CHAPTER TWO
Hellfire hit Boston Police Department.
Hellfire had a name.
Jane Rizzoli.
She had managed to stay calm as she walked from the morgue to the elevator.
But the news, although expected, had made Jane feel like her heart had frozen. She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think.
The blood on the photograph did in fact belong to Dr. Maura Isles. It is Kent that delivers the disturbing news.
Jane had watched his mouth move.
"The blood is a match to Dr. Maura Isles."
Had it been anyone other than Kent, that had not worked with someone like Maura, they would maybe have given her this information in a more hopeful or a softer and less certain way, instead of the plain raw truth.
She stared at Kent like she was waiting for more. Her face paled considerably. Jane watched the look of concern slowly cross Kent's face because she had not responded at all to him. In the back of Jane's mind she wondered if Maura might have chuckled softly at this, the first time in Jane Rizzoli's entire life that she was rendered completely speechless.
She then reached out her arm and braced herself against the doorframe. The hardness of it helped ground her and her legs felt less like jelly. Kent had stepped closer preparing to catch her if she collapsed.
After a moment, when she could speak, she did, 'Is Maura dead?'.
Kent, in a simple act of fierce compassion, had shaken his head 'No'.
Jane knew he really meant 'We don't know, we can't know, we have no proof either way'.
'Never assume, never guess, the facts will tell the story', that was Maura's motto. There was not enough information to conclude Maura was dead, nor was there enough information to conclude she was alive. And that sickening unknown factor travelled the three floor in the elevator with Jane.
It was like her own blood had seemed to stop flowing. And the elevator dinged at her floor and her blood seemed to move again, rapidly. By the time Jane crossed the room and reached her desk, her blood seemed to be rushing through her veins at such speed that she felt like throwing up. Heat had risen from her chest to her face and all she could hear was the sounds like a fast pounding drum. Boom-Boom-Boom-Boom.
She had to make it stop...somehow...
and so she screamed.
And this hellfire emptied the bullpen faster than a free donuts sign. In a split second Jane hurled everything off her desk onto the floor with an echoing scream. The only thing remaining on the detectives desk when the scream ended was her computer monitor and a pencil that seemed to have escaped it's fate only momentarily before it rolled off the other side anyway. Her chair was on its back with the wheels spinning. And she stood with her hands in fists, panting, her expression changing between anger and sorrow with every expansion of her chest.
After a moment the anger seemed to lose out to a desperate sadness and Jane's forlorn look and glassy eyes made Korsak hold his breath in anticipation.
Casey proudly holds up another picture of Jane for Maura to see. His eyes sparkle in glee as he points at Jane's face, it is a look Maura has glimpsed just once, when Jane lost her cool on a suspect, but never with the intensity she sees now, standing in front of her empty desk in the BPD bullpen with a pile of items on the floor around it. Maura hadn't been aware their were security cameras in the bullpen, she didn't think anyone knew. More importantly she wondered how Casey had acquired such a thing, but fear stopped her asking him.
Maura watches as Casey pins it up on a wall amongst some of his other pictures. Pictures of Jane and Casey together during happier times. In the park, smiling, together at the ice-rink, outside the movies, at family dinner. But also pictures of Jane at the 'Dirty Robber' with her family and Maura.
Pictures of Jane eating alone in her apartment taken through the window. Jane at the gym with sweat running down her face. Jane with a coffee cup at a crime scene. Some pictures from two years prior and others more recent.
It is a definite stalker style tribute and it scares Maura deeply. How many hours she has already watched Casey, hunched over his desk studying the pictures, or altering them, admiring them. He is obsessed, insanely so.
But he allows Maura to watch him work from her spot on the couch a few meters away. It's like he is fine with Maura to see this almost vulnerable obsessive side of him for some reason, she can't quite understand, although maybe he doesn't believe there is anything wrong with what he is doing at all.
He mumbles to himself occasionally as he works meticulously studying the next photo of Jane.
Casey's obsession is only half of what worries Maura, that he allows her to watch worries her most.
Since she doesn't know his agenda she can only assume, and Maura assuming is in itself a dangerous thing. She immediately assumes he will not let her live. She especially doesn't believe he would allow her to watch him as well as allow her to live. He has never blindfolded her so she knows exactly where she is in Boston, she knows who he is, especially since she studied his medical records to help him with medical care five years ago around the time he dated Jane. If she somehow managed to escape he would be caught and would not go free for what he was currently doing...so she has concluded he would never ever allow her to escape...or allow her to ever tell a single soul about what he is and has been up to. Why does he let her live at all? Why make her watch Jane being tormented by him. Why have a living witness at all?
