- 3 -

Barefoot I walk across the forest floor.

Why don't I have socks, shoes?

Why didn't you give me any?

Why did you leave me alone, why do I have to be here? I feel the night breathing down my neck. How it burns under my skin.

The desire, the greed, the taste you brought me to.

The first time, the last time.

I am like you.

I need to kill.

Snatches of thoughts, voices echoing through the mind like a tape. The predator felt the stings of the pine needles, the little stones, and every branch it stepped on. Barefoot. As if on silent paws, moving through the undergrowth without a sound. On the lookout, on the hunt.

The predator had long since spotted its target, even if the time had not yet come.

As the moon emerged from behind the treetops and bathed the forest in ghostly light, the figure flinched as if afraid of being hit by a beam of light. It hid in the shadows of the slender, closely grown trunks. And waited for the right moment, while lustful noises sounded in a nearby clearing.

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Maura put a cup of coffee down for Jane while her wife chewed on her bagel with cream cheese with relish and went over her notes. She gasped in shock when she felt a hand on her wrist and a tug. "Oh," she gasped in surprise as she found herself sitting on her newlywed's lap.

Jane looked up at her and grinned like a Cheshire cat. "Hi."

Maura grinned as much as the detective and lowered her head. "Hi."

Jane held Maura's gaze and felt her heart nearly jump out of her chest when she looked into the blonde's hazel eyes. They had been married to each other for barely forty-eight hours and were already acting like it had been forty-eight years when they were at work. Barely allowing themselves a minute to really enjoy their new living situation, they had agreed to get married on a weekend when there was a chance they might be called to a crime scene. Some said it was rushed, but for these two, it was a perfect time. They didn't need an extensive honeymoon; they could catch up in a year or two.

Jane could hardly believe her luck that she had found someone like Maura and that the blonde accepted her for who she was. Not just the tough detective she mimed at work and for the women she'd hooked up with in a few bars, but also allowing herself to get emotional at times, even allowing a few tears when it all got to be too much. That Maura didn't roll her eyes when she came home and shed her hard shell and just was herself. A complex being with a lot of rough edges.

Jane took a deep breath and ran her thumb over Maura's jawline, gently skirting the contours of her face, and Maura's eyes fluttered shut when Jane ran the backs of her fingers over her throat.

Maura loved it when her girlfriend/wife didn't always go hard, but also when she lowered her protective walls and was just Jane, sensitive, gentle. Reasons why she was so good at her job. Not just at her job, but in bed, too.

Eyes snapped up when she heard Maura exhale steadily, but felt her swallowing hard as if to calm her nerves.

The doctor opened her eyes and smiled mischievously when she began to lower her head. "It's starting to be a very good morning."

Jane blinked a few times. "Wasn't it a good morning before?"

"We're finally alone for once," the blonde whispered against the detective's lips.

"As far as I know, we were all to ourselves on our wedding night, too," Jane said, furrowing her brows. "Unless a third person was hiding in the closet or under the bed."

"You don't remember, do you?" asked Maura, straightening up, regaining her distance, and Jane whimpered almost inaudibly.

The brunette opened and closed her mouth again, looking past Maura and narrowing her eyes as she tried to recall the events of their wedding day, giving up seconds later. "I can still remember the wedding ceremony and you saying 'I do'." She grinned when the other woman rolled her eyes. "I also remember the boisterous laughter and the alcohol, a lot of alcohol, and -" She paused and looked at her wife, ashamed. "And then it's all gone."

Maura laughed heartily when Jane ashamedly buried her face in her chest with a groan. This was why she had fallen in love with this woman. It took some time, but then Jane admitted she was wrong or that she had simply forgotten something, in this case being under the influence of alcohol. "We laughed, we danced and had we had a wonderful evening with our friends and families. And afterward, we went up to our room and nothing happened. We went to bed and fell asleep."

Jane straightened in surprise, her eyes snapping upward once again. "You mean to say we didn't -" Jane's brows furrowed again when Maura shook her head, smiling. "But you and I were naked!"

Maura heartily laughed again. "Do you think I would fall asleep in my wedding dress?" she asked, and the detective pursed her lips. "Honey, we barely slept the night before our wedding, barely ate, and drank too much. We weren't able to have sex at all."

"Worst night ever," Jane groaned, looking apologetically at her wife.

Maura kissed her gently and smiled. "On the contrary, I woke up with you as my wife."

