Maura clutched the chair while Nick stared into his laptop, clicking through personnel files.
The social worker had hurried after all after Jane's delivered message.
Jane frowned deeply as she paced the office. "So?"
"Now we know more," Maura said. Her face was even tenser than before, and she paused. "Michael Herbert has taken the last name of his adopted family, and he's no longer registered anywhere under the name Hebert, and he also took his middle name to forget his past."
Jane paused and looked at them both. "And what does he call himself now?"
"I --" Maura paused, apparently having difficulty continuing. "I don't want to prejudge anything, Jane." She turned to Nick, who was already typing on his keyboard. "We need to take a quick look at the personnel files, and then we'll know more."
Jane looked at them both with wide eyes. "And if what you guys suspect happens? Would that be good news or bad news?"
"Bad," Nick said, looking up from his laptop for a moment, watching Jane's features slip. "Awful news, Chief."
xxx
Five hours? Five minutes?
Elizabeth didn't know how much time had passed as she opened her eyes in the darkness. Such impenetrable darkness made no difference in how she opened or closed her eyes. It seemed as if the darkness was complete - or as if she, Elizabeth, was blind.
In return, she smelled something. Peppermint. Something had been rubbed under her nose. But why?
Then her thoughts turned to something else. The most pressing concern. Survival. That powerful instinct that had always guided man.
She needed to know if she could move.
And breathed a sigh of relief.
Yes, she could move her hands. But then she felt chains on both ankles attached to the wall.
So it didn't help her at all that she could move.
She couldn't get away from here.
A glare of light stabbed her in the face.
Then she heard a voice.
Tinny and distorted, as if the Navi was checking in again. But she wasn't in her car anymore. She was in the stomach of the monster. And here she was talking to the Guardian of the Dead, Charon, as it seemed to her, the mystical ferryman who brought souls across Styx. Souls of which Elizabeth herself was to become one.
"Elizabeth Rizzoli!" the voice said.
Elizabeth wasn't surprised that the person to whom the voice belonged knew her. But a strange overtone in that voice, something familiar, made her cringe.
A suspicion sprouted in her. But everything in her screamed that it could not be, must not be.
But when the person to whom the voice belonged turned the flashlight on himself, Elizabeth knew she was right in her suspicions.
Still, it hit her like a hammer blow when she recognized the man's face.
"Welcome, Detective Rizzoli," it sounded tinny through the dungeon. "Welcome to the realm of the Guardian of the Dead."
xxx
Nick was going through the BPD personnel files while Maura and Jane looked over his shoulder in front of the laptop.
Maura looked at her wife and realized precisely what she was thinking about. Elizabeth.
Their daughter was on her way, but neither knew where exactly.
Nick's it-people were already defining possible places where Elizabeth's journey would have to take her statistically. But an inner voice told Maura that her older daughter could be in danger.
"Born November 18th?" asked Nick with a deep frown.
Maura nodded slowly, watching the mini egg timer on the laptop's monitor with a pounding heart as it computed. Instead of digging around in personnel files for a long time, Nick had logged into the all-Boston police database.
"There are workers listed in there?" the attorney inquired.
"All of them, even the temps," Nick replied.
Then the dataset they had been waiting for finally flashed on the screen.
"Same date of birth," Maura said, almost forgetting to breathe.
Nick's frown deepened. "And the same name. Hebert became Martinek."
"And Michael," the lawyer added, "became Carl."
The three in Jane's office looked at each other.
"Liz!" they said, as if from the same mouth."
xxx
It was Carl.
Katherine's intern.
The killer worked in the BPD.
Elizabeth couldn't believe it.
She knew it the moment Carl turned the light of the flashlight on his face and fixed her out of staring eyes.
He tried to show some semblance of triumph but just grinned wryly and gave a choppy laugh. A laugh that was more like a sob.
The young man in the doctor's coat, the detective thought. The one who had seen her at the hospital. He had told her that 'the young man who had assisted at the lecture with Dr. Isles' had also been at the hospital.
"That was you," Elizabeth said. "You were injecting air into Samantha Conway's catheter."
