Author's Note- Being an "essential" worker just sucks up all of my time and energy. :)
Disclaimer- Don't own the show. No profit had. Blah, blah, blah- the usual technical jargon.
Chapter Fifty-Four:
It was with relief that Jane escaped the confines of the precinct basement, fleeing from the close quarters of shelf after shelf of unsolved heartache, and the whispered conspiracies that had started to make her itch with paranoia. Her entire body felt the need to escape the precinct, to reach Maura, and to console herself with the woman's presence in her arms. Nothing less would do. Maybe if she held the woman hard enough, she'd be able to shake her disquiet. She couldn't believe that Hoyt had somehow gotten away with so much violence and psychopathy in the past. Well- it wasn't as if she hadn't thought him capable, but she was having trouble wrapping her head around it being so extensive and going so far back. If he really was responsible for a murder when he was still a teenager, and there was no doubt in her mind that he probably was, then the murders she knew him to be responsible for recently were only the latest in a long line of deaths that could be attributed to him. Which meant that he wasn't just a newly violent sex offender, he'd been viciously psychotic for decades. This was serial killer territory, complete and utter insanity. The kind of murderer with experience and no conscience, which also made him the most dangerous and deadly killer she'd ever come up against. No wonder he scared Maura so badly. It was one thing to suspect and something completely different to know.
Maura had known since she was fifteen; since she was just a kid.
What Hoyt had done to her then was brutal and unthinkable, and made Jane so angry that her hands still clenched into fists at the mere thought. What he had been doing, for years now, was cruel. To make her relive over and over the trauma of being forced into giving her body away to protect her family. With this murder as the final clue, Jane now knew for herself how unconscionable his actions were, which made her realize in turn that his depravity reached even further than she had suspected. Why hadn't he been caught and put away yet? Why had he been allowed to keep hurting people like this? Most importantly- how was she going to make it stop now, to protect the woman she loved? Her mind latched onto the paper still clutched in her hand, the single page of investigation that summed up the abrupt ending of a young woman's life. The first, perhaps, of Hoyt's victims. Carefully, she smoothed it out and looked over it again, as if it would have somehow sprouted more answers for her in the interim.
Margory Hamilton had been just thirty-three when she'd been killed, leaving behind only her brother's family. What had she been like? Who had she been to those who had loved her? Had her life been full and happy before she'd somehow caught the attention of a predator like Hoyt, attention that would end up brutally costing her her life before her time? The report gave no insight, little to note on her life before her tragic death, and only a cursory recall of her day before the killing. She had been seen at the First Avenue Bank in the early morning, caught on CCTV making a small withdrawal from her account. The sum hadn't been noted. There was no interview with the clerk working the counter. No one at work that had seen her leave early, only noting that she was gone when she hadn't shown up for an important meeting that she had been tasked with transcribing. As a secretary, she hadn't really been remarkable. There was nothing of a confidential nature that she had been working on. It ended there. Her boss hadn't even been interviewed to see if she had been acting strangely or if she had any insights into her secretaries personal life.
Had the actual file done any better? She could only guess.
It was sad. Sad that so many people had dropped the ball, so much work left undone that she knew was standard procedure on any murder case, but particularly on one where the circumstances were so unique. The report mentioned the body being staged, the unusual cuts on her arms, legs, and breasts, there was even mention of a trophy had been taken by the perpetrator, though what it had been wasn't clear. She didn't need to work homicide to understand that the detectives hadn't bothered to look into those small details, nor how little in general had been done to solve Ms. Hamilton's murder. She didn't need to be an expert in law to suspect that nowadays, those detectives would probably be fired and charged for such negligence. She didn't need to be a detective for the lack of follow-through to rankle either. Not only this case, but so many others, especially Maura's rape- it all might not have happened if they had caught Hoyt then.
She twisted her lips up in thought.
What was it that had drawn Korsak's deep-diver to this case? What actually connected Marjory Hamilton to a seventeen-year-old Hoyt, who by all accounts that Frost had given her, had only moved to Boston from New York shortly before the murder occurred? The file on the killing might have provided some insight, some kind of redemption for those in charge of the case, but she couldn't look at it. Because of the mounting danger surrounding this investigation, she couldn't even ask the one who'd found that connection. Any contact with whoever it was that had been looking into Hoyt could lead to another murder that she really didn't want to be responsible for, if it was possible to not drag someone else into this at the risk of their lives.