Jane took a deep breath and nodded, silently agreeing with the ME, but then something changed in her eyes. "That means we still have to consummate the wedding night. We can start right now."

Maura chuckled, but then held her breath when Jane ran her hand over her thigh, got serious, and kissed her wife long, hard. Jane looked her straight in the eye and her heart leaped. Every time the detective looked like that, she felt as if Jane was taking a peek at her soul, she trembled.

Jane didn't ask her if she was freezing or if she was okay. She continued to look Maura in the eye, stretching her back to kiss the doctor again, this time not without ulterior motive or restraint. The hum of her cell phone abruptly ended the moment and the Italian growled dangerously low as if a bone had been held up to a dog's nose and then taken away before the dog could bite.

Maura pressed her lips together in disgust and lifted the device in front of her wife's eyes.

Jane, annoyed, took the call. "Rizzoli."

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Jane, unnerved, entered the third floor of the BPD and immediately spotted the man standing waiting at her desk. She knew him, had dealt with him many times before, just like Maura. She lowered her brows and marched over to her desk. "Detective Connolly, how can I help you?"

Detective Ethan Connolly was a handsome, tall man. His ice-blue eyes contrasted sharply with his dark brown, short hair. One of several reasons Maura had decided to date him many years ago. "I'm here for your license plate research."

Jane pondered for a moment. It was indeed surprising that a detective from the cold case department would be looking up. As yet, the male body had not been identified. So far, it was purely an identification case.

He handed her a file and slipped his hands into the pockets of his neatly pressed suit pants, which were very likely part of a suit that cost more than she earned a month. "The man is absolutely unremarkable. Except for a couple of parking tickets. Well, and that he was just reported missing four weeks ago. But I was told that this car was connected to a crime. Is that right?"

Jane opened the file and skimmed the reports. "A double homicide," she confirmed. "The time of the crime matches the missing person report. What date was that exactly?"

"June 12," the other detective said, and she noted the date. "A Monday."

Jane briefly reported the skeletonized bodies, and the two arranged for the CSRU to take fingerprints from the vehicle.

"Steering wheel, radio, and the common parts," Jane enumerated, "and we'll check for gum or cigarette butts for DNA."

"Okay."

Jane straightened up again and leaned back in her chair, eyeing her opposite skeptically. "Are you going to tell me what Cold Cases has to do with the couple?" she asked straight-faced.

Ethan Connolly cleared his throat and handed her another file. "Maybe you'd best take a look at this."

She accepted the second file and frowned. "Look at what?"

Connolly licked his lips and frowned, sitting down without asking in the chair that sat next to her desk. "There's a similar case. The double murder of a couple. Two years ago, in Peters Park."

Jane stiffened. Double homicides were everywhere. There had to be more. The other colleague continued with a list of circumstances of death that made her shudder. And not because of their particular brutality, but because the whole thing sounded like an exact copy of the current case.

Someone had better take a look at this, Jane and Connolly quickly agreed.

"Do you want me to send you the rest of the investigation files?" wanted Connolly to know. "I'll tell you right now, though: Not all of it is digitized. And they're boxes," he pointed out.

Jane rolled her eyes and stood up from her chair without warning, grabbing her blazer. "First, show me the crime scene from two years ago."

"Oh," Connolly said in surprise, standing up as well. "OK. I ... I'll just get my things."

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Silently, Jane trotted along behind the giant. It could have been an enchanting walk. Low, slender birch trees formed translucent thickets. It could have been an enchanting walk if she liked men and if Connolly had no history with her wife.

He led Jane to a barely discernible turnoff. "Here it is," he said.

Jane looked around with furrowed brows. "Here?"

Connolly nodded slowly. "Marita Scott and Jermain Fields. Both Bostonians."

Jane remembered a little about the case; she and her team had not investigated the murder. Connolly was part of the investigation team and after the case was put to the cold cases, he asked to be transferred so he could still look into this murder until it was solved.

Connolly continued with what was known about how the crime occurred. The two had last been seen alive two years ago in September. An unusually warm few weeks, especially after the cold and rainy summer. According to Marita's parents, the twenty-something had been dating the son of Fields, a pharmaceutical salesman, for a few weeks. He had picked her up, she had lived there more than at home anyway. But that was probably normal for new lovers. Marita's father was a high official and thought nothing of the relationship with Jermain, especially since the family was involved in one scandal or another. A ruthless clan, they said, but Jermain was a good-natured type who was a bit out of sorts. Because the two retreated more often, the disappearance hadn't been noticed until three days later.

