Half an hour later, the two women sat in a booth of a cozy dinner, where Elizabeth typed furiously into her laptop. "You're right, the lecture wasn't a complete waste of time," she admitted with furrowed brows. "However, I might have come to the same conclusion if I had seen my own kids on their computers."

"Are you going to enlighten me at some point as to what this is all about?" the doctor replied pointedly, taking a sip from her coffee cup.

"Of course. I realized we didn't go far enough with the FBI and that there's a bigger 'net' we can cast. The net just now, the Internet. The fact that this guy did it earlier and then disappeared doesn't have to mean he was in jail here, or even that he went into hiding to avoid arrest, like BTK, who was happily living somewhere in Kansas."

"BTK got caught," Katherine reminded her sister. They were talking about the notorious serial killer Denis Rader in Wichita, who evaded arrest for decades until he was finally caught in 2003.

"He also took long breaks between his murders," the detective replied. "Once for almost eight years."

Katherine circled the table and looked at the screen while Elizabeth typed 'boiled human bones' into Google. She read the search results aloud. "I can't believe this. Instructions on how to cook human bones? The Church of Euthanasia? History of cannibalism?"

"Slow down," Elizabeth admonished, glancing briefly at her sister. "We're only on the first page. That's exactly why the FBI had nothing."

"Call up the next page," the younger woman demanded.

"Jesus," Elizabeth growled, "not so fast." But she did.

Katherine's eyes fell on a line about halfway down the next page. She pointed to it and read. "Here, 'Bones found on beach believed to be Martha Palmer's ...' Click on it."

"Yep," the detective replied, clicking on the article, even though her little sister's eagerness was beginning to annoy her.

A newspaper article from the English-language Costa Rica Times appeared on the screen, with a photo of a beautiful middle-aged woman.

"The article is from 2009," Elizabeth noted with a frown. "It says the bones were found too far up the shore to have been washed up, and they were lying there like someone had laid them out to dry."

"Does it say anything about bones -"

"I'm just getting to that," Elizabeth hissed, annoyed. "Here: according to police officials, the yellowish discoloration of the bones indicates that they may have been cooked before being laid out on the beach."

"A murder in another country in 2009 doesn't exactly make a pattern," Katherine sighed, leaning back.

"But it's worth a call to the Costa Rican police," the older woman replied.

Katherine leaned forward a little again and pointed at the screen. "Maybe not necessary."

Elizabeth scanned the screen, then furrowed her brows. "Where are you?"

"I'm reading about why the murder of Martha Palmer was such a big deal. Her husband, Victor Palmer, owned the hotel that included the beach. He sold everything afterward."

Elizabeth emptied her coffee cup and then frowned. "If my wife was found murdered on my property, I might sell it, too," she said. "That doesn't have to mean anything."

"But this call is definitely worth it after all," Katherine now urged and grinned broadly. It didn't escape her notice that her big sister was repeatedly rubbing her right thigh, something she had observed more often in the past few days. Someone who didn't know Elizabeth would very likely assume that this was just a nervous tic, or that her leg tended to fall asleep several times a day, but Katherine knew the backstory. She knew that Elizabeth had been shot in the thigh as a teenager when a serial killer had tried to kill her mother and that the detective had never really recovered from that injury. Elizabeth had come through physical therapy well and had also returned to her beloved basketball team at the time, but had never fully regained her original form and had ultimately quit the sport. Katherine could also still recall her parents' late-night conversations in which either Jane or Maura expressed concern about addiction in their oldest daughter. A concern that would prove unfounded. Elizabeth eventually came to the conclusion herself that she needed to stop the medication and work harder on herself to be at least 98% restored.

"Does it still hurt?" the doctor asked suddenly.

Elizabeth looked at her thigh and stopped the rubbing motion she was making unconsciously. She gritted her teeth and took a deep breath. "Sometimes," she answered honestly, shrugging her shoulders. "Mostly when the weather changes or when I'm under a lot of pressure, but it's nothing I can't handle. It's just a scar."

Katherine nodded slowly and raised her hand to order another round of coffee. She knew it wasn't just a scar, but a constant reminder of what had happened then. As a psychiatrist, she knew one or two stories of patients who had lost a limb in a car accident or an accident at work and still suffered from phantom pain to this day, and besides, she had read about this phenomenon in more than enough journals reporting on soldiers who had lost arms or legs during combat operations. She also knew that such trauma left not only physical scars but psychological ones as well. Katherine couldn't remember how many times in her professional career she had explained to a patient that trauma was still trauma, whether it was physical or psychological. Both left scars that could be addressed medically. The wisdom she had learned from her child psychologist back when she had been in treatment herself. She took a deep breath and suddenly shook her head. "I can barely remember that night."

