**DISCLAIMER – I do not own the characters, they belong to TNT and associated bodies. **
A/N: 500 miles, crazy good cover on Grey's last week by Sleeping at last. Also, while I have used the name of real places in this chapter, and real ranks, they are in no way intended to be taken or read as anything other than purely fictional.
A/N 2: Despite every effort, when I copy and paste the chapters, for some reason the programme decides to omit a word or two here and there, entirely of it's own volition. This story is un-betaed, but I am trying to avoid careless errors. If you spot any, please forgive me!
FLIGHTLESS ANGEL.
Chapter 15 – I'm gunna be (500 miles)
Maura walked into her office with trepidation.
Matthew had barely acknowledged her presence in the Laboratory for the past 3 days, as he went about detailing specific pieces of evidence to her team. Handing them over as her Senior Criminalists logged each one, and took a sample to retest.
Maura's initial report of concern was enough to move the DA's office into immediate action of reopening the case. One of their own had been taken, after all. Seemingly by a ghost. And if there was one thing Maura Isles was sure of, it was that the living are killed by the living. Killed by the free, by those who walk alongside us in the street, with a polite apology after a bump of arms, with a smile as a door is held open; with the same arms intent on bringing harm, free to move as maim as they wish, and not from the confines of a prison cell.
Maura knocked lightly on the door to her own office, where Matthew sat on one of her guest chairs.
He looked up slowly, his face a mixture of emotions. Maura could read the most visible. Exhaustion. Fear. A hint of nervousness. Sadness. Such sadness. She watched him play with the ring on the little finger of his left hand, a trait not unfamiliar to her.
"I do the same thing, when I'm anxious. My father has a tendency to do it, also," Maura appeased, walking through the room slowly and quietly, to join Matthew where he was hunched over.
"My wedding ring," Matthew half-smiled, as he toyed the small signet around and around his finger. We got married years back, in my last year of College. Not officially of course, on paper we've been 'married' just over a year. But things were different then, and wearing it on this finger stopped people asking difficult questions, especially for Thomas."
"What kind of questions are considered difficult?" Maura mused aloud, in her adorable, naïve manner.
"Thomas is Irish-Catholic. From Boston. We met at BCU. He was a Law senior when I was pre-Med. Everyone knows now, obviously; but at the time we were young and nervous and he needed his parents backing to get a foot into the career he'd worked so hard for."
"Does he still work in Law?" Maura tried to keep the conversation going, knowing Jane would be arriving momentarily, before leaving to re-interview Peter Cranston.
"Mmmm," Matthew mused. "Within the field yes, as an attorney, no. He works in the prison system actually, he's the Commissoner of Big Sandy Prison, back home in Kentucky. He's here in Boston at the moment actually, on a course back at BCU for a few weeks. Not the greatest time to be calling buddies for a reunion really, with all that's going on."
"I'm sure it's a comfort to you, having him here with you," Maura countered, sympathetically.
"A little." Matthew looked to the door, where Jane stood with an unreadable expression, her hands clasped in front of her, hair tied into a loose ponytail.
"Matthew," she nodded her head ever so slightly. "Maura, can I borrow you for a minute?" Jane's head tilted in the direction of the main Morgue, as she left the conversation she had intruded upon.
Maura excused herself, before walking quickly out to Jane, who motioned with her index finger to her lips to indicate for Maura to keep her voice low.
"Jane? What's the matter? Why couldn't we speak in front of Matthew?" Maura whispered with concern.
Jane's eyes narrowed and a strange smile covered her features, her eyes darting from one invisible spot to another on the wall behind Maura.
"Did he just say that his husband, is the Commissioner of Big Sandy?" Jane questioned rhetorically.
"Yes. Yes he did."
"You know what's funny Maura. This morning I went out to Cedar Junction, only to be told that Peter Cranston was shipped out of the state within weeks of the sentence." Jane raised her eyebrows and cocked her head, to establish if the M.E was following. Content that she was with Jane, Jane continued. "Apparently, Peter Cranston grew up in Kentucky."
Maura's eyebrows shot up and she visibly straightened her gait, unsure if she wanted to hear what Jane was going to say next.
