With blue lights, Jane zigzagged from lane to lane across the expressway. Even at 9:30 p.m., the highway was still congested. People in Boston were the worst drivers in the country. The very worst. They even beat the New Yorkers. They either drove way too slow or way too fast, there was nothing in between. Except for gridlock, of course, when the hare caught up with the hedgehog and had to get into the irons, provoking queues of red brake lights and rear-end collisions.
Shortly after the highway on-ramp, traffic had come to a complete standstill. Further ahead in the oncoming lane, a sea of blue and red lights flashed. The highway divided here, so there was no way to cross to the other side. Jane cursed the moron cop who had picked this of all places for his vehicle checkpoint. She swung right onto the shoulder and drove a scant mile past the traffic jam of gawkers, hares, and hedgehogs, now united in their curiosity, craning their necks and sticking their heads out the window to get a better look at the gruesome traffic accident they suspected was further ahead. Jane was now level with the armada of fifteen to twenty patrol cars gathered in the other lane. A police helicopter was just taking off. Traffic was blocked in both directions, and on both sides of the highway, bloodthirsty onlookers sat in the front rows on the roofs and hoods of their cars, watching the spectacle unfold before them. Others were simply frustrated and honking their horns.
Once past the police barricade, Jane sped to the end. There she took the exit and tried to return westbound on the road. That turned out to be impossible because traffic was at a standstill and already backed up on the on-ramp. Jane had to radio a highway trooper to have the driveway cleared so she could even get on the bridge.
Finally, she passed another roadblock and another line of rubberneckers and parked her unmarked car behind a string of at least ten patrol cars. Apparently, every single police department in Boston was represented here. The two right lanes were marked off with beacons, and a freckle-faced trooper of no more than nineteen was trying to get the rubberneckers in the left lane to move on.
Ambulance and fire trucks were parked in front of the patrol cars. A white car marked MEDICAL EXAMINER was individually parked a little farther ahead. The car had no blue lights on. If Jane hadn't known what it was about, she would have sworn it was a mass casualty collision.
She walked past the empty patrol cars with the flashing blue lights. A lone black Jaguar XJ8 stood intact on the shoulder between the bridge wall and more empty patrol cars. Damn. God and the world were out here. This was going to be a feast for the media.
Just beyond the exit, rose the Boston Globe building. The ninth-floor windows were practically level with the bridge. Well, wonderful. The reporters didn't even have to get out of their offices to take the photo for the front page. The windows of the building were lit up and peppered with dark outlines. Some intern with a telephoto lens was probably taking a close-up of Jane's nose hair at that very moment.
The Jaguar was empty, the tailgate open. In the trunk, Jane saw a white sheet gently swayed by the tropical breeze. A couple of police officers in different uniforms stood together five yards away, talking. Their bodies unconsciously shielded the trunk. A wide variety of information rushed and squawked from radios in mushy, unintelligible police jargon.
To the west, the magnificent Boston skyline glowed in neon pink and light blue, flecked with lemon yellow.
Parked directly behind the brand-new Jaguar was a Highway Patrol squad car. Jane saw the dark silhouette of a single figure in the back seat behind the grille that separated the driver from the rear.
Jane walked over to the officers and flashed her badge. "Does anyone know where I can find Sergeant Ribero?"
Another nineteen-year-old, this time in a BPD uniform, nodded and pointed to a couple of cops standing behind the forensics van. Jane saw three uniformed men talking to two Blues Brothers look-alikes in dark suits, missing only their sunglasses. The Blues Brothers listened intently and took notes. Jane recognized one of them, FBI, and gritted her teeth involuntarily.
The police officers in front of the Jaguar took a step aside to let Jane through to the car. The trunk light illuminated the cloth; red stains began to seep through the dense fabric. She pulled a pair of gloves from her pants pocket. Suddenly, a large, heavy hand settled on her shoulder from behind, "I hope you haven't eaten tonight, Jane. It's pretty bad."
Standing behind Jane was Vince Korsak, her old partner, and mentor. "Where the hell have you been?"
"I got stuck in a freaking traffic jam." Jane shook her head and looked around. "Apparently half the world knew before I did. What a three-ring circus."
"You know life punishes those who delay. Have you waved to our best friends at the Globe yet?" Korsak pointed at the building and waved his arm exaggeratedly. He'd probably end up on the front page tomorrow.
"All right, all right. I'm not saying anything. What do we have?"
