- 7 -

"A payphone?" Jane Rizzoli couldn't believe her ears.

Nina gave her a grin and talked all kinds of stuff over analog lines while she led Jane and the front entrance. "Down there." She pointed with her palm toward a dimly lit corner. Six steps below the entrance.

"To think there's still one of those," Jane thought aloud, approaching the apparatus. The box casing with its rounded corners was almost completely covered with scribbles. Sharpies, spray cans, and all sorts of stickers, most of which had peeled-off surfaces. "Does the phone still work?"

"Someone replaced the receiver." The analyst nodded.

"Hmm. And when?"

"I don't know. The thing itself must have had a few years on it."

"You were probably still in kindergarten," Jane tried a joke that failed. Nina responded with an irritated look and pointed to a spot on the cable. The tape had been unwound, exposing the contacts. "Neatly, wire by wire."

Jane pondered. "Has the old receiver been cut off? I only know of wires that have been ripped out -"

It had been a nightmare for everyone who depended on payphones before the days of cellular service. Ripped out handsets. Or excrement that someone had left behind.

Nina scratched her chin. "Hm. It may be that it would have been easier to jam the cables inside. But the fact is, that's how it was done. Maybe he didn't have a screwdriver to match."

Jane's mental carousel began to spin. "What kind of coins can you put in there?"

"The conventional coins, what else?"

"Did you touch it anywhere?"

"No."

The Italian woman furrowed her brows and looked at the other woman for a long time. "Good, do you have any gloves on you? I want to know if this device still works." Nina handed her a pair, nodding, and Jane thanked her and pulled on the latex gloves. She picked up the phone, waited for the dial tone, and with her other hand unearthed a coin from her jeans pocket. She had a coin in almost every pair of pants. She briefly considered whether to sacrifice the coin. Then she smiled and let the metal jingle through the slot. Dialed her cell phone number and, handing the still puzzled looking Nina the buzzing cell phone. "Answer it, please."

Nina did so hesitantly. "Hello?"

Jane heard her voice double and with a barely perceptible time lag. "Thank you." She put the phone back in the well and reached out for her cell phone.

"So what do we get out of this now, besides you being a little poorer?", Nina wanted to know.

Jane smiled broadly. "I'll get the money back! The device is going to the lab. I want a list of all the calls, incoming and outgoing, which can't be that many. Nowadays, everyone has some kind of flat rate. I also want to know who maintains this device, who repairs it, and, most importantly, who empties the coins. And fingerprints should be taken from the coins inside. Just like from the machine itself."

With those words, she pulled off the rubber gloves. The latex clicked, she crumpled them up and let the lump disappear into her pants pocket. She could literally feel the confidence coursing through her body.

It was the best lead they had in this case.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jane was sitting on the couch watching a recorded football game with a beer and a bowl of popcorn when suddenly someone stood in front of her, blocking her view as she took a sip from the bottle. She frowned and braced herself for a long and drawn-out argument with her wife because she was watching a sports recording rather than meeting friends and family at the Dirty Robber.

Instead of heading to the bar alone, the doctor had retreated to her study, saying she would continue working on her paper.

Jane let her eyes drift slowly upward, and she furrowed her brows as the blonde took the beer bottle from her hand and set it down on the coffee table. "Okay," she said long-drawn-out, swallowing hard. She hadn't looked at the clock in a while and wondered if it was so late that it would be best to go to bed since Maura was only wearing a negligee. She was surprised when the ME suddenly pushed her against the back of the couch and straddled her lap. "I have a feeling we're not going to fight," Jane said more softly, her hands landing on Maura's bare thighs as if of their own accord.

The blonde shook her head seriously and leaned down a little. "We won't." She closed the distance to Jane's lips and paused briefly with a smile when her wife's fingers dug into her thighs, then kissed the detective and heard a relieved and satisfied exhale. She whimpered when Jane's hands began to move upward and unintentionally rolled her hips.