Marita worked in a medical supply store, and her boss had called to see if she was still sick.

"The two of them were tied up with a duct-tape, and he was lying there." Connolly pointed to the base of a crooked birch tree. "Unclothed on the bottom, T-shirt and thin sweater on top. Blood on his chest. He exhibited strangulation marks and received a gunshot to the head, but it was not fatal."

Jane squinted against the sun and drew her brows together. "How so?"

"He was already asphyxiated."

Jane swallowed. A ritual? Had it played out the same way in Peters Park? "What about her?"

"Same thing. She was naked, but we couldn't tell how much of the clothing she had removed herself. There were traces of semen on the shirt and the blanket, but the shirt was yards away from her." Again, Connolly indicated two positions. Marita's body had been right next to her boyfriend's.

On the blanket.

"Semen from him?"

Ethan Connolly nodded somberly. "At least the asshole had still let them have their fun. Probably jerked off in the process."

Jane made a disgusted face at the thought. "Didn't find anything, though, I guess."

"Bullshit. No chance here certainly not three days later. And rained, besides."

Jane took a deep breath and asked more questions about the time of death, the finding, witnesses, possible suspects. The double murder had initially been treated as a relationship crime, the family had been investigated, a possible rival had been sought. But nothing had led to a result. The case went cold, life went on. Even for the relatives of Marita and Jermain.

Connolly took a deep breath and looked around, avoiding eye contact. "So you're assuming this could be an America-wide serial killer?" he stated casually.

Jane looked at him questioningly. She almost compared him again to the Ethan Connolly he had been in her eyes years ago. An aspiring homicide investigator with a bright future ahead of him, but then he started dating Maura and her opinion of him had changed abruptly. "Did I say that?"

"No. But ... you seem pretty piqued if I do say so myself."

Jane took a deep breath and furrowed her brows. "The headshots, the duct tape, and the whole crime sequence speak pretty clearly. That's too much detail to be coincidences."

"So you think the perp is from Boston," Connolly put his pride on the back burner and looked at the woman.

Jane rubbed her forehead and made a quick face. "We haven't gotten that far yet. There's got to be some connection. Have you looked up the owner of the car yet?"

Ethan Connolly shook his head. "We can go there directly. The reporting address is 12 miles from here. It's all a wash."

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The small house appeared on a quiet side street and immediately something haunted her mind, but Jane failed to grasp it. On one of the brick posts, a sign formed of clay and decorated by hand revealed the names of the occupants. Haskel and Carmel Alperstein, and their daughter Kyla. The bright colors with which the artwork was designed had faded.

At that moment, Jane wasn't too upset that they hadn't yet to deliver an official death notice. The male body had not yet been identified. As she walked over the sloping cobblestones, she wondered what would be harder to digest as a relative. The news that the husband was dead, or that he was wanted as a suspected killer.

And then there was something else she had noticed. Not a single car on the street had Boston license plates.

Connolly cleared his throat before knocking on the front door.

It opened instantly. A pair of bright blue eyes gazed at the two detectives. They shone almost brighter than Ethan Connolly's. Also, the very young-looking woman without makeup had straw-blond hair that seemed difficult to tame. Strands curled out of the braided queue everywhere. Jane knew this problem all too well. The woman was wearing washed-out jeans and bright red wool socks. She also wore a Mickey Mouse shirt, under which her bra showed.

"Are you guys Jehovah's Witnesses?" asked Kyla Alperstein. "Because if you are, you're at the wrong house."

"Boston PD," Connolly said, unimpressed. He spared long explanations regarding cold cases and homicide but got straight to the point. "We're here for Haskel Alperstein."

"Oh no." Her hand was placed in front of her mouth. "Police? What about my dad?" Jane bit her tongue. That's why the woman seemed so young. She was his daughter. Then she wasn't a mid-thirties woman who had held up well, but an early-twenties woman who seemed older.

Ethan Connolly continued the dialogue.

Whether she had filed a missing person's report.

Yes.

When she had expected him back.

At that time? Friday nights. But it was not rare that he spontaneously added a night or the weekend. It was not until Sunday that she tried to reach him.

That had been June 11th, Jane recalled. The missing persons report had come in a day later, according to Connolly.

On whether they lived here alone.

"Since Mom died, yes," the young woman replied with a saddened expression. "She died two years ago."