Korsak looked at her almost sternly and leaned against the concrete wall. "About 8:15 p.m. tonight, Chavez, a rookie Highway Patrol officer, sees a black Jaguar speeding down the road. He follows it onto the highway and sees it also has a broken taillight. So he waves him out. There's only one guy in the car. He asks for his driver's license, registration, and so on. Chavez says the guy is playing Mr. Cool, slick, not a bead of sweat, not a twitch, nothing. He shows him a driver's license issued in Boston in the name of Bantling. William Bantling. A resident of Mission Hill. Chavez is walking around the car to give the guy a ticket when some weird smell hits his nose, apparently coming from the trunk. So he asks Bantling for permission to look in the trunk. But the guy says no. Something's up, Chavez thinks. Along the lines of, why does this guy mind me looking in his trunk? So he calls for backup and a dog squad and holds him here until the cavalry arrives. Twenty minutes later, the K-9 is there, and the dog immediately reacts to the trunk, you know, scratching, barking, the whole nine yards. The boys, of course, think coke! Daddy's got some powdered sugar hidden in the car. They pop the hood and ... Surprise! Our friend here has a dead girl in the trunk. She's got a big hole in her chest, and she's missing her heart. Well, everybody went crazy. And got on the radios. Within no time, we had every agency down here, and every cop has his own sergeant with them. It was like a carnival. Our chief even flew in in a helicopter to take a look. You just missed him. He was at some snazzy fundraiser for the governor or something. When he heard about it, he just claimed he was needed here right away. And instead of driving the twenty minutes from the Biltmore Hotel, he had the guys fly him and the governor in. We had to close the highway in both directions so the helicopter could land. Then he came wobbling in with his fat belly, got the sneak preview of the carnage, and then was able to tickle the governor's sack with his latest findings on the flight back to steak and fries. Can you believe all that?" Korsak shook his head.
Jane nodded in the direction of the lead investigator's van. "Who are the Blues Brothers?"
Korsak grinned broadly. "Do I really have to say? Our dear, loyal friends from the FBI, of course. On time to take credit for solving a case they never investigated." He rolled his eyes. "Stevens and Carmedy. They're just sucking up to the big boss guys so they'll at least have the facts at the press conference they'll undoubtedly give tomorrow."
"Why did the FBI find out about this before I did?" Jane looked around and shook her head. "For crying out loud, Vince, the whole damn world is here."
"The Special Agent in Charge of Boston was also at the fundraising dinner. But as far as I know, the federal agents, modest as they are, came here in the car. The other guys, well, you know, they just want to be there at this historic moment."
Jane shook her head again. The man from the FBI in Boston was Mark Gracker. He and Jane had clashed before, long before the Boogeyman case. It was over an organized crime murder. Gracker and his agents had taken the case away from her, conveniently after Jane had solved it and identified the suspect. A minute after whispering the suspect's name behind a locked door at the big chiefs' war council at the FBI and BPD, Jane was stunned to watch on the news as Gracker handcuffed the guy while simultaneously giving an interview to Channel 6's Julia Yarborough. Ten days later, the FBI promoted Gracker to Special Agent in Charge of Boston.
Bureau agents always tried to get involved just when they could end up looking like heroes. Since Waco and Ruby Ridge, they desperately needed to burnish their image. But Marilyn Siban's body had been found on federal property, so her case fell under federal law, and so Jane could ill-afford to tell Gracker to fuck off. She glanced in the trunk. "Has the girl been identified?"
"It's Anna Prado, the girl who disappeared from the Level. She's only been missing a couple of weeks. Anyway, the body is still pretty fit. Can't have been dead more than a day or so. What a shame. A real beauty."
Jane pulled on her latex gloves and lifted the white sheet. Another pair of empty dead eyes stared helplessly at her. Baby blue this time. "Did anyone move her? Touched her?"
"Nope. You get what you see. The Blues Brothers peeked in once but didn't touch her. I was babysitting. Just look, fellas, and be nice to the fellas! The forensics team has already photographed everything. They finished about ten minutes ago."
Anna Prado's naked body was lying on its back, knees bent, lower legs bent backward. Her arms were bound above her head with a nylon cord. The long platinum blond hair spread out underneath. The chest was open with two cuts forming a cross, the sternum neatly broken open. The heart was missing. Blood had collected under the body, but not much; obviously she had been killed elsewhere.
"He was probably just going to take her to a secluded spot and play with her some more. Then in a few months, we would have found a skeleton hanging in a drain pipe as a Christmas present, or something. In case you didn't know, Jane, the world is full of sick assholes." He stood up and grinned over at a slowly passing car, giving it the middle finger. "Like that piece of shit there, desperate to see something really bad."