Jane's hands moved to said hips and she looked deep into her wife's eyes when she pulled back when the air became necessary. She swallowed hard and helped the blonde in her movement, her gaze dropping briefly to her lap before looking Maura in the eye again. She gritted her teeth as Maura when bit her lower lip and flipped her wife onto the couch.

Maura gasped in surprise when she suddenly lay on her back on the couch with the detective hovering over her, Jane's eyes almost black and lust-filled. Her gaze was like that of a predator who had just taken down her prey. Hungry. She bit her lower lip again and slipped her hands under Jane's shirt, she needed more skin contact, more of her wife.

Jane took the hint and pulled her shirt over her head in a skillfully smooth motion and Maura began to smile.

Maura's smile fell when something changed in her wife's demeanor. The predator gave way to something she had seen so many times over the years and still couldn't put her finger on by name. Her eyes rolled back in her head when she felt her wife's lips in the crook of her neck. "Oh," she breathed, licking her lips. Her real intention was a fuck like last time, something to satisfy the need. Fast, raw, animal. For that reason she had chosen the silk negligee before drawing Jane's attention from the TV, she knew the detective couldn't resist it. She exhaled loudly and steadily as she felt Jane's lips ghost over her shoulder before the brunette slipped the thin strap off. "Oh," she sighed a little louder when she felt Jane's lips on her collarbone and arched her back a little, this was going anything but as planned. The shiver down her spine and the goosebumps were not part of it. When she opened her eyes and caught sight of brown eyes filled with lust ... And with love, she bit her lower lip again. She knew exactly the difference between being fucked senseless by Jane and Jane making love, she liked both without cutting, or at least only making small cuts.

Jane looked at her and frowned a little. "I love you, Maura," she breathed against the blonde's skin.

"I love you too, Jane," the ME whispered, and her eyes fluttered shut after the material of the negligee was brushed down her exposed breast, feeling Jane's lips on her exposed skin.

This wasn't going to be a fuck, this was going Jane making love to her.

A smile spread across Maura's lips.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

What time it was, she did not know.

Ghostly white pervaded the treetops, rising clouds of mist seemed to reach out to her like tentacles. And the cracking of the branches she stepped on echoed like cannon thunder in her ears.

He will find me, she thought in panic.

But she had no time, no peace, to think clearly. Somewhere behind her, he would come. His hairy grimace, the dark mask. The ice-cold hands that had grabbed at her body. The ones that wanted to rip her shirt off her body. Who had immobilized her boyfriend? First, he had confronted them both, forced them to kneel at gunpoint. Then from behind, a swing with an arm-thick timber. Plop. Just the memory of the dull-sounding thud drove nausea and panic through her body. Then he toppled forward. Another thud. More of a rustle than a pop, like a bag of kitty litter being heaved out of the trunk and into the front yard. Blood oozed from the laceration through his hair.

Wood cracked, and she pulled up.

She couldn't let him get her. She changed direction, just a little, to where she'd heard a metallic screech earlier. An industrial plant? Hardly. The rail line, she hoped. The fog reached out, soon she could barely make out her own feet.

The chilled air burned in her lungs as she left the hem of the trees. How long had she been running? She didn't know.

Maybe I lost him, she thought. Please, God, let me have lost him.

She knew from the newspaper that a monster was prowling the wooded areas of the city. A killer who left no witnesses, no survivors.

Please, God ...

She recognized the glimmer of signaling equipment. She felt the gravel heaped up beneath the tracks.

And then she felt a cold grip, a hand tightening around her shoulder.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

How long had she been asleep?

Outside it was pitch black, only the moon was glaring white in the night sky. There were hardly any cars driving.

Jane groaned and slipped on her underwear, reaching for the same jeans she'd worn the day before and fumbling for a shirt. At this hour, she didn't care how she looked, just fixing the bare essentials. Looking in the mirror, she was startled by the bags under her eyes.

"No wonder," she muttered.

