-15-

Cavanaugh had gotten an update from Jane. Korsak and Frankie asked few intervening questions. Astonishment prevailed. One thing troubled them all, and that was whether or not Axel Singer would be kept in custody.

"He didn't bury the Jetta, nor did he murder the woman," Cavanaugh said after a brief exchange of glances with Jane. "Apparently, he lawyered up."

"That's a pill we have to swallow." Jane nodded with a contrite expression. "But what concerns us, for now, is this: George Scully had a child, or rather the woman found in the trunk of the car. What became of the child? Why didn't anyone tell us? Do the neighbors in all keep their mouths shut, or did they know nothing about it? I mean... a child! You can't keep something like that a secret."

"Do you have any idea," Korsak grumbled, and everyone in the room knew there had been the most abysmal of incidents. Unnoticed home births, unregistered children, not infrequently from incestuous unions. Dead infants.

"I know there is," Jane replied, more sharply than she intended, "but we're investigating Scully's environment so intensely, why hasn't this come up long ago?"

"There's nothing in the book, anyway." Korsak pointed to a stack of worn paper pages. "Neither the woman nor a child are mentioned there."

"What about this teenager?" Frankie frowned.

Cavanaugh shook his head. "That was Singer, wasn't it?"

"That was our theory," Frankie said. "But it could just as easily have been Scully's own son. He was old enough to have big kids."

"According to the file, he didn't have one, though," Jane objected. At least that was what the remaining records indicated. Scully had died with no next of kin. No brother, no heirs. Besides, would Scully have called his own son a 'brat' and a 'mama's boy'? In other words, considered him worthless like his victims?

It occurred to Jane that she had practically contradicted herself with her last statement. Scully, according to the records, was not only childless, he had not been married at all. That in no way ruled out an illegitimate offspring. "Shit," she uttered aloud, slapping her thigh. "It's pretty obvious. It's his kid, and she wasn't his wife. But that puts us right in front of the next problem. After all, if Scully's paternity isn't registered, none of this is going to do us any good!"

"I don't see what good any of this is going to do anyway," Frankie confessed. "You don't really believe Singer is this illegitimate child."

"I don't believe anything anymore" Jane was already holding her cell phone. "Call that writer again, please, and grill him about the girlfriend and kid. I'll call Connolly."

There was an embarrassing mood in the Cold Case department.

Connolly answered the call on his cell phone and barked into the microphone without so much as a glance at the display. "What?" Jane's voice placated him only slightly.

"Hey, Connolly. I've got a little favor to ask you."

"Keep it coming," he continued to grumble. "You can do it with me, after all."

"What's the matter?" asked Jane. "Singer, is it?"

"Uh-huh. As we speak on the phone, he's being released from custody. Great, isn't it? And now I'm probably getting your displeasure about it, too."

"Nonsense. I had to expect it." Then a pressed laugh. "I'm just picturing Singer seeing his garden for the first time."

It was a small comfort, but even Ethan Connolly couldn't suppress a grin. "At least something, yeah," he grumbled. Then he turned serious again. "Do you think we should give Linda Marx a heads-up?"

"I can call her," Jane replied. It was a phone call neither of them cared to make. Connolly thanked her and then asked, "What did you want from me anyway?"

"It's about the dead woman. Scully's girlfriend, presumably. I need everything you've got."

"You know there's not much there."

"Did you know she had a kid?"

Connolly scratched behind his ear. A child? That was news to him. He'd remember that, wouldn't he? "You sure? I don't know anything about that. And in his file -"

"Illegitimate. But Maura has established a pregnancy including birth. No chance of error, the body is in far too good a condition for that."

"And the child is supposed to be Scully's?"

"I don't know. But we'll have to check it out. I'd like to see Singer's birth record, too."

"You don't mean Scully had something with Singer's mother? That's absurd."

