-14-

Jane poked her head into Maura's office and knocked on the door frame, smiling when her wife looked up from a file. "Hey, you."

Maura tried to smile, to no avail. "Hello."

"You wanted to see me?"

The doctor took a deep breath and nodded. "Yes."

The detective sauntered into the office and looked closely at her wife. "What did you want to talk to me about?"

"I have the test results from Linda -"

"No," Jane interrupted the ME and took a step toward the desk. "No, Maura, I mean, what did you want to talk to me about last night? I can tell something's bothering you."

Maura dropped her gaze for a moment and she licked her lips, opened her mouth but closed it immediately, then said seriously, "Now is not the time nor the place to discuss this, Jane."

Jane nodded slowly and chewed the inside of her cheek, a queasy feeling settling in the pit of her stomach. "We'll talk about it tonight, at home. Okay?" She saw the skeptical look on her wife's face and frowned. "I promise I'll be home on time tonight."

Maura nodded in agreement. "Okay."

The detective now pointed to the file lying in front of the ME. "So, what do you have for me?"

Maura handed Jane the file that had been in front of her and licked her lips again. "We have examined everything really intensively, but there are no traces of any narcotics in Linda Marx's samples. Neither urine nor saliva, and certainly not in the blood sample."

"I'm not surprised by the blood sample," Jane muttered as she skimmed the page with her eyebrows furled. "Aren't roofies metabolized within a few hours?"

"Metabolized," Maura said, standing up, walking around her desk, and sitting on the edge. "Right. But there should have been something in the saliva. Well, maybe there just wasn't enough saliva."

"We can't blame her for that," Jane replied forcefully. "After all she's been through, it's a wonder she took any samples at all."

"Maybe so," the doctor replied. "That's the problem with benzodiazepines."

"Will it do any good if you know the exact substance?"

"The lab is already analyzing the contents of the vials. There's also something else. The medical report."

Jane held her breath. Semen. Skin particles.

Maura sighed and brushed her hair behind her ear. "Lube. Latex. No traces of ejaculate."

"Huh?" Jane already knew about the lube. And Singer certainly wasn't stupid enough not to use a condom afterward, with all that preparation.

Maura crossed her ankles and placed her hands on the edge of the desk. "Linda Marx had intercourse, that's clear. But the typical injuries in the genital area are missing. No lacerations, no hematomas, as would normally be present if the sex was not consensual. If you ask me, and you can save any lewd remarks, this was consensual, almost tender sex. Vanilla sex."

"Vanilla sex," Jane repeated. Never. "She was unconscious, after all," she thought aloud, but that still didn't contradict what Maura had said. On the contrary. An unconscious woman didn't get aroused, didn't get wet, didn't open up willingly. Before she could think further, Maura continued speaking.

"In any case, Linda Marx's sex partner took a very gentle approach. Just as if he wanted to commit his crime in the most ... least unpleasant way possible."

Jane snorted. Such a paraphrase could only come from her wife. But Maura had resolved the contradiction; now the lack of injury made sense again. "Sure, that's it!" she exclaimed as she marched to the door. "He didn't think she'd notice. They're neighbors, for crying out loud." Was Axel Singer so callous that he had thought he could get away with it?

"Jane, where are you going?"

"I'm gonna dig deeper to get that son of a bitch."

"Of course," Maura muttered and went back behind her desk. "I'll see you in the morning then."

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Korsak and Frankie stood bent over a table, on which were all sorts of papers in a desolate mess. In Korsak's hand was a printout on which large black patterns were visible. "You're just in time," he greeted Jane, peering over the rim of his reading glasses. Before she could think of something glib to say, Korsak continued, "The tire tread fits. No doubt about it. Singer's tires match the prints in our forest exactly."

"Our forest," Frankie muttered.

"That fits," she said, ignoring the interjection. "Shall we confront Singer about it?"

"No, wait. There's more." Frankie rummaged through the papers and unearthed a file.

"What's this?"

"A report from the psychiatric ward. If I may quote the lady: We have more luck than sense."

"Oh, yeah? And that means?"

