated and flatter me beyond belief.