- 4 -

As Jane climbed back into the unmarked car, she slapped her forehead. "I'm so stupid!" she exclaimed.

Connolly grinned and cleared his throat. "Do you want me to contradict you now?" he asked with a mischievous grin. "Or will you explain to me what that assumption is about?"

"Allston! The bodies by the river!" rattled out of Jane's mind. She remembered a television report that had caused a stir. It had been years since the remains of a young man and woman had been discovered near the river. Another dead couple, if you looked at it that way.

Connolly started the car and laughed. "Except this couple was from a different century. This one particular cold case is quite enough for me. So please, let's not dig up any more couples that don't even have anything to do with each other. I can't handle that."

Jane nodded slowly when he drove off.

"Something different for a change," she heard him say.

"Yeah?"

"Did you notice where Kyla Alperstein works?"

"Hmm. A pharmacy."

"Exactly." Connolly raised his eyebrows meaningfully. "Kind of like Marita Scott."

"Wasn't that a medical supply store?"

"It was, but still." Connolly clutched the steering wheel tensely. But his eyes were wide awake. "Two double homicides, a pharmacy, a medical supply house, a pharmaceutical salesman," he enumerated. "We should keep an eye on that, I think."

Jane looked at him and arched a brow, wondering at what point she had invited Connolly to join the investigation.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

It was a hot, sunny day in July, and half the city seemed to have disappeared into the urban green spaces. Children laughed, dogs frolicked, couples in love and old people silently watched the hustle and bustle. Many were idle, and the police were also longing for a quiet Sunday.

When a call from an angry walker reached the control center, this dream was shattered for the officers on duty. In an area difficult to access, two siblings had made a gruesome discovery: the bodies of two adults. Unclothed, covered with branches. Their feet were looking in the direction of the children, and only with difficulty had the mother been able to prevent the two from also seeing the faces of the murdered.

Homicide was called in immediately; Jane was still sitting in Connolly's car when the call reached her.

Connolly gritted his teeth and took a deep breath. "What else did the dispatch center say?"

"A man and a woman. I think the dead are mostly covered up, but she has toenails painted red, they stood out to them."

"The kids?"

"The officers," Jane corrected. "But the children certainly did. Terrible to have to see something like that. Hopefully, they won't get a crack for life. It's too much to put children through in this world as it is."

Connolly nodded and remained silent.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The barrier appeared out of nowhere. A slight bend, then half a dozen vehicles blocked the passage. A handful of passersby huddled around, two uniformed men pointed to other paths. The forest was crisscrossed, in some places as straight as a checkerboard.

Jane hurried purposefully toward a colleague and pointed herself out. Then she had someone explain where she needed to go.

"If you want, I'll give you the coordinates -" the cop said with a frown.

"No, thanks," Jane declined, swallowing hard. She knew the way. Even if she had come from a different side today, she knew it was the same area where they had found the other couple.

She hardly dared to think it.

A serial killer?

"What about you," Connolly asked as he came up to her.

Jane explained to him.

"Darned and sewed up! Another double murder while the whole forest is full of police?"

The two strode off, so briskly that there was little thought of further conversation.

The scene was widely cordoned off with police tape, and it seemed as if they were watching the replay of a movie they had just seen.

Maura rose and paused when she saw her ex-boyfriend standing next to her wife, then called them both over. "Jane ... Detective Connolly."

The man cleared his throat and smiled faintly. "Maura."

"Can we ...," Jane said to break the awkward silence, pointing at the bodies. "we talk about this?"

"Looks like a copycat," the ME said, licking his lips. "A couple. Stripped, tied up, and shot. Except they're a little fresher and not decomposed. And no one's nibbled on them yet, either."

Jane wrinkled her nose."

The walker had called 911 directly. Still, the paramedics had been first on the scene. As gently as possible, the two bodies had been examined for signa mortis; signs of death such as failure to breathe, lack of pulse, corneal opacities, and cadaveric cold. In addition, by remaining in the supine position for hours, the death marks caused by the sinking of blood were clearly pronounced. In the two deceased, these red discolorations were visible in the armpit areas. According to a cautious assessment, a paramedic assumed a midnight demise. He had noted gunshots to the head as the cause.

Maura handed Jane the papers he had left for her. "The case is pretty clear for once today. According to my research, I'm assuming one o'clock tonight. Relatively accurate, because we didn't have much of a temperature drop tonight. And the nice thing is, there were two livers at once for me to prick."

Together they walked over to the bodies, still mostly covered, which lay side by side as if laid out.

Connolly rubbed his chin. He muttered something about 'hunt break,' which made Jane brighten.

"What are you saying?"

Connolly leaned forward to see the faces of the dead. There was a crack under his shoes. "No twigs in the mouth," he said then. "No 'last bite'."

"You're talking about hunter's jewelry, right?" said Maura." What about the twigs on the bodies."