"I don't mean anything anymore. There's a DNA profile on Scully, isn't there? And we'll have the dead woman's ready soon. We also have a sample from Singer. We can invest that little bit of diligence."

"Singer was a juvenile at the time," objected Connolly, to whom that seemed a stretch.

"So what? Scully was old enough. And even the dead woman was around her mid-thirties. The time of her confinement, I'm afraid, is impossible to determine; it might have been when she was in her twenties."

Connolly shook himself. "You forget that Singer came from a wealthy family. With a father and a mother."

"And you forget it's just a street. Sometimes the weirdest things happen in a neighborhood like that. Everybody knows about it, but on the outside, you're as silent as the grave." Jane sighed. "Ethan, I know it sounds absurd. But we rule out one thing at a time, what else are we going to do?"

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Why had she driven here in the first place?

Jane paused behind the wheel of her car and cast a furtive glance at her cell phone, as she had done repeatedly over the past few hours. Shouldn't she rather be in the Cold Case department, going through old files? No. Connolly could do that without her help. Was she making her restless circles around Boston so she could be at the morgue quickly if needed? But what was she doing there? As long as Maura couldn't reconstruct the infant's adult face from the mummified uterus with some software, there was hardly anything that required her presence. Or, in the end, was the detective just looking for something to do just so she wouldn't have to go to Singer's house? To stay out of his hair, to avoid committing a skip act she would regret? Was she deliberately putting off the phone call to Linda Marx? Someone had to inform the poor woman that her rapist was coming home again. Next door. To the same street.

Jane felt nausea rising inside her. At that moment, her cell phone vibrated, and it sounded like a message. Connolly. Axel Singer had been released. She bit her lower lip.

High time. Jane composed a reply, telling her colleague that she would inform Linda Marx. Seconds later, she listened for the dial tone, but only the voicemail answered after the sixth toot."

"Hello, Ms. Marx, Jane Rizzoli. Um, I just wanted to let you know, and I'm very sorry that Axel Singer has been released from custody. Maybe you'd like to go back to the hotel. Anyway, you can reach me anytime. Okay? Bye."

If there was one thing she liked even less than talking to voicemails, it was delivering bad news.

The detective sighed. Should she actually drop out?

How would Sophie Brennan react when she asked her questions about William Rodgers? A man Jane had a huge problem with and whose secret daughter wanted nothing to do with either. Each for their own reasons.

No, she decided and turned the ignition key. Rodgers' salvation was not her responsibility. And Mrs. Brennan had enough to put up with as it was.

Twenty minutes later, Jane squatted at her desk in the bullpen. She clutched a water bottle with only a last sip remaining in it. Her gaze roamed over the boards on which the images of victims and suspects stuck. Colorful lines, garishly colored notes, a huge fuss. And for what? What good had it done?

She threw her head back and dumped the rest of the water into her mouth. Then the plastic bottle flew toward the trash can. The trash in the bin was already piling up so high, however, that the bottle fell out with a loud bounce and came to rest only after seemingly rolling endlessly.

Jane groped after it, bent down under Korsak's desk, and fished out the bottle to stuff it back into the bin. As she did so, her eyes fell on the torn papers inside, with two blue-tinted freezer bags peeking out from between them. She paused in her movement. A thought took shape. A thought she had suppressed before, that she had not wanted to, or been able to, allow. Axel Singer had invaded Linda Marx. Had empowered himself to her womanhood as she lay defenseless before him. Axel Singer, a man for whom there seemed to be nothing more important than conquering young, good-looking women. Sleeping with them. The Moonshine Killer's victims were women who fit this prey pattern. However, no evidence of sexual abuse had been found on them. No lubricant, no lacerations. Why hadn't he taken them after he had killed their alpha males and they had lain defenseless before him? Why had he held back here, of all places, at the zenith of his power?

Jane still sat in a crouch, staring into space.

What if someone else was the moonlight killer? What if, in the end, this moonshine killer had no way to copulate with his victims at all? What ... Jane jumped up and rushed to Cavanaugh's office, hoping he was still there.