"At the time of the original murders, he was in Boston on a temporary contract with a construction firm. He had no ties to Boston. So as soon as the verdict came in, he was shipped out home. To Big Sandy."
Maura took a moment to process.
"Jane, where are you going with this?"
"Right now, I have no idea. I'm just following the path where it leads me. But right now, I'm not entirely sure, that the man sitting inside your office, is entirely ignorant of where exactly this path will lead me. In fact, I would bet money he knows exactly where this path is taking me, because he helped pave it."
"Jane," Maura turned to check a quick glance at a clearly agitated Matthew who was now pacing her office.
"I'm not going to Kentucky, Maur'. I'm not letting you out of my sight for a single second, until we figure out why in hell," Jane's voice got both hoarser and more pointed at this point. "Why in hell, Maur'; Peter Cranston is sitting in a prison . . . run by the husband, of the man who supposedly solved this case . . . the same man whose sister died, over this case . . . in the same town where three of them grew up. Where they attended the same elementary school," Jane motioned to the file in her hand, letting Maura glance over the yearbook photos and Registers. "Where Peter Cranston and Jess graduated the same high school, in the same year. And yet none of this was apparently available at trial. Or was even looked into during the initial investigation. I can appreciate there are coincidences in life Maur', but something stinks about this case."
Maura stood still for a moment, looking between the evidence in her hands, and the man now sitting with his head in his hands.
"Peter Cranston, Jane. You need to talk to him," she finally spoke.
"I will, tonight. Video-call. Frost is setting it up as we speak. But I wanna talk to him," Jane looked at Matthew like a wild animal looking at it's dinner, "I wanna see exactly how much little Matty here, knows about Peter. Exactly how much he knows about what happened that summer. And the summers that followed," Jane ended cryptically, bowing her head, acknowledging she had said too much.
A pointed look from Maura was all it took.
Jane picked the file back out of the M.E's hands, and closed it slowly, before turning to head back upstairs, second-guessing herself, and walking right up to the blonde so that they were almost face to face.
She whispered in a low, and dangerous tone.
"I shared a room with that guy's sister for 2 years, Maur." Jane looked almost in pain, as if she didn't want to have to make Maura hear any more about Jessica. But if they were really going to solve this case, they had to solve all of it. "She was just about the cleanest person that I ever met in my entire life, until I met you, but that's another story."
Maura smiled at the comment, knowing Jane was trying to make this about as bearable as talking about your dead ex can be.
"Maura she cleaned her guns religiously. All the time. Mom was the same, anytime she came to visit, she'd tell Jess, 'Every 1000 rounds, clean that thing!'" Jane smiled at the memory, before looking to Matthew once more, who was now staring at her. Her smile faded and she looked at Maura with a ferocious protectiveness. "Maura that damn gun jammed every session we had at the ranges, because she cleaned it too damn much. She constantly had oil stains on her cuffs from the excess spill that would come out of the plug. Now you tell me, why they found no oil on her at the scene? Tell me how that girl could manage to go through with killing herself, when that thing would have jammed at least twice on her, giving her two outs. When she was just about as devoutly Catholic as they come?" Jane raised her eyebrows, in hurt, pain, confusion, anger, resentment, grief. In every emotion that Jessica's death brought up. In every new emotion being stirred up by, what had always been her suspicion, that her death was not suicide.
"Jane . . ." Maura touched the rabid Detective's arm.
"When you re-examine this case Maura, re-examine it all. Including Jess. She's one of his victim's too."
Jane fidgeted with the pen in her hand, flipping it between fingers, twirtling it, tapping it on the desk. A sharp, "Um mmm, ma'am", from the conference video screen in front of her, brought her back to her surroundings.
A man was seated directly in front of her, on a screen of course, in prision regulation overalls. He had a sun-worn face and appeared much older than his 38 years, with his hair greying and distinct lines around his eyes, chin and forehead. Jane glanced down to the file on the desk in front of her. It was the same man, but in a much aged body.
"Peter Cranston?" Jane asked, more out of shock than clarification.
