Maura reviewed the page and then set it aside. She was sitting at home, her computer and various files scattered on the table. She had received another batch of paperwork that morning by courier from her attorney's office.
Before leaving the office the day before she had requested copies of everything –all the evidence that they had received through the discovery process and all the evidence Stipling had managed to collect so far.
Stipling was right, since the moment she learned Jane was dead she hadn't done anything. She had sat back in her depression, but that was over now. Now she had something to focus on – and while it wasn't like it was before when she helped the homicide division with a case, this case was personal to her.
She barely noticed when her mom laid a plate of food next to her for lunch.
"You have to eat Maura," she said after a few moments and Maura looked up to see her mother was sitting across from her. She looked at the plate of food, slid it over and began to eat while examining the next page.
"Maura honey, I've been thinking about this all night, and I am sure you have too, but is it possible that Jane is still alive?"
It was not the question she had expected her mother to ask. They had left the attorney's office after learning about the forgery on the divorce papers and while she had said it out loud – that she had slept with someone, she hadn't gone into details. She figured her mother would ask her about that and she wasn't sure in light of what she now knew if that was a conversation she was up to having.
"As much as I dislike Dr. Pike, his consultation with the M.E. in Maine was not incorrect. The amount of blood. She couldn't have survived that kind of blood loss."
"I was hoping that maybe it was wrong."
"It wasn't. I may have failed at being a wife, but I still know how to read evidence and the evidence points to her being dead."
"I know I am not a cop or a scientist, but I hope you know I will help with this in anyway I can."
Maura smiled. It felt good to have her mother here with her, watching over her. She wondered if her relationship with her mother would be this good if it hadn't been for Jane. It was Jane who had pointed out to Constance that her relationship with her daughter was lacking. Jane always seemed to be protecting her.
"I am glad you are here," Maura said to her.
"I am not going anywhere," she said reaching across and gripping Maura's hand. "Now what can I do to help prove you didn't do this?"
"This isn't about proving my innocence,"
"What do you mean? Of course it is."
"Yes, I will work to prove I didn't do this, but that isn't why I asked for all of this. I have to find Jane."
"But you just said there was no way she could have survived the blood loss."
"She couldn't have, but her body also hasn't been recovered yet. Samantha was obsessed with Jane, even more so than Hoyt ever was. In life she tried to keep a connection to Jane through the women she dated. I suspect her charity work with the NYPD in her mind also connected her to Jane. Even if she didn't kill Jane, Stipling is right, she had some part in it, which means she is our best hope for finding Jane's body. Jane deserves to be put to rest properly."
She hadn't gotten to go to Jane's funeral naturally and while she swore she wasn't even going to turn on the TV that day, she couldn't help but watch the news that evening. It was as if every cop in Boston was there in their dress uniforms. Although the casket was empty, Frankie, Tommy, Jane's father, Cavanaugh, Korsak and Frost were the pallbearers.
Maura couldn't even watch the whole segment on it, and for two days she didn't leave the bed.
Now she was hoping against hope that there would be something in the evidence that gave her an idea of where her body might be. The coroner's report, prepared by Dr. Pike, was shorter than most since there was no body. She was thankful for that because she was unsure she could read a full report on Jane.
She had spent a lot of the morning going over Stipling's report and making notes – trying to come up with some sort of profile of Samantha. She knew at some point at least Jane had loved her. Jane had admitted that when she was going out with Samantha she could see it lasting forever, which was why when Samantha broke it off because she wanted to pursue her career in New York it had left Jane heartbroken.
And if that had been the last of their time together, Maura couldn't help but wonder if Jane would still be alive now. Looking back through the lense of time that was no longer clouded by her anger and belief in Jane's unfaithfulness, she knew Jane went to meet Samantha that night for one reason – absolution.
Jane had felt guilt over how she had left things with Samantha. It had been a tough story for Jane to tell. They had recently gotten engaged and were out walking in Jane's neighborhood at the time when Maura had asked her if she had ever thought they would end together. Jane admitted she wasn't sure because she was sure Maura was out of her league, and then she made some comment about women she had dated being out of her league. Somehow this led to them talking about Samantha.
"When Sam first moved to New York, she invited me up a couple of months later. I was stupid and naïve, thinking maybe she had got up there decided it wasn't for her and wanted to come home but wanted to make sure I wanted her back," Jane said. "And at the time, yeah, I wanted her back. But that isn't why she asked me to come. She wanted me up there so she could try and convince me to come to New York permanently. I mean can you imagine me in New York?"