A colleague from dispatch had rung Jane out of bed and informed her that there had been an 'incident'. An incident that would involve Homicide. So she should get a move on. "I'll be at the precinct in ten," the detective had replied with a suppressed yawn.

"Not at the precinct," the smoky voice defended. "At the airport."

That, too.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The ride took fifteen minutes, which would have been unthinkable in normal traffic. Jane had to concentrate to take the right exit but finally reached the access road.

"Voilà, the airport security." She smiled at her passenger.

Frankie was astonished.

"Never been here before?" asked Jane.

Frankie shook his head.

They entered the building, glaring spotlights shining all around them; Logan International Airport's Terminal 1 was nearby. Jane asked her way purposefully, flashed her badge when necessary, and finally, the two detectives were ushered into a narrow, sparsely furnished room. Crouched on a chair, in a dimly lit corner, was a woman. Estimated to be in her late twenties, with disheveled hair, a gray wool blanket lay over her shoulders. The dirty shoes suggested that she had been walking through the forest. Scraps of leaves and dry mud were speckled to the base of her jeans.

Thin fingers clutched a porcelain cup from which hung the flag of a teabag. Only when Jane had approached within two steps did the woman lift her chin, just a little, and a pair of tired eyes gazed at Jane.

"Hi. I'm Jane Rizzoli with the Boston Police Department." As she often did, she avoided using the term homicide. For weak nerves - and her counterpart undoubtedly had no strength for further shocks - the mere mention of murder was not reasonable.

The woman nodded silently.

"My colleagues have notified us. We would like to know what happened. They told me you were picked up in the area of the railroad tracks. Can you tell me how you got there?"

Silence.

Jane had been informed that a ranger had come across a distraught woman. No papers. She had babbled confusedly, understandable had been only the two sentences: 'He is dead!' and 'Please help him'.

She had given the muscular officer who tried to pull her off the tracks a few sensitive jolts. Apparently, she had mistaken him for someone else. For the murderer, perhaps. Immediately, it was all back. The same forest. A woman who reported a dead man. Was he her lover? Had the two of them fall victim to the same couple murderer who had been up to his mischief for weeks?

At last, she began to speak.

"We ... we were in the woods. My boyfriend and I. We wanted to ... he did -"

A torrent of tears needed to come out of her. In a spasm she dropped the cup from her hand, it fell to the ground, and the handle burst off. Tea splashed onto her pant leg, but it was long gone.

"It's okay," Jane said softly, brows furrowed. "Take your time. Maybe you'll tell me your name first."

At the same time, officers began combing the forest. Some of them were using search dogs to collect at the sites of the other pairs of bodies from the previous weeks. These, they had determined, were relatively exactly 328 yards apart. Somewhere in between - various clues had been found here over the weeks, and theories had been raised and discarded - had to be the crime scene. Whether it was exactly the same spot, no one knew. Whether a smart serial killer (everything in Jane resisted calling a killer smart, even if it was true) would actually choose the same spot? Wasn't the same forest risk enough already?

Obviously not, as had become apparent today - after weeks of dead ends and failures.

The search was extended in a star pattern from the sites, while other search parties approached from the outer approaches to the forest.

Even before Jane had a useful statement on record in the semi-darkness of the room, Frankie indicated to her that one of the dogs had struck. A pack of wild boars had scattered in a furious panic. In the midst of a trampled shelter, the half-naked body of a man came into the searchlight's beam.

The couple killer had indeed struck again. Only this time, someone had given him the slip. Jane felt a certain relief, even if she wasn't allowed to show it. Before her sat an important witness. Perhaps the only person who had escaped the predator alive.

A pretty couple, Jane thought silently, deep in Forest's grounds.

Blood on moss and stone. As it was, so it will be again.

The poem had burned itself into her memory. Again and again, they had puzzled over it. Inconclusively. And the parties of the two tenements had also proved to be a dead end.

Nevertheless. There it was now, the next evening light.