Perhaps the bigger question on her mind should be how had Hoyt gotten to Lieutenant Cavanaugh, or to the people that he worked for, like the Police Commissioner and the Mayor? He moved in sophisticated circles, rich ones too, and he was friends with a lot of influential people, but that didn't explain how he had made this happen. He would have had to have someone on the inside, someone with a hell of a lot of power. Gotten someone to ignore the mounting evidence and the obviousness of the real culprit in a case no one else should have known was even happening. That was another level of influence and power. That was control, maybe blackmail, to get someone to commit such a betrayal of their ethics. Assuming, of course, that this person had ethics. How had this person, and Hoyt, had the pull to get her case wrapped up so quickly too, with Paul of all people taking the rap as the ruthless head of a highly successful escort service turned serial murderer? It was ridiculous. While she hadn't seen the footage of the attack on Maura like other had, Barry had given her a bit of a rundown of what Paul had said and done during it. The young man had been as unhinged as his mentor, that was clear, but a criminal mastermind he was not. He hadn't even had the foresight to protect himself from Hoyt turning on him. Either he was stupid or he had been blind with devotion, which she equated to another kind of stupidity.
Paul had been a bartender, a twenty-something nobody that was invisible to the majority of society. He must have been ripe for manipulation, probably disaffected, probably mad at all the gorgeous woman who passed through his work without a second look at him. That wouldn't have been Maura. Maura was kind to a fault, had more than likely shown him attention, commiseration. It was probably what had made him fixate on her, had made him hold onto the hope that someday Hoyt would let him have her. With that kind of promise waiting in the wings of his troubled mind, it wouldn't have been hard to convince him to kill. To teach him to kill.
She thought about the other crime scenes, the murder victims that could have been Maura if she hadn't gotten to her when she did. She tried to think about all the different evidence and rituals that spoke to MO that they had cataloged. On tape, Paul had admitted to killing Lyla and Annabeth, and yes, Annabeth's murder fit his MO. It had been all newness, a few nods to Hoyt's MO, but with subtle differences that screamed copycat as a warning. A warning for her. To scare her. However, Lyla's death had followed Hoyt's MO to a tea, which meant that while the actual murder had been committed by Paul, Hoyt had been there, seeing to every detail. That was the only reason it would have matched so perfectly to the sketchy profile they'd managed to make of Hoyt. Both murder had been to teach Maura, and ostensibly her as well, a lesson about prying where they shouldn't. A lesson about only having what Hoyt allowed them to have, only living because he allowed them to live. Paul had said that he'd been told he could have Maura if he was just patient enough. If he did what he was told. In all honesty, she doubted Hoyt had ever had any intention of giving Maura to anyone. In his mind, he owned the woman, and there had to be a reason he had set up his conquest, his property, as an escort. It wasn't to get killed by someone else. Perhaps Maura had been right, perhaps it was to remind her every day that she belonged to him. He thought he could control her better if he forced her to work for him, to use her body like a weapon and an object. Even forcing upon her mind this idea that her body was somehow separate from herself, that it was his and his alone to dictate its actions. Making her view herself as expendable, loveless, manipulated... powerless.
'He gloats about how much I'm like him.' That's what Maura had said.
Was it all to make her see herself the same way he saw himself? Was it all part of a plan to make them the same? That would mean that all of this was a plan as well. A series of actions he had taken not out of fancy, but for a specific purpose. Which would mean that even sending Paul in had had a purpose. Not to kill Maura. That wouldn't make any sense, not after all these years that she and her father had been doing exactly what he had wanted. In fact, he might have sent the young man as a test for Maura, more than for him to have his way with her. Did that mean he had wanted the doctor to defend herself from him? Had it been his intention all along to force Maura to kill him, to make her a killer, like him?
And did that mean that Jane herself had played right into his hands?
Had he wanted her to?
It didn't seem improbable.
What would he gain from something like that?
