- Chapter 4 -

"I need to know you have this under control, Sergeant."

Jane nodded, her mind unable to keep up with the words coming from Day's mouth. The last time she had been around the captain, she had turned into a walking pile of girlish glee. Day was a walking legend, notorious for his ability to rally community support during big cases which always lead to big arrests. The public loved him almost as much as the detectives at BPD did. Stupidly, she had snubbed him by not remembering his face – the guy was a star, specific features became faded in all the glory his fame brought – but Jane straightened her spine to show the icon that she could be trusted to treat her first case as a sergeant with the respect that it deserved. You represent the community and the community deserves to know you're putting a hundred percent of yourself into your cases, the captain said during her graduation ceremony at the police academy. Day was her idol, she had a responsibility to live up to the expectations he had set for all detectives that came after him. He did set the bar, after all.

"Sergeant, with all your nodding, I'm starting to feel like this is all going over your head. This isn't the time to daydream."

Jane started to nod for what had to be the fiftieth time but thought better of it. She really wasn't listening as well as she probably should be, given the seriousness of the situation. The feeling of basking in the glory of Capt. Ashley Fucking Day was like being hooked up to an IV of serotonin. The world around her blurred into a hazy vision of shapes and colors defined by the buzzing sensation generated within her body, nothing else mattered. By having Day so close to her proximity, Jane felt like the same little girl that was so ashamed by her ugly duckling looks and inability to fit in with the girls or guys in her class that she would lash out in a rebellion against the nuns, school, and even other kids.

Jane's younger years had been difficult because she had always refused to follow simple niceties. It was like the other kids had a manual to being normal that her mother had forgotten to pick up before leaving the hospital. Fitting in was next to impossible, yet following her own path seemed like the scariest thing in the world to do. She had been eight, after all. It sucked to feel lost even within her crazy Italian family. Playing any and every sport imaginable – Jane had been the wrestling team's secret weapon given her squirrelly nature and flexibility – worked in managing the feeling for a couple of years. It wasn't until she had made the decision to attend a mandatory Career Day thingie at school instead of attempting another round of smoking behind the wall-ball courts that a real direction began to present itself. Just as she had been ready to bail from the auditorium in annoyance after watching yet another nurse reaffirm gender stereotypes by telling all the lil' women out there that they could help birth babies into the world if they chose nursing as a career path, a short man strode over to the microphone, adjusted it to his height, and gave the audience of preteens a look that commanded all childish discussion to cease immediately. On his hip, a gun twinkled in the florescent light of the stage, signifying him as a cop. He wasn't dressed in the outfit normally associated with cops, however, as his plain blue suit rustled slightly, the sound reverberating loudly around the silent auditorium. And here's another police officer for all the guys, Jane remembered thinking, waiting for him to say something as she played with a couple tendrils of loose curls that had broken free from her messy ponytail placed precariously on the top of her head.

"Not that many of you can do what I do," the police officer dressed in the funny clothes said, simply. "I'm looking at maybe two or three faces that might be able to be a detective."

The usual smartass in every group of preteens screamed out, "Yeah, right!"

"Who said that?"

The dumbass raised his hand proudly, bringing a round of giggles as everyone recognized who the child was. Several of the teachers just managed to stop drooling over the small detective on stage to shake in disapproval at the offending child. With a sinister smile, the detective beckoned the young boy to come up stage. Recognizing an opportunity to reaffirm his class clown status to the rest of the school, the boy ran up to the stage with a stupid ass grin on his face.

"How about we introduce ourselves, first." The detective extended a pale hand toward the boy who was nearly taller than him. "Homicide Detective, Second Grade Ashley Day. And you are?"

The small boy laughed heartily, doubling over. "Ashley! You're a like a girl trying to be a guy. You and that crazy girl, Jane Rizzoli, would get along since you're both trying to be something you're not."