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Jane sat in the lieutenant's office.

Cavanaugh leaned back in his chair after she made her request to him. "Impressive theory," he said. But Jane could certainly tell when he was skeptical.

"Then let me do whatever is necessary to verify it," she urged.

"Or falsify it," he added.

"Whatever," she snorted. "We've had so many crazy approaches to this case, one more or less won't matter."

"Have you heard about the cell phones? The trophies," then he explained. "They're the victims' devices."

Jane bit her tongue. She had put her cell phone on the charger, and there it still was. Had Nina tried to reach her? Damn. "Meaning what?"

"We may have let Axel Singer go too soon -"

Jane cut him off. "Sir, I'm desperately trying to explain to you that Singer is not the Moonlight Killer!"

"That he may not be."

"What difference does it make?"

"We're talking about a serial killer here." Now Cavanaugh's tone became sharp. "He murders on bright, warm moonlit nights, and his victims are lovers. The last time he was disturbed. His cycle is incomplete. One man is dead, the woman is still alive. Tonight is possibly the last night before it gets cloudy and cold. That is the difference to all nights will have from tomorrow. If we're not on our guard, he'll kill again tonight and then disappear into oblivion."

Jane looked at him for a long time not without sensing a certain desperation that had apparently taken possession of Cavanaugh as well. "Then we are basically in agreement. My theory doesn't exclude yours. Except that it may not be a male serial killer, but a female one."

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"A female serial killer," Korsak repeated suspiciously. "There's no such thing."

"Wouldn't be our first female serial killer, Vince," Jane retorted, annoyed. She had just put her theory to her colleagues, and she was annoyed that he seemed more concerned about the term than the thing behind it.

"But?"

"It's about Scully's kid," Jane exclaimed. "Frankie and Connolly have been talking to this Sanders, haven't they. And what about Connolly's research?"

"Now, calm down," Korsak said in an emphatically calm tone. He picked up his cell phone and raised his hand. "Hello, Ethan?" he said with a mocking grin. "I've got a partner here who's impatient. What do you say?" While Jane gave him a withering look, Korsak turned on the speaker.

Hearing a female voice, Jane reacted in puzzlement, then recognized Grace Saylan and had to smile. Connolly finally had his energized partner back.

"Hello, it's tough," the American woman with Turkish roots began. "Lots of kids out of wedlock, but something always falls through the cracks."

"Mm. Did you look for mothers with sons, or daughters, too?"

"First, for both. There were lots of hits, so we narrowed it down to mothers whose whereabouts are unknown. The list immediately got a lot smaller."

Jane slid forward in her chair and frowned. "How small?"

"There are two cases in the possible time frame that could fit."

"Great. Let's hear it."

Grace Saylan read aloud the two names that were completely unfamiliar to Jane. Cindy Cooper and Millie Gardner. The first of the two women had given birth in Quincy, the other in Boston. The first a boy, the second a girl."

"And the registration address?" wanted Jane to know.

Saylan named them. None of them even came close to matching, but that didn't mean anything. "I checked on the whereabouts of both of them," she said afterward. "Cindy Cooper married a Finn. Together with him and their child, she moved to Europe."

"When exactly?"

"07/31/1990."

"That's several months after Scully's arrest," Jane thought aloud, not giving any thought to how far the young colleague was already involved in the investigation.

Grace Saylan didn't let on as she said, "It's harder with the other one."

"In what way?"

"Millie Gardner," Saylan said, sighing, "There are hundreds of those."

"But not with illegitimate daughters."

"True. Still. The research is going to be difficult, especially since we don't have a starting point."

"Why not?"

"Ms. Gardner gave birth to her daughter on 04/02/1983, and the residence on her ID card was probably out of date because I couldn't find anything on her."

Jane entered the birth date into her computer. "Saturday," she thought aloud. "Do you know when the woman was released from the hospital?"