Elizabeth looked at her little sister in surprise and closed her laptop. "When that happened?" she asked, and Katherine just nodded. "You can't because luckily you were in your room listening to music on your Ipad." She furrowed her brows and followed Katherine with her eyes sat down on the other side of the table again. "To be honest, I can only remember a small fraction of what actually happened that night, too." She smiled as the waiter refilled their cups again, but then became serious again after he disappeared. "I can only remember Luke Cope wrestling with Mom and then a shot being fired, Mom chasing after Cope into the darkness, and then Ma suddenly being home and trying to help me. And then all I can remember is the hospital."

Katherine nodded slowly and looked into her cup while rolling it between her hands. "I still dream about them," she said suddenly, seeing the detective's questioning look as she raised her eyes. "Wilkinson and Cope," she answered the silent question. "And Daniel Proctor. Every night to be honest."

"Oh, Kate," the detective breathed, closing her eyes briefly. The name Daniel Proctor was all too familiar to her. He was the reason she'd gone to New York for a few weeks last year after her little sister and the NYPD homicide detective Nathan Sanders had subliminally asked her for help. Actually, the psychiatrist and the New York detective had intended to ask Jane for advice, but Elizabeth had convinced them that she could be just as helpful and had put in her annual leave and asked her parents to host her daughters, neither Jane nor Maura objected and asked no further questions, both assuming that she would need some time to herself after Sarah's suicide. And besides, Elizabeth wanted to get to know the man her little sister raved about during the weekly phone calls before he was thrown to the wolves, after all, she knew from her own experience how relentless her parents could be. After a rough start, Elizabeth had come to the conclusion that Nathan was the one for her little sister. While the two couldn't have been more different, together they were an unbeatable team, even if they sometimes brushed up against each other and heated disagreements ensued in the NYPD, Elizabeth was sure that Maura and Jane would be more than thrilled with the man when they met him, neither of them could have guessed at the time that the meeting would never happen.

Elizabeth frowned deeply at the thought and chewed the inside of her cheek. She remembered how Nathan had asked her out for a drink one night and then informed her in a crowded cop bar that he was going to ask her little sister if Katherine wanted to marry him. She also remembered that he had been nervous all evening and had needed several beers before he even came out with that, and an annoyed Elizabeth urging him on.

At first, Elizabeth had assumed that he was going to reveal to her that he was planning to leave Katherine, and had been mentally preparing to beat up a homicide detective in a cop bar in a strange city, but when he had let her in on his plan, she had assured him of her full support, and the next night he had proposed to Katherine in that very bar in front of all his friends and colleagues. A month later, he was dead. They had found out that Daniel Proctor was using an abandoned warehouse as a hideout, where he also tortured and killed his victims, and had trapped the wife killer right there, the psychopath had no escape, however, they had underestimated what kind of danger came from someone who felt cornered and had gone into the building without waiting for support. Nathan had pushed to get into the building before Proctor could make another run for it. Elizabeth had hesitated for the reason that she had been given only a limited ability to act with consultation with Jane by the captain of New York Homicide. She had insisted that she and Nathan wait for backup, but the other detective had come up with such good reasons that she relented and advanced with him into the warehouse. It was a mistake she still regretted to this day and one that had nearly cost her her career.

Nathan had been taken by surprise by Proctor and had been worked over so massively with an iron bar that the detective had been hospitalized with serious head injuries, but had fallen into a coma an hour later and had not awakened from it. That day was the last time she had seen her little sister.

Elizabeth winced as a glass shattered on the floor and came back to the here and now. She realized that she had only drifted off in thought for a few seconds. She took a deep breath and took a sip of coffee.

Katherine licked her lips and smiled sadly. "Every night, another one of the three stands in the shadow of my room, coming for me."

Elizabeth nodded slowly and cleared her throat. "Do you talk to anyone about this?" She saw the other woman's questioning look and lifted her shoulders. "I mean ... you shrinks have a shrink of your own so you don't go completely nuts, right?"

A smile flitted across Katherine's lips. "So we don't go completely nuts?"

"You wouldn't have me believe that you psychologists aren't little batty yourselves, would you?" retorted Elizabeth with a knowing grin.

Katherine lowered her brows with a smile, then tossed a few bills on the table. "We should get back to BPD."

Elizabeth grabbed her laptop and followed her sister. "Wait. You didn't answer my question!"

Katherine snorted and opened the front door. "Fuck you," she retorted, and her big sister chuckled.