Jane blushed uncomfortably as a couple of guys turned to laugh at her. The remaining students laughed loudly at the detective's feminine name. As the students continued to laugh at his expense, Day watched the boy with a bored expression. For just a brief second, he gazed out of the corner of his eye to make eye contact with the only girl not joining in the raucous display. His confident wink in her direction seemed to reassure Jane that he wouldn't back down to a troublemaker.

"You still haven't told me your name."

With a frown, the boy narrowed his eyes at the detective's cool demeanor. "What are you, dude? A robot?"

"No, I've experienced far more abuse from people a lot bigger than you." Day narrowed his eyes and pushed the microphone to the side, hardly needed given the power of his voice. "Now, stop being rude and tell me what your name might be, child."

"Sean."

"Well, Sean, I can assure you that being a detective is as difficult as I say it is. Do you know why it is so difficult?"

The emotionless voice of the detective hardly changed in tone as he stared down the boy with his dark eyes that refused to let him get a break. On the edge of her seat, Jane watched, absolutely riveted by the authority the man commanded from everyone. Even though he was short and had a girl's name, the detective wasn't backing down. He even seemed to revel in the power he wielded on the stage to bring the crowd to a standstill.

"A detective has to see him/herself as a representative of the community. They have to want to protect those around them, not make fun of them because they're different." Day's eyes made contact with Jane's wide-open ones for a second time, smiling again as he watched her chew her hair anxiously. "All of you, including our little friend Sean, want to be rich, successful, important. Detectives are cut from a different cloth. Detectives like myself will never be those things. There is no 'I' in the mind of a detective, only 'we' and 'us'. The collective, the community always comes first. To find a person with the unique ability to put others first and their own personal needs and desires second… People like that are truly rare. And when you add in the physical requirements, it's like looking for a needle in a haystack."

As Sean struggled to find his voice before the detective, Jane sat in her plastic seat. Her whole body hummed in a way that she had never felt before. The sensation wasn't uncomfortable but different. It wasn't until later in her life that she had realized that the moment was the first stirrings of a crush, her first crush. The man had to have been twice her age but to Jane's preteen mind that gave him a level of exoticness that all the other boys in her class lacked.

The rest of the career day went by in a blur. Jane remembered trying to fluff herself up – lining her lips in strawberry shortcake flavored Lipsmackers like all the girls did in the movies when they went to talk to guys they liked and taking her hair out of the messy ponytail since two guys and a girl had said she looked "cute" with her hair down – but all of the female teachers had been hogging his attention. Despite the attention, Day just smiled politely and stared at the clock like he was counting down the minutes till he could get back to his world of protecting the innocent from evil. Watching him from afar, Jane felt her heart race. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter, pitter-patter. When she had walked her Tommy and Frankie home that afternoon, she had told the boys they could go to the playground alone as long as they didn't tell ma. Happily they had ran off while she had locked herself in her room and masturbated for the first time, unable to stop until the sound of her mother's car rolling into the driveway forced her into an erratic panic to sneak out and get her brothers from the playground before she got in trouble. As she ran full-speed to get the boys back from the playground before her ma realized the house was empty before dinner, Jane could remember the same thought had been racing through her head, stuck on repeat like a catchy pop song from a half-naked woman in her thirties trying to act as if she had really been touched for the first time: I need to be a homicide detective, just like him.

Looking back over the years when she had been a rare introspective mood, Jane wondered why she had gotten so excited seeing Detective Ashley Day. Was it the connection she felt to him when he looked at her with those dark eyes? Or was it the idea of being with other people that wouldn't think she was weird because she was strong and wanted to make things better instead of simply fitting in like everyone else? Hell, maybe it was the passion of the first teenage crush. Regardless, after the first time Jane had experienced the joy of masturbating, womanhood came quickly behind. Somewhat late to the party, her menstrual cycle knocked on the door soon after her sexual awakening. And with that came breasts – miniscule as they might be – and some real, honest to god attention from young men instead of the usual little boys that hung around trying to recruit her for flag football tournaments. Her ma had taken the moment as a sign that miracles truly do happen if you pray enough, warranting a celebration that was on par with the second coming of Jesus himself. Thank god, she really is a girl. Now we can buy pink filigreed bras, sickly sweet deodorant, dresses weighed down by endless ruffles, and prepare her for the joy of childbirth and taking care of her domineering hubby.