The next curtain had fallen.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jane glanced after her. Sophie Dornan stooped and climbed into the back door of the patrol car that would take her home. The blanket was stuck under her arm. As the car door slammed shut, the interior light shone on an empty face. Sophie Dornan pulled the gray wool blanket over her shoulders and snuggled in as if in a cocoon. Then the lamp went out, and the car started moving. Home, where an empty apartment waited.

Sophie Dornan was from Hyde Park, was forty-three years old, and had married her husband Robert two years ago. It was her second marriage, from the first she had a grown son, fathered by a brutal man who had raped her several times and from whom she had nevertheless only gotten away after fifteen bad years. Only after her husband had driven his Mercedes into a bridge abutment in a drunken stupor had peace returned to her life. All this she had told quite freely. Mrs. Dornan had withdrawn, focused on her son, and only allowed contact with other men again after three years, when he had joined the army at eighteen. Soon Robert had entered her life. A loving man - in his first life, he always said, he had been a pilot for American Airlines, now, after eye surgery, he was a thoroughly down-to-earth contemporary. He had retrained in tax law, his wife knew to report.

"Has there been any change lately?" Jane had asked.

"Not really." An indecisive silence had ensued, then Sophie Dornan had added that the subject of children had been a factor in recent weeks. "He wanted a son of his own so badly. Or a child of his own, for that matter. But I'm going to be forty-four, geez, and besides ... Besides, I didn't really manage things very well then."

"Wasn't that partly because of your first husband?"

"Possibly. But they're both dead now."

This truth hit like a whiplash.

Jane had had to comfort and reassure her counterpart again and again. A female doctor, whom the colleagues from the airport security had notified, administered a light sedative to Dornan.

The officers in the woods had sent some photos to Frankie, including the dead man's likeness. He edited the cropping a bit, even changing the harsh exposure so the image wouldn't look too shocking. But there was one thing that even Frankie couldn't take away: the fact that the murdered man was undoubtedly Robert Dornan. Nothing and no one could help him anymore.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The sky was still pitch black, there was still an hour before sunrise. The floodlight with which the CSRU illuminated the site seemed all the more surreal. Men and women booted around everywhere. Jane couldn't help but notice that Maura was missing.

Shortly after finding the body, paramedics had confirmed the death and estimated the time of passing at midnight. There was blood in the man's mouth, and there were also traces of it on his bandanna. The bandanna was the only piece of clothing the dead man wore on his upper body. And besides calf-length tennis socks and colorful boxer shorts, it was also the only textile. Jeans had been secured, several yards away. Shoes likewise. And also a jacket, which was of a much smaller size and on the denim of which there was a butterfly made of rhinestones. Women's clothing. Unfortunately, a brief but heavy downpour had put a crimp in the forensics team's plans. And the cause of death wasn't entirely clear either. Had he suffocated? Had he been strangled with the bandanna?

Jane looked for Kent and asked him to uncover the body for her.

"Are you doing Maura's job now?" he teased.

"I need to know if it's the same scheme," Jane returned, kneeling to the ground.

"Careful!" still Kent warned her, but Jane merely waved it off. "Doesn't matter now," she grumbled, thinking about how she spilled coffee over her legs when her brother braked sharply without warning.

She had a pair of gloves handed to her and searched the man's head. Ran them through his wax-styled hair, but nowhere was there an entry wound. Had he not been shot in the end? Then where did the blood in his mouth come from?

"Was he moved?" she asked.

"No," Kent replied. "I wasn't there when the paramedics arrived, but I still encountered them. They swore up and down they hadn't changed anything. Oh well. Except to take the temperature."

He pointed to the shorts. They didn't fit as they belonged and generally seemed a little too tight. That could just as easily be due to the rain.

Jane looked at Kent with furrowed brows. "Can we turn him enough so I can see the wrists?"

"At your risk," he replied with a shrug. "You'll explain that to Dr. Isles, though."

The detective rolled her eyes. "On my account. So - please."

Robert Dornan had to be lifted only a few inches to catch a glimpse of his hands. As expected, they were in a bound position. The wrists were fixed crosswise with duct tape.