Jane rubbed at her face, sure she was smudging the little bit of mascara she'd put on in the car, but not really caring. Her brain hurt from trying to piece this all together into a coherent narrative. Trying to think like Hoyt, to put herself in the place of a sick and twisted monster, was making her sick and dizzy. Maybe Maura and Korsak were right. Maybe she needed a break from chasing Hoyt, maybe she needed more sleep before she tried to go after him with more determination. Though how that could be possible after she'd slept all of yesterday away, she couldn't say. That wouldn't stop her from asking Frost to work from her apartment when she got back so that she and Maura could curl up together and get some more sleep.
Actual sleep, not-
"Move it or lose it, Rizzoli."
She started in surprise, not having been aware that the elevator had even stopped, much less that the doors had opened. "Sorry, Khan." Hurrying through the open doors and out of the other officer's way, Jane was surprised again when the woman called her back. They'd come up in the Academy only a year apart, but they barely knew each other's names. "Yeah?"
"There was a tech from CSU looking for you in the lobby, last I went through. Something Holiday? She seemed anxious to see you."
"Oh, uh- okay, thanks."
The woman nodded as she released the elevator doors to let them close between them.
Staring at the doors long after they closed, Jane couldn't help but frown. A CSU tech- perhaps from the other day? That was the only crime scene she could think of that she had been directly involved with and there was no other reason to involve her in the findings of another case unless it was Korsak giving her the information. Unless Hoyt had managed to kill someone else since Maura had seemingly vanished from where he could watch her. Anxious suddenly, she paused on her way toward the exit. She wondered what the Holiday woman could possibly want to see her about so urgently, if it was for another case. According to Lieutenant Cavanaugh, the case of the shooting was closed, as was her case against Hoyt. She wasn't to investigate further.
She chewed her cheek in thought. There was something to be said for just going home and disregarding what Khan had told her. Being away from Maura still rankled and she didn't like the thought that there was even a possibility that someone had made Maura, especially without her by the doctor's side to protect her. Whatever it was could be relayed to her via Korsak or perhaps it could just wait. There was nothing saying that she had to respond to someone just looking for her. Yet, she had a feeling she shouldn't ignore a CSU tech wanting to speak to her for any reason or the possibility of another Hoyt related case popping up either, and she couldn't deny that Maura was probably just as safe as she had been before she'd left. Frost was with her and anyway, Korsak had been right- no one knew that she was at Jane's to begin with. She supposed a few extra minutes couldn't exactly hurt anything, could it?
With a nod to herself, she started moving down the hall, resolving not to take the back exit like she had intended, but instead to make her way across the building and down the front steps that would lead to the main lobby of the station. It wasn't often that she came down this way. Being in Narcotics meant being undercover a lot and it was usual for her and the other officers and detectives to always use the least frequented entries.
It was a high-vaulted room, the lobby. All marble and utilitarian, government issue rugs that did nothing to muffle the disorienting echo that filled the room when it was in use. Walls were full of medals, awards, and pictures- both of officers being honored and criminals being hunted. Some wooden partitions around the metal detectors kept a separation between the outside world and the inner. A bank of chairs lined one side and an isle, a sort of impromptu intake area, and most of them were occupied at this time of day. Beneath the noise of people talking and walking to and fro, she could make out the blip of sirens on the other side of the doors as they opened and closed multiple times. Her eyes panned around, trying to see if she could spot the person looking for her before she had to take it to the desk sergeant on duty.
"Officer Rizzoli."
She turned at the sound of her name being called and saw a woman in a CSU jacket taking a step up the stairs toward her. It was the same tech who'd volunteered to help her with Maura the other night. Her hair was down today- curly, black, and just reaching her shoulders. It looked cute. Her kind face and pretty black skin looked less sallow in the light too, though Jane thought perhaps it had just been off color that night because they were working with someone who'd been the victim of an assault. That kind of thing was never easy. There was a reason that most people rotated out of the Special Victims Unit on a bi-yearly basis. "Nina, right? Heard a tech was looking for me, that you?"
Without answering, the woman came up and took her arm, holding it urgently. As if she was scared of something. "Can I speak to you? In private?"
Frowning in concern, Jane nodded and let herself be led down the rest of the stairs, around the corner out of the main lobby, and on through a door into the stairwell that led down to the basement of this part of the precinct, which she believed housed the morgue and labs.