Ashley Day had managed to penetrate her girlish existence all those years ago and now she was expected to work alongside him without going down memory lane. The Greek god of her childhood fantasies had descended from his Mt. Olympus of glory to mingle with the mortals who had spent years worshipping his existence. Seeing him before her twenty-six years later, now doing the same thing he had been to her as an impressionable child, it was quite simply the most fucked up thing she had the pleasure of experiencing, outside of having a child of her own.

"Now I know you're not listening to me, Sergeant."

Jane shook her head out of the mental cobwebs. "No, sir. I'm listening."

"Then what did I just say?"

"Uhh…murder is bad and something about the community?"

"Jane," Day said, sighing. "We need to get a hold of this murder before the community feels like we, and mainly you, aren't handling things seriously. With the tensions already present in this neighborhood regarding racial and class issues, things are already problematic. We, meaning you, need to take this seriously."

"Sir, I don't have this under control because I don't know what I have yet. We just started doing interviews with a couple of burglary and trespass suspects who wandered upon the body in the process of doing…something. I'll bring them to the station and after their booked we'll interrogate the two of them separately. Sir, Captain, investigations are a process, you know that."

"I don't like your tone, Sergeant. Do I have to remind you about rank?"

Jane messaged her temples. "No, you don't have to remind me about rank because my tone hasn't changed. Why are you even here, in the first place? There's like three journalists out there who have to be here because this neighborhood is part of their beat. Nobody knows anything yet."

"Rizzoli," Day began, quietly. "You'd be best to remember that you don't have the benefit of your former Sergeant to hide behind anymore. Before, when you mouthed off, he'd be there to take the fall but now…just watch what you say. Can you do that?"

"Yes, sir."

Day took out a small piece of yellow line paper with a name written in delegate cursive on it. "The sexton of this graveyard would like to talk to you concerning this incident. He's waiting back at BPD. He expects the utmost curtesy so please don't throw him in an interrogation room, please."

"But I'm kinda busy with the investigation."

"Jane, you're a sergeant now."

"So I can't do my job?"

"Your job is to supervise and handle the public and their perception of the Homicide division. Running around with the team can't happen anymore. You watch from afar, giving orders, while they work." Jane took the piece of paper with a sigh, still massaging her temples. "This is a transitional period for you, Sergeant. Making mistakes is normal during this difficult time. That's why I'm here, to keep you on track."

Jane nodded automatically. I've disappointed him. Why do I even give a rat's ass why I've disappointed him?

"Do you need me to sit in on the interview with the sexton?"

"What?" Jane asked, dreamily.

"The cemetery's supervisor. You want me to sit in?"

"I don't really know," Jane began weakly, unable to make eye contact. "If you think that's best then you probably should, I guess."

"Good, I'll meet you back at BPD. Fourth floor, by the way."

Jane watched the man walk away, her mind lost in thought. She felt sick to her stomach. The pleasurable haze that descended whenever she was around the Captain had transmuted itself into a form of passive aggression that she wasn't familiar with. All she wanted to do was hit something, show Ashley Fucking Day that she wasn't that same little weak girl chewing on her hair and waiting for change to come to her but wanting to show him that she wasn't that same girl anymore just made her more frustrated. She didn't need his approval or anyone else's for that matter. She was Jane "Badass" Rizzoli. Day probably didn't even remember her from all those years ago. She was obsessing over a man that she saw from a distance and, most importantly, Jane didn't even know why.

"We're going to take the body back to the crime lab," Maura said, causing Jane to jump in surprise. "I'll hitch a ride with the techies, if you don't mind. We're dealing with bones and it's easy for things like this to get damaged or contaminated with poor handling." Noticing her wife's blank stare, Maura placed an arm on the small of her back before turning Jane toward her. "What did he say to you?"

"What he said wasn't important. It's the fact that I just rolled over and let him say it that concerns me."