"Thank you," the Italian said thoughtfully after snapping a few photos. Kent and colleagues lowered the dead man back down. "You can call the merciless. Get him to the morgue."

Frankie approached. He had been talking to the witness who had found the body, who was standing at the edge of the scene with two uniformed men and at that moment took a hearty draught from his flask, which he unabashedly offered toward the officers afterward.

"Well?" he inquired.

"Is that the ranger?"

"Ranger, my ass," Frankie waved off. "But first you."

"Well, he was tied up, just like the others. Shot? Maybe. If the perp shot him in the mouth. Since the exit wound is missing, the bullet would have to still be on the top of his skull. But if it was, that's not certain yet. There are also strangulation marks on the neck, but they're not conclusive either." Jane swallowed. "Damn! We'd need Maura here now, and she sent Kent here today, of all days!"

"She'll do the autopsy, won't she," her brother said. But that didn't reassure Jane. And what he told her afterward worried Jane even more.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Jane thought twice about getting into the camouflage green Ford Ranger. But she was freezing and longed to take the weight off her legs for a moment. The vehicle owner had introduced himself to her as Michael Blankenship. He suggested he'd drive her to the spot where he had picked up the distraught woman.

"I just wanted to have a little talk with you," the detective rebuffed.

"Don't you want to see the spot? I thought at first the woman was going to throw herself in front of the train."

"Well, we know by now she wasn't planning to do that. She was on the run."

"Yes. From the Panther."

Jane narrowed her eyes. "Who says she was?"

"Well, that's pretty obvious."

"To us, maybe," she grumbled, thinking of what Frankie had told her. "Where are you going to get -"

"It's not like we're stupid," Blankenship said. "You may think what you like about the press. But there's always something about the Panther. Does that actually annoy you?"

"What?"

„The press."

"Sometimes," Jane faltered. "When did the press start using that term?"

"Does it matter?"

"I'd hardly ask otherwise."

"Touché. I don't know. For quite a while."

Damn. Could it be that the press had inspired the writer of the verses and not the other way around? Could that be? Jane's mind raced, suddenly the car shook. Blankenship had started the engine. "Hey. I didn't say I wanted a ride with you."

"It's not far," Blankenship replied with a grin. "And besides, you should really check out the place, believe me."

"Mm. Whatever." Jane didn't like it when someone pushed her to do something. "But I'll tell you right now, I'm not in the mood for games. And you tell me all about that neighborhood watch group you mentioned earlier!" The very term, that unspeakable word, made Jane's stomach ache.

Blankenship turned his pickup truck around, which looked to Jane like a battlecruiser. It was foiled in a dull olive drab and must have had all the attachments that must have existed in the hunting-and-forestry catalog. Of course, Blankenship, a stocky muscleman with a half-bald head and tattoos in every visible place, was wearing cargo pants in black and gray spotted camouflage and a matching long-sleeved shirt that he had pulled up to below his elbows. Jane estimated the man to be about forty.

"Coffee?" he asked between bumps that went through Jane's spine.

"No, thanks. Had more than enough already. Can you go slower?"

Blankenship laughed out loud. "Seasick, are you?"

No, city kid, Jane thought. "Just slow down a little, please."

"Okay."

Michael Blankenship wasn't an unsympathetic person. If you looked away from his tattoos, an Iron Cross and various runes, and all the survivalist posturing, he was a good-looking contemporary who could articulate. Not one of those dull thugs, as Jane had feared. And yet ...

"Now, let's talk turkey. What is it with these vigilantes?"

"Don't take it personally. But people are dying here. And the police, well, somehow you guys sat it out."

Sat it out?! "Wait a minute," Jane indignantly said. "We turned over every stone, but there were no clues!"

"See." Blankenship raised his shoulders. "Then be glad you've got us."

"Who do I have? How many of you are there? And what criteria do you use? Do you line up around the forest and control the entrance?"