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Elizabeth slowly drove the car down the ramp into the BPD garage and parked it in her lot. She opened the driver's door while her sister got out on the passenger's side and snatched her purse from the center console so fast she almost hit herself with it.

Katherine saw the detective's questioning look and paused. "Oops."

Elizabeth saw the whole thing and furrowed her brows. "What do you have in there, a gold bar?"

The doctor slumped her shoulders and rolled her eyes again. "I wish. It's a paperweight, in case someone tries to mug me, or my big sister gets any ideas about making stupid remarks."

"Try to remember you keep it in your purse next time, or you'll hurt yourself," the detective replied with a smug smile.

Katherine stuck her tongue out at her before taking her cell phone and wallet out of her purse.

"Charming," Elizabeth chuckled before locking the car and heading for the elevators.

Katherine followed her and noticed that her sister was limping a little more like other days, but decided not to address it. "What's going on between you and this Dr. Ross?"

Elizabeth pressed the elevator button and raised a brow. "Why?"

The doctor took a long look at the detective and turned the corners of her mouth down while almost innocently raising her shoulders. "I just noticed that you and Dr. Ross are ... pretty close."

Elizabeth exhaled slowly and shoved her hands into her pants pockets. "We're friends who work together. And every once in a while, we'll go out for a drink with each other after work when Ma or Mom is watching the girls."

"Mh-hm," Katherine replied with a sly smile before entering the elevator car.

"What?" asked Elizabeth, following the younger woman. "What is it?"

Katherine had to start laughing at her sister's ignorance. "Liz, you know I love you, but sometimes you're just a dork."

"What?" the detective laughed, looking at her ignorantly. "What do you mean?"

"Didn't you notice the way Dr. Ross looked at you the last time we were in the morgue?" laughed Katherine, amused.

Elizabeth made a face and turned away a little, almost as if she were embarrassed by this conversation. "What are you talking about? We're just friends who go out for a drink every now and then when it comes up."

Katherine grinned broadly and nodded slowly. "Remember how our parents got together?"

This time it was the detective who rolled her eyes. She knew the story of how Jane and Maura had started out as just coworkers who couldn't really stand each other originally and then had gotten closer over drinks, inside and out, but then she dropped her shoulders. She herself hadn't missed the fact that Ross showed more interest in her during their drinks than an ordinary friend would show, and that something stirred inside her that she hadn't felt in years, but whenever she thought she was ready for the next step, something held her back. Some kind of guilt towards her dead wife and her daughters. She sighed heavily and licked her lips. "I ... have to think about the girls, too."

Katherine followed her sister to her desk, knowing that this was the end of the subject that had begun with banter. She took a deep breath and sat down on the chair beside said desk as Simms walked past it. "Hey, Simms, where's everybody?"

Simms paused and eyed the two women. "The captain's in a meeting and the others are away on business." He paused, then gestured with his thumb over his shoulder as he looked long at the doctor. "Um, I'm going down to the Café, do you want me to bring you something, Doc? Maybe a coffee?"

Katherine smiled kindly. "I'm fine, thanks."

"I'll have an iced coffee!" exclaimed Elizabeth after her colleague as he made his way to the elevator, only waving her off.

Katherine looked slowly at her sister and then wrinkled her nose. "How can you even drink something like that."

"In a cup with a straw," the detective replied with a broad grin as she pulled her laptop out of her briefcase and booted it up. "Works wonders on warm days, you should try it sometime."

"No, thanks," the younger woman replied in disgust.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and slowly turned to Katherine, waiting until the other detective had disappeared into the elevator. "Speaking of love interests, I know someone who's dying to ask you out."

Katherine typed something into her cell phone and looked up briefly with furrowed brows. "Who? Savarese? I think I have enough Italians in my life already."

Elizabeth grunted and thrust her chin toward the elevator. "Simms. Come on, you've got to admit that fellow looks an awful lot like Michael B. Jordan. And besides, ever since he met you, he's asked me repeatedly if you're single."

Katherine was in no mood to joke after that statement. Not because of the comparison to the actor, she agreed with her sister there, but because she felt that Nick Simms bore much more resemblance to her dead fiancé Nathan. She licked her lips and looked at the laptop. "Who exactly were you going to call in Costa Rica?"

Elizabeth cleared her throat now and became serious again, knowing her little well-intentioned joke had gone too far. "Their version of the FBI is called OJI, Organismo de Investigacón Judicial," she said, pulling up the organization's website and typing a longer number into her landline phone. "Let's hope my Spanish is good enough at worst."

"And the best-case scenario?"