Connolly waved it off. "A shooter breach or a sign of possession is out of question," he explained. "A single twig would suffice for that, about forearm length. There would be one in the mouth at the last bite. But this ... no. My guess is pure camouflage. The perp must have known half of Boston was flocking to the green today."

"You sure know your stuff," Jane said sullenly with a raised brow, and Maura gave her an admonishing look.

"With hunting?", Connolly bobbed his head back and forth. "Just a little. But I spent a lot of my childhood in Alaska. That shapes you."

Jane mimicked him silently when he turned back to the bodies, and Maura hoisted her name through her teeth.

She didn't know much about hunting, but she did have a feel for the psyche of serial killers. And what seemed to be brewing here was not to her liking.

She ordered that the branches should now be cleared away.

While the men from the CSRU cautiously took it upon themselves to do so, Jane followed every move with a wary eye. The first thing she noticed was the man holding the woman's hand. "You see that? A pair of lovers. The killer wanted us to recognize them as such." She bent down as far as she could. Then she recognized the wedding rings. Connolly apparently saw them, too.

"Married," he grumbled. "Was there anything like that at the first crime scene?"

"Not that I know of." Jane sought the ME's gaze, but she also answered in the negative. On the other hand, with a layover of four weeks, a lot could have happened. A wedding ring that slipped off their fingers. A magpie. Jane thought about using a metal detector but dismissed the idea for now. "At least we know from the first two victims that they weren't married couples," Jane continued. "So that doesn't seem to be a criterion. More like a coincidence." And turning to Maura, "Would you please pull the rings off before these two are taken away? The engravings may be helpful."

"Yes," said with a nod. "Of course."

They waited until the CSRU people had removed all the twigs and stowed a few samples in plastic bags. Then one took two dozen photos from every possible angle. When he pulled back, he signified with a prompting nod that the dead could now be moved.

Maura bent down and pulled two plastic bottles from her leather doctor's bag. The first had a spray head, and sure enough, after a brief treatment with a foaming liquid, she managed to pull off both rings.

"Voilà," she said as she jingled the metal in Jane's gloved outstretched hand. "Now, may I continue according to my standard?"

"Sure," Jane murmured, almost lost in thought, holding the wedding rings up to the sun and reading the inscriptions with narrowed eyes.

To the moon ... Andrea 06/10/2006

Andrè 08/10/2011

"On my birthday, of all days," she muttered, earning a questioning look from Connolly. "Here, André." She handed him the ring. "He got married on August 10th in 2011."

She did the math. Was it the year she had taken an impromptu trip to Mexico with Maura? Or had they gone to New York together for two weeks? No time to think.

Connolly nodded. "Oh, I see. So André was his name. Then the recognition service can get started. What's her name?"

"Don't be hasty." Jane handed him the second ring. "The wedding dates are not matching. They may be lovers. But a married couple they are not!"

In her head, she was already going over the conversations that would soon have to be had. It wasn't just that somewhere in the city two people were waiting for their partners and had to face death. It had to feel much worse to learn that they had died hand in hand with another.

Jane went to Maura once again. "Please swab her. I want to know if she had sex before she died. And I want to know if she had it with him, or with someone else. Whether she might have had sex with her killer." Jane tucked her chin when she saw the blonde's warning look. She took a deep breath, then continued, "If so, I want to know if the sex was voluntary. And how often -"

Maura smiled pointedly. "Mhm, and if it was good, I'd best find out, too. I see."

Jane furrowed her brows and slumped her shoulders a little. She knew why her wife had been a bit vexatious. The two hadn't been intimate since their wedding night, when, according to Maura, sex hadn't occurred. She cleared her throat. "At least you know what I'm getting at. We need a sequence of events, anything that can still be figured out. Everything the first couple couldn't tell us anymore. Well, and the very first thing we need is fingerprints, and we need them as soon as possible."

"Okay. Anything else, or may I continue?"

Connolly spoke up, "I'd be interested to know if this was the crime scene, too." He pointed to the long clearing that stretched out beside them. "Pretty risky, in my opinion. The chances of running into a few other moonstruck lovers are pretty high after all."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jane frowned deeply and lowered her forehead to her wife's, Maura running her hands down her bare back.

Jane kissed Maura gently before rolling to the side and her wife whimpered softly. "Maura?" Maura didn't open her eyes and sucked in her lower lip before licking it. "You okay?"

A smile spread across Maura's face and she turned her head, opening her eyes. "More than okay."

It hadn't taken long for Maura to figure out that Jane was physically conditioned differently than other women, yet she'd never brought it up. It had taken Jane years to get over herself to tell her friend that she wasn't like other women. Not because she was ashamed, but because she knew Maura well enough and expected to be inundated with countless awkward questions and medical jargon. Instead, Maura sat on her couch, listening without interjecting a question while she drank her wine, nodding now and then, not saying very much. That had made Jane nervous, and she had followed Maura to the kitchen island when the blonde got up without a word without warning. She had feared that her secret, which she had kept for years, had caused a crack in her friendship with Maura that couldn't be fixed.