"No records exist from before 1990. When they started digitizing the files years ago, they took 01/01/1990 as the cut-off date. Singer's stay was in February, for fourteen days, followed by therapy." He handed his sister the papers.

Jane thanked him and sat down. "Nina deserves a raise," she said, and Frankie agreed with a nod. Jane had had the intuition that Nina should dig again into Singer's backstory, digging as deep as necessary, if necessary, until the family's genesis would come to light. This brought out that Axel Singer had once been in a psychiatric ward. Jane began to read. It was the sad story of a young man, an only child, who had had trouble connecting with others all his life. Spoiled by his mother, rather rejected by his father, he had been quite isolated even in kindergarten. No sports clubs. First contacts with alcohol and soft drugs at the age of fourteen. No sexual experiences at least according to his mother. A certain potential for aggression, he always listens to this bad music. The question of a trigger remained in the dark, he had refused school on and off for weeks and often just sat there with an apathetic expression. According to a doctor's note, a drug-induced psychosis was possible. More detailed clarification required. Unfortunately, there were about why Singer had been sent to the psychiatric ward. Jane suspected that the parents were overwhelmed with a teenage rebel who suddenly wasn't functioning as they would like. It was possible that police or Child Protective Services had gotten involved if truancy was a factor. She did the math. If the abnormalities had anything to do with Scully's arrest ... it was only a few months from there to the hospitalization. In between, Christmas. A time when crises occurred even in stable families.

At the end of the recording, Singer was certified to have made good progress. Not a word about medication. Not a word about therapy. It was as if only half of the records had been digitized. Had they forgotten the back? Damn.

Only one thing could be read clearly: No danger to self or others.

"Well then," Jane grumbled, still not knowing whether to be satisfied or dissatisfied with this result.

Frankie walked over to his desk and eyed his sister closely. "What are you going to tell him?"

Jane also sat down at her desk and took a deep breath. "Well, first the thing about the tire tracks. To that, he'll probably retort that all old Jettas drive those tires. Then I'll slam the psychiatric thing in his face. Another point that scratches at his image. Something he would never have told us. And if I have to, the fingerprints on the vials again."

"We've been over this," Korsak grumbled from his desk.

"I don't care. If he denies it, all the more reason to question his state of mind. I want him to come off the reservation. For him to snap."

"I don't know," the old man replied. He didn't seem eager to have a runaway crime suspect in his care.

Before Jane could object, she got a message. Connolly. He suggested probing the ground.

We can get this done today, call me

"Damn," Jane growled as she looked at her watch.

Korsak looked over the rim of his glasses questioningly.

"Maura," Frankie asked before taking a sip of coffee.

"Connolly," Jane replied, giving him a long look. "He wants to have Singer's property probed."

"So?"

Jane opened her mouth and hesitated, frowning deeply. "I think that can wait until morning. We all earned a good night's sleep."

Korsak leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses meaningfully.

Frankie looked briefly at the other man, then back at Jane. "Are you and Maura okay?" He dared to ask the question that was also on Korsak's mind.

"Yes," Jane sighed and slowly stood up, slowly gathering her belongings and taking her blazer off the back of her chair. "Yeah, we're fine."

"You sure?"

Jane smiled tightly and nodded before making her way out of the bullpen. "Yep. See you guys tomorrow."

"Night," Korsak said reflexively, raising his shoulders when Frankie looked at him with a frown.

Jane pressed the elevator button and looked at the display while she put on her blazer, and her frown was impossible to miss. She didn't know if Maura and she were okay, but she became abruptly aware that the change in dynamic between her and her wife had not gone unnoticed, which was all the more troubling.

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She sat on the couch, leaning forward thoughtfully with her elbows on her thighs and a deep frown, running her fingers over her lips in thought. Thoughts not about the case, Axel Singer or Linda Marx, but about when she forgot she had a new life, a life in which she was married to the woman she loved above all else and yet after only a short time began to neglect. At which point she became the person she didn't want to become. Who took that life and marriage for granted. In the morning she had gotten up with Maura and gone to work, in the evening they had hardly seen each other or only talked about the case before going to bed.