"Not a bad idea."

"Uh-huh, and who gets in and who doesn't? Who's to say you won't eventually start denying entry to couples? Or men who look suspicious? Men with dark hair, maybe, or dark complexions because they look like black panthers."

"It was obvious."

"What was obvious?"

"That now the Nazi thing comes. There was never any talk of black panthers. We're just -"

"Concerned?"

"Vigilant."

"Mh. And you carry weapons?"

"Only what the law allows. And no, we don't deny anyone entry."

"Then what? Do you go after the couples? Maybe some people get a kick out of watching someone in flagrante delicto." Jane wasn't sure herself what was getting her so worked up. Was it because she hadn't noticed any of this? Because the topic of the couple murders had been on and off for the past few weeks but had led to nothing? Because she had not been able to convict the murderer? Or because in the end, she had secretly hoped that the perpetrator would stop or had moved on to other places? Even if she didn't like such thoughts, they were part of the everyday life of a detective.

After endless rumbling, Blankenship brought the Ranger to a stop.

Jane let the door swing open and jumped onto the gridlocked forest floor. A forest road blocked by a red-and-white striped turnpike.

"Come on over here," she heard Blankenship call. "But watch out for the barrier."

Jane's gaze was glued to the ground, where a rusty metal pole lay among the nettles, its best days long gone. It was torn from its mount, presumably the precursor to the red and white barrier. Jane put one foot over it, then the other. When she reached Blankenship, the latter's flashlight flared, so brightly that the detective put her hand to his face.

"You got your cell phone ready?"

"Yeah, why?"

Blankenship illuminated an area on the loamy ground. Various tire tracks, most washed out, but one stood out. A few millimeters of water stood in it.

"It's fresh," Jane stated, thinking. "Made just before the rain." That meant the car had still been parked here around the time of the man's death. And who knows how long before that. Even if that still necessarily meant something ...

"I've already photographed them, too," Blankenship interrupted her train of thought.

Jane looked up with a furrowed brow. "What for?"

"We're playing on the same side, remember?"

"It's not a game to me."

"That was just a phrase," he said, scratching his forearm. Jane's gaze fell on a steel helmet bearing an imperial eagle.

"Whatever." She pointed to the tattoo. "Again, on the subject of Nazi."

"Yeah?"

"What would you think if I wore something like that on my arm?"

Michael Blankenship laughed out. "I would think that you like German history, and not just the bad part of it. That you like the symbols of the German Empire and," he chuckled. "That when you were hired into law enforcement, they must have been blind."

"Why is that?"

"Because no one with drawings like that gets admitted to the police force."

"Not without reason, I guess," Jane said thoughtfully, then realized. "Wait a minute," she tilted her head, "did you try?"

"Yep."

"I'm sorry, but I can't even really feel sorry for you," the detective confessed. "Maybe you're not one of them, but it's the outside that counts. Nobody trusts a cop who has to explain his body paint first."

"Anyway ... What do you think of the trail? Could be from the perp, right?"

Jane looked around. The path they had come across was a forest trail. A yellow-bordered sign indicated that it was private. From the other side of the barrier, the road continued graveled. According to the map, the nearest public road was a few hundred yards away. This was not the place you get lost.

"Anyway, we should follow it up," she replied. She probably would have said the same thing if she hadn't been convinced of the importance of the trial. If only so Blankenship couldn't claim that BPD was 'sitting this one out'.

"Please send me your footage," she said, notifying CSRU, so they could take prints of the tire track.

She decided to wait for her CSRU colleagues to arrive. Of course, Blankenship straddled them. "I'm not leaving you alone after all."

"Fine," She smiled wearily. "Then you can explain to me again exactly when you discovered this trail and why you were just here."

Blankenship answered evasively, at least that's how it seemed to her. He talked about patrol, about a suspicious vehicle, about a chance hit. But he couldn't back any of it up with details.

Jane was glad when her colleagues arrived.

And she decided to keep Michael Blankenship on the radar.