The lingering silence in the house was so stifling that Jane asked the ME to say something, anything, while Maura refilled her glass and took a sip. The next thing that came out of her mouth surprised and relieved Jane at the same time, that this small but important detail wouldn't change anything in their friendship. Of course, at that moment Jane couldn't help thinking that nothing was small and Maura had to grin broadly. Of course, as expected, Jane's confession was followed by awkward questions on some inconvenient occasions and places, just as Jane had expected.

Maura smiled when Jane started running her fingers over her stomach and turned her head to the detective, looking her straight in the eyes. "I was afraid you were broken."

Jane blinked a few times. "Excuse me?" She rolled her eyes when the other woman let her eyes travel down on her. "There was too much alcohol on our wedding day and too much stress. And then we caught this case." Jane rolled her eyes again when Maura started to grin. "You could see yourself that there's nothing broken about me. Everything works just fine."

"Yes," Maura said with the broad smile that caused Jane to grin, too. "I could convince myself of that."

The Italian lowered her brows when she saw Maura's mischievous smile. That was exactly what she had said after their first night together, with the same grin. She ran her hand down the doctor's arm and grew serious, frowning. "You know I love you, right?"

Maura became serious again and slid closer to the detective. "Of course I know that, Jane."

Jane nodded slowly and took a deep breath. "I just wanted to make sure you knew how much I love you."

Maura became abruptly aware that her wife was briefly thinking of the couples who had cheated on their spouses. It seemed like it was just a fleeting thought. She kissed Jane's lips and smiled while brushing a strand of hair from her forehead. "You don't have to make sure I know, Jane." She kissed her wife once again and leaned her forehead against Jane's. "Never."

Jane nodded and sighed long and loud.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jane looked at the numbers on the old-fashioned clock radio in Kyla Alperstein's kitchen. 3:33 pm, the colon separating the number, blinked frantically, leaving her transfixed, waiting for the minute to finally turn.

Kyla Alperstein had taken the news with unexpected composure.

Earlier in the morning, Maura had succeeded in taking a fingerprint of the dead man. Patchy thought it was, she had immediately forwarded the results to Jane. The result was almost unambiguous: the probability of being wrong was in the comma range. Absolute certainty would come from DNA analysis. But Kyla seemed to have come to terms with the staggering reality

"I've been expecting this," she said quietly. "Since you were here. Since you called earlier to come again." Her eyes looked as if she wanted to cry but had no tears left.

Ethan Connolly exchanged a few empathetic sentences with her while Jane flipped through some papers Kyla had laid out for them. Travel statements, a few notes, mostly business. Haskel Alperstein had been around a lot; Boston was always the main destination, probably, right after Whit Monday, blocked out with highlighter until the weekend. Thursday, June 8, was marked with an arrow that extended to Saturday. After that, a question mark in a red ballpoint pen.

"His travel plans were from Thursday to Saturday," Jane read aloud. "With an option for Sunday?"

"Isn't that what I said before?" asked Kyla. "Sometimes he did it that way."

Jane looked up with furrowed brows. "And the rest of the week?"

"He always marked the whole week when he traveled. So he'd keep track of it. So he could take care of the lawn, the house, well, everything." Kyla heaved a sob. "Why did someone kill him?"

"That's what we're trying to find out," Jane said quietly, brows still furrowed. "Please think again very carefully. Do you know if your father was seeing someone?"

"I don't know -" Kyla nervously ran her hands over her face. "No. I don't think he would have told me anything, either. Why is this so important?"

"We're trying to reconstruct his last hours," Jane explained. "And in doing so, we have to consider the possibility that your father and his companion were targeted and killed."

Kyla's jaw dropped. "Targeted?"

Jane felt caught in the dichotomy of not revealing too much about the investigation details on the one hand and asking as specifically as possible on the other. "Well," she began, "the woman was married. That makes a relationship crime possible." A relationship crime usually ended for the murderer with the passing of his hated victim. Still, she asked the question, even with the last double homicide haunting her mind. Just because some things pointed to a series of murders, it was too early to dismiss all possibilities. But it wasn't until Jane excused herself for a few minutes to use the restroom and pulled her cell phone out of her pocket to tell her wife she was pretty much done visiting Kyla Alperstein. She returned to Ethan Connolly and Kyla Alperstein.

Connolly stood up and extended his hand to Kyla, "Please check in anytime. Promise?"

Kyla just nodded and sniffled. "Thanks."

Jane also said goodbye. At that, Kyla squeezed her hand extra tightly as she said, "Please find the killer. Please."

"We will," Jane promised, even though she thought nothing of such platitudes. But in moments like these, anything that helped the bereaved in any way seemed permissible.