"No. But I can find out."

Jane thanked her, almost effusively. But as soon as Korsak ended the conversation, the wave ebbed.

"And then what?" he cut to the chase. "The girl is reported. Under a false address. No one cares, at least not until she goes to school."

"Still," Jane replied with furrowed brows.

"But it's much more likely that the little girl was followed around for a while and the investigation was eventually dropped. No Internet and the databases still in the beginning. The youth welfare offices were just as overburdened as they are today. Who cares about a little girl?"

As much as Jane hated to admit it, Korsak was probably right. If one thing had never changed during her long career, it was that. In the end, it was always the kids who fell through the cracks, Whose souls burned. An uneasy sense of foreboding rose in her.

George Scully had not been officially married and had lived alone, even if the old neighbors had said otherwise. If the girl was not his, why should he have had any inhibitions about murdering her, too? After all, he had killed the woman he must have loved at least some of the time. And his misanthropic view of man was sufficiently documented in Sanders' book.

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About twenty minutes had passed.

Jane had made several phone calls, three of which had gone to the Quincy Police Department. In addition, a brief conversation with the two seniors whose coffee still left a bitter taste in her mind.

"Damn!" She had smacked her forehead. If only she had listened a little better. The two old men had practically handed her the solution on a silver platter, after all.

He was just gone. Just like the little one.

That's exactly what the woman had said with a sad face. And with the 'little one' she had not meant Scully's young girlfriend, but her daughter!

The detective appraised her colleagues, all of whom had gathered in the conference room. When she was aware of the attention, she strode to the board, on which she noted some data.

Sandra Gardner.

The name was not much rarer than her mother's.

In parallel, Jane had listed the dates of Axel Singer.

Born in 1974, he was nine years old when Sandra was born. The stay in the psychiatric ward wasn't until 1990 after both mother and daughter had disappeared. And months after Scully's arrest.

"We have a lot and yet nothing," Cavanaugh stated after a moment of general silence. He had promised to issue a nationwide manhunt for all Sandra Gardner born in April 1983. But what no one dared to say was how the whole thing was going to help them catch the Moonlight Killer.

Even though the name Millie left a ringing in Jane's ear. Her head was so full, unfortunately, that she couldn't get it categorized at that moment.

When her cell phone buzzed, it was a load off her mind. "Ms. Marx. I was getting worried," she said. "Are you home?"

"No. I couldn't," it came after a small pause, and the woman's voice sounded contrite. No wonder.

"Then you know -"

"That he's free again? It was hard to miss."

"There was nothing we could do, I'm sorry," Jane affirmed. "But forensics is still evaluating his personal effects. Don't give up hope." She paused for a moment, then asked, "Are you going back to a hotel?"

"I think so. But first I have to eat something. I always do that when I'm frustrated." Linda Marx laughed with a cackle. "Luckily, I packed my running shoes."

"We can run together sometime," Jane said. „Anyway, we'll keep in touch. And please check in with me whenever you feel the need."

"That's all right," Marx breathed heavily. "Thanks."

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Jane entered her wife's office and saw that she was standing in front of a shelf with her back to her. The detective closed the door and the blinds before walking over to the blonde and wrapping her arms around her waist.

Even though the two women had agreed even then that they would keep their BPD relationship strictly professional, it was usually Jane who would sneak into the office and break that golden rule because she needed mental or emotional support, or because she was so engrossed in a case that it barely allowed her to be home with Maura. This time, both were true.

Maura turned her head a little and smiled. She knew that the ongoing case demanded everything from the detectives and that Jane taking advantage of this short break to have some togetherness with her, she certainly wouldn't object, even though it had been Jane who had said then that they would keep it strictly professional in BPD. Even back when the two women had been just friends, that plan had never really worked. Especially not after they had become an official couple. Jane had been looking for an excuse to be in either Maura's office or in the morgue, and flipped, Maura to be in the bullpen.