Finally letting go of her too tight grip, the woman looked down the stairs, before at last turning to talk to her. In that moment though, it appeared that nerves got the better of her tongue.
Jane's alarm grew. "Spit it out, Nina. What's wrong?"
"I didn't know who else I should..." Nina started breathlessly. "-and I wasn't sure where to take it, or who to talk to about it, or even what-"
"Whoa, easy." She tried to get the tech to calm down by taking her shoulders. "Start from the beginning."
Nina took a deep breath. "I went over the clothing collected at the scene from the other night, just in case the findings needed to be available for an inquest that might come from it, or at least to see if there was some way to prove that it was a good shooting. Last night, I stayed late because I wanted to make sure the results came through properly... and I found something just before my boss pulled the plug on any further investigation into the shooting this morning. Which wouldn't exactly be weird, except that when I tried to tell him what I found, he told me it didn't matter, and wouldn't even let me finish giving him a report. Either he didn't care... Well, either that or he was ordered not to listen to me."
"Alright. Found what then, exactly?" Jane tried not to let her excitement and trepidation show, but the strain made her voice go high.
"A fiber and more specifically, the trace evidence on the fiber of a certain kind of chemical. It was transferred onto the dress that... that the v-victim was wearing at the time of the attack. Nothing that matched what she or the attacker were wearing."
"Couldn't it have just been transfer from the room? It's not like the rooms are cleaned that thoroughly." She asked, giving the woman a puzzled look.
Nina made a face and tipped her head this way and that. "Possible, but doubtful. There was no other trace of the chemical found anywhere in the room except for a tiny amount on the attacker's clothing, which is where I believe it was transferred to the victim from. Not something that seemed noteworthy at first, but odd enough that I ran it through the database anyway and was able to match it. The fiber turned out to be a synthetic thread used mostly by hospitals for suturing, but the chemical is what popped for me. It was insulin."
"So? Lots of people have diabetes and use insulin, Nina."
"True, but running it all through the database kicked up the same kind of fiber from another crime scene."
She deflated, blowing out air through her nose in aggravation. "That's not really news, Nina. It could be from anyone who has gotten stitches in the last day or so, and even if it was from Paul, we already have him on tape confessing to the murders of two women. It wouldn't be strange if there was evidence from them-"
"It wasn't a case with a female victim." Nina said bluntly.
That stopped her. "What do you mean? Who was it? What case?" She asked the questions rapid fire, her anxiety coming back with a vengeance. It wasn't evidence that would convict, per se, but it was something.
Maybe.
"A man named Lawrence Nevit. He was found murdered and dumped in an overgrown field just north and east of Magazine Beach on the Charles, by the Cambridge Street bridge and the Houghton chemical plant."
Her heart skipped a few beats in recognition of the name, sure she had heard wrong. "Nevit?"
"He was-"
"I know who he was." She interrupted the tech's explanation, trying to make her brain come up with what that might mean. Lawrence Nevit was the same man that had attacked Maura on the night they'd met, the one that Hoyt had killed for messing with his 'property'. He had been the catalyst that had forced Maura to confess Hoyt's name to her, the person she had been afraid was her father, but to be completely honest, Jane hadn't thought of him since the night they'd found out. As far as she knew, the investigation into his death was ongoing and there hadn't been any telling leads that pointed to either Paul or Hoyt given the difference in MO. She had assumed Hoyt had gotten someone else to kill Nevit, but it was too clean and professional to speak to mind like Paul's. "Did the fiber from the Nevit crime scene have traces of the same chemical?"
"I don't know. I didn't work that case, and while I have access to the findings logged in the database, I don't have access to the evidence itself to check and see if it was overlooked."
Well, so it was something at least. Loose evidence, but evidence nonetheless.
Jane thought about Maura, about her desire to return to the doctor's side as soon as possible to ensure that she was protected. But she was being paranoid. There was no one but the three of them who knew where Maura was, even if Hoyt had somehow gotten a hold of her name and knew that she had betrayed him. Cavanaugh wouldn't have been stupid enough to actually put her name on any of the files. Besides, Frost was with her and if there was anyone she trusted with the doctor's life, it was him.
Okay. A little longer detour wouldn't hurt.
"Show me."