"No," Maura said as they walked hand-in-hand. "I picture a lot of fights involving you over the Red Sox."
"Exactly. But Samantha didn't see it that way. I used to love that about Samantha – that she saw the world as she thought it should be and she tried to make it that way. If she saw an injustice, she wanted to see it fixed. Anyway, I get up there and I spend the week with her and she's trying and trying to get me to see that she and I could have a life there in New York. But I don't see it, and I realize then that she and I are on different paths in life and while I loved her, I was kind of ok with us discovering our own separate paths. I heard from here a couple of times after that, but not much. "
"You said something before that you were the one who hurt her, what happened?"
Jane stopped and looked down at their joined hands. "Hoyt happened."
They started walking again. "I had just been released from the hospital and was at home, arguing with Ma. She wanted me to stay with her or let her stay with me and I wasn't going to let that happen. There was a knock at the door and I had Ma answer it, mostly because if it was a reporter I wanted her to send them away, but the truth was my hands were so messed up at that point I couldn't have opened my own door which was why Ma was being so insistent. She opens the door and there was Samantha."
"She had heard what had happened and came from New York. I was stunned to see her there and so was Ma. I am not sure my mother ever really accepted Sam. I don't think she had anything against her really, just that awkwardness of her being my first girlfriend. While Sam and I dated, we weren't really open about it and that was on me. I mean the people who were really important in my life knew and people around the precinct either knew or suspected, but I wasn't ready to be that open about it. Sam understood because she was like that – understanding."
"She sounds like a good person."
"She was, she is, which is why she didn't deserve what I did to her."
They reached Jane's place and went inside, settling down on the couch, still touching each other. Maura had found that simply being in contact with Jane was comforting to her.
"I managed to get Ma to leave, only because Sam reassured her that she would stay and take care of anything I needed. I found I was super nervous at first having her there. But she didn't ask me what happened, pressure me to talk about it or anything like that. She merely asked if there was anything I needed. I said a beer and she went to my fridge opened one for me and for her and there we were."
"She stayed with me there for the next few weeks and I guess we sort of got back together. She would do her work from there – spending hours on the phone and computer. She would drive me to my rehab appointments for my hands and when I had to go see the department shrink. She was there when I would wake at night …"
"In a way though she was worse than Ma. She just wouldn't give me any space, and one night I just blew up at her. We were talking, arguing, and she mentioned again how it would be better if we went to New York because her job was there. I told her mine wasn't and she got upset at the idea of me going back to work at all. She started saying all this stuff about me not working at all and how she would take care of me, and I told her that my work was who I was and it didn't matter if we were in New York, Florida, Kansas or Washington that being a cop was who I was. She then made the mistake of trying to take my hands in hers and I lost it"
"I yelled at her, told her I wasn't some invalid that she needed to take care of, and that it bothered me that … it bothered me that she didn't seem to care what happened to me; she only seemed to care about these," she said lifting up her hands. "It's like she had finally found a hobby or something. I don't know. I kicked her out that night, made her leave – said things about our past relationship and I was mean. I wanted her to leave so I said everything I could think of to say to get her to leave. I haven't spoken to her since."
"Looking back, I know it wasn't so much Sam, it was where I was in my life at that point. I should never have let her stay from the beginning because the way I was then, I was toxic to anyone. I was just so … angry."
"Anger is understandable after what you went through. I am sure Samantha understood that as well."
After thinking about it some more, Maura knew it wasn't just Jane's attitude at the time. It was Samantha as well. Jane pushing her out of her life, could have served as the catalyst for Samantha's obsession. She quickly went back to Stipling's report. She began to read what he knew of Sam's relationships – looking at the dates that he estimated encompassed each one. If he was right, Samantha was dating women who liked Jane before Jane's encounter with Hoyt.
As much as she hated conjecture without evidence, she began to wonder if Jane's actions is what made Samantha do what she had done now, and if that was enough for Samantha to work with someone to kill her.
She needed to talk to someone – someone who actually knew Samantha.
She thought back to what Jane had said. Angela had never really accepted her. What if Angela's reasons had less to do with it being Jane's first girlfriend and more about Samantha? To find out, she would need to speak with Angela. She would need to speak to someone who was still grieving over the loss of her daughter and believed that Maura had done it.