"She looks fresh, Vince." Jane touched her arm. Flesh and muscle moved, the skin was cold. Rigor mortis had set in and subsided, but not too long ago. She estimated she had been dead only a day. She took a step back. Under the shoe, she heard a soft crunch. She bent down and picked up what looked like the splinter of a taillight. She put it in her pants pocket. "What did they use to break into the trunk?"
"I think a crowbar. Piedmont from BPD was the only one who touched the trunk after it was open. Forensics will get on it as soon as the body is at the morgue. I just wanted you to see where it was found before moving on."
"Who is this Bantling guy? Does he have a record?" Jane looked around for the patrol car parked three yards away. The figure in the back seat sat upright and motionless. In the darkness, she couldn't make out the face.
"No. We ran his name through the computer. Nothing. I called Jannie, the shrink, and as we speak, she's in the middle of picking apart his dirty little life, from the first time he shit himself in diapers to the last time he peed. We'll know more tomorrow at breakfast."
"What's he doing? Where's he from? I've never heard of him. He didn't show up on any of our lists, did he?"
"Not on any. He's forty-one and works as a buyer for Tommy Tan's Interior Design, some posh West End store. He travels a lot to South America and India. Claimed he was on his way to the airport when Chavez stopped him. All we know is that he lives in seclusion. We have sent an army of cops to his house, they are questioning the neighbors and really just waiting for the search warrant. So far, we're hearing the usual baloney from the neighbors: actually a nice guy, but I've always had a feeling! and so on. Then tomorrow they appear on the Jerry Springer Show, where they explain to the nation why they are psychics and we are idiots. Also, I've already called the DA's office. Of our guys, Masterson and Bowman are working on the warrants. Maura Isles from the DA's office then goes with them through the paperwork, and then at the end, they all go to the judge and get milk and cookies and the signature."
"Did Bantling make a statement?"
"He's silent as the grave. He hasn't said a word since he refused Chavez permission to open the trunk. We've got him wired in the back of Lou Ribero's car, listening to him, but he's not even breathing. I told people, nobody can talk to him, we'll handle it. The FBI idiots haven't questioned him either. Not yet, anyway, although I'm sure that's high on their list."
"All right. Tell the techs to get on with it. Have them pick up the body. Make sure they bag the hands before she's moved." Jane waved to the two forensics colleagues and the five forensics technicians crouched on the side of the road, trying to look as inconspicuous as possible with their blue jackets that said POLICE and MEDICAL EXAMINER in big yellow fluorescent letters. Now they were descending on the trunk like termites.
Jane nodded to the group of police officers still standing around the car and pushed her way back between them. The unmistakable noise of a helicopter hovering overhead boomed in the sky. Glaring headlights glared from above. "Hey Korsak, please tell me that's our fat-ass boss coming in for second rounds."
Vince Korsak looked up and blinked. Then he shook his head in annoyance. "Unfortunately, no. That, my friend, is the sensationalist disaster reporters from Channel 7. Looks like we hit the jackpot. We'll be on air for the eleven o'clock news. Don't forget to smile."
"Shit. The hordes are attacking. All right, let's get this guy into BPD and talk to him before he realizes what he's in for him, howls for a lawyer, and gets the civil rights movement going. I'll talk to our friends of the FBI later. We just can't leave any doubt that he's our suspect."
Jane opened the back door of the BPD patrol car and leaned in. The man in the back seat stared straight ahead. In the dim light, Jane saw that his right eye was blue and swollen, blood oozing from a cut on his cheekbone. There were red scratches on his neck. He must have tripped on the way to the patrol car. It always amazed Jane how clumsy the suspects were. Especially here in Boston.
"Mr. Bantling, I'm Detective Jane Rizzoli with the Boston Police Department. I need to ask you to come with me. I need to ask you a few questions."
William Bantling continued to stare straight ahead without making a face. He didn't even blink. "I know who you are, Detective Rizzoli. And I can assure you there is nothing we need to discuss in your office or anywhere else. I'm invoking my right to remain silent. I want to talk to my lawyer."
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Cara Dunn waited impatiently for her boss at the reception desk of the Boston District Attorney's Office. She was small and voluptuous, pacing back and forth in front of the elevators with a pink notepad. It was 9:02 a.m., and officially she'd been here for an hour and two minutes, even though she hadn't actually gotten to the office until 8:15 a.m. She'd had enough. She was fed up, she just wasn't going to put up with this crap anymore. The job paid too little for that.
The elevator doors opened, and Cara stared at those exiting. Behind some of the uniformed and tie-wearing people, she spotted the person she'd been waiting for, dressed in a plain gray suit and dark sunglasses. "Where have you been?" she hissed angrily. "Did you know I had to take over thirty messages for you?"