"That someone speaks English." Twenty minutes later, Elizabeth was rapidly scribbling on a sheet of her notepad. Her sister stood behind her, trying to decipher Elizabeth's handwriting. "And you're quite sure?" she asked with furrowed brows. "Thank you, thank you very much. If there's ever anything we can do for you ... Which you can count on. Muchas gracias, mi amigo." She put down the phone and looked toward Jane's office. The captain had arrived a few minutes earlier, rushed into her den with a curt greeting, and closed the door. "Antonio, my new best friend in Costa Rica, is going to email me everything they have," Elizabeth said, unable to hide her excitement as she continued writing in her pad.

"Everything he has on what?" asked Katherine, sitting back down in her chair next to the desk.

"About the murder of Martha Palmer. It wasn't the first murder case with boiled bones down there."

"When did it start?"

"Hold on: shortly after the murders started here."

Katherine was amazed. "How many victims in Costa Rica?"

Elizabeth looked up from her notepad and frowned deeply. "Twenty-two."

"Good Lord," Katherine gasped, slowly leaning back in her chair. "How did we miss that?"

"Drawer thinking," Elizabeth sighed, rubbing her forehead strainedly. "Whereas our drawer was the United States."

"But cooked bones were only mentioned in connection with the Martha Palmer murder. Where were the other bodies found."

Elizabeth opened the email, gritting her teeth. "No bodies, bones. Just bones. A murder every year or two. Sometimes several in a year. The police were in the dark most of the time because there was no discernible pattern connecting the victims. They were from all walks of life, rich and poor, locals and tourists, and they were found in different parts of the country, on beaches on both the Caribbean and Pacific sides." Elizabeth looked at her little sister to gauge her reaction. "And most importantly, the Martha Palmer murder was the last of its kind."

"2009," Katherine replied, thinking about it. "Has there been a period of time between then and now without a similar murder?"

"No," the detective replied, shaking her head. "Antonio specifically pointed that out."

"So the Costa Rican police are going to help us?"

"They already have -"

"I mean, for example, check their civil registry to see who has left the country since then and not returned."

Elizabeth clicked her mouse and started typing again. "That won't be necessary," she replied.

"Why not?"

Elizabeth clicked again. "Because we already know the answer."

Her sister pointed to the screen, and Katherine's mouth fell open in amazement: she

saw a digital image of a Boston driver's license with a photo of a man in his early sixties, a shock of white hair, and a face that either didn't seem to have aged or had been reshaped by an excellent plastic surgeon.

"Oh my God," breathed the doctor. "He's here." The license holder's name was Victor Palmer.

"Since 2010," Elizabeth confirmed, looking slowly at the other woman. "He moved back here after the resort was sold."

"Again?"

"He's from Boston. Born and raised here."

Katherine exhaled slowly and looked meaningfully at the detective.

Elizabeth held her gaze and then made a quick face. "It can't be that simple. I mean, I can still imagine him killing the women down there and here. But his own wife?"

"Either it just came over him, or she found out what her husband was up to all those years and he murdered her to shut her up. Then he comes back here, his impulse to kill overcomes him, and he picks up where he left off in Costa Rica - killing women and boiling their bones."

"We have to tell Ma," Elizabeth replied, standing up. "Come on."

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Forty-five minutes later, the two women were sitting on the couch in Jane's office, Savarese in the chair across from them and the captain at her desk.

Elizabeth and Katherine were reporting what they had found out about the murders in Costa Rica and about Victor Palmer.

A strange thing happened then. Hearing Palmer's name, Jane stood up and began pacing back and forth around the room. It amused and worried Elizabeth at the same time because, in all her years of working with her mother and patron saint, she had never seen Jane do that.

"That's unbelievable," Savarese said after the two women finished talking. "It sounds perfectly logical, but it's just unbelievable. Do we know where this crazy person is right now?"

"The address on the driver's license Palmer got when he returned is -"

"Melrose," Jane said, running a hand through her hair. "A big-box brick house he bought with the proceeds from the sale of his beach resort."

There was silence in the room after this statement until Katherine finally broke it. "How do you know where Palmer lives, Ma?"

"Because I was there," Jane replied chagrinedly, taking a long look at the others.

Elizabeth's eyebrows drew together. "At Palmer's house?"

"The police chief dragged me to a party there about a year and a half ago," Jane replied. "They grew up a block away from each other. Palmer is also close friends with the mayor. Heavens, I talked to the man for a few minutes at that party. I told him Maura and I were planning a vacation, and he highly recommended Costa Rica and the resort he used to own."