This time, the detective hadn't had to look far for a reason to go to Maura's office. Maura smiled broadly when she noticed Jane's thumb tracing gingerly circles over her belly. She hadn't been sure how her wife would react when Jane learned of the pregnancy. She had sat in her office for days, racking her brain about how to break the news to the detective. Had wondered if Jane would gush with happiness or completely freak out. She had also thought about alternatives that, after thinking about it for a while, were out of the question and that she wouldn't tell Jane she had considered for a fraction, that secret she would take to her grave. She knew that if she would tell it to her wife, Jane would indeed freak out.

The detective's cell phone buzzed and Jane groaned in annoyance before letting go of her wife and reading the message.

Maura turned to the brunette and frowned a little when she saw the exhausted face.

"I know," Jane sighed, slumping her shoulders. "I look terrible. I'll sleep in when this damn case is over. And then we should talk about the stuff we need to get because of the baby," she said as she headed for the door, but then she paused and looked at the doctor with wide eyes. "And you're sure that -"

"That I'm really pregnant? Yes, I'm sure," Maura whispered emphatically, and something in Jane's eyes changed that made her smile.

A deep frown suddenly appeared on Jane's forehead. "We still need to talk about a suitable doctor, and about the nursery and -"

"Jane," Maura interrupted her wife, and she looked at her with wide eyes. "Go!"

Jane grinned and put her hand on the knob before opening the door. "I love you."

Maura smiled broadly. "I love you, too. Now go before Korsak sends out a missing person report."

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Another meeting was scheduled. In attendance, along with numerous officers from other departments, were Ethan Connolly and Grace Saylan, plus their supervisor, Ed Barker.

"I had a longer meeting with a couple of bigwigs earlier," Cavanaugh summarized," and we're in agreement so far that we're going to launch an interdepartmental operation. The entire urban forest will be swarming with plainclothes officers tonight. Vice, narcotics, we're getting support from every angle."

"Wouldn't it be easier just to keep this Singer under surveillance?" inquired a voice whose face Jane couldn't place. The conference room was filled with so many people that she had lost track of them.

"We can do that, of course," Cavanaugh evaded, "but we want him to feel safe. The only option we have is to catch him in flagrante delicto."

"Pretty risky," someone else announced.

Jane had to nod involuntarily, even though she didn't want to stab Cavanaugh in the back. She cleared her throat, and promptly the lieutenant pointed at her, "Would you like to say something about that, Rizzoli."

All eyes turned to Jane, which made her uncomfortable. A hot wave surged through her as she stood up. "There's some doubt about whether Singer is really our perp," she said hesitantly. Actually, she had wanted to reveal this information later, but what else could she do?

An excited murmur swelled.

"Please!" shouted Cavanaugh to the crowd, and it quieted down a bit again. "This theory, and it's nothing more than that, must not leave the room. The online media is putting out messages across the board about how special tonight, of all nights, is going to be. How brightly the moonlight shines, how the nature smells one last time before the first frost will suck the life out of it." Someone chuckled.

"Lots of sultry things like that," the lieutenant said in response, "which we'll circulate accordingly. When the Moonlight Killer," he put the term in quotation marks with his fingers, "reads these things, it may arouse his lust for murder. And it outweighs his caution. Unfortunately, we were too late to run a campaign in the newspapers, but we're still hoping for a radio spot." Cavanaugh gave a strained snort. "Whatever. That's all we can do in advance."

He then informed those present that the urban forest was to be observed by teams of two. Disguised as couples who would approach the forest parking lots in unmarked cars and move through the forest after dark with picnic blankets and backpacks. Or individuals who would equip themselves appropriately immediately after the meeting to take up hidden positions in the forest. Invisible to everyone. The operation was coordinated with the relevant authorities.