Theatrically, she flipped through her pad and ran after her victim through the security doors into the Major Crimes Unit rooms, all the way into the small office labeled MAURA ISLES, ESQU. ASSISTANT CHIEF. Now Cara waved the pad above her head. "All the messages, all for you!"
The last person Maura Isles wanted to run into first thing in the morning was her bitchy secretary, Cara. A day that started with her couldn't be a good day at all. Today was no exception. Maura set her briefcase on the desk, took off her sunglasses, and looked at the angry person standing in front of her: hands with brightly painted artificial nails thrust to her hips, her voluptuous forms squeezed into a neon pink Lycra top and flowered skirt that was two sizes too small and way too short.
"As far as I'm informed, Cara, your contractual duties include answering the phone and taking messages."
"But not that many. I didn't get to do anything else. Why didn't you call and tell me what to say to the press people?"
As if she was doing anything. Maura's forced smile only half-heartedly hid the gnashing of teeth. "Just tell the press there's no comment from our side, and get on with your work. I'll call back those who need it. I have a hearing at ten o'clock that I need to prepare for. Please make sure I'm not disturbed." Then she focused on her briefcase and ended the discussion, taking out her papers.
Cara clicked disapprovingly her tongue, slammed the pad down on Maura's desk, and turned around on her pink high heels. She muttered a few unintelligible curses and stormed out of the office.
Maura watched as she stumbled down the hall to the writing pool, where she would probably spend the next two hours complaining to her colleagues about the dramatic events of the morning and her horrible boss. And if it was the last thing Maura accomplished in her office, at some point she would have that person transferred. Preferably to the Department of Social Services on the other side of town. Not an easy task. Cara had been there for ten years, making her virtually tenured. She would probably be carried out feet first in an oversized black body bag rather than the Attorney General mustering up the courage to actually fire her.
Maura flipped through the pink notepad. NBC Channel 6, WSVN Channel 7 CBS Channel 2, Today Show, Boston Globe, Good Morning America, Telemundo, Miami Herald, New York Times, Chicago Tribune, even the Daily Mail from London. The list didn't stop at all.
News of the arrest of a suspect in the Boogeyman murder series had spread through the media like wildfire in the early morning hours, and the mad hunt for information had begun. Maura had already seen the tent camp of press hounds on the steps of the Justice Building across the street through the office window, with direct satellite links to New York and Los Angeles.
A year ago, the attorney general had assigned Maura to assist the Boogeyman task force in its investigation. Maura had been at the crime scenes and at some of the autopsies, drawing up warrants, checking with the medical examiner, going over police and lab reports, and taking witness statements. She had also taken some of the harsh criticism with which they were daily showered by the press for their lack of success. And now, her dedication to the men and women of the police force had earned her the grand prize: she would lead the trial of the worst serial killer in Boston's history. It was a role that made her the star of the day in the eyes of the media, a phenomenon she loathed from the bottom of her heart.
In her ten years in the district attorney's office, she had tried cases against all manner of criminals, from the fisherman who caught crawfish out of fishing season to the triple murder committed by a gang of seventeen-year-olds. She had pleaded with the judge for fines, for community service, for probation, jail, for "life." Five years ago, with a conviction rate of nearly one hundred percent, she had been commended and promoted to the Major Crimes Unit, a small special unit that assembled the top ten prosecutors. Here, she and her colleagues had a much smaller caseload to work on than the other 240 attorneys in the overly busy prosecutor's office, but it was not only the most serious crimes but also the ones that were the most difficult to prove.
It was almost always about murder, it was always an ugly affair, and one always had to reckon with increased media interest. Organized crime, child murders, executions in the gang milieu, frustrated fathers who wiped out their families after work. Each case was a potential media spectacle, some landing on the front page while others were lost as a note in the local section. Some of the crimes didn't even make it into the newspaper, in case they were overshadowed by an even more horrific murder case, a tornado, or an ignominious defeat for the New England Patriots.
During her five years at Major Crimes, Maura had spotted her name in the newspaper more than once. The attention made her nervous each time, and she still hated giving interviews. She was doing her job and doing it well. But not for the public or the limelight, but for the victims, for those who could no longer speak from their graves. And for their innocent friends and families who, after the hubbub had died down and the cameras were turned off, were still stunned. Maura wanted to give the victims a sense of justice so they wouldn't feel quite so powerless. But in this case, the spotlight would be even more relentless than usual already, because this was the first time Maura had the national and international media on her back and not just the local press.
When Vince Korsak called her at home last night to tell her they had a suspect in the Boogeyman case, she immediately knew it was going to be a big deal. Probably the biggest case of her entire career.