She fell silent, and Elizabeth knew exactly what was going through her mother's mind: they were about to cause a category five political shitstorm, and her parents were in the middle of it.

"And this is all foolproof?" asked Jane, turning to Elizabeth. "Dead certain?"

Elizabeth looked at her with wide brown eyes and nodded slowly with raised brows. "Yes, ma'am. What do you want us to do?"

Jane sat back down at her desk and ran her fingers over one brow with a sigh. Everyone saw that the captain was back. "You're not going to do a damn thing until I say so," she growled in that threatening voice the other two women knew so well.

"Captain," Savarese said, "maybe we should have that asshole tailed just in case he plans to commit another murder."

"We're not doing anything, I said," Jane repeated louder. Then she continued more temperately, "Until I confer with the Chief of Detectives about, what I'll do tonight and get the green light, nobody's doing a damn thing." She looked directly at Elizabeth and Katherine. "And that's especially true for you two. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," Elizabeth replied, nodding.

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Jane sat down on her side of the couch sighing and staring straight ahead while her wife slid over to her and slipped her hand under Jane's shirt. It was one of the things over the years they had been together that had never changed. "I can tell you right now that this case is going to give me a real stomach ulcer."

Maura exhaled loudly and nodded against her wife's shoulder. "The case or the girls?"

Jane still stared ahead with a furrowed brow and also took a deep breath, hesitating to answer for a moment. "The case gives me the ulcer, the girls the subsequent heart attack." She shook her head, then looked down at the lawyer from above. "I suspected -" she paused and shook her head one more time, "No, I knew the Rosa Castillo case was going to cause us problems, especially because the order not to go public had not been my own decision, but that it would take on such proportions -"

Maura waited patiently for a few seconds and then concluded that her wife wouldn't verbally complete the thought. "If Victor Palmer is responsible for the murders, it doesn't matter what his political influence is, Jane. If he's been killing women all these years, then he needs to be held accountable."

"I know, Maura," Jane replied, taking a swig of beer from the bottle sitting on the coffee in front of her. "I'm the last person who wants Palmer to get away with the murders if he's responsible just because he's friends with the Chief of Police. I don't give a shit who he grew up with either, you of all people should know that. It's just -" She laughed suddenly, running her hand through her hair. "I'm now painfully aware again why I never really envied my superiors."

"You mean the political aspect?" asked Maura, smiling a little when her wife nodded. She could very well relate to what Jane was talking about. Even then, one of the daily things she had to deal with in her office was politics. She also knew that was every homicide investigator's nightmare, having to deal with lawyers and politicians. And sometimes a lawyer's nightmare, too, when they had to deal with unruly cops. She took a deep breath and sat up as well. "What are you going to do?"

Jane scratched her chin thoughtfully and licked her lips. "Actually, I was planning to inform the Chief of Detectives that his buddy has moved into the investigation."

Maura closed her eyes with a sigh before getting up from the couch and heading to the kitchen. She knew all too well the tone the captain was taking at that moment; she'd heard it over and over again when Jane imagined then that the DA's office was covering up a lot of things. "And you didn't do it because you were concerned about our daughter's career and credibility?"

Jane looked at the graying blonde, furrowed her brows, and then stood up as well. "No, I didn't talk to him about it because I'm well aware that he's informing his buddy Palmer that he's under suspicion and, in the worst-case scenario, advising him to arm himself with a gaggle of saucy lawyers for you and your people to deal with, while I and my people get our hands tied by the Chief of Police personally interfering with the investigation or even making sure it's shut down completely."

Maura looked at her wife for a long moment before refilling her empty glass of wine. She could relate to what Jane was talking about; she, as well as the captain, had been in law enforcement long enough to know that people like Victor Palmer, who was guilty but had politically influential friends, would try to do anything just to avoid prosecution, even if they had committed the crime. She guessed that Victor Palmer was one of those kinds of people, too. "So what are you going to do?"

Jane frowned deeply and propped her hip against the kitchen island. "I'm going to try to watch Kate's, Liz's, and Savarese's backs as long as possible so they can do a decent investigation."

Maura looked at her wife for a long moment, almost surprised that Jane had just said that. "Even if it's professional suicide?"

"It doesn't matter, Maura," Jane replied firmly, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. "This is about more than twenty murder victims who have been waiting for twenty years to get justice, including Rosa Castillo. And if Victor Palmer is responsible for this, then I'll personally arrest him throw away the key."

"Okay," Maura said simply with a nod and took a sip of wine.

Jane looked at the other woman long and hard, knowing that that single word gave an implicit her full assurance that she would support her wife, her children, and this investigation.