"Yes, ma'am." The reply came in a deep, but clear and effortlessly polite southern brogue. His demeanour was attentive, Jane could see from his gait that he was sitting up straight, if a little wearily; that his face displayed no obvious signs of discomfort or evasiveness, all in all; she could tell there was more than a chance that this man may be receptive, if not welcoming to her. She had spent way too much time around a certain M.E.
"Mr Cranston," Jane spoke, deliberately choosing the formal prefix, to give the man some self worth. "Mr Cranston, my name is Detective Jane Rizzoli with the Boston Police Department. I believe that you've been made aware that we're reinvestigating the 5 murders that you were convicted of in 1999."
"I have been, ma'am."
"Mr Cranston, I know it's late and I apologise for that, but I really just want to get a better understanding of your own situation at the time, and I would like to ask you a few questions about that time. About the time the murders took place." Jane flicked through the file to the small section, less than a page, where Cranston's original defence attorney had scribbled a few notes on a possible alabi. She noticed the words, "cannot explain honeysuckle link. In daily contact."
She looked to the screen.
"Sorry, ma'am; yes that's fine. I guess you can't see me nodding from here," the man smiled.
"Sorry," Jane couldn't help but smile back. Jane Rizzoli knew a killer when she saw one, but nothing about Peter Cranston was making the hairs on her neck stand up. If anything, he reminded her of some of her Pop's old colleagues, the type of men that worked hard, that would give you the time of day for innocent reasons.
"Peter, I want to talk to you about honeysuckle. As absurd as that sounds." Jane frowned, and tapped on the case notes, before looking to the side for a few moments and then returning her attention to the screen. "Peter in your case notes, your Attorney wrote that you had and I quote 'daily contact' with the flower. But he hasn't written anything more. Can you talk to me about that?"
Peter's face looked surprised momentarily, before looking to his hands; and back up to the camera.
"We tried to put together some reasoning, for the evidence the young man brought against me." Jane noted the lack of anger while Peter was speaking of the man who had effectively stolen his life from him. "But we were unable to do. You see, I was working on a property at the time, spring in Boston ma'am. I worked in construction. But there was a house next door, and this old lady would be out there all the time, in the garden. I mowed a lot of lawns as a kid, I'm not a city boy. So, seeing as we finished early some days, I said to that lady, 'Ma'am I could help you in the garden, if you would like'." Peter slowed down his story, as Jane flicked furiously through the file, to try and find some link to the story, which invariably was going somewhere. Has this ever been taken account of?
"Her grandson was about the house, but the boy was always indoors studying. He was only a little older than me, but he was a College boy, kid was going places. He was fair-skinned so I just figured he wasn't one for the sunny days. So I began to help her here and there, day or two a week. She had these beautiful honeysuckle plants, right by the door, whole way down the drive. It was late April time, so you could smell them whole way down the street," he smiled sadly, looking away from the camera as the memory enveloped him.
"It's okay Peter," Jane said. "Keep going, I'm listening." She was listening more than ever.
"Well, ma'am . . . Detective, I would walk on that drive on those days that I helped out. In my work boots. I wear a 10.5." He looked sadly below the pan of the camera. "So that's how I was always covered in their pollen. She would tease me sometimes, bring me out homemade lemonade, and take one of those flowers and put it in my hair, it was long back then, I was only young," he ran his hand over thinning, grey hair. "All those murders happened that Summer. When the honeysuckle was in blossom." His shoulders noticeably dropped. "I've been telling people for years, ma'am, I did not harm those girls. I could barely find my way back to my accommodation, let alone go running around a City murdering young girls. But . . ." he raised his eyebrows, in what Jane sensed was a commonly felt feeling of feeling subjected to defeat.
"Peter, I'm gunna need that address if you can remember it. And the name of that old lady." Jane looked pointedly to the camera.
"Oh I don't know it off the top of my head, it was a long time ago." Jane's eyes closed and her head dipped; dead end. "But considering the boss here was that young fair-skinned boy I mentioned," Jane's head shot back up to look at the man smiling on screen, "I'm pretty sure he could tell you his Grandmother's address."
Jane couldn't help but smile.
"Are you willing to sign a document, if I have what you just said transcribed?"
"Why not, couldn't do any harm, could it?"
'Nor could you, in a month of Sundays' Jane thought to herself.