She had spent half the night working on the search warrants for Bantling's house and his two cars. She spent the rest of the night preparing for Bantling's first court hearing, which was scheduled for ten o'clock. And in between, she had toured the scene on the highway and stopped by the morgue to look at the body. Then, after three messages on her answering machine, she had called back Attorney General Jerry Small, who was upset that while he was at the same fund-raising party for the governor as the Boston police chief and FBI dude, they apparently hadn't invited him to the after-hours party on the highway like the other bigwigs. Small wanted her to find out why he had been passed over. And above it all, Maura had simply forgotten to sleep.
Bantling was entitled to a preliminary formal hearing within twenty-four hours of his arrest, at which a judge would decide whether the provisional arrest for Anna Prado's murder was lawful. Was there probable cause that he had committed the crime of which he was accused? It was reasonable to assume that a dismembered body in a trunk was considered probable cause. Normally, the first hearing was a mere formality, a two-minute affair handled via a monitor, the defendant seated in front of one screen in the county jail, and in front of the second screen in a tiny courtroom across the street sat a bad-tempered, overworked judge with a daily hearing workload of two hundred minor offenses and fifty felonies.
The bad-tempered judge read the arrest report and the charge of the crime declared that probable cause existed, set or denied bail, and then moved on to the next defendant in the long line that wound through the jail. And that was it. It was over so quickly that most of the time the defendant didn't even realize his name had been called. He waited in the prison bleachers, staring blankly ahead of him until he was brought down and placed in the other line waiting to be taken back to the cells. The prosecutor and defense attorney sat with the judge in the courtroom, but they were mere accessories. There were no witnesses, no testimony, nothing more, just the judge reading out the arrest protocol. And he always found probable cause. Without exception. That was the way it was, the good old legal system.
But in this case, in this case, everything would be completely different. Today, the defendant was even escorted from the jail across the street to the courthouse, where he was given a first formal hearing all to himself on a separate date in a separate courtroom. Just him, his defense attorney, the prosecutor, the judge, who was not in such a bad mood today, and the entire press corps, which had camped out overnight on the courthouse steps to get a seat in the courtroom.
A nice, sad affair that would be watched simultaneously by millions of viewers in front of their televisions across the country and around the world. And then again on the five o'clock, the eight o'clock and the eleven o'clock news.
Maura had a hunch that this time it wouldn't be done in two minutes.
The judge was the Honorable Irving J. Katz, a real press hound. He was old and crotchety and had probably been a judge when there hadn't even been a court in Boston. To Judge Katz' displeasure, the Chief Justice no longer let him try cases but had instead made him king of the first hearings, a usually uneventful and nerve-wracking post. A case like this, of course, warmed Judge Katz' heart. Maura expected that for the first five minutes of the hearing he would simply turn his silent, dreadful gaze of condemnation on Bantling. And at the cameras. Then he would ask for the arrest report from the bailiff and proceed to slowly intone the charge of the crime, letting every syllable drip with contempt. He would pretend that he was reading the arrest report with the facts about Bantling's arrest for the first time, of course, he had done this ten times in his office, but now his venerable furrowed brows would furrow theatrically in shock and disgust. He would ask what Bantling had to say about the crime accusation, though it didn't matter until the arraignment hearing in three weeks. Then he would round out his appearance with a short dramatic speech, "I pray that these ugly accusations are not true, that these barbaric, evil acts were not committed by you, William Rupert Bantling. But if you are guilty of such crimes, may God have mercy on your soul, for you will burn in hell for this!" Or something like that. That would be the headline for the Miami Herald extra: Judge: Boogeyman to burn in hell! Of course, Katz would find probable cause. Probably Maura wouldn't even have to speak up. Still, she wanted to be well prepared in case she was challenged by Bantling's attorney.
The judge who had issued the search warrant for the car last night and later, at five in the morning, signed the search warrants for Bantling's house and second car in his bathrobe, was Judge Rodriguez. At the moment, at least four police squads were taking apart every square inch of Bantling's life by the scruff of the neck. But by the time of their final report at eight o'clock, they had found no "smoking gun"; no stash of stolen human hearts; no secret chamber where, next to photos of the dead victims, a note hung from the mirror that read, 'I did this to them, and they deserved it!'
Of course, that complicated things. It complicated matters because, since last night, Bantling had invoked his right to remain silent and his right to an attorney and had completely shut down. To connect him to the other nine dead girls, Maura needed more evidence than just Anna Prado's body.
It also complicated matters because it was entirely within the realm of possibility that William Bantling was just a freeloader and that the real boogeyman was reading his newspaper this morning and laughing his head off at them all over a hot cup of coffee and a croissant.