She had vowed not to become one of those people who just lived next to her partner until it was better to get divorced before everything was ruined. Had this point already been reached without her realizing it? Had a certain self-evidence crept in without Jane noticing? The self-evidence that Maura was there, at her side? A matter of course that Maura was already tired of. Or was it because Jane had been to Quincy more often than to Beacon Hill in recent days? Did Maura think she preferred spending time with Linda Marx instead of her? Did the doctor think Jane was having an affair with the young woman? In retrospect, Jane probably would have come to that conclusion.

Jane blinked several times when someone sat down next to her on the couch, jolting her out of her train of thought. She looked at Maura, who had sat down, and it didn't escape her that there was a strain on her face. An expression Maura only had when she didn't have good news to share. Something that would be life-changing. She hung her head for a moment and licked her lips before looking at the other woman and starting to say, "Maura, I know the last few months have been anything but easy, but whatever it is, we can work it out, together."

"I'm pregnant, Jane," Maura blurted out in no uncertain terms. The look on her face indicated that she had planned a slightly longer speech herself because she put her right hand over her mouth and closed her eyes as if wishing the words back into her mouth.

Jane heard the words, but her brain seemed to need a moment more to comprehend the meaning and magnitude of them. Her breathing had stopped and her heart was beating wildly against her chest, her ears were rushing and she was suddenly in a kind of tunnel. There was nothing and no one around Maura and her anymore. A bomb could have exploded next to her and she wouldn't have noticed. She looked at her wife with wide, disbelieving eyes. "What?"

Maura pressed her lips together with a frown before saying. "I'm pregnant."

"You sure?" the detective asked, wishing she could have kicked herself when she saw the look on the doctor's face. Knowing Maura, she'd have probably been standing in the lab late at night, sticking a needle in her own arm to take a blood sample and then analyzing it herself to be one hundred percent sure her suspicions were correct. "I mean ... What? ... When? ... How?"

"Do you really want me to explain how?" returned Maura sharply.

Jane closed her eyes briefly and turned more in her seat to face the blonde. Her initial tension eased, but at the same time was replaced by another feeling she had rarely felt since she had been with Maura. Uncertainty. "What I'm trying to say is, we've always been careful. How could this happen?" Those weren't the words she really wanted to say, but they bubbled out of her without permission.

"Do you think I planned on getting pregnant right away the first year we are married to each other?" asked Maura in a tone that was sharp, hurt, and uncertain. "This is anything but planned."

"I know," Jane whispered.

"I was going to take you on our honeymoon to the Galapagos Islands that our parents gave us," the doctor said, sniffling.

Jane nodded slowly and took a deep breath. "I know."

"I wanted to solve cases with you and travel the country. And start a family with you in three or four years. Instead, we're here now, haven't been to the Galapagos, and haven't traveled the U.S. -"

Jane was again freed from her stupor and slid over to Maura as she closed her eyes, placing her hand on Maura's cheek and drying a tear that inevitably rolled down the blonde's cheek. "Maura, please look at me." She furrowed her brows when hazel eyes looked at her. "Life ... Finds its own way, it doesn't stick to plans. We'll figure it out, together. Okay? No matter what, I won't let you down. Okay?"

Maura took a deep breath and nodded.

Jane kissed her softly and long before looking at Maura with a smile. "You sure you're pregnant?"

Maura's mood brightened and she nodded with a smile. "Yes, I am."

„Jesus", Jane breathed with a smile that almost split her face in two and Maura chuckled when the detective leaned her forehead against hers.

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Korsak had obtained all the permits to roll a small excavator off the back of a truck at 7:20 am. Next to him, Jane sipped coffee from a paper cup. Maura and two CSRUs had also arrived. Jane considered her wife with a glance and could now see the change herself, which the others had probably interpreted as a negative sign. She tried to imagine what Maura would look like in a few weeks when the pregnancy could no longer be concealed. The two women had agreed the night before that they would keep Maura's pregnancy to themselves for now. Maura had listed so many factors and complications that could take place in the early weeks of pregnancy.

"You do know that the woman you're staring at is married to you, right?" whispered Korsak.

Jane came back to the here and now, however, looking at him questioningly at her former partner. "What?"

"You're staring at Maura like you're seeing her for the very first time. If you're not careful, you'll start drooling."