"What about our 'concerned citizens'?" inquired Korsak as Cavanaugh paused briefly to take a drink of water. Somewhere in the room, Korsak's phrasing caused a groan; elsewhere, a snort of laughter.

"The vigilantes are in on it," Cavanaugh replied, pointedly matter-of-fact. "We can't exclude them, because then we would have to notify too many people of our action. We want to lure the moonlight killer, not deter him."

It was obvious from the murmurs that this assessment did not go over well with everyone. Jane, still standing next to the lieutenant, continued in a loud voice, "It hasn't bothered him so far either that Blankenship and his cronies were on the scene. It would be more noticeable, wouldn't it, if they were no longer seen?" She wondered if she felt the same way. Jane didn't know. Nor was she convinced that the Moonlight Killer would be lured into the woods simply because it was suggested that this September moonlight night was his last chance for prey. What was much more on the detective's mind was the thought of who was hiding under the Moonlight Killer's name, if it wasn't Axel Singer.

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Jane was standing in the restroom washing her hands when she looked in the mirror and then took a closer look at herself with a frown. Now she could see what her wife had seen earlier, that she looked quite worn out and at the same moment she was glad that her mother was taking an extended vacation. She could hear Angela complaining that the job demanded too much of her children and that Jane should take a few days off and sleep in, and that the job of a cop was far too dangerous. She had already had to listen to these things from her mother when she was still sitting in a patrol car. Nonsense, when she had still been at the academy. The frown deepened as she thought unintentionally about the unborn child, how her mother would react, and how often she would complain loudly about how being a cop was way too dangerous, especially now that there was a baby on the way. "Ma, get out of my head," she whispered knowing she was alone. She looked in the mirror as the door to the restroom opened and cocked her head to the side when she recognized the ME. She raised an eyebrow when the doctor locked the door and slowly approached her. "You do know we're in a restroom in BPD, right?"

Maura grinned mischievously and continued pacing toward her wife. "When did you get so shy?"

If Jane had been drinking anything, she would have very likely choked on it. She knew that the blonde had been referring to the nightly escapades that had occurred in Maura's office when they had been the last in the department. Right then, they had thrown all rules and caution overboard and given in to carnal lust, even though they knew it didn't mean anyone wouldn't barge into Maura's office. Just because the forensics lab and morgue had been empty. it didn't mean a detective would stray there late at night, or into one of the rooms on the third floor of the building.

Jane dried her hands with paper towels and tossed them into the trash can before turning to the doctor, eyeing the smaller woman closely. "You should know I'm a lot of things, just not shy."

Maura stood close to Jane, a smile still on her lips. "As exciting as the thought is, you, me, in the restroom while the other detectives are outside -" She pressed a file against her wife's chest and went back to spacing out. "That's not why I'm here."

"And what do you have for me? A match on the DNA?" Jane frowned as Maura scurried into a stall.

"I don't have a match," Maura replied from behind the closed door, "but a finding. The DNA on the woman's body turned up a match. However, with a completely different case -"

"Which one?"

"You're being insufferable again right now."

Jane slumped her shoulders. "I'm sorry, Maura, but it's really pressing."

Maura flushed before stepping out of the stall and walking to the sink to wash her hands as well. "It's a double homicide in Connecticut from two years ago. There were several traces of DNA found near the bodies."

"Wait a minute. Connecticut? You sure?"

"Yes," Maura replied, glancing at her wife's reflection. "Two women. A cold case. There's a suspicion it was a hate crime -"

„It sure isn't", Jane growled. "Who did the DNA come from?"

Maura now turned to the detective and gave her a serious look. "I don't know. But it's definitely related to our DNA. First degree."

"Wait a minute. With what DNA exactly?"

"Well, the dead one from the trunk."

Without warning, Jane took two big steps toward her wife, took Maura's head in her hands, and kissed her. "Maura, you're a genius."

Maura looked at her in amazement and Jane left the restroom before she could say anything in reply. "I know," she laughed in wonder.