She shudders slightly. Casey, it seems, enjoys watching Jane pained as opposed to the normal psychology of a compulsive stalker, someone who wants to but can't be involved with someone that they cannot stop thinking about. And deep in the recesses of Maura's mind, she knows if he enjoys Jane's suffering, then killing Maura could be the natural final step in his plan. Maura fiddles with the ring on her finger while she watches Casey at work.
'Maybe he has PTSD' Maura thinks and frowns, 'would PTSD explain his behavior or was it some sort of psychotic break'. The Casey she remembered might have been a jerk at times but she couldn't imagine him doing anything like this back when she knew him.
'Casey saw the things Jane suffered through, her showdown against a serial killer, her raw fear, her nightmares, her suffering. He once loved her enough to not want to see her suffer...to not do something like this to her now...surely.'
She watches the back of Caseys head bobbing around, his no2 army haircut he was so attached too, there isn't much else for her to do other than let her mind dangerously rationalize her situation which only pushes her into fear and panic. Occasionally she can distract herself with a photo of Jane that she had been able to attach a sweet and positive memory to. Jane at her desk angry, she can replace with Jane, feet up on her desk, turning to look at a voice over her shoulder, and smiling softly in recognition at her friend approaching. Jane jogging, she can put herself next to her friend and remember the enjoyable times they spent together running, joking, smiling.
Maura has only about 5 feet of noisy chain length in which to move around so there is the couch she is on, a lumpy bed to the left, the bar fridge stocked with water in front of her with a blank television sitting on top of it, and the toilet to the right. Everything else, including Casey, is just out of her reach.
So she sits and waits patiently trying not to think too much.
Maura stares at the pictures Casey seems to disturbingly treasure, the most recent ones, ones since Maura disappeared. Jane at her desk at BPD surrounded by case files looking extremely exhausted, Jane in her car sitting outside Maura's house staring at the darkened windows, Jane asleep on her couch hugging a blanket in front of the muted television, Angela tightly hugging a teary Jane outside division one cafe, Jane fighting with Korsak at the dirty robber, and Jane jogging around the block alone her eyes red from crying.
Maura's stomach cramps as she feels her friends suffering combined with feeling homesick and afraid.
How long...how long will this go on for.
Right now, Jane wants to keep screaming and stomping and smashing everything in sight like the Hulk would. She had already decked Crowe for a rude remark he made about Maura, and had then fought with both Korsak and Frankie over her unpredictable behaviour. She is reactive and angry and hurting and sick of going only around in circles but she also knows throwing things and screaming won't help. She only needs one semi-decent lead.
Just one.
But the only clues they find are ones the unsub has intentionally left for them and the clues have them completely chasing their tails.
At Maura's house they had found an ice-pick stabbed into Maura's fancy cedar front door with no prints or DNA on it, so they went after Paddy Doyle and his crew to investigate even though they knew he would never harm his daughter, or allow her to be harmed, and he was being se-up, but they had nothing else to go on in those first few days.
Also at Maura's house thrown over her couch were cold case files, ones that Maura worked on in her spare time at home. Jane had spent hours going through every single one looking for any clue but they were all dead ends. Most likely unrelated and possibly just a massive distraction, but they had no other leads then.
Maura's cellphone was left inside her house and the last call had been to Hope Martin, Maura's biological mother. Hope said she received a call at her clinic but when she answered the line no one on the other end had spoken and so after a few minutes she hung up thinking it was an accidental call.
Jane noted that all Maura's photos on her phone had been erased and oddly, Jane's number had been removed completely as well but everything else seemed the same.
Maura's car was found near BPD with a GPS inside that had been set up with the 'home' location as 'The Dirty Robber', the place they all hung out and often had dinner and drinks. They knew there was no link between Maura and any persons there, another dead end.
Constance, Maura's mother, had received a postcard with a smiling cartoon tortoise on the front and no writing on the back, the postmark was here in Boston, Constances address had been typed and there was nothing else they could find out about it.
And the new evidence found, the photo covered in Maura's blood outside the same place told them nothing at this stage.
The clues clearly told Jane that whoever took Maura knew intimate details about her and her family and her friends, and they wanted everyone to know this fact.
Jane finally sat back down in her chair at her now cleared desk and put her head in her hands. What was she doing. How was she going to cope. What was next. They were at the mercy of the unsub and so was Maura. But at least her heart was beating normally again.
...to be continued...