Jane cleared her throat now. "Do we have to wait for Cavanaugh?"

Korsak shook his head, having already shaken off the brief conversation. "No."

The backhoe operator approached them, along with the driver of the truck, apparently the company's boss. A brief exchange of words, a few busy looks, then the engine roared to life and the dozer worked its way toward the hill. Jane had insisted, despite all objections, that the excavator approach from the front.

"We can just tear the brush away," the driver argued.

"But I don't want anything going over the hill. Especially not over what's below it." After Jane explained anew that Connolly and his team had found a buried car last night while probing the ground, everyone seemed convinced. Who knew how thick the layer of soil was over the car and how long the soil and the car body would hold up to a multi-ton tracked excavator.

"Detective Rizzoli," called one of the two CSRU's digging around the garden under a young oak tree.

Jane was chipper, nibbling her thumbnail with a frown. "Yeah?"

"We found something," the man called out, and a blue plastic bag emerged from the soil.

"What do you have?"

"Cell phones."

Memorabilia, she thought, and triumphantly, punching her brother's arm.

"Ow!" howled Frankie but shared her enthusiasm.

Again and again, the backhoe's bucket dug into the hillside, tufts of grass and root balls rolled through the area, and dark, peaty soil was piled on top. Even though the garden had been anything but well-kept before, the tracks and the excavated earth gave it the flair of a large construction site within minutes. Then a metallic screech, followed by a crack.

Even before the detective recognized the gold paint of the trunk lid, she saw the shattered rear window with shreds of a gray tarp hanging over it.

"Damn. It's the Jetta!" she called out, having long since runoff. The excavator operator, who had immediately brought the bucket to a halt, also jumped out of the cab. So did the CSRU, who was standing in a higher position to direct him if necessary. "Oh look at that, I owned this brand," he said with a furtive grin.

"Certainly not this one," Jane growled as she pushed past the men. Maura was also immediately on the scene. Jane pointed to the trunk. "Can we open that?"

Maura looked around to make sure. "We need to uncover the car a bit more, Jane."

Immediately, two forensics were at work with shovels.

"Careful," the blonde cautioned.

"We won't break anything," one of the men muttered. Again and again, the metal of the shovel scraped dully. The bumper jutting backward, Jane guessed. Gray shreds lapped from the earth. Then the license plate emerged and with it the lock's pusher.

"Do you mind?" asked Jane.

One of the forensics officers shrugged. "It's rusted anyway," he surmised, and the very first attempt Jane made proved him right.

"Shit. Would be too easy otherwise," she grumbled and had a crowbar handed to her. "Then we'll make short work of it," she said and agreed with the two men on the best spot. Then she applied the crowbar. She pressed several times, cursed, put all her weight on the iron. Metal screeched, revealing the trunk of the Jetta. Her breath caught in her throat. A mummified skull peeked out of a holey plastic sheet, black on one side and white on the other.

And the probability was that the person was a woman.

Although there was no doubt about the fact that the person in the trunk of the Volkswagen had been dead for decades, Maura had bent over the trunk and was examining the remains.

Over the past two hours, they had closed the trunk again so they could proceed with the earthwork.

The Jetta now lay exposed enough that the doors could be opened to secure the first traces. The side window and the windshield were intact. Root growth had dug along them, leading the experts to estimate that thirty years was a realistic estimate. Scully must have driven the car between the walls of the drive-through, stretched a protective sheet over it, and then piled twigs and topsoil on top.

"And no one wants to have noticed a backhoe at that time?" wondered Connolly.

In her head, Jane recapped what she knew about Scully's significant other. It was shockingly little. He had lived with her. Since when there were different statements about it. Until when no one knew exactly. At some point, before his arrest, she had simply disappeared. For Jane, it was a miracle that a name had been noted in the files. And that it had lasted with Scully at all. Neither his photo nor his psychogram made him an attractive contemporary.

"She's been well preserved," Jane heard her wife continue. "May I?"

Jane nodded, the next moment the plastic crackled as the ME's latex-wrapped hands drove under it. The plastic revealed the dead woman's ribcage. Except for a gold necklace, she appeared to be unclothed. Only at a second glance did the detective discern remnants of a pair of panties. "Didn't she have anything else on?" she inquired. "Or are the clothes rotten?"

"Not at all!" objected Maura. "Not if she was dumped and buried here. She was naked except for her panties. And that," she pointed out the brown neck, skin still stretched over it, "looks like the cause of death to me."

Jane suspected the doctor recognized strangulation marks, even if she didn't see anything obvious. She also rarely dealt with mummified bodies. "Give me a hand," she asked. "Strangulation?"

"Yes. And if you want to know for sure, you'll lend her to me for a few hours."

Jane looked at her wife for a long moment. "So we're agreed that it's a woman," she assured herself. "What age? And what's the hair color?"

Korsak and Frankie grunted when she saw the doctor's expression, Connolly rolled his eyes in amusement.

"Age, skin color, cup size," Maura feigned, "you can have anything from me. But not until after the autopsy."

"It's okay," Jane replied with a roll of her eyes. "You can have her for all I care."

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In the morgue, Maura just lifted the index finger placed in a saline solution from its container. The finger felt cold and slippery; she had refrained from using tweezers so she would not accidentally break the skin. An appraising glance followed by a smile. Burial in a virtually airtight space had done the body good. No animal damage, no decay. With a little luck, she would be able to take a full set of fingerprints from the unknown dead woman. The question remained whether the poor woman had ever been registered in her short life.

She groaned as her cell phone began to ring and plopped the finger down on the empty metal table where bodies usually lay for the autopsy. On the way, she pulled the glove off her right hand. With a silent curse on her lips, she grabbed the cell phone. Too late. The caller had already hung up again. This time she cursed loudly. The display told her it was a well-known number. Her wife. Maura rolled her eyes and pressed a button, waiting for the callback to set up. "What is it?" she croaked after Jane answered.

"I wanted to hear how far you are," the detective said almost hesitantly.

"I'm booking myself a vacation to Egypt," Maura teased. "Always watching cat videos is too boring for me in the long run."

"Maura!"

"Okay. If you want to get specific. I'm fingerprinting the dead woman right now. The DNA is already being analyzed. The body doesn't show a bullet hole or other injuries, so I'm assuming strangulation. Except for a pair of panties, she was not wearing any clothes. Rape marks or the like can no longer be determined. And don't ask me now about sperm or skin flakes. There were needles and leaf debris in the plastic sheeting, indicating that the murder occurred in the woods. In any case, these were not plant remains that could have gotten lost there while digging. There was a small pine cone stuck in her panties."

"Is it possible that the killer undressed her first and then put the panties back on her afterward?" wanted Jane to know. "Maybe to cover her pubic area?"

"Possibly. But you'll have to find that out for yourselves, I'm afraid. It could also be that she struggled. Lying on her back, with the perpetrator's knee on her sternum and his hands around her neck. In the process, the peg ... slipped in."

"Wait a minute. Sternum?"

"Sorry." Maura fretted; she had actually forgotten to mention that. "If I'm to interpret the fractures in the chest area wrong, they either come from something very heavy being on top of her. For example, the perpetrator's knee. It could also have happened when she was being loaded into the trunk. Remember, the woman has been dead for thirty years. There is no doubt about that. But we're going to have to live with the fact that some things can't be definitively determined."

"Okay. Thank you," Jane replied. "Then let me know when you're done with the prints."

"Will do. Is there even a set to match?"

"I'm working on that," it came back. But it sounded less than confident, the ME thought.

When Jane's cell phone rang another time, she responded with a puzzled tone, "Oh look. First, you act like I'm getting on your nerves like a beast, and then suddenly you can't get enough of me."

Maura chuckled briefly, then became serious in one fell swoop. "It's something I forgot to say. You see, our dead woman was pregnant."

"She had a baby?"

"Told you."

The detective swallowed hard as she realized the significance. The woman had a child inside her. By Scully? "And had she ... I mean, how far was she?"

"What?" Maura seemed irritated, and then she laughed. "Nonsense, Jane, not that pregnant after all. She's been through a pregnancy, at least one, including childbirth. That's what I mean by that."

Jane swallowed again. A child? Why on earth hadn't anyone told her?