"I'm sorry to hear that," Jane chimed in.

Kyla nodded. "What's going on with my dad now?"

"We don't know for sure yet," Detective Connolly said. "We found his car."

"Found it?"

"In a secluded parking lot. Abandoned," Jane explained. "And the whole thing, unfortunately, near a crime scene."

The young woman turned white as a sheet and grabbed the post of the wooden stairs. "Are you saying ...?"

"We don't know anything more specific yet. But the license plate led us to you. Do you have a recent photo of your father?"

"Yes, just a moment." Kyla pressed. "Why don't you come inside?"

It wasn't long before she returned. The photo in her hand showed a happy-looking family. "It was taken three months before my mom died. Appearances are deceiving. Mom had wanted us to take a normal photo where you wouldn't see anything on her. She was dying of cancer." The young woman was silent for a few seconds, furtively wiping the corners of her eyes. "She was very brave."

Jane nodded slowly and waited a moment before asking. "Do you know how tall your father is?" It wasn't clear from the photo. But the stature could have matched that of the male victim.

"6'0."" The daughter smiled. "His ID card says an extra inch, and he always stresses he won't let it be taken away. That's how I know for sure."

Connolly breathed heavily. The height pretty much matched what Maura's had determined.

"Ms. Alperstein," he said calmly, too calmly, and would have preferred to grab the young woman's hands. "I'm afraid there's a possibility that something has happened to your father."

Jane raised her brows and took a step forward. "So far, we don't know for sure."

"Okay." Kyla Alperstein's eyes widened. "Now what?"

"It would help if we had some of your father's clothes or hygiene items. Unwashed clothes, a comb, or the toothbrush."

Kyla laughed bitter. "I hope he took it with him."

"Something like that."

"I'll check."

Kyla shuffled away. It took longer than expected, and after a silent exchange of glances with the other detective, Jane decided to go after the woman. She was just reaching the hallway when she heard a sob.

"Please dear God ... not that too -"

So she did believe in something. Somehow that was comforting to know at that moment. For as much as Jane hated to admit it to herself, there was a good chance that Kyla Alperstein was now an orphan. What explanation could there be for her father's disappearance? For the body at the place where it was found and for the parked car? She took another deep breath before stepping into the doorway. "Are you all right?", Jane's question sounded trite, and she wished she could have taken it back.

Kyla spun around, and a towel fell to the floor. "No, but thanks for asking." She bent down for it and sniffled. „I'm scared as hell, you know? I mean, you wouldn't come all the way out here if you weren't convinced -"

"No. That's so not true," Jane countered, stepping up beside the young woman. Carefully, she put her arm around Kyla. She could feel her heartbeat. "However, the evidence doesn't bode well. I'm sorry we have to leave you in this uncertainty."

Kyla began to cry softly and tilted her head against Jane's shoulder. "Then I have no one left. No one!"

"Let's look for DNA, okay?" the detective suggested after a while, during which the two of them had just been leaning against the vanity. "The quicker we can get some certainty."

"How long should I wait then?", Kyla detached herself from their proximity and ran her palm over her forehead. "Two days? Then the analysis. How long will that take? I can check myself into the loony bin by then!"

Jane shook her head. "We'll run the genetic fingerprint right away. The forensic lab already has the sample. So it won't take long." She paused for a second, then continued, "It would still be good if there was anyone there for you. You shouldn't be alone right now."

"No."

"No neighbors, work colleagues -?"

"It's okay." Kyla waved it off. "I'll be back on my feet tomorrow morning at seven. That's a distraction."

"Where do you work?"

"CVS Pharmacy."

Kyla made no secret of the fact that she was no longer in the mood for a lengthy conversation. Normal defensive behavior, Jane knew. Self-protection.

Jane accepted the towel, a wet razor, and a brush. Kyla also fished a T-shirt out of the laundry basket with socks and boxers wrapped in it.

"Do you need anything else from me?" asked Kyla. When Jane answered in the affirmative, she opened the mirrored cabinet and removed a lady's razor from it. "Here. I guarantee it's just my hair on it."

Jane bagged the items. "Thanks a lot, that should do it. You'll get things back as soon as possible."

Connolly handed the young woman another business card and wrote down the pharmacy's phone number, as well as Kyla Alperstein's cell phone number. "I'll talk to you tomorrow," he said in parting. "The business card has my cell phone number on it, too."