Carl grinned, more in triumph now, though sadness was chiseled into his features whenever he played the role of rhe Guardian of the Death. It was a sadness that would probably never go away. "Evidence disposal," he said. "I knew right away which hospital she was going to. After all, it was my job to coordinate the chase. I received all the e-mails with information on missing persons. Remember?"
Elizabeth shook her head inwardly. How stupid had they all been? They had let Carl have the laptop and had given him the access data, and he had been in charge of all the information on Walton, Hurts, and Conway.
They had let the buck stop here.
They had left it to the snake to watch over the newly hatched baby birds.
"My dad," Carl said, "my real dad didn't love my mom. He beat her. And me, too. And one day, his belly was swollen. More and more. No one knew why this was happening; they just thought it was related to his drinking. But my father just kept drinking."
This time he shone the flashlight in Elizabeth's face as if to learn what reactions his words provoked. Elizabeth preferred not to answer and thought it would be better to let him talk and then engage him in conversation. The rational part of her brain advised that anything that will buy you time can help you.
The irrational part, however, was afraid. Afraid of staying here forever, in the grip of the killer who was all the more dangerous because he was different from other killers: not driven, uncomprehending, and volatile, but brilliant, cold, and calculating.
"One day," Carl continued, "a terrible gurgling and screaming were coming from the bathroom. Dad was lying there on the floor, spitting up blood. So much blood -- Like a wriggling fish that had just been pulled out of a bloody ocean, he lay there. Do you know what it was?"
The detective shrugged.
"Varicose veins in the esophagus," Carl said. "That's what you get when you drink too much. Eventually, they burst, and blood spurts out of your mouth. It was as if all the booze Dad had drunk into himself over the years had turned to blood. He screamed until he couldn't breathe. He was gasping as he almost choked on his blood. He was shaking and twitching. And at one point, he lay very still in his blood ... dark red blood, interspersed with black grains. That's how he was lying on the floor of the white-walled bathroom when we found him. In a puddle of his blood. Like a monster that had just been slaughtered. But you know what? I didn't mind because he didn't deserve any better." He shone the light back in Elizabeth's face. "Sure, it was horrible to have to see something like that as a little boy, but on the other hand, it was good. Do you know why?"
Elizabeth lacked the imagination to see how such a sight could have been suitable for a child, but Carl was already speaking before she could answer.
"At the time, I thought the world was fair. That the wicked must pay for what they do. But then I had to realize that they don't have to pay. On the contrary, the world helps the wicked. Because the world itself is evil." He paused dramatically. "Do you know my story?"
The detective nodded slowly.
"Joseph Hurts?"
"The defense attorney," Elizabeth replied curtly.
"Yes, the defense attorney," Carl replied, drawing out the word. "He was defending Burns. And he was evil, too." Another pause. "Do you want to meet Hurts?"
Elizabeth thought the question was a joke at first. Any laughter would have instantly stuck in her throat when she saw what the flashlight's beam plucked from the darkness. It was a face right next to her. The remains of a face. The detective saw blood and shreds of flesh as if a bloody mask had been put on the man.
"Let me introduce you to Joseph Hurts," Carl said. "I had to do a little ... work on his face. Um, work on it before he agreed to hang his mother. But then he did. As they say in the FBI? One man's force is another man's education." He looked at the detective expectantly, like a bird of prey trying to peck the tears from her face.
Elizabeth was spellbound and repulsed by the cut, decaying countenance of the criminal defense attorney, whom she was no longer sure had not occasionally crossed her path in the corridors of a courthouse when he was alive. At the same time, she noticed the smell of the tiger balm under her nose gradually dissipating to make way for ...
"What about Walton?" she asked, noticing her voice breaking through her thoughts. It could be a protective reflex not to have to finish thinking about certain things. "Jason Walton? Where is he?"
"Oh yes, Jason Walton," Carl said in a tone others would use to tell of a vacation acquaintance.
At the same time, Elizabeth became increasingly aware of the smell. It was an acrid smell, a mixture of hydrogen peroxide, sulfur, and raw milk cheese, mixed with a slight Parmesan aroma.
The smell of dead bodies.
At that moment, she flinched.
There